Sneezy Was Also A Dwarf

Thai food makes me sneeze, evidently.
   So does the dusty inside of a disreputable muffler shop.
   And being in a ship on the ocean. But being in the ocean itself does not make me sneeze.
   Trying not to think about sneezing makes me sneeze. So does looking at a lit flourescent tube. Really.
   Picking my nose while driving my truck past the intersection of Third and Highland in Los Angeles made me sneeze more often than not. I have no idea why, but I did test it out and the results are better than chance.

I'm not an allergic person, no pet dander, no pollen, no milk products, no peanuts, no shellfish. As far as I know I'm not allergic to anything, never have been. I'm pretty sure it's because of all the dirt my parents let me eat when I was a kid. And yet, for some reason, those things I outlined above will make me sneeze. Every time.
   Why?
   Would someone tell me why I can walk into a Thai restaurant and sneeze immediately even though I haven't sneezed in days? Doesn't happen for a Japanese restaurant, or Korean, or Italian, or German, or even a McDonald's. But the moment I walk into a place where the waitresses wear brocaded full-length skirts, the sneeze is on.
   Is it psychosomatic? What trauma in my past life led me to associate sneezing with Mee Krob? Better yet, how the hell do I stop?
   This kind of makes me wonder, what other things do I do unconsciously, things that don't draw attention to themselves quite like a sneeze does. Maybe I stare into the refrigerator? Maybe I twitch when I walk past a fudge shop? I don't know! It makes me crazy. Or maybe I was that way to begin with.

Saturday Mourning

Time was, back in the olden days when there were only three broadcast networks and PBS, Saturday morning was the time for children's programming. Some cartoons, some live action, some educational, some purely for entertainment. Not that the TV stations did this out of the goodness of their missing hearts, they did it because the FCC mandated it. Still, when I was a kid we'd plan our Saturday mornings around what was on TV. If my sister and I disagreed we'd have to alternate days or she'd get half an hour I'd get the next half hour, like that. Saturday morning was for kids.
   Now Saturday morning is a vast wasteland the like of which Newton Minow could never have imagined. The big four networks have completely abandoned any original programming and now they farm their Saturday mornings out to horrible toy-placement companies. I've written about who does what on Saturday morning before. They've all surrendered to Nickelodeon and Disney. Shameful.
   Why the FCC has chosen to ignore its long-standing community service requirements is beyond me, but the upshot of their negligence is the broadcast networks get away with commercials disguised as worthwhile children's television.*

Kids these days don't know how bad they have it. They think that horrible Disney programs are the way kids' TV has always been, and that's just not true. Kids' TV used to be good, something to look forward to, with programs like these:

Kukla, Fran, and Ollie - puppets and a role-model adult who talked to kids like they were people instead of representatives of their demographic band. Imagine that.
Captain Kangaroo - Mr. Moose and Bunny Rabbit, and a talking grandfather clock
Little Rascals - from generations before mine, but still excellent
Super Friends - DC Comics characters are the best
'The Batman' - theme song by The Edge, this was a particularly good version
Warner Bros cartoons - this is cultural literacy, how are kids going to know about Acme products if they don't watch the Roadrunner? How will they learn about opera if Bugs Bunny isn't torturing Elmer Fudd with Wagner?
Shazam - live action... okay, not the best show, but still better than Yu-Gi-Oh
Electra Woman and Dyna Girl - a soap star was also a super-hero
Thundarr the Barbarian - not a toy line first, the best part was armageddon in 1994

I could go on with the Smurfs, Scooby Doo, GI Joe, Speed Buggy, Liddsville, etc. etc. etc. Even when these were kind of bad they were good, and nowadays kids' TV is just terrible, insulting and juvenile. We need to get back to good, old-fashioned kids' programming. FCC... where are you?



* actually, now that I think about it, the FCC has become a home for toothless bureaucrats more interested in putting in their time until retirement than enforcing the will of the people. Pretty much like every other government agency.

