the ocean

New Levels of Uselessness

Lately it seems like all I can do is think about the election. If I'm not talking about the election, I'm studying polls of the election, or reading blogs about the election. I've even had several dreams about the election. In them, I've forgotten to vote or somehow voted for Bob Barr, or found that some completely unexpected third party like Toby Keith has been elected. These last four days really need to fly by or I've had it.

In other news, my secretary has started ratting me out when I'm out of the office. Yesterday I left at 4:30 and found out she was telling people I'd "slipped out to go to the gym." Today I was walking down the hall and heard her say "Oh, wait a second, he's right here," at which point she just handed me the phone. We're going to have to do some retraining on the whole "he's stepped away from his desk for a moment" thing. Honesty and the workplace have no business with one another.

Transitions

Have you ever noticed how liberally some people use the "high importance" flag on their email? It seems like every other funny forward and bake sale announcement I get these days is marked urgent. Just today I got an email marked with a big red exclamation point that informed me copies of some cases are on their way to me through interoffice mail. Stop the presses.

What was really urgent, it turns out, was my need for a stepladder. (How's that for a fun segue?) I was buying light bulbs at Home Depot yesterday and decided to throw a six-foot stepladder into the mix. It almost didn't fit in my car and I thought my arms might fall off as I carried it up the stairs, but it's turned out just beautifully. I've already used it twice, which matches the number of times I've used the label maker I impulse bought at Target last year. I'm just shattering records all over the place.

And speaking of records, I think my cleaning lady may have taken my vinyl copy of Miami Sound Machine's Primitive Love. (I am the transition king.) I can't find it anywhere and I'm fairly certain I'm not friends with anyone who would actually want to take it. In fact, I've never