View from the Top

Right now, I'm writing from the top floor of one of America's ugliest pieces of architecture. No, not Anna Nicole Smith's cleavage. Ha ha ha ha ha. No. Ha ha ha ha. Um, seriously, way no. I'm at University Hall setting up AV equipment for my role as technologist for the University of Illinois. Adding to the mystique and glamor of my job: playing chicken and pressing a button when prompted during this morning's presentation. Time to buy a remote for the office, I think.

Still, check out that view. Even the Sears Tower's weird boxy shape looks good measured against the ribbon of highway. I'm lucky I get to have these kinds of views. Even though I'm usually the guy hidden behind the curtain and today was the only guy in the room wearing less than a two piece suit (I had on khakis and my very newest sneakers), and even though I make about a third as much as these guys in a given year, I can still enjoy the view from the top.

Ha ha ha. I had you going for a minute, though, right? She's the dumb playmate who married the millionaire on his deathbed. Ring a bell? A bell that goes, "ha ha ha ha ha"? Okay, whatever.

Go, view.

Mighty Movie Magic - or - I really did believe a man could fly but then it was boring and after a while I was just hungry

I'm hitting the movie theater opening night to confirm or deny Ebert's two star assessment of the alien in blue and red, Superman Returns. Unluckily, work held me until late, so with a two plus hour running time I'm going to be home with my Earthling darling (and occasional Kryptonite, especially when she melts my heart) Brandi. Luckily, I've got a seat at the rail. It's twenty more minutes until they even start rolling the ads and I'm within striking distance of the skinny comic book kid who thinks he's hilarious because he can quote the entire Superman oevre and blend it seamlessly with his infinite Simpsons wisdom. Even his voice sounds like it has braces. Do other people see me like that? I swear all the reference comedy comes from a less arrogant space. Really?

Oh, now he's telling his date (again, really?) that he can show her all his downloaded, pirated movie clips except that she would have to spend the night in his bedroom. Boy, silk gets jealous that he's so smooth.

"I read enough comic books that I've learned something: my life is a comic book..." ==> direct quote

Good gravy, he's talking about and handing out tips on dating now. Apparently, when he starts seeing women, they can't stick to his plan of keeping things casual and they wind up seeing each other every day. He's looking for a middle ground between friends and marriage. Actually, I think he's looking for middle ground between World of Warcraft and Tomb Raider, a mythical paradise that might also include real live girls wearing revealing outfits.

More pearls of wisdom. How can he still be talking such pap? This time it's Miss Manners' guide to the teenage social scene: "I'm sorry, but texting me on the phone is the least-appropriate thing to do." Okay. Somehow, waxing poetic about how awesome he is with women to the woman he's with falls outside of his irony radar.

"I would rather a singer do bad acting than the other way around." Our friend weighing in on the age-old debate of singing versus acting.

"When you talk about puppets, I'm saying to myself, 'You and I miss marionettes...'" I can't even guess at the context.

I understand at last, what makes bullies go nuts around guys like this (me? Less so, now that I work out.) This guy seriously needs to get hit in the face with a dodgeball. Speaking of! ComedySportz held a "Sportz" rehearsal last night where we played, some of us for the first time since middle school humiliation. Yes, people got hit in the face... accidentally, the thrower felt really bad. Yes, I throw ridiculously bad and catch worse. I'm still replaying the movie in my head of the moment when someone in front of me stepped to the left, dodging/revealing a ball too late for me to do anything. Nailed. Someone on my team caught a ball. Back in, I threw a ball. Caught, handily. Out again. Friend, that is the circle of life. The only thing that suxors about it is that I wanted to be so much better at the game. I've spent more than half of my life since training for some sport or another. It should carry over.

Ads have started. Movie ads are looking more like movies, but they still suck. I can see why people want to move the movie back to the living room. It's sort of a reverse Catholic church. (Footnote: in the early days of Christianity, back when it was a flavor of Judaism and a little after, services were held in the home. How much altar do you need to speak to an infinite being who knows your every movement, hears your every thought? It wasn't until the Council of Nicea when St. Nick consolidated power specifically into churches, in the process deciding what exactly was Jesus' mix of god and human. Churches sprang up.) Okay, you probably should punch me in the face now. I deserve it.

AFTERMATH

The move is sawn. Seen. Whatever. It's over.

Funny moments:
1) Between preview and movie, two guys wedge into the two courtesy seats I left between me and the couple next to me. They talk through the entire movie. But that doesn't bother me because...
2) A family sits down in the seats in front of me about two minutes after the movie starts. They obviously have nowhere else to sit. Also important: they're not that into the idea of sitting still and not talking through the movie. I think the youngest slept through the whole thing. I'm not sure the movie is appropriate for the under-six crowd. There probably should be an age cutoff for Kevin Spacey movies. Otherwise I'm worried they're going to change all the packaging to "Se7en": starring THAT GUY from "Superman Returns". No, not the Namibian love child guy. Not the guy with the freckles. Head guy. Now you're talking.

Anyways, they didn't bother me that much because...

3) Some guy next to me wouldn't stop sneezing/coughing and he wouldn't cover his mouth. And any fan of Kevin Spacey movies remembers that moment in "Outbreak" when you follow Ebola-esque germs from cougher to all the other people in the movie theater. Remember? Anyone?

Anyways, that didn't bother me that much either because...

4) The movie deserved two stars, maybe less. Ever have a talented friend take himself way too seriously? He's a good artist but all of a sudden he treats every napkin doodle like the Sistine Chapel? That's this movie. To Brian Singer's credit, I think he faithfully reproduced every iconic Superman comic book moment from 50 years of comics, and that's pretty much every frame, but oh! that dialogue stank. We get that Superman is terse. He's not Spider-Man with a quip for every villain vanquished. He's a little nerdy. But Singer took so many colors away from his word palette that we weren't looking at a barebones black and white so much as just white... like the bread but less filling.

Even worse was the way the powers played out. Perhaps it's five years of Smallville talking, but once you establish limits, even simple ones, like, "Superman can be harmed by and has reduced powers in the proximity of kryptonite" should be abided by. Also, once you have (metaphorically-speaking) fired off a gun in a scene or at least revealed that something is a weapon, leaving it unfired for the remainder of the movie because you want to show the heroism of ordinary people is just hack. Everything becomes a matter of convenience then.

