July 2011
2 posts
White Stripes on Conan →
Oldie but goodie.
June 2011
1 post
“…every Saturday at the market there’s a musician there that plays...”
– Overheard at Tamarack Brewpub, a few nights ago
May 2011
1 post
April 2011
6 posts
WatchGus’s first sustained laugh. A six year old in the row ahead of us pretended to punch himself and fall for ten minutes, and Gus laughed most of the time. I missed the best bits, but this is at least a taste.
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“I’ve seen a blind guy bite a police horse! A puppy committed suicide after...”
– Tracy Jordan, 30 Rock Season 4 (via wikiquote)
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March 2011
8 posts
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Lullabyes
When I’m in charge of Gus I usually end up putting him in an Ergo carrier to fall asleep. He hates the first few minutes of it, but I can always seem to calm him down and get him to fall asleep by humming or singing different songs (unless he’s in beast mode, flailing his arms and kicking his legs with no consolation).
So far, this is the short list of songs Gus can fall asleep to:
...
"Inside Job"
Most of the time I am able to dismiss the fucked-upped-ness of the global political landscape with a few minutes of that warm-fuzzy, hard-to-breath, helpless-like-you’re-in-the-middle-of-Montana-or-Iowa-and-cannot-do-anything-to-change-the-bigger-picture feeling. I felt politically aware in 2008, when it felt like America was going to right its metaphorical ship and elect a President and...
3 tags
I don't have a work to read this anymore, so here...
I have been confused on the direction of my life for a few years now. It’s the luxury of not-needyness, and I will try to complain as little as possible. In many ways, I have figured out the major arc of my life—I am married, we have a son, there are multiple animals that sleep where we sleep, we own a house that we do things to and for the last six weeks I don’t hate what I do...
January 2011
1 post
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This is that time I feel confident work isn't...
Hey hey, positive change time!
Three weeks ago today I had a son, baby boy August Leo. Gusalufagus. He gave us a scare on his way out, but now that he’s here we’re going gangbusters (no idea what the fuck that means…good, i hope?).
He’s made quite the impression on us, as a first child is prone to do. But he’s actually already helped push me to acting on something...
December 2010
1 post
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November 2010
2 posts
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This is that time I feel confident work isn't...
I’ve tossed this job aside about 3 times a day for the last 4 years. I have given up on finding a way to make things work an average of 15 times a week; 60 times a month; over 700 times a year. That’s twice a day, everyday of my life for 4 years, over two thousand times that I’ve given up on myself as a tenable employee. That’s often.
In that time, I’ve applied for exactly, precisely ZERO other...
September 2009
4 posts
"Your status update is too long. The maximum...
Facebook says I can’t post this as a “status update.” My status, at the time, was more complicated that 420 characters could ever describe:
f I die of Swine Flu, I want my gravestone to read “I survived swine flu.” If I die of something else, it can still read that, as long as there’s some kind of notation pointing out the original ironic intent of the epitaph;...
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Clarification
I suppose this is an open letter to my future therapy sessions, the one where we cover “self importance” and “self-reference” and the death of “self esteem,” but I need to take a second to type clearly and speak in a non-shaded voice:
Dear Reader:
Why are you here? You don’t need a reason. If it feels right, just go with it. On the off chance that...
So pissed, diary....sad mood
A day after the 3-day book writing contest thing ends, I find out that it’s actually a thing, all official and shit. And I want to do it. And it sounds incredibly easy….even though writing past 2-1/2 paragraphs has been impossible for the last few years. YEARS>3 days.
August 2009
3 posts
1 tag
Why does this subject have an auto-fill option?
What was the deal with the last post? Who the fuck does that guy think he is, a culturally referenceable figure?
Too much ambiguity. Fuck this, we’re better off at our safe, cozy homes; this doesn’t make any fucking sense, with the absences and dog pictures and random honesties.
If I wrote about things that happened in my...
1. Plane crashes are LOUD. I try to take a quiet morning walk with my dogs and the whole thing turns into a bloodier, less conceited version of Lost.
2. How many times in a day can you be asked by strangers to field dress a wound? Eleven. From now on, I carry my first aid kit in a black backpack. The white pack with the Red Cross is practically an invitation for anyone with an open head wound or...
