Blowing Sh*t Up With Gas

Maybe I Told This Tale Already...

2008-07-03T13:41:00.000-05:00

...but, I was home today for lunch & heard the great Fountains of Wayne hit "Stacey's Mom," and that triggered a few memories. The first is the story of a woman in my office (here at Horn Dog Enterprises -- HDE) who walked around the entire place one day many years back asking everyone to vote for her in the WDVE (a local classic rock station) "MILF Contest." Gentleman that I am, I took her aside and asked if she knew what MILF meant. She didn't. It was a little awkward for a week or so thereafter (even for HDE).

Anyway, in the tune, you get the feeling that the speaker is basically a young man, probably of high school age, who finds himself enamoured with "Stacey's Mom," right? I would argue that this is the usual / traditional sense of the acronym MILF -- spoken by a young man about someone's mother. That's kind of an important distinction because, technically speaking, "MILF" could be uttered by anyone of any age about any attractive woman who has borne a child. And, of course it's a subjective descriptor; a MILF to me may not be a MILF to you. But, again, I think it's safe to call it a young man's term.

It's also pretty much solely a guy thing (e.g., there being no equivalent term "DILF"), although MILF could technically be applied in a lesbian context (though I've never heard it used that way -- which, btw, would make interesting blog fodder).

As defined above, I never found myself in situation in which the term MILF would have been applicable. And, as I'm now clinging desperately to my late 30s, I suppose the window of opportunity has long passed for the proper use of that term. But I do vividly recall one MILF, at least as far as some of my friends were concerned.

There's a guy who reads this blog sometimes called Denn The Hunter (referred to in my book, Tales of the Midwest as Alec Baldwin). Quite a few young men had a crush on Mrs. Baldwin -- especially a guy called Hero in my book. I was probably the only guy, aside from the Baldwin brothers, who didn't think of Mrs. Baldwin as a MILF, and that's probably only because I spent so much time at their house, she was kind of like a mother to me (or, well, maybe an aunt or something).

But Hero was so delusional about his MILF crush (and probably other things) that I think he actually believed he had a shot with Mrs. Baldwin. Once when we were 16 or 17, I recall him vocalizing a decision one day: "I'm gonna lay one on her," he'd said. That was typical Hero stuff, of course. I don't think he ever did, thankfully.

Happy 4th of July. See you next week!

Does anyone else ever feel ...

2008-07-02T08:43:00.001-05:00

... that if CraigsList completely disappeared from the face of the Earth, we'd all be better off?

Failed Hollywood Merchandising Efforts, Vol. 1

2008-06-30T09:05:00.001-05:00

"The High School Musical Framing Nailer"

(This post should be considered a meme. Consider yourself tagged if you feel so moved.)

Will Return Next Week

2008-06-24T06:50:00.002-05:00

Hmmm. Blogger didn't post my last two posts. I guess something's screwy.

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2008-06-24T05:59:00.000-05:00

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Comic Book Advice Sought

2008-06-23T22:44:00.000-05:00

Wow, am I busy! I'm totally overextended these days, prepping my house for sale, decluttering, selling off possessions, etc. Quick question for any comic book aficionados on the blogosphere: Is anything in the following list worth anything? I'm thinking of doing a bulk sale on eBay or CraigsList (e.g., $20 takes all, or some such nonsense), but don't want to just "give away" anything of particular value. So, here are the comic books I found in my basement. Assume VG+ condition on everything.

