couldn't be worse...

* i'm still deathly ill
* one of our cats is going completely fucking siegfried-and-roy on my sister in law
* the one car we are left with is currently in the shop
* the lawyer who has been draggin his feet for weeks has set a closing date 3 days after we have to be out of the state and on our way south

anything else?

the wife is pms-ing, the lawn needs mowing, i'm getting stomach cramps, the oldest child is clingy and the youngest child is whiny...

somebody kill me, now.

oh, canada...

I just checked my guestmap, and was surprised to find I have at least one reader in each of the four big western provinces of Canada just north of the border up there... British Columbia and Saskatoon and... ummm... Canadonia... ummm and, uh... French Canadonia?

Ah, who the hell knows...

Hey, if any of you Canucks sees Douglas Coupland walking around on the streets of Canada, tell him to hurry up and finish his damned book, eh?

a kitty’s tale…

My wife’s sister and fiancée arrived yesterday, via plane, from Louisiana. Today they will leave New York, in my car, headed South, with our two cats. They will stop in Baltimore and Atlanta, where our heavily sedated cats will proceed to pee all over several Motel 6’s. Then they will continue on to Baton Rouge, where they will be locked in a 10’ by 10’ room in one of my sister-in-law’s restored slum-houses that she repairs and rents out. After a week or so, they will be driven to Alabama to our lovely new house, where they will be so traumatized that they will more than likely completely destroy our brand new carpet, room-by-room.

All this to save a couple hundred bucks!

Actually, I like to imagine the journey will be much more Disneyesque. Somewhere in New Jersey, they will escape from their captors and flee into the woods. There they will befriend a crafty raccoon, who will teach them how to fend for themselves in the untamed wilderness of the Garden State. Gradually, their wanderings will take them southwards – through Maryland, where they will briefly stow away on a crabbing boat, down to the Carolinas where they will help rescue a bear cub from a brush fire. In Georgia, they will be taken in by a kindly old hobo, who will feed them sardines from a can. The kitties will tag along when the hobo hops aboard a train to New Orleans. Weeks later, our family will be vacationing when we just happen to spot them aboard a Mardi Gras float. There will be a tearful, purry reunion and we will take them home to Alabama. After their hard year’s journey, the kitties will be more appreciative of their comfortable, domestic life. And yet, very so often we will catch them gazing wistfully out of the window, perhaps yearning to return to their Life on the Road…

I’m sorry… what was I talking about before?

Oh… yeah… I guess I should go clean out the litterbox and pack it in the trunk. They’d better not piss in my fucking car, that’s all I can say.

snrf...

It's nice to know that grading isn't the only stress-trigger that causes me to become deathly ill... and that any suitable high stress situation (i.e. moving) can have the same effect.

I feel like crap.

Anyway, yesterday we went to my daughter's preschool graduation. Yeah. People got dressed up for this event! People cried! Come on folks... they aren't going off to fucking college next year, they're just starting kindergarten... get over it.

I'm too damned sniffly and sneezy to be sentimental.

shark attack victim, no doubt...

I'm sitting here on the computer, and the Litttle Guy is watching The Wiggles and I'm not really paying much attention when this song comes on that I've never heard about having a barbeque at the beach but since they're Australian they say a "barbie" at the beach and because of the accent and my divided attention I find myself hearing the Wiggles singing...

"Tell your friends there's a body on the beach
Tell your friends there's a body on the beach
Tell your friends there's a body on the beach
Tell your friends there's a body on the beach..."

What? You mean, like... washed up on the beach?

Somebody call Chief Brody.

paging doctor jung…

I mentioned a few posts ago that I’ve started my Summer Reading List. I picked two at random… “Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk and “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman. "Fight Club" I've finished, and I'm about 1/3 though "American Gods". Check out these two passages below…

from “American Gods” – page 212…

“He turned on the bedside lamp, climbed into bed, and read for a little, trying to turn off his mind, to get the last few days out of his head, picking the dullest looking articles in the dullest-looking “Reader’s Digests”. He noticed he was falling asleep halfway through ”I am Joe’s Pancreas”. He barely had enough time to turn out the bedside light and put his head down on the pillow before his eyes closed for the night.

from “Fight Club” – page 49…

“I found stacks and stacks of “Reader’s Digest” in the basement and now there’s a pile of “Reader’s Digest” in every room
Life in These Unites States
Laughter Is the Best Medicine.
Stacks of magazines are about the only furniture.
In the oldest magazines, there’s a series of articles where organs in the human body talk about themselves in the first person: I am Jane’s Uterus. I am Joe’s Prostate. No kidding…”

Now, I ask you… what the FUCK? Has anybody else heard of these articles? Is this just an insanely improbable confluence of obscure references? To have this appear in two consecutive books that I’m reading??

