y'all can't all be wrong: July 2003

That's an unsound blog fundamental. Without a repost or comment, there's no interaction. Worse, there's no dialogue. Without a dialogue, what's the point? Typewriters come cheap these days, just write a dusty book.

Furthermore, here's what m-w.com says about monologues: "a long speech monopolizing conversation."

Anyway, case in point. Here is a bit blog dialogue (I'll leave it to the reader to create the neologism blogalogue -- 'cause I don't do things like that):

I've started making a list of things I want to do before I hit the big 3-0. (I've got 2 1/2 years, but these things require planning.) Mainly, I want this list to remind me to stop making excuses and living day by day.

So, under the guise that y'all will hold me to this, here's the list I've come up with so far:

1. Leave the country.
2. Pick someone up in a bar.
3. Drive across the country.
4. Ride a motorcycle.
5. Shoot a gun.

Try it in reverse order:

5. Shoot a gun.
4. Ride a motorcycle.
3. Drive across the country.
2. Pick someone up in a bar.
1. Leave the country.

If you did it that way, you could probably get it all accomplished in less than 3 days; and, if #5 was Postal enough, you'd probably want to.

Unflamed dialogue is the root of progress -- otherwise we would all have mouths but no ears.

I can't write tonight, so for once I succumb to exhaustion. For once enervation kills motivation and I get to wake up tomorrow and I ask myself if I really have it in me. For once I bite into my literary Bismarck and words don't go squirting out the other end.

I don't know. Maybe it's a line from Peter Hitchen's essay, "Not In Our Name" (republished in Harper's, July 2003) that's bringing me down:

There seems to be a new ideology of Americanism in which one is either totally loyal or one is a suspect.

I guess I'm a suspect then. Hey, I am missing a finger. According to the HSD, you should be suspicious of people who are missing digits.

Terrorist doesn't seem like the right word -- although, it's got high efficacy in the political realm. Maybe by the time Cold War II rolls around we'll have Red Terrorists. We'll boycott the summer and winter Olympics and then all the bloggers will be run through McCarthyism type trials. I can see it now, "The Great Guantanamo Bay Prison Camp Blog Meet Up in 2037 -- True Insurrectionists Only!"

And no, no, no, I'm not anti-American. I might be a Socialist, but I am not anti-American. But, see, I must be feeling like a suspect because I'm qualifying that I am not anti-American. Screw it -- really. I enjoy paying taxes and what's more American than that? That's freaking direct support of the American government. In fact I think real Americans are the ones who pay taxes and don't bitch about it or the ones who refuse to pay taxes and also don't bitch about it. The weather sucks more than taxes. Bitch about that. In the meantime if taxes get you down, run for office, or vote, or start a blog or something.

Oops, I just typed an email where I used the word lead instead of led. Why are these things so extraordinarily humbling and maddening? I think I'm hooked on phonics and I am in need of the 12 step typo program.

Artist: Coldplay
Song: Warning Sign
Album: A Rush of Blood to the Head
Year: 2002

While visiting San Francisco -- sure -- have a literati moment and visit City Lights Bookstore. But if you want yeoman enlightenment (it's better than you think), make a visit to City Limits Restaurant in Bremerton, Washington.

Bremerton is an economically and Prozacally depressed city. I get to go there frequently by virtue of my job. Today, I went to City Limits for lunch. The guy behind the counter took for-fucking ever to take my order. I was seething with all the nastiness that writers block and sleep deprivation produces -- and I was just about to give him a super urbanized "what the fuck is taking so long?" when a rare Seattle ray of sun beamed of wave of empathy into every part of my soul.

