Early morning
For about the last two weeks I've been waking up precisely at 3am...without an alarm clock. Bizarre. I can't get back to sleep, so I get up and go to work.
Commuting at 4am is interesting. You run into two kinds of people: drunk vampires weaving their way home after a long night of carousing, and idiots like me who are heading to work. The hard part of course is that I knock out much of what I need to do uninterrupted and straight through, so my workday is effectively done by 9am! Then what? Coffee, walk around, more coffee, walk, bug the office people upstairs, coffee. Then I take a coffee break.
By noon I'm exhausted and by 4pm I've really hit the wall. The vicious cycle continues; I go home, walk the park, and end up in bed around 8pm.
I guess with that early bedtime, it's no wonder I'm awake at 3am.
If a mower's running in the forest, and there's no one there to hear it....
True story, from yesterday's London Sun newspaper:
a Buddhist monk was killed by a
giant lawnmower with faulty brakes. The 50 year old monk had chased after the machine when it pulled away from him. He caught up with the mower but
slipped and fell under the blades as he tried to climb into the cab. He was sliced up by the cutter in the 12-acre grounds of the Peace Pagoda in Milton Keynes, UK. According to an investigator, and speaking of the mower: “It should not have been used. The only way you could get the tractor to stay stationary was to turn off the engine.”
Now, here's the extra weird part: this poor monk had previously lost
three fingers in a mower accident ten years ago. And his name: Rev Gyosei Handa.
"Handa".
Hooray for Hollywood!
Didja watch the
Oscars?Me neither.
Reading the paper today, I found that the list of winners were all a bunch of goddamm
foreign illegal aliens. They included:
Best Actor: Tristan Hamish MacDougal (right), as Gabby, the cleft-palate with a heart of gold, in "I'm Not Mumbling, I'm Scottish". During his acceptance speech, he brought the audience to tears with this moving tribute to his wheelchair-bound mother: "Boggin? Och aye! A bit fousty, dinna ya ken! No the noo. When ah met yer Senga doon the toun, we had a richt gud blether the gither as the po wee hen be skivin. W'mater til ma wee sporran ya...ach! Iva g'minda beatye roond the chops wita wee haggis y'noo!". Rumors of an aneurysm allegedly suffered by the TV transcription service worker assigned to the Oscars are just that--rumors--and remain unconfirmed at press time.
Best Actress: Sophie Danielle de Montegnard (right). Unforgettable as Fifi, the sad and ugly French prostitute with a heart of gold, who shaved her armpits and then went off to seek her fortune in New York, in "La Plume De Ma Tante Est Sur La Table".
Best Supporting Actor: Javier Jesus Maradona de la Hoya Maricon (right), for his stirring performance as Jaffa the Jungle Boy, the Venezuelan ghetto child with a heart of gold, who runs away from his abusive alcoholic lottery playing tia and finds fame and fortune as a circus performer in "El Elefante Tiene Un Tronco, (Pero Tengo Solamente Una Maleta)" (The Elephant's Got A Trunk, But I've Only Got A Suitcase).
Best Supporting Actress: Jenna Jameson (right), as...aw, hell. You can figure this one out on your own.
There you have Nigel's Oscar roundup.
Up next: the Grammy Awards! My money's on Neil Young for his astonishing and moving alt-rock/reggae/hip-hop/cabaret style re-working
of his huge hit, Heart Of Gold. How about you?
I can't win. I won't win. I don't want to win.
Japanese Salarymen -- the black-suited corporate warriors who work long hours, spend long evenings drinking with cronies and stumble home late to long-suffering wives -- have
danger waiting for them as they near retirement.
A change in Japanese law this year allows a
wife who is filing for divorce to claim as much as half her husband's company pension. When the new law went into effect in April, divorce filings across Japan spiked 6.1 percent.
There's a
club that's formed in Tokyo in response to all this, called
The National Chauvinistic Husbands Association. For real. It's sort of a support group, designed to help men learn how to treat their wives better, and each evening begins with a group toast repeating the recommended strategy for use when arguing with their wives.
"I can't win. I won't win. I don't want to win," they bellow in unison, before tippling from tall schooners of draft beer.
Hysterical. And oh so true.
My hero is Al Gore, protector of birds and weeds
I love the environment. I am really concerned about green-space and am thrilled when I see pristine, natural open spaces. Grass is good.
To that end, I only throw my cigarette butts away on the pavement.
And
fossil fuels, hell, don't get me started. When I was young I though "fossil fuel" meant lunch for my 965 year old shriveled up 2nd grade teacher. But now I'm being responsible. So, I have a question for all the enviro-types out there: is it ok to chop down a tree if I'm going to make a bicycle out of it? That's right, a
wooden bicycle. Think about it.
Is your head exploding processing that one?
I ate Mexican food last night...
...I was worried, but now after seeing this photo: not so much.
