Another Heart Attack

About a conversation I overheard in the grocery store yesterday:

Two men in their late 60s or early 70s bump into each other in the dairy section. It appears to have been some time since they last saw one another. I hear snippets of greetings and something about finally being retired as I pass them on the way to the egg case. I pick up a carton of brown, organic, cage-frees and check to see if any are broken. As I make my way back toward the two men, I hear this treasure of an exchange:

Man No. 1: So what have you been up to?
Man No. 2: Not a whole lot. Had me another heart attack.
Man No. 1: Oh did you?
Man No. 2: Uh-huh.

The tone of this conversation was so casual, teetering on the verge of boredom. Man No. 2 could just as well have said he joined a bowling league. "Had me another heart attack" could have been substituted with "Got me a new riding mower" and nothing about the conversation -- the tone, the friend's response -- would have changed.

So that's what this old-timer's been up to? That's how he constitutes passing the days? He not only has had himself a heart attack, he's had himself another heart attack. By watching commercials for prescription medicine and retirement funds, you'd think all retired folk do is ride 3-speed bikes, play upper-class sports while wearing diapers and cherish their grandchildren between the preparation of home-cooked meals in sunshiny kitchens.

I would at least have expected a little more incredulousness from both men. I mean, this was not the first but at least the second time that no blood flowed anywhere near one of his four delicate, life-enabling chambers as the No. 1 worldwide cause of death for humans perhaps very nearly claimed another victim.

I should have eavesdropped a little longer to see how the conversation progressed. My guess is that it went something like so:

So what have you been up to?
Not a whole lot. Had me another heart attack.
Oh did you?
Uh-huh.
Was it serious?
Was what serious?
Your heart attack.
Oh. I suppose. [awkward pause] You see they have bacon and canned biscuits on special this week?
Is that right.
Uh-huh.

Monkey Dream

I often dream of bizarre things but this one last night I can't shake from my head: I was walking through the ancient ruins of some foreign land (Peru?). Perched in an old window bay was a small monkey, a macaque perhaps. The peculiar thing about this type of monkey was that it would find the skulls of larger animals and craft them into masks. It was the only species besides humans to comprehend the idea of a mask.

So I see this little monkey wearing this giant skull on its head. I tried to take a photo but it ran away. The photo turned out blurry anyway.

What does this mean? Does the mask theme have anything to do with Halloween? There were some other odd things going on in these ruins (actually the ruins turned into a dilapidated child-care center later in the dream), but the monkey was the oddest.

Avoiding real-life foreshadowing

I was walking up my hardwood stairs today wearing socks, cradling my open laptop in my left arm and clutching a full, hot cup of coffee in my right hand.

As I went up the stairs, my dog Tuffy was racing up with me under my feet.
Some background . . .

My laptop: Full of all my short stories, various other pieces of writing, school work, music downloads, photos.

The cup of joe: Coffee not important, but the mug it was in was hand-crafted pottery made by my wife Erin.

As I carefully made my way up the stairs I dreaded taking a fall. Not for fear of getting hurt or spilling coffee or even breaking the laptop. Rather, it was the metaphor of the fall that frightened me most.

Because if my life was fiction and my character simultaneously drops a) a machine equated to his creative expression and hard work, and b) a mug crafted by his wife's loving and caring hands, it could only be foreshadowing for the disaster and heartbreak looming around the corner.

Thankfully, I made it up the stairs unscathed.

A story about an elephant

I wrote a story a while back which was basically a monologue from a guy who thinks the best way for him to make his mark in life would be to become an elephant.
The story, called "Being," was published today at a place called
A Cautionary Tale.

It's really short so an excerpt would basically constitute the entire thing.

Read the story here

Reach For Your Dreams

Estimated reading time: 46 seconds

People are always saying that you should reach for your dreams.

But that’s not really practical for everyone. For instance, last night I dreamt I was a juggling donkey.

But, you reply, when they say “reach for your dreams,” they don’t mean your actual dreams, the crazy or bizarre things that run through your head when are sleeping. Everyone’s dreams are weird. You’re not special. What they mean is to set goals, however lofty they may seem, and go after them no matter the costs.

OK. Agreed. But when I set out to make a list of lofty goals, the first two items on the list were:

1) Buy donkey suit

2) Learn to juggle

Irrevria update

I'd like to trumpet a new story I had that was published. It's at Susurrus Magazine: The Literature of Madness. My story is called "Through the Monkey Glass." Here is a short excerpt:

Compelling the orangutan to return could be as easy as a banana, or perhaps four bananas or one giant fiberglass banana, approximately 60-65 feet high. (Note: Maybe the whole monkey-banana thing is just a stereotype. Example: Everyone thinks that bears eat honey and porridge when in actuality, the whole bear-honey-porridge thing originates in fables, cartoons and children's cereals. So it's probable that the concept of monkeys and bananas derived from some allegory, likely African. And because monkeys and bananas have been linked so seamlessly, perhaps now at zoos and in cartoons, monkeys eat bananas because "monkeys eat bananas." Or maybe monkeys eat bananas because they're readily available in their native habitat. If monkeys were introduced to different fruits and vegetables, perhaps they would prefer radishes, carrots or cherry tomatoes.)
On second thought, instead of bananas, I figured I should build a giant fiberglass vegetable tray.

I was also the featured writer for this issue of Susurrus, which basically consists of a short interview that goes deep on my inspiration and motives as a writer. Or something like that.

here's a link to the mag


Here's a link to the interview

New York Stories

New York Stories

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 17 seconds

A trip to New York City is never just a trip to New York City. You see things you never intended to see and the stories you tell when you return home are not the stories you planned to tell on the way there.

Erin and I made a trip to the city Monday, taking along Ryan, a copy editing intern from Kansas City staying with us for the summer. It was his first trip to New York, which made me think back to my first time.

I was 25 and New York was one of Erin and I's first ventures into a large city alone. I remember being half excited, half nervous for five days straight, it being the first trip where my wallet went from my back pocket to my front pocket while I was still at the airport.

I remember seeing Times Square, overwhelmed by the consumeristic cacophony dancing, flashing and buzzing to the point where it all becomes silent and you just can’t stop looking up or snapping photos, trying to fill your camera with the enormity of the city. To me, Times Square is everything a first trip to New York is about. You feel like you’re at the epicenter of the universe, and you are.