MARVEL COMICS

X-Factor (1985), #1 (3 copies), 2-8, 10-13, 15-16

The West Coast Avengers (1985), #1-19, 21

The Avengers (1986), #264-272, 274-278

Cloak & Dagger (1985), #1-7

Web of Spider Man (1985), #5,6, 8-14, 17

Elf Quest (1985), #1, 3-5

New Mutants (1986) #38

Nick Fury Shield (1984) #2

The Vision and the Scarlet Witch (1986), #6-9 (from the 12-issue limited series)

Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider Man (1985) #100

Dakota North Investigations (1986), #1-2

The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones (1983) #9, 15, 34

Kazar the Savage (1981) #1,4,5,6,14

The Sword of Solomon Kane (1985) #1-6 (6-issue limited series)

Conan the Barbarian (1985) #174-181, plus a "giant-sized annual #10"

The Gargoyle (1985), #1,2,4 (from a limited series)

Lords of the Ultra Realm (1986) #1

Legionnaires(1985) #3

EPIC

Epic Magazine, Feb. 1986

Timespirits (1984) #2,4,5

Starstruck (1985) #5

OTHER

Modern Comics (1977) Ghostly Haunts #40

As you can tell, I've been away from comics for 20 years, so I'm totally out of the loop. Suppose I could eBay them individually... but if anyone knows right off the bat that something should be kept from the "$20 takes all eBay list," please let me know! I should add that I've saved out just a few of my faves, most notably one limited series that totally rocked my world back then. It was called Moonshadow, with absolutely breathtaking art by Jon J. Muth. Here's a look at the first cover from the series:

My Next Hobby

2008-06-17T13:50:00.003-05:00

I hope this video embed works, as I'm not able to check from work. Anyway, this is my new favorite sport -- kite jumping. Once my house sells, I'm going to take about $400 and buy a huge-ass "power kite" and learn how to do this. According to my limited research so far, I think I'll buy a quad-line kite, as opposed to the 2-line model these kids are using. What do you think of this one? My favorite feature is how you have to sign a liability release to even purchase one!

Since I'll be a novice, I'm also planning to buy some rope and tether myself to the ground until I get the hang of it. Wouldn't want to get totally blown away on my first outing, right?

Cat Colony Saved with Desperate Phone Call

2008-06-16T14:45:00.001-05:00

Things came to an ugly head at the Hillman compound last week. In as-yet-unreported news, our feral cat colony has expanded (as cat colonies are prone to do). What started as a couple of wild kitties has blossomed into a family of six. To any normal person, this is a complete disaster. However, to my daughter, this was a wonderful development.

As soon as we found out about the kittens, we started having serious talks about spaying the females ASAP! (That's the best practice, by the way -- spay the females & you don't get more kittehs. The males, quite luckily, avoid neutering.)

With preparations already in motion to fix up / sell the house and then head off to the west coast, this cute cat colony had culminated in a complex conundrum. Pretty bad, right?

Well, it gets worse. Ages ago, I introduced the real-life inspiration for one of my favorite fictional evil character inventions, "Mrs. Pipistrello"(*). Well, Mrs. Pipistrello saw said kitties and went hysterical on my daughter. Threats were uttered, harsh words spoken, dirty glances exchanged. Then, my daughter noticed a mysterious white powder lining Mrs. Pipistrello's back porch. Yep, it seemed the ol' crank intended to poison the colony.

Action was required. So, I picked up the phone and called out to a nearby horse barn at which my daughter used to ride. I asked for the owner (a guy I'd never met) and then explained the situation.

"You called at the right time," he said. "We could use a family of cats here at the barn. As long as you fix the girl cats, we'll take 'em all." He added that, not only could they live peacefully in the barn, but that all of the riders who frequent the place usually treat the barn cats extra special -- bringing them food & treats all the time.

I'd say the odds of a satisfactory resolution to this problem were about 6.5 million to 1. The odds of addressing it via a single, on-a-whim phone call were incalculable. But, there it is. Cat problem solved. Q.E.D.

(*) Just as a footnote: In my fiction writing, I allow a few characters to pop up in various, otherwise unrelated works. This particular lady was the inspiration for "Mrs. Pipistrello" who first appears in my NaNoWriMo novella, "Pirates of Pamlico Sound" (available for download along the right side of my blog). In real life, this woman's Italian. The word pipistrello is Italian for bat, (as in, she's an old bat). Also, I should note in fairness that, upon the resolution of this problem, Mrs. Pipistrello claimed that the white powder was some kind of detergent that she'd reportedly heard cats do not like. So, her excuse was basically "cat repellent." Um-hmm... Like I'm buying that.

