I Can Hardly Believe the Things My Mind Comes Up With

I just wrote a short story about transsexual stripper assassins. It's only one page. Let me know if you want to read it.

The Highlight of My Day

I just spent the last half-hour explaining in categorical detail why Aladdin is the best Disney movie ever. I should clarify: best animated non-Pixar Disney movie ever (even though I believe that Pixar's stuff doesn't hold a candle to Aladdin, it's just easier to keep separate because they're fairly different styles). I should clarify further: I only needed to defend Aladdin against The Lion King and The Little Mermaid because those were the only two that my friend suggested were better than Aladdin (she also suggested Bambi, but I dismissed that out of hand).

I went through songs, story, supporting cast, and villains, and Aladdin won on all but one of those (songs--Mermaid has the superior soundtrack). Just think about it. You know I'm right.

Coffee vs. Me

Coffee usually puts me to sleep. But today. Today I had a cup of coffee and it's making me feel disoriented and dizzy. I don't get it. Why me? Why am I the one who has strange reactions to regular foods and now beverages? Probably because I laughed at the cancer commercial at the movies.

My Study in Political Geography

Today, out of boredom, I decided to look up rankings of countries by area, population, and population density. Here are the top 5s for each, but for more details (like the actual statistics), you'll have to look them up on your own.

AREA
1. Russia
2. Canada
3. U.S.A.
4. China
5. Brazil

POPULATION
1. China
2. India
3. U.S.A.
4. Indonesia
5. Brazil

DENSITY
1. Monaco
2. Singapore
3. Vatican City
4. Malta
5. Maldives

So I decided that I want to figure out the "most efficient" countries based on their ranks in each graph. I'm not doing this mathematically, or maybe I am, I don't know. But here's the list of the best of the biggest.

1. India (avg. rank of 9.3)
2. China (19.7)
3. Pakistan (26)
4. Indonesia (26.7)
5. Japan (29.7)
6. Nigeria (31)
7. Bangladesh (35.7)
8. Vietnam (36.3)
9. Egypt (45.7)
10. Mexico (47)

Blog Day Returns

Today for the first time ever, after all these years I've been at Cigna, the elevator stopped at every floor. That's right, floor 0, then floor 1, then floor 2, then floor 3, then floor 4, and at last floor 5. It was incredible. And now that I talked about it, it'll probably happen all the time and drive me crazy.

My 72 Hours Are Up

So I gave myself 72 hours for my Peace Corps fervor to die down...and it hasn't. But a great many complications have come up. There are a few things I have determined, though once again these determinations are not immune to flagging passions either.

1. I need to get out of this country if my faith/soul/mind/sanity are to prosper.
2. I very much want and perhaps need to live a life without things.
3. I would like to help people in person. Or help people in general.
4. I can't plan the next major step as a vacation or an escape from "the real world."

Life-changing decision, here I come.

Picture Me

I'm stealing this from Christine who stole it from some other guy who stole it from some other guy. The deal is, I take the categories prompted in the previous poster's dealy and do a google image search for those things for me and then post my favorite image from the first page. You dig? Don't worry, it'll all make sense in a second.

My First & Last Name



My Hometown



My Current Place of Residence



My Favorite Smell



My Favorite Drink



Place I Most Enjoy



My Favorite Song



My Favorite Food



My Grandmother's Maiden Name

Peace Corps Conundrum

The Peace Corps, while still incredibly alluring, is not the immediate solution to my problem. If I apply now, it will still take six to twelve months before I can leave. That will be perfect for getting out on of my lease, but it is far from perfect for getting me out of this soul-crushing corporate hell-hole.

I am still devoted to this Peace Corps thing (at least for the next 67 hours), but I need something else for the time being. Or maybe I don't, and these next six to twelve months will teach me patience, humility, and all those other things it's important to learn. Or the wait will kill me. Let's check the percentages on this one.

Chance these months will teach me patience, humility, etc.: 35%
Chance these months will drive me to suicide or wild, irrational behavior resulting in death: 59%
Chance I will go completely insane and be institutionalized for the rest of my life: 1%
Chance I will find a living as a silent loner aboard a Japanese whaling ship: 5%

And a clarification: Sorry to any readers who might take an arbitrary 59% chance of suicide seriously. I know it's an inappropriate issue to joke about. If you prefer, you may take it metaphorically. I tried it with splendid results. To answer any concerns, though: no, I am not depressed.

The Next Step

Though I feel like I shouldn't speak with much certainty, as certainty tends to be a highly relative principle with me, I am planning on joining the Peace Corps. I just printed out my application, and I'll hopefully have it filled out by the end of this week. I'll work on my essay at work. Hopefully I'll be out of the country by May. Of course, this is assuming I don't change my mind in 72 hours like I always do.

