Psychic Television Commercial

Seinfeld cuts to commercial. Suddenly this middle-aged lady appears and says, "I know you." A multitude of questions come to mind. For instance, How? She goes on to say, "You're sitting there with rheumatoid arthritis...blah blah etc."

So it turns out she was talking to someone else. I sure hope she doesn't make that mistake again; it was pretty awkward for the both of us.

The Subliminal Nap

Today during my nap during lunch, I heard two songs playing in the lobby of my building. One right after the other. They were as follows.

"Soul Meets Body" by Death Cab
"Since You've Been Gone" by Kelly Clarkson

In my half-waking, half-sleeping mind, I first thought I was on the OC, and then I thought I was on Laguna Beach. Thankfully they played Shakira next and I was back in the real world.

My favorite things to write are made-up coversations.

An imagined conversation between the New Year (2006) and the Old Year (2005).

New Year to Old Year: You're old.
Old Year: You're ugly.
New Year: Not as ugly as your mom!
Old Year: We have the same mom.
New Year: I know you are, but what am I?
Old Year: You suck.
New Year: Whatever. I'm gonna go hang out with Hilary Duff.

Bagels

I like bagels. I especially liked buying them for everyone. Then I liked eating the one that I ate. But now there is a quandary. I, having eaten only one bagel, am not full, yet I, having felt the severity of the bagel, do not want to eat another one. Well, if I puke, I puke. No way around it. Bagel #2, you're about to die.

The thing I was going to talk about before that I just remembered

I enjoy hanging out with [names deleted to preserve the sacred anonymity of the white car] a great deal. They say things no one else I know would ever say (in a smart way), and that's very cool. Even when they talk about cancer.

Ideas that came up when talking about this person they knew who had cancer:
--He looked like the kind of person would get cancer. (I, fortunately, do not look like that kind of person.)
--One should not hang out with someone who has cancer solely because they have cancer because cancer does not mean that you have to like someone.
--Not asking this one important thing about someone's cancer is similar to not finding out what kind of dog a person got. (I don't remember what the important thing was.)
--Cutting off someone's conversation with a cancer patient so that we can go to a book store is insensitive but OK.
--[Name deleted again because she told me to not tell anyone what we talked about] is a difficult girlfriend to get over.

Oh, I just realized that what happens in the car stays in the car. Crap. So I deleted the names just now.

I had one thing to say, but now I have a different thing to say.

I just encountered, for like the fifth time in my life, the word "webinar." This word bothers me. It means "seminar on the web." I'm not too concerned with the linguistic nonsense of the word. I don't care that a "seminar" is not hosted in a "sem" or that "sem" is not a prefix at all and therefore cannot be so haphazardly replaced. I'm upset because this word sounds ugly.

Let's explore this issue. Webinar. Sounds more like the name of a wizard or a really lame board game, and let's face it, those things are not known for their cool sounding names (names like Gandalf and Parcheesi).

I suggest we abandon this word. And let us abandon the thing that this word means.

My New Favorite Language

Cockney Rhyming Slang is about the smartest thing ever developed. For those unfamiliar, here's how it works: you have a word (balls), then you find a phrase that rhymes with that word (cobblers' awls), then you drop off the part that rhymes and you get your slang (cobblers). It's excellent, and I plan to bring some of the obscure ones into everyday use.

Intersesting Cockney Rhyming Slang fact: the use of the word "bread" for money originates in the slang because of the phrase "bread and honey." Bet you didn't know that, smart guy.

Good Idea, Bad Idea

Good Idea: going to sleep at 10:30 or 11 to rest up for an early day of work.
Bad Idea: going to see a late movie, not getting to sleep until 2, and earning a hot 5 hours of sleep.

Good Idea: buying maybe a dozen bagels for my work team this morning, keeping in mind that most of them won't be in today.
Bad Idea: buying 19 bagels and three tubs of cream cheese for what turned out to be about 10 people.

Good Idea: thinking of more of these things because two is boring.
Bad Idea: not thinking of any more because I'm tired.

