WTF?

I don't know what's up with this; I posted this picture a couple of hours ago, and I actually saw it on the blog, but then it disappeared.
I had mentioned the first time around that recently I found several decent Rachael Leigh Cook photos online, which is why you've seen a spate of RLC pics, in various styles, posted here. As I mentioned when I posted this before, this is the same outfit from the Nagel pic, but with it being in an attempt at the "Comic" style, I opted with keeping the shirt white, as it is in the actual photographs.
Anyway, I hope this actually posts this time...

Sleep GOOD!

It’s gloomy and wet outside today, and, while I haven’t been out there at all, I doubt that it’s any too warm.
Overall it’s a very dismal autumn day here in Northern Virginia.
I can’t complain too much, though, as my mom tells me that back home in Michigan this past week they got 8 inches of snow.
I did miss having actual seasons when I lived in Tucson, but snow was one thing I definitely didn’t miss. 28 years of winters in the Snow Belt were more than enough.
So far I guess I’ve accomplished a fair amount today, all things considered, what with the creation of another blog for the purposes of writing a novel, finishing two pictures of RLC, and doing my laundry.
Well, the colors at least, and while I haven’t folded all of them, I did finish the majority.
I’m feeling very tired and a bit loopy, as I was up for most of the night last night.
Why is that, you ask? Well, my co-workers Brian and Kathleen are getting married in Vegas this weekend, and they asked me to bring them to the airport this morning.
Since they’ve brought me to the airport and picked me up a couple of times, I could hardly refuse to return the favor…even though their flight left at 6 am, which meant that I had to pick them up at 4 am.
Typically on Wednesday nights I’m up until sometime between 2 and 3, so I decided that I might as well not even bother going to sleep before picking them up. I did try to squeeze in a nap during the afternoon yesterday, but without success.
Because they had more stuff than would fit in my car, once I got to Brian and Kathleen’s, I drove them to the airport in Brian’s truck, which meant that I had to drive it back, drop it off, pick up my car, and then drive home.
The end result was that I didn’t get home until sometime around 5:20.
Because I would have to go to bed early tonight in order to get up for my workout and first day of my work week tomorrow I didn’t want to go to bed at that point and end up sleeping all day and totally throwing off my sleep schedule.
However, it’s been a very long time since I stayed awake for much more than 24 hours straight.
I can’t even remember my last all-nighter, though I’m fairly sure that a tremendous amount of alcohol was involved.
In any case, I didn’t feel like I was up to the task of staying awake.
I decided that I could squeeze in around three and a half hours, since getting up at 9 wouldn’t throw my Thursday routine off too much.
It took me a while to drift off, so I’m operating on about three hours of sleep within the last 30 hours or so.
So far I haven’t made any peanut butter cookies and I don’t think I’m going to. I just don’t feel up to it. I guess I’ll have to try to find a way to get through a weekend without them.
I did do some cooking this week, though. I really didn’t need to; my freezer was already stuffed full of enough leftovers to provide me a month's worth of lunches at work.
I didn’t make anything too fancy; Tuesday was some simple roasted chicken breasts with white corn and brown rice, and yesterday was Tuscan Pot Roast, which sounds slight fancier than it actually is.
The Tuscan Pot Roast was an all-day affair, with eight hours spent inside my Kitchen Kettle (the versatile appliance that can function as crock pot, vegetable steamer, and deep fryer; it’s one of the coolest cooking accoutrements I have) just slowly cooking away.
It turned out pretty decently, though I think that if I ever make it again I’ll use a larger roast.
I managed to get in a proper workout yesterday, as there was no one in the weight room to impede my progress. I didn’t see that cute(ish) girl who told me that I smell REALLY good in the rental office when I walked by, though I did talk to her on the phone twice this week, with one of those times being yesterday, shortly before my workout.
At least, I think it was her. On the phone she identified herself as Kelly, and so far as I know there are only three people working in the rental office: the Property Manager, who’s named Shannon, the older lady named Mercedes, and the cute(ish) girl who told me that I smell REALLY good, which, by process of elimination, would make her Kelly.
The reason she called was in reference to some maintenance requests I had put in.
Last week when I signed my lease I mentioned that the fan on my HVAC system wasn’t working, and that the light in the dining room was burned out.
When I came home on Friday evening there was a note on my door stating that someone from maintenance had been in my apartment.
I walked in and noted that the door to my laundry room was open (I always leave it closed), and that there was a note on my thermostat explaining that the transformer had been replaced. I tried the fan and it worked. I then tried the dining room light. The dining room remained dark.
I came to the conclusion that the maintenance person must have thought that the light was burned out in the laundry room.
I wasn’t overly concerned, as I don’t really make much use of my dining room anyway.
On Monday, when I was on my way home from my abortive trip to buy a desk, my phone rang. It was Kelly verifying that the maintenance requests I had made had been tended to. I explained about the dining room, and she told me that someone would be in to take care of it.
Later that afternoon the young guy who replaced the batteries on my smoke detectors came in and replaced the bulb.
Yesterday morning Kelly called to, once again, verify that my request had been attended to. I said that it had and thanked her.
Thanks to Kelly and Kathleen, calling to confirm that I would be bringing them to the airport, my phone was unusually busy this week. Yesterday alone it rang on THREE separate occasions (Kelly, my mom, Kathleen). That might actually be a record for me.
I still don’t know what my blog novel is going to be about.
I don’t think it’s going to be a science fiction or fantasy story, though I was thinking that I might experiment a little with magical realism, though I think that idea probably stems from the title, “15,000 Years,” which brings to mind “100 Years of Solitude.”
(If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it; none of this will be on the test.)
In addition to some more RLC pictures done in varying styles, upcoming posts may include a new Britney pic. I haven’t done any in a while, simply because ever since she hooked up with her new husband she hasn’t been doing any photoshoots, so new material is scarce. New, worthwhile material, at any rate. There are lots of shots of her walking with the guy, shopping with the guy, throwing food at photographers, and so forth, but no good, posed images.
I do have a lot of older images I could choose from, and quite a few unfinished pictures that I could just finish, but I don’t feel like going back to the old stuff.
In any case, I found halfway decent paparazzi shot of her that I think is worth rendering, so that should be appearing soon on a blog near you.
I’m almost hoping that baseball will preempt The Simpsons again tonight so that I can go to bed even earlier.
Still, there are a few things I should tend to before I finally crash, so I will sign off for now, and in case I don’t return before Monday, I’ll wish you all a good weekend.

