Year: 2004

I recently bought a new mobile phone, which will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me. “One friend suggested I put that message on a t-shirt.” The new one has a built-in camera, which means that, because I am too lazy to use the good-quality digital camera that I quite often have with me, I will be able to take crappy pictures and share them with the world.

You might be thinking the photo above is a commentary on urbanization, the depersonalization of modern society or creeping commercialism. In fact, the only reason I took this picture is because the Hardee’s sign reads:

NEW LOAD
BISCUIT &
GARY BOWL

I guess I just don’t have what it takes. Thousands of bloggers, including many linked over there on the left, manage to produce amusing, informative, interesting and worthwhile writing while balancing full-time jobs, parenthood, the demands of quotidian existence and probably volunteering for Doctors Without Borders, for all I know. I get a 9-to-5 job and the best I can do is take a month to come up with something about microwave popcorn. What’s worse is that when I do finally post again, my post is about how lame I am for not posting. How lame is that? The only thing worse would be if I wrote about spam.

I’m still getting about 150 a day, which gives me a chance to see the themes developing. It’s nice to see that it’s not all about penile enhancement anymore. Mortgages are always popular, of course, but yesterday the theme seemed to be, “Euphemisms for ‘Reduce.’ I got emails encouraging me to butcher, chop, knock and scalp my mortgage payment. When I find a broker who can help me eviscerate my payment, we’ll talk. “I’m waiting for them to get confused and send me one that says, “Women Worship Low Payments or “Drill Your Girlfriends Mortgage All Night!”

Today’s theme seems to be “Long Lost Friends” Sebastian wrote to say, “We used to talk” and Mcclain wonders if I “remeber way back when? Granted, I am getting old and my memory is not what it used to be. But I think I would remember if I had ever made friends with Parson Straightaway and Eldridge Landscape.

Well, there you go. Nearly a month of silence, then I give you a lame compendium of spam subject lines. The least I can do is finally release this one, which I’ve been holding in reserve for months:

Boy in front, sheriff around and mirror behind are what made America great!

1. Microwave popcorn is never as good as you think it will be.

2. No matter how many times you learn this lesson, you are still capable of deceiving yourself.

3. You will cook it for too long, because you are a greedy bastard and want every last kernel.

4. You will burn it.

5. You will eat it anyway. All of it. Even the burned bits. You will upend the bag over your mouth and get popcorn grit all over your clothes.

6. When you are done, you will feel:
a. kind of sick
b. very thirsty
c. greasy

7. You’ll need to wash your hands like Lady Macbeth to get that “butter” off.

8. You will be forced to endure the smell in your office for the rest of the day.

9. Despite the fact that your co-workers know all of the above to be true, the smell will entice them to make their own, starting a chain reaction that could conceivably go on all afternoon.

10. Microwave popcorn should be prohibited in offices, like smoking. There should be microwave ovens outside the front door for people who are addicted.

Last Friday on my way to work, a large American station wagon of indeterminate make and vintage “it may actually have had fake wood panels on the side” attempted to change lanes, notwithstanding the presence of a significant impediment to this particular endeavor, i.e., me. I hit my brakes and my horn, and gave the driver the raised-palm, “What the hell were you thinking?” gesture, which I like to think is more witheringly opprobrious than the traditional bird flip. Then I pretty much stopped thinking about the whole thing, as it wasn’t exactly an uncommon commuting experience.

A few moments later, a white, full-sized American pickup truck passed me and pulled right up to the bumper of the station wagon, blowing his horn. The wagon changed lanes, and the pickup driver passed him, and then intentionally cut him off, missing the wagon’s front bumper by inches. I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. Then it occurred to me: The pickup truck driver was avenging me.

Perhaps he thought I was a damsel in distress, because at the time, Plooblewagon being in the shop, I was driving a rented Toyota Matrix, which anyone can see is not nearly as macho as a Mazda Protégé5. Not nearly as macho. Anyway, just for the record, I don’t want to be avenged. I considered the whole thing settled by my “you’re a moron grimace. Road rage is bad enough without forming alliances, coalitions and mutual defense pacts.

Some friend of mine, possibly Bryon, once proposed a course of action for dealing with fellow motorists too stupid to share the public roadway. Everybody would be issued with a dart gun, with a dart marked “IDIOT” “I think the idea was you get one dart a year, so you’d want to be selective in its use.” When you see somebody doing something incredibly stupid, you shoot a dart at his car, which would stick with an indelible adhesive. Once you accumulate five darts stuck to your car, you lose your license.