A Little Magic

I was trudging up the stairs this morning - because the elevator STILL isn't fixed - and I got to thinking how it would be really great if I had a faithful manservant who would just carry me. Then I realized that any man big enough to actually pick me up probably wouldn't fit through a normal-sized door, so I abandoned that thought. Lifting one foot after the other, though, I hit on another great idea.
   I need to master the mystic arts. Then I could just magic myself up the stairs, no walking needed.
   As a matter of fact, if I were an adept enough student then I could just magic myself up a whole host of things that seem to be problems for me at the moment. I wouldn't need a job because I'd just conjure stacks of cash. I wouldn't need to go to the grocery store because I'd just wave my hand and make food appear. I'd wave the other hand to clean the dishes - no more dishwasher for me. I wouldn't have to pay rent, and I'd probably move out of my place to find my Sanctum Sanctorum at the top of some mountain or in a bubble at the bottom of the sea. Probably the mountain, the sea smells like a fish toilet to me.
   The one hitch to my plans is that these sorts of things usually happen with some great personal tragedy. Batman's parents were killed, Superman is the last survivor of an entire planet, a brilliant but arrogant surgeon loses the use of his hands in an auto accident, that kind of thing. I'm not really down with the whole idea of personal tragedy. I don't want to lose any parts or pieces that I've become fond of over the years.
   I'm an American, dammit, I want everything good without any risk or sacrifice! And I want it now!
   So rather than real magic, maybe I'll just settle for some douchebaggy trickery, camera tricks and bad illusions. Let me get some leather and ugly tattoos, some skanky ex-stripper chicks for eye candy and I'll be in business. Chris Angel, I'm coming for you...

Are You Talkin' To Me?

You know what you don't see enough of any more?
   Pinky rings.
   Maybe I'm just not hanging around the right crowd, but it's been a long time since I've seen a pinky ring displayed un-ironically. I think Joe Pesci ruined the pinky ring for everyone, made it a cliche and a joke instead of a statement.
   Used to be, a pinky ring said 'I'm so tough that I can decorate my least-useful digits.' But now all a pinky ring says is 'I'm going as Goodfellas for Halloween.' Either that or you're trying to be Leisure Suit Larry (now there's a blast from the past).
   It's time to take the pinky ring back. Men should be able to flash a little bling on their little fingers and feel like people are admiring them instead of ridiculing them.
   You guys go first, I'm allergic to goombah gold.


COMMUTE: there - 40 minutes      back - 40 minutes to go 11 miles
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 61 days

I Don't Care

Heretic. Blasphemer. Subversive. Deserter. Turncoat. Commie. I have been called all these things, and worse besides. But I'm a creampuff, really. What could possibly make otherwise sober and level-headed citizens revile me so?
   I don't care about the SuperBowl.
   Yup. Couldn't give a rat's ass. Means as much to me as World Cup soccer, and I don't even know when that is. And I don't mean this particular SuperBowl, I mean all SuperBowls, across all time. It's one of those things that's hyped beyond all reason, pumped up in such an overbearing and grandiose fashion that it couldn't possibly live up to the expectations. And it doesn't. Falls flat.
   'Oooh, but you'll miss the SuperBowl ads,' you say. And I say 'no, I won't.' If I wanted to see them I could watch them on YouTube, but I don't give a rat's ass about that either.
   Don't get me wrong, I'm not an elitist, I haven't turned my TV to PBS and unplugged it. I watch a lot of bad TV, I revel in it, and lately I have watched some football. For God's sake, I watch NASCAR relgiously so I'm not exactly highbrow. I'm just tired of overblown, over-hyped crap that I'm supposed to like if I was in any way a good American. Enough already.

Here's a short list of other crap people seem to think matters that I also don't care about. This is just a sample, the entire list is far too long to share.
   Grammys
   Lost
   Twitter
   Lady Gaga
   Seinfeld - a blast from the past, but it's still a horrible show
   YouTube
   American Idol
   Trans Fats
   Winter Olympics - when somebody non-white wins something let me know

p.s. Yes, I do know the SuperBowl is next weekend. That's how much I don't care about it, I'm letting you know well beforehand.