Frustrated Novelist...

...or would that be "Blogist" instead? Is there such a thing as a "Blogist?" "Blogger," maybe?
Meh, whatever.
In any case, I've created another blog, available for viewing at http://www.15000years.blogspot.com
This is the site for my participation in "National Novel Writing Month."
Yes, I am going to attempt to write a complete novel in the month of November.
No, I don't know what it's about yet.
The title for the novel, "15,000 Years," is just the first thing that popped into my head.
I'm writing under the pseudonym of "Wolf Priestap," which is actually my "porn star name," as determined by one of the methods I've encountered.
The other method for determining my porn star name, the name of my first pet and the street I grew up on, would result in the name "Wolf M-26."
While sort of interesting, it just doesn't have the same ring to it as the name I came up with using the first pet's name-mother's maiden name method.
I may end up neglecting Threshold during the upcoming novel-writing month, but I'm sure you'll forgive me. I will try to keep up the entries, though.

What else can I say except...

*Sigh*

Man and Superman

Despite my inability to find a desk that suits my needs/sense of aesthetics, I did finally manage to spend some money this week.
Last year DC Comics launched what they’ve referred to as a “soft reboot” of Superman in the form of a twelve-issue limited series titled “Birthright.”
What this means is that they’ve retroactively altered the character's history. The basic idea is the same, they’ve just altered some of the details.
This is hardly the first time such a thing has been done. The most extreme example occurred in the years that followed 1985’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” in which DC effectively reset the continuity of every character in its stable.
It was hardly a graceful transition, and it took a long time for them to figure out which bits of history they wanted to keep and which ones they wanted to get rid of, but, after about ten years, they finally managed to stabilize things.
For the most part, at least.
But in those earliest days of the post-Crisis DC Universe, there were a lot of major resets of characters, with the most significant being the 1986 reset of Superman.
To understand how the reset came about, you have to understand that at that point Superman had been continuously published for nearly 50 years. There had been a lot of changes over the years, most of which I won’t get into, but essentially after nearly 50 years Superman had become stagnant. There were a lot of reasons for this, not the least of which was, with his ability to fly faster than the speed of light, to travel through time at will, and his being completely and utterly invulnerable, he was just too powerful to be interesting.
Beyond that, his history had become altogether too convoluted, and, well, silly.
Okay, it was completely ridiculous.
There were all the colorful versions of kryptonite, Krypto the Super-Dog, Comet, the Super-Horse, Streaky, the Super-Cat, Beppo, the Super-Monkey, and Bizarro, and a host of other pointlessly stupid characters and ideas.
Also, for someone who was supposed to be the last survivor of a doomed planet, he managed to have a lot of living relatives such as his cousin Supergirl and her parents. And given that the populations of two whole Kryptonian cities had survived Krypton’s destruction, he could hardly lay claim to the title “Last Son of Krypton.”
Sales of “Superman” and “Action Comics,” were sinking like stones. Clearly, something had to be done, as it would be an unacceptable state of affairs for DC to cease publication of its flagship character.
Enter John Byrne.
For several years John Byrne had been the biggest name in comics. He was a genuine superstar. As artist on X-Men, and later writer and artist on Fantastic Four, Byrne had cemented his reputation as a fan favorite. Having Byrne’s name attached to a title was a guaranteed sales boost.
There’s no question that the dominance of Marvel Comics over all of its competitors had a lot to do with the fact that they had John Byrne under contract.
In 1986 that contract came up for renewal.
I can only imagine what it must have been like in the offices of DC Comics when it became known that Byrne was up for grabs, and I can’t imagine what they would have been willing to offer to get their hands on him.
Regardless of whatever else they may have offered him, there was only one thing that Byrne wanted: Superman.
I doubt that DC hesitated for even a second.
With the recent reset of DC Universe continuity, this was the ideal time for Byrne to take over the reins.
The existing creative team had time to wrap up any loose ends on the two Superman titles, and in the summer of 1986 DC published a two-part story split between “Superman” and “Action” entitled “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”
This story was written by Alan Moore, and served as sort of a means of tying up all of the loose ends of the past 48 years, and of providing a fitting ending before the new beginning.
“Superman” and “Action” temporarily ceased publication after this (really, really excellent) storyline, and the late summer of 86 saw the publication of a 6 issue mini-series entitled “The Man of Steel.”
This was Byrne’s retelling (and retooling) of the Supeman legend.
This was a Superman the world had never seen before.
Here’s a list of some of the major changes Byrne introduced:

No more Superboy. Clark Kent did not don his cape (or his glasses, for that matter) until he was well into his adulthood.
The continued existence of Ma and Pa Kent. In the old continuity, the Kents died before Clark moved off to the big city. Byrne decided to keep them alive, with the intention of making them a regular part of Superman’s life.
No more milquetoast. Seeing no real reason to bring it to such an extreme, Byrne decided to dispense with the nerdy, cowardly Clark Kent persona. Much more in keeping with the times, Clark was going to be a dynamic go-getter in his own right. He was, after all, an award-winning investigative journalist, and as such could hardly afford to be squeamish. Far from being a bookish nerd, in high school Clark was a star athlete, using his powers, in a greatly subdued fashion, to almost single-handedly win championships, until Pa finally gave him a talking to and he came to understand the selfishness of his actions and the responsibilities that his powers imposed on him.
Clark was a yuppie. He was also a best-selling author.
He was, truly, the Last Son of Krypton. On a personal note, this bothered me a little. One of the major events of the Crisis was the noble death of Supergirl. It was a very good story, and it was very sad, and it became completely invalidated by this change to continuity, since it now meant that Supergirl had never existed.
His powers were reduced. No more quick trips through time, or interstellar flights made in a matter of moments, or casually juggling planets. Supes was still one of the most powerful beings around, but he was no longer seemingly all-powerful.

There were all sorts of other changes, but these were the most significant. In a lot of ways the changes reflected the times. For example, in prior continuity, Supeman’s hair didn’t grow when he was under the rays of a yellow star (which, in case you don’t know, is the source of his powers). Byrne eliminated that notion, since it gave him the opportunity to occasionally present Superman with some Don Johnson-esque five o’clock shadow.
As another example, and by Byrne's own admission, the relationship between Lois and Clark greatly resembled the relationship between Cybil Shepherd and Bruce Willis on “Moonlighting.”
If you ever saw that godawful “Lois and Clark” TV series with Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain, I should mention that, while it was very poorly executed, the basic ideas of the show were largely based on the changes that Byrne had introduced.
In any case, the way that the “Man of Steel” mini-series worked was that each issue moved forward in time by quite a bit, until finally “catching up” with the current time. It painted the broad strokes of Superman’s history from the moment he revealed himself to the world, up to the present day (which was several years later), and allowed Byrne the freedom to fill in the blanks later.
When “Man of Steel” concluded, DC launched three “new” titles: Superman, Adventures of Superman, and Action Comics.
“Action Comics” continued its numbering from where it left off, “Adventures” picked up the numbering of the previous “Superman” series, and the new “Superman” started fresh at #1.
There is SO much more I could write about this, but there are other things I want to focus on.
The point is that this was NOT a “soft reboot.” It was very much a “hard reboot,” as it completely scrapped the existing history and started fresh.
“Birthright” has not done this. Essentially everything that has happened since 1986 has still happened just as it did, it’s just that the events prior to that occurred slightly differently, according to the new history.
One thing that’s sort of interesting to note is that, in a lot of ways, with “Man of Steel,” Byrne revamped Superman’s history in the comics to more closely resemble the version presented in the Superman movie (No previous career as Superboy; no prior relationship with Lex Luthor, etc.), and with “Birthright,” writer Mark Waid has revamped Superman’s history to more closely resemble that currently being presented on TV’s “Smallville.”
In any case, the point of all of this is that the entire 12-issue run of “Birthright” has been collected in a Hardcover edition that goes on sale this week, and I ordered a copy of it from Amazon.
That was the first thing I spent money on, but while I was at it, I decided to start rebuilding my “Sandman” collection, and so I ordered three of the collected volumes from Amazon.
So that was nearly $90 right there.
Today I picked up an FM transmitter for my MP3 player. This will allow me to listen to my entire collection of MP3s in my car without having to buy some kind of MP3 player for my car or to burn all of the songs onto conventional CDs.