But on our way home Monday, riding the MetroNorth line back into New Haven, we weren’t discussing the Statue of Liberty and how much bigger or smaller Ryan thought it was going to be. We didn’t talk about the view from atop of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the panoramic line of skyscrapers long enough to fill dozens of large cities. And we didn’t talk about how this was the first time where “What is this, Grand Central Station?” was a legitimate question.

Rather, we talked about the things we never expected, like the father on the subway who had to nearly fight off the old man trying to feed a giant pretzel to his 3-year-old daughter.

“It’s OK. No thanks. Please. No,” the father said, his hand shielding the face of the child to prevent the man’s hand from forcing the pretzel into her mouth. At one point the seemingly-normal-but-probably-nuts old man tried to reach around the father’s head and feed the kid from behind. The old man just smiled the entire time, oblivious to the father's paternal sense of peril.

My concern grew when the force-feeding pretzel man ended his zealous attempt with the girl and sat next to me. I sat nervously for the remainder of the ride, knowing that a giant piece of pretzel could be stuffed into my face at any time if I let my guard down.

We rehashed our dinner, where we descended a flight of stairs in Chinatown to enter a tiny, no-frills, Zagat-rated restaurant where we shared a table with a man whose crusty yellow eye infection produced a cloudy blue glaze over his left eyeball. As he answered his pesky cell phone with god-knows-why statements like “Fat Sal’s Pizza!” I couldn’t help but stare at the pale discolored ring around his unsightly chapped lips.

Before his shaky hand and unsure grip spilled a glass of water all over the table, he ended his last cell phone conversation “Can’t a guy eat his last meal in peace?”

It’s a question I normally would assume is asked sarcastically, but judging on how this guy was literally oozing with sickness, we all thought there was an outside chance he was serious.

Central Park was, of course, brought up on the ride home as well. Not for its thrilling example of city planning genius or its calming, oasis-in-the-city lake views or the solace of its intricate trail system. It was the nearly nude sunbathers, the deformed horns on the goat at the petting zoo and the handful of couples making out so vigorously that they approached NC-17 territory as we strolled past.

In the short term, it was the crazies that dominated our New York stories. It was the proselytizing subway rider who pleaded that you “make peace with your maker before you meet your undertaker.” It wasn’t the jutting dominance of the Empire State Building, the reality of the World Trade Center site or the bedlam of Times Square at night.

I’ll never forget seeing and experiencing these landmarks for the first time. After six trips to New York, the first one is the one I remember most.

But after you’ve seen all the sights in New York, it’s the craziness, the unexpected, the unplanned that forces you to return. After a few trips, you leave your camera at home and return with nothing but a handful of stories you never imagined telling.

The Butt Of The Joke

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 12 seconds

Recently me and a friend of mine that I work with were discussing his home state of North Dakota. How cold does it get there? What do people from North Dakota do for fun? Why would anyone possibly have reason to visit North Dakota?

The conversation then gravitated toward who North Dakota's interstate rivals are and the states North Dakota looks down upon.

Namely, if a North Dakotan is telling a joke and needs a dumb character to jump out of an airplane without a parachute, screw in a light bulb in a haphazard fashion or outfit a submarine with insufficient windows, which state will this person reside?

The obvious answer to me would be South Dakota. I figured both Dakotas would claim to be the better Dakota, the real Dakota.

Rather, he said, the accepted states to utilize are Minnesota and Montana. (My first thought was what could be funny about Montana? Ranch hands? Mountaineers? Are there any glacier jokes floating around out there? A Google search produced this gem: Why is North Dakota so windy? Because Minnesota sucks and Montana blows.)

How North Dakotans feel toward Minnesota and Montana reinforces the notion that who the butt of the joke is changes by when and where you live and doesn't always make the most sense.

I was discussing this concept a few years ago with two friends of mine, one from Mexico, the other from Bolivia (An American, a Mexican and a Bolivian walk into a bar . . .). They said that when they need someone to be the butt of the joke, they use people from a place in Spain called Galicia. To me Galicia is a place I'd never heard of but presume is on a map. To them, it's where all the dumb people from jokes live. Who knew?

When I was in my golden joke-telling years (grade school, 1983-1989), the butt of the joke was always a Polack. Always. Sometimes the adjective "dumb" was added, just in case there was any confusion as this particular Polack's intelligence. As in, Did you hear about the dumb Polack that froze to death outside a theater? He was waiting to see the movie "Closed for the Winter." Ka-Blam! Whew that one was funny the first time I heard it.

Why a Polack? I have no idea. Probably something involving World War II. But to this day, I still see Polish people in a light that should probably be a tad brighter than it is.

Around this same time, a slew of Ethiopian jokes began to spring up, thanks to a historical famine in the African country from 1983-85. If there's one thing that makes for great laughs, it's famine. These jokes mainly had to do with hunger, starvation and the hilarity of being dangerously skinny.

Like this choice joke, which I might add, I learned from my brother in 3^rd grade: How many Ethiopians can you fit into a bathtub? None. They all slide down the drain.

Horrible, I know. And probably too soon.

Why other famished African nations never got the same treatment, I don't know. I'm still waiting to hear a Kenya joke or something that skewers those rascally Algerians.

But then something funny (not ha-ha) began to happen. Not only were Ethiopians targeted for famine-related humor, suddenly they got caught up being the dumb person in the joke. Take one joke for instance, also told to me in elementary school, likely at recess. The premise is three people walking through the dessert. Each has one item that will either keep them cool or nourish them in some fashion. The first guy has water, the second guy has food. And the third guy has a car door so that when it gets hot, he can roll the window down.

When that joke was told to me, the guy with the car door was an Ethiopian! That's not necessary!

I was also told a joke that consisted of people going down a skunk hole to see how long they could stand the smell. One by one they would go down the hole, each staying longer and longer before the smell forces them out. Well, when it was the butt of the joke's turn to go down the skunk hole, they waited and waited before the skunk finally came out complaining of the awful odor.

What type of person would smell so bad that even a skunk would abandon its home to flee the terrible stench? According to this joke in the form in which is was told to me, an Ethiopian.