Biz-arre.

Ommmm....

I simply MUST make time for meditation and yoga when I move. I just felt so... I don't even know how to describe it... the next day... it wasn't like I was particularly SORE or anything... there was just this sensation of - "Oh, look! I have a BODY!" I could just FEEL it, y'know?

I have serious doubts about being able to find a class in Alabama... so it'll probably be just me, in my office. I'll be getting to work really early, because I'll have to drop off my daughter at school by 7:30. So I should easily be able to squeeze in 30 minutes of Yoga in the office before 8:00. I should buy a yoga mat and a flat pillow for meditation and keep them in the corner of my office. That sould do a lot to solidify my reputation as the Exotic New York Weirdo, huh? I'm already considering keeping the Old School's flaky new-age traditions alive by exchanging my shoes for Asian slippers at the office door. Maybe I could convince my boss that we should have a group Yoga practice every morning too. (God I miss working at that place.)

is it funnier with the dirty words...?

Now that "Sex and the City" is in syndication on TBS, we've been TiVo-ing it intermittently. And I've seen a few episodes on HBO in the past, and I'm having the same reaction now as I did then. I can tell where the laughs are supposed to be, but... I just don't find any of it funny.

Do you HAVE to be a woman to find the show even mildly watchable? It is just overhyped because it's so supposedly "naughty" but the writing is really just banal and mediocre? Is it just me? Because I really TRIED.

get the hell off of my lawn...

We had a yard sale this weekend.
We made $250.
It was totally NOT worth it!

I mean... not that $250 isn't "nice".. but really, at this point in our lives... with as much going on as we have going on... it wasn't worth a whole day's worth of time and effort.

Oh well.. . at least we don't have to PACK all that crap now.

dave don’t like bugs…

embellished snippets of a conversation from yesteday's yard sale after Dave got bitten by a weird stripey flying insect….

Dave: I just got bitten by a really weird bug, and it’s tingling.
Wife: Hmmm… what kid of bug?
Dave: I have no idea. It was too big to be a mosquito and too small to be a bee and too skinny to be a fly. And I’m not sure if it bit me or sucked me or stung me, but now the spot is tingling… isn’t that weird?
Wife: Maybe you should go run some water on it.
Dave: I think it may have been a tse-tse fly.
Wife: I don’t think it was a tse-tse fly.
Dave: You don’t know.
Wife: So, what, now you’re going to get malaria or something?
Dave: Malaria my ass!! We’re talking about fucking African Sleeping Sickness here!
Wife: Well, I’m pretty sure the tse-tse fly is not indigenous to Long Island.
Dave: Yeah, well… when I drop unconscious in about an hour and a half, we’ll see.
Wife: Mmm-hmmm...

(pause)

Dave: Did I tell you I saw a deadly brown recluse spider in the shed today?

the egotistical whack-job formerly known as madonna…

So, have you heard that Madonna now wants to be known as “Ethel” or “Esther” or some such Old Testament bullshit, in celebration of her trendy devotion to Kabbalah? Yeah… apparently she didn’t get the memo from Prince that people will only put up with a certain amount of stupid shit like that, no matter how freaking famous you are.

books…

In a confluence of events yesterday, I have been convinced to read some fiction this summer. First, Amazon.com completely NAILED some recommendations for me… as in… ”People who like THIS author also like this OTHER author” and I’ll be god-damned if I didn’t like that other author, so… it’s time to start listening to the Amazon Recommendation Robots. Then my forwarded me this NetMeme with a big list of 300-some books that you’re supposed to mark off which ones you’ve read… and there were LOTS that made me go… “Oh yeah… I wanted to read that for a long time.” And since I currently don’t have a computer to call my own… I shall fill the void with... BOOKS!!

