Sunday, October 30, 2005

Haloween partyolays


Oh Yeah!
Originally uploaded by Theorris.
Supposed to go to 4 different parties last night. Went to two. The Hulkster was boistrous as only the Hulkster can be. That, of course, is an annoying trait at small parties (the first) but it was mildly entertaining for me at least if not for others.

Favorite lines of the night:

"You know, Mean Gene...."
"Which little Hulkster out there is going to get the Hulk a beer?"
"Hulkamania is running wild in the streets of Salt Lake City!"

You can only imagine how annoying this would get. I loved it.

Friday, October 28, 2005

Halloween is fun!


Halloween is fun!
Originally uploaded by Theorris.
My costume represents the best of my manual dexterity and graphic artisty. Man I suck, but the costume will be great.

On the whole, Halloween costume making for me is usually a one-off event anyway. I regularly pull decent costumes together in 10 minutes or less. This one is the most planned I've been in years, I think.

One of my favorites of all time was going as "beat up." That one just involved some bloody makeup and a stuff to blacken my eyes.

Mid-B and Dr. Write kindly gave me a ride home today and I told them of my possible costumes for this year:

  1. Dead Hemmingway (too bloody and beardy)
  2. Hunter S. Thompson (too obvious and too bloody)
  3. Enoch Emory in his gorrilla suit from F.O.'s Wiseblood (too obscure and too hot)
  4. or (the winner) 80's Hulk Hogan!

Hulkamania rules! All the little Hulksters out there are helping me out, Mean Gene!

Fight for what's right! Fight for your right!

And no, I won't put up with that Hollywood Hogan shit. Imagine the Hulkster wearing a feather boa. Bah!

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Give them a few seconds and I'll think they'll figure it out

Mid-B and I got a hoot out of the following that appeared in our College's newspaper:
While some students feel safe and educated on how to put on a condom, many do not know what to do after it is on.
You can make your own punchline.

Monday, October 24, 2005

16 observations written while leaving Minneapolis, Minnesota

1: It is not that Minneapolis is boring, but I think I am just tired of the place. I've been to the various cultural hotspots that one can attend to on any normal day and most of the others are closed on a Sunday. So I used the morning to explore a little bit more and then ended up taking the light rail out to the airport too many hours early to even count. The airport, in fact, seems to be a lot like the Minneapolis I was exploring this morning—the maze-like Skyway. It is what Minnesotans use to navigate the city when it is sub zero, I suppose. Such skyways were quite the thing in the 70s—a way of attracting suburbanites back downtown in a variety of cities since it kept them off the dirty streets and in an environment that pretty much mimicked their prefab stomping grounds. The Minneapolis Skyway is pretty much like that. The funny thing is, however, people don't really seem to use it, favoring the streets and their direct route to the needlessly arcane second level sidewalks. I'm sure all that changes, no doubt, when winter hits full-force and the wind is cold enough to intimidate even the most well-adapted Minnesotan of full-blown Scandinavian heritage. Then again I like to think of the average Minneapolitan as shunning the suburb in the midst of their happy city. Somehow, walking a block south of my hotel where the skyway ceases to exist, turnstiles disappear and normal, everyday bundled-up city resumes, proves to me that the folks of Minneapolis have a better insight into dealing with their winters than just suburbanizing and air-conditioning it our of existence.

In that neighborhood that was not commercial, and not too rich, but definitely inhabited by true city-dwellers, I saw folks who had a sense of where they were and the weather. "Is it chilly in here?" the cute waitress at Jerusalem's asked the couple who'd come in after me. The woman-half of the pair was bundling herself a bit.

"Yeah," the man said.

"Our heat's out, but its not like its too cold yet."

"Yeah, it'll be too cold too soon. I'll turn the heat up."

"Oh you don't have too. Just bring us a coffee."

"You bet."

2: The airport bartender is bored. He tells his co-bartender he wants to go watch Smallville. "Its how I take myself out of reality, you know." Both the bartenders are in their 60s. He made a bit of small talk with me, but now that I am engrossed in typing he doesn't bother me. I'm on my second "big one" of a fine beer—Schnell's Oktoberfest. I'm thinking about a third. It is good beer, and it is good to see the sun has come out as I look across the concourse. The people rush to their gate. When my time comes, I'll saunter.

3: The Vikes won their game by a literal last-second field goal. The bartenders are suitably unimpressed. "Now all it will be is we have a chance."

"Yeah you know."

4: A very attractive woman comes in with this guy. Immediately I want to talk to her. She's in a white jacket, has perfectly straight sandy blonde hair, a great face (no noticeable makeup, deep brown eyes, and I'm turned on by her. I gather she is not with the guy but knows him. They order matching beers. She orders first and he follows. He's flirting with her and I find myself getting stupidly jealous. I should be talking to her, I type (just now, and you witness it). Suddenly (as in now) I feel quite stupid. So I write about it. I change the subject and talk to Russ (the bartender—I now know his name) about the traffic that would have come onto the train from the Metrodome after the Viking's win. Apparently there will be folks floating in from the game into the airport shortly. People fly into town for football games?

5: I'm thinking about the woman I met on my first night in Minneapolis. It was a bold, shot-of-whiskey flirtation for me, but we had a great conversation and I've been thinking about her since then. She was cool--from MIT: a scientist studying acoustics. She was in town for some computer-fandango and she was attractive. Attractive. Oh yeah she was hot. I told her the truth about who I was and what I was doing but I still think she was not telling the truth. I'm sure she has met plenty of guys on the road who give her the writing center coordinator story. Yeah that's a big one to score with the ladies!

Of course I believed everything she said. The encounter has kind of depressed me for the whole conference. She disappeared, of course. What's new?

6: I think I both despise and love traveling.

7: I lie. I lie egregiously to a rich couple at a new bar in the airport. It is fun. I enjoy telling them about the amenities at a non-existent ski resort by Deluth. I am suddenly a ski resort reviewer, you see. My story checks out: ironic hoodie, SLC destination, the desire to have a Jaegermeister shot (and the completion of that) and my pity of Minnesota and its lack of terrain. Ah I suddenly feel a lack of personal terrain in my fabrication.

It is a joke for me. Pretend. You know: like Peter Pan or Mr. Rogers. Although Mr. Rogers freaks me out even more than Peter Pan, it is fun to pretend some times.

8: Usually I'm very non-pretentious and the previous part flies in the face of that.

9: 2 hour flight next to a woman who won't have a jot to do with me and a dude who is looking at the pictures in his 3 magazines. I moved my monitor so they can't see. Did you detect it?

10: I'm ordering a nice black coffee.


11: I'm kind of sad now. Excuse me. Yeah whatever. Fuck you.

12: See I am not a very good traveling companion. Ask Lis.

13: 12 makes me sad.

14: We've finally reached the generation of airplanes that no longer have ashtrays.

15: I like chasing the sun. I also like listening to the Eels and Wilco while doing it. I also like how Johnny Depp says "Wow" in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

16: Sometimes I feel like Willie Wonka. Sometimes I feel like Charlie Bucket.

Sunday, October 23, 2005

You're going to make it after all

Still in Minneapolis. Yada yada. Lis and I walked around a bit the other day after her battle with her hotel's tredmill. We decided to take on the role of absolute tourist geeks and take pictures by the Mary Tyler Moore statue on the main drag. Then we ventured by light rail to the Mall of America. MOA, by the way, is a heinous ass pit. The one saving grace is that I will never again have to go to a mall since all my future mall devotion has been made up for by one trip to that worthless behemouth. Can you tell I hated the Mall of America?

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

The View


The View
Originally uploaded by Theorris.
Yup that's what I look out on here in beautiful downtown Minneapolis. I explored a bit right when I got here (mostly to fight off 2 hours of airplane confinement). It is a titch windy here. I assume that is abnormal, but what the hell do I know. I look down on a church that looks like a combo of the Cathedral of the Madelene and First Pres in Salt Lake. Minneapolis and SLC have a lot in common, I think--scandanavians and what not. The buildings, of course, look bigger here simply because there is nothing to compare them too aside from the mighty Mississippi, which, isn't all that mighty up here.

I'll keep an eye out for Paul Bunyon, Laura Ingalls-Wilder and Mary Tyler Moore for you. I'm sure they're around somewhere--probably all hanging out at the convenience store/Asian market/liquor store out behind my fancy-pants hotel. (More on find fun in faux-privelege later.)

"I'm a travelin' man..."

Traveling is a theme for me this week. I'll be venturing out of good old SLC to the great Twin City Mecca. Don't ask me what Krazy Kat and Beck have to do with it, however. (Sorry the file is so large--I tried to compress it down to something reasonable, but the quality went right out the window. The MP4 on that page is set to stream, but I don't know if it actually does.)

Monday, October 17, 2005

Pool


Pool
Originally uploaded by Theorris.
Karmaking pooling it up at Brewvies. We went there to see Wedding Crashers--a movie that was far better than I expected. I told King and Friend Dustin who is relocating from Wyoming that it reminded me of the Marx Brothers. King was taken aback by this remark, I think. He is right, of course, there are not usually eggregious hand jobs in Marx Brother's movies.

Hand job. Ever notice how many times that phrase is mentioned in Rushmore?

Sunday, October 16, 2005

"Catnipped"

If WC Fields really said it (and I have my doubts), I find it to be true: don't work with animals (and children). Catnipped. Boonis (the cat) generally gets quite hyper when given catnip performing all sorts of wild behavior such as crazy jumps and across the room flings of his toy mice. The presene of the camera, however, seems to have made him shy.

Monday, October 10, 2005

iProcrastination or proscrasto-blogging

I put my iPod over there <--- yeah over there (it is the white thing with the buttons and the screen.) Actually it isn't my iPod at all since I don't own an iPod, but it does show you what is playing on my iTunes iNow. Likewise I have another program that "mobs" play lists for me--finding similar artists to ones that are playing and making them for me in iTunes.

Kind of childish, really, but it does distract me from the work I am finally doing. I hadn't, ofcourse, started the work earlier today or at all this long weekend, but now I'm in the midst of it, taking a procrastinating break by writing about procrastination.

All this page fiddling, song list building, and writing about procrastination is a bit like housework for me. I know when I was in college my digs were never cleaner than when I had to write a paper. That's the procrasto-cleaning that many of us are familiar with.

So now instead of cleaning I just do stupid things with a web page or make song lists or write about procrastination to feel like I am actually accomplishing something while avoiding the real work I need to be doing that I should have done long ago. Why? Because I can, that's why. No one is forcing me to do the work aside from myself and now my desire to be through with it and my guilt for not having it done already.

Procrasto-rambling is indeed just as fulfilling as procrasto-web- fiddling, procrasto-iTunes-playlisticating and procrasto-cleaning. None of it, of course, beats procrasto-beer-drinking.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

Fall Break


Wasatch from Desolation Trail
Originally uploaded by MacClint.
The nice thing about my job is that I get random holidays like Fall Break where I can catch up on what's going on in the canyons above SLC. I briefly thought about going out of town, but sometimes it is nice just to be home and take things as they come. After some debate, Karmaking and I decided to go for a hike up Millcreek Canyon. The debate was more about which canyon would be best. I think we chose Millcreek simply because it was closest.

We stopped at the Desolation Trail just above the Boy Scout camp and I regailed Karmaking of stories from my work at that camp guiding 11-year-olds as a world-wise 14-year-old camp staff member. I amused K. with tales of a crazy racoon, kids who broke their arms because they didn't listen to me, and how I disposed of the rattle snake we had caught in camp (I took it up the same trail and flung it out in to the woods.) King was intrigued how one would handle a snake, and I told him about the crafty use of a forked stick and gloves in snake handling.

As King noted as we were driving out of the canyon after the hike "it was like being in another world." Indeed.

There are more pics over at Flickr.

Monday, October 03, 2005

Sunday, October 02, 2005

The Wilhelm Invitational


The Wilhelm Invitational
Originally uploaded by MacClint.
The Invitational was a success at least for those who showed up. For those who didn't show up it was a complete failure.

Update: Dun Dun Dun Dah. (Oh and you can kiss Bowlarama goodbye--The Bowling Syndicate abides!)