Only Hers...

I went to get coffee with I.S. and B.M. today. I.S. was telling us about this boss he had who was 32 but still had a thing for college age girls. B.M. laughed and said, "Don't we all." It was a total guy moment. Men trying to put on airs with other men to throw their testosterone around. So, I piped up and said that I have a thing for college ladies, especially those in grad school at the University of Missouri. B.M. just rolled his eyes and said, "yeah, yeah." For those of you that don't know it my wife is a grad student at the University of Missouri.

I don't need to put on airs, I love my wife. I don't want other women. I guess my macho level just flat-lined, but I don't care. Even if I don't mean it, it is a betrayal to say it. I want her to know I am faithful, and I want everyone else to know it too. I love being only hers.

Cell Phones Are For Kids

I really hate call waiting on my cell phone. I call someone and end up getting their voice mail. While I am leaving an obnoxious message about getting their voice mail, they end up calling me back. So, now I have to hang up with the voice mail and answer the other line, but the button to accomplish this task is the same button in both instances. So, I hit the hang up/answer button and end up hanging up both calls! Then we go into the annoying “User is Busy” loop as I try to call the person back and they try to call me back at the same time.

Today I think I even managed to hang up on myself. I am pretty sure that both calls were still active, but I disconnected from myself. A little voice came on the line telling me that the person at my own phone number was unavailable due to the fact that he hung up on himself, and that I should wait a while to try again…preferably when I learn to actually use the cell phone properly. Needless to say that I was not boasting a lot of self-confidence after this message. I would say that the message in and of itself was degrading enough without the added “MORON” yelled at the end of it.

There Are Signs Everywhere

I came into work today and was overcome by the sense of something different. I think the human mind is fascinating in that respect. We get so complacent in our routines that we fail to notice repeated things on a daily basis, but as soon as one of those things is taken away our mind is a whirlwind of thought. Something was different and although I couldn’t say with exact certainty what it was, I knew something had changed. The other amazing thing is that it totally messed me up. I couldn’t function. Even now after I have finally figured out what it was I am still feeling the affects fading all too slowly.

Across the parking lot from us is a church. The church had signs situated along certain parking spaces that said, “These Spots Reserved on Sunday for Our Less Mobile Senior Members.” I park in front of these signs everyday, but today they are gone. True, the church is actually abandoned, having moved their congregation to another location, but still. The least they could have done was consult me so that I could have had time to prepare my mind and thus bypass the affects caused by having my world suddenly turned upside-down.

I Smell Like Pancakes

I used to tell people that I smelled like certain foods. It would go something like, “I smell like tacos today” or “I smell like pizza tonight.” I didn’t mean that I ACTUALLY had some odor of food that was pervading from my body. It wasn’t even some foodinal aroma attached to my clothes. It was my way of telling them what I felt like eating. When faced with indecision, sometimes I could smell things on the wind and it would inspire me. So, I guess you could say that “I smell like pancakes for breakfast” was just a shortened form of “I smell pancakes and that sounds good for breakfast.” I don’t know what made me think to write that today. I think it was when a colleague asked me what I felt like for lunch and I thought about saying, “I smell like Mexican food today.”

If I had Jedi Powers...

The topic of today’s entry is what would you do with Jedi powers? I mean we see the Jedi in the movies using their powers at moments of great need, but what do they do with them on a daily basis. So, I thought about what I could do with my powers in my day-to-day life.

I could use the force to bring things to me so I don’t have to get up, like getting the remote control from across the room when I leave it over there. I could use it to allow me to drink my water or eat my snacks without having to stop typing at my computer. I could use it to type at my computer, so I could just sit and drink my water or eat my snacks. I could sit in the park and produce sudden gusts of “wind” to throw the birds off when they are flying. I could move cars out of the way when I get stuck in traffic in the morning.

I could use Jedi mind tricks to convince my boss to give me a promotion. I could use them at Thanksgiving to convince my brother that he doesn’t really want the last piece of pumpkin pie. I could use them on salespeople to get them to stop feeding me crap when I want to buy something. I could use them to convince my wife that she really doesn’t want to buy another purse after all.

I could use the power of Empathy to finally know what my wife is really thinking and feeling. I could use it to understand what people are going through when something terrible happens, so I know best how to comfort them.

I could use Force Stealth to render myself invisible, and well…maybe we shouldn’t delve too deeply into what I could do if I was invisible. Maybe you should just use your imagination.

So what would you do?

The Disappearing Ear

B.M. has a coffee mug with the famous self-portrait of Van Gogh on it. As the mug gets hot Van Gogh’s ear disappears. I tried to explain to him the disparity with the idea since Van Gogh painted his portrait from the side with his good ear. So, you would never see the bad ear actually disappearing as the mug suggests because it is never visible to begin with.