I stopped by Borders today and picked up “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman and “Fight Club” by Chuck Pahalooniewoonieook, or however the fuck you might spell it. No particular reason to start with those… I just hope they don’t suck, or I’ll find myself back reading big, thick, nerdy, scientist books in no time.

i still think i'd do meredith viera, though...

My wife has been TiVo-ing "The View" lately. Didn't that show used to at least attempt to be intelligent and topical? Now it's like watching 4 women do a live reading of an issue of Cosmo. Awful. Even the days when Bawbawa is on... it's all just crap.

Not that I ... you know.... watch it myself or anything...

the specifics...

(i don't want to get into the details of the laptop problem... i'm trying to let that go for now... but here is my letter to Apple Customer Care... you can read between the lines and figure out the story.)

Dear Customer Care Supervisor:

I am writing in regards to an Apple repair, currently on hold with the service department. The case number is 234-010-89 and concerns a G3 iBook with a defective logic board that the technicians are refusing to repair under warranty, citing incidental damage to the plastic casing that they claim indicates the machine “may have been dropped” in their words. This is not the case.

The damage they describe is a 3 millimeter crack in the plastic casing just below the AC input. When I phoned in the repair order, the service technician asked if there was any cosmetic damage to the case, and I described the crack. It was caused several months ago when I tripped over the AC cord, pulling it roughly from the machine at an angle. This event resulted in a slight bending of the AC input tip, and the aforementioned crack in the plastic below the input. The machine did not fall to the floor. The machine performed without any problems for 3 months following the incident. All of this was explained to the support personnel before the machine was shipped.

The problems exhibited by this particular machine came on suddenly and did not coincide with any unexpected shock to the laptop. My description of the issue in question corresponds almost verbatim to the problems outlined in the iBook Logic Board Repair Extension program. (Lines in the display, garbled video, booting to a blank screen – see http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/) In other words, this is a known issue with these machines. My machine’s serial number – UV3221B7PBM – falls within the range of iBooks affected by this chronic problem. I recently paid $180 to extend my laptop’s warranty through the AppleCare program. To ask that I now pay upwards of $700 to repair a one-year-old machine, which is still under warranty, and is exhibiting problems corresponding to a known logic board defect is simply not acceptable.

I understand that granting me this repair involves giving the customer the benefit of the doubt. But I am a long time Apple customer who has had some very negative experiences with quality issues over the past few years. (If you check my account you’ll learn that this iBook was in fact a replacement machine, sent to replace an 800 MHz iBook that had no fewer than FIVE major hardware problems during the first 9 months after its purchase.) This is not what I expect from Macintosh computers. I did my Ph.D. dissertation on a Mac Plus. I have, in my own home, computers ranging from a Mac Classic to a 5400, an 8500, two 9500’s and a beige G3. Not one of these machines has ever suffered a significant hardware failure in the past decade of use. And yet I’ve had a half-dozen major iBook issues within the past 20 months.

Besides being a loyal personal user of Apple’s products, I use Macs whenever I can in my professional work. In 2 weeks, I will be leaving my academic post to become the director of the (XXXXXXXXX) Foundation. In this job I will be charged with the production of some twenty educational DVDs. The foundation has purchased nine Macintosh G5 computers in the past 12 months to handle various video and audio production tasks, partly on my urging to make the production process more Mac-centered. I’ve already decided to hold off on the purchase of a 12” Powerbook as my main work machine until this customer service issue is resolved. I hate to think that Apple Computer would take the chance on losing the confidence of a long-time customer over a failure to repair a known issue. I sincerely hope that Apple Customer Care can review this matter and see to it that this repair is made under warranty, and that I can come away from this experience continuing to feel positively about purchasing Apple products in the future.


Sincerely,





Professor David (XXXXXXX), Ph. D

the relaxation program...

Ok... as usual, I actually exaggerated a bit for comic effect. Last night I had a rum and coke, did about 30 minutes of yoga and then meditated for a little while with my iPod. I actually felt much more relaxed afterwards. And my back feels GREAT today. I think yoga should become a daily thing as soon as I start my new job. Unless it was the rum and coke that was the culprit. Hmmm...