I gained awareness that the guy behind the counter put his heart and soul into the restaurant. And while I am off to New York City, frolicking in pinwheel fashion and pretending to be so cosmopolitan -- he's back in a nothing town taking care of his own. I hope to God his dream is bigger than my actualities. 'Cause, the thing is this guy waited on me hand and foot -- and he didn't call me a hippy-faggot for my purple sunglasses, and he didn't flinch from my initial dissatisfaction with him --regardless that he probably did feel my irritation and probably didn't understand my garb. He went through the trouble of custom-making my home-fries without green peppers (I abhor them) and just before I left, he gave me a free Dr Pepper to go. All of this and the place has live jazz and omelets all day long (the omelets not the jazz).

So Mr. Man behind the counter, SOTW Volume 7 is for you. I'll be off on my journeys everywhere, royally exercising all that is privileged; my neighbors will be right at home Mike-Tysoningly-slamming their doors for whatever reason, but at least the world will know; but you mister counter man, you will be at work, tending to your customers, soaking in the evening jazz, all the while enjoying the thrill of filling your humble space in the world.

We'll meet again kind fellow -- maybe play a game of Euchre or two. In the meantime enjoy this melancholy song -- it could have been so much better if it was written for you rather than (ostensibly) some anonymous chick.

Peace, TQ

Addendum, I found this looking for a City Limits webpage. They are probably commonplace, but the disco ball is such a great juxtaposition to the bleakness of Bremerton.

In a way there is a sadness to everything. Sometimes I think life is just a bunch of moments trying to avoid sadness.
-- tqb 2000-April-03 3:30 PM

No time to post really -- I just preloaded a few entries before I departed for NYC. The preceding quote was part of a great email dialogue (4 months worth) that I had with a Seattle date interest (I never got the date)... I will comment on comments when I return...

One time there was a boy who never caught a fish. He tried and tried and he never caught a fish. He never even caught seaweed. But he never gave up. When he got to age ten he thought he shouldn't use worms anymore, so he used lures. His dad told him to use a spear, but he didnt want to. His dad said when you get older you should try a spear. He thought he'd try when he got to age 17. Actually he didn't. He bought one and put it together and he caught a 30 pound salmon. He brought it home and had a celabrating cermony. And besides that he got a dollar and five cents. And he told his dad about his spear that he bought it and put it together and caught a 30 pound salmon. And the price for the spear was only five dollars but it would have been 10 dollars but it was on sale. When Sal grew up he started to skin-dive. When Sal's father died he remembered about his spear and about the salmon. So Sal started to spearfish when he skin dived. He caught many fish for the poor, and thanks to his father he got the name The Spear Fisherman. The End.

Ten years ago I promised myself that I would never read without a pencil in hand. Check. That accomplishment has doubled my reading comprehension. Today, I promise myself to never travel without a journal (i.e. to have access to a journal at *every* moment of my travels). Argh -- I am bursting with words and I am going to have to do it all by memory (NYC Summer 2003).

It's so cool to see The Starry Night hanging in Queens.
-- some random New Yorker

My words begin plucking at threads nervously, seeking purchase, a weak point, a vulnerable ear. That’s when it comes, the urge to shout in the church, the nursery, the crowded movie house. It’s an itch at first. Inconsequential. But that itch is soon a torrent behind a straining dam. Noah’s flood. That itch is my whole life. Here it comes now. Cover your ears. Build an ark.

Freaking pound my thin brain and its half-wit understanding into fallow ground on exhaustion on excuses and on another trip to NYC. I think I'll just sit here until the words come out right. Five days of vacation, one day of work, and back into a lifetime of burnout. Tip the bottle a little heavier tonight. I am fumbling towards the weekend and when it arrives I will stumble through it and on Monday my dishes will remain unfinished.

NYC: I'm in the middle of the International Center of Photography (ICP) and I start to freak out about all the allusions I don't know and all the words I can't comprehend and how there are 8 million nearby people disposed to cut my throat in intellectual-dog eat intellectual-dog fashion.