Finally: Kryptonian technology made from crystals? Cool. That it always makes the same crappy seventies chandeliers in small, medium, large and continent-sized? Not so nifty. Also, if water makes it grow, what's it take to make it stop growing? How can Lex chart that? And even if it's growing a new continent on the eastern coast of North America, how does that take away from the coastlines of all the other continents? Is there only so much basalt to go around?

I'd give you the answers, but then I would have to invite you into my bedroom, place of Geek Mystery, and we all know what that can lead to.

Babies? Somehow?

Frankenstein Helps the Plants to Grow

In the foreground: my brandywine tomato plant, raised from seed from a kit bought by my lovely wife, Brandi, and just starting to sprout some serious leaves. I should have tomatoes by, oh, about fall.

But what's this? In the background? Something green and decidedly not leafy! Something with scars at its temple, the strength of many men and the simplicity of a child. Something not alive, but not dead, either, not a Spring but certainly not an Autumn and absolutely out of place with that weird orange and purple jumpsuit. It's... Toy Frankenstein's Monster!

Our downstairs neighbor makes our lawn look like a putting green, but he also gets pretty excited when it comes to garage sales... to the point where he beings home and decorates the yard with creatures like Adam here. Downstairs, we've got robots, gondolas, potted plants, some of which I suspect are weeds that just sprouted in the right place, and of course about forty clocks set to go off every hour, forty-three minutes past the hour.

I'm fine with it all as long as it makes the plants grow. Which, somehow, it does, as evidenced by my amazing, now flowering squash plant:

Switcheroo

It's not funny to me now, but I hope it will be ten years down the line. Work has me switching offices. I work two half time jobs that add up to a full time paycheck. Too bad one of the half time jobs doesn't realize it's half time. I talked to my boss to the problem. I'm being transferred to a new office. Problem solved? Uh, no, because the half my bosses transferred is the easy half. Now I'll be working for an office that I've had the pleasure to support a handful of times over the last couple of years.

This office is trouble.

Put yourself back on the playground. There's a kid sitting on the swings, not swinging, staring at you. You think, "Hey, maybe he thinks I look like someone he knows. He wouldn't want to beat me up. People just don't do that." So you run around with a couple of your friends playing tag. You look up. He's closer. More, the look on his face is one part Freddy Krueger, one part shark maw, frozen mid-bite by the magic of digital video. Someone calls your name. You turn and trip. Was that a leg?

On the way back into class he points you out to his friends. Your velcro wallet goes missing after gym. He drops something nasty and green into your milk at lunchtime. When you complain about it to the teacher, she sits everyone down for a conference and the kid says it was all a big misunderstanding and how a lack of familiarity can turn even friendly faces into scary creatures... in short, all of the crap he's learned to shovel over the years to avoid having to fess up over his bad attitude. At the end of the conference, you shake hands and he smiles just as wide as the teacher wants him to, only you can't: as he shakes your hand he's digging into your wrist with his fingernails.

When you walk home, you realize he lives three doors down from you. His mom and your mom really, really want you to be friends, because then they can send one over to the other's house and halve those pesky babysitting bills.

You don't even know his name and you know it's not going to work. Worse, you feel bad for your mom. Money doesn't grow on trees and you need to get out of the house once in a while.

Yeah, well, it's still not going to work. Can we call it at that?

Not today.

I first found out I would be transferred when my on-site contact told my boss that she didn't like my personality. Sure, sometimes I try to cultivate a hard nosed character on stage, but at work I try to be earnest and interested, if slightly worn out from my extracurriculars. My boss had the answer, and that answer was transfer. I got confused and asked my on-site contact what she meant and she could give me no good answer. When I got upset she said the transfer could happen then (end of February) or now (end of June). I didn't want to leave at all. I picked later.

Well, I thought, maybe I'm not giving them a fair shake. I'll probably like the new office.

No. I did not like the new office. Not at all. I told the outgoing tech support guy about this. He told me why my experience was unusual. See, even though the people I had not liked had behaved badly towards me, misunderstanding me, interrupting when I was trying to explain, sending out emails to complain about the work when I was halfway through and forced to move on because at that point I was supporting three offices while the outgoing tech was on vacation, all of the bad feelings I felt didn't matter because that was them being them. Sure. My point exactly. His advice: don't let it make me act nasty toward them.

I'm a ComedySportz ref. Until you've played target to a houseful of drunken twentysomethings out to prove that they're funnier than the show they paid to see, you don't know the meaning of the word patience.

I know how to take it and smile. It doesn't mean I want to. And just because I can doesn't mean I should, or that anyone should, but since I own my skin, I'm the one who has to look out for it.

I spoke to the on-site contact about establishing parameters of service, things that I can and cannot do. I want to establish to everyone that I am half time and that there will be some times I can't immediately see to their issues because I've got a line of issues as long as my arm on a good day. He said it would undermine my position. I think he's right. I wish it would undermine it. Some offices come to depend on a network admin to the point of addiction, where they stop caring whether they click on an infected file. Who cares when someone else can clean up your mess? Why learn when you've got someone else to do your learning for you? Isn't that what money is FOR?

Bless you, Mr. President.

I've complained a lot lately. It bugs me. Maybe I will like the new job better. Maybe the new kid's not so bad. We both like Spider-Man more than Superman. He stole my super-poseable, but he let me play with his Legos. Sure, it sucks, but patience is its own reward. Besides...

I dragged that Spider-Man through the poison ivy behind the tracks. I hope he puts it in his mouth.

I'm sending out resumes. Today.

Hi, my name is Matt and...

..I once bought a pound of chocolate covered pretzels before seeing a show at Second City. I thought I was going to share.

I ate the entire bag.

..and suddenly knew what it was like to TASTE through TIME.

Bike the Drive Pics

Sunday morning, I signed on to Bike the Drive, a cool Chicago event where they empty IL-49 - otherwise known as Lakeshore Drive - of cars and set up bicycling-friendly conditions for 15 miles. The route went from Hollywood in the north to the Museum of Science and Industry at 57th in the south, with special event booths dead center at Columbus and Balbo. Water breaks at three and four mile intervals as well as flag-waving volunteers kept even the not so fit - mentally and physically - hydrated and in line.

I biked with a smile on my face... but there was trouble in my heart. First, the humidity was cranked about as high as you can get before the air turns to Jell-o and, second, is 5:30 AM really the bes time to start this sucker? On a Sunday? Do I LOOK like an early riser? (I'd like to be. Tell me I am. Do these pants make me look like an early riser? Be honest. I won't be mad.) I had a 10:00 ComedySportz show the night before, so "early to bed" was not an option. I set the alarm for six. Unfortunately, I set the music station to NPR. Note: the easiest way to sleep through an hour and a half of alarm is to motivate yourself with light jazz and news commentary. So I got out late and did about half the course, but I did get a t-shirt, a number, two bananas, a bagel and a free PowerBar, so I consider that $40 well spent.

