Stupid Commercial: Census

Yeah, returning census forms are kewl!



Really? Adding a chintzy hip-hop beat and a lame rap interlude is supposed to get Generation Y to send in personal information?? Really???

What The Fuck Was I Thinking Now?

Father told me this afternoon that we were eating pizza, so what do I do?  I go watch a movie ... where I always get popcorn and Coke.  I was going to stuff my face this evening and I go and stuff my face this fucking afternoon.

Why in the hell did I do this?  I had something to write; I could've done that this afternoon.  (Shit, I'm doing this now and it's about last night's title game -- this is already old!)  I could've gotten my oil changed.  I could've returned home and rummaged through my papers to find my tax documents.  I could've done any of those things and prevented myself from stuff my face.  But instead I decided to take in a movie.  And it was Clash Of The Titans, which was very mediocre and starred Sam Worthington.  I've seen all three of his movies.  I'm not impressed with his acting in any of those films, and yet I keep watching him.  And I spent $12.75 watching something I could've gone through the rest of my life not watching.  That qualifies as a waste.

So why did I do it?  In a confusion of thoughts this afternoon I kind of decided on this, I guess.  Some shit happened this morning, stuff I'll get to some later time, and I wanted to give myself a break.  I could've had my car serviced today, but I figured I could do it Friday, and it'll be sunnier then, and there's a chance the mechanic might be in a foul mood because of the rain today, and besides I need gas, and the gas station attached to the repair shop for some reason has prices higher than other places, so I'll wait. ...  Something like that.  And the rain dampened my mood for filing my column.  I thought I would get my oil changed if I didn't see any good movie when I arrived there, but I thought ten minutes was enough to wait for COTT.

Worse yet, not only did we eat pizza, we ate at 5:30, about two hours after I finished my tub of popcorn.  I usually voraciously wolf down five, six, even seven slices of pizza, even in my advanced age.  But with my full stomach, I had trouble finishing my fifth pizza.  I probably consumed 3,000-500 calories today, and with Dancing With The Stars on tonight I won't be exercising it off.

What the fuck was I thinking?

Mental Note:

That song I like a lot: Whtie Zombie, "Thunder Kiss '65."

Now, to remember the name of that instrumental song I first heard way back in summer school.  I keep hearing it from time to time and even catching the piano player's name, but I keep forgetting. ...

A Challenge To My Authority And My Leadership

I will be oblique when offering details, but I will say this: After a dinner conversation I had last night, I only bolster my belief I'm not cut out to work.  I was burned out by the time I lost my jobs partly because I hated getting manipulated by my superiors.  I mean, life's too short; why in the hell would I want to spend a third of my day, and my life, hating what I do and hating the people I do it with.  And being out of a full-time job the past three years hasn't made me forget; in fact, it's only steeled my resolve against it.

I might like a job more if I had authority, but even that sucks.  If more responsibilities comes more accountability, and all I would want out of a leadership position are the money, the perks, the ability to go when the fuck I want, and the control -- specifically, the control to fire people that I don't like.  I can understand why they could be let go if there's problems with the company, but I wouldn't feel good about it.  I certainly wouldn't have the stones to do it without feeling like I'm going to kill myself afterward.  How can anyone feel good playing God like that?  These people have lives to live, a family to support, dreams dashed because you say "The economy's not good, so we have to let you go."  No, too chickenshit to do that.  But firing people who piss you off?  Well, that's change we can all believe in.  I would love, absolutely luv to terminate the employment of someone I hated -- yeah, guess I get the last word, motherfucker ... now get the fuck outta here, or I'll call security and the police and have your ass arrested too!  That would so more than make up for firing anyone that didn't deserve it.

Alas, I was told by the people I was having this conversation with over a very fine dinner that you can't do that because it's possibly illegal and definitely unprofessional.  Man, who gives a fuck about being professional?  All business is personal, right?  I can't work personally detached from what I do.  I am what I work; there really is no other reason to work.  Apparently that's not how The Real World operates.  So I guess I'll stay away a while longer.

What happened this afternoon ties into that deep talk.  I lead a fantasy baseball league whose draft was online this past weekend.  There has to be a waiver list ranked for those who want to get other players that weren't drafted.  I thought Yahoo! would automatically do it for me, but they didn't, so I had to do it.  I thought, and I still think, that waiver priority is ranked according to your first round draft position.  For the league I run, that is in reverse order of finish the previous season.  Since I was last last year, I got the first pick this year, and thus the first pick in the waiver order.