Posts I Never Finished, Volume 11

2008-06-12T09:07:00.001-05:00

So, you know that excellent Norah Jones tune, "Don't Know Why I Didn't Come"?

[As I said, I never finished this post. It was going in a direction that was, IMHO, too lewd for even this blog. Better to just leave this one alone, I think. I hope I didn't just ruin that tune for anyone, btw.]

Posts I Never Finished, Volume 10

2008-06-12T08:56:00.001-05:00

This one was entitled simply, "The BATFSDR"

You know the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms? I was thinking... Why stop there? If they really wanted to have a kick-ass bureau, they'd call it the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll. (Did you see that dude's ATF hat?)

Tango Tuesday

2008-06-10T14:34:00.001-05:00

Wouldn't "Tango Tuesday" be a great feature? Shouldn't we ALL tango on Tuesdays, really? Anyway, today I thought I'd mix things up a bit. Instead of posting my usual obnoxious brand of scatalogical humor, I thought I'd post a small treasure I unearthed while cleaning out the dark and mysterious area below my desk at home.

I came across an old piece of sheet music I'd purchased ages ago in an antique store. Looked to be mid-1920s, though there was no date listed. Complicating matters, all of the text is in Spanish. But, I loved the cover photo (which, naturally, I forgot to scan for this post -- sorry). So, I ponied up the 50 cents and bought the piece.

Technically, I'm not sure if it qualifies as a tango, even though it's subtitled, Tango Cancion. If I'm not mistaken, the rhythmic ostinati of a classical "tango" is something on the order of ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR-AND, ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR-AND, etc. A habanera, on the other hand, is more ONE (and two) AND THREE (and) FOUR (and), ONE (and two) AND THREE (and) FOUR (and) -- think Bizet's famous Carmen.

In any case, this habanera-styled tune's called "Jurame" (click to go listen to it). In Spanish, that would sound something like HOOR-uh-may. It means (I now know, after Googling) "Promise Me." Since I'm a huge fan of the habanera, I typed it into my notation program for your listening pleasure. (The link above is the resulting midi file.) I even notated the arpeggiated notes as 32nds or 64ths, depending on the situation, and added some pedaling. Came out pretty nice.

After typing it all in, I naturally began to wonder who wrote it. (There's no mention of an author on the sheet!) If you like the piece, here's some slightly edited composer bio info from the web (sorry, I forgot to save the source URL):

Maria Grever (1884-1951) was an early star of Mexican music. Born in Guanajuato, she studied in Europe with Claude Debussy and Franz Lehar (of Merry Widow fame) and eventually found her way to New York. "Jurame" ("Promise Me"), composed in the mid-1920s, was her first real success, though she would go on to compose over 800 other ballads, including "Te quiero dijiste" (another favourite of operatic stars).

800 ballads! Holy habanero peppers, batman. Interesting to note the romantic influence there as well. Makes perfect sense, right? I'll have to scan the sheet music cover picture, as it may be Grever there. The only other pic I could find on the web (pasted below) seems to be from her later years. Enjoy the midi.

Posts I Never Finished, Volume 9

2008-06-09T15:08:00.001-05:00

This one was entitled, simply, "Handy Guide to Visiting St. Louis, Missouri"

To recap: safely visiting St. Louis requires remembering nothing more than 50 geographical facts you already know -- your state names. If you find yourself on or near a street that includes a state name, remember this handy tip: GET THE FUCK AWAY ASAP OR YOU WILL GET MUGGED.

Posts I Never Finished, Volume 8

2008-06-06T22:14:00.001-05:00

I used to be a pro at rationalizing junk food. For example, I used to argue that partially hydrogenated vegetable oil probably wasn't so bad for you. It just seemed like there must have been a fully hydrogenated version out there somewhere that was much worse.