So because of mass famine, Ethiopians wind up being made fun of for being skinny and ravenously hungry, which progressed into being made fun of for being dumb, which ballooned into flat-out, mean-spirited contempt.

Most of the time, the butt of the dumb joke is understandable. Not justified, but understandable, formulated from a regional rivalry, xenophobia or long-standing stereotype. Hippies, aggies, jocks, blondes, Polacks, Montanans.

But Ethiopians? They were starving, skinny and malnourished. And according to our jokes in the mid-80s, they were dumb too.

Getting Kids To Read

Would anyone argue that books don't command the attention of America's youth as much as they once did?

With TV, DVDS, video games, instant messaging, text messaging, social networking, virtual worlds, camera phones, organized sports, organized play groups, organized snack times, forced and unforced naps, theme restaurants and ADD epidemics, is there even time for anything else? And if there were time, what kid would spend that time reading?

Sixty years ago, kids read because the only other option was listening to plays that featured a bunch of bored foley artists and came from a radio the size of a professional wrestler.

Once TV came along, books took another hit. But teachers and parents told kids to read, and being children of past generations, they did as they were instructed.

If you want kids to read in today's climate, you need to embark on some serious strategy being that it takes a bit more attention, effort and focus to read a book than to space out while watching someone else's zany cat bat at the air on YouTube.

You tell your kid to read now, you'll be lucky if he pauses his game of Guitar Hero before he tells you to F-off. Imagine how teachers feel as their assigned reading is likely bring a slew of cease and desist letters from parents' attorneys citing cruel and unusual emotional distress thrust upon the too-busy-to read-are-you-kidding-me students.

Battling students who'd rather read some random hottie's MySpace profile, unsupportive and uninvolved parents, all but the best teachers would rather just show the kids the movie in class than have them read the book (and for Romeo and Juliet, they pass on the 1968 classic for 1996's ultra-hip, modern vernacular, Leo DiCaprio version.).

To get books into the lives of children, educators had to go a step further. Call it creative enticement.

They could bite the bullet and just trade reading for cash, but in addition to studies that point out that this doesn't really work, it also wouldn't suit today's ever-slim school budgets. They could reward kids with cheap prizes or go with the standby school-wide ice cream or pizza party for students who meet certain literary goals. But since contemporary children eat Chuck E. Cheese whenever they damn-well feel like it and demand and receive DQ each time they pass it in the car, those once sought-after foods have become a drab burden more than anything.

Eschewing unadulterated bribery, schools with principals willing to take one for the team have resorted to another mode of reading enticement: voluntary public humiliation.

This can come in many forms, but taking on an embarrassing hair style seems to be most popular: a shaved head, a mohawk or some variation of socially unacceptable hair dye.

Principals and teachers have been known to kiss pigs, allow themselves to be dunked in pools of water or slime, take pies in the face or ingest something so clearly disgusting it forces other adults in attendance into a bout of dry heaves.

Still waiting to emerge is the principal who takes the humiliation reward too far, like promising to take shots to the groin from every kid who meets their goal. After getting a solid moon boot to the testicular region, the red-faced and sweating principal is doubled-over in pain as he gathers the composure to force the words "Thanks for reading William!"

The reasoning as to why this approach seems to get kids to read when nothing else will is simple. As a reward for completing a task, children get to watch an authority figure stripped of his power, losing a bit of dignity and thus being brought closer to their level.

He is no longer Principal Wilson; he's that goofy guy with the mohawk who personally invited the giggles and scorn.

So this tactic will work for the time being, that is until someone produces a video game that, using uploaded images, creates an animated digital version of their own principal. Students will then be able to play games where they are free to assault the principal with pies, water torture, sleep deprivation and, of course, countless kicks to the crotch.

Ready For The Real World

Estimated reading time: 24 seconds

They sit through the entire commencement.
And with a final word,
Students are dismissed for the last time.
After sixteen years, school is over.
It is a fleeting moment so pure, so exuberant.
Graduates, accomplished and uncontained,
Send their caps blissfully into the air.
But one keeps his on
To protect himself from falling caps.

Cool Rabbits

Estimated Reading Time: 4.5 seconds

If I were a rabbit, I’d be one of those cool ones. One with the wristbands.

Some photos

I have gone back through the years and pulled together some photos from various places Erin and I have traveled: Europe, New York, Chicago, St. Lucia, Mexico and elsewhere. You can view them here

Tacorral: So bad it's good

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes 4 seconds

The name Tacorral should have been warning enough.

What kind of restaurant gets its name from the awkward combination of a structure and a popular food item?

Would you eat at Burri-tower or Hambur-garage?

But the name might be the Mexican restaurant’s high point, considering the food was as authentic as a Taco Bell Cheesy Gordita Crunch, its walls were ripe with stereotypical Mexican knickknacks and its décor could only be described as naco.

After being seated in the sparsely-populated dining room, the first thing that came to our attention was the music. The best way for a fake Mexican restaurant to mask its fakeness is by piping in some authentic Mariachi.

Not Tacorral. Instead of anything remotely Mexican, Tacorral opted for music that sounded like something off The Brady Bunch. In a particular, one of those whacky Brady Bunch scenes where Peter’s science fair volcano display violently overflows, Tiger the dog runs through covered in soap suds and Alice somehow ends up getting a pie in the face.

I didn’t mind the music – primarily brass instruments playing upbeat songs half jazz-half showtune. I loved it, actually. But hearing it at a Mexican restaurant just made the place seem goofy and pathetic.

Amidst the near-neon blue and orange paint, piñatas hanging from the ceiling and serapes and miniature sombreros drooping from the walls, we kicked things off with an order of chips and sauce. When we got our chips and sauce, we discovered why the restaurant had chosen the word sauce in lieu of, say, salsa. Accompanying a basket of taco chips was a smooth red sauce that tasted distinctly like Ortega Taco Sauce. Not that I don’t like Ortega Taco Sauce, but I think if I were serving tortilla chips to guests at my house, even I would be too embarrassed to offer Ortega Taco Sauce.

