Writing on a regular bassist

So I didn't win the contest I sorta talked about in the last post. That's okay. It was an honor just to be rejected. Seriously, though. I think its time to start writing on a more regular basis (MS Word tried to turn that into "bassist." That's kinda funny. Is a regular bassist a dependable bassist who shows up to band practice on time, or is he/she a bassist with a diet high enough in fiber that his/her bowel movements are within the normal range?).

Thanks to Nathan Bransford for picking my paragraph as a finalist, and thanks to all three people who showed up at my blog and thought, "How the hell did this guy become a finalist? He writes like a drunk turtle." You have all made my day.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to drink some beer, wax my shell, and give this bassist some oat bran.

-The Sasquatch

Hello and Welcome

Hello and welcome to all the people who have come to this site from the other site where they're doing the thing I'm not allowed to mention lest I become disqualified and lose my shot at Internet glory.

A few interesting facts about me:

• I can drink a 16 ounce beer in less than two seconds.
  
• I used to use the "I can drink a 16 ounce beer in less than two seconds" line whenever I met new people, but I stopped once I graduated college (except for when I am in the company of lawyers, who consider such a feat a good indicator of intellectual prowess).
  
• I have no idea who Mitch Hedberg is, but I'm certainly going to look him up on youtube once I get home from work and am able to watch videos on youtube without being threatened with corporal punishment.
  
• Yes, my dad sometimes says those things, but he doesn't say them enough to fill in for the "#@!$ My Dad Says" guy, who totally sold his parents out for a crappy television show.
  
• I think William Shatner would make a bad father.
  
• He'd be a pretty good uncle, though.
  
• A lot of people I know and like told me that Anonymous' entry was better than mine. I tend to agree. Anonymous' is shorter than mine and that makes it better because reading is hard.
  
• If Shakespeare is right and Brevity is the soul of wit, I must be witless.
  
• A lot of the people I know and like agree with the previous item in this list. Especially the "witless" part.
  
• Thanks for looking at my blogger blog.
  

For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, just wait a few years for my next post. It will all make sense then.

Piece,
The Sasquatch

The Best Thing That Ever Was

He smiles at me, the way he does, with his eyes cocked sideways twoards me and his mouth half open; expectantly, like he's listening to a long and complicated joke that's just about reached its punchline. Then I look at him and smile and he throws his head back and opens his mouth as far and as wide as he can, joy exploding on his face, the same way his momma does on rare and wonderful occasions. I smile again, hoping to egg him into another one, but he furrows his brow as if to say, "Not yet, old man." And just when I've about given up hope he does it one more time. We repeat this a few times as I change his diaper. In a few years I'll have to remind him to keep his voice down because its late and his laughter tends to wake up his mother, maybe his siblings (if there will be any) and most likely the neighbors as well. His voice will carry and he won't notice it. It will take constant reminding to keep from offending people. Just like his dad. But for now, whether there is noise or silence, I see him smile and I think to myself, "this is the best thing that ever was."

A Day in the Life:

9:08am

I just realized that my favorite morning radio program is still away for the Holidays, so I made up for it by tuning into an episode of “A Prairie Home Companion” from back in April. A friend recently made fun of me for listening to “old people radio.”

“Well I usually skip the talking portion and listen to the music,” I said.

“Like that makes it any better,” he said.

10:45am

My contacts are drying out and I can hardly see anything. I have the monitor set to “extra blind” and everything is still blurry. When I walk around, it’s like I’m surrounded by a 2’ bubble of clarity outside of which is a sea of shifting, liquid colors. There are people out there. Some of them speak to me. I turn my head in their general direction, squint like Mr. Magoo, and affect the best response I can muster before leaving as quickly as possible so as not to appear stupid.

12:30pm

I went to a place called W.G. Grinders for lunch today. It was the first time I had been there. It’s cold but pleasant outside, so I walked about half a mile there. I’m without a car today, so that’s another reason. The restaurant had options for sandwiches. 6”, 10”, and 20”. I remember thinking to myself, “When I was younger, I probably would have gone for the 20in, but now that I’m a bit older, I’ll be responsible and get the medium.

About five minutes later, they brought out a sandwich that was twice the size of my head. I asked the owner if it was 10” wide as well as long. He laughed. I tried my best but was unable to eat the whole thing. A group of Marines at the counter laughed at me when I asked for a doggie bag. Some of them opted for the 20” sandwiches.

Does this mean I’m getting older than I thought or is WG Grinders just generous with their portions?

12:42pm

Is it just me, or does anybody else find it ironic that it takes upwards of two whole minutes to load a page titled “15 quick ways to improve your page load speed” from a popular web development website?