To extend the usefulness of the FM transmitter further, I also bought a cheap bookshelf stereo system to put in my kitchen. When I’m at home, I frequently plug my MP3 player into my home theater system, but because of the layout of my apartment, I have a hard time hearing the music when I’m in the kitchen without really blasting it.
Now I can just keep the bookshelf system in my kitchen and broadcast my MP3s directly to it.
It’s all kind of pointless, I know, but it’s pretty cool.
I think I’m done with spending money, though, at least for a little while. I’m going to muddle through with the desk I have for a while.
In case you’re curious, sometime in 1988 Byrne left the Superman titles, citing “creative differences.” The books floundered for a while, but ultimately they found a good team that made the Superman titles, as “Comic Buyer’s Guide” put it, “the most consistently good mainstream titles on the market.”
By the way, I thought I should mention that actor Brandon Routh, a relative unknown, has been officially cast as the next big-screen Superman. I’ve never seen him in anything, but I don’t really hold out much hope for the Superman movie anyway, so it’s kind of irrelevant. From pictures I’ve seen, he does at least have the right look anyway.
By the way, in case you were wondering, I do watch “Smallville.” I was resistant to the idea at first, as I thought it would be another “Lois and Clark” fiasco, but eventually I began watching it and became impressed with how well they’ve handled it.
For the most part, at least.
This season they introduced the character of Lois Lane, as portrayed by actress Erica Durance, and I have to say that I was just utterly blown away by her.
Her performance as Lois is the very best portrayal of the character I’ve ever seen. She just captures the spirit of Lois perfectly, managing to be strong and aggressive while still having a lot of heart and compassion.
During every scene featuring Lois I can be found with a smile on my face. No one has ever really done this character justice before, and I thank Erica Durance for finally presenting the Lois that I know and love to the world. Her interpretation of Lois Lane is of a woman ideally suited to be the love of Superman’s life.
I honestly can’t stress just how impressed I am by Erica Durance (and how depressed I am by the fact that she’s not a regular cast member, and, in fact, won’t be on tonight’s episode). I actually posted comments to a WB message board to express my appreciation, and my hope that she will return as a recurring character, and I even, briefly, toyed with the notion of putting up a fan page for her, but ultimately decided that I don’t want to be quite that geeky.
Still, I’m of the opinion that Lois Lane was a role that she was born to play, and I was actually having a conversation with Scott at work one day about that in which I suggested that, of all the people who have ever played the part of a comic book character, she was the most ideally suited for her role.
The possible exception I noted was J.K. Simmons as “J. Jonah Jameson” in the “Spider-Man” movies, because that is another excellent example of someone born to play a part. In fact, ultimately I had to agree with Scott and concede that Simmons does edge out Durance in that regard.
In a later conversation with someone else, though, we were forced to admit that there is someone else who edges out even Simmons: Shelley Duvall as “Olive Oyl.”
There is a person who was truly born to play a role.
I concluded that she doesn’t count, though, since she’s nowhere near as entertaining as Simmons as old J.J.J., and Erica Durance is at least a million times hotter than she is.
Hell, in contrast to how hot Erica Durance is, Shelley Duvall can hardly even be said to be a member of the same species.
(I’m sure that Shelley Duvall is a perfectly lovely human being, and, as mentioned, she was ideal for the role of Olive Oyl, and I recognize that the "species" comment was pretty extreme, but the fact remains that she is not an attractive woman.)
By the way, one other person who possibly edges out Erica Durance as Lois is actor Kevin Conroy as the voice of Bruce Wayne/Batman on the various animated incarnations of Batman (Batman: The Animated Series, Batman: Beyond, Justice League, etc.).
For the rest of my life, in my mind, Kevin Conroy will be the voice of Batman.
And of course there’s Patrick Stewart as Professor X, but, even though he is clearly ideal, somehow he just doesn’t approach the level of Simmons, Durance, or Conroy. Maybe it’s because I have a hard time separating him from Picard. Who knows?
More to the point, I guess, who cares? I suppose I should apologize if I’ve bored the pants off of any of you non-comic geeks out there, but I should think by now you’d be used to it…