Day of a Billion Posts

Like last Friday, today is a day that I will most certainly be bored because I am anxious for my three-day weekend. Because I will be bored, I will, also like last week, post a lot.

Expect zaniness. And try not to let your head explode.

My New Life Goal

Right now I want more than anything to see the Timberwolves play the Boston Celtics on Monday, January 30th. And I think other people should come.

Music Reached Its Peak in 1986

The greatest human achievement in the realm of music is without a doubt Fore! by Huey Lewis and the News. Everything before its release endeavored to reach this pinnacle of greatness, and everything after will always fall short. I'd like to see someone try to argue with me on this one because I'm pretty sure if you try, your head will explode.

Yet Another Ben-trospective

To celebrate the years I've spent blogging, I decided that I would post links to everything I've posted on this day in my life. But I've never posted on December 23rd before because I was always on break from school and enjoying my relaxation. So I decided that I'd do January 23rd. Turns out I've never posted on January 23rd either, but that I don't understand. And then I looked at one post from February 23rd and it sucked. So you get nothing but Bennew, which is make I call the new things I'm posting. But don't worry, I'll never call them that again.

Here's My Plan

OK, so lunches begin at 11. So if they're going to send us home early, they're gonna have to do it by 11 so that some people don't miss the message. So my plan is if they don't send us home by 11, I'm just gonna make a run for it. A mad dash out the door, a slow descent down the elevator, then another mad dash to my car, and a peel out of the parking lot. They'll never know I left. At least maybe not for a couple minutes. I should have thought ahead and brought a dummy of me.

White-Out Makes Things Disappear!

It also might be able to pull rabbits out of hats, but I walked in just as the magic show was ending.

This post exists because I'm killing time while the white-out dries.

Doot doot doot. Dooty dooty doo.

It's a litte something called class. You, my friend, do not have it. Class.

I think I was going to post something kind of clever related to another one of Brie's posts I just read, but as I wrote that subject line, I realized that I no longer have class. As in school. And I have never missed school more in my life. Where's a soggy bagel machine when you need one?

I just took a donut to eat, but I couldn't finish it. It's too sweet. So I'm stuck with half a donut. If I were keeping score, the score would be something like Me-1, Donut-1. Or Me-50, Donut-50. Or Me-3.5, Donut-3.5. Basically anything that signifies a tie. But not Me-11, Donut-11.

A Banner Day

You know what's incredibly depressing? I have been here for an hour. No longer than a single hour. Sixty minutes of the four hundred and eighty minute day. Four hundred and twenty minutes to go. Unless I find a bathtub and toaster. Because I heard those are the two key ingredients for a time machine. Well, I can't remember if that was actually time machine or soggy bagels, but I think both would be a worthwhile venture.

An Episode from the Lives of Ben and Cockney-Speaking Stress Ball

"Hey," says Ben.
"Shut the 'ell up, you daf' quack!" says Cockney-Speaking Stress Ball.
"Geez, what's your problem?"
"I just foun' out I got lung cancer. Too many ciggies, I'm afraid."
"I'm sorry."
"AY! I don't need yow bleedin' pity! I'll wallop you in the gulliver, I will!"
"Hey calm down, there. Maybe you need to release some stress."
"Oh, tryin' to be bloody ironical. So bleedin' clever, you are. I oughtta tear off a rabbit's ears, tie 'em in a bow, and ram 'em up yer arse. That'll show you clever, you bleedin' canary!"
"I don't get it."

Another Update Means Two Updates in One Hour

I have a Cigna Behavioral Health stress ball. You know what stress balls are, right? Things you squeeze to make you feel less stressed. Except this is not a ball, it's in the shape of a star. It's kind of cute. And it was free.

The most interesting thing about this stress star, though, is that it talks in a dirty Cockney accent. Bleedin' this and bloody that all day. It makes me laugh. Now we're best friends.

Why Are We Here?

Today is Friday. The Friday before Christmas. And I am in an office building in Eden Prairie, which is (probably not) ironically far from Edenic. I would rather be anywhere else right now. Including the insides of a volcano or POW camp in Vietnam. I'd appreciate the change of scenery.

