Opposites Attract

Does anyone remember that incredibly shitty Paula Abdul video with "Scat Cat" or was it MC Scat Cat. Who knows. To be honest it really doesn't matter it's just that when I say or hear "opposites attract" I think of Paula Abdul dancing on a roof with a horribly animated cat tap dancing. An animated cat tap dancing, what the fuck is that, that's like getting close to Xanadu fucked up. It was the eighties, and well there was blow, much blow and probably hookers.

SG is one of these chronic procrastinators. She is so much of one I bought her as a joke this T-shirt from Threadless that was yellow with this phrase printed on it that said "Procrastinators the leaders of tomorrow". To be honest I'm kind of slow and I was drawn to the fact that it said "procrastinators" everything after that was inconsequential. I'm that stupid blond (sorry blond people but me, I'm sort of dense) that hears a joke and only realizes it's funny after everyone else has laughed. Something kind of amusing a I pulled on her was that one day her library had a water main burst. She called me up before I had left for work asking me to bring clothing. It was something like bring a t-shirt and some pants that I wont' care about getting too dirty in. The t-shirt I brought.... "Procrastinators, the leaders of tomorrow."

Why I bring up all this procrastination talk is that we (SG and I) have started brewing beer finally. I have this problem where I have a really hard time switching gears and starting something I've never done. Show me how to do it and I will fucking go to town and run you into the ground to the point where you wish you could flash me with one of those memory erasing gizmo's from "Men and Black". The problem with procrastination is apparently for SG she hit this artificial brewing deadline. It was either a deadline or I actually was able to out wait her. About a week ago we started our cooking and primary fermentation of our Scottish Ale. The problem was that we started it when we had to go somewhere and brewing beer is apparently not one of those things you just do in between commercials. It's this lengthy process boiling followed by cooling to 70 degrees so that you can take an accurate hydrometer reading followed by transferring into a plastic bucket (aka: primary fermentation thing). It only becomes a problem when you start it at 2pm and you have to be somewhere at 6pm which was the case last Sunday. I'm not sure if I thought this was a fluke or something but tonight SG got this idea that we HAD to transfer our beer into giant glass bottle (aka: carboy, aka: giant fucking glass thing). Again we had somewhere to be and we only had about 30 minutes to sanitize all parts that were to come in contact with the beer and syphon the beer to the glass carboy. It got done but there was much cursing and stress of which I don't really like to work under. Again opposites I would have loved to just wait till tomorrow but it needed to be done tonight and well I guess it kind of did but somehow a procrastinator with an artificial deadline forced me to procrastinate from doing it.

There are other opposites attract and to be honest I'm not sure that has anything to do with it. SG and I are by and large very compatible except for procrastination which seems to come into play more than you think it would in a post academic life.

One other opposites which is bad, arguments. She wants to go away and calm down, I want to talk it out. You have no idea how many times that has gotten me into trouble.

Enough of all this jibber jabber I have some video games to achieve and they aren't going to achieve for themselves. I also have a pair of headphones hooked up to my retro stereo receiver here listening to CD101 and for a change they are playing continuously pleasing music without many commercials. Would I rather listen to Woxy.com? Yes but retro receiver knows nothing of these innertubes.

For about the last month or so I've had this ever increasing itch to start writing again. I'm not sure what it is. I feel manic bouncing between apathy and this desire to do something, anything. I blame in part what I am reading now. I have this tendency to absorb whatever I'm reading to the point where it bleeds over a little bit into my actual life. This isn't so bad when one reads a thing of thing fantasy novel and there are swords and dragons and all kinds of silly crap. It becomes a little bit more of a problem when you are reading a memoir by Augusten Burroughs on his early childhood. Everyone in the book is emotionally damaged in one way or another and while reading it I start to revaluate things I do and see aspects of mental illness what with my compulsive organization and sanding of imperfections on my house. Did I mention the dental picks? Oh sweet dental picks that remove paint from our lead pane windows.

...