Next was the main dish, a beef burrito for me. Considering the Brady Bunch music and the Ortega taco sauce, the burrito was exactly what you’d expect. Loaded with cheese, the meat had the distinct and familiar flavor of Old El Paso, the seasoning mix, not the venerable Old Texas town. By regular food standards, it was somewhat tasty. By Mexican food standards, it was laughable. It was at this point that I just sort of felt sorry for Tacorral and its so-bad-it’s-good production of Mexican cuisine.

Upon leaving, I commented that Tacorral was like a Taco Bell where you have to wait to be seated. Because people don’t go to Taco Bell for Mexican food. They go there for cheap, tasty food that happens to served inside some form of a tortilla and has vague connections to Mexico.

A friend who has also visited Tacorral suspects the restaurant is merely a front, citing the reality of white people serving bland, inauthentic Mexican food in a place that by most accounts is always virtually empty.

The only way Tacorral makes sense to me is if someone told two Americans to create a Mexican restaurant in one afternoon. Based on their misguided knowledge of Mexican culture, they’d rely on the clichéd images of piñatas and sombrero-wearing, mustachioed Mexicans catching a siesta while propped against a donkey.

They’d paint the walls colors they thought were Mexico-ish but were more suited for Miami’s South Beach. Their meat would be seasoned via spice packet and each dish would be loaded with cheddar cheese. For some reason the grocery store would be out of salsa, forcing them to go with taco sauce instead.

They’d head to Target in hopes of finding a last-minute Mariachi CD and end up settling on something called Gil Savagio’s Brass Orchestra, based on the false conclusion that his name sounded somewhat Hispanic.

It’s an explanation as good as any.

Cap'n Crunch Clean and Sober

From here forth, the Cap'n will simply be known as Crunch.

After 44 years, Quaker Oats and Ari Steinowitz, the man who has played the Cap'n since the popular breakfast cereal's debut in 1963, have decided an image change was long overdue, saying that cereal-eating children can now expect a calmer, more laid-back Cap'n.

This comes following a string of bizarre actions culminating in his arrest in January after showing up to a Connecticut casino drunk without his toupee and missing his captains trousers and hat while attempting to wrestle a stuffed coyote.

Steinowitz pleaded no contest to charges of public intoxication, indecency, disorderly conduct and assault of a law enforcement official. He was sentenced to 64 days in jail, fined an undisclosed sum and ordered into mandatory substance abuse treatment.

It was this treatment that Steinowitz and Quaker Oats
say was the biggest catalyst for change.

Officials at the cereal giant have since acknowledged privately a growing concern for years about the Cap'n's suspected amphetamine addiction which led to an increasingly hyper-aggressive and overly-energetic insistence on people eating his cereal.

They point out the visual change over the years on the cereal boxes, going from a stoic if not weathered seaman in the 60s and 70s to the recent eye-bulging buffoon, saluting and grinning while practically forcing large spoonfuls of his cereal on anyone from coworkers to passing motorists to infants and
toddlers.

Quaker Oats officials said the return to a more dignified persona would be gradual. While temporarily keeping the name Cap'n Crunch, Steinowitz will now appear on cereal boxes wearing a 'do rag in place of a bulky captains hat. He'll also sport more of a neutral, almost sedated expression to better reflect the attitudes of today's youth.

Political Climate Crisis

Estimated reading time: 53 seconds

Then there were just two colors, two flavors, two ideologies and they thought it clever to call it a political spectrum.

They shouted past one another ideas that fit neatly between commercial breaks, serving as forced interruptions. Ideas were kept brief and small to fit this framework, not too complex, not too nuanced. To maintain an opinion short and simple was to repeat culturally acceptable ideology, to repackage conventional wisdom, to revisit what had been established before. And you agreed and nodded as what you already knew was confirmed by someone whose importance, you assumed, put them in front of a camera.

Voices that did not fit this template, voices willing to truly defy and provoke remained silent in favor of those waiting to comply. Those willing to discuss and listen, challenge and discern were kept quietly aside.

Instead, the shouting.

The two men claimed to disagree with one another but secretly had a common goal.
To argue over red and blue, black and white, good and evil, business as usual while their country burned in a hazy darkness.

A Pig To Haunt Your Sleep

Estimated reading time: 1 minute 21 seconds

At first sight, the photo could make the churchiest of church-goers curse in freakish wonder.

A dead pig weighing 1,050-something pounds and measuring 9 feet 4 inches.

Pigs just aren’t supposed to be that big, that monstrous.

About four times larger than the average feral hog, the pig would weigh more than a good-sized cow and dwarf the size of your average bull moose.

Once you rid the massive pig’s image from haunting your sleep, the most logical joke to make from the whole thing is “That’s a lot of bacon.”

Funny because it’s true. That is a lot of bacon. Roughly 22,727 slices of bacon.

But in all seriousness, the father of the 11-year-old who shot the pig confirmed that the bulk of the pig will be used to make sausage – 500 to 700 pounds of sausage, which converts into about 9,390 breakfast links (someone needs to put this guy and his family on heart attack watch ASAP.)

However, I think I’d have a hard time eating sausage that came from this rhinoceros of a pig.

I’d be afraid that the pig’s stuff would somehow get inside me and permeate my glands and nodes. I’d wake up the next morning with shiny gray skin, hands, feet and ears in freakish proportions, my fingers beginning to fuse and harden as my voice gets crazy deep and I sprout dark, thick hair everywhere.

The more sausage I eat, the more I look like a freakishly large pig.

Oh wait . . .

Tennis, Spiders and Terror

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes 4 seconds

Passing a tennis court as you walk back from the pharmacy you notice a man laying on his side just inside the baseline on the far end of the court.

Dozens of balls line the fence and sit at the foot of the net. A large empty practice basket straddles the service line.

You try to talk yourself out of investigating, offering the idea that the man had halted his practice to grab some quick shuteye on the court’s 112-degree surface. The blood spattered on the front of his white T-shirt jolts you from your comfort.

Walking briskly across the court, you approach the man, who is apparently breathing but unconscious. You inspect closer the small orange and red splatters on his shirt, noting in your head that it looks like he had been squirted by a spray bottle full of blood.

Looking for the source of the blood you go to lift his shirt. As you reach toward him, what you see sends a shock up your spinal column as you jump away in primitive flight.