Well, that's what I think it is.  Apparently someone else in the league thought it was the exact opposite order, and he bitched about it, on the boards, and not in a very ... professional way.  (He was the guy who won the league last year; there's a new person this year, which means he gets second in the waiver order to start out the season.)  I don't appreciate being showed up like that.  I think as a commissioner I deserve more respect.  As a human I'm entitled to some more decency.

But I didn't want to get into a pissing match with him, especially if I'm wrong.  So I just changed it.  Probably won't matter much, I'll probably lose anyway.  But I was just hoping that he wouldn't respond and that'd be the end of it.  Oh no.  In his reply he boasted about winning back-to-back and, most disrespectfully, he had to say that he was pointed out a mistake I made.  Man, I am this close to throwing this asshole out of my league.  But I have to be ... professional about it.  So I'm going to let this one go.  Well, OK, I didn't exactly do that.  I replied that I thought Yahoo! leagues start the season's waiver order the way I think it's done, and then I told him that what he said about me was "tacky."  So let's see if he wants to mouth off to this, then I'll have reason to throw his ass out of my league.

The one thing that scares me about all of this: What happens if I know this guy?  Like, he was someone I was acquainted with in college?  It would not be the right idea to throw him out if I actually know him.  Or maybe I would, because this fantasy baseball league is all I have right now.

Saw a friend.  Bumped into another friend who invited us to a pub on the West Bank.  Didn't know there was music going on so there was a cover.  OK.

They left about 20 minutes after I got there.  So I had a choice: Stay and listen to the band, or leave after finishing my beer.  If the former, it could suck, and I would miss Bob Valvano's "Match Game" in the midnight hour on ESPN Radio.  If the latter, I would've wasted the five dollar cover for a 20-minute beer.  I'm cheap, so I stay.  Don't wanna a chug a beer.

Well, the band was mediocre, but at least their set was only a half hour, so I was done by 1:20.  Better yet, when I turned on the radio on my way home, guess what I heard?  He delayed "Match Game" by an hour!  So I didn't miss anything at all!!

This is supposed to be a depressing, angry blog, but I had nothing else to talk about.

Can't Escape My Modem Problems

Modem fuckin' buggin' all goddamn day and night.  Planned on going to the coffeehouse tonight after the art show anyway because I had my fantasy baseball draft.  At least the Internet there is much more stable.

Things are going swimmingly with my online draft.  I'm actually happy with my players.  But then, third round from the last, my screen goes dark and my computer's telling me the connection's been lost.  But that can't be totally true because I can still see the countdown clock telling how much time I have left to make my pick.  So I wait, then I try to reload the screen, then I go back and try and click on a new screen.  Everything else is still working on the Internet except this, which is still trying to load.

Finally, after going back and reclicking, I have the live draft page up and running ... just in time to see the computer automatically make my second consecutive pick.  (Since I was at the end of the snake draft I got to pick back-to-back ... well, the computer picked for me.)  So I now have Jose Lopez, a man I've never heard of, and busted Adrian Beltre instead of the two pitchers I needed to round out my roster.  Right now, I am lacking a player in one of my Pitching spots.  Which one of these scrubs do I give up?

Oh yeah, and the new guy in my draft, the one invited through a friend, someone I've never met before, this asshole just drafted Dodgers.  If you're going to do that, why don't you just not do fantasy baseball and just go fucking watch the Dodgers?

The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -2). The only team this week to win more than one game. Specifically they won two games and dropped two games. I bore witness to one of those losses: The first-ever game at Target Field. The stadium looks awesome. It's certainly much better than the Metrodome. Now, if we should have spent $450 million to build it, that's another matter. At least the Gophers can now play at the Dome and away from Siebert Field, although that old ballpark has its own charm.

Anyway, they didn't do themselves or our new stadium any justice; they got drubbed there 9-1, scoring that lone run in the bottom of the ninth on give-'em-sumpin' effort by the first-ever winners at Target Field, Louisiana Tech. Great for them, and it was interesting to see a baseball team you don't get to see every day. But only that team showed up. They did beat the Bulldogs on Friday and defeat Concordia-Moorhead at the Dome on Wednesday. The begin Big Ten play this week with three at Purdue.

#-2: Swarm (Re-Entry!). A 1-1 weekend. It was important that they clipped off that win at Calgary, even if they lost all their piss the next night in a loss to Edmonton. The good news is that the playoff race may be over already; the 4th-place Swarm are three games up on Colorado for the final spot in the Western Conference playoff chase. They host Edmonton Saturday.