July 2009
2 posts
Pop Quiz
Damn me for not reading David Foster Wallace sooner. I don’t want to say I was hooked from the first sentence, because my mind is a Bell Chart….the second sentence gave me the 95% certainty I was looking for. I haven’t written dickhole (aside from just there, a few seconds ago (as if I were meaning the actual word “dickhole” and not a colloquialism for...
June 2009
1 post
Counting
July, August, September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May, June, Nearly July.
I, for one, am glad to have been rid of that Joe Thiele for an entire year. No, tumblr, Thiele is spelled that way.
July 2008
2 posts
Nic Cage--Hit Machine
Nicholas Cage’s new movie looks like it has a beginning, middle and an end. That’s the nicest thing I can say after seeing the trailer for “Bangkok Dangerous.”
I think an alternative title to be considered should be “Movie Bad.” Har har jokez.
Two fucking months...
Let’s say I was honoring the internets by avoiding them when it has been 85 degrees and sunny outside.
May 2008
1 post
Still better than the movies
As a kid my comedic-timing was influenced by the Garfield cartoon strip almost exclusively. I would check out every collection from my public library, repeatedly, not understanding why after completing the eight volume (for example), the ninth had yet to be released. And eight months later why only the ninth had been released without a tenth companion. So I read “Garfield Minus...
April 2008
3 posts
I'm better at writing fake jokes than real ones.
From the same story as below; like the excerpts in the New Yorker, only maybe a lot closer to a Reader’s Digest feature. So last week I was on this train, traveling across country—something I do a lot, because I love to punish my behind. Can you say tingling? Anyway, my feet were falling asleep, so I stand up and start hopping around from leg to leg, trying to get the blood flowing again....
Moviez
I think I could make a better “Hitman” than the people who made “Hitman.” As I just wrote that, the stupid-guy voice in my head said, “yours would be a HIT, man.” As I just wrote THAT, I renamed the stupid-guy voice “Belush.” I need the Belush to quiet the fuck down.
March 2008
8 posts
I am a predictor. I am a hypothesizer.
One of the stories I wrote a few years ago—not the same one condemned a few weeks ago—popped up in some papers I was looking through today. It was a very rough draft, one that I had noted and highlighted and scrutinized for 10+ drafts before. The very first thing of the story, however, had nearly survived each of those edited versions in the same condition it had started in. So, more...
“What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t...”
– DMX in an XXLmag.com interview, via kottke.org
There's a CD out there that contains every single...
Salt is to pepper as cable television is to rocking music collections meant to remind you of a stranger time. There’s commercials for “BUZZCUTS,” and I think that’s all that’s on the album cover. And from that, it’s supposedly implied that it’s going to contain smash hit machines like Papa Roach, Puddle of Mudd and any other band that seemed to matter...
I think I'm ready to start admitting to a little...
So there’s this show, Lost, that I managed to avoid for the better part of three years. Sure, I saw the initial advertisements for it, and thought, “wow, that is dumb,” and said it out loud so I could assure myself I was being serious. I remember reading how insanely popular it became it its first season, but I tried my best to ignore it. I would read on the internets about...
Proof procrastination works
Instead of claiming redemption in my Apple computer patardedness (buying a MacBook Pro 8 days before the NEW MacBook Pros were introduced), I waited 3 days too long and found that I was no longer eligible to get the $300 back—the discount proving how quickly and severely my computer’s retail value has dropped in the 2-1/2 weeks I’ve owned it.
Commercial love
There’s a commercial playing now with a poppy version of “With a little help from my friends,” which for some reason really stands out to me. And I looked into it, and it’s part of the “Wonder Years” theme song, except the version is VERY different. And it was written by The Beatles (or something—honestly, when Wikipedia research is too much effort, what...
February 2008
13 posts
In regards to a story I have been trying to forget...
Tonight, I realized I cannot name the main character—or his counterpart—of my first major “serious” fictional story. That makes me a bit sad, because I know at the time of writing it that I dwelled upon the name for awhile. I drew a picture of the opening dialogue’s setting, as I’ve always pictured it in my mind. And it’s always in sepia tones that I...
I think I just stumbled upon some type of...
Browsing through television channels tonight, “Transporter 2” was playing on FX. I am glad to have watched for two minutes: assumptions were proved wrong. When it came time for the good guy—after avoiding 17 swords and 12 axes, putting all of these ineffective weapon-yielders into a dumpster (LITERALLY)—to say to the movie audience, “Looks like I just took out some...