One exhibition at the ICP was "Cuba on the Verge" and God, what do I know about that? I know that Castro was born the same year as my dad. I know that Cuba is currently the in place to go to. This -- by the words of all my friends who ride on the outer envelope of the avant-garde -- and curse -- I can barely say beer in Spanish. Castro -- crazy fuck. He got out of jail, went to Mexico, returned to Cuba with 81 men and started a revolution (but don't trust some lame blog for your history facts). Eighty-two men to start a revolution? You'd better be a genius in psychology to lead a revolution, but then you'd better be stupid enough to believe it all. Viva Fidel! But don't freak. Whatever. One of the pictures in the exhibit had that approving message spray painted on a rock. Viva George W! Is that better? Don't think now -- just punch multiple holes in your voters' ballot, or better yet, don't vote at all.

Number 9. Anyone can start a revolution on a bad idea, but it takes a true genius and true thinker to revolutionize a great idea. OK, that quote has been in my cerebral phlegm for a while. I finally coughed it out. Someday I'd like to go back to school and find the roots of that quote as I'm sure I lifted it from some long-ago-smarter-than-me philosopher (not that I ever formally studied philosophy). And not some school like the University of Minnesota and its à la carte, look-don't-touch educational methodology. I want a school where I can conquer academia and then get my ass kicked by knowledge and understanding. Ravishment for queries, lust for dialogue, rush for consumption. And even if I get A grades, I'll ask for Cs, because I'll know my educational truths with or without letters appended to them.

NYC: I trekked up to the Upper West Side. Columbia University baby. I just wanted to experience what it felt like to walk around an Ivy League institution. I walked through College Walk (what else would you do on it?). The path is flanked by Low Memorial library to the north and Butler Library to the south. The front facade of Butler is inscribed with names like Homer, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, and Vergil. Honestly, the inscriptions shook me with reverent intimidation (allusions and words will kill us all [update: this, this, this is how I feel: words shift too quickly]). Although, they also struck me with curiosity and want: a mind to be tapped is a journey to be gained. Low's inscription had some blah-blah-blah about "for the public good" or something close to that. Yeah, well, at $30,000 per academic year, what public is it good for? Hey, I am a too-small-town boy way out of his element. I'd gladly go back, but my brainy sin's been let out of my school bag and I want to run with all the academicians. Oh God, chop off my legs and spray me with ridicule, I hate being out of my element. Especially when I write a paper and don't include big words such as obsequious, decocting, cupidity, voluble, remonstrance, polymath, gasconade, and/or coruscate.

I so dream of an intellectual, yet altruistic coterie that bends and accepts ideas, making malleable every thought I give to them… [more here soon]

I'm eroding, beating nighttime waves senseless, looking for switches in darkness.

But If that's what it takes to get it out, then pound the fuck out of me until dirt and flesh become one. I'm living my life of allusions, waiting to impress the guy with the bigger desk and longer pen, "Welcome aboard Mr. Berg, we need someone just like you."

I still can't believe more people haven't crapped their pants over the fact that President Bush took a vacation during the entire month of August 2001. Never mind the incompetency theories which could be rudely debated between now and whenever the JFK assassination gets solved; and never mind the vacation's unfortunate propinquity to 2001-09-11. What hard working American gets to take a paid month off only seven months into a new job? The White House called it a "working vacation" -- makes me think of me "working from home" after a night of playing cards with the boys. Come on Mr. President, we all deserve and need time off, but you only get the job for four years -- suck it up and show some solidarity to your American coworkers who might just get a month of vacation after two or three years of work.

The estimated recoveries range from 100 percent for certain claims to nothing for common stock shareholders. [source]

It was GOP genius when they discovered that it's much easier getting rich by stealing a dollar from a million stupid people rather than stealing $1,000,000 from a couple of wealthy ones... I should have majored in White Collar Crime.

In light of the sausage incident, it's a bad title, but if this site was a baseball bat, it just hit me over the head. In a non-felonious, spectacular way.