12:57pm

Most people would use twitter for this sort of thing, wouldn't they? Ah well.

Welcome to the Future!

Can you believe its 2009 already? Think about it. I've been out of school long enough for the toddlers that occupied Kindergarten when I was in school to actually graduate themselves. If that happens two more times, I'll be on a porch with a shotgun before I know it, screaming at all the whippersnappers to get the hell off my lawn.

Assuming we have a lawn to yell about, that is. Which might not happen for two major reasons...

First, global warming could kill all plant life on earth, reeking havoc on the food supply, forcing humans to use our magical powers of science to develop genetically engineered sources of nutrition and sustenance. Either that or we evolve wholly new digestive systems at a heretofore unheard of metabolic rate. A new sort of gastronomic prowess that will let us digest rock or coal would be just the thing we need.

Second, the economy might collapse, causing Jen and me to abandon our dreams of homeownership, accepting positions as deck hands on the latest and greatest line of Carnival cruise ships. If that happens, the entire world will be our front yard! And all I'll have to do is walk around with a shotgun telling the mutant teenage spawn of the world's richest people to stop messing around and get the hell out of my sleeping receptacle before I call management and have them secretly fed into the ship's engine as fuel. Once both the environment and the economy collapse, human flesh, particularly that of spoiled, rich kids, will become the source of energy that makes the world turn, of course. And it's not like the kids' parents will notice they've gone missing. Rich people don't care about their kids. Everybody knows that.

I don't think it'll come to that, though. When things get real bad, the beauty of uninhibited Capitalism will force McDonalds and Burger King to race against the clock, inventing a coal-based hamburger, solving both the nutritional and economc problems that face the world, returning everything to relative normalcy except for the minute possibility that flatulence from the McCoal Burger might result in accidental self-immolation if you buy the wrong kind of fabric for your pajamas.

Which is why I have decided to sleep in the nude from here on out. Just in case.

I'm sure you wanted that image stuck in your head. That's why I spoke so freely of my naked, hairy ass, sleeping above the covers for all to see. I'll have to sleep above the covers, of course, because if my digestive expectorations achieve a high level of flammability, it wouldn't make sense to eschew pajamas and keep the wonderful, 600 thread count sheets Jen and I got as a present (from someone or other) when we got married. Bedsheets are just as likely as my flannel, Aqua Teen Hunger Force t-shirt to catch aflame. More so, probably. Meatwad is cool, but even he is susceptible the laws of Thermodynamics. Tossing the pjs and sleeping under the covers would be about as useful giving openly corrupt bakers 50% of the American gross domestic product with no strings attached and then expecting them to be charitable with their newfound wealth.

That would be ludicrous! I'm glad nobody thinks that way!

So 2009 approaches quickly and I can't wait. if my powers of observation are correct, it looks like this will be the year that the world collapses around us and we devolve into a Mad Max style polst-Apocalyptic nightmare. I've been preparing myself for this eventuality a long time. I read "The Stand" About a 157 times when I was a kid, I laughed at "I am Legend" for all the right reasons, and I recently started in on Cormac McCarthy's entire bilbiography. I might not be able to grow food, and I can't see well enough to shoot straight and hit the zombies when they attack (and they WILL attack), but at least I'll be able to quip sarastic, vaguely philosophic rhetoric. Those are the characters everyone loves the most, anyway.

I might sound cynical and if questioned on the matter I'd have to agree. With one caveat. I'm personally optimistic but socially cynical. I hope for the best in my life, but I believe our species is on the back end of the bell curve, the part where trigonometry takes over and everything goes to shit. Faced with the prospect of a new year, I think the best thing to do is sit back with your favorite drink and watch everything burn.

It's the best kind of entertainment there is.

Proverb or Curse?

An ancient Chinese proverb goes like this: "May you live in interesting times." With all the economic fun recently, I guess we've met that. Most people don't know it, but the "interesting times" proverb was the first of three. The other two are "May you come to the attention of those in authority" and "May you find what you are looking for."

Some people interpret these as less proverb and more curse. I think I agree with that sentiment.

Change you can BELIEVE in

This Blows

Things have been weird this last week. The remnants of Ike rolled through on Sunday, knocking out power for 153% of Columbus residents, businesses, and people with no fixed address. It was strange because it was totally unexpected. The morning was hot and sunny and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, even though Pastor Tom at church took everybody outside and made us play cornhole. The wind picked up round about 1:00, but it never rained. It was still hot and sunny; just really bleeping windy. There was too much wind for all that sun. Standing outside was like watching Steve Urkel compete in the “World’s Strongest Man” competition. Reality is there right in front of you, but it just doesn’t make sense.

