I may be some time...

I think that my ass has become as numb and lifeless as the stool at the counter of my local café that I’m sitting on. I’m not sure though; let me check.

Yep, not moving.

All sense of touch and potential gropings has been squeezed out of my backside, bled out through a brilliant combination of not-moving and lack of hydration. Well, not lack of hydration so much as only ingesting arrhythmia-inducing amounts of caffeine instead of actual water. Water, while free, does not justify my sitting in a café for 5 hours at a time to the all-seeing barista; that is coffee’s job.

My $1.85 plus repeated fifty-cent refills pays my rent here, not 8oz. glasses of water available free of charge next to the sugar packets and napkins over my right shoulder. I could drink both at the same time but I have a limit to the amount of things I will stack in front of me in a public place and my laptop, coffee and cel phone fill that quota. No water for me then.

So here I sit; jittery and bled of fluid via my coffee enema, numb legs braided around my bar stool like a poorly thought-out friendship bracelet.

I wonder if I can flag someone down –solicit some help in getting off of my perch with a minimum of embarrassment—before I topple ass-over-tea-kettle off of here with a lack of perambulation that would make a paraplegic blush?

Visions of skyward facing feet tumbling leftward in a slow-motion arc, shoes shooting of in different directions as I crash to the ground, are filling my head.

“Shiftless layabout flattens 12 toddlers and a Dominican friar –news at eleven!”

I may be overreacting. I could just reach down and untangle my legs from this not-so-overly-complex single-poled bar stool I’m sitting, couldn’t I? Maybe. That’s the problem when I drink too much coffee: I come up with Rube Goldberg-esque solutions to, say, reaching for a pencil that is two inches out of my reach.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

A Dead Horse: New Ways to Beat It... Wait... Never Mind...

Tiger Woods Funny as Balls(adj.) Mad-Libs

Good ______(noun) and thank you for _______(progressive verb) me. Many of you in this room are my ______(noun,plural). Many of you in this room know me. Many of you have _______(verb, past-tense) for me or you've worked with me or you've supported me.

Now every one of you has good reason to be ______(adjective) of me. I want to say to each of you, simply and directly, I am deeply _______(adjective) for my _________(adj.) and _______(adj.) behavior I _______(verb, past-tense) in.

I know people want to find out how I could be so _______(adj.) and so ________(adj.). People want to know how I could have done these things to my _______(noun), ________(proper noun), and to my ________(noun). And while I have always _________(verb, past-tense) to be a _______(adj.) person, there are some things I want to _______(verb).

I have a lot to _____(verb) for, but there is one ______(noun) I really want to ______(verb). Some ______(pl.noun) have speculated that ______(proper noun#1) somehow hurt or ______(verb, past tense) me on Thanksgiving night. It ______(verb) me that people would ________(verb) a story like that. ______(proper noun#1) never ______(verb) me that ______(noun) or any other ______(noun). There has never been an episode of _______(noun) in our ________(noun), ever. _______(proper noun#1) has shown enormous ______(noun) and ______(noun) throughout this _______(noun). _______(proper noun#1) deserves praise, not ______(noun).

Parents used to point to me as a ______(noun) for their _______(noun, pl.). I owe all those ______(noun, pl.) a ______(adj.) apology. I want to say to them that I am truly _______(adj.).

Some _______(noun, pl.) have made up _______(noun, pl.) that never happened. They said I used ________(noun, pl.). This is completely and utterly ________(adj.). Some have _______(verb, past-tense) things about my ________(noun). Despite the _______(noun) I have done, I still believe it is right to _______(verb) my family from the public ________(noun). They did not do these things; I did.

I recognize I have brought this on myself, and I know above all I am the one who needs to _______(verb). I owe it to my _______(noun) to become a better _______(noun). I owe it to those _______(superlative adj.) to me to become a better _______(noun). That's where my focus will be.