We're Off To See The Wizard

Last night I rediscovered the joy of skipping. We (Jenna, Sara, and I) were walking back to Sara's house from Burrito Loco when it suddenly occurred to me: why not skip? I haven't skipped in years, but this was incredible. I could even skip backwards! It's probably the best thing that's happened to me since being in New Orleans.

So I tried to get Jenna and Sara to skip with me, but they were less than enthusiastic. I finally got them to join in a little bit when I told them this story: "Remember the Wizard of Oz? And remember the song they sang when they went down the yellow brick road? [Here they sang 'We're off to see the Wizard,' etc.] Remember what they did when they sang? They skipped!"

If Women I've Never Spoken to Proposed to Me, and If I Was Also Mildly Psychic

Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou, I must turn down your request to be my wife because I don't like your books or poetry. I've never read anything you've written, but since I'm mildly psychic, I can read your mind and tell that it's much too full of swears for my taste. Also, I can't be seen in public with anyone wearing a mumu.

Demi Moore
I know I'm better than Ashton in pretty much every conceivable way (I know because I'm psychic), and that's why it makes it all the harder for me to turn you down. Pity isn't a good reason to marry someone, Demi, and while I'm sorry that you have to lie about your age to be accepted in Hollywood, and I'm sorry that your a necrophiliac (are you sure your mind doesn't mean nymphomaniac?), marrying me won't make any of that go away. And please put Striptease 2 out of your mind.

That Girl I work with who I think is named Miranda
I'm glad I'm psychic because if I wasn't, I would probably say yes. You're a very attractive person, but I'm more than a little disturbed by the dungeon of your previous husbands in your basement. If you really want me to marry you, you'd let them go. I don't care what evil scheme you're collecting them for; you just can't keep people prisoner like that. I think there's some provision against it in the Geneva Convention.

Big Bird
Yes. Wait, are you a girl or a guy? I'm not that psychic.

Jean Grey
I'd really really like to say yes, but I'm afraid our psychic powers will come into direct competition. I can't tolerate someone being more psychic than me because I'm very possessive of my psychic powers, so we probably wouldn't get along very well. Even if could deal with your awesome psychic powers, I'm pretty sure we'd get bored of each other because we'd be able to read each other's mind all the time. Reading minds instead of having conversations would turn into interrupting thoughts with insults and dirty jokes. That's not the kind of life I want to live, and it's not the kind of life you deserve.

Swiss Miss
What? There's turds in your cocoa? No thanks.

Addendum

It occurs to me suddenly that I've been waiting for the right time to quit my job and be homeless or something and depart from my worldly belongings. Perhaps this is an opportunity. So I put this question to you: should I quit my job suddenly and start a new life with nothing and do nothing but seek God, or is that wildly impractical?

The Final Straw

Cigna, we're through.

I've just received news that Cigna is scaling down my job to include none of my original duties. I will no longer be doing searches for critical incidents. I will no longer be calling people to do surveys. Instead, I will be taking messages for callers who have been waiting too long.

I'm insulted. I was hired to do a certain job, and now I'm being forcibly removed from that to something so much below my intelligence and training and skills. I won't take it. I need a job that appreciates me for what I can do. I never really thought that this was that kind of job, but now I'm sure it's not.

I'm beginning a new job search starting now. I may not find another job. I may have to stay here indefinitely, and I guess I could stand it (insert some good points about Christian humility and whatnot), but I don't belong here, and now it's perfectly clear.

Names Have Smells, Apparently

I was just filing something under the name "Myrtle," and for some reason the foul stench of cow poop filled my nose. While part of me wonders why I associate the name "Myrtle" with cow poop, a larger part of me wonders why I did not immediately associate it with Yertle the Turtle.

A Response

To the people who put up the "Thank You For Not Smoking" sign in the Cigna restroom:

You're welcome.

Today I Bought

Today I bought my first Rosary ever. I don't know how to pray the Rosary, but I'm going to learn. I always had a slight fascination with Rosaries, and just recently I decided that I needed a beaded Jesus thing to hold onto, so here we are. Is Rosary supposed to be capitalized or not?

I also bought a crucifix. And I looked for some icons, but I couldn't find any that I felt like buying today.

One thing I noticed, though, is that I have problems with making a monetary transaction for spiritual items. It seems to me that something with spiritual meaning should be given, not paid for. I would say God is a communist, but I'm pretty sure God has no strong opinion on economics one way or the other.

Will all my posts from now on be this dull? I hope not, but I think so.

The First Post Post-New Orleans

There's something about spending a week in the middle of utter destruction that completely changed my perspective on blogging. Or maybe it's just that my perspective on anything radically changes from day to day. Either way, the next thing I post will probably much less ambiguous.