Posts I Never Finished, Volume 7

2008-06-06T22:09:00.001-05:00

This was in my "drafts" folder, too. It was simply entitled "Grapes." Must've been from my minimalist period.

Clinton / Obama, Unplugged

2008-06-06T16:12:00.001-05:00

Today, the Associated Press reported that Clinton & Obama met .... drum roll please ... WITHOUT AIDES!!!!! WOW, that's amazing news! THANKS, AP!!! You guys ROCK!!! By the way, here are some other things they did, ALL COMPLETELY WITHOUT AIDES:

* Barack rose at one point, grabbed a Poland Spring bottled water from the fridge, and returned to the sofa.

* He proceeded to open the bottle (himself!) and pour the contents into a tumbler.

* Hillary then snatched the bottle and walked it to a nearby recycling bin (all by herself!).

* After Hillary's *second* Poland Spring (each one personally retrieved and opened!), it was reported that she excused herself to use the bathroom -- again, sans aides! When one aide reportedly offered to "help," Hillary said, "No thanks, I got this one."

The Buck Stops ... Where?

2008-06-06T13:08:00.001-05:00

This is Mike Garrison, currently the lame duck president of West Virginia University -- lame duck because he has announced his resignation over a scandal involving the doctoring of records. From the AP article:

Though an independent panel found there was no evidence of Garrison's interference, it was on his watch last fall that WVU administrators added courses and grades to [the governor's daughter's] incomplete transcript, awarding her a 1998 executive master's business of administration degree she'd been claiming on her resume.

I don't have much of a reason for caring about this story. Trust me, my proximity to West Virginia is pure coincidence. Probably, I'm just interested because the dude's my own age (39), and I wonder if I would have handled it better than he did. Hell, I wonder whether my dog could have done a better job... But, the story raises a few important business-philosophical questions:

1. To what extent should leaders accept responsibility for the actions of their subordinates?

2. How could Garrison have handled this situation better?

My own answers are admittedly offered in hindsight. But, for what they're worth:

1. Individuals need to bear the responsibility for their own actions. It is impossible for a leader (someone like Garrison, in charge of hundreds of faculty and thousands of students) to foretell the future or effectively monitor the behavior and actions of all those he oversees. However...

2. He certainly could have handled the situation better by (1) acting immediately, decisively, openly, and professionally, (2) immediately firing those responsible, (3) immediately revoking the bogus degree, and (4) authoritatively communicating his decisions to his board, his administration, the student body, the press, and the community. (Clearly, the problem here was the high-profile nature of the screw-up -- i.e., the governor's daughter! So, I suspect he attempted to bury this out of fear. He gambled; he lost.)

As a HR professional, I'd like to stress how this situation underscores the importance of understanding and defining one's responsibilities (in terms of one's role, one's authoritative boundaries, and one's accountability) prior to accepting a position. While you cannot foresee every potentially negative situation on the horizon, you can probably anticipate generally unexpected circumstances and outline a general response. This is the underlying rationale, for example, of corporate "disaster planning" (all the rage after 9/11).

It's also something I think about on a daily basis here at Horn Dog Enterprises -- defining the scope of our consulting engagements. (Business 101, really...) When you're entering into a business transaction, it's critical to get the other guy to sign off on the scope. That way, you're covered in case the scope changes. And it always changes. Garrison fucked that one up bigtime.

So, accountability is important. But something also smacks of the political here, IMHO -- a forum in which accountability is paradoxically linked with much of the ugliness in today's two-party system. Not that I advocate nonaccountability, of course. But, as an independent, I routinely observe a phenomenon I think of as "blame convenience" -- which is one party's tendency to push the blame directly to the other for each problem we face in the world. No matter what side you're on, it's painfully easy to track a political problem back to someone on the other side of the aisle. Some hypothetical examples:

Republican in the Oval Office when "Some Major Problem" Arises:

Democrat Response: The problem lies with the President because he's in charge -- and besides, all Republicans are idiots.