What kind of man reads Threshold?

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First new Nagel in a while

It's been a while since I've done the simple Nagel style, so when I was looking at this picture of Rachael Leigh Cook, I thought I'd crank one out. There's a little more to the image, but I got lazy and decided I didn't feel like drawing her hands or her foot, so I cropped it down to this. I realized as I was working on this that RLC's features are really suited to the Nagel style. Mmmm...Rachael Leigh Cook. *Sigh*

I did nothing BUT flinch

Most of the time, like most things, TV commercials fill me with an overwhelming feeling of impotent rage. They make me wish that I had a button that I could push that would cause a sudden jolt of electricity to go through the bodies of all the people responsible for the commercial.
It just seems to me that there ought to be some method for consumers to register their displeasure that’s a little more immediate, and painful, than simply refusing to purchase the products or services being advertised.
In any case, every so often there are commercials that make me laugh or entertain me in some fashion.
Little Caesar’s used to make great commercials back in the day, but they’ve been gone for a very long time.
Lately the commercial that’s been entertaining me is for Lee Jeans, though the commercial itself has very little to do with jeans.
The commercial in question features a giant woman walking casually down a city street, inadvertently leaving a path of destruction in her wake.
She spots a guy in a window (the guy, at least, appears to be wearing Lee Jeans; the 90 foot woman is wearing a dress), and apparently likes what she sees. She turns to check her reflection on the side of a nearby building (the expressions on the faces of the guys inside the building, at breast level, are great), then taps on the guy’s window.
He turns to look, and, despite being a little nonplussed, waves to her. She signals for him to not go anywhere, then turns to the rooftop of a nearby building to borrow a brush from a painter. She paints her number on a sign and motions for the man to call her, then walks off into the sunset, and the tagline of “No matter what happens, don’t flinch," attributed to Buddy Lee, comes up on screen.
Throughout the commercial an odd remix of “Pretty Woman” plays.
As mentioned, this commercial has almost nothing to do with jeans, and if it weren’t for the shot featuring a picture of “Buddy Lee” that can be seen on the side of a building that the woman was standing next to, you wouldn’t even know that it’s a commercial for Lee Jeans until the end.
Still, I find it entertaining. If you haven’t seen the commercial, you can find it here: http://www.joeytomatoes.com/buddyleeprettywoman.htm
As a cross-promotion for the “Don’t Flinch” campaign, Lee has put up a Web site that is supposed to be the personal blog of the “90 Foot Babe.” You can visit it at http://dontflinch.blogs.com/
You can also call the phone number in the commercial and hear a recorded message from the 90 Foot Babe.
It’s all rather silly, but at least it’s not as irritating as most ads.
Of course, the thing that makes the commercial entertaining is the 90 Foot Babe, who is indeed a babe.
Obviously she's not really tha tall, but seeing her makes me think about how, in the real world, I don’t typically go for tall women, simply because I’m not very tall myself.
Something between 5’ and 5’5” is pretty much the ideal for me, but it’s not as if I don’t find taller women attractive. While I think I’d look silly if I were with a woman who was quite a bit taller than I am, I’m not entirely opposed to the notion.
90 feet would be a tad excessive, though.
I did once fall hard for a very tall (though not quite 90 feet) woman several years ago.
When I was living in Minnesota, there came a time that I noticed this very tall, very beautiful young woman in a bar.
She was amazing. She had what I described as “classic” features. She was, to my mind, very much like a statue of an ancient Greek goddess come to life.
Indeed, privately I referred to her as “The Goddess,” but when speaking of her to others, she was simply “Tall Chick.”
I’m not certain why Tall Chick stood out so prominently, what it was about her that made her tower figuratively above the crowd, in the same way that she literally did, but for the first time in my life I felt myself truly drawn to a tall woman, and despite the vast differences in our heights, I was willing to ignore just how ridiculous the two of us would look together and I thought “Comparisons to Mutt and Jeff be damned!”
At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself. The reality of the situation bore no resemblance to my internal bravado.
Throughout most of the summer of 1999 I caught periodic glimpses of Tall Chick whenever I went out to the local bars. Typically, there would come a moment in the evening in which we would make eye contact, and frequently she would smile at me.
At this point, though, I should mention that apart from her “classic” features, there was another aspect to Tall Chick that made the term “Goddess” more apt: the almost religious sense of terror she engendered in me.
On my best day I’m at least a little intimidated by an attractive woman, but in the case of Tall Chick it was something else entirely. Under normal circumstances it would be possible for me to approach a woman and say hello (and then it becomes a matter of struggling to not trip over my tongue from there, but by that time I’ve at least made the approach), but that was decidedly not the case with Tall Chick.
As much as this woman attracted me, she terrified me more.
Based on our observations of her, my friends and I concluded that Tall Chick was single, and because she spent so much time out in the bars, it was clear that she was single and looking.
From what I could see, she was extremely friendly and approachable. Even when she shot guys down, which, in all honesty, I only saw her do in the most extreme conditions (fat, old, unemployed guys who spent ALL of their time sitting in bars), she seemed to be very gentle about it.
(I’m not suggesting that every guy who approached her “got lucky” or anything; I don’t think I ever saw her go home with anyone. I simply mean that if a guy asked her to dance, or if he could join her at her table, she usually said yes.)
Somehow the fact that she was so approachable, paradoxically (I’ve never said that my brain makes sense), made her that much more terrifying. Maybe I thought that being gently shot down by her would make things worse somehow.
Apart from being afraid of her, though, Tall Chick was usually in the company of friends who seemed far less friendly. Her girlfriends often “circled the wagons” and did their best to keep “undesirables” from approaching Tall Chick.
They all looked very mean, and added to my fear.
The closest I ever came to Tall Chick was when I was sitting at the table next to hers. She was sitting right behind me. My friend Eric was encouraging me to turn around and say something to her, but I just steadfastly shook my head. What could I say? "Hi, I think you're beautiful and you scare me." Somehow I don't think that would come off as charming.
There did come a night, though, when a combination of anger, fatigue, and liquid courage made me feel bold enough to approach her. I had no idea what I was going to say to her, but I knew that the moment had come and I could no longer stand on the sidelines watching.
I began weaving my way through the crowd toward her, dodging the bumping and grinding bodies all around me. I was bold. I was confident. Like Caesar descending on Gaul, I would be victorious. Veni, Vidi, Vici, I would declare! “I came, I saw…I was cut off at the last possible second by some guy who stepped in front of me and asked her to dance.”