How I Spent My Day

I apologize if you were not one of the privileged few to receive one of my insane inventions today. I wrote about ten different little vignettes and sent them out to about ten different people. I'd post them all here, but it would take up too much space. I will, however, briefly describe each one and you can request a copy if you'd like. Keep in mind, every last one of them is made up.

1. Lightning rods to fight the alien invasion
2. Bearded guy translates for the zoo animals
3. Please save us from the mouse in the building
4. Wisdom requires extreme action
5. The tall, foreign man I met
6. My happy times in 'Nam
7. My surreal experience in Iowa
8. The mad speech pathologist
9. The confused and perhaps heartless veterinarian
10. A request for assistance in the anti-beige attack force

I Don't Come to the Blogulution; the Blogulution Comes to Me

I have at last joined the ranks of the blogging elite. As a member of this self-appointed ruling class, I must take it upon myself to defend my luxurious lifestyle and criticize the faults of everyone beneath me.

Criticism #1: This isn't the tea I asked for.
Didn't I ask for fresh Chinese jasmine? This is Mongolian green! You're fired, Jeeves. No, you and your whole family are fired. No, wait a second. Wait here, Jeeves. Anderson, have Jeeves and his family executed.

Criticism #2: Your friends are boorish.
Who invited these...these peasants? Drinking their soup out of the bowl? Eating with their hands? This is why I let the population starve.

Criticism #3: The effort to annex France is not going as planned.
I told you to come at them from the south! They expected us to come from the east! They're always attacked from the east! Colonel, why did you enlist in the Blogulution army? To serve your country, yes? How would you feel if you failed your country? Yes, well, you'll be feeling quite worse after I sell you to the Chinese for tea. Guards!

Criticism #4: My castle is drafty.
Somebody tell the wind to desist immediately or I will be forced to take military action. And you! What did I tell you about the weatherstripping? Yes, well, too bad. Bring me some tea and then we'll have you executed. Thank you!

Tetanus-O-Rama

I got my tetanus shot today. I guess that means I'm invincible to tetanus. The list of things that Ben is invincible to is now:

Melting
Muffins
Spiderman
Yodeling
Tetanus

McSweeney's Interactive

My bitter, cynical outcry has finally received an answer!

Today I wrote a letter to McSweeney's accusing them of no longer being funny, and I cited their week "McSweeney's Predicts" section as evidence. The letter, as it reached the McSweeney's Corporate Conglomerate, is as follows:

Dear McSweeney,
Not everything can be funny forever. Everything loses its humor sooner or later, so don't be upset when I say that you're losing your funny as I write. It happened before with the jesters of the dark ages, and the kings had them killed. It happened with Picasso, and then people started taking him seriously. It happened with The Simpsons, Tom Hanks, Saturday Night Live, the comics in the Sunday paper, and Democrats, and you, McSweeney, are next. I say this as a warning so that you might not follow their unfortunate paths.

I was not fully aware of your decline until I read McSweeney's Predicts. As I see it, your predictions fall into two categories: 1) virtual locks, and 2) uninspired and dull guesses. For an example of category 1, you give Lost a whole three year buffer before its cancellation. That's pretty generous for a show whose second season has been universally panned. They've only had two years so far, and only 50% of them have been good. They'd even be lucky if they had two more years of stories.

In category 2, you predict that Good Night, and Good Luck will win best picture. I can appreciate that because you were wrong, but it's not funny. It's normal. It's the kind of thing someone on the street would say. What might have been funny is predicting that one of the nominated films would not win best picture, though that would then have an 80% chance of being true and fall into category 1.

What makes you funny, McSweeney, is cleverness. Do not be dry for the sake of being dry. We are not British. Remember that.

With great concern,
Ben Robison

Minutes ago, I received a response from the McSweeney's "head honcho," as he delightfully did not call himself. It is as follows as well:

Ben:

Thanks for the warning. As you might imagine, I get one just about every other day declaring that we've sunk into irrelevance or unfunniness, or worse. Yours is more polite and reasoned than most. For example, the most recent one before yours came from a Steve who declared, "You suck beyond what I thought was possible in the realm of suckiness."

At the end of his message, he told us to "eat shit and die."

Strangely, most people are dismayed at us being "too clever," while you are concerned that we've lost our cleverness. I guess this illustrates the old you can't please all the Bens and Steves all the time axiom.

What can I say, but we do the best we can at providing free weekdaily entertainment. Invariably, and inevitably, we fall short in a thousand ways each and every day, but I've grown comfortable with that. It's worse to not try, or to swing like a pendulum trying to please Steve one day and Ben the next because then you're pleasing no one, particularly not yourself.

I'm sure our time will come eventually (or it has happened already) and people will stop reading or caring what we put in our Internet space. Some think we've never been funny, which may be true as well.

And yet, we will be here, forever, annoying the Steves and Bens of the world with our uncleverness (or overcleverness), because we believe. We believe.