Hold on, let me turn off the sarcasmatron. Yeah, I kind of do. I wish it cost less, but all of the bicycling stuff around Chicago does make it seem much safer for bicyclists than most metropolises (metropoli?). And if you divide everything up, my bagel only cost about ten dollars, which is about right in 2014 dollars, not adjusted for inflation.

April's Starch March

Despite my firstborn son status, I survived Passover. Eating matzoh for a week and a day didn't help. When I got on the treadmill the Saturday afterwards, it felt like I had accidentally worn my combination gym shorts/X-ray lead apron. Energy bled out of me. I refused to extend the ban against leavened foods to my diet beverages. To all for whom Coca-Cola is banned from kosher-for-Passover foods because of its corn syrup, I say, "Suckers." Still, the twelve miles was very, very hard. They say your body has about two thousand calories' energy stored in its muscles. This is your "gas tank" and when it goes empty, that's your "wall". Runners like colorful metaphors. I hit the wall at about seven miles. Now I know why runners like to eat a big dinner of pasta the night before.

Brandi and I celebrated the end of Passover by eating most of a Chicago-style deep dish pizza with extra cheese and tomato sauce. I can't help but wonder if Moses and the Thirteen Tribes did the same when they reached the Promised Land.

The thirteen miles I did the next weekend went much quicker. My secret: a giant Jewel-Osco cookie, with frosting, and lots of sleep.

My dad used to talk about exercise giving him energy. I never had any idea what the hell he was taking when he said it. Exercise bums my body out. I work out and I need lots of rest. At least, I usually do. After my thirteen mile run, I was wired. When I came home and tried to burn a DVD for my friend Bob, the computer crapped out. "Stupid computer," I wanted to shout at it, "I'm ready for more. Run, dammit!" But like so many things in the tech industry, just punching it did more harm than good.

I didn't actually punch my computer. I haven't seriously abused my electronics since the time I took my iMac's keyboard and slammed it into my recliner as hard as I could. A couple of "shift" keys came off, as I recall, and a bunch of the numeric keypad. So, if you ever wonder why I consider re-attaching keys that have popped off the keyboard, consider that my start. I also once punched my computer so hard the processor popped out of the motherboard. Boy, did that scare the crap out of me. "Disconnected?!" Slam. Computer goes blank. Matt tries to remember how much money a new computer would cost and how soon he can get one. As a lark, he opens up the case of his computer, looking to see how much silicon he's going to have to solder together to get the old thing to work. To his surprise, he discovers the heat sink and processor have dislodged from the motherboard. He plugs it back in. The computer powers up. Matt hears a silent reply from the gods of computing: it was not her time; it was too soon.

I have trouble sleeping sometimes. What doctors call insomnia, I call "cats". We saw an animal behaviorist to learn why one of our cats held her feces so long, she began throwing up because her digestive system literally could hold nothing more, and why the other one sometimes uses what he likes to think of as the literbox and what we think of as "pillows". Apparently, there is a silent power struggle in our home. Also, cats' noses are 3500 times more powerful than our own. I suspect that number. Wouldn't that mean if a cat smelled a flower, he would explode? Regardless, we have to clean the litterbox more often. We also need to devote 20 minutes a day to getting them aerobic exercise. Twenty minutes each. I joked about one of us quitting our jobs to become cat parents. Brandi said, "You told me getting a cat would be a lot of work." Being right sucks when it doesn't get you out of anything.

Brandi also swapped around bells to deal with the issues of dominance - one cat seems to have developed a dominant streak in addition to the permanent PMS she seems to be suffering whenever she meows. I swear when I hear it I want to write a symphony of nails on a chalkboard, just to have something more pleasant to hear. Rio, our orange cat, now has three bells to Patrick's none. Whenever she bounces it sounds like the opening strains to "Jingle Bells". Unfortunately, cats are nocturnal, so while they do like to sleep on top of us for part of the night, they also roam in the very early morning. I've woken up at four in the morning two days in a row only to look at the clock and groan.

I did have an interesting dream this morning. Last night, Brandi and I joked about quitting our jobs and moving into our garage to eliminate 90% of our rent and most of our utilities. My sleeping brain must have been listening because in my dream we had downgraded to exactly that and the cats were driving me absolutely nuts there. I also had terrible flu-like symptoms. I woke up - in the dream - and tried to find the computer or the phone to call in sick to work. Eventually, probably when the alarm went off, I realized it was a dream. I opened my eyes for real... and felt okay. I was only dream sick. I think it was my unconscious phoning in sick because the dream wasn't very good or original. It was the best it could do.

Brandi asked me the other day if I had goals. I rattled off a short list of them, including, "make the best Chicken Parmesan ever" since, coincidentally, I was making Chicken Parmesan at the time. I want to lead an interesting life. A long time ago, in eighth grade, I thought I could lead an interesting life by writing one. I think that dream lasted until I saw "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", and I realized that writers trying to lead interesting lives either a) burn out or b) lie. The honesty bug makes lying painful and socially awkward for me, so I opted out. Sure, I still write and love it, but it's something I want to make part of my life, not something I want to carve my life out of. Perhaps the distinction is semantic.

Regardless, I want to make elegance. Sometimes I draw. Other times I perform improvisational comedy. Alarmingly, I haven't found a good way that also brings in a lot of money, although, strangely enough, the ways I have found wound up costing us a lot in taxes every year. You won't catch me saying this very often, but thank goodness for George W. Bush and the repeal of the marriage tax. Whoa. That hurt more than I thought it would. I think I had less trouble running a half marathon.

Brandi and I wisely chose to do both our laundry and taxes on the same night. I won't imply there was friction, but I will say it's a good idea we didn't soak anything we owned in anything flammable. We owed. Between the two of us we had at least a small child's body weight in clothing. Several highlights of the evening: 1) sending that letter off with the taxes, our payment, and a middle finger aimed squarely at a conservative government bent on spending my money on crap like Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay, 2) the hauling, 3) laundromat television blaring really loud Spanish soap operas at us for three hours, 4) thanking the woman at the counter at the post office for staying there late to handle us last-minute stragglers, whereby decreasing by 0.000004% the chance that someone in the near future will "go postal", 5) did I mention the hauling?, 6) pretending the change machine was a slot machine, sticking a twenty dollar bill and "winning" twenty dollars in quarters. Hey, I get my entertainment where I can.

