I hate this contemporary, Rumsfeldian way of speaking where you ask a question and then answer it yourself. Example: “Does that mean things will be difficult for us? Yes. Does that mean we’ll quit? No.” It’s irritating and it displeases me, and when I have servants I will tell them so constantly.

Why don’t you just say “Things will be difficult but we won’t quit.” It’s shorter.

“Does it make you a douchebag if you answer your own questions out loud? Yes. Are you capturing my attention? No.”

------------------------------------------

Apparently there was a local explosion of some sort, later in the evening. I was at the West Side today and on my way out I saw like, literally twenty fire engines scattered all over Clementi like a “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” bug.

Three or four fire engines is no big deal, you see it every day; twenty is scary. I checked my phone to see if today’s date was 9/11 upside down or something.

The firemen said a plastics place had caught fire. I didn’t smell anything but I’m sure it smelled terrific. I know because there’s construction underneath my apartment, and twice a month they turn on what sounds like a buzzsaw and immediately afterwards my apartment fills with the smell of burning plastic. For the first five minutes it’s terrible; for the second twenty minutes it’s bad; after that you can’t smell it anymore but you lose the ability to do math.

-----------------------------

I was never great at math to begin with; I somehow managed to defy my DNA imperative. I blame it on my attention deficit disorder. It’s an exquisitely cruel irony that the thing preventing me from being good at math is abbreviated "ADD."

----------------------------

Jesus. I’m on a funk jag, and Average White Band’s “Cut the Cake” is the best thing to happen to me in a while.If you can listen to “Cut the Cake” without standing up at your desk, pushing the chair back and shuffling around then you are made out of wood. Like Jake Gyllenhaal. Yes he is, and you know it.

Pending Catchy Caption

I like giving people directions. I don’t know when it started, but lately I find myself crossing the street and approaching map-peering tourists that are clearly lost. If you ever wanted directions you would love the ones I gave you because they are clear, succinct and accurate. “Go two blocks, make a left.” “Go a block south to Holland Village, make a left, then make your second right.”

Most people are thankful, but some people don’t want my directions. They clutch their maps tight and look at me with actual fear, as if all the rumors they’ve heard about Asians are true and I’m going to pistol-whip them before taking their sneakers. But I push my directions on them anyway. “That’s north, that’s south,” I say, pointing to each. If they don’t wanna tell me where they’re going, fine; but at least I oriented them.

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So I’m used to approaching people, not so used to people approaching me. Yesterday I’m down in front of the Jade for my dinner, knocking off a smoke and officially neglecting my duties as Desperate Umemployed Guy. I've been trying to get companies interested for hours and I figure I can make do for fifteen. Anyways this kid comes up to me, maybe early twenties. Dressed down. Crew cut, intense look.

“Can I ask you a question?” he says, getting right up in my ear. “I’m taking a survey for my school.”

At a glance I figure he’s not a threat. “Sure.”“What do you think happens to you after you die?”

I think about it. Ten seconds passes. A breeze blows smoke from my cigarette into the kid’s face, but he doesn’t blink.

“I don’t think anything happens,” I finally say. “I think you die, then that’s it.”

The kid scribbles something into a notepad and shakes his head. “I’ve been getting a lot of those today,” he says. Which I thought was odd, because I noticed the notepad was blank; he was scribbling on the first page. “Maybe it was different before 9/11, or what’s going on over in Iraq. Some people think nothing happens to you when you die. But after you die, that’s an eternity, right? You’re stuck in eternity, don’t you think?”

Now I’m suspicious. “What school?” I ask.

“What?” he says, even though he heard me.“What school do you go to?”

“SA,” he says, and suddenly he looks uncomfortable. “I have something for you,” he says, quickly changing topic and pulling something out of his bag.

It looks like a wallet with twenties sticking out of it, but as he presses it into my hand I see it’s just a photorealistic brochure that’s been cut and designed to look like that. I open it up. There are multiple-choice questions inside.

“Thank you for taking the time,” he says, and walks off without another word.