There are very few things that have brightened my day so far. There were two when I started writing this, now there are three.

#1: Brie's old post about how she totally pissed off a Caribou customer. Good f'ing morning indeed.

#2: A story my coworker told me. Her son came back from kindergarten one day and said, "How much money do I have in my college fund?" His mom laughed at him. Then he said, "And another thing. I'm six years old and I haven't been to Japan yet!" So his mom said, "I'm 26 and I haven't either!" Take that, kid. Put that in your hot air balloon and fly to Asia.

#3: As I wrote about being inside a volcano, I remembered the Simpsons episode when Bart calls Australia. When he makes random calls, he calls some area that's full of lava. A house floats by the pay phone, and a guy sitting on the house grabs the phone, but the house keeps floating and he falls in the lava. This call appears on the phone bill as "Disputed Zone." I just want to sit on the couch and watch Simpsons all day.

Merry Christmas to all, and I hope you never have to work a day in your life.

It's a Wonderful Movie

Last night I went to see It's a Wonderful Life at Oak Street Cinema. What a great movie. Just fantastic all around.

That is all.

It's Funny.

What do you call a fish with no eyes?

A fsh. Wait, no. That's with no "i"s. Crap. How about "a blind fish"? That's almost funny. Blindness is funny.

Something to Immortalize

I sent this to Will via facebook back when I still had access to facebook at work. Apparently it was great, so I felt it should be shared with everyone. So, ta da.

Today's episode is... "I would rather be a railroad conductor than _______."
I would rather be a railroad conductor than a vampire.
I would rather be a railroad conductor than swallow a stick of dynamite.
I would rather be a railroad conductor than spend the rest of my life on stilts.
I would rather be a railroad conductor than a short man.
I would rather be a railroad conductor than read The Da Vinci Code.
I would rather be a railroad conductor than have more infrequent bouts of cleverness.
I would rather be a railroad conductor than be unable to grow facial hair.
I would rather be a railroad conductor than an apple.
I would rather be a railroad conductor than be violently dismembered.
I would rather be a railroad conductor than wear the same the shirt all the time.
I would rather be a railroad conductor than be born on leap day.
I would rather be a railroad conductor than wait in line for hours to buy grapes.
I would rather be a railroad conductor than a Canadian.
I would rather be a railroad conductor than have anything to do with the letter "w." And so on. Good day to you. ~~Ben

Twin Peaks 2: Eden Prairie

There's this guy I work with who looks just like the one-armed man from Twin Peaks. Except he has glasses and is slightly fattter than the one-armed man. Plus he has two arms. Nonetheless, I am convinced that this is what the one-armed man would look like fiteen years after his appearance on Twin Peaks. Assuming he can regrow arms, that is.

Tonight I look forward to a dream featuring a backwards-talking midget and Laura Palmer's cousin.

The Ice Cold Bitch Goddess

Today I nicknamed traffic "The Ice Cold Bitch Goddess." I have never experienced such horrid stasis. Before today, I did not believe so many cars were in existence.

I left work at 5, and immediately hit a stone wall on the freeway. Usually the freeway traffic is loose for the first mile or so, but today not at all. The traffic was stop and go (more stop than go, and the go was usually slower than walking speed) for as far as the eye could see and probably much further beyond that.

I exited the freeway at my first chance, and even that took twenty-five minutes (which, by the way, was longer than it took me to get home yesterday during a worse snowstorm). After I exited, I spent more than ten minutes at a single intersection as well as a total of fifteen more minutes at other intersections.

Overall it took me 1.25 hours to take a drive that took me .25 hours yesterday.


Man has never more desperately needed flying cars.

Close Calls

Yesterday it snowed. A lot.

Today on my drive to work, my car's wheels acted a little more like skis. I nearly spun out twice, and I practically hit a pile of snow in the parking lot. But somehow I didn't actually spin out or hit the snow pile.

The lesson: I am an awesome driver.

"Say something wise, Ben."

The Monster Mash is one of the top five greatest songs ever written.