The nice thing about getting laundry done is never having to gamble that you're going to walk under a black light while wearing your favorite pair of pants for the eleventh time. This has happened to me and it was not, not, not pretty.

There but for the grace of God go I.

Looks like the mayor trotted out the nice weather preview today. Not bad, Mr. Mayor. Your choice of seventy degrees married to partly cloudy skies and gentle breezes may just be the master stroke of your political career. Then again, some of the naysayers are blogging about your taking advantage of the creation of someone with even more connections. I wonder what He would think of that, sir.

This weekend, I played a show held in honor of the theatre where I have performed for almost the last six years. 2851 North Halsted played host to shows with John Malkovitch, Gary Sinise, Laurie Metcalf and a thousand other Chicago theatre stars, legends, afficionados and hobbyists. The show alternated scenes from St. Nicholas productions, Steppenwolf and ComedySportz, and, yeah, we held our own against actors far more seasoned. You get a lot of leeway with comedy. Deanna, Martin and I did Brecht/Ibsen stage directions with the directions parts shouted offstage by Katherine and Keith. I don't say this often enough but our timing rocked. Fresh-faced improvisers often make the mistake of filling the air with sound. I used to peform with a guy - "Jethro", but he was born "Jeff" - who made sound effects every time he took a step. Unfortunately for him, he also really liked to set his partner up with intricate, clever arguments, which he would invariably punctuate with some weird farting noise because he was baking quiche. He was great once he quit that habit. Other improvisers just talk. And talk. Did I mention the talking? I learned reasonably early on in sketch writing that efficiency counts most. People use ten words when they could use three or one and a tilt of their head... Why? Because they don't trust the actors or audience to know their intent, and so they trade clarity for mystery or tension.

We did not trade clarity for mystery. Given a Brechtian location of junkyard, Deanna immediately went searching for her lost wedding ring, an opening with about a million overtones of sadness, anger, love, shared history. Martin and I hardly had to move.

I should also take a moment to mention the other two scenes: Pick-a-Play and Blind Line Mamet. In Pick-a-Play you usually have two players reading and one justifying, grounding the scene and helping to marry lines from, for instance, Shakespeare and Duck Tales. Our artistic director, Joe Janes, chose to make all three actors read from plays by the same author - Sam Shepard. The unity of voice allowed Sara, Paul and Martin (again!) to relate to each other through voice, body language, mime... in other words, acting. For the suggestion, Joe got a Sam Shepard location (trailer park). Sara broke hearts when she cracked open that first brewski.

Last before the Panel of Famous Former Tenants, Scot, Rich and Ben performed Blind Line Mamet, set in a typical Mamet location (pawn shop). All the lines the players pulled out at random came from David Mamet plays. My favorite in light of the Brown Bag or "We never say anything dirty at ComedySportz because like Jackie Chan we want to play family friendly to increase ticket sales, and this is generally a good idea" Foul was, "Money talks and bullshit walks..." Three guys in suits wandering around a pawn shop cursing at each other? The audience ate it up. Props to Scot for trying to sell, um, something and props to Ben for not giving in to the improv urge to identify everything because, man, Mamet is vague, sometimes infuriatingly.

Oh, I also got drunk on expensive champagne.

They had glasses of it out. It was billed as a "champagne brunch". I had just finished my scene and felt relieved my unburnt bridge to the rest of the Chicago theatre community stayed unburnt, so I wandered out into the lobby. Brandi started me off on watching my calories, so I didn't want to stuff Ann Sathers cinnamon rolls into my face, delicious and sinful though they were. Put enough work into your workout and eating starts to feel like an investment. Of course, after everyone went in to the theatre to watch the show(s), they stopped putting fresh glasses out, so I had to open one myself. In the coatroom. Because I was afraid of getting caught. I poured a glass and headed back inside the theatre, resisting the urge to chug. I still drank it quickly.

Then I got another one.

Oh, my poor liver, you were born for better things.

Brandi and I had a glass of wine at dinner, testing out the Costco Riesling we want to use for Thursday's seder at our house. We both almost fell asleep into our Chicken Parmesan. I would have slept for the rest of the night, except that I had another ComedySportz show (Battleprov) that I had to ref (badly; at one point telling the audience to send a player out of the room, "...with a one, two, three! Ready? Goodbye [player]!" Pause. "I just forgot how to count to three.").

In retrospect, I'm kind of lucky to be alive.

Certainly on a day like today.

Enjoying the sunset.

Pinned by the turtle

Babysitting duties this Saturday, with Brandi and special guest rockstar Michal. We trundled off to the local playground to work off some energy. Michal dared me to crawl under the cement turtle. I did it. "Now sit up!" I could not. If I had to guess, I would say I couldn't have sat up underneath it since the late seventies, when I was Michal's size. I did make Brandi take this great shot, though. It looks like we wrestled and I lost.

By the way, if I'm ever homeless and out of friends, I'm making the underside of this turtle my home. It's small but still roomier than my studio on Melrose. I kid. The studio had a closet. Just a few blankets would keep me warm in the turtle's concrete embrace through wintertime. The shell would keep out rain. Maybe a length of chicken wire for the larger vermin? Maybe a hot plate? Maybe I'm gonna think this plan through a little harder?

Aw, turtle.

Some wine with that cheese

Nothing hurts more than losing a patient. Unless that patient belonged to somebody you didn't like. Plausible deniability works, but you have to fake sorrow.

We have a guy who works at one of my offices. People call him "Buzz". He's old enough, but I'm sure he never walked on the moon. Buzz has problems with technology. Lucky for him, though, he's a legend in his own mind. He breezes into the office with a sheaf of stuff to scan for, I dunno? His personal archives? He can't use a computer.

I walked through the door this Wednesday and smelled trouble just as strong as the smell of burnt pizza drifting up from the Giordano's four floors below. Our office manager walked up to me. She wore a smirk. "Buzz is looking for you."

"Oh?"

"The Internet is out at his home. He's going to ask you to fix it."

"We're not supposed to do support outside of the office."

"I know. [The admin you replaced] went to his house. He's going to ask you to go to his house."

What? Does nobody tell this man "no"? Apparently not, because about ten minutes later, Buzz walks by my desk.

"Uh... Yeah, the Internet's out at my home."