I put the cigarette back in my mouth and start reading the questions.

- Do you consider yourself a good person?
- Have you ever stolen anything?
- Where do people go after they die?
- If someone tells you they are a thief, do you think they are a good person?

I flip to the back, and see a passage from the Bible. The numbers, the colons.

I look after the kid, but he’s long gone. You know, if he wanted to talk to me about God he could’ve just said so. Survey. Sheesh.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think about the people who don’t want my directions. When I see them with a map I tell them which way north and south is anyway, because I assume they need them. Maybe the kid figured he’s doing the same thing. Maybe he can see my soul and my soul is holding a map, so he figures he’s orienting me. I dunno.

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Alcohol free-Day 4

By four in the morning I’m very, very tired. I click the lamp off, my head hits the pillow and I slowly begin descending into sleep. Fifteen seconds into it I hear a shockingly loud

BAMMM

and my eyes pop open.

Without a doubt that was the sound of a car accident, and judging by the volume of the crunch, the vehicle involved was huge. The lack of screeching preceding the impact means the driver didn’t even brake.

Well. I’m sure someone will call the police. There are plenty of other neighbors who probably heard it, I think, and close my eyes.

“Fuuuuck,” I say, opening them again. It’s attitudes like this that led to the Kitty Genovese thing, and I don’t want to be one of those people. (Do a Google if you don’t know what I’m talking about.) I get out of bed and start pulling clothes on.

It’s cold and raining outside. First thing I see is a newspaper delivery truck, massive and dinosaur-proportioned, pulled over by the curb. They often rocket up my block late at night, because if you really gun it you can catch all the lights in a row. The driver is standing in front of the truck with a cell phone pressed against his ear.

The yellowtop cab he T-boned is thirty feet behind, skewed crazily in the middle of the intersection, passenger side crunched in like a “C.” The taxi driver is still sitting in the driver’s seat, talking calmly into his cell. Next to the cab lies the massive front bumper from the News truck, torn off from the impact.

Another yellowtop cab cruises past the damaged one and slows conspicuously, the way I’d imagine Serengeti wildebeests might pause when passing a mortally-wounded brother. The drivers make eye contact and then the undamaged cab is on its way.

There’s nothing for me to do down here, so I go back inside.

Poor Ms. Genovese, reduced to a paragraph or two in sociology textbooks. A shame if you ask me.

Soulmates.Yeah.

My Soulmate Sells Kumquats

THE SCENE: 11 p.m. on a Thursday. I`m eating noodles at a Korean outlet with L., an attractive 20-something professional. I`ve known her for five days

ME:Good noodles.
SHE:So, do you believe in "soulmates"?
ME:[choking] Uh...yes...no...maybe.
SHE:I believe in soulmates. I believe there`s someone out there for everyone. What do you think?
ME:Well...I think there`s absolutely no Cosmic Guarantee that there`s anyone on this planet with whom I`m destined to have a meaningful, entertaining, and durable relationship. And even if there is, with my luck she probably lives in Jakarta.
SHE:That`s...interesting.
ME:She lives in Jakarta and sells kumquats from a cart. She speaks three languages, none of them being English. But somehow, it`s been supernaturally ordained that she`s "The One."
SHE:So how do you decide who you want to date?
ME:I just play it by ear. The soulmate thing is too much to shoot for. For instance, I asked you on a date because...well, because you`re pretty and we smoke the same cigarettes. Figured I`d just, you know, see where it went.
SHE:Huh. I`m gonna get some more noodles. [gets up]

---------------------------------------------------------

I don`t know where people get this idea that there`s "somebody special" out there for everyone. "Oh, it`s fated," people say.

Lemme tell you a little something--God, Allah, Fate, or whoever`s up there for you--these are busy people. They`re dealing with things like floods, earthquakes, and world peace--they`ve got better things to do than sit around and map your romantic future. If God`s got a Palm Pilot, you can be damn sure "Hook Peter up with Jenny" isn`t on his To Do list today.