I Hate Metal

One of the problems of having an apartment is that I am now a walking, talking ball of static electricity. Don't know how it happened, and it's too late to start caring. I'm doomed.

It's only really a problem at work, where all of the door handles are especially conducive to static shock. It's happened so often now that I cringe everytime I reach for a handle. Ouch.

I wonder if I can get disability for inclination toward severe static shock.

Weekends in the Eau C. always make it to the blog.

Mary Beth and I visited Eau Claire Friday night and Saturday afternoon (it was all part of the same trip). As usual, the Robisons wrought some awesome havoc. Here's a highlight reel.

Part 1.
We saw The Chronicles of Narnia. (I didn't like that much because it wasn't as good as the animated L,W,W or the BBC Narnias, but it was still pretty good.) We were in a hilarious mood to begin with, and it spilled over into the movie and resulted in us ruining the movie for everyone. First, you know that St. Jude's Children's Hospital thing that they're running at the beginning of the movies now? With all the celebrities and cancerous kids? I laughed through the whole thing. So hard that I cried. When it started, Brad said, "This isn't funny," so I laughed and I could not control myself. It was OK at first cuz it was just the celebrities, but when the tragic-looking children came on, I must have seemed like a terrorist.

During the movie, there was a scene that was straight out of Lord of the Rings--that one where the hobbits all hide from the Ring Wraiths under that tree--where all the kids hid under a rock. Derivative, fine, whatever, but the funny part was that both Dan and Brad made a Ring Wraith crack at the same time. There were several other Lord of the Rings moments, and the ending was exactly like the ending of Star Wars. So I started singing the Star Wars theme.

Part 2.
We went to lunch, and then we went to Savers. At Savers, Dan found a little one-and-a-half-octave toy keyboard that played exactly (and I mean exactly) the same drum machine line from "Photobooth" by Death Cab for Cutie. It was amazing. He bought it and will most likely show it off to anyone who cares.

Part 3.
There is no part 3.

Short People

Does anybody remember the midget tossing game? Where you toss midgets into a bucket? I just tried to play it at work, and of course it's blocked. But the interetsing thing is that I expected it to be blocked under the "Games" category, but instead it was blocked under the "Adult Content" category. So I'm thinking maybe they changed it to Naked Midget Tossing, and that disgusts me.

Fame

The name "Unspar" has somehow garnered a reputation of its own. I'm a celebrity...of sorts.

Last night I met three people who I've never heard of before. Mark introduced me as his friend Ben, and they were all like "Unspar Ben?" How does this happen? Does my fame precede me? Are there some teeming millions of Unspar devotees out there that could never refer to me by my real name? The answer is apparently and undeniably yes. I don't know if these people just read the things I write or if Mark and Polley have just told them stories about me (what stories, I can't imagine). Either way, I'm both proud and paranoid.

At the end of the night, one of these new friends said, "Unspar, always a pleasure." Indeed? Indeed.

The Inferno

I refuse to do what work there is yet to do today, so I decided to compare my workday to Dante’s descent into Hell because my workday so closely resembles Dante's descent into Hell. For those unfamiliar with the Inferno, Dante describes nine circles of hell, each progressively more evil than the next, beginning with Limbo, the home of the virtuous pagans.

Circle One (Limbo): I begin the day with a slightly indifferent, slightly positive attitude, yet I have a vague hollow feeling at being deprived of home and bed for the next eight and a half hours. I work, and I exist, but I feel like nothing.

Circle Two (The Lustful): Umm…I don’t think this circle really applies to work. At least not until I do it in the elevator, and that’s highly unlikely.

Circle Thee (The Gluttons): I get really really hungry, but I’m not allowed to eat until 12. Jerks.

Circle Four (The Avaricious and Prodigal): I revive my energy with the thought that I’m making a lot of money. But the work for it is like pushing and pulling a giant rock back and forth. (The rock has a money sign drawn on it.)

Circle Five (The Wrathful): So I start to get angry. And some jerk starts ramming a boat in my face. It’s uncomfortable.

Circle Six (The Heretics): Why not lose hope? I’m buried here for the next couple years, so why believe in anything? Except that I still believe in the existence of the soul because of the constant torment of it.