Crawling all over the man’s shirt are thousands of tiny red baby spiders, some of which had been smashed to create the illusion of blood.

After a few moments, you deduce the man had been hit by some sort of bomb of spiders, the red being the spiders that splattered on impact. What had rendered him unconscious was beyond your comprehension, a potential truth so horrendous and terrifying you try to suppress it but fail.

Ten years earlier you would have called 911. But not now. Not with a man who had been hit by a bullet full of baby spiders which may or may not have stripped him of consciousness. If you see something, say something, you recall hearing.

You dial the Department of Homeland Security. Awaiting instruction, you back slowly off the court, returning reluctantly to a changed world.

Sarcasm Lost On Google

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes 59 seconds

With its complex algorithms that would make advanced extra terrestrial life wither dumbly, it's no secret that the super wizard computer geeks at Google have done some amazing things.

Not only can one type in the nonsense phrase "goat saddle" and actually see picture after picture of, you guessed, goats wearing saddles, but he can also find web sites that sell goat saddles and – I swear it – tips on how to make saddling a goat as pleasant as possible for you and the goat.

But what makes Google so successful as a business is how it recognizes key words within your search results and automatically generates relevant and potentially useful links to paid advertisers. So when searching for goat saddles, on the right of the screen are links to web sites where you can buy goats and saddles.

Google has applied this same technology to its e-mail program Gmail. But instead of recognizing key words in an internet search, it picks up on what it thinks is the content of your e-mail – keywords and phrases – and offers potentially relevant advertising links to the right of the message.

At first this seems a little creepy and a lot obtrusive. I imagine someone or something actually reading and comprehending the content of my e-mail and supplying the corresponding advertising.

But if you read the disclaimers and FAQs supplied by Google, you can be rest assured that it has nothing to do with monitoring or spying and everything to do with the complex algorithms and Google super wizards mentioned above.

While Google may pat itself on the back for being able to use artificial intelligence to decipher human correspondence, all in the name of advertising, I have discovered something Google is not too good at: Detecting sarcasm.

This played out simply the other day, in an e-mail exchange I had with a friend of mine who I'll call "Ted." (I'll also omit the names of anyone else to keep all identities anonymous).

It's important to know that it has been Ted's shtick to downplay his current position in life, his job, the city he lives in. He's not entirely happy with it but when he talks about it, he lays the sarcasm and hyperbole on thick. It's become sort of a joke, kind of like Ted's life (that was actually an example of how Ted might actually joke . . . see?).

The e-mail exchange went something like this:

Ted: You still want to have lunch tomorrow? If so, we should also include "Brian." I'm available around 1.

My biggest accomplishment this evening was [insert name of lame movie here]. My life is in F'ing shambles.

Me: That sorry excuse for a human being "Brian" and I were just discussing activities for tomorrow. We were thinking of playing some basketball and then going to lunch. Thoughts?

Ted: "Brian's" life is one of the only things that makes mine seem relevant. I'll be home from work around 1 so maybe hoops at 1:30 and lunch to follow?

Now I'm going to watch [insert name of lame movie here] and then go to sleep. F---.

So if you're a computer and/or robot reading this e-mail and looking for key words, some consistent subjects and relevant phrases, here's what you might deduce:

You've got two people talking about getting lunch and playing basketball. And then something else keeps coming up, like references to lives being in "shambles" and someone who is a "sorry excuse for a human being."

So I look to the right of the e-mail exchange and notice the specifically tailored advertising generated for this conversation.

Expectedly, there were links concerning the NBA and NBA playoffs. Good job Google, 1-for-1. Next up was one advertisement targeting overweight children and another offering tips for the overweight. I'll give Google a consolation prize for that but it was getting colder on relevant advertising, as the most prominent and abundant number of links it offered were quite different.

There was one for teenagers with troubled pregnancies, one advertising a "practical, proven program for parents of troubled teenagers," and another claiming that "surrogate mothers are needed."

Wow. I never knew our lives were this dire.

So maybe Google still has some work to do, to find a way to detect the dry wit of its users. Or perhaps Google is really a step ahead of me and Ted is actually dealing with a troubled teen pregnancy and just hasn't told me.

Today's Smell: Walgreens

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 28 seconds

I walked into a Walgreens the other day looking for a muffin pan (A muffin pan at Walgreens you ask? Well, it’s only logical when you plan to have muffins on an easy Saturday morning and A) you discover that for some reason your only muffin pan is not in the drawer below the stove as usual but in some closet in your wife's classroom at school and B) there's a Walgreens less than 1/6-mile from your doorstep).
Immediately when I walked into Walgreens I was permeated with that smell. You know that smell. That Walgreens smell. I can't describe it in any other way than . . . Walgreens.
No matter if the Walgreens is in Denver, Kansas City, El Paso, Omaha or Manchester, CT, or if the Walgreens is 16 years old or 16 weeks old, all Walgreens smell exactly the same (true could be said of other discount chains, Target especially).

How can this be?

Certainly over the last 20 years, Walgreens has changed the bulk of its products, or perhaps began carrying more convenience foods and makeup and less camera supplies and toys. And yet the scent is exactly the same.

I want to know specifically what I am smelling.

Maybe the smell is the product of commercially unsuccessful, bargain DVDs placed near a cash register. Maybe the smell is a cocktail of hair clips and self grooming tools placed in proximity to cigarettes and Nicoderm patches. Maybe it’s the combined scent achieved when a photo processing center butts up against a dairy case.

Some I have spoken to about this think it’s a scent Walgreens sprays in all its stores. My only hesitation with this theory is that if Walgreens was to provide a scent for its stores, it would pick something like “sea breeze” or “flowers” over “Walgreens.”

Whatever makes up the smell, to me it’s one of the most remarkable, consistent and unique scents I have ever smelled while purchasing allergy pills and Pringles.

I carry my weight well

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 48 seconds

"If you don't mind me asking . . ." said the guy who sits across from me at work. "But how much do you weigh?"

(For the split second after I heard the preface "If you don't mind me asking" my feeling was part fear, part excited anticipation. Anytime that statement precedes a question, the possibilities are endless. Have you ever shot someone in the face while hunting? How often would you say you are drunk at work?)

