Ruminate

In the “which is scarier” department… would you rather have your secrets

stolen by big brother or be tortured to reveal them?

Here is how to spend your birthday the Chris Lott way:

First, get the flu. Not on your birthday, but a day or two before so that you will spend some time wondering if you are really getting sick and then actually be sick on your birthday itself.

Yell at your kids for being– well– kids, because you are sick and tired. Then feel extremely bad and have no way to make up for it. Lie in bed in the dark and ponder your miniscule list of accomplishments.

Make sure to get a few cards from people who mistake you for being 5-10 years older than you are. The only other cards you are allowed to receive are electronic greeting cards with a virus.

Take the day off work (you will be sick, after all), but be too sick to enjoy it. When you finally can rouse yourself, go to the movies and watch a horrible movie. You are to be the only person in the theatre at the time. The woman selling you candy and the ticket taker should look at you and your large soda and bag of candy with pity.

It is important that you be feeling really shitty by the time dinner with your wife rolls around. I recommend a combination of light-headedness, nausea, and burning in the lungs.

After the dinner, distract your wife (or significant other) and nearly get involved in a horrifying car accident. Make sure that the oncoming car is coming at your side of the car.

Go to sleep wondering how many more of these days you will be blessed with.

Is it art if it naturally gets taken out with the trash?

I have to admit that technologically, the new dataplay drive tht many are predicting will replace the CD looks pretty cool… but am I the only one that likes CD covers and inserts? Am I really supposed to believe that the record industry would continue to provide full-size inserts and covers? I know, I sound like the old hippy crying that without the LP there is no room for his beloved, groovy art, but as an inveterate music hound, I know there is more to a cd collection than just the discs.

No matter how many ways one tries to look at it, or how much one would like it to be justified, ignorant, knee-jerk prejudice is– and will always be– ignorant prejudice. No amount of blather can conceal that fact.

Way to go. And to think… last time I got on a plane I had gum that noted it had “explosive” flavor. Maybe I should have been strip-searched and anally probed? Is anything surprising anymore?

Do you ever wonder why they don’t use actual idiots to play the idiots on television shows and movies? Why have an actor with actual talent waste their time pretending to be like the dimwits that surround us everyday? How about killing two birds with one stone by letting the numbskulls play themselves (providing some gainful employment) and freeing the actors with talent up to create some of the escapist entertainment we really need?

I’ve been pondering all the people I owe letters and notes to. I am absolutely horrible at keeping up a correspondence with a lethargy that has no relation to how close I am to that individual. If I were a conjoined twin successfully separated it would be remarkable if I remembered to send Valentine (the evil one) a card at Christmas. But I have a new resolve: I will not allow terrorist attacks to force me to resume my forgotten correspondence. That would be letting the bastards win.

Have you seen any of the promos for the concert coming up on public television? I’m a bit baffled at 60+ year old doo-wop groups in matching mustard yellow suits trying to sing falsetto out of their remaining lung… but I am actually scared by Little Richard’s face, which has been nipped, tucked, stretched, collagenated, and otherwise treated until it is a strange plasticine… the sweat doesn’t run down his face as much as it beads up like the water on a newly treated windshield.

There are no good guys in any side of most current political conflicts. Americans tend to root for the Israelis against the Palestinians, but there is good reason for rancor on both sides. Harpers Magazine has a great piece showing one facet of the Palestinian side of things. A real eye-opener.

Get Your War On has some brilliant cartoons…

If you’re using a weblog system that doesn’t support comments directly (such as Blogger), then this new comment system might be good… and fill in for the AWOL BlogVoices system.

Jakob Nielsen is at it again. I have a love/hate relationship with the guy.

The WayBack Machine… what a cool idea. I wish they had more collections!

Maybe it’s just the time of the year with winter here, snow on the ground that isn’t going to go away, and the prospect of -20 to -40 degree weather coming soon… Or maybe it’s being sick and laboring under some serious (and seriously close deadlines), or maybe it’s my 31st birthday coming up too quickly (the one where I no longer fit in the young five-year brackets on questionnaires like 21-25 and 26-30, but instead become part of the amorphous mass of “made it or not, there you go” age 31-40, declining years adults), or maybe I’m just decompressing after bottling so much up dealing with my daughter’s diagnosis with juvenile diabetes, or maybe I am just doomed to be perpetually angst-ridden without the benefit of piercing intellectual insight into the human condition…

Whatever the case, I am feel myself going into a serious, hide-in-bed-so-long-my-bones-atrophy, kick-friends’-puppies, east-sweets-until-nauseated-then-repeat, deep-down-body-aching kind of funk. I’m trying most of the normal remedies: whiskey, buying myself presents, obsessively reading book
after book, but they don’t seem to be working too well.

On the plus side, we are entering that streak of many holidays set close together, and I have been working enough hours to deserve a little time off… and I can always console myself with the fact that my life isn’t quite half over yet (optimistically speaking).