I have a lot of ______(noun) to do, and I intend to ______(verb) myself to doing it. Part of following this ______(noun) for me is ________(philosophy/religion), which my ______(noun) taught me at a young age. People probably don't realize it, but I was _______(verb, past-tense) a __________(philosophical/religious follower), and I actively ________(verb, past-tense) my faith from childhood until I _______(verb, past-tense) away from it in recent years. _________(philosophy/religion) teaches that a _______(verb,progressive) for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and _______(adj.) search for ________(noun). It teaches me to stop _______(verb, progressive) every _______(noun) and to learn ______(noun). Obviously, I lost track of what I was taught.

As I move forward, I will continue to receive ______(noun) because I've ______(verb, past-tense) that's how people really do ______(verb). Starting tomorrow, I will leave for more ______(noun) and more ______(noun). I would like to thank my friends at _______(proper noun) and the _______(noun, pl.) in the field this week for understanding why I'm making these _______(noun, pl.) today.

That also means relying on ______(noun, pl.) for help. I've learned to seek _______(noun) from my peers in therapy, and I hope someday to return that _______(noun) to others who are seeking ________(noun). I do plan to return to _______(sport) one day, I just don't know when that day will be.

Finally, there are many _______(noun, pl.) in this room, and there are many _______(noun, pl.) at _______(noun) who believed in me. Today, I want to ask for your _________(noun). I ask you to find room in your _______(noun) to one day believe in _______(noun) again.

______(verb) you.

Demetri Martin is a Criminal Genius; OR 'How Palindromes Ruined My Day'

Demetri Martin, for the uninitiated, is a standup comedian who features a wide array of props in his sets. He points out simple figures of speech that can be made hilarious with one small change, one misplaced vowel or by simply adding 'ladies' to the end of any sentence. Go ahead and try that last one out, I'll wait. See? Didn't adding that last little bit just make whatever you were saying infinitely creepier? No? Did you say 'ladies' like you were Mel 'The Velvet Fog' Torme? Go ahead, try it again...

'Mmmm, noodle soup... ladi-i-ies.'

But I digress --Demetri is a brilliant guy who has no problems shooting from the hip with surgical precision, lacing the air around a metaphor or homonym with verbal buckshot. I, on the other hand, get thrown out of places when shooting from the hip for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I take things too literally and firearms make people nervous.

"Shoot Me a Letter" - You're doing it wrong...

Despite my verbal handicaps and an inability to see beyond the most ham-handed of metaphors, at times I still fancy myself something of a wordsmith --not unlike Taco Bell fancies themselves a center for epicurean fantasy, I imagine. That there is what we in the industry call 'self deprecation'; I looked it up.

Now recently I have begun to have a tad more energy. This could be for a number of reasons, but the most likely culprit is the bionic looking C-PAP machine that now adorns my bedstand. For the uninitiated, C-PAP stands for... something about breathing and forcing air into my lungs. Wait, hold on --Continuous Positive Airway Pressure--that's it! Anyways, the crux of the situation is that I have, according to my Cardio-pulminologist Dr. O'Connor, 'severe obstructive Sleep Apnea'. Short version: I stop breathing a lot when I sleep. A lot, a lot. They've done studies --with doctors and scientists and everything-- and my level of Apnea registers an 892 on the 'Reggie White Chance of Dying in Your Sleep Scale of Abstract Numbers'.

"What, too soon?"

The long and the short of it is that of 330 minutes of measured sleep I stopped breathing over 450 times for an average of 20.5 seconds. Do the math on that --I'll wait. Did your TI-83 catch on fire? Mine crunched numbers for 30 seconds and then spit out an x/y axis graph that looked like an '82 Cutlass --I may have done something wrong, but the end result is the same: my apnea does not make for good math. Nor, apparently, does it make for restful sleep. Back to Dr. O'Connor, who's deadpan delivery borders on British, and the results of my sleep test: I spend 2/3 of my total 'sleep' volume in stage II sleep and never truly reach stage IV slow-wave/REM sleep. This means that I don't dream, I don't heal properly, and, most importantly, my brain never rests. Apparently my body hasn't gotten the amount of sleep that a normal person needs since the Carter administration.