Republican Response #1: The problem lies with the current and/or previous Democratically controlled Congress.

Republican Response #2: The problem exists because of the previous Democratic administration's policies.

Democrat in the Oval Office when "Some Major Problem" Arises:

Republican Response: The problem lies with the President because he's in charge -- and besides, all Democrats are idiots.

Democrat Response #1: The problem lies with the current and/or previous Republican-controlled Congress.

Democrat Response #2: The problem exists because of the previous Republican administration's policies.

Let's say, for a moment, that there really IS no so-called cosmological first mover for many of our problems (or that maybe there is, but we're to remain hopelessly agnostic therein -- as they're too complex or too dynamic for human comprehension). They still, however, exist.

As such, you do have to kind of admire a guy like Harry Truman, who said, "Look, I'm the guy in charge here, now. So, no matter what happens or happened, it's me who you need to see about it -- at least on my watch." So, in my mind, the question is not, "Who's fault is it?" The question is: Who's in charge now and what is he or she doing about it? One might fairly ask that very question about the current economy.

Posts I Never Finished, Volume 6

2008-06-04T14:57:00.001-05:00

[Hmm, I'm not sure exactly what was going to follow this headline, but in the spirit of this collection of posts, I'm running it:]

"Today, I Wanna Give a Big BSUWG Shoutout to All my MFin' Readaz"

Posts I Never Finished, Volume 5

2008-06-04T14:53:00.000-05:00

The technical aspects of designing a social networking system are actually quite easy compared with the more policy-oriented ones. Even a huge blog system like Blogger is actually quite simplistic from a programming standpoint, using technology that has been around in one form or another since at least the mid-1990s. You have users, posts, and comments, mainly. Plus little bells and whistles here and there. But, the database part is actually a breeze. People write up their posts, you put those posts into a database table. That gets linked to a comments table. Etc. The whole of the blogosphere (at its core level) is really about 5 rather basic SQL statements, as I see it.

And, since people can post whatever the hell they want, both visually and in writing, that makes writing a blogging system even easier -- because, again, you have almost no rules to enforce via the programming code. But, get yourself into a more formal setting (say, for example, writing a blogging application for a professional association), and it's the editorial and other "policing" policies that start to drive you mad. You have to program them all in, at some point -- which means that, at some point, a computer programmer has to ponder about which exact swear words are allowable and which ones aren't. "Fuck" is probably a no-no, as is the c-word. But, what about "shit"? That's not too bad, right?

I created a little subroutine for my site called NastyArray. Basically, it works like this:

You dimension a variable big enough to hold as many offensive words as you want, and then you keep track of how many you have identified:

Dim nastyArray(50)
nastyArray(1) = "[imagine an awful word here]"
nastyArray(2) = "[imagine an awful word here]"
nastyArray(3) = "[imagine an awful word here]"
nastyArray(4) = "[imagine an awful word here]"
nastyArray(5) = "[imagine an awful word here]"
nastyArray(6) = "[imagine an awful word here]"
nastyArray(7) = "[imagine an awful word here]"
nastyArray(8) = "[imagine an awful word here]"
nastyArray(9) = "[imagine an awful word here]"

numberofNastys = 9

So, in that case, it's 9. Don't ask me to share them because that would take an entire post to explain my choices. They're worse than George Carlin's infamous list, though.

Anyway, whenever you have some text you need to scrub, you just call a little function I like to call NastyKiller, like so:

Function NastyKiller(result)
   For x = 1 to numberofNastys
      foundNasty = InStr(lcase(result), nastyArray(x))
         if foundNasty <> 0 then result = Replace(lcase(result),nastyArray(x),"[edited]")
   Next
   NastyKiller= result
End Function

Thus, this mother[edited]ing piece of [edited] of a blog post becomes family [edited]ing friendly.