I was literally within inches of her when he stepped in. He actually bumped me out of the way. The guy came out of NOWHERE. It was like God had just suddenly made him appear in front of me in order to say "No Tall Chick for you!"
Defeated, I retired to Eric’s car to pass out in the backseat while he was getting busy with the monstrosity that he was willing to settle for that evening. If you ever want to meet the model of a man who is decidedly not picky, you should meet Eric.
Of course, his scattershot approach has paid off for him, and at last account he was happily married to a lovely young lady and cheerfully stepping into the new role of father to their little girl.
In any case, Eric, while the fount for many a possible anecdote, is not the focus of this entry, so…
Hoping that one day my boldness would return under more ideal circumstances, I resolved to be prepared.
I sat down and came up with an opening line with which to approach Tall Chick. I realize that using a line can come off as way too artificial and cheesy, but anything had to be better than the “Duhhh….” that would be likely to fall from my mouth if I approached her unprepared.
Besides, it was a GREAT line, drawing on comparisons to Helen of Troy and demonstrating the fact that I was brilliant, thoughtful, sincere, and, in a bookish, poetic sort of way, sexy.
I rehearsed this line in my head constantly, and could recite it (without sounding like it was rehearsed) on a moment’s notice without having to give it even a second’s thought. It was as natural as breathing.
The very first time I saw Tall Chick after having come up with the line, it instantly disappeared from my mind, and I’ve never been able to recover it.
It was like it was a balloon and the sight of her popped it.
By the beginning of 2000, most of my friends had departed Minnesota for greener, or at least different, pastures, and, left on my own, I didn’t get out much, so I didn’t see Tall Chick too often.
At that time I was working for a printing company that owned several local newspapers in the area. In celebration of having completed the final printing of a very large project which virtually everyone in the company (myself included) had contributed to, the company rented space in a local bar in order to throw a party for all employees.
By around 9 pm it became clear that there was a strong contingent that wanted to keep the party going as long as possible, and, quite naturally, I was among them, since if it meant more drinking I was always up for it.
We stayed at that bar for a while, then eventually moved on to another one, then went to the bar that typically proved to be the final destination on most nights out in that town, a place called "The Woodshed."
There were actually several groups of us, and the group I was with had arrived well before the others. As soon as we walked in the door I spotted Tall Chick. I sighed, then went over to grab a table while some others went to the bar to get us all drinks.
I sat watching Tall Chick as I waited for my drink.
While I was watching, one of the other groups of coworkers arrived, and among them was Steve, a guy I got along with particularly well.
When he walked in the door, Tall Chick turned, rushed over to him, and threw her arms around him.
I think my eyes probably came pretty close to popping out of my skull at that point, and despite the fact that I liked him a great deal, my first thought was “Must kill Steve.”
I sat quietly and fought that urge down, and ultimately, noticing that I had seemed to shrink into myself, Steve asked me what was wrong.
I said, “You know Tall Chick.”
(I had mentioned Tall Chick to him many times).
He responded, “I do?”
I said, “She’s the girl who hugged you when you walked in the door.”
“That’s Tall Chick?”
He confessed that he barely knew her, and, in fact, couldn’t remember her name, but that he'd had some interaction with her through work. He added that he would do what he could to “hook me up.”
I got the distinct impression that Steve didn’t often drink, as he tended to go a little wild that night, spending a great deal of time out on the dance floor with a group of other coworkers.
In his efforts to “hook me up” with Tall Chick that night, he would yell for me to come out on the dance floor as if he had something to tell me, then would try to maneuver me next to Tall Chick and tell me to “go for it.”
I only dance under the most extreme of circumstances, and these circumstances weren’t quite extreme enough (read: I wasn't anywhere near drunk enough), and so I would flee back to my hiding spot and wish that I had what it took to approach Tall Chick.
On a positive note, though, at the end of the night I did end up spending a fair amount of time parked outside my house making out with the receptionist who’d given me a ride home. She was no Tall Chick, but she was kind of cute.
Steve had the next day off, so I didn’t get to talk to him about Tall Chick until the following Monday.
He looked through the list of contacts on his Palm Pilot and determined who she was.
When he told me her name he said, “Dude, you’re going to love this: she works at the funeral home. I worked on an ad campaign with her a while back, so that’s how I know her.”
I think that, with my nihilistic personality, he thought that the fact that she worked in a funeral home would ad some sort of additional morbid fascination for me. In fact, I did think it was kind of funny, but I don't think that, for all my negativity, I've ever been especially morbid. I suppose I could be mistaken, though.
It was entirely irrelavent, though, as I don’t think I ever saw Tall Chick again after that night, as I was fired shortly thereafter, and by mid-summer had moved back to Michigan.
Still, I often think of Tall Chick and wonder what might have been if I hadn’t been such a coward.
I can’t imagine that anything would have come of it, since I was pretty much a self-destructive drunk who more or less lived in squalor at the time. Then again, lots of chicks seem to go for that type, so who knows? Odds are that if I had put myself out there a little more back then, I would have had much better luck than I would now that I’ve cleaned up my act.
In any case, that’s the abbreviated Tale of Tall Chick, who, while not quite 90 feet tall, was indeed a babe.
When I worked in Tucson there was a woman at work whom I referred to as “Tall Chick Jr.” She wasn’t quite as tall as Tall Chick, and was nowhere near as attractive, but she did at least remind me of her a little.
Unlike her predecessor, I did actually engage Tall Chick Jr. in conversation, and very soon came to regret it, as it didn’t take long to discover that she was a complete psycho.
So I never really made a move on her, but I had established a pattern of talking to her on breaks, so I frequently had to listen to her craziness.
There was a time or two in which, in desperation, I thought, “Who cares if she’s crazy? It’s the weekend; I’ll make a move.”
Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, though, on those nights I invariably failed to encounter her, and I moved out to Virginia before I ever got another shot at it.
So those have been my primary experiences with tall women. Most of the other women I’ve been attracted to or involved with have been much shorter.
And while I still remain intimidated and have difficulty approaching most women on those increasingly rare occasions in which I actually encounter them, no one has ever filled me with the combination of awe and terror that Tall Chick did.
I honestly don’t know why that is, and now, since she’s more than a thousand miles and practically a lifetime away, I suppose that I never will.
I’d like to think, though, that as I’ve gotten older and somewhat wiser, if she were to suddenly tap on my window, I wouldn’t flinch.