The geese and the great outdoors
Oh GOD, what fun. I have
begun a walking program, shlubbies, per the good advice of my blog buddy
Loving Annie. There's a really
nice park my house backs up onto with a 2.5 mile walking trail, and that's where this
comedy is unfolding.
You know how when you were a kid, you never gave walking or running a second thought? I'm having a lot more than two thoughts, I gotta tell. Not that I'm going to stop or anything, but oh, jeez....
As I've told you before,
I hate the "great outdoors". I like the great indoors. Air conditioning, TV remotes, cold beer at hand whenever you need one (morning, noon, night), etc. Mountains and lakes make me nervous, whereas watching re-runs of My Mother The Car on TVLand makes me comfortable. Basically, acceptable great outdoors stuff to me pretty much starts and ends with me watching nature programs while prone on the couch.
I like animals ok and have had many pets. At one time, all at once, three cats and two dogs. But
wild animals? Not so much in close proximity, and there are some
pissed off geese around the pond in this park.
Geese don't like me. They see me and start honking. How do you get a goose to like you? Should I be concerned? Maybe they need food--idea--should I bring some old bread and throw it at them? Purina Goose Chow, maybe?
As big as I am right now, maybe I can get the geese to like me by imitating their walk. It's not difficult; the waddling comes pretty naturally right now!
Wiper...my ass!
This morning while driving in (before sunrise)
it started raining. So I flipped on the wipers.
Wrong move.
The driver's side
wiper snapped off the arm. Fortunately it didn't fly off the car--but then I was stuck. Pulled over, pitch black, raining, and without a working flashlight (I had a plug-in one but the plug got mangled so it was useless, I found out).
Ever try to
re-attach car wipers in the dark in the rain? Hell, ever tried to re-attach car wipers in your garage under fluorescent lights? Who thought of the
design of these things? Am I the only one who can't understand the directions? I have lots of spatial trouble; real difficulty visualizing a three-dimensional outcome from a two-dimensional instruction drawing. So that made it extra hard.
I finally managed to sort of get it back on and soaked, made my way to the home.
What a way to start the day....
Eerie, unsettling old magazine ad
Oh, man--can you believe this
old French magazine ad for Pakistan International Airlines? Click on it to see it full size. *Gulp*....
My brain hurts
I shave my own head. It saves time, it saves money. But boy, is it a pain.
It takes a lot of work to end up as gorgeous as I am. My
cranium, nude, looks like the
dark side of the moon. I half expect Neil Armstrong to take "one small step for a man" on it each time I shave the bloody thing down. There are nooks, crannies, and crannies in the nooks and crannies, ridges, hills, valleys, etc.
If it weren't my skull, it'd be a nice place to go mountaineering.
Why all the bumps and lumps? Years ago my father told me that I used to
bang my head against the wall as I was trying to go to sleep. He and my mother would be slipping into the arms of Morpheus, and just before pass-out time he'd be roused by a rhythmic "thump...thump...thump" emanating from my locked basement room. That would have been me, your Nigel, sending out
messages to the natives in the jungle via my own personalized head drum.
Come to think of it, that explains a lot, doesn't it? Finally, some insight into why I am the way I am:
it's brain damage, people! It must be! Caused by me banging my head against the wall beginning about age 2...
Walking down the aisle....
...the thing's pointing the wrong way. A.) In mouth; B.) pull trigger.
Insect sex
Fact: the male praying mantis cannot copulate while its head is attached to its body. The female initiates sex by
ripping the male's head off. At left, mantis meal and mating occurring before our very eyes. Charming.
Quote: “Ah, yes,
divorce ... from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet.” --Robin Williams
Sitting on the deck in the sun this morning, I'm feeling particularly
charitable as I muse over the state of
male/female relationships. Having long ago given up on hooking up, I'm provided with unique perspective on this interesting topic, to wit:
it ain't worth it. As I sip from my ice cold can of PBR (it's 11:30am here but in Europe it's happy hour, goddammit, so someone's drinking at an appropriate time and I don't want them to feel left out), I thank the Lord above for my
quiet, empty home while cursing my
quiet, empty bank account, bereft of bucks, bucko, 'cause of them thar pesky alimony payments. I'm not bitter or anything, see.
Mmmmm, the PBR tastes gooooooooooooooooooooood.
So, how's YOUR Saturday going?
Attn Homer Simpson! Change your name, save some $$
Not quite sure what to make of this. I imagine someone somewhere might change their name to save a few bucks on their tombstone...?
'scuse me while I kiss this guy....
The title of this post refers to "Purple Haze" by
Jimi Hendrix (at right). There's a line he sings that goes: "'scuse me while I kiss the sky" and for years many, many people thought it was "kiss this guy". There's a
web site devoted to this called the
Archive of Misheard Lyrics and its url is http://www.kissthisguy.com
Back in my
on air radio days, we'd "take requests". The fun part of this
was when the listener wasn't sure of the song title and/or would
request using mangled song lyrics. Trying to figure out exactly what the hell song they wanted was sometimes easy, sometimes a challenge. I used to take calls from people who wanted to hear
"Carry a laser down the road" (Mr. Mr., "Kyrie", the lyrics were Greek--"Kyrie eleison"--meaning "Lord have mercy")...