Or maybe the jack of the nword. What's a jack anyway? I want to be a jack -- put it on my résumé: "TQ: Jack, July 1999 - December 2001." What's a nword? New word, of course. Perhaps n'word? Wait -- let me do Google search… Yep, already been defined. It's a different definition, but really, nword! how passé, How Blasé, HOW INSIPID.

Here's yet another idea: how about a Walkman jammer for when you're riding the bus and want to read but the dude (is dude gender neutral?) sitting behind you has his on maximum volume? C'mon dude, just bring your freakin' boom box on the bus and turn that up instead. At it least it would be full audio spectrum and not the ultra-distracting-high-end sibilance of s t s t s t s t s t s t s t s t s t s t s t s. I don't care what you play; I don't care how loud it is. Just give me full spectrum, 'cause the crap that is spilling out of your earphones sounds like my dentist sadisticizing my teeth and I can't read when I've got that image in my head.

Oh yeah. Nword. The whole point was to test my TrackBacks and to tell the world how much I enjoy my first and second posts. Hey man, my horn sounds better than your horn -- sounds even better when I get to blow it.

Y'all should read Motherless Brooklyn just so I can say Eatmebailey and have it make sense.

Every time I comb my web stats, I feel totally sorry for the unfortunate person who landed on my site after doing a Google search on "best laundromats in queens." Sorry pal -- I hope your year wasn't ruined.

Another destiny quote? Another Lethem quote? Another Hesse quote? Man, it's like I'm forcing you to bite my literary nails and ride my OCD train. Well, the song I wrote for SOTW Volume 9 doesn't have lyrics -- so it was either make something up or borrow something:

If you weren't funny, you didn't quite exist. And it was usually better to be fully stupid, impotent, lazy, greedy or freakish than to seek to dodge your destiny, or layer it underneath pathetic guises of vanity or calm. -- Jonathan Lethem (from Motherless Brooklyn)

I can see that your thoughts are deeper than you yourself are able to express. But since this is so, you know, don't you, that you've never lived what you are thinking and that isn't good. Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value. -- Hermann Hesse (from Demian)

Ahh, the wretched curse that music places on me, the four fingered bassist. I have been vociferously criticized and surreptitiously ridiculed. Some critiques were warranted. Some were complete bullshit. Eventually, I quit. And it would have been a complete quit, but my life has always been music and words. So, in my personally bleak musical landscape of the past 7 years, my words kept my music in a nurturing quiescence.

I realize I'll never be the top-shelf virtuoso. I've got way too much ADD, OCD, and lately, a bit of IDD (Intelligence Deficit Disorder) -- and these things are pretty effective virtuoso roadblocks. Nevertheless, there are tunes within me -- a fierce desire to create music, and I've neglected it and have been ashamed of it for many years. The song I wrote for SOTW Volume 9 is a great example. Admittedly, it's a loose performance. I'm still struggling with my transition from bass playing to guitar playing, and I still trip over those concentration hurdles -- which can really wonk my sense of rhythm (It's been with me my whole life. If you want me to play in 7/8 time, just ask me to play in 4/4). So, there's a bit of slop in my performance, and the recording is super noisy since I can't isolate my computer's fans which means they get recorded on every thing I track in my room (drag!). But, I just love the piece -- it's something that makes me happy. And sharing my music with my blog readers is even more thrilling.

In regards to the Lethem quote I've never been calm -- so let me stop trying to mask it. I don't like it, but I go to my Yoga classes and whittle away at it week by week. In the meantime let me be freakish and have a good time finding a channel for my music and words. That's where the Hesse quote steps up to dance. I need to live these ideas in my head -- even when faced with that dangnabit-vociferous-criticism and that dangnabit-surreptitious-ridicule. I don't care anymore. Laugh. It's what's in my head. The blog -- *my* blog (y'all can't all be wrong), has really pushed me in line to live what I am thinking; and this, as Hesse might say to me, "is good."