Our power went out at 3:00, which was a good thing because we were watching the Bengals lose to the Tennesse Titans at the time, and if the carnage on my television continued much longer I would have had to throw something large and heavy into our shiny new flat screen. We spent a decent amount of money on that thing, and I imagine Jen wouldn’t have appreciated it too much.

At least not until the Browns played.


So the power was out Sunday night and has been m.i.a. ever since. That has meant lots of money spent eating out, lots of time searching for bags of ice to keep our food from spoiling, and lots of time listening to AM talk radio, hoping in vain for positive news updates from the happy folks at WTVN, who keep telling us to look for more information on their website (how, exactly, am I supposed to do that, Paco?). Evenings move a lot slower when there isn't television to watch, and we crawled into bed early last night, hoping that the dulcet tones of Sean Hannity, who spoke excitedly about illegal aliens and fiscal responsibility, would lull us to sleep.

The worst part is that normal, rational people, who understand perfectly the rules of the road when they encounter everyday things like stop signs, apparently lose at least 50 IQ points when faced with the complex task of navigating a multiple lane intersection when the stoplights don't work. Some people - a rare few - adhere to the standard guidelines, which tell you to treat it like a four way stop. Others continue through the intersection at breakneck speeds, oblivious to everyone and everything they encounter. These are likely the same people who spend hours at home playing Grand Theft Auto and have decided to take the game to the streets now that the power has gone out and their game boxes no longer give them a questionably healthy yet completely legal outlet for their rage. They swing around corners at wide angles, shout loud profanities at old women, and attempt Olympic records for the 400m dash from each full stop, all the while hoping that if they hit a pedestrian hard enough, they'll knock him into the median and score extra points.

The worst offenders, however, are the timid. These are the people who go to bed at 8:00 pm every evening, never watch movies with a higher rating than G, and scour the ingredients of their food to make sure there are no unnecessary extravagances like salt or fat or taste. I see these people in their cars. They approach each intersection with their eyes closed, repeating a well-practiced mantra1, and then they leap into the intersection without paying attention. Only it wasn't their turn. Realizing their mistake, they panic. They cover their heads in a manner similar to what their teachers always said would protect them from a nuclear explosion when they were kids. They wave everyone else around, but people can't get past them, and everybody gets mad and starts honking, which exacerbates the whole thing, making tensions rise and causing the timid drivers to go into shock. As if they believe a real nuclear explosion is imminent. They hunker down further and prepare for the worst, which is a good thing because that's when one of the GTA's I mentioned earlier comes barreling through the intersection, ramming into the Timid Driver's car, and knocking it onto the median.The timid driver screams in horror, losing what little sanity he had left. And the GTA gets excited, thinking he's scored a thousand points and moved up a level.


We're supposed to get power back this evening. I hope so, too, because the hot water is nearly gone and I imagine we'll have to wash our clothes with a soapboard before too terribly long. Soapboards are nice when you're watching re-runs of "The Beverly Hillbillies," but in reality they stand for a complete lack of civilization and manners. I'm not saying I have either of those, but I do like to keep up pretenses.


Plus, I'd really like to get back to Grand Theft Auto.

Dry Leaves

Strange weather in columbus, ohio. After weeks of nothing, the rain decided to open up and really let loose. It spits and it showers, and fog hangs in the air, making everything seem dank like I how I always imagine London to be. We moved recently and my trek into work at the great and wonderful state university of ohio now includes a drive through the city on one of columbus’ major highway instead of around the side like I used to. It’s nice on mornings like this. Clouds hang around the tops of the buildings, obscuring the tops, giving them room to whisper at each other in the rain, telling stories about the people who scurry about below, oblivious to everything going on above them.

Time’s moving fast again. Last I checked it was early spring and summer was just around the corner. Now it’s almost fall. The recent hot dryness has turned the edges of green tree leaves brown, forcing them inward in a manner that reminds you of fall. It isn’t fall; not yet. Jen tells me it’s just the lack of water, but it feels like fall; it smells like fall. And even if it isn’t quite the real thing yet, the crispness of everything might very well be the beginning, that reminder that the wild beauty of nature’s death dance is not to far off.

Time is moving fast again. Summer passed me bye much faster than it usually does. A lot has happened these past few months to distract me and, maybe I’ll go into that here sometime soon. Maybe I won’t. Right now I’ll just sit on the deck and watch the leaves change.

Whether it’s a lack of water or the real thing doesn’t matter. It’s still beautiful.