Things That Worry Me Which Probably Shouldn't

I hesitate to walk over manhole covers or those trap door things in the sidewalk, not because I'm afraid I'll fall through, but because when I do fall through I know I'll end up in a secret subterranean world, and I just can't keep a secret.
   There are many things below ground, phone lines, water pipes, cable TV cables, sewer pipes and the C.H.U.D.s that live in them. But I'm pretty sure that there's more, a hollow Earth maybe, or just really big caverns where blind cavefish have developed a some sort of civilization where there's no shame bumping into walls.
   It would be my luck to fall into the one manhole that doesn't end up in the sewer but ends up in some barbaric, Edgar Rice Burroughs-inspired world of dinosaurs and psychic flying lizards. I'd inevitably get captured by the psychic flying lizards, who would set about planning to kill me in an absurdly round-about way. I'd get out of it by explaining to them that no one on the surface world would possibly believe me if I told them what I saw, but I would assure them that I wouldn't say anything in the first place.
   Because the psychic flying lizards are gullible (right? everybody knows that) they would let me go. Then, of course, once I was safely back on the surface world I would blab the whole thing to anyone willing to listen.
   Before too long you'd have developers moving in, clear-cutting forests of giant ferns so they could put up condos, displacing the dinosaurs and buying the psychic flying lizards out for pennies on the dollar. Then the gorilla-men would go next, and the sabretooth-men, and finally the Stone-Age type human beings would start walking around with cell phones discussing what they'd seen the night before on TMZ.
   See? It's just better for everyone concerned if I walk around metal plates in the sidewalk.

Going Back On My Promise

Sometimes you say things you regret, or you do things you regret and you regret talking about them later. And sometimes you make a sweeping pronouncement so bold and all-encompassing that you never want to go against it. But then you do and you have to come clean. This is come-clean day for me. Ready? Okay... deep breath... here goes...
   I'm running.
   Yup, for the past two weeks I've been on the treadmill at the gym, slowly increasing my speed and my distance. My goal is a non-stop mile - which, honestly, I could do right now but for my laziness issues - and after achieving that I will find some other running-related goal.
   This will be disappointing to many of you, I know, especially my long-time friends. You may recall such pronouncements as 'I only run when someone is chasing me. With a gun.' Or classics like 'If you see me running, swerve and put me out of my misery.'
   If I learned nothing else from the Bush administration, I learned that it's a very bad idea to stick slavishly to a clearly-discredited policy, and my running ban was one of those. I've been steadily losing weight for years now, slimming down and toning up, but I will never be really fit until I get more cardiovascular endurance. And, regrettably, running is about the only way to do that. So I'm running. God help us all.
   I think this may be one of the signs of the Apocalypse. Anybody want to check the Book of Revelations?

My Proust Questionnaire

Vanity Fair magazine has a regular feature on its last page in which they ask celebrities or people of note to answer the same 18-30 questions. The Proust Questionnaire. Since I may never have Vanity Fair knocking on my door asking for my two cents, I decided to short-cut the process and just post my answers to a few of those questions right away.
   Yeah, I read Vanity Fair. So what? You want to fight about it? Right... didn't think so...

Anyway, I tried not to be as evasive and superior as Martha Stewart - who would not really answer a single question, no surprise there - or as self-absorbed and old-Hollywood as Tony Curtis.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
   When Gotham City is finally free from the scourge of crime... hold on, that's Batman...
   uh... a good steak dinner - with potatoes and asparagus and creme brulle and all that - that I didn't make for myself and that I didn't have to pay for.
What is your greatest fear?
   That chimps, gorillas, and orangoutangs are plotting to take over the world. And that they'd do a better job than we have.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
   Laziness.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
   Unearned arrogance.
What is your current state of mind?
   Pretty good for an unemployed bum
What is your greatest regret?
   That I didn't stay in Venice for Carnival when the pretty rental car clerk asked me to. Not a joke, it really happened and it's my one regret.
How would you like to die?
   On my hundredth birthday, falling fifty feet from a circus trapeze, and I survive the fall but the sound I make when I hit the ground spooks the elephant and he scoops me up in his tusks and flings me into the Human Cannonball's cannon, which goes off and shoots me into the fair grounds where I land in the cotton candy machine. And then I smother on cotton candy.