Pause. What was he waiting for? Me to ask how I could leap to the rescue? Where he lived? Whether he broke the Internet? "Okay..."

"Yeah, I need it to work."

"I can't work outside of the office."

"Well, the other fellow came by."

"I'm not him."

Buzz went through a bunch of different reasons why I needed to restore Internet connection to his home. Some things you should know: Buzz doesn't work for my office, per se, but he has received grants for travel and a computer because he promised to drum up enthusiasm for our seminars. So far, $10,000 later, nothing. He has an office on campus he never uses. He has an assistant who he used so infrequently, she was re-absorbed back into our main office. However, he needed the home computer for, er, work email. His wife works for the state retirement system and would be out of luck without that computer. If that failed, he would "talk to [my boss]". I respond to veiled threats with unveiled apathy.

"Can I tell her to give you a call?" he asked, turning large, watery eyes towards me.

"She can give me a call," I said. My shoulders slumped.

So she did. It helped that his wife was nice and seemed more lost than demanding. She gave me the error message, which I looked up. Not a lot of solutions. At home, they used dialup. So many things can go wrong with dialup. Worse, it's not like you can call tech support when your computer blows up. She was speaking on her cell phone. Okay, that works. Her computer still didn't. The limited information I had suggested her modem had failed or become unseated from the motherboard, but like many users she had her own opinions about her granddaughter using her computer, or maybe the lightning storm, or maybe...? One thing was sure, her operating system did not see a modem attached where once there was a modem, and the computer was very, very old.

I recommended she get a new computer, but, that being just my opinion, I also looked up Yahoo! tech support, so she could consult more advanced minds than mine. She called back ten minutes later. "They couldn't help." I gave her Dell's support number. Ten minutes later, nobody called. I thought I was off the hook.

The next day, the computer showed up at my desk. Buzz brought it in. He didn't leave a note, though. I realized it was his computer because, two minutes after I walked in the door, our office manager handed me a slip of paper showing me the model of computer Buzz had taken home from the office. They matched. On the minus side, the problem would not go away. On the plus, I might be able to fix the problem just by re-seating the modem.

I couldn't fix the problem. Was it the modem driver? Well? Aztech, the modem maker with the name adorably combining technology with bloody sun god worship, had drivers for Windows 2000, but only for New Zealand. Installing them kind of fixed the problem, at least until I tried to dial out. No dice. I looked up other access numbers. The computer made "faxing" noises, but fell shy of handshaking and acknowledging username and password. I installed the XP modem driver for US computers. Yahoo! still hated me.

"You're going to have to get another computer," I said for the second time.

He stared at me. "So, what are you saying?"

Nothing hurts more than losing a patient. Except losing your patience. That sucks, too.

Hey

Hey! What's going on? Lissen up.

Brandi started counting calories. I did, too. I'm a follower. Almost immediately, I realized I was taking in a lot more than I thought I was, back when I wondered why I wasn't losing weight. Now I know why Subway doesn't show Jared eating that three pack of chocolate chip cookies. Now that I'm not just exercising to lose weight, I can focus on the marathon.

Hey.

Yeah, October will come all too soon if I don't start ramping up my mileage. Luckily, this time, I'm almost as ahead of the game as my sister Heather is on everything else. Last week, I ran 9 miles. You're supposed to ramp up by about a mile a week. I have 29 weeks. Possibly, I may be able to scale up more slowly than my first and only marathon.

Hey.

...is for horses, Brandi's most lovable bit when we drive along country roads. When she spots a bale, she points. "Hay!" she says, but it's not as funny typed. Try it with your friends.

Hey.

...makers are what boxers use to punch each other out. I feel that way in the morning. I try to tell myself I'm drinking that Diet Coke at 9:00 AM because it tastes so good. Who am I kidding? Caffeine is bad for you unless you have the genes to clear it out of your system. I have no idea if I have the genes. I don't smoke and drink in moderation. Can someone tell me how I can steer clear of an early grave and chug away at sweet things and not gain weight? Also, let me know if I'm asking too much.

Hey.

T. Hate is for losers. I try to keep a good attitude, but work sometimes gets me down, particularly when I feel a boss or co-workers lie to me. I'll probably blog more about this as I'm able to pull away more from it. Suffice it to say, if I had the opportunity to quit my job, pretend to be a gay hairdresser and tour around the country for the next six months giving, you know, "flamboyant" advice to straight women about their hair for a $50,000 paycheck, I'd do it. Which is why it's funny that I'm auditioning for just such a role on Tuesday. Time to bone up on my Sean Hayes impersonation. This may be a bit of a stretch for me. Forgive me, Brandi, for I may have to leave the wedding ring on the keychain this time. I hope next time the American Psychiatry Association has people giving out hilarious Lucy-style psychiatric advice in the style of Niles Crane. I can do a David Hyde Pierce.

Hey.

...beas corpus. Habeas corpus ad subjiciendum. Help, I am being held against my will in my job and my apartment. I want to live in a nice place and sleep for money, but apparently there's no money in being lazy, and I'm just going to have to toe the line until I can come up with the one thing everyone needs, nobody has, somebody can't market, and Microsoft can't co-opt. It might be an uphill battle.

I'm breaking out of the mold, though. I wear sneakers to work. I used RealVNC to access my Unix-based, elegantly interfaced at-home Mac mini from work. Technology is like growing extra arms; it's great until you get to the pits. Buying a car helped. Having a bicycle helps more, or would if I could just get my butt in gear and fix my flat. My cell phone doubles as a computer, and has more processing power than the one I owned ten years ago and a screen resolution just under half what I owned when I first went to college. Sprint, when you sold me the data plan, y'all got served.

Hey.

Rrrr. It's time to shave. I've got hair coming out of every pore on my face and an audition on Tuesday that I don't want to walk into as Harvey Fierstein. Time to get rid of the steel wool. I'll miss the maturity it gave me. I keep catching my eye in plate glass windows, somber, sober, bits of gray under my chin reminding me, "You're old. Eventually, you'll die, but before then, you'll turn into a fleshy raisin." Thanks, beard. On top, the advance of gray has slowed to a crawl. I feel a very mild betrayal coming from my body, like asking for a Gatorade and receiving a Propel. Sure, it's a little better for you, but, man, it's not what I asked for. My shoulders seem to have grown hair in sympathy. This may be the first summer I wax for the beach. The pain doesn't bother me, just the shame. Should I get one of those big sticks you can attach to an electric razor to shave your back? Or just wear a t-shirt and intimate I forgot to do my situps? Choices...