How could such a thing as "soulmates" be possible, when people are constantly changing and evolving? Are you the exact same person you were one year ago? I mean, this ain`t like back in the day, 700 years ago, when you were born a farmer and stayed a farmer.

In the year 2004, people are constantly reinventing themselves. People adapt to new situations, personalities change over the years. I`ve seen people changed by money, changed by careers, changed by drugs. Seen straight folk gone gay.

Bad news: People are unpredictable, quirky little organisms, and there is no cosmic guarantee that your perfect match is out there. And even if there was, look, there are over 2.5 billion people of the opposite sex on this planet; the odds of you finding her are 2.5-billion-to-1. (Bad news if you`re bisexual: you`ve got 5-billion-to-1 odds.)

And people fall in and out of love. If you`re lucky, when the music stops you`ll be in a good relationship with someone you care for, understand, and have really good sex with. If you`re unlucky, when the music stops you`ll own lots of cats, several of whom you`ll actually argue with.

I think it`s more realistic to just start with someone you`ve got some basic commonalities with, someone with whom you have a mutual attraction. If you like each other enough, if the energy is right, then hopefully you`ll get that little feeling in your chest, that feeling that makes everything OK when she keeps you waiting for an hour or throws up in your car. If the vibe is right, you`ll make your best efforts to make it work, and compensate for all surmountable incompatibilities.

In the absence of Fated Soulmates, I think we owe it to ourselves to have as many moments, as many connections, as possible. The globe keeps spinning with or without you; you might as well be having fun.

That's me on the right. 

Shoulda Stuck With the "Friend" Thing

ME:If you`re not attracted to me. I totally understand, and I won`t press it. You can`t date someone you`re not attracted to.

SHE:I am attracted to you. It`s just that...I don`t know....

ME:Well, shouldn`t we give it a shot? Look, we have a lot of fun together, we both live close enough.... What`s
your favorite movie?

SHE:Meet Joe Black.

ME:That`s in my Top Five! See, we`ve got a common vibe going on. I`ll prove it--I`m thinking of a number between one and twenty. Try to guess what it is. Just guess.

SHE:Thirteen.

ME:Okay that wasn`t it. But it was close....

SHE:Fourteen.

ME:...No.

SHE:Six.

ME:Uh, guess again.

SHE:I don`t know, seventeen.

ME:Close! It was nineteen! You were only off by two. Two is a close enough number that we should date, no?

Needless to say, this didn`t go anywhere. Which is just as well, because I usually end up dating the wrong chicks.
I go for the wrong types, I have poor filtering systems. My friends just shake their heads. "Why didn`t you say something?" I`ll say, after the girl has gutted me and broken one of my appliances.
"Well, you seemed really into her," they say. "Didn`t wanna burst your bubble." Then one day the bubble bursts, and I can`t make toast.

The Woman
The woman from the dialogue above, let`s call her Trouble, was absolutely the wrong woman for me, but I couldn`t tell. All I can say is, sometimes the trailer looks great, but the movie sucks.

The "trailer" for Trouble: a hip, confident, witty downtown-style chick. Stable job, well-read, studied martial arts but still smoked. A catch in my book.

The actual "movie": a confused, man-hating kneejerk Feminazi, though I wouldn`t discover this until months later (that`s another story). I should have read the reviews.

The Warning
I did hear one review. "Stay away from her," warned a mutual friend, who`d gone to school with Trouble. "She`s a judgmental girl. You might fall in her favor now, but once you do something that doesn`t line up with her vision of what you should be, you`ll be on the outs. Trust me." But did I listen? Nooooooo....

The Setup
Trouble and I are in a cafe downtown, late on a Thursday. We`ve been hanging out every other night for a week. Sparks aren`t flying just yet, but I figure they`re preparing for takeoff.

"I`m surprised we`ve seen each other so much lately," I say, as the gruesomely hip waitress throws the menus at us. "You don`t seem like the type of girl to give so much of her time to one person."

"I`m not, Ivan," she says, scanning the menu. "But I like spending time with you." Green light, or red herring? I started to fall for her. Even though she lived in the far east and I was going broke on the tolls.