Here's hoping the past isn't prologue

I received a piece of spam yesterday that, in the subject line, informed me that “being antiquated don’t matter,” and suggested that, via whatever the hell it was the spam was supposed to be marketing, I could look, and feel, years younger.
I said a lot of angry things in the general direction of the spammer, which is to say, at my monitor (which I also gave the finger), then I deleted the spam.
Of course, such a spectacle is hardly unusual. I spend a good portion of time saying angry words at my computer monitor and my TV, and giving the finger to both.
This is, of course, because I spend a great deal of my time actively engaged in being angry.
You may wonder why. Why am I so angry?
There are lots of reasons, many of which I’m sure date all the way back to my childhood, and I have no intention of delving into them here.
However, while I can’t/won’t give you any insight into what made me so angry in the first place, I can explain to you some of the things that keep me angry.
Let’s take an imaginative walk in Jon’s shoes, shall we?

It’s 6:30 Sunday evening and you’re getting into your car to go home. It’s been a long three days filled with a fair number of annoyances, but at least it’s all over now and you can go home to…
Well, what can you go home to? Your wife? No. Girlfriend? No.
Okay, so there won’t be anyone waiting for you when you get home, but at least once you’re there you can kick back and enjoy a nice cold beer, right?
Oh, wait. No, you can’t.
A relaxing cigarette?
Uh uh.
Okay, so you don’t have anyone waiting for you and you can’t engage in any of your former beloved pastimes, but at least you’ve got “Dead Like Me.”
For two more weeks, anyway.
In any case, whether you really have a reason to rush home or not, the fact of the matter is that your work week is over and, if for no other reason than sheer habit, you are in a rush to get home.
You make the turn onto the road that will lead you to the toll road. You need to move over two lanes to the left, and you don’t have a lot of time in which to do it. It’s not helping your mood any that there is someone in the lane next to you who keeps speeding up and slowing down in order to match your speed, preventing you from making the move. Finally, you floor it, move over a lane, continue to floor it, move over another lane, and slam on the brakes to avoid hitting the person who, seeing that you’ve made it into the lane and are behind him, feels that he needs to piss you off by inexplicably braking.
You make it onto the toll road and move uneventfully toward your exit.
There are two lanes that lead to your exit, and, ideally, the two lanes would split into three, each one leading to a different toll booth.
Recently, for over a month and a half, one of the toll booth lanes was closed for them to do…something. Exactly what they were hoping to accomplish in that month and a half hasn’t really made itself apparent.
In any case, you stay in the left lane as you take the exit and you try to pull ahead of the U-Haul truck that’s in the left lane.
Unfortunately, you’re unable to do this, as the U-Haul truck is straddling both lanes, not only preventing you from getting past it, but also forcing you to slow down even more than you already have. Eventually the U-Haul picks a lane: yours. You now have one more vehicle ahead of you in line, and experience has taught you that one vehicle can translate into several additional minutes stuck waiting for your chance to throw your toll in the basket.
Traffic at the toll booths is backed up, though you can’t quite see why, since you have a big U-Haul blocking your view. You move a little, the right lane moves a lot, you wait, you move a little, the right lane moves even more, and eventually you see that only one of the three toll booths is open.
Your first real piece of luck is that somehow you've nanaged to get in the correct lane.
However, even though they can now clearly see that they need to move over to the left, everyone in the right lane is waiting until the last possible second to squeeze in.
You keep yourself as close as possible to the rear bumper of the U-Haul. You don’t mean to be an ass, but there’s no reason you should have to suffer just because the people in the right lane are too stupid to have moved over when they should have.
Even so, a jackass with an SUV and a sense of entitlement is trying to intimidate you into letting him in, and he edges in closer and closer to you.
He nearly sideswipes you before he finally accepts the fact that you’re not going to let him in.
You wait behind the U-Haul for two minutes while the driver digs around for money and makes idle chitchat with the toll booth attendant.
Eventually you make your way through the booth and onto the last major leg of your journey home.
There is altogether too much traffic for a Sunday evening, and you find yourself frequently sitting behind a dozen cars watching as no one ahead of you reacts to the fact that the light has turned green.
The new interchange that has just opened is supposed to have alleviated the biggest bottleneck on this route. Though it hasn’t completely alleviated the problem, it has reduced the average wait from two minutes to 30 seconds, and eventually, as all cross-traffic is moved onto the overpass, the light will be removed completely.
In the meantime, though, the light is still there, and people still don’t seem to understand that only red means stop.
Presumably in an effort to maintain balance, a light further down the road has begun to stay red longer than it used to. You can't see any other reason for the increase in the duration, since there is very little traffic, in relative terms, coming off the cross street.
As you make the approach to the last major stopping point on your journey, you are stuck behind a car that is going 35 miles an hour.
Because of this, you miss your light. You wait for the northbound light to turn red, then you wait for the green arrow allowing the southbound traffic to turn from the west to turn red, then, wait for the light for all of the cross traffic to turn red, and finally your arrow turns green.
You cruise quickly along with no one ahead of you. Further down the road you see traffic from a side street merging into your lane, and even though there is no earthly explanation for it, you see all of their brake lights flare into existence, and suddenly where you once had clear sailing you suddenly have half a dozen cars ahead of you going twenty miles an hour slower than you are. You swear and slam on the brakes.
After making your way through two four-way stops, where, as usual, confusion as to how four-way stops work reigns supreme, you finally get to the home stretch, which, after two years of construction, one-lane roads, and flagmen, is at last a thing of beauty with passing and turning lanes that allow you to gracefully speed past any obstacle.
And you’re home.
Of course you can’t find a parking space near your building, but that’s hardly anything new.
You walk in the front door thinking about writing a blog entry about why you’re so angry all of the time, and how there are always a million little things just hammering away at you, trying to make your temper explode.
Your apartment door always closes itself as soon as you let go of it, and usually when you step into your apartment, the first thing you do is turn and lock it, since you know from experience that if you don’t lock it right away you’ll forget.
At the exact moment that you’re turning to lock the door you’re thinking about how you wish you could learn to let go of the anger, and how you just wish it didn’t always seem as though the universe is out to get you.
Distracted by these thoughts, you fail to notice that as you’ve been standing in your foyer the door hasn’t closed because it’s been caught on your left foot, and you only discover this as you whirl around and slam the side of your head, hard, against the door.