"If you forgive me for not answering, I'll forgive you for asking," I responded, turning my cheek and tilting my nose toward the ceiling.

Boo-yah! Take that! Asking me such a personal question. Shame on you! Shame on us all. I'm embarrassed for you, sir.

Actually I didn't really say that. It was a comeback Dear Abby advised a number of years ago to use when someone asks you a personal or embarrassing question. But I should have said it, not because I took offense to the question, but because it would have been quite humorous. As it turned out, I didn't mind providing an answer.

"205," I said.

"Really!?" he responded, with a bit more surprise in his voice than I had hoped. I questioned his reaction.

"Oh, it's just . . . you carry your weight well," he said.

This is something no one had ever said to me. I tried to figure out what this actually meant. I carry my weight well?

After some thought, I figured out that what he was really saying was that, by looking at me and my round face, he would have thought I weighed a lot more than 205. So rather than "you carry your weight well," he should have said "You know you're really not as obese as you look." Suddenly a euphemistic phrase turns into an emotionally-scarring insult.

But if I had to choose, carrying my weight well beats the alternative. I'd rather weigh 205 and appear to be 190 than to severely restrict my calories and exercise like mad to drop 15 pounds and actually weigh 190.

Because in the end, unless somebody asks (which apparently is not unheard of), no one really knows how much I weigh. If I look 190, I am 190.

Now bring on the chicken tenders.

More Assorted thoughts of no particular importance

Estimated reading time: 2 minute, 9 seconds

Haircuts and shampoo

It never fails.

I get a haircut, go about my day and then go to bed. The next morning I feel my hair and remember that I got haircut and am happy that I finally took the time to get the haircut after three shaggy weeks of nagging myself.

However, all recognition of the new haircut disappears in the shower. Ready to wash my hair, I squeeze out the same amount of shampoo as I had the day before. This is, of course, way too much shampoo as the length of my hair has been trimmed by 50 percent.

Ultimately I am left with an abundance of lather that I have no use for, some of which undoubtedly runs into my eyes.

Depressing

I bought a pocket-sized notebook to record assorted thoughts of no particular importance while I am away from a computer or larger portion of paper. However, the first thing I write in it is "Georgy Girl," which serves as a reminder that I'd really like to download the 1966 oldie-but-goodie by The Seekers. I then note how lame I am.

Dogs vs. Mailmen: Hatred Not A Myth

The fact that my dog barks at the mailman is not the issue. Even I have the desire – albeit suppressed – to nervously shout and alert others if a stranger steps onto my porch, whether they be from Jehovah's Witness, Manchester Democrats, LDS or U.S Mail.

It's more of a concern as to when she starts barking at the mailman. Before I get to that, it's important to know that we live in a normal neighborhood where people freely and regularly walk up and down the sidewalk at all times during daylight hours, usually pushing a stroller or being pulled by a dog. Hellion, perched atop her lookout on the arm of the couch where she can monitor the neighborhood from the living room window, allows these pedestrians to walk past in silence.

But Monday through Saturday, Hellion begins to bark at around 11 a.m. I look out the window and see nothing. I look harder, opening the shades as far as possible and pressing my face against the glass to the point of pain to see what is the object of her ire. The mailman, walking his route, is across the street . . . five houses down. He is the size of a Cocoa Pebble to us. And yet she knows it's him, barking and growling, almost out of pure hatred. I compliment her on her remarkable eyesight – clearly better than mine – then tell her to pipe it down.

Maybe it's the blue wool pants, blue cotton blend shirt, eagle-emblazoned hat or the canvas sack of mail. Whatever it is, Hellion doesn't like it.

Where's the Laundromat?

We were driving in downtown Hartford today and were stopped at a stoplight. My window was down, letting the 78-degree air permeate the car's interior. A man on the sidewalk carrying a sack of laundry shouts at me.

"Hey, do you know where there's a laundry-mat?!"

Unfamiliar with that part of town I said I didn't know.

But after thinking about for a second, I was like "Man, you need a plan before you're walking down the street with a bag of dirty clothes."

Human-Sized Bunnies and Potentially-Evil Clowns

Estimated reading time: 57 seconds

Saturday's front page of the Hartford Courant featured unrelated photos of two entities in which I find unequivocally frightening: A human-sized Easter Bunny and a clown.

The bunny was holding a screaming baby, a baby whose screaming is for the first time whole-heartedly justified. If I were being cradled and potentially strangled dead by a grinning, man-sized rabbit, I would too scream with the fear of God.

If I saw that bunny anywhere outside, say, a mall or a fair or a parade, I would respond in one of two ways. Either I would retreat as fast as my aerobic condition permitted, or I would savagely beat it to death, depending on my access to an object that would inflict an adequate amount of blunt force trauma, a tire iron perhaps.

This clown - oddly clutching a stuffed cat - is a somewhat less threatening figure although highly unnecessary and potentially evil and dangerous. Clowns I have learned to coexist with just as long as they don't make any sudden moves or aggressive gestures in my presence or direction. (On the topic, I'm still unsure what I think about those "street performers" who stand still until you put money in their cup before doing some sort of robotic movement or some otherwise non-human action. Double-unsure if all robotic movement corresponds with a hidden whistling sound coming from their mouth).

I was trying to think of what else that could have been pictured on the page more frightening than the giant bunny or the clown. I finally settled on Hobo Dentist.

Assorted thoughts of no particular importance

Estimated reading time: 1 minute, 22 seconds

Free-Throw Routines

Nearly every basketball player has some elaborate routine they go through each time they shoot free throws.

For one guy it's four quick bounces in front then one methodical bounce to the right. Shoot.

For another guy it's five slow bounces, clutch the ball staring at the rim, take a deep breath, assume shooting position, knees bent with emphasis. Shoot.

Another player doesn't bounce it at all but employs a dramatic spin before he shoots.

There are as many different free-throw routines as there are players.

I'm assuming these routines, followed with remarkable accuracy, are two parts rhythm – a way to keep things consistent at the line – and one superstition.

This all makes sense . . . for someone who shoots 86 percent.