Hey.

...lows and pretty little angel wings, my comedy students are starting to enjoy class, which is great because I'm going to start kicking their butts. I teach ComedySportz 202, scenic study. After a boring beginning last week where I talked way too much, this week went a lot better, with more scenes, more action, more living examples of what it means to bring something to the table when you write and act simultaneously.

I read an article about younger folks making more demands when they start jobs. More vacation, more pay, more opportunities for promotion, and if they don't get it, they walk. All well and good, but what does it really mean? More excuses to live with Mom and Pop, waiting for the perfect opportunity. I dig boldness, yeah, but too much reads as arrogance. Sometimes you've just got to bite the bullet and take the best thing you can get. Do I sound like a spoiled white collar, white American with a bachelor's in drinking? Bite me. I did my time in food service. I might again, just to show those young non-bearded, non-graying schmucks. Want some attitude with your latte?

Hey.

Z. Purple haze. My calluses are coming in again for guitar. Before I started playing, I always thought you got calluses on your strumming hand. Funny how you just assume it's the more active one. Wire strings hurt. I'm starting in on bar chords, but they are really touch and go. My incentive: "Puff the Magic Dragon". Start in G, go to B min, C, back to G, A7, D7, G again. That first switch usually takes me a couple of minutes to get right. I want to get to the point where I can play it and not have the eight year olds I'm hypothetically supposed to be entertaining wandering off to see if their college loans are in order. Funny how I always wanted to play guitar, you know, without all that rigamarole of learning how to do it. It's the allure of the Matrix. Sure, machines took over the scorched earth, turned people into batteries, kept everybody alive by liquifying the dead and feeding them back to the living and trapped everybody in a bottle reality that looks suspiciously like an idealized Chicago. Keanu Reeves learned kung fu in, like, three seconds. Wish they'd downloaded an acting program.

Cheap shot, sorry, couldn't resist. Pure jealousy, Keanu. Now that Hugo Weaving, on the other hand...

Hey.

...zel eyes. What can be prettier? My wife has big, brown, beautiful eyes and looks like a movie star. She's stunning and nothing drives me nuts faster than anyone disparaging her inner and outer beauty, not least of all, her. What beasts lurk in our subconscious? Wicked, wicked beasts, always looking to tear us down. Do I look fat in this blog?

Hey.

...drian's Wall, the northernmost line separating Roman incursion into Great Britain, now, more or less, the line between England and Scotland. Mason Dixon of its day. The line between you and me, barbarians and civilization. Do the haters win when we close all our borders down and stop trying to meddle in the dark corners of the world? Are they winning already?

Hey.

..des, I'm running out of words, and time, and brown hair, and patience for people too clever by half. Play well with each other. It's a cold world out there, but, thanks to oil addiction and carbon emissions, getting warmer. Scientists agree: it's going to be an interesting future. Watch out. It's happening now. And now. And now.

Yes.

Now.

This is dumb, but...

...isn't it ironic that there's a "fist" in "pacifist"?

The point is that it doesn't use it.

ComedySportz Costume Contest

ComedySportz held rehearsal for new hires tonight, hosted by the second-to-newests. We each took a number - one through four - on the way in and divided into four groups. We then competed in a series of contests. First, we picked names. Ones became "Tramp-o-Lean", twos "TwosDaze with Morrie", threes "Helluva Fighter" and fours (my team) "Jaywalkers". Threes won that round, though there were many more after, including team cheers (two did human pyramids, us included), team logo, and - pictured here - team costume. ComedySportz and our second-to-newest facilitators provided the materials: markers, red, white and blue tissue paper, aluminum foil, tape and the bag to hold it all in. You can see from the picture two teams used their Office Depot bags as diapers. After costumes came eight sealed challenges. Congratulations to Tramp-o-Lean for taking the championship and to our daring models Ric Walker, Tim Whetham, Scot Goodhart and Zach Thompson. The push-ups are payin
g off!

Chunks Blown

I had a bad show last night. Everything but Rap Line started with a whimper and went downhill from there. My third show of three this week and the first since last week that I didn't ref. Don't get me wrong. I kind of blew chunks when I refereed the ComedySportz Training Center 303s and 404s, but the best-worst thing about reffing is knowing that, even if you f'd up, you've got half a million more words until the end of the show to redeem yourself. In the Sunday show, I completely blanked on explaining "Growing/Shrinking Machine". I've got a shoebox full of excuses, not least of which was an ambitious game lineup I that felt less like a solid show than trying to shoehorn two shows in one. So I got the suggestion and let 'er rip. Cap'n Alice, improv trooper that she was, played along, starting the scene out. Each person after shouted "freeze", entering the scene and thereby starting a new scene based on everybody's position... like "Freeze Tag" but with numerical constraints. When all the players are tagged in, the last player shouts, "Freeze" or finds a way to exit and the scenes return in reverse order. See? I can explain it. Except that I didn't and just admitted it to the crowd, saying, "Sorry. Well, you know what it is now. If anybody has any questions, see me after the show."

You don't get that chance as a player.

Every couple of weeks, the artistic direction at ComedySportz changes emphasis. Environment was being pushed two weeks ago. Now, it's want. Characters have an inner monologue that we as an audience only hear when the keyboard ramps up and the players burst into song. As a character last night, I had no want except for quiet, a want which all-too-easily reflected my own sleepiness when I got to the theatre, but which was hard to get amidst the spectacle and fake "I'm gonna punch you so hard your mama's gonna feel it" atmosphere of improv competition.

And you know what's funny? That's not even a counterproductive want for the show. The other team captain, Mike underplayed much of the show to brilliant effect. Challenged to come up with something more battle worth than Rocks-Paper-Scizzors, he brought out the Fluffy Chick... of Death. Then, when two thirds of the audience wasn't paying attention, he stomped on it. The final third fell in love then, and I can't say I blame them. Buster Keaton underplays well. He invested in situations that at time risked life and limb - see: house falling on, window in the right place, saved by - but it didn't play on his face. The trick is to hang back, ready to strike like the coiled cobra. Slumping in the corner like an understuffed owl just does not cut it.

I am proud of winning Rap Line, though. There aren't many words that rhyme with "Ferrari". I'll post the near-winning rhyme, umm, later. Everybody needs a mystery, even an understuffed own.