Why Do You...
Trouble and I continue hanging out. When she moves from Bedok into Holland Village I see her even more, and before long there`s some chemistry happening, electrons trading places and all that sh-t. One night in her new apartment, I bring up the idea of the two of us dating, and our little burgeoning relationship slams into a pothole.

"Us, going out? But we`re friends," she says, and my teleprompter reads AH, F-CK on it. I`ve been shot down by Friendly Fire, the worst kind.

Later I go home to mop the floor. During periods of distress, I tend to clean. The upshot of things going wrong with women is that my kitchen usually ends up spotless.

Build Me Up, Buttercup, Baby...
Okay, I think. Trouble and I will just be friends, fine.
But one night we`re at my place, and she starts in with the flirting. Like an alcoholic trying to stay sober, I`m trying to stay in the Friend Zone so I lay it down. "Listen, Trouble," I say. "you`re gonna have to crank the flirting down a notch. Because frankly, you`re confusing the sh-t outta me."

"Well," she says, slowly, "you`re not the only one who`s confused."

Ai-yah. Ai-gu.
Later that night, we`re at her place, on her couch. I make the move, she`s receptive, and stuff starts happening. Nothing too hot and heavy, PG-13 all the way; but nevertheless, stuff. I`m thinking my Friend status has been revoked.

Just to Let Me Down
Two days later, the winds change and we have the conversation I printed up top. The deal is off, my show has been canceled, the gig is up. Why she changed her mind, I`ll never know.

I`m scrubbing the kitchen counter at 2 in the morning when my roommate comes home. "Girl trouble?" he says, eyeing the Scrubbing Bubbles. He`s been following the story, and I give him the update.

"Yo," he says, after I bring him up to speed. "Woman like that, who can`t make up her mind, sounds like trouble. She`d be even more trouble if you started dating her. It`s good that you didn`t get into it--later you`ll realize you dodged a bullet."

Turns out he was right; I later found out she is a pain in the ass, and I did dodge a bullet. Problem is, I think I subconsciously enjoy getting shot at.

"Plenty of fish in the sea," says my roommate, gesturing towards our window, beyond which lies the rest of the island. He`s right, there`s a whole city of women out there for me to meet.

I`d better stock up on Mop `N Glo. ©

Bars...

I used to walk into a bar or a party and think “My future girlfriend might be in here.” I don’t think that anymore.

Sometimes it scares me thinking about all the weird shit I’m into and how I’ll never be able to share it with anyone. Not just some of it, all of it. That sinking realization that there is no Right Woman; my tastes have become too insane and specific. With each passing year and its attendant accrual of idiosyncrasies and experiences, the chances of finding a match become more and more remote.

Sometimes I care, sometimes I don’t. I think these days I mostly just want the physical stuff. It’s so easy to understand, easy to see where you are and the feedback is immediate. Best of all it involves a minimum of talking.

My patience for bullshit has gone way, way down. I look back at some of the bullshit ex-girlfriends have put me through and I wonder what the fuck I was ever thinking. I wonder how I could have let some of these people trick me and/or completely waste my time. I’m ashamed at my own complicity.

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Whenever I start feeling bad for no reason, I tell myself it’s just chemical. An unlucky combination of ingredients stemming from having eaten the wrong foods or maintaining improper levels of sleep, endorphins, caffeine or nicotine. That tomorrow I will wake up and feel good and hear a fucking funny joke or read something interesting, or take a picture I like, or go into a bar with the proper level of expectations.

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Today was a long day, but tonight was a good night. I went into a bar with the proper level of expectations, and they were exceeded.

I’d like tomorrow to be a short day, but you cannot specify with these things. It would be nice if you could order days like catalog items. If you could do so my tomorrow would be short, productive and filled with much sleep.

My head hurts. It’s either the gin or the lack of sleep. Either way I am going to remedy the situation by lying prone until my breathing becomes even, my eyes close and my consciousness goes away.