But guys who are shooting in the 50s? Doing the same thing at the line every time? C'mon. Shake it up. That little thing you do where you rotate the ball so that your hand rests on the same part each time before you send the ball bouncing off the rim has gotten you a deplorable 46 percent clip from the free throw line.

On Vomiting

How come whenever people throw up in movies they always a) sit or kneel on the bathroom floor; b) stick their entire head or face into the toilet c) rest their arms on the dirtiest part of the toilet as they vomit?

Granted I don't throw up as often as people tend to in movies, but when I do I am always standing with my face at least a foot and a half away from anything I had just urinated into within the last 24 hours.

Game Idea

I want to come up with a board game for people to play when they call in sick to work but aren't really sick.

I'm not sure what to call it.

Vague Fortune Cookies

I got a fortune cookie the other day that said "Taking chances may bring success."

May bring success? May?

What kind of vague, on the fence fortune is that?

Why not just say "Taking chances may or may not bring success."

If you're are going to be vague about whether or not taking chances will bring success, at least be specific about something.

Drink four beers before going to work. Your relaxed demeanor may take the edge off a tense workplace and see that your efficiency and creativity skyrocket. Or you may unexpectedly get somewhat aggressive and confrontational over a co-worker's innocent question about punctuation. They smell alcohol on your breath and send you shamefully home in a cab, immediately putting you on unpaid administrative leave.

The Go-Tart

Estimated reading time: 50 seconds

Today's topic: Kellogg's new version of the Pop-Tart, the Go-Tart.

The two products are made of the same goodness: mysteriously consistent crust, high-fructose laden fruit-like filling and the party-themed candy-coated top.

The only difference between the old and the new is the shape.

The Pop-Tart insists on sticking with its bulky, 3x4-inch rectangular travesty, a shape that hit its peak in the early 80s. The Go-Tart, on the other hand, takes the shape of the sleeker, more hip, and possibly healthier, Butterfinger.

The enhanced, streamlined contour makes the Go-Tart much easier to handle, easier to "grab and go," a joy to consume while operating a car and way more convenient to stuff into a purse, backpack or your giant, fat, salivating child's mouth.

My only take on this: Thank God. Anything they could do to make those clunky, complicated and hard-to-grasp Pop-Tarts easier to eat with a 21^st century, on-the-go, not-enough-time-to-hassle-with-a-POP-TART-anymore lifestyle would be a much welcomed improvement.

Just for the kids out there, here is the Go-Tart ingredient list:

ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMIN MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1], RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2], FOLIC ACID), HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, SUGAR, VEGETABLE OIL (SOYBEAN, COTTONSEED AND HYDROGENATED COTTONSEED OIL† WITH TBHQ AND CITRIC ACID FOR FRESHNESS), CONTAINS TWO PERCENT OR LESS OF GLYCERIN, STRAWBERRY PUREE CONCENTRATE, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, CORNSTARCH, PEAR PUREE CONCENTRATE, SALT, APPLE PUREE CONCENTRATE, TAPIOCA STARCH, APPLE POWDER, LEAVENING (BAKING SODA, SODIUM ALUMINUM PHOSPHATE), NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVORS, DEXTROSE, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, CELLULOSE GEL, SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, MILLED CORN, CORN SYRUP, MALIC ACID, CARAMEL COLOR, PROPYLENE GLYCOL ALGINATE, DATEM, CELLULOSE GUM, WHEY PROTEIN ISOLATE, CORN SYRUP SOLIDS, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN AND/OR COTTONSEED OIL†, RED #40, VITAMIN A PALMITATE, CITRIC ACID, COLOR ADDED, NIACINAMIDE, REDUCED IRON, PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6), RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2), THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1), TRICALCIUM PHOSPHATE, TURMERIC COLOR, FOLIC ACID, BLUE #1, SOY LECITHIN.

Why I vacationed in Dallas

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 24 seconds

Last month I asked if I could leave work a little early because I had an early morning flight to catch.

"Oh yeah? Where are you going?"

"Dallas."

He literally laughed. "Seriously?"

I was serious. I can understand why he found my answer humorous. Although a fine city nonetheless, people don't really see Dallas as a vacation hotspot. It's like Boise or Kansas City or Cleveland.

I gave him the short answer. We have friends there. Here's the long answer:

In April, 2001, we lived in Corpus Christi, Texas and had zero friends living within a 1,000-mile radius. New town, new jobs. It was understandable. Within six months, things started to change.

First came along Tapril, a combination of two people named Tate and April. Erin taught with April at Calallen High School. Tate was her husband, a lawyer. They turned out to be our first couple friend.

From my experience, couple friends create an inherently volatile situation where two people who enjoy each other's company decide to sit their spouses across from one another at a restaurant for a round of uninspired and painfully clumsy small talk while they laugh and talk it up like nothing unusual. Luckily, we and Tapril were able to avoid these follies.

Next, the baron landscape of friendship that was my workplace started to transform. It seemed that every few weeks, a new face would arrive and we would become friends. As people arrived, the circle got bigger and within a year, we had at least seven good friends (I define a good friend as someone you could hang out with by yourself, without the social buffer of another person to take the pressure of the awkwardness of dull conversations and the incompatibility you share).

It was the first time I had that many good friends since my fourth birthday party and that was only because my mom invited everyone on our street and the next street down.

Because of the size of our city, nobody lived farther than 15 minutes drive from anyone else. And our similar work schedules made it not uncommon to push two, even three tables together for post-work drinks and/or unnecessary face-stuffing.

If you wanted someone to hang out with, one person and usually more were up for it. This meant brunch at John and Helen's, Chinese lunch buffet with Ryan and John, camping with Karson (or Tapril), beading with Helen and Kari (that was Erin, of course, not me), reality TV with John, hillbilly concerts with Tapril, coffee before work with Karson, volleyball, karaoke, the beach, pool(s), IHOP and so on.

I don’t know if any of us realized how amazingly odd this was at the time.

But people early in their careers, especially anyone who works in newspapers likely will have somewhat of a transient life. You find a newspaper, work there for a year or three than move on, usually to a bigger paper, a bigger city.

Slowly, the same forces that lured everyone to Corpus Christi sent them away. We all began to go our separate ways. Except something funny happened, something odd and unimaginable. For their own unrelated reasons, all of our friends ended up in the same city again. Except us. We moved as far away as you could without applying for a work visa. And then moved again, just as far in another direction.