Fortunately, as a huge lump formed on my head, the rest of my evening proved fairly uneventful, and I did enjoy my television viewing.
But that gives you at least an idea of the sort of things that keep the embers of my anger smoldering, and while I can appreciate the amusing irony of the thoughts that were in my head right before I used the door to knock them out of it, it was still pretty irritating, and was pretty representative of what my life is like ALL THE TIME.
Being Jon means that even the most mundane activity can, without warning, become a life or death struggle. I typically don’t enjoy slapstick humor that involves someone clumsily stumbling along, simply because it usually feels all too familiar. As I watch it I’ll think, “That’s not funny; that hurts! That happened to me this morning.”Apart from the fact that I was born without any sort of natural grace, I think a great deal of my bumbling stems from the fact that I simply don’t pay that much attention to what I’m doing.
Given that said bumbling tends to account for a great deal of my anger, I once resolved to try to put a stop to it. I decided that my every action would be deliberate and considered, and I would scrupulously avoid the careless and haphazard actions that invariably led to cuts, bumps, bruises, cursing, and rage.
Carefully taking my time to do things pissed me off even more, though, so I soon abandoned the approach.
Besides, even without frequent blows to the head, there are plenty of other things in the world to piss me off, most of which I have absolutely no control over.
Because I have no control over these things, acceptance, it seems, as anyone who’s ever been in a 12 Step program would tell me, is the answer.
I have to accept the fact that I’m clumsy and as such am likely to injure myself on a regular basis. I have to accept the fact that other people are going to get in my way on the highway, and in all other areas of life. I have to accept the fact that at the end of the workday I’m going to come home to an empty apartment, and that unless I make some kind of change to my fundamental nature, which I seem to be either unwilling, unable, or both, to do, I’m going to continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
However, the fact of the matter is that I DO accept all of those things. When I wake up to start the day, I understand that all of them are going to be a part of the day that is ahead of me.
But acceptance can only go so far. Acceptance keeps me from acting out some scene straight out of “Falling Down,” and it helps me rein in the anger, but it doesn’t get rid of it.
I realize that there are people who are much, much worse off than I am, and that God, the Universe, Fate, or whatever, is (probably) not “out to get me,” but there are times when I’m pretty sure that there are things that happen to me that couldn’t possibly happen to anyone else.
So yeah, I get angry.
I suppose I should do something about it, but I’m not sure that there’s much that can be done, and honestly, I think that writing things like this is about the most effective thing I can do.
In any case, that’s it for this little trip down “Anger Avenue.”
There are a couple of related topics that came up today, though. I mentioned how I have to accept that there are people who are going to get in my way.
Today I was thinking that there are people who exist solely for that purpose.
Not to just get in my way specifically, but in general. That’s their function in life: being in the way.
By way of example, over the weekend I started on a new workout routine. It involves working out more days during the week. So, after working out Friday and Saturday, and taking off Sunday, I went over to my apartment complex’s weight room today.
There was a guy, in regular (non-workout) clothes in there making use of the machine. Okay, that’s fine, I guess. A little irritating, since it would throw off the order of my routine, but not a big deal.
So I made use of some of the other parts of the machine (this is a multi-purpose machine with several different attachments) while I waited for him to finish.
It soon became apparent, though, that this guy was one of those “random workout” people.
He was the sort of guy who, every six months, just walks into a weight room and starts randomly exercising as if he’s going to somehow gain some benefit from just lifting a dumbbell a couple of times.
In this guy’s case the main focus was the bench press.
He’d sit down, push it a couple of times, get up, adjust the weight, sit down and do nothing, get up, turn the TVs on, sit down, do a couple of presses, get up, adjust the weight, go into the room set off to the side for kids, turn on the TV in there, come back in, make a rush for the bench press attachment before I could get to it, push at it, discover that he had set the weight too high, get up, etc.
He did this consistently the whole time I was in there. Eventually he moved on to other exercises, but kept doing it in such a random way that it was impossible for me to complete any kind of circuit.
It occurred to me that he had to realize that he wasn’t really accomplishing anything with his haphazard approach, and that the only possible reason for him to be there was to simply be in my way.
So rather than club him over the back of the head with a dumbbell, I gave up and came home.
I thought maybe I’d go for a walk to get a little bit more exercise in, but I didn’t feel up to it, so I decided to take a nap.
Shortly after I dozed off, two kids started playing a game outside in the parking lot.
I’m not sure what they called it, but my name for the game was “Let’s scream at the top of our lungs outside Jon’s window while he tries to take a nap.”
So I gave up on that.
My anger flared up again at 6 when I turned on the TV to watch “The Simpsons” and found baseball on in its place.
Turing off the TV, I sat down and began writing this.
Overall, “failure” seemed to be the word of the day, and it wasn’t limited to my failure to properly work out or nap.
This month I have three paydays, with this past Friday being the second. Thanks to careful planning, after a few expenses are taken out, the bulk of this paycheck is mine to do with whatever I’d like.
For the most part that means putting money in my savings account, but I did intend to buy a few things, like a new desk.
I went to a couple of places but couldn’t find a desk that suited my needs. I looked for a few other things to buy, but decided that since I don’t have nearly enough money to buy all the things I want, I shouldn’t bother buying any of the things I want.
So, after failing to buy most of the things I went out intending to buy, I came home, and that’s when I ran into the roadblock to my workout, and, inevitably, found myself here, writing this.
So that pretty much brings you up to speed on today. Hopefully it’s not a day that indicates what the rest of the week is going to be like.