"Though I am sad that I apparently sleep-walked through the era of this gem..."

But no more!! Now I have my trusty C-PAP machine propping my airways open with humidified air at the small price of looking like some half-naked fireman while I sleep --the footie pajamas only increase the 'Road Warrior meets Children of the Corn aspect of it'. With my ability to finally get to stage IV sleep came two things:
1) I now not only dream, I dream about really weird shit. Apparently my brain is cramming together all of the dreams that I was supposed to be having with all of my new dreams into some decade-spanning VH1 mashup of nonsense imagery. With clowns. It's f#$%*d up.
2) I have a ridiculous amount of clarity and energy now, which brings us back to my original point: Demtri Martin and his comedic ability. Was that segue jarring enough? I think I lost a tooth from the side-impact.

This morning I was putting my new found energy and rested brain to one of its most efficient uses: multi-tasking with extreme prejudice. Or, to at least not feeling bad about the primary action items that I was shoving to the side of my brain while Wiki-scaping and attacking someones vampire on facebook. Either way, I was getting more useless/time-wasting/ebay purchasing/porn-scaping stuff done. So while I was staring at the ceiling wondering what the f#%& I was doing with my morning answering email this morning I decided to cruise my favorite link-dump, reddit.com. It was whilst traipsing through reddit that my morning was brought to a screeching halt, my lunch break was accordioned by an 18-wheeler and much of my afternoon was carried off on an overly-used and poorly thought out metaphor all thanks to Demetri Martin.

"I write sentences good --and think them good too!"

What I found blew my ever-loving mind: it was a poem entitled "Dammit I'm Mad" is 224 words long and reads the same backwards as it does forwards; an insanely long palindrome, if you will. Ridiculously long in fact... la-a-a-dies.

Wow, that really does sound creepy

In dissecting one man's genius with my own dull-witted and imprecise brain pan I began to feel akin to an old buggy driver whipping a braying mule while getting dust shot in my face by a horde of passing Ferraris... Ferrari... Porsches. Or, because I'm lazy you're retarded and need visual cues, something like this:

Hint: I'm the one in the foreground --not the full-sized one--in this visual-metaphor.

In any case I was not about to take this challenging of my manhood --for it was a challenge-- laying down. Nay, I would construct my own Palindrome Poem that would shake the very foundations of literature, linguistics and, yes, facebook. "This would be easy", I thought. "I know what palindromes are and I know what letters are; I'll just sit here and construct one long stream-of-consciousness War and Peace-length palindrome out of known palindromes and other letters." Child's play, yes?

4 hours later -- "Poop, Radar!; Poop!" is all that I had... Things were not looking up.

"Um, Hawkeye? Can you not shout that at me?"

Well, this was going to be harder than I thought. As I began to shake my C-PAP machine like a magic 8-ball, screaming increasingly hostile questions at it, an idea came to me:

"Why not unleash the power of the internets, the all-knowing horde-of-hordes hive-mind, on my problem?" I screamed into the intake nozzle of my inanimate, unknowing breathing device.

So here's what I came up with:

Satan Oscillate My Metallic Sonatas

(A Palindrome's Odyssey)

Satan oscillate my metallic sonatas.

Nipson Anomimata Mi Monan Opsin.

Ma, I so resign. It's all a poet air. Ben is, I see, so Greek, (in?).

Was I a gateman? Eh? Spit a diaper. Mood's mode; Pallas, I won!

Diaper pane, sold entire - melt til ever!

Revel, little merit Ned? Lose, nap: repaid.

Now is all Apedom's doom -Repaid a tip, she; Name tag, a, I saw.

Nike ergo sees! Is inebriate opal lasting? Is Eros? I am!

Nipson Anomimata Mi Monan Opsin.

Satan oscillate my metallic sonatas.