Bench in the park

My wife and I sat on that bench a little over two years ago. This was when we were still dating. It was daytime then and the trees were dressed in their summer leaves. We had walked all over centre island and we sat here for a bit to rest and listen to the sounds of the birds in the trees and fishermen who sat in their boats in the next cove, arguing about the fish and whether they were biting. I kissed her. Then some kids came along on the walking path and we stopped. We got up a minute later and left. It was a nice moment.

Other Worlds

When I was a kid, we had this fire pit in our backyard. It was built of bricks and concrete and it had a small chimney that reached maybe four to five feet in the air. It may have been shorter, though. I was much smaller back then. I used to dream that our fire pit wasn’t actually a fire pit. I imagined it was an actual chimney for an underground house. I imagined an entire civilization of subterranean people, scurrying around just beneath us, going about their sunless lives oblivious to the world that existed just above them. I believed in this place so strongly that I would often look out my bedroom window at night to see if I could catch the smoke rising out of the chimney, evidence that this other world existed.

When I was a boy there was this tree, this gnarled behemoth that stood on the hill next to our apartment. A series of mean roots ripped through the ground, coalescing into a trunk covered in knotholes and crevasses and impossibly brittle bark and then, just a few feet off the ground, split into three or four large branches that danced and jigged sideways, just above the ground. The branches spread out in all directions, in and among each other, twisting their way towards the heavens. The tree never seemed to sway, even in the strongest wind, and the leaves, which turned a dark and ugly brown in autumn, were always the last to fall. I imagined the tree was a witch’s hand, sent from the depths of hell to snatch the neighborhood kids who always seemed to want to play on it.

When I was little we had this field down the hill behind the Chalmers parking lot that was covered by a lush carpet of thick, green grass that grew long and swayed in the summer breezes. I imaged invisible warriors fighting legendary battles in this field, their invisible, heavy feet moving the grass as they fought against invisible monsters to keep control of the field and protect the people who lived nearby. Some days, when it was less windy and the field stood relatively still, I searched the grass, looking for arrowheads, broken pieces of metal, and flecks of red on the green blades that covered the ground; evidence of the battle I was certain had taken place.

When I was young I found a large bone buried in the ground just past the giant tire in the playground behind my school. My friends and I spent all year trying to dig it up. We found sticks from the nearby woods and we dug into the ground near the bone, looking for the rest of the dinosaur. Of course it was a dinosaur bone. We all knew it. We hoped to dig it up by the end of the year and present our findings to the teacher, who would put us on television and give us medals for our smarts and our bravery. Everyone would love us, we told ourselves. All we needed to go was dig up that bone.

When I was a kid there were other worlds than the one in which I lived. Many other worlds.

My wife and I spent most of last night reorganizing our kitchen. We stayed up pretty late building some shelves we plan to use for wine storage and we were pretty tired by the time we went to bed. Just before we fell asleep, my wife rolled over and said, “We’re thirty. Isn’t that weird.”

“We’re not thirty yet,” I said, “We’re only twenty ten.”

“No. We’re thirty.”

“Does that mean we’re old?”

“I think so,” she said. Then she paused and continued. “Thirty. How did that happen?”

We both fell asleep shortly thereafter but, just before I nodded off, I remembered a lot of the things I used to believe when I was a kid. I thought of the chimney and the tree and the field and dinosaur bone. I haven’t thought of those things for a very, very long time.

How did that happen?

Seasonal Employment

So Jen and I got part time, seasonal jobs to help us pay off some debt. We're hoping that we might one day be able to pay off the massive debt we accumulated in the pursuit of our four useless degrees (between the two of us). She's working at a temp agency. It's tough for her and she's tired when she comes home from work.

This is how I feel about my job...

Happy Slapsgiving, Everyone

Did I say that out loud?

You know you've checked out of your job when, in response to a co-worker's suggestion about a particular course of action, you utter the following:

"You might want to try to get [boss] to pimp that one, because my pimp hand isn't strong enough for that."

Countdown to new employment: 9 days

Intelligence

Intelligence: n

1. Wait until late June to address the broken air conditioning in the building, leaving my office to roast at over 100 degrees until almost Independence Day.
2. Turn the air conditioning off September 1, when the temperature outside is still quite warm. Temp in my office: 103.
   
3. In response to complaints, wait for temperature to dip into the 60s, then turn the a/c back on. Temp in my office: 40.
   
4. In response to complaints, turn on heat in the building. Temp outside creeps back into the 80s. Temp in my office: 105.
   
5. Temp outside continues to rise. Heat is still on. People complain vociferously.
   
6. Facilities responds by turning on the heat for the second floor and the a/c for the first floor. Temp on first floor: 40. Temp on second floor: 95. temp in my office: 101.