About two weeks ago I bought a bunch of music and have been slowly listening my way through it. One album in particular that I am really digging is "New Wave" by Against Me! About a year ago one of SG's coworkers made me a copy of their live album "American's Abroad". At the time I didn't really know anything about Against Me! and my initial listen through made me feel little towards them either way. I have that problem when I listen to music, I've found if I really like it from the start I tend not to like it a year later. Then there are the times when I listen to something and I just can't stand it, so I put the album away and about three or four months later I listen to it again and I love it. This is sort of what happened when I made an MP3 CD awhile back I just happened to get a few of their songs on that disc. There's something about their music. It's raw with this feeling that punk used to have in the 70's before every teenage eyeliner wearing boy decided that punk was the best way to get out their angst that they didn't fit in and that they couldn't hook up with any girls. The guitar rifts are simple and driving more like the powerful undertones you get from a big diesel engine. The lead singer belts out all these meaningful lyrics in what initially makes you think is just him growling tonelessly. It's when you listen closer you realize he's actually growling notes and it sounds pretty damn good. Against Me! when I listen to them leaves me feeling that they are this scottish punk version of of a singer song writer like Ani Difranco. There's the depth of Ani Difranco with the roaring simplicity of old punk music.

A lyric in particular that I really like is from the song "Thrash Unreal".

This night is going to end when we’re damn well ready for it to be over. Worked all week long now the music is playing on our time. We do what we do to get by, and then we need a release.

Seen like that it really lacks the emotional hit you get when it's growled at you by lead singer Tom Gabel but I still really like it. How many times do you hit the weekend and you just need to let go drink a few beers and unwind because all week you've been doing what others want you to do and how many times do you not go get those drinks.

APATHY

In the truest display of what I can think can sum up apathy I give this example. Yesterday I walked into the break room at around 12:30 to grab some pasta salad that SG made. Scrumptious pasta salad, God I love pasta salad. Standing there is one of my coworkers and upon entering said coworker warns me that there is a giant puddle on the floor. The puddle is obvious as it has soaked the rug next to the break room sink. Not caring and only focused on the lovely that is pasta salad I go back to my desk.

Fast forward to three hours later I go to the break room to get some coffee. What do I see? The puddle still there and upon greater inspection I notice that the puddle looks to be originating from the water cooler. Better yet sitting in the puddle is a surge protector. Doing the only apathetic thing I can think off I tap the puddle with my shoe, fill up my coffee mug and go mock this thing that I have seen to a coworker. Did I think to take a picture? Yes but when I went back someone had cleaned it up which totally ruined my anonymous email to OSCEA.

GET OFF OF THE EFFING STAGE

If what I've heard is true about writing and it being like a muscle then my writing muscle is something close to that of a bed ridden comatose person with oozing bed sores. I read once that programmers should get in the habit of writing even if they don't have much to say. The idea is that by getting in the habit of writing on a daily basis it will make it easier to do things like write specifications and documentation of code. As it is my writing for specifications and comments to tickets goes something like "Me code, fix broke thing, code better, think maybe. Coffee?"

I have this loathing, this burning hatred for Lifestyles Community Pavilion. I thought it was that maybe I just hated their indoor concerts but no... it turns out I hate their outdoor concerts. One could make the point that maybe I'm just going to all the wrong concerts but then I'd pose the question what is a GOOD concert. Last night I went to see Modest Mouse at the outdoor venue. I have this new theory that maybe the problem with the LC is that all they serve is Budweiser products and that it isn't actually the venue but the Budweiser that turns people into heinous, crowd surfing, elbow jabbing, hey I'm 7 foot tall and I'm going to elbow in front of you wee man and then stand there dancing like a drunk sorority girl on a bar room table type of person. Maybe? Maybe. Seriously I somehow went from being in a group of normal sized people to suddenly being surrounded by 7 foot tall Beowulf slaying Neanderthals. I was fully expecting the much banging on chests, swinging of war hammers (Which by the way a maul a civilized version of a war hammer) and drinking of mead out of goat antlers. I must have a magnet on me that says "I'm short please fucking stand in front of me."