Ah, the sweet smell of success. Suck on that, Yalie! Wait, isn't this a Nickleback song? F&*$! DAMN YOU DEMITRI!!!!

Billy Mays: Death of a Pitchman; or 'Trust the guy with a heart condition who did blow'

'As Seen on TV --Billy re-enacting 'Scarface', now with more blow.'

Early last week I felt somewhat put-upon when confronted with cooking dinner for myself --I had just spent the prior week moving from one side of Seattle to the other after doing the same thing in the opposite direction 3 months before. While this was a move up and infinitely better for me in the long-run, it has played havoc with my ability to cook a meal that didn't include the words 'instant', 'ramen' or misspelled versions of 'Cheese'. Instead of rummaging through my recently organized cupboards, chock full of an alphabet-soup of things unlikely to be found on any diet marketed as 'Healthy' or even 'Won't Turn your Bloodwork into Chemical-Gumbo', I decided to eat out. Not that this really changed the menu to something more healthy, it just allowed me to feel less directly responsible by adding a middleman, in this case 'Hamburger Harry's'.

This particular sports-bar in Ballard has opened the floodgates and possibly torn a hole into the 8th Dimension in regards to its ability to stuff foods into other foods. The one burger in particular that may be directly responsible for shit like this happening again:


"This picture ignores the 18th law of thermodynamics: 'The Fly, The Kurgen and Robocop cannot be in L.A. at one time'

is this:


The Jalapeno-popper burger --they stuff an already stuffed food into another piece of food!! But I digress...

After preparing my body to accept this caloric bounty (I ran across the street, thus elevating my heart-rate and, in my mind, justifying a 4200 calorie meal) I set to eating. It was while searching for a distraction from what I was putting into my body that my attention was drawn towards a commercial on one of the 482 flatscreen tv's flashing bright colors and lights at me. I'm simple like that -- 'What? Loud noises and flashy lights? This must be important!'

...And it was important. Why? Because Billy fucking Mays said so.

"What is the rhetorical definition for 'beating a dead horse'? This blog."

Not 6 months after dying from a cocktail of Heart Disease mixed with Co-Fucking-caine, the ghost of Billy is back hocking hands-free-super-cleany-sham-wowy crap on t.v.

Now I'm not one to dogpile on the recently deceased (unless they really, really deserve it, or I'm feeling uppity) but does this strike anyone else as odd? Billy Mays died just only six months ago (June 8th, 2009) and it already seems that everyone has forgotten just how exactly that came about. Apparently the public at large has the same ability to ignore the unpleasant realities of their heroes as I have in regarding my own health and the dipshittery that I inflict on it --I'm drawing strained parallels in order to justify my Junkfood/Buckaroo Banzai tangent. Shut your mouth.

Back to the task at hand: anyone else feel weird about trusting a guy to recommend products to them who blew his weakened heart apart by choosing cocaine over, say, Aspirin?

Maybe his longtime friend and the owner of 'As Seen on TV' can explain their choice to continue using Cokey-the-Bear to peddle their wares:

'Longtime friend and colleague AJ Khubani, founder and CEO of the "As Seen on TV" product company Telebrands, said Mays never exhibited any signs of drug use and was always prepared for his many commercial shoots. "I'm just shocked," Khubani said. "He was the model of a responsible citizen."'

...Or maybe not.

Oh-kay, so they're going to play the age-old modest praise/encomium gambit. This figure of speech, also known as a 'River Phoenix Eulogy', is implemented in the hopes that by meeting certain minimal character requirements (in this case, appearing to not be doing Cocaine) we will forget that the person actually was doing Cocaine. Well two can play at this game, 'As Seen on TV'.

...Wait, that sounds like a lot of work. How about I just cut and paste amusing photos in with ironic captions down below.

Now, with fewer calories burned per unit of output.


"WARNING: Irony Kills"

....Ahhh screw it --I'm tired. Must be all that not-doing-cocaine.

Bacon Lube - 'Applewood Smoked' Sounds like a Priapism-induced Sexual Mishap...