Best,

John Warner
Website Editor

Though I appreciate this, I have a sneaking feeling that it's just a form letter with a programmable blank for my name. But what really dogs me is that he says he'd end up pleasing no one if he'd try to please the Steves one day and the Bens the next. Is he an idiot? He'd be pleasing everybody! I used to think the problem was that McSweeney was trying too hard, but now I realize they're all just lazy. This is perhaps a major reason why McSweeney's is not the brilliant whatever-you-call-it I once thought it was.

And I just realized that for his use of the word "shit," John Warner got a warning from Cigna telling him to shut up his potty mouth. I'm serious. They send those things automatically.

I Am Suprised I'm Alive

I would like to take this moment to apologize to two of my friends for nearly killing them last night in my car.

I'm sorry Chris Polley and Mark Waller that I took that left turn on the corner of Washington and 4th when there was traffic coming at us. I am grateful we survived and that no one so much as honked, but I am sorry to have put your lives so much at risk.

And thank you, Chris Polley, for locking your door.

Sandwich

At lunch today I had a conversation with a coworker that lasted nearly a half an hour about how the sandwich is a lunch-only food. She believed sandwiches were OK for dinner, I adamantly argued the opposite. It was one of the best conversations I ever had.

Most of the time was spent discussing which sandwiches may qualify for dinnertime. We came to the following conclusions:

-The warmer the meat, the more likely it would be OK to have that sandwich for dinner.

-If a sandwich has melted cheese, it is even more likely to be OK for dinner than if it was meat alone.

-Hamburgers and sloppy joes are not sandwiches because the bread is referred to as a "bun."

If you're interested to know why I can't have sandwiches for dinner, it's because it just feels wrong. It's wrong for the same reason the phrase "I eats" is wrong, or for the same reason not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day is wrong, or for the same reason murder is wrong.

Some Might Say I Have No Life

I shall spend this evening watching Sweet Home Alabama on broadcast television. Is it because I don't know what to do with my time? Is it because I'm seduced by Reese Witherspoon's chaste beauty? Is it because I'm a sucker? Or is it because it's genuinely funny and enjoyable? The world may never know.

Flipper Has a Blog

Hey everybody,

Flipper has a blog.

He hasn't written much yet, but just you wait.

Who I Am

Today I took a Myers-Briggs personality test because I was bored and, as it counts as psychology, it's work-relatd. I got an ENFP.

Some of you may be surprised that I pulled out an E, but I'm not. It only edged out the I by one point. That's how it makes sense. The description is also surprisingly accurate.

I think the most striking line is about how I get bored easily.

For Your Benefit

If you haven't heard of Point Break Live!, you're missing out on one of the most incredible ideas to ever enter and emerge from the cranium of a human being.

The theater show, which is apparently staged in a bar, tells the story of former-Ohio-State-quaterback-turned-FBI-special-agent Johnny Utah and his adventures with extreme surfing bank robbers. The brilliant development of this piece over the film is the fact that the actor who plays Johnny Utah (originally played by the sublime Keanu Reeves) is chosen at random from the audience every night.

Unfortunately, it's only showing in New York at present, but I've been waiting for a reason to go to New York. Now I have one.

(Thank you for Dan Marfield for bringing this epic event to my attention.)

Identity Crisis My Ass

I've been reading through old entries of random friends, and I discovered that my entries, while entertaining (maybe), are patently dishonest. I've become that sarcastic guy that can't tell the difference between sarcasm and sincerity anymore. For instance, that last sentence was sarcastic. That's going to be a difficult knot to untangle for the rest of this entry.

So this got me thinking: am I capable of honesty and sincerity with anyone but myself? The answer is not no forever, but it is no for now.

The normal sarcastic, irreverent me would conclude that honesty is for suckers, or sincerity is boring, or something like that. But there's something non-sucker-ish about honesty and something interesting about sincerity. It's kind of disconcerting, like my world is falling apart.

The strangely sincere and respectful me would announce that this marks a drastic change in personality, but the normal sarcastic and irreverent me knows better. As far as he's concerned, I'll be dead and rolling in my multiple and diverse graves before anybody tries to say I was one who could be taken seriously.

I will say this: It's funny how this sounds almost nothing like anything I would say to anyone in person. Or even via email. Or if I was conscious of anyone reading this ever.

Infestation

I have ants in my apartment.

How could this have happened? I just cleaned the whole place thoroughly like five days ago. I vacuumed, I swept, I scrubbed the floors. Plus, aren't the ants supposed to be dead until the thaw? This is one giant load of crap.

This morning I took about five minutes to squish as many as I could, but that didn't do anything. For each one I killed, another emerged from the carpet or the little ruts between the tiles. They're unstoppable.

You have provoked my wrath, ants.