And God knows if anyone is really reading this thing. I read it and laugh and post quotes about how good it feels to toot my horn, and I comment on my own comments and laugh about that, and I write run-on-and-on sentences and laugh about that too. One guy surfed into my site on a web search for the best Laundromats in Queens, NY -- maybe he read some and laughed. And I've got one ostensibly faithful reader out there on the East Coast. So that's three: me, some confused guy in Queens, and a faithful New England reader. For tonight three is the perfect amount. What the hell, you know? Have a good laugh; checkout some of my words and a bit of my music (SOTW Volume 9). If they inspire you -- cool. If not, at least I can feel happy being the Mutant Freak leading the parade and living what I am thinking.

God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam [Hussein], which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them.

God inspired me to hit al Qaeda, and so I hit it. And I had the inspiration to hit Saddam, and so I hit him. Now I am determined to solve the Middle East problem if you help. Otherwise the elections will come and I will be wrapped up with them. [source]

Even those with nerves of noodles can enjoy incaffeination. Although, when people like me start sucking down espresso shots -- you'd better take my keys and keep me away from that heavy machinery. Driving While Incaffeinated. I'm a menace I tell ya!

Blog: ~~Web Log~~

Blog: Web (Dia)Log(ue)

For all of you who keep saying I wish I would have purchased 1,000 Microsoft shares way back when -- well, you should have listened to Prince.

So 2night I'm gonna party like it's 1999! I was dreamin' when I wrote this, so sue me if I go 2 fast But life is just a party and parties weren't meant 2 last War is all around us, my mind says prepare 2 fight So if I gotta die, I'm gonna listen 2 my body 2night Yeah, they say 2000 zero zero party over, oops, out of time!

He was the prophet of the dot com boom and bust: "2000 zero zero party over!" When was the crash? When did W get elected?

To be used when you are sending an email to someone and are making plans to meet somewhere (e.g. "let's meet at the Capitol Club at 6:00 tonight"). In this case you would tag your email with:

ICOFU: (206) 555-1212 (substituting *your* cell phone number of course) Make sense?

I'm feeling the way East Coast bloggers were feeling last Sunday night. With little doubt the country is metaphorically balanced by blogs in the West and blogs in the East. To be sure, check out the unrelated, unknown, and purely unplanned synchronicity between this post: Needed: Back up, company, inspiration and this post: SOTW Vol 9: What The Hell, You Know? And if our blogs disappear, what happens next? Are we all off to the great next? Yeah, let's do it!!! Imperialism until we’re geographically and universally incestuous. Oh-oh, I'm saying shit that isn't See Spot Run.

Oh God, it's the Aventinus. This stuff should require a waiver before you drink it (it's on tap in Seattle at a place called Prost [previously called Kismet] -- all dreams end at Prost). Yeah, yeah, the perfect night. I may lose myself, but I never lose the thread. OCDs know where you are and what you are doing all the time; they never lose the thread. So the perfect night is one episode of All In The Family and a half-liter of Aventinus. This is happiness for intellectual isolation and spiritual fatigue. How the hell did All In The Family obtain Top 40 status? It's a brutal show. So we either got more stupid since the 1970s or we got absolutely stupid since the 1970s. Pick one. Damn. We went from All In The Family to Charles In Charge.

Eh... No point in thinking really. God and/or Evolution (don't want to exclude anyone) are wrong! Big brains aren't for thinking. Big brains are for bullshit. Big bullshit receptacles. Run a red light; run someone over; run me over, send your pets to the shelter when they no longer fit your career; smack your kids around when they don't think like you do; and absolutely don't forget to Pollyannize the worst of the worst: you can always move to the suburbs.