Circle Seven (The Violent): Eh, not my thing. But this circle is home to the sodomites, and I sometimes feel like I’m being sodomized. Makes you think.

Circle Eight (The Fraudulent): This is the part when I sleep during lunch.

Circle Nine (The Traitors): The worst of the members of this circle get chewed up by Satan for eternity. So my company’s like Satan, and for my treachery of comparing the company to Satan, I am eaten alive. Fitting.

And so ends my descent. When Dante finished his journey through Hell, he climbed up the mountain of Purgatory to Paradise. So I guess I have more metaphors to look forward to. Hooray.

This Morning's Pains

Today I woke up and thought it was Wednesday. I love Wednesdays. But it's actually Tuesday. That's depressing.

Also, last night I had a pretty cool dream. In it, I was about to fall asleep, but the moment I was going to fall asleep, my alarm went off. So I woke up feeling like I got no sleep at all.

Also, my bathroom sink is still clogged.

At least I still have more than six hours left at work.

A Not-So-Medieval Tragedy

Somebody totally stole my lunch today. That was my lunch. Mine. I made it. I was planning to eat. It contained things I paid for with my own money. My lunch. Why would anyone steal my lunch?

Which got me thinking. I love it when things like this happen. Thing beyond my control or influence. Because if something has nothing to do with me, it means there's something to learn from the situation. Like when I got a speeding ticket. There's a lesson, and it's not just "Put your lunch somewhere else," or "Don't speed," it has more to do with what happens afterwards or how that event affects my plans.

So what lesson did I learn from getting my lunch stolen? It's hard to say. But it has produced two new lines of thought: 1) Maybe my lunch was diseased and God delivered me from it, and 2) I hope whoever stole it enjoyed it.

Alas

I'm afraid I'm much too perpetually bored to give this up. There's no reason to get rid of it, though there's no reason to keep it either. So I shall relish in the status quo, enjoying the identity crisis and concern over expenses that naturally accompany it.

If I was two inches taller, all my problems would be solved.

Some Serious Soul Searching and Salliteration

Why should I write anything in here ever again? According to my reader map, I have a total of three readers (but I know better---there are at least five). One might argue, however, that readership doesn't matter as long as you're being true to yourself and blah blah blah puke. So that's out. And then there's the whole problem of, you know, me being bored with this. The doctors told me it's incurable, the boredom.

Yet why should I write anything in livejournal ever again? Perhaps more people read livejournal, and perhaps it's more convenient to write in livejournal, and perhaps more people comment in livejournal and therefore give me a reason for existence, but for some reason it's less fulfilling. The way any food but carrots is less fulfilling to bunny rabbits. Writing in livejournal is like holding myself to a sub-par standard. At least it's easy.

So I have resolved. All meaningful communication between me and the world-at-large will now be distributed through random emails. From this point on, if you wish to read something substantial I have to say (substantial along the lines of "Love is like a rock..." not substantial like serious ideology) beyond maybe a few turds per month in this toilet, get me your email address. I will try not to disappoint, but, you know. It's what I do.

A Stern Warning of Things To Come

My apartment now has electricity, internet, and phone line. I am glad to have electricity, and I am glad to have internet, but I am not glad to have phone line. Because that means that I'll have to use two distinct phones, and that's confusing. I only got it so that I could buzz people in. Thirty-five bucks a month for a buzzer.

Here's my proposed solution: everybody call my land line. I refuse to pay much for a cell phone when I have an incredibly expensive land line. I thought about completely getting rid of my cell phone, but there's no way that would work. So I guess this post was completely pointless. I have no idea what I was talking about.

And so on.

I seriously totally forgot that I had this thing until now. Hey me: surprise!

Why Not Do Something Pointless?

I've really done it this time. I signed up for a stupid thing that maps people who read this. So sign up. Cuz it's about the stupidest thing I've ever thought to do.

The map of People Who Read Unspar

Keanu says, "Whoa."