Alright calm down. The concert was great, all the songs from latest album were played (I think) along a large portion of material from "Bad News for People that Love Good News" with a few earlier songs mixed in. The crowd was frothing, sweaty and screaming the lyrics to every song all the while bouncing like flubber infused bouncy balls. The crowd surfing did my heart good to see until those that surfed decided that once they got to the stage that it wasn't enough to get up there. No they needed to start dancing, posturing and generally making a total asshole of themselves. Surprisingly it was almost entirely guys doing that kind of thing. Can you sense the sarcasm. It got so bad that Isaac Broc (Lead Singer) had to start telling people to get the fuck of the stage. Let me apologize right now, I'm using names of people and I by no means mean to make it sound like I know these people or their life history. I'm not sure if this is part of the YouTube generation of the innanet but it's retarded. The posturing and dancing had all the semblance's of a child standing in the middle of an aisle in the grocery store yelling "Look mommy, look mommy do you see what I'm doing, do you see, LOOOK MOMMMMY!"

Something totally unrelated to the concert was a story about piss I heard last night. I had mentioned to someone about how I have a friend that tends to get even with piss. I was one upped by this story.

This friend of a friend was sick and feeling very lazy. Laying on the couch he didn't really want to get up to use the bathroom so he grabbed the nearest pop can and filled it with urine. His mother at the time had this tendency to take half drank cans of pop and stick them in the refrigerator for consumption later. Later that night the family sits down at the dinner table and out comes the half filled can of piss that the mother put in the fridge. She takes a sip and says "Ewww what's wrong with this it tastes like piss." She takes another sip before deciding to pour out the can.

I never did ask if he ever told his mother that she drank his piss or if she continued the tradition of stowing half drank cans of pop in the fridge. I couldn't because I couldn't stop laughing.

I HUNG UP THE SHOWER CURTAIN

There are times when a person gets intentionally inebriated and then there are times when inebriation sneaks up on you like "The King" (Burger King) and delivers you a steamy heap of drunk. It's not pleasing and it's not tasty but then arguably neither is Burger King. SG claims she saw me going downhill and stopped drinking knowing full well that when one starts down that path it's like trying to stop a locomotive with nothing but your hands. I'd just like to think that she didn't have the will to compete in the latest bout of drunk. SG and I have this thing we do when we go out where we try to see which one will drive the other home. Most mature adults will agree before they go out who is driving and who is drinking. We not yet being mature adults and not sure when maturity will hit choose to try to out drink the other.

I like variety and I like to try different things which doesn't work so well when having more than a drink or two. Mix this, mix that have some wine, and have some beer have some hard liquor. By the time I'm done my stomach is so upset and queasy that I vomit for that reason alone. Besides my love of variety I also drink in a very knee jerk fashion. If there is a drink in my hand I tend to drink it in the same way that your body breathes for you without having to think about it. If I had a glass of water that was constantly being filled it would nearly guarantee that 90% of my problems would go away. I guess I could try to bring a Nalgene bottle full of water but I think most bars frown on that since they probably think you are bringing your own hooch in. Oh if they did let me bring my own water I would go out with water bottles clipped to my body like a bandolier. It could be my agualier and I would where a big sombrero and have a lip full of chaw. I have this feeling though that I would either be looked at funny or worse have my water bottles confiscated. Confiscation of my shit makes me grumpy and I really don't need another reason to be grumpy.

The ride home was uneventful except for the occasional drunk breathing huffing noises and the hand resting lightly on the window button like a gunslinger waiting to draw his gun in a showdown. Ahhh yes drunk breathing. Drunk breathing is very similar to the minor tremors and bulges that occur on volcanoes right before they explode. Like these volcanic eruption predictors drunk breathing can be the single most reliable sign that someone is about to go Mount St Helens and that you should best start running to avoid the pyroclastic flows of vomit that will erupt from said person.

By 7:30am all the drama had subsided and the reality had set in. I learned later that I had tried to sleep in our guest (sick persons) bedroom but had trouble sleeping due to being cold and probably because of the dizziness. The attempt to sleep in a bed was followed by the traditional last hu-ah in the bathroom and the collapse on the bathroom floor pants-less and using the pedestal sink as a pillow. Through all of this SG was either showering or reading her book snuggled up in bed. She was nice enough before going to bed to check on me one last time and game me a pair of sweatpants a blanket and a towel wadded up to make a surprisingly nice pillow. A folded up towel might be the single greatest thing that you can do for a drunk person sleeping on the floor. So please if you or someone you love gets hurt by alcohol, have mercy on them and make them a pillow out of a towel it might be the single nicest thing you can do for them.