I love bacon --bacon on my bacon; bacon-wrapped bacon and potato cheddar wedges; bacon floss; hell, I think that Nitrous Oxide needs to come in several bacony flavors so that I can pass out to the smell of crackling pig-fat while I'm going under for my first of many Bypass surgeries. Nothing says irony like getting your ribs cracked open in order to replace your bacon-damaged heart valve with one from a pig whilst being serenaded by the dulcet tones of Hickory-Smoked bacon cooking on a grill.

Wow --smells like a rendering plant in here...

What I won't stand for though is someone who takes things too far --ironic, I know. When someone puts my love of bacon in mortal danger; danger so palpable, so close at hand that I can feel it breathing over my shoulder and poisoning the one love that I thought, in the immortal words of George W. Bush, was 'un-put-downable', then I must act. Or at least write a strongly worded blog about it and then go back to my Sunday of pajamas and screaming at the television.

What danger, you ask? Bacon-lube, that's what.

But Finnian, what's so bad about Bacon-lube?

I'll tell you what, commie --take off your beret, put down your little red book and stop murdering those children for a second and listen to my words, America hater.

Raise your hand if you love bacon. You too, pinko; I know you *heart* bacon in all of its glorious iterations --don't be afraid.



'Che, the Bay of Pigs is just a place name --there are no pigs there for your bacon." "But I love the bacon..."

Here's where it gets complicated --follow me, if you can.

Bacon Tastes good. Bacon SMELLS even better.

Sex is generally good (barring late night mistakes at the Airport Lounge). Sex though, generally, does not smell even better.

In fact, the smells associated with sex are a general road-map as to how your night is going and how much worse it may possibly get. Add in to this already volatile mix the confusing aroma of roasting pig-flesh and you can see where I'm going. The smell and taste of cured meat is something that, during sex, elicits in me a Pavlovian response somewhat akin to a Chinese Firedrill.


Like this, but with more cowbell and less chubbiness.

If I am in the midst of having inadvisable sex with someone after too many tall cans of Steinlager then I am going to need to rely on all of my beer-dulled senses to keep the night from swerving from 'just plain depressing' to the land of 'holy-hell, how in the monkey f#$k did I end up here??!?!'. One of those senses, sadly, is my sense of smell.

Far be it for me to poo-poo anything bacon-scented/flavored/otherwise, but this particular product seems to blur several lines that I would prefer stayed unblurrable. Bacon in the kitchen; uncomfortable crying, groping and sadness in the bedroom --and never the two shall meet.

Carl Sagan - Erudite enough to almost make me care...

This makes me want to re-read 'Broca's Brain' and 'Dragons in the Garden of Eden', maybe even 'Cosmos'. 'Want' then fades in to 'thought about' which loses it's v-hold and rapidly devolves in to 'Someone attacked my Vampire on Facebook?' How can erudite exposition and insightful narrative ever compete with the ability to coast through life passively, spoon fed pocket-book wisdom and bite-sized half-truths from cradle to grave? I have an idea about that; two words: Michael Fucking Bay.


I shit you not, this is what came up as the 14th image when I googled 'Michael Bay'


Michael Bay needs to remake 'Cosmos' right the fuck now. Can you imagine what that book would be like in movie form with Nicholas Cage and a sassy, wise-cracking asteroid for a sidekick?

Michael 'Movie-plot-line-rapist' Bay: "I just, you think, this needs, I mean, ya know? Bigger explosion-ness-iveness-osity. I mean, MAN, grrrrrrrrr, just, ya know?"

Nicholas Cage: "I can see where you want me to go with this. I'll kick it up a notch -Bangkok Dangerous-like. Guaranteed millions. Where's my bear costume?"

Asteroid (Played by Michael Clarke Duncan): "I... Are you two fucking high, or just retarded?"

Mike Bay: "Aaannn-n-nd... CUT! Print it!! I'll be in my airstream, bathing in the blood and tears of a 12 year-old blind Inuit."