I just made my mouth beep. I don't know how it happened. I was just sitting here, mouth gaping open like a loser, and out came a beep. Not like me saying, "beep," but like a for real beep.

This is today's greatest moment so far.

From Celebrity to Health Insurance Director

Michael Showalter is the new director of the Consumerism group at my company. It's a sad day for comedy. Like when a clown dies.

Aww, McSweeney, you're the best!

This is one of my favorite McSweeney's lists of recent memory.

Things A Koala Would Say

Things I Learn and How I Really Wish I Didn't Learn Them

Did you know that November is National Prematurity Awareness Month? And that November 15th is Prematurity Awareness Day? When I first saw this, I wondered why we would devote a whole month or even a whole day to being aware of adolescence. That's neither important nor interesting. Why can't November be National Elephant Month or something?

Turns out it's actually for premature births, "the number one killer of newborns in the United States." As if it's some kind of assailant. I picture him with a cape and a sinister hat and a diaper. Because he's not mature. I'd draw a picture, but work probably blocked MS Paint because the category "fun and interesting" is filtered.

Oral Fixation

I've unconsciously decided that the only logical place to put my pen when I'm not using it is in my mouth. And I just recently started doubling it up. So I've been sitting around with two pens in my mouth. I got a little creative with it too, lining the pens up in different ways, experimenting with parallel and perpendicular placement. I've done pretty much everything but the Walrus, which is just plain uncomfortable. If only I had a third pen. I'd probably seriously injure myself somehow.

Fact: You can never have too many boxes.

I started packing up my things last night because I'm moving out very soon. It turns out that I have a lot of junk. Comic books I read once and will never read again, some stickers that I never used for bands that I don't remember ever knowing about, and so forth. I also don't have many home decorations, which I find very disconcerting. My walls will be boring. I have a giant oriental fan, a Chemical Brothers poster, and two religious icons. They all rule, but they're all I've got. Gasp. Maybe I'll just start gluing junk to the walls.

Though convention suggests I should be working, my principles assert that I should not be working.

I'm wearing my headset right now so that it looks like I'm working. It's quite possible I'm fooling everyone. I should start talking like I'm talking to someone. That would be hilarious to me and normal to everyone else, a situation which happens not often enough.

Interesting thing about the headset. It's kind of like a conch shell. I can hear the ocean. Only the ocean sounds like static. Now I wish I was at the ocean, but far enough away from it that it sounded like static.

Not so polysyllabic

The urinals are out of order.

What happens when my mind stops.

I have nothing to do. I can think of nothing to do. I've been drinking water intermittently just to fill the time. It fills the time inadequately. Now I'm off to data entry.

But....

O, to be a chocolate man, to dance gaily through the land, and to be all made of chocolate. The people, they would say, "O look, there goes the chocolate man," and I would wave my hand of chocolate and say, "Yes, 'tis I, the chocolate man!" I would live in the forest in a secret chocolate glen with the chocolate fairies among the chocolate flowers, and we would celebrate chocolate and the fact that we were chocolate. Every month on chocolate day we would parade through the town and blow chocolate kisses to the non-chocolate townspeople, and they would smile at us because we were chocolate. O, to be a chocolate man and to be made of chocolate.

The Eau C.

This weekend, following the GRE, I went to Eau Claire to visit my brother. The highlights include...

The most hilarious dinner at Fazoli's. We somehow got on the subject of how porn is made, and Dan, pretending to be a big-shot movie producer criticizing a porn script, said, "This script is crap. The characters--they're always having sex! The plot is practically nonexistent!" I thought he began it by saying "Angie, this script..." which made it even funnier. Cuz who's Angie?

After dinner we took a pack of crayons from the kids section and decided to try and light them cigarettes. We were laughing so hard, we couldn't even hold the crayon up to our faces. Then dan changed the "Reserved Parking" sign to "Reserved Rarking" and then "Reserved Barking" by drawing on it with his crayon.

We totally schooled Fazoli's.

Yum

It smells like barbecue. On the entire floor. Oh man do I want some o' that.