YOU AREN'T ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE
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That takes pictures of concerts with your cellphone. Until a about a week ago I couldn't have been one of those people but now I have taken one very baby step out of ludditeville and got myself one of those fangled camera phones.

On Saturday (3/3) I went to the "Wolfmother" show at the LC (lifestyle community pavilion) with SG and a couple of friends. The reasons why I went were varied but they boiled down to things like I like the album, the concert wasn't too expensive and the LC isn't too big. The too big part matters because I hate big concerts, something about paying lots of money to barely be able to see the band you paid to see. I've only ever been to a LC concert once before and that was outside and I highly recommend the LC in the summer as it is not too big and yet has a wealth of places to stand or sit (My favorite is the grassy knoll built on an incline). There's just something about seeing a concert outside with a beer in one hand a White Castle slider in the other, friends at your side and live music. Maybe it's the lush in me but there are very few things that can match being able to have a drink or six outside.

The LC inside however is a whole other underwhelming and rage building experience. It's nice, sanitary and wholesome which all added up to feeling commercial. A rock concert in my mind is all about gritty alcoholic decadence and indoors the LC felt more like a Lutheran youth group lock in. My biggest gripe and I apologize to SG and Olaf as they heard every single one of my gripes is the setup of the first floor. The ground level that you enter onto is more or less the first floor that then spreads towards stage at a uniform level until it hits the pit. The problem with this first floor is that it's probably fifty yards deep and has no incline whatsoever. To exacerbate this lack of a incline is that the stage is actually lower than the first floor. So unless you happen to be of Andre the Giant proportions your chance of actually seeing anything is slim and nil unless you are right up front. The evidence that the LC realized this problem was they installed these projector screens on the ceiling. So dumb. Let's go to a concert then stand around drinking Budweiser products in the middle of a crowd while staring up at giant TV screens.

I know I had other gripes but those might have had more to do with the people that were at the show than the venue itself. Before I gripe anymore and start sounding 40 years older than I am let me say that the Wolfmother concert was fantastic. The band had a great stage presence putting out such a full sound that you sort of forgot that it was just three guys. The music was smack on, the improvisations were neither too long or too short and the encore was electric. The experience though was mixed and maybe that was because I was with SG. SG is normally a sane and rational person when not surrounding by groups of people. Put her in a mall and she starts to get one of those wild animal looks, put her in the middle of a crowd in a pit and she turns "Oh my God the Zombies are coming get the fuck out of my way". It was actually really amusing.

Most of the issues had to do with SG being shorter than I am so I was constantly trying to find her a place to stand so that she could see something. Problems started whenever someone would decide that the pit was too rough or that the first floor/second floor was too boring and they would weave their way through the crowd to stand in front of SG. Sometimes they would stop in front of us only to move on and sometimes they would just stop. Oh you poor stoppers. One guy stopped in front of SG and she nudged/pushed him. When he turned around she somehow simultaneously made the WTF, shoo kitty kitty gesture at him all the while yelling over the concert to tell him to move. Then there was the drunk kid that kept groping women as he wove himself back to the front of the pit. That poor bastard nearly got knocked on his ass when SG and a horde of other woman pushed him.

Come to think of it this wasn't all that different from when we were in college and we used to go out. Huh, I completely forgot that she used to yell and push people in the bars at O.U. and now that I really think about it many of those bars weren't all that different from a pit. I remember telling her over and over again that if she were to pick a fight that I would not back her up. I don't mean to sound like an asshole and I know I should throw down for my woman but it just doesn't seem right to throw down for someone who intentionally starts things.

One of the more entertaining things that we did that night was irritate people who would try to take or make calls on their cell. They would eventually plug their one ear in an attempt to hear better at which point SG and I would start screaming WOO directly at their head. This Wooing would gain the attention of other equally irritating people who also started wooing at the cellphone user. There were nice people like this guy with a faux hawk who stood in front of Jess then apologized to her for doing so and inviting her to stand in front of him if she couldn't see. Then there was the woman who flipped my phone closed when I attempted to text message Olaf that I had moved to the pit during the opening band. She was really funny because after she flipped my phone closed she then apologized profusely.