Continuing my relaxation program... the wife took the kids to the zoo with some friends today, so I have some quiet time. The agenda?

1)Shower.
2)FedEx nasty letter to Apple.
3)Trip to the Guitar Center.
4)Trip to Barnes and Noble.

That should do the trick.

this position is called the rumandcokasana...

After the shitty day I had today, I decided that after the wife went out and the kids were in bed, I was either going to do yoga and meditate, or I was going to hit the liquor cabinet - but I couldn't choose. I think I've decided to compromise and get drunk while watching a yoga video.

FUCK!

FUCK APPPLE COMPUTER! Do you hear me?? FUCK THEM! Fuck Apple and FUCK their piece of shit laptops, and FUCK Steve Fucking Jobs right up the ass with a fucking Firewire cable...

I can't even get into it any more right now, other than to say...

FUCK!!

the childless may skip...

Hey... am I the only one who harbors a deep desire to pound that irritating "Clay" character who introduces the shows on "Playhouse Disney" into a flattened fucking Silly Putty pancake?

ju-jitsu? I'm going to learn... ju-jitsu?

My son is one and a half, and he doesn't talk. Well... he says "ball" and "Ma" and makes a lot of animal sounds (including, oddly enough "panda" - who knew?) but he really doesn't care much for words in general. But one thing he does say, whenever he sees something new, or something he likes, or something particularly interesting, is...

"Whoa!"

Now, I'm not sure he really means the same thing when HE says "whoa" as we do when WE say "whoa"... in other words, it may just be a noise rather than a proper word, but... he sure as hell does say it a lot!

"Whoa! Wuh! Wa? W'... WHOA!"

It's like living with a very, very short Keanu Reeves.

posting with my stump...

I put my iBook in a box for pickup today.

I swear to fuck it's like I've just shipped my right arm off in an Airborne Express truck. I'm completely incapacitated.

And is it a bad sign for Apple that the Airborne Express guy not only recognizes the Apple return boxes, but KNOWS what the typical turnaround time is for an Apple repair?? How many of these things does he pick up in a day??

Dammit.

things on hold...

I have a bunch of entries I was gonna post that were half finished on my Mac, and I don't feel like re-starting them, so you're just going to have to wait. The highlight was my daughter's dance recital - 4 hours of pre-adolescent girls (and disturbingly ever-so-slightly-POST-adolescent girls) dancing about... but I don't want to spoil it.

As for now, the Little One has had a fever for 2 days. My wife was going to take the kids to the zoo with some friends today, but... no go. So, maybe Thursday I'll get some time alone to write. Meanwhile the boxing proceeds apace. That's it for now.

"this is the best party we've had in 7-10 years...!"

Looks like the White Trash Neighbors are having a big noisy cookout today with lots and lots of guests...

I wonder who got out of prison?

damn...

Posts by the Doc will be sporadic for a a few days, whilst my iBook enjoys yet another migratory flight to Cupertino.

Piece of crap.

nooner...

My Mom took the kids out to the Aquarium yesterday so the wife and I could get some packing done. Which we did. For an hour. Then we had sex.

And I'm not usually a fan of Daytime Sex... I'm a lights-off kinda guy. I dunno why. Light hurts my eyes. I just wind up squinting the whole time.

But the thing is... I think yesterday may have been the Best Sex Ever. How about that? After 7-10 years... who'd have thought? But it was. From the surprise 69 to the Main Act to the Second Round... a first for me, by the way - an honest-to-goodess MULTIPLE ORGASM. Not one of those take-a-break and fool-around-for-5-minutes and go-again jobs.... we're talking no-break, no-withdrawal, no-downtime, BONUS orgasm. And simultaneous to boot!

Beats the fuck out of packing, that's for damned sure.

oh, those colourful brits...

News headline today from The Guardian...

British "cybercops" are to join other law enforcers around the world which are patrolling internet chatrooms to try to protect children from paedophiles....

Leave it to the British and their extra vowels to lend the word "pedophile" an air of sophistication!

it's all about the reagans...