It really doesn’t take much these days to make me feel old and out of touch. Last night I arrived in Kansas City, MO for a seminar. After a day spent trying to get into Atlanta and then trying to get out of Atlanta, I arrived late and was forced to seek sustenance at the crappy sports bar in my hotel, where, despite the total lack of ambience, I got a highly serviceable burger and a decent local microbrew for $6.42, which is roughly 20 percent of what The Worst $34 Room-Service Meal in History cost me in Reykjavík. While I was enjoying the Cheapest Hotel Restaurant Meal in History “oh, and I was”, the woman sitting next to me at the bar struck up a conversation. “It’s a very friendly town.” Turns out she’s here with her 18-year old son, who is competing with thousands of others in a Magic: The Gathering tournament. First prize is 25 large. I was truly impressed, not the least because I have almost no idea what Magic: The Gathering is. I know it’s some kind of fantasy roleplaying game that requires sitting around late at night doing things with cards. I certainly have nothing against that. I just don’t know what it is. I thought I was pretty up on what the kids these days are doing, what with the fact that I watch MTV and all. Apparently this is yet another phenomenon, much like that thing a few years ago when college kids were running around in sewer drains doing something or other and occasionally dying, of which I was not informed. I can tell you this in an authoritative manner about the afficionados of this pursuit: they are running around my hotel lobby wearing ball caps and backpacks and acting squirrely and engaging me in smart-alecky conversation in a way that shows they do not accord me the proper respect due my age and station. Kids these days. Then again, I am half in the bag and not wearing socks.

I’ve just noticed that the PA in the lobby is playing a Muzak version of “I Can’t Help Falling in Love With You.” This is clearly an attempt to drive the gamer kids to bed. Or me. Either way, it’s working.

As for Kansas City “”The City of Fountains””, you’ve heard the phrase, “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes”? Surely it was coined here. In the space of an hour today we went from clear skies to lowering skies to glowering skies to the hardest downpour I’ve seen in years to clear skies again. At the end of the seminar I had every intention of walking out to find a barbecue restaurant recommended to me by the airport shuttle driver, but after this afternoon’s display, I was afraid to set foot outside. Luckily, downtown KC has one of those modern utopian skywalk systems which allows you to traverse from hotel lobby to sterile, bullshit mall to hotel lobby “the mall is owned by Hallmark, for heaven’s sake” without ever setting foot on the pavement or mixing with the hoi polloi. I had to venture the last half-mile actually out of doors, but soon found myself at the BBQ joint in question. It turned out to be a big, slick yuppie hellhole, with a waiting list. When I went into the men’s room and heard the theme from “Sex and the City”, I quickly turned on my heel and left.

This turned out to be a good thing, because I then went to the other restaurant suggested by the shuttle driver, the Hereford House, the dumpiness of the outside of which cannot begin to hint at the wonders to be found within. There I had what is basically my perfect meal: a martini to start, a tossed salad with blue cheese, a medium-rare steak with herb-garlic butter and mashed potatoes, and a Talisker single malt scotch to finish. The meal reaffirmed my conviction that I really was meant to be an advertising exec in New York. In the ’50s.

One of the nicest things about having a job is not having to interview anymore. I chronicled my annoyances with the job search process pretty extensively while I was in it, and I’m very happy to be out of it. I’m also happy that my current employers didn’t ask me any of the stupid b.s. questions that I had heard from so many other HR types, including my all-time favorite, “What would you say is your biggest fault?, which as I believe I pointed out at the time may have cost me two jobs in a month.

I’m thinking about all of this because Jean has a phone interview this afternoon and asked me to throw some questions at her last night. It took quite a while before I could think of any but the annoying ones, and then I started thinking of amusing variations. Well, amusing to me anyway. Not necessarily to someone who was trying to prepare for an interview.

Where do you see yourself in the next five minutes?

What would you say is your biggest arm?

Think back to a recent conflict with a colleague and describe how you resolved it — using only facial expressions.

Would you describe yourself as a person?

Do you consider yourself a self-starter? Would you be willing to help start others?

What did I mean by that last question?

We want to get to know you as a person, not just as an employee. What are you like in the sack?

What makes you so goddamn special?