HAPPY 30th YOU GRUMPY BASTARD
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My mother-in-law best expressed my thirtieth birthday in the following phrase: "Happy birthday, a third of your life is now over." Yeesh with in-laws like that who needs, well who needs in-laws to be honest. Then again my father-in-law is my go to man when I start throwing adult tantrums from home improvement woes so maybe in-laws aren't all that bad. Thankfully I have Animal Crossing and Animal Crossing didn't let me down. No sir, nope not one bit. I got a birthday cake and letters with presents, and, and, and.... Oh fine I know it's not real but it was a nice gesture even if the cake they gave me was missing a piece (filthy stinking furry bastards).

My thirtieth. I almost thought that on waking up my body was going to fall apart like a car the day after it's fourth year of ownership. Fourth year? Yes well for the longest time my family drove Fords where on the fourth year right after the last payment all hell would break loose. Whether this was a characteristic of Fords or of cars in general who knows but I'm leaning towards the former. I may have thought that my bodies warranty was going to run out because I kept remembering a conversation with an older friend of mine and his wife about how their bodies hurt more now then they used too. Then again the friend in question is sort of a cranky old grandma cat so I'm not sure why put much stock in that.

None of this falling apart happened. Instead I took the day off went over and ran my fastest three and a half miles to date and grabbed a bite to eat at my most favorite quirkiest restaurant in town. Taking the day off wasn't so much because of my birthday but because I wanted to get lunch at Starliner Diner and Starliner isn't all that close to where I work. Ahh Starliner Diner. Starliner has to be one of the tastiest, cheapest restaurants in town and is by far one of my most favorite places to eat. The cuisine? Tasty cuisine. Seriously it's a weird mix of Cuban, Mexican, and Texan (Is Texan really a type of food?) where the portion sizes are huge the cost of an entree is about $9 and the decor is dirty. I don't know what the bathroom looks like and I hope to God that I never drink enough coffee or Margaritas to find out. Starliner is the only place where I would rather substitute black beans or skillet vegetables than eat catchup with french fries. It's not that I love french fries so much as I like catchup. If God had a favorite condiment it would be Catchup.

Lunch was followed by a visit to Best Buy and an enraging experience of not finding anything that I wanted at the prices I was willing to pay. I can't figure it out about that place. The DVDs are not cheap their music prices are usually undercut by Target or Circuit City, their electronics selection is poor, their computers are overpriced and their selection of audio gear pathetic. Enraging, always enraging and yet I still go back expecting something different. Oh the pain.

I spent the rest of my day playing Animal Crossing in front of our fire place while watching snow gracefully fall from the sky. I also tried to read "On Bullshit" by Harry G. Frankfurt, sanded a wall and shoveled the then not so graceful and much more tooth grinding snow from the driveway. Who says one's thirtieth birthday doesn't have to suck.

"On Bullshit" was one of those books where I was deluded myself into thinking that it would be really relaxing to take a stroll through the conversation of some philosophy majors while they discussed what "bullshit" is. My stroll turned out to be much shorter than I would have liked as I hit a fork in the path and got confused on what I should do. Instead of choosing a fork I just turned around and went back to my car but then couldn't remember which car was mine.

Maybe my frustration and confusion had something to do with having to look up a word every other page. Maybe this would be OK if the book were of a normal hard bound book size but when the book is the size of a pocket dictionary with the font-size of a children's book it just becomes painful. I'm not sure what I was expecting when I decided to read some one's dissertation about the definition of bullshit. I think I thought "I saw this on The Daily Show it sounds amusing." Of the words that I came across before I exhausted my teenie little rat brain were pleonastic, perspicuous, and procrustean. By the fourth page of the book I started to break out in a cold sweat feeling more like a person with the duty to translate 18th century Japanese literature when all they had was an elementary school language level. Personally I think it's because I'm now thirty and my brain is already starting to dry out. I figure I've got five good years before all I can do is get drunk and yell "feck" like Father Jack Hackett from "Father Tedd".