Ronald Reagan isn't even in the ground yet, and already Republicans are buzzing around looking for things to name after him. I heard yesterday that some want to rename the Pentagon - "The Ronald Reagan National Defense Center". That really rolls off the tongue, huh? There is also apparently a contingent that for a long while has been proposing that he be added to Mount Rushmore! Hey... why not just rename the whole country "Reaganopia" and be done with it??

The best proposal I've heard this week is that his face be added to US Currency. Some were suggesting dimes, but there were also people who wanted to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20. (Because what we really need is the FOURTH redesign of the twenty dollar bill in five years.)

If you want to put Reagan's face on a piece of currency, I suggest the $10,000 bill. That way, poor people would never get to see any of the money - just like when he was president.

revenge of the swedes...

Today... a return trip to Ikea, this time without the kids to buy a chair that wouldn't fit in the car with carseats in the back.

Price of chair - $99

Total spent at Ikea today - $450

HOW DOES THAT HAPPEN?!

Damn you Swedes and your cute little home furnishings!!

i got your “flightless bird”, right here...

We went to the aquarium at Coney Island a few weeks ago... big disappointment... small, dirty... all the tanks had more algae than the White Trash Neighbors’ swimming pool. Anyway, at one point the boy and I were separated from my wife and daughter, and on the way back to find them, we passed a big tank marked Jackass Penguins which, as far as I could tell, appeared to be empty. When I got back to my wife I said...

Dave: “So, did you see any jackass penguins?”
Wife: “No.”
Dave: ”Really? I did... and when I saw him he said - Hey! What the fuck are YOU lookin’ at??”

Unfortunately, nobody around here appreciates my comic genius.

harry potter and the prisoner of continuity...

Mom is here for the week – ostensibly to help watch the kids while the wife and I put the house into boxes... we’ll see how much gets done. Last night after the kids were in bed, the Wife and I went to see Harry Potter. It was beautifully directed, but it had plot-holes big enough to fly a hippogriff through. And I’m not talking about tiny omissions or run of the mill deviations from the book.... I’m talking about great gaping lapses in exposition that threaten to leave the viewer completely bewildered. So much of the dénouement was left unexplained that I can’t imagine there aren’t Very Important Facts that will need to be patched up in later films.

Oh well.... at least the 3 kids can kinda act now. And the new Dumbledore didn’t suck.

I’ll refrain from a full-out rant about the Asshole Down the Aisle Who Had 8 Separate Conversations on His Fucking Cell Phone, but really... Jesus Christ... I paid $12.50 for this movie ticket, buddy... SHUT THE FUCK UP!!

look... mommy's home... now get the hell away from me...

Well... that went fairly well.

Oh, except for the 90 minutes of bloodcurdling screaming circa 3:30 AM every night by the Boy Who Doesn't Understand Where The Breasts Have Gone.

Other than that.

Just fine.

save me...

In case you weren’t able to fully read between the lines of my last post, my wife is away for the whole weekend – leaving me alone with... THEM. They are both in bed now, so I have officially survived the first day. I am celebrating with a ginger ale + vodka. Some will know how unlike me that is. You don’t drink, don’t smoke? What do you do? Well... this week I’m smoking AND drinking, so... fuck everybody.

Next I will retire to the basement to celebrate with a big pile of new DVDs.

Tomorrow is the real test. Morning to night... all day... one Dad... two kids... no net. We will go to the park and run in circles until we collapse. Unless it rains. If it rains... I’m doomed!

Then... get this.... Sunday is the dress rehearsal for my daughter’s “dance recital”. Which means that by 8:30 AM, I need to have both kids not only merely dressed, but the girl with her hair done and MAKEUP applied!

Stay tuned for the fiasco, folks!

an informal poll...

Open only to married, female readers with children...

If you were to tell your husband, "Hey honey... I'm going to go spend a weekend in the city with some friends and leave you alone with the kids for 3 whole days"... would your husband not inform you that you have clearly gone completely and absolutely INSANE??

yeah.... it’s the americans who are crazy...

I went to Borders this morning to sit and work on my play. I got maybe a page and a half written, so it was kind of a waste of time. But I did have a fascinating conversation with and old, foreign, suburban-homeless guy.