#-3: Timberwolves (Last Week: -3). They won only one game this week, but I was at the one game they won, which ended their losing streak at 16 and averted setting a franchise-worst record; that's why I put them above the Wild. It was far from a perfect game and I can see that there'd be a talent and chemistry if the Woofie Dogs faced any contender. But I have to say that I was impressed by Darko Milicic in this game. He and Al Jefferson (and you can throw in Kevin Love too) play just about the same position, but if Donnie Darko really commits to rebounding more and scoring less, can he slide into the center spot and free Big Al to play the 4, his natural position? OK, a guy can dream.

They lost to Orlando and Phoenix this week as well, so no, they're nowhere near where they should be. This week: a weekend backer-to-backer (home to Miami then at the Bastard Seattle SuperSonics Easter Evening? On consecutive nights?? Specifically less than 24 hours between games???), then Wednesday hosting Golden State and another great rookie, Stephen Curry. I have tickets to this game and am looking forward to see my friend's debacle of a squad.

#-4: Wild (Last Week: -1). This isn't the end, but you can see it from here. They are nine points from the Bastard Quebec Nordiques and the final playoff spot in the Western Conference, so if anybody sneezes tonight, the Wild are out. That's what you get when you reel off yet another 1-2 week like they did in beating Los Angeles but getting the shit kicked out of them by two playoff teams, Detroit and Chicago (the latter being at home Wednesday night by a score of 4-0). They still can't score, they just can't.

For the Wild to even have a chance they have to win every single game on their schedule from here on out. Tonight they host conference-leading San Jose ... OK, not gonna happen. They also take one final road trip to the Western Provinces this week -- at Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary. They'll be taking the same trip this week their co-tenants, the Swarm, did last week. Funny.

For the third and final time I tried to help My Mother find a video clip of Julia Child baking something.  We stumbled onto a different recipe and we both thought that meant that there are clips of her doing every single recipe on the Internet.  That isn't the case -- and I spent a good hour waiting between hiccups by my disgraceful modem to search everywhere for it and finally declare an end to this fruitless search.  That put me at too late an hour to check out the community center in Shoreview to exercise.

I want to do right for My Mother, for both my parents actually, but they keep asking me to do the impossible.  It's like ripping a CD to use as a ringtone for Mother -- yeah, I said yes because I thought you could do it, but once I tried doing it it's easier said than done.  I don't know, OK?  And Father, I thought you were the one who knew how to hook up a VCR to a TV in order to record a show.  Is a converter box going to fuck everything up?  Don't ask me, I don't know.  You're the electronics genius, I'm not.  You fucking told me I'm not, asshole, many fucking times.

And to top it all off My Fucking Father told me to clean the furniture and gave me an ultimatum on either keeping or dumping all my papers.  Don't fucking come down on me luck that, goddamn you!!!

Bad Driver: 901 NWR (WI)

You, asshole with the yellow muscle car with the two huge black stripes going from hood to trunk: You have a nice-looking car.  But you act like you do, veering across two, two! lanes of traffic to get right in front of me noon time on 35WS without turning on your lights.  Fuck you.  Hope I got you.

What The Fuck Was I Thinking?

Like I planned I decided to give myself a trip to the strip club after two weeks away.  There, one of my favorites, a woman whom I showed my manhood to, just happened to be there.  She was flirty and fun and having a good time.  After the one dance I got from her she invited me over to talk at the bar, then immediately talk outside because she wanted to smoke.

After hanging out for five minutes or so she invited me back inside.  But I had other plans, I was already there for a half hour and, maybe most importantly, I had nothing else I think I could say to her.  We had gone on swimmingly; pushing the conversation even further would have risked humiliation.  So as long as I was outside, I decided to ask her if I could leave.  She seemed fine with it.

What were my other plans?  Go to the Italian restaurant, another place I haven't been to in a while, just because, or because I wanted to see SportsCenter highlights of the Timberwolves win tonight, which I attended and which ended their 16-game losing streak -- if they would've lost this, it would've been a franchise-longest.  Yep, this is what I passed up talking to a stripper for.

Why the hell did I do that?  It could've ended in disaster.  But maybe we could've talked about something deeper, something that could've formed an unbreakable bond between us.  Maybe we could've talked about me exposing myself to her, and she saying that not only did she not mind, but she actually liked it.  Maybe we could've arranged some takeout.  I don't know, all I know is the chance for me to engage with her more is gone, and with it all the possibilities.

Instead I didn't even get to see any SportsCenter highlights of the Wolves game and I ate a salad and soup that, turns out, I wasn't even hungry for.  I like the place, but I have to stop going if I'm not hungry.  Now I'm way too full, and I still haven't finished the Coke I took to go.

To take this full circle ... what the fuck was I thinking?