Wow, that took a left turn somewhere. Probably sometime right after I slugged those two 5-Hour Energy shots in a row. I think I can hear the future now. No, wait, that's my heart screaming.


"All the sugar, Twice the AWESOME!!!"

Moyer to Bullpen - Entrance to "Thunderstruck" unlikely

Jamie Moyer, ever the epitome of the 'crafty lefty', is headed to the bullpen. Along with his bag of Shuttlecock pitches, metronome delivery and Speedy Autoglass commercials with blacked-out Mariners logos Moyer brings one more intangible bit of excitement to the Phillies bullpen: perhaps the most heralded chance at ironic intro music since Daryl Strawberry retired. While the Straw may have been able to bring the house down once or twice to "Cocaine" or "That Smell", he was a one-trick-pony, emphasis added on the 'trick'. Moyer, on the other hand, offers years and years worth of material when it comes to choosing the music that he will walk, not run, out of the bullpen to.

In honor of the slowest fastball to be featured in a bullpen since the advent of batting helmets and electricity I offer you my Top 10 list for Moyer's intro music:

10. 'Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay' by Otis Redding. Can you imagine? No one would stop laughing until well after Moyer sat down the side with consecutive 28kph strikeouts. He could take a solid 20 minutes to wander out to the mound, even pretending to get lost on his way, and batters still wouldn't be able to pull it together for long enough to even hold the bat up. Nothing lowers ones defences like Otis, MY MAN! I mean, can you imagine a boxer or UFC fighter entering the ring to that?

9. 'The Sound of Silence' by Simon and Garfunkel. As soon as "Hello darkness, my old friend.." came out of the PA system people would lose their shit. Nothing, and I mean nothing, gets the crowd pumped like Paul Simon and that other guy with the Afro. You know, whatsisname from The Greatest American Hero.

Art Garfunkel: the John Oates of the 1960's

8. 'A Sailor Looks at Forty' by Jimmy Buffet. Nothing better than entering to music about feeling old that has an age reference 6 years younger than you in its title.

7. 'Forever Young' by Alphaville. While the nod to aging in the title is very appropriate the song itself would also produce an unexpected side-benefit: that of causing all batters born in the 70's to daydream about their junior prom. While they are standing in the batters box, reflecting on this and other neon-soaked memories they will be distracted for at least a pitch or two, completely oblivious to the turtle-paced baseball looping towards them and the strike zone.

6. 'Against the Wind' by Bob Seger. This is a dual-purpose song, giving a nod to Moyer's workmanlike struggles throughout his career as well as the literal effect that wind has on a ball when it is moving at the reduced speeds that he underhands it at.

5. 'Touch of Grey' by the Grateful Dead. Probably the only time that the Dead will be used to stir up the crowd outside of a medical marijuana rally or Bill Walton's celebrity golf tourney.

"Really; I was high the whole time I was in Boston... Portland? I was in Portland?"

4. 'Changes' by David Bowie. Any song about the disconnect between youth and the preceding generation is even more awesome when applied to Moyer. He is the quintessential old grandad on the mound today, as he probably will continue to be for the next odd decade and a half, spouting off such grandpa-isms as "in MY day" or "turn down that hippity-hop music!!!".

3. 'Songbird' by Kenny G. This would be simply awesome and its anesthetic quality would probably put everyone to sleep. Either that or it would start a riot on the level of Detroit's 'Disco Demolition' night. No one polarizes people like the saccharine king of the alto sax.

2. 'Don't Fear the Reaper' by Blue Oyster Cult. Because thunder stix lick my taint and Jamie Moyer shirts with 'More Cowbell' on the back would lead to their replacement. Plus, its a song about death and he's really, really old. Get it? It's like the fart joke of the ironic-intro-music genre, if there ever was one, which there is because I just started it.

1. 'Too Old to Rock 'N' Roll, Too Young to Die' by Jethro Tull. Why? Because flute-solos and songs about death are what baseball is all about. Where the fuck have you been?