OFSHG: “Are yoo American? Yoo loook American. Mebbee yoo can tell mee soomtheen abowt America...eh?”

Dave: “...”

OFSHG: ”What ees superma’, eh?”

Dave : What?

OFSHG: ”Superma’, ey? Yoo know? What ees superma’, eh? Americans are CRAZY”

Now at this point I felt sure it was my duty to defend myself as an American, but because of the guy’s accent I wasn’t sure if I should be defending America’s love for supermarkets or Superman. Either way, I didn’t feel quite up to it...

Dave: (shrugs)“I don't know what to tell you, buddy...”

OFSHG: ”Wherre ees themoney, in America, eh? Becuss, I loook arount, and I dun see any money”

Dave: (not out loud) "Well, I spent MY money on this nice fancy iPod, which I'm going to put on right now so I don't have to listen to YOUR crazy ass any longer.

Do I have a sign on my back that says "Crazy Fuckers... Come Talk to ME!"...?

it starts out nicely enough...

Aaaah.... Earl Grey tea and thin Swedish cookies from Ikea. The wife is asleep, the kids are downstairs squealing at each other, but I’m just going to ignore them and sit here and write. So there.

It’s here... June. No longer can I say – “Oh, we’re moving in a few months” or “We’re moving at the end of next month”... no. We’re moving THIS month. We’re moving in 4 fucking weeks. We ARE moving... like NOW... we are in the PROCESS of moving. Boxes, boxes, boxes... and it makes no difference. Mountains of boxes.... WALLS of boxes, and the house is still full of crap. In fact, I decided last night that there is but one adjective which can accurately describe our house - ”strewn”. The house is strewn with toys... it is strewn with shoes (Oh! The Shoes!**)... it is strewn with mail... it is strewn with dishes... it is strewn with clothes... it is strewn with shit-we-buy-and-don’t-put-away... it is strewn with teeny-tiny bits of garbage and paper... it is driving me UP A FUCKING WALL.

I’m sick and tired of living like this. And I see no end in sight. Because my wife is fucking insane, and has no idea how to organize. And I can bear SOME blame for the way the house looks, but really... 75% of the GARBAGE piled on top of everything is hers. One can verify this with a single look into her office, which nobody goes into but her. And I say she is insane because of the following – this happened at Ikea last weekend, but it happens ALL THE FUCKING TIME. We’ll be shopping and she’ll see some box or some basket or some crate or some bin... this week in Ikea it was shiny-steel-storage-boxes... and she’ll say “Oh, look at this... I think I’ll get some of these for my office.” And then I will say – “What are you going to put in them?” and then she will say... “I don’t know.”

No.

No, no, no...

NO, no, no, no, NO, no, no, no, NO, NO, no, no...

Do you see?

The proper approach would be this...

“Oh, look at this giant fucking pile of coupons/magazines/bills/papers/garbage... I think I’ll keep an eye out for a box/basket/crate/bin which is the appropriate size and shape to contain this fucking pile which I don’t seem to EVER be able to find a place for after TEN FUCKING YEARS of having the same fucking pile.”

Because otherwise, the house winds up full of piles of crap AND empty or half full or OVERfull storage boxes, none of which are the proper size and shape to contain any of the various categories of crap-pile.

Have I made my point yet? Do you detect that this is an “issue” that has persisted for some time? Do you remember how I was all relaxed and drinking tea back when this post started?

I figure the only way to win is to play along and to buy boxes, baskets, crates, and bins of EVERY CONCEIVABLE SIZE from 2” x 2” x 2” up to 3’ x 3’ x 3’ so that SOMETHING always has to fit in SOME container SOMEWHERE.

Of course then the question arises as to where to put all the boxes, baskets, crates, and bins.

Dave

** Regarding the shoes... this problem is a result of The Boy - whose favorite activity is to put on one shoe... my shoe, his sister's shoe, his mother's shoe... never HIS shoe, because he can't get THOSE on by himself... and to hobble around the house wearing one shoe for about 10 minutes and then to REMOVE that shoe, which now lay on the floor some arbitrary distance and direction away from its partner. Thus... the shoes become... you guessed it... STREWN!! It was cute for a while, but now the Shoe Game has become very, very old.