Live from Kol Ami

Brandi as Vashti, in her solo singing debut. Gershwin is the theme of Purim this year and as you can see, everybody went all-out. Well, kind of high school all-out, but the theme is there. The fellow in the Lone Ranger mask is playing Haman, the bad guy of the story, who wants to kill all of the Jews. You boo when you hear his name.

The performers cleverly adapted the lyrics to George and Ira Gershwin classics. I wish I knew more George and Ira Gershwin classics. Performances went from "really great try" to "well, okay, that was amazing; I wish the microphone hadn't cut out" and everywhere in between. Brandi was, of course, stunning.

As you can tell from the quality, I took these pictures with my cameraphone in the sanctuary. I hope I didn't break any rules doing so. I consider tacit permission given, since they asked me and another guy named Matt to videotape the proceedings, and of course they didn't specifically forbid photos.

If you found me tomorrow, struck by lightning, you'll know which deity to haul in for questioning.

Ticktockman

My watch reads March 17th, but I think it's getting ambitious. I don't know why it reset itself, but we had a thunderstorm last night and maybe my wrist got struck by lightning, just a little.

I had a tough time getting up this morning. All the flashes and booming sounded like somebody targeted Chicago for an airstrike. All the red states finally decided to gang up and get rid of those pesky blues dotting the edges of the map. The madness spreads until it becomes the de facto status quo, and that's just way too much Latin for anyone.

I meant to swim this morning. Nothing doing. It felt too good to lay in bed for the extra hour. Rather than do work today, I learned how to count to thirty-one on one hand. It's actually pretty easy if you do it in binary. Add another hand and you can count to more than a thousand. You have to have pretty flexible fingers to do it, but you can do it.

I played referee at a ComedySportz show last night. I kept forgetting key elements, like how the players were going to play their games. I blame it on a pre-emptive lightning strike on my brain. The best improv feels like surfing the information pool in your brain. The worst feels like you got caught in the eddies and all your paddling just gets you more tangled in the rushes. Also, it makes your metaphors really intricate. Twice in the last month, I've found myself in scenes trying to remember what Dean Kamen invented that was supposed to revolutionize the world of transportation by zipping people around on two self-balancing wheels. Hint: not a bicycle. Second hint: it's a Segway. Third hint: get a bicycle.

Last November, I wrote a novel called "Greater Than". It still needs finishing, but one of the characters deliberately downs aspartame to make himself more stupid and to drown out the voices of an alien consortium controlling him and the destiny of humankind. I think a lot of novel writing is wishful thinking, but that might be wishful thinking.

In a moment of panic last night, I thought I had a second ComedySportz show, so after my first show I dropped Brandi off at her rehearsal and zipped back up to the theatre. My friend and fellow performer Tara showed up to ref and I wish I could say we had a ref off, but I just left to hit the Target.

Tara is amazing. When she plays games she's just great. When she screws up she's even better. I use her as my gold standard for why failure should not bother you. Audiences love it when you a) acknowledge that what they saw and what you saw were both out of whack with what you intended and b) get over yourself and play to your strengths. Speaking of strengths, the hilarious thing about Tara is that, maybe sixty percent of the time she does an impression of everybody's dropped-out-of-high-school uncle, with a voice that sounds like she drinks a case of beer to fall asleep and a half a pack of cigarettes to wake up. You can see her face in the dictionary next to, "Heeeeeeyyyyyyyyy!" Thirty percent of the time, she sounds like a grandmother who has been carefully preserved in Oil of Olay and makes cooing sounds at each and every precious widdle thing you do. "Isn't that the most precious thing?" she'll say and then pile on the hugs. Ten percent of the time she sounds like Kathleen Turner, you know, when she was awesome, which is hot.

So, off to Target I went, where I tried to take a picture of our car, parked opposite another Scion XA, Scion a Scion, battle to the death, or at least better gas mileage. I couldn't get a good angle. You have to picture it. It's amazing. Some day, I need to get a wide angle lense for my cameraphone, or turn my eyes into cameras like they promised us all the Cyberpunk street punks would get in any William Gibson novel. Someday.

I take comfort in the knowledge that my watch will get there first.

The War on Pants

One and a half miles in the pool. Sixty laps in fifty-seven minutes. The chlorine doesn't bleach my hair so much as make it feel like a mass of wool dipped in tar. The Damen bus skipped right past me at Polk. I ran three blocks to catch up to it at Malcolm X college, trying not to feel too bad if I didn't. I assume I could fit in just fine at the MX campus. I'm white but I have soul.

I still feel fat.

Six miles on a treadmill on Wednesday. Twenty more to go before the long run is long enough for October. January second, my co-worker Nick signed up for the Chicago marathon. I waited until July last year. Registration closes at 40,000 runners, so the deadline is flexible, kinda. I needed a paycheck for the ninety bucks it costs to sign up. I missed it by a week. They won't catch me flat footed this year. Pun not intended. I signed up two months ago.

Another co-worker, Alicia, sees me in the hallway. "Did you gain weight?" she asks, perfectly innocently. "I mean, you look good..." Brandi promises to kill her.

I joined a gym. Two gyms, actually. The YMCA gives me a place to play racquetball with my honey, run, lift weights, do the elliptical trainer, hum along with the Village People song and feel bad for the residents who probably don't think it's all that fun to stay there, all close to home. After work, I can walk down to the University gym, which I joined almost the same time I signed up for the marathon, and swim to my heart's content in the 75 yard pool. Wintertime, not as many people feel like dipping a toe in so I usually get a lane to myself. Other swimmers make me competitive. How dare the guy in the Hulk underoos swim trunks flip kick faster than me? I answer by speeding up. I work up the water-analog of a good sweat. Another facility on West Campus gives me choice and a slightly longer pool. New facility on top of the old tennis courts Brandi and I used to sneak onto until they started padlocking them and almost as an afterthought tearing them down. Soon, I won't have to get too worked up to get my worked out.

That's soon. Last week, I bruised my waist on my old pants. I just could not believe how big my waist had gotten and how quickly.

We bought a car. I got depressed on night and ate almost an entire Jewel big cookie, a cookie about the size of a medium pizza, with frosting. I eat cookies or cake after every lunch. You don't have to be too religious to see that some things happen for a reason.

Still, tonight I swam a mile and a half. It's a start. As that weird Mortal Kombat guy who could morph into all the other characters except Goro said, "Finish him."

By him, I mean "it". And by "it" I mean, "getting healthy" and also "the Chicago Marathon: opening salvo in the war on pants".