In light of last night's post and in light of gorilla-guerilla-Seattle-SUVs that think this sign

I posted about the Doobie Brother's "What A Fool Believes," before -- and then crossed it out. But every time I hear the song it just totally cracks me up. I get one of those giddy smiles -- like the kind you get when you're in a situation where you shouldn't be smiling but are. Like last night -- I was shopping for mayonnaise and I was cracking myself up thinking of how ridiculous the product is. Then some other shopper comes down the aisle and busts me smiling at a mayonnaise jar.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jill"
To: "Timmy Q"
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 9:53 AM

i saw this movie last night "about a boy." the main character was always looking for dates, and when women ask what he does, he replies with NOTHING. i kept thinking of when you were unemployed. how even after you got a job you wanted to tell women you did nothing. :)

I received my first "I don't like your blog" comment this week. I give it time here since I've been looking forward to one of these -- I just wish it wouldn't have taken so long.

Your blog bores me. Why waste you [sic] money on a website that offers nothing but a sad peek into a boring life?

I won't argue with this. Although, better a sad peek into a boring life than a boring peek into a sad life. At least I got the order right. Besides, I already bring all this up in SOTW Volume 5 -- the part about being a derationalized blog. Blogs are inherently boring -- if they don't do it for you, there is plenty of net porn to go around.

Artist: Blondie
Song: Angels On The Balcony
Album: Autoamerican
Year: 1980

[ed note: I tiredfully wrote this without segues, but I'll post it just to post]

Just caught Blondie on a rerun of The Pink Lady and Jeff on Trio TV. I remember watching Deborah Harry on K-tel commercials when I was 9 or 10. I had some sort of autonomous reverence for her. The commercials would come on and I would change the channel in fear of my parents catching my automatic and uncontrollable worship of her. I felt like Ms. Harry's complete physical and spiritual sexuality that was personified as Blondie was heaped upon me -- marking me with some sort of Hester Prynne-ish sign.

To this day, I don't understand the fear I had of an adult catching me watching a 20 second clip of a good pop band with a pretty lead singer. If it was purely sexual embarrassment, I could attribute it to the same sort of feelings I got when my family members would tease me about some girlfriend that I never had. But the feelings I had were deeper.

I knew the word rapture. I knew that it had religious significance (as in the Rapture). I knew that what it represented didn't belong in the domain of children. But I didn't know the literal meaning of rapture. So, Blondie's "Rapture" was a point of confusion for me -- bewildering and enticing. Throughout my youth, I never separated the unknown meaning of rapture and the forbidden feelings that Blondie and Deborah Harry induced. It's probably the best contextual assimilation of a word that I have ever experienced.

And just like the Great Rock and Roll Ambiguity that is strewn throughout the lyrics of "Angels On The Balcony:"

They can still see him singing on the corner singing songs
That never fade away, fade into the kids that come along.

I really came of age on the pop-fabulous of Blondie. NYC and Milwaukee are as diametric as they come, but it might as well have been me and my 3rd grade fantasies that were worshipping at CBGBs, that were hanging with dudes with blinking red LED sunglasses, that were simultaneously dyeing hair blonde and black. Blondie was wide-open mainstream by the time they hit me, but they pushed my boundaries, gave me roller skating highs, and forever stuck into this kid who came along.

Volume 10 aside: while watching The Pink Lady and Jeff I saw a Ginsu-like commercial for doughnuts "without all the fat." Now, your grandparents might tell you that there are no guarantees in life. Sure enough. However, in my life there are two guarantees: my beer will contain alcohol; my doughnuts will contain fat.

I hate these flocking arrow things too: >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> As if I don't remember what I wrote. And if I don't, the arrow ain't going to help.

I know these things are settable, but I wish they didn't exist. The once-in-a-month I need the Re: -- I'll manually type it. Same with the arrow. Better yet, I'll use quotation marks instead of arrows. Quotation marks once had a use.

Let me kick myself in the ass here: It's a hell of a lot easier to criticize a bad idea than to recognize a good idea. At least I recognize that. Party On! Say my place -- whenever you want...

Comments comments. I *will* respond to all as soon as possible. Let me say it here before I say it again: "writing instead of zzzing! @ whenever it is!"

I am Don Music (the link cracks me up). As a toddler I would bang my head against the wall if I didn't understand something, didn't do something right, or didn't get my way.