And that's what brought us to Dallas/Fort Worth. Besides trips to Denver to see family, it was the first trip where experiencing something new – a new city, a new culture, a new landscape – was not on the list.

We came with no plans, no sights to see. We came to do what we used to do on a near daily basis. Talk, laugh, drink, gossip and laugh some more. And we flew a thousand miles to do it.

The highlight of our trip for me was a single moment. Nothing terribly planned. We were all gathered at Karson's and had opened some wine that Ryan brought. Somebody asked whoever to do a toast. It was more for the sappy sentimentality than a group of people taking themselves seriously.

Ryan stepped up and out of nowhere, with glass held high and a gaze toward the ceiling for comedic effect, he said, "There are wood ships, and good ships, and ships that sail the sea. But the best ships are friendships and may they always be."

A classic Irish toast and now a classic moment. It was hilarious, irreverent, sentimental and poignant all at once.

If Ryan had said the same words, holding the same wine, in front of the same people a few years earlier, I probably would have chuckled. But the meaning would have been lost. Because then, I lived 10 minutes away. And we would see each other tomorrow.

Rooting for nobodys

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes 4 seconds

When thinking about professional sports – say, the NBA – you think about sportsade endorsements, night club entourages, all-star games, Sportscenter highlights and theatrically overblown pre-game introductions.

But for all the famously overpaid, pampered, super celebristars, there are a couple guys on every team that sit at the end of the bench wearing their warm-ups throughout the game. They never get introduced before tipoff and rarely even play.

Although it may seem obvious and uninsightful, that guy, the guy who remains anonymous to fans and media plays on an NBA team.

That guy defied serious odds to make it to the most elite point possible.

At every level he played at – junior leagues, high school, college – he was likely the best player on the team, way ahead of the competition.

Right now he could walk in to any gym or crash any pickup game in the world and be the best player on the floor if not outright dominating. He’s a better player than 99.7 percent of people who have ever picked up a basketball.

Despite all of this, to most fans he “sucks.” He sits the bench. Not only is he not the star of his team, he hardly contributes anything. And if he does play, it is only because the score is so lopsided that his presence on the court will not have any effect on the game’s final outcome.

Among his peers, he is paid the least (albeit hundreds of thousands a year) and plays the least.

He has immense talent in some respects and zero talent in others. He suits up in front of thousands of people three times a week yet remains a nobody.

And while the salary probably makes the medicine go down, I can’t help but feel a little for these guys. They’ve made it to the pinnacle of basketball but on some levels are failures.

So the next time I go to an NBA game, I’m not going to cheer for the superstars. They have enough people who know them, love them and cheer them. After all, they’re in the NBA and they’re successful.

Mechanical bulls and me

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 34 seconds

Perhaps it was because my first question was "Do they have a mechanical bull?"

But for whatever reason, when it was confirmed by sight that a mechanical bull was indeed in operation at the Stockyards in Fort Worth, Texas, it was instantly assumed that I would ride it.

No one else in our group of five even hinted at or entertained the slightest thought of they themselves taking a wild albeit unnecessary spin on the mechanical beast. But everyone questioned not if I should ride, but would the ride come immediately or after having given the ¾-lbs. burrito I had just eaten time to hit the bottom of my stomach.

I, of course, wouldn't have it any other way, this being my first encounter with a mechanical bull. And given the amount of thought I have given to the subject of mechanical bulls – talking about them, writing about them, joking about them – to not ride when given the opportunity would be unspeakable.

To me, mechanical bulls are inherently funny. For one, the honky tonk atmosphere of silly, skinny white guys in clownish shirts, funny hats and cowboy boots is a good start. Getting these fellers to ride a bucking machine based on the actions of an erratic and aggressive animal to the point of covering the contraption with the hide of a real bull and you have created something legendarily humorous.

The idea of riding a real bull is absurd enough. Take a powerful, angry, volatile, unpredictable animal and tie an ungodly strap around its private parts, making it more angry, volatile and unpredictable. Then, for the dumb witted, yee-haw fun of it, get on its back and stay on for as long as possible before getting tossed off like you were made of hay and held together by a pair of discarded overalls. Too easy? Well, you can only hold on with one hand. Oh yeah, and to make some sense out of this whole rigamaroll, once you get bucked off the dangerous beast, clowns shall run out to serve as distraction as you pick up your goofy hat and scamper off over some bleachers.

But with a mechanical bull, an absurd and, face it, idiotic event is replicated as entertainment for people who want to ride the bull but don't want the risk of being a) stomped b) disemboweled or c) having their neck snapped as they tumble to an unforgiving dirt surface.

An amusement ride is born. But unlike a normal thrill ride, which undoubtedly buckles you to your seat using straps and belts with the goal of keeping you safely attached to the vessel, a mechanical bull hopes for just the opposite. Its goal is to get you to fall off, and the more violently spectacular you are tossed aside, the better.

For the life of me I can't figure out why the idea of this activity is attractive to people. It is so avoidable, so bizarre, so funny.

To me, a mechanical bull is part absurd, part surreal, part volatile, wholly unnecessary and totally random. Which is almost exactly how I would describe my sense of humor.

And maybe that's the connection I feel with mechanical bulls. Perhaps the mechanical bull is the embodiment of my personality, representing a trait of mine that I value the most.

Perhaps that's why my friends didn't question if I would ride. It all seemed so natural.

So yes I rode. I rode because I would never forgive myself otherwise. Five dollars per ride? I had no choice, you see? Sign a release saying I can't sue regardless of how mangled I become after getting flipped off a mechanical animal? Saying no would be denying the essence of my being.

OK maybe that pushed it too far. But of course I rode.

My ride wasn't as spectacular as how I had planned it in my mind. I didn't cartwheel off the bull in a haphazardly fantastic style. I didn't lie in the mangled, crumpled heap on the ground as I had hoped.

But at least I rode. And at the same time, was able to cross a lifelong goal off my list.

And for the record, moving up on that list of goals were:

1. Learning to yodel
2. Developing a jaw-dropping tap dance routine to bust out at parties and small gatherings.