Posts I Never Finished, Volume 4

2008-06-04T14:30:00.001-05:00

[I really don't know what in the hell I was thinking on this one, but it feels good to clean out my "drafts" folder, so I'm soldiering on...]

Dear Readers,

In an effort to purge unnecessary language from my life, I'm considering changing my standard business sign-off. Right now, it's:

Best regards,

-Patrick Hillman

However, I'm gravitating toward:

Best,

-PH

Posts I Never Finished, Volume 3

2008-06-04T14:26:00.001-05:00

Test Your Trivial Knowledge:
"This man is the host of Jeopardy."

Sure, you know his name... or do you? Is he:

a) Alex Trevec

b) Alec Trevec

c) Alex Trebec

d) Alec Trebec

[I suppose this one could have been considered "done," but I ultimately didn't post it because I thought it was pretty stupid. I'm probably the only person on earth who can never remember this dude's name. BTW, when searching for his picture, I noted some anti-Jeopardy sentiment among Canadians. They call him one of Canada's Unofficial National Treasures (which ain't a good thing if you're an acronym buff). However, since I'm NOT CANADIAN, I have no beef with the dude.]

ps Answer in the form of a question! "Who is...?"

Posts I Never Finished, Volume 2

2008-06-04T14:07:00.001-05:00

"Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:
President of Iran, Midnite Toker"

This post could almost be presented as "done" for blogging purposes. However, for the record, I gave up about half-way though trying to make the thin line of vertical smoke from Ahmadinejad's jay look realistic. The general haze turned out pretty good though, thanks to an excellent "add smoke using Photoshop" tutorial I found online here.

Posts I Never Finished, Volume 1

2008-06-03T23:30:00.001-05:00

[Sometimes I start writing posts, but grow painfully bored before finishing. I'm sorry I never completed this post, as Mr. Miller may have liked it. Instead of deleting it, though, I'll just post the body of it and let it end where it did. See if you get bored before I did...]

Carly Simon hit the Billboard charts with You're So Vain about 250 years ago. But, there was no blogosphere back then, so I'm not sure how many people have taken the time to examine the song in any kind of depth. For the record,she has never divulged the identity of the "vain" subject, though many speculate Warren Beatty.

The particular pop-cultural allure of this song seems to reside in the aforementioned speculation. (Warren Beatty? Mick Jagger? James Taylor?) The world may never know. But the more interesting aspect, IMHO, is this: While the song is generally known to be about someone who is particularly vain, there is actually little lyrical evidence to support the assertion. Let's look at the subject's actions as described in the song:

You walked into the party like you were walking onto a yacht

Your hat strategically dipped below one eye

Your scarf it was apricot

("Your scarf it was apricot?" What was she, Yoda?) Anyway, fifteen years ago, I'd probably have had a field day filtering that through some Marxist literary theories. For openers, I have to admit I cannot necessarily relate to the usual manner with which one might walk onto a yacht. "Walk" seems to me a weak choice for the action. Looking back, I see that this rather weak verb is used twice in that opening line. I'd forgotten the first instance of "walking" into "the party."

How does one walk onto a yacht? Carefully, I'd guess. (You wouldn't want to lose your balance.) But, of course, she didn't mean that. Perhaps she should have said "your yacht," which could have better implied the meaning she was after -- that of a wealthy tycoon. However, logically speaking, it doesn't necessarily follow that a wealthy tycoon is vain. I'm sure there are men and women occupying respectable slots on the Forbes 400 list who have self-image issues.

It should also be noted that neither strategically dipped hats nor apricot scarves are traditional hallmarks of vanity. The hat suggests a possible Walter Mitty syndrome and the scarf implies a certain flamboyance -- but not necessarily vanity. [Perhaps it was precisely, as Sturdy Girl suggested regarding my recent questionable use of cinnamon/clove soap, metrosexuality.]