I am just sitting here in a lump of self-pity and decongestant delirium.

My diet is text and subtext. Popcorn is a vehicle for butter and salt. BLTs are a vehicle for bacon and mayonnaise. Waffles are a vehicle for syrup and butter. Of course, I haven't eaten meat since February, so the BLT thing has been supplanted by: hamburger-style-veggie-burgers are a vehicle for American cheese and mustard. American cheese is a terribly embarrassing moniker. The embodiment of suck is kiln-dried-orange-dyed-coagulated milk between saran (a tough flexible thermoplastic resin) wrap. That's negated culture with or without the pun.

I could have written a brilliant Song Of The Week tonight; instead, I drank red zinfandel and Miller High Life with a friend. Have mercy -- both my handful of readers and the Lord combined: last week was the strangest of my life. It will remain so until next Sunday.

...because they would offend me aesthetically

Hmm... Let me go drink another beer and pull out my condensed soliloquies of monologues. Art hangs in a museum damn it. Ennui sleeps in technical manuals. Blogs need to live and breathe -- even in the foul air of a comment awry.

It's a disease. I have unquenchable adoration for pet pronunciations of words. Every time I hear one that zings me in a laughable and funny-feeling kind of way, I adopt it and uncontrollably use it. Of course, when you are talking to someone who is trying to suss out your intelligence level, it isn't the best time to pull out a pet pronunciation. Therefore, in a effort to mitigate the world's already-heading-towards-doltish-but-let's-not-make-it-worse assessment of my linguistic prowess (jesus-h-verbosity) -- (dash dash) -- I propose new pronunciations for the following words:

Con-see-urge-ee. Yep. Try that one out in a business meeting. So we'll just change it and make the world a better place.

It was Bush's first formal solo news conference since March, the eighth of his presidency, and came shortly before he departs on Saturday for what amounts to a month-long vacation at his Texas ranch interspersed with various official and fund-raising events. [source]

But although Walker and Ferguson are packed with potential, they've produced little on game days. [source 3rd paragraph]

I sit next to the microwave now; I get the joys of burnt saran wrap on 2-day-old chop suey with misplaced green pepper overtones. My 5-volt, 3-amp power supply for my hub died. It's now running on a 5-volt, 2.5-amp power supply. A half amp short, the story of my life. Plus, a bone between my ear and my brain feels like it's getting assaulted by a dental-hygienist-plaque-scraping blade -- kind of a muted, but unpleasant pain. Pause a second; back up one sentence. Look at the damn thing, that damn gerund sitting right in the middle of that overextended sentence: getting. I don't like verbal nouns: standing, squatting, picking, plucking, dicking, ducking. Make up your mind -- one side or the other.

I'm watching this PBS thing on President Nixon last night (I watch PBS because my standards are higher than yours). Looks like Nixon had a little heroin-like attachment to the power swords that you can wield out of the oval office. Of course, W-Bush knows it as the squished circle office, but really President Nixon (if you can hear me across the CIA-tapped death wire) -- did you think that the (slightly paraphrased) "I am a monarch and therefore above the law" defense was your best course of action? The PBS special ended with a bunch of interviews with important people who said that we have largely and regrettably forgotten the lessons of Watergate.

A Gore Vidal special (undoubtedly, deliberately) followed the Nixon special. One of the first statements was Vidal's phrase, "United States of Amnesia." Now, with or without the aforementioned Watergate forgetfulness, I still give a big ole amensia to Vidal's admonishment.

Aside: I always thought Gore Vidal was a trash romance novelist, largely because of the placement of his novels on grocery store check-stand end-caps. Oops. I also could have been thinking "Gore Vidal Sassoon", and god knows how that that could have shaped my sub-conscience. Anyway, I might give City & the Pillar or The Last Empire a try. The guy's a good freak; a welcomed fly in the ostensible-do-no-wrong soup of American government.

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