Face Junk

Other than not being Jewish, I still have a chance of being buried in a Jewish cemetary. One of the prerequisites is no tattoos. Piercings, I don't know. I have a few scars from whittling, stage combat, and blood donations - never at the same time - but other than that, I'm clean of markings that don't wash off. I always wanted a tattoo. Somehow, I can't embrace the permanence of it. What I like in the morning I hate by nightfall; putting any one piece of art on my body means I have to stare at it when I get out of the shower, every single damn day, or at least the days I bathe. I have thought about drawing something. Speaking less charitably than usual, most tattoos are skin cartoons. Artists draw lines then fill them in with color (sometimes). I can draw cartoons. I have a friend who draws them professionally - and, yes, I can see the logical fallacy in this as, said the allergic-to-seafood man, "I have a friend who ate thirty pounds of shrimp; anything he can do, I can do better..." I've worked as a graphic designer and I have the talent of a Schulz but the temper of a Dali. I can't let my skin will mock me.

I can stand tattoos on other people, even the wrong tattoos for the right reason. For instance, everybody gets Asian symbols. I think it's a rule for anyone who has ever gone skydiving. What makes kanji so much better than our alphabet? Do Japanese kids get the word "yeah!" tattooed on their shoulder blades? On second thought, probably yes. I mean, "Yeah!" My friend Fred has two Japanese symbols inked into his skin, one for either shoulder, and, no, I don't remember what they stand for and don't know enough Japanese to guess just by looking. I like Fred's tattoos. He got them at a time when his life was descending into / recovering from chaos and I think they centered him. But even though I don't know the other people with Asian-style tattoos, I sure can judge them.

<sidebar> I heard an interesting story about an Asian tattoo artist so tired of inscribing the same words - "bravery" and "lover" and "soulful" - into the skins of people who could not read the characters or even, perhaps, really understand the meaning of the words in their native tongues - that he started writing swears instead. I wonder how long he thought he could get away with it. I mean, it's not as if he was gently raking the characters into a Buddhist sand garden. Tattoos stay with you forever. Even frat boys visit China, sometimes.

Now what if you had a guy who just kept on going back, for different symbols? If I were that tattoo artist, I'd pull out my DVD of Memento and bookmark AltaVista's Babelfish and just go to town. Then if the victim ever went swimming in Beijing, everyone would know who raped and killed HIS wife*. <end sidebar>

There are other ways to mess with your body, though, and I'm not just talking about breast implants. I read a disturbing article with even more disturbing illustrations about subcutaneous implants made from silicone. Imagine breast implants, but not shaped like a jellyfish and not stuck in under the soft bits. One guy had weird proto-horns growing out of his forehead. A girl had brass knuckles clearly visible as an imprint above the soft bits, just below the collar bone. In the picture, she wore a look like she was going to reach in under her own skin, yank out the implant and beat you to death with them. Just like the porcupine quills, sometimes Nature very clearly says, "Stay away."

Then come the piercings. I can understand piercing ears. Brandi got her ears pierced when she was a little girl, because her grandfather loved girls with pierced ears and he promised her diamond earrings. I grew up just as it became fashionable for boys to get earrings. Left ear meant you were straight. Right ear meant not. Both ears meant you were Will Smith, who is neither because Jada Pinkett-Smith is a robot. Ever seen her in the same room as a strong magnet? I rest my case.

So, once the fashionistas opened up the floodgates of men's earrings, that was when I think all hell broke loose. I blame one-upsmanship. Suddenly, your boyfriend has more jewelry than you. What to do? Get double-pierced. Now you've got four holes in the soft tissue on either side of your cranium, how fashionable! How your girlfriends envy you, for a time, or at least until they can find an ice cube and a safety pin to settle the score. Then it's time to pierce something else. How about your tongue? Navel? Eyebrow, nose, cheek, naughty bits...

Pretty soon, you find you have to leave four hours early to make your flight, because you can't make it through airport security without first removing six pounds of surgical steel and high-grade silver from your body. You and Jada Pinkett-Smith have the same nightmares: you're all alone in a darkened room when suddenly someone throws a switch. A faint humming echoes and you find yourself rising, pulled from above by... an enormous junkyard magnet! Oh, the humanity (robotity)!

I mean, it's an interesting look, but does anyone else out there think a nose ring looks like a shiny booger? I work with a woman who wears one and it's all I can do to keep my own hands away from my face, for fear of sympathetic wiping. Some of the kids who work at the Alley don't even bother with the stud and get the pull-down kind, as popularized by the beef industry and bull fights. Others get the metal spikes that stick out of lower lips like a really vicious soul patch. Newsflash: it looks like you got stabbed by a leprechaun. Eyebrow rings look like stitches, or the Band-Aids you put on in lieu of stitches during a boxing match.

Yet, in direct defiance of my reservations, people keep their face hardware firmly planted in their face. Why? Why did I have to clean out Brandi's upper ear piercing, repeatedly, swabbing with alcohol and Q-tips and pulling out the occasional stray hair wrapped around the shaft of the earring? Why do people not necessarily all that well suited to public speaking build even more walls in the form of mush mouthed speaking, the direct result of a tongue stud that will not stay clean or out of the way when they try to form words? "If I pull it out the hole will close up..."

Well, duh. What's that tapping? Nature, at the window again, gently reminding you that, orthotrycyclene and aspartame and antibiotics to the contrary, she does not like to be trifled with. She always gets the last word, because we're all going to the same place: a Jewish cemetary. Well, some of us.

It reminds me of a quote I saw on the back of a sk8-er t-shirt a few years ago. On the front, it read, "He who dies with the most toys..."

And on the back...

"...still dies. NO FEAR!"

Yeah! No fear!

* John G.

Sometimes, I...

...sing along with the AC/DC song, "Highway to Hell" and add an extra "p" at the end, so it's "Highway to Help".

That way, I've twisted the original, "evil" intent into something nice, or at least, the promise of nice, once the help finally arrives, or you drive far enough towards it. Like a rest stop, or a full-blown oasis. In that way, isn't AC/DC a lot like a scratchy-voiced, irritating, Down Under kind of life?

I have too much time in my own head.

Progress...

"Progress is failing in a different way."

- Sarah Newby, IGPA Research Assistant

...said to me while I mucked up for the nth time trying to get the fax/scanning workstation to remember to send out a document. Reminds me of Bill Clinton getting elected by quoting Alcoholics Anonymous, "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." Isn't it?

Isn't it?

Also, that may not be the exact quote.