I was starting to believe that there would be no evidence whatsoever of the subject's actual narcissism. However, Simon continues:

You had one eye on the mirror as you watched yourself gavotte

Alone, it's not an entirely poor line. However, in the context of a forced rhyme scheme (yacht, apricot, gavotte), its quality is reduced considerably. Still, I'll at least admit that it implies vanity. The question is: Now that Simon has actually put forth a statement to support her premise, will she sustain her momentum, or will she let it peter out with additional weak, unrelated observations?

And all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner

They'd be your partner, and...

Well, aside from my affinity for the anapestic meter of "all the girls dreamed that they'd be your partner," there is once again a logical flaw in this statement in that it does not support Simon's thesis. If the women desired the subject, that might make him beautiful, but not necessarily vain.

You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you

You're so vain, I'll bet you think this song is about you

Don't you? Don't you?

I won't beat this part to death, as it's been done so since 1973. Quite obviously, there is a paradox here as the tune IS about the person. And, furthermore, believing a song is about oneself is not necessarily a narcissistic action. She has, after all, cited specific events already and will follow up with additional specifics.

Any normal person, vain or not, would draw this conclusion. It'd be like... well, if Carly's next tune contained the lyrics, "ooooo, you wrote on a blog called Blowing Shit Up with Gas, and you were obnoxious and talked out your ass, and your book Tales of the Midwest was really crass .... and you're so vain, you probably think this song is about you. Don't you?!!!! Don't you?!???!!!" Well, uh, yeah Carly, I think maybe it IS about me! But anyway...

You had me several years ago when I was still quite naive

Well you said that we made such a pretty pair

And that you would never leave

But you gave away the things you loved and one of them was me

Ahh, yes... Now we finally get to the brass tacks; what the tune really addresses (which isn't, it's quite clear, a vain man).

- - - - - - - - - - - - [insert abrupt ending] - - - - - - - - -

Okay, right here is the point at which I got bored, stopped writing, and almost deleted the piece -- which is kind of sad because I hadn't even had a chance to praise Simon for the one good line in the whole song:

I had some dreams, they were clouds in my coffee,
Clouds in my coffee, and...

Clearly that's the only really interesting line in the whole tune, right? Even Simon must have recognized that because she reiterates the words "clouds in my coffee." Poets use this reiteration device from time to time. Hell, I've done it myself. I've got a whole chapbook that I'll post someday... But, while a poet does it for effect, I had the feeling that Simon's use was more pitiful, as though she were writing a bunch of crap and then suddenly accidentally produced something interesting. The reiteration becomes not a purposeful, cadenced reflection, but rather a young woman excitedly shouting to the world, "Hey, look, a metaphor!!! I made a metaphor!"

Why yes, Carly, you did. My congratulations.

List of Moderately Gay Things I've Done Lately

2008-06-02T13:17:00.001-05:00

Since a few of my blogospheric acquaintances are gay, I thought I'd share this brief list of moderately gay things I've done lately. You'll have to be the judge as to whether I'm playing for the other team, as it were.

1. Found myself browsing the designer soap aisle at our local organic food co-op;

2. Selected a bar of cinnamon-clove scented soap;

(2a. It may have cost $2.99 or more... I forgot to look;)

3. Actually used said soap & liked the smell;

4. Considering not going back to Irish Spring for a while.

Admittedly, that's pretty powerful circumstantial evidence. But, I assure you it's all perfectly straight. I'd stay and defend myself further, but I have to run. I'm late for a pedicure.

Life @ Horn Dog Enterprises (HDE)

2008-05-30T10:24:00.002-05:00

One of the consultants at HDE walked into my office this morning to ask my opinion of a camcorder. "It's got a built-in 40 jiggabyte hard drive. Do you think 40 jiggabytes is enough?"

"Oh, it'll be more than enough, my friend," I said, nodding enthusiastically. "More than enough!"

Curious Thoughts...

2008-05-29T00:00:00.000-05:00

Do you ever wonder if Otis Spunkmeyer got teased a lot as a child?