The Future

I wonder if scholars will one day discover all my electronic correspondence and decide to publish it. I've written some pretty fantastic emails in my day, so I imagine the scholars would be impressed, but ought it really be published? What if my emails would end up doing a terrible disservice to mankind? What if I inspire the next Hitler (i.e.-"That magnificent Ben figure sure talked a great deal about Rocktown. Perhaps we should found a town by that name and hurl rocks at everyone from its fearsome walls!")? This is a concern I deal with every day.

The future sure is unpredictable.

New Things Encountered

There are certain things I do not expect to exist. The weary routine of life trains us into believing only a limited set of things are ever available to experience. And then you dial a phone number and hear "Zephyr Song" by Red Hot Chili Peppers instead of that ringing noise.

This has happened to me twice.

If I only heard "Zephyr Song" once when I tried to call someone, I would be relatively unfazed. "This is interesting," I would say to myself, "but not quite worth noting in the annals of history or my blog." But I heard it twice, possibly from two different phone numbers.

It may have been the same phone number, and I just totally spaced on whether or not I had actually called that number before. I am a model employee.

The other day I also heard "Swingtown" while on hold. The only problem was that I only heard the boring synth solo. For once I wanted to stay on hold.

A Boring Sports Post

My two favorite college basketball teams have a combined total of two (2) seniors on their rosters. Kansas has one and Wisconsin has one. Kansas doesn't even have any juniors on their team. Wait, no. Kansas has three seniors. Sorry. That's still a whopping somewhere-around-fifteen underclassmen.

Here's to everyone being younger than me.

The Hilarity of Terrible Things

A coworker of mine recently had a seizure. Frightening, tragic, and so on, of course, but like all tragedies, this one has its humorous upside. The medication she's on to prevent future seizures has weakened her equilibrium and made swiss cheese of her memory. The equilibrium thing isn't that funny; I tend not to laugh when people fall down, and she hasn't fallen down, which is good. The memory thing, though, is great. She occasionally can't remember words for things, like while we were talking, she didn't know the word for the thing that goes over the mattress on your bed ("sheets"), so I got to play a little guessing game. Quite amusing, and not entirely at her expense. She laughed too.

Those of you that know me well, which is pretty much all of you, know that I have an awful memory as well. This made it especially fun for me. There was one point when, in mid-conversation, she totally forgot what she was talking about. I thought she was joking, so I laughed. Then I realized she actually forgot. Between laughter and realization, I of course forgot what we were talking about as well. So we laughed.

You may not think this is funny because you remember stuff. But if you ever become an Alzheimer's patient, I hope that you understand the humor in not being able to remember anything that's happened in the past five minutes.

Life Lesson

Hootie & the Blowfish has been on the verge of delivering me an important message for the past twenty minutes. It begins, "Tiiiiiiiiiime," and since I don't remember the rest of the song, that's all I get. What are you trying to tell me, Hootie? Something about time?

I wonder if people in less mindless jobs interact wih less mindless songs in a less surreal way. I don't think I want to know the answer.

Life Event

You may have heard the rumors, and they are true. I have an apartment. 54th and Nicollet is the location. Excellent area, excellent building, excellent everything. I move in December 1st. And I go shopping at Ikea tonight. This is going to be awesome.

This May Become More Frequent.

How does one spend the fifteen minutes before lunch break? There's not enough time to do work, but there's too much time to do nothing. This may be today's most serious quandary.

Nazi Supermen Are Our Superiors

They just blocked facebook from work. Their justification is that it's a "personals and dating" website. How feeble-minded. It's so much more than that.

So that means that this new "blog" is all I have for solace from the chronic pains of my working world. My mind needs an exercise like this because it's not getting much use at all right now. Yesterday, for instance, I felt like I was going to pass out. But that might not have been a brain thing; I'm not sure. Might have been because I didn't eat lunch.

Once, Always.

There was a time when I would write things and people would read them. There was a time when I was incredibly bored and spent hours in front of my computer, recording the most inane things that came to mind. There was a time when my life revolved around a close-knit community of friends and acquaintances, all of whom were more or less confined to the electronic realm. Those times, my friends, have returned.

That is all. For now.