"I'm Gonna Sit On You" (George Harrison, "I've Got My Mind Set On You"),
"There's A Bathroom On The Right" (CCR, "Bad Moon Rising"), and tons of others.
Perhaps
my favorite mangled lyrics request was a phone call from back in 1978 that went something like this:
Nigel: 104 KFMX, can I help you?
Caller: Yeah, man, I wanna hear
PIZZA BURNING!
Nigel: Excuse me?
Caller: Pizza Burning!
Nigel: A song called Pizza Burning?
Caller: Yeah man--that
jam from Mick and Keith!Nigel: The Stones? Pizza Burning? Sing me some of the lyrics so I can figure it out.
Caller: OK, here goes:
"I don't wanna be your...pizza burning"...Nigel: That's "Beast of Burden", sir, "Beast of Burden".
Caller: Play it! Pizza Burning!!!
I've got the song on my mp3 player and I'm listening (and laughing thinking about that call) right now...
Update from the death house
Everybody's sick here at the funeral home, but our
owner, Mr. Wiges (at left, in his normal getup--this isn't a Halloween photo), is as usual 100% fit as a fiddle. This guy isn't human. He never, ever, ever gets sick. How this is possible, I dunno--could be from
inhaling formaldehyde all these years?
This Wiges is a piece of work. He doesn't smile much. Plus, he looks exactly the way people think a funeral director should look--
just like Lurch on the Addams family. But, he has a high squeeky voice and nervous tremors, so we try like hell to keep him away from grieving family members when they're visiting the home.
One other tidbit of news, this time sorta sad:
Carmella in casket receiving got fired last month. They've replaced her with some guy, and more's the pity. Carmella and her thong provided me hours and hours of
fantasy hand party entertainment, and now she's....gone. *sniff*
Gay street changes to 2 way
...not that there's anything wrong with that.
Thoughts on turning 50
Now that I'm officially 50:
I've got the face I deserve, according to philosophers. When I look in the mirror, all I think is: "I hope them there philosophers were wrong."
- Hangovers are definitely different now. Before, they were headaches that went away within 3 hours. Now, I feel like I've been hit by a baseball bat. It's like having the flu, but without all the fun normally associated with that.
- I meet young nubility now and there's a sense of safety they derive from being in my presence. It's almost like I'm their protective uncle.
- BUT: that goddam "drive" get worse, if that's even possible. This is the crux of my problem, you see: I am a for real honest to God dirty old man, I'm ashamed to say. My idea of a good retirement location is a college town where I can rent an apartment with a balcony and sit out there all day, drinking sambuca and smoking Balkan Sobranies, and perve on the 20 year old pulchritude passing by on their way to class. Can someone help me with this? I mean it. I want NOT to be that way. 'Tis a conundrum.
- I haven't as yet joined AARP, despite their repeated entreaties for me to do just that. They're a bunch of commies who are agitating for universal health care, free love, legalized abortions containing marijuana, and colon-rectal scans all paid for on the taxpayer's dime. Or something similar. But I do like their magazine.
Alone again, naturally.
Actual headline from yesterday....
Honestly, sometimes you don't even have to work hard to create a post. You just look around and it comes to you. From yesterday's WTTG Washington D.C. website:
Annoyed by geeks in Orlando
I got out of Orlando by the skin of my teeth.That's how I felt, btw--that I had
skin on my teeth. I caught the most
massive head cold, so throughout my meetings I was wheezing and spewing and sneezing and coughing. I did my best to keep away from people, even going so far as to set up one of my meetings via WEB EX, for God's sake, despite the fact that I was just in the next room!
Aren't I thoughtful?
This explains why there were only limited posts during the trip. Anyhow, I
felt a bit better on the plane home. Loving Annie smartly suggests using seatguru.com , which I do all the time to select plane seats, and I found myself heading northwards in Delta's
767-300's best seat in the house, 26F. The reason I like this seat is,
no annoying douchenozzles next to you asking you questions and talking up a storm.
All was not sweetness and light, unfortunately. The
normal advantages of 26F were trumped by the geek-athon that was occurring in seats 25F and 25G, directly in front of me. Two guys who looked like the
dorkage pictured at left engaged in a
non-stop, loud, screeching argument from takeoff to touchdown. The subject?
The efficacy of object oriented programming in a Linux environment. Or something like that.
Apparently not content that
Delta wasn't showing Firefly on endless loop on the in-seat video player, these
George Lucas worshiping, living in their mother's basement Star Trek groupie noids completely spoiled my flight, and I say to them here and now on the morning of my 50th birthday:
Shut up. Buff my scrotum. Or, as you geeks would say it:
"100010111010001001110 10000 110001001001000111111."
For about the last two weeks I've been waking up precisely at 3am...without an alarm clock. Bizarre. I can't get back to sleep, so I get up and go to work.