The bottom of the mug is just as funny, and it is even funnier that B.M. never thought to look on the bottom of it. On the bottom of the mug it says “The Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild…For best results use other side.”

Toes and Chicken Pot Pies

Last night I dreamed I was in China with my boss. We were at a dinner party and for some reason he was giving people a scientific explanation about my toes sticking through the ends of my socks. I am not quite sure what this means exactly. I have heard that dreams hold meanings to our unconscious minds. I wonder if it means that I shouldn’t eat chicken pot pies for dinner anymore. Maybe it means I need to cut my toenails. Or perhaps it means something more. Maybe it is the secret of life revealed to me in a dream and I have only to figure it out to unlock its secrets and save humanity as we know it! Probably not. I am going with the chicken pot pie theory.

Ponkapog Papers

Last night I was reading the “Ponkapog Papers” by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. The section I am reading at the moment is called “Leaves on a Notebook,” and could only be what I would characterize as an early blog. It is random comments and musings on life written presumably on scraps of paper as Mr. Aldrich traveled through his every day existence. I am fascinated by this literay work because of its parallelism with my own mind or at least how I am striving to wire my own mind…catching everything, experiencing life at every turn, and writing it down in random spurts that only make sense to me.

Read the "Ponkapog Papers" on-line.

JAVA in German

I wonder if there are programming languages written in other languages, like JAVA in German. You know where the “for loops” would be “fuer loops” instead. I think it would be awfully conceited of us to make everyone learn English in order to be able to use and understand certain programming languages. On the flip side it would make for a more standard program. There would be no compatibility issues or conversions needed between different programs. On the flip side of that it might be no different than going between different programming languages like JAVA to C++. I guess the world may never know how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop. Or at least I won’t because I have no ambition to pursue this idea further than here in this blog.

George in Any Language

I found out today that B.M.'s middle name is “Jurgis” [Pronounced Yur-gis]. I immediately found this fascinating and asked him if it meant “George.” He told me that it did in fact mean “George” in Lithuanian, and was amazed that I knew this. I told him that it sounded like the Greek form of “George” which is “Georgios” [Pronounced Yee-or-gos]. This happens to be my brother-in-law’s name, so I am intimately familiar with its pronunciation.

Margarita

Did you know that "margarita" is Spanish for "Daisy"? When you think about it it makes perfect sense. A margarita has a yellow-green center of liquid framed by a white circle of salt. I imagine that if you looked straight down at it that it would look just like a daisy.

Pocket Hair Live in Concert!

I have an addition to the Pocket Hair post. I was discussing the reality of starting a band with B.M. and I.S., and I realized that I would need musicians, singers, and song writers first. Basically I have none of the components to start a band at the moment except for the name. I started to imagine a movie script where a so-called band gets touted as the next big thing. They do all sorts of promotional stunts with them, like photo shoots, magazine spreads, picture signings, and talk shows, but the band never actually releases any music. The phenomenon would be purely spread by word of mouth and accentuated by the fact that everybody wants to be in the “KNOW” crowd. After a little while the band could break up, citing irreconcilable differences. They could then start the circus over again several years later with a reunion tour or something.

The Bald Monks

I noticed last night that my kneecaps are completely bald. The hair runs down my thigh, abruptly stops at my kneecap, and then picks up again on the other side. I assume that can be attributed to my pants rubbing on that same spot day after day, but it just struck me as odd. I would say it was more how the scene looked like two monks kneeling at the end of my legs with their heads bowed in prayer.

Pocket Hair?

Yesterday I was sitting at my desk and I noticed that my pocket had hair growing out of it. Well, it wasn’t real hair, but it looked like hair nonetheless. It was actually the frayed edges of the fabric on the inside of the pocket starting to stick up out of the pocket. It was so intriguing that I shared the notion with B.M. He was so intrigued that he insisted that I let him take a picture of it. This sparked off a whole conversation at lunch, and I ended up wondering if anyone else had seen the same phenomenon and thought it looked like pocket hair. I further wondered if anyone had a website about it. So, for fun I looked up http://www.pockethair.com/. Amazingly enough it wasn’t taken yet. I started to ponder the possibilities. That would be a great name for a blog spot. It could contain my random thoughts about nothing important. I.S. suggested that I could start a band called Pocket Hair, and that could be our official website. Can you imagine what an untapped goldmine that is?

So, here I am setting up the above mentioned blog spot. And to whatever weary traveler that might happen to come across this blog, I bid you welcome. I consider it a success if it does nothing more than entertain you for a few minutes.