I have this theory that when sleeping my consciousness doesn’t actually go away, it’s simply transferred to a person who’s just waking up on the other side of the planet. Then when they go to sleep I get it back. But I can’t decide if it’s the same person or a different person every day. Or if it’s a dude or a chick, young or old, good or evil. I’d put up a poll but I can barely keep my eyes open. Talk to you later.

Day 6

Today’s soundtrack:I'll take you back to 73 before I ever had a multi-platinum sellin' CD...

Today at 8:02pm: Watching an incredibly depressing movie from mainland China. Don’t ever move to Datong

I have such random shit in my Bookmarks. Classic muscle cars, some banking shit, the blog of some strange female I’ve never met (nor read, except for that one time), some hotel rooms I don’t remember inquiring about, HMV pages, a link to the Mass MOCA.

Whatchu got in yours? It would be interesting to profile people based on what they had in their bookmarks (discounting the boringly obvious, like porn). They could have a magazine called Celebrity Bookmarks and I guarantee you some asshole would read it. “Let’s see what Tom Cruise has in his bookmarks!”

I can’t lie, that asshole might be me. Sometimes when I get home “Access Hollywood” is on, and I don’t turn it off like I should.

I have dreams about dressing D-onald R-umsfeld up in full combat gear and dropping his ass off in hostile territory. You want a war so fucking bad go fight it your fucking self. Get in there, Donald. Keep your head down.

Everyone knows Saddam needs to go, but an assault on Iraq seems like a ridiculously inelegant and karmically costly solution. We invented psychological warfare, rotating credit and fast food; I have a hard time believing we can’t think of some evil, sneaky shit to get rid of this guy. War seems so fucking 1940s.

Day 5

Today’s soundtrack: unpaid bills...Afghanistan hills
Today at 7:02pm: Doing involuntary push-ups.

Midnight on a Wednesday and you have to ask yourself, do you really wanna go out to a bar? Do you really want to put your Outside Pants on and stuff some crumpled, miraculously unspent bills in your pocket and go?
Or do you want to just stay home and chill. Catch a little Conan, make a nice pot of decaf, write your silly little journals.

Last night I chose wrong, I went to the bar. You shouldn’t go simply because you have nothing better to do, right? I used to think some sensation, any sensation was better than no sensation at all but now I’m not so sure.

Speaking of sensation did you ever drink absinthe? I drank it last year in friend's house. I’m not much for drugs and shit but absinthe was fucking awesome. It felt like listening to all the best Def Leppard songs in a cloud filled with pretty girls.

I’m hiding from my “journal.” I put “journal” in quotes because until I make some significant fucking progress it’s just a joke, a loose collection of unintelligent sentences that all happen to be in the same Word file.

When I’m writing it I see the characters moving around, I hear the things they say and I transcribe it.

When I’m not writing it I see the characters frozen in suspended animation, just sitting there floating. Doing nothing, saying nothing. They’re so sad when they’re not doing anything, it’s almost like they’re temporarily dead. Sometimes I go for a walk and they start moving again. Other times I look in the mirror and see a grim hack.

Lord of the Rings..

Do NOT read below if you have not seen Lord of the Rings III: Return of the King, because I’m going to discuss the ending.

It was definitely satisfying, worth every penny of the ten bucks. They neatly tied up most of the storylines so you know what happens to everyone, but to me there are many questions they left unanswered.

So I think they should make a fourth one, Lord of the Rings IV: The Clean-Up. What a mess they made in this movie! From the battle at Minas Tirith to that city they trashed by the river to the destruction of Mount Doom and all of Mordor.

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Here are the unresolved issues:

1. Orc-aid. At the end of the movie, Mordor is destroyed and thousands of orcs flee into the countryside. This is a humanitarian disaster! Where are all these now-homeless orcs going to live, and what will they eat? And do you want an unemployed, displaced population of thousands running around carrying spiked iron balls and shit?

2. Lord of the EPA. After Frodo ditches the ring Mount Doom erupts, explodes and erodes. I’m no expert agriculturalist, but come on, all that molten lava can’t be good for the ecosystem. The fallout must have been crazy. Not to mention with that much soot in the air, Gandalf the White had better have plenty of detergent.

BILBO
Oh, you became Gandalf the Grey again!

GANDALF
No, I’m still Gandalf the White.

BILBO
But your robes are all--

GANDALF
I know, I know, I know, shut up about it already. Mordor’s covered in like three feet of soot so what do you want from me.

3. Clean-up in Aisle Seven. The war at Minas Tirith (the white city, the one that looked like a Parliament ad) left a huuuuge goddamned mess in front of the city. Broken catapults, ruined siege towers, gargantuan chunks of masonry, and thousands of corpses, including at least twelve of those gigantic elephant-things.

What do you do with the corpse of a forty-foot war mammoth? You can’t just leave it there to rot--can you imagine the smell? But you can’t exactly drag it away either, I mean where are you going to put it.

I guess they could cut them up and make elephant steak, but you can practically see the looks on kids’ faces (“We’re eating elephant again?”) and whatever they didn’t finish in a week would probably go bad, since they didn’t have refrigerators and stuff.

If I was mayor of Minas Tirith I would dictate the hobbits drag the corpses of all twelve war mammoths back to The Shire. “Oh, they’re little people all right, but don’t underestimate them! You saw what they did. Compared to getting rid of that ring this oughta be a piece of cake... Frodo! You want some rope?”

On the other hand, the broken catapults were probably easy to get rid off--they had wheels, so you could drag them to a lot behind the city and sell them at a discount. (“Like new! Low mileage! Only used once!”) And as far as the siege towers, I guess you could save those in case you needed to raid a neighboring city.

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Random Observations:

- For a wizard, Gandalf doesn’t seem to do a lot of goddamned magic. There’s one scene where he rides out and scares dragons away by turning his staff into a huge flashlight. Other than that he doesn’t do so much as pull a penny out of Frodo’s ear. Magicians at children’s birthday parties do more tricks than this guy.

- As Lam pointed out, Gandalf has an air freshener on the top of his staff. (Check it out.) I guess he has some personal odor issues.

- There seemed to be more than one scene where two hobbits take a tumble down a hill or battlefield and one of them lands on top of the other. And then, rather than standing and dusting themselves off, they recite several lines of dialogue to each other while in the prone position. Hmmm.

- I’m not afraid to say it: That scene at the end, where three hobbits are frolicking in a bed and then an extremely enthusiastic-looking dwarf shows up? Yeah, I got a little uncomfortable.

- Do you think Hobbits have huge penises? ‘Cause their feet are like HUGE.

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As with the previous two films, it’s a little difficult not to be disappointed with Frodo’s performance. Like if you were Frodo’s boss, you’d totally fire him. The paperwork might look like this:

Performance Review
Employee: Baggins, Frodo

Employee demonstrates:

- A lack of follow-through
- Inability to delegate tasks
- Inability to take command of a situation
- Inability to identify problems and implement synergistic solutions
- A tendency to pass out during times of danger
- A tendency to cry when scared or despairing
- Inability to correctly select which of two companions to align himself with: a) an honest, trustworthy, hardworking and lifelong friend, or b) a murderous, schizophrenic mutant.

Comments: Subject appears dazed and is perenially unshod. Recommend dismissal pending consultation with HR.

If you ask me, Sam is the one who does all the heavy lifting. That’s right, the gardener.

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So the end finally comes, and surprise surprise, Frodo can’t do the job. He can’t throw the ring into the fire. Gee, who could’ve seen this coming. All those times he cried and started whining, I said to myself “Now here’s a guy with some cojones.” But no!

If I was Sam, at that point I would’ve double-drop-kicked Frodo right off that ledge. Then I would’ve picked Gollum up and twisted him into a pretzel, and sent him to keep Frodo company.

GANDALF
So what happened?

SAM
Job’s done.

GANDALF
What happened to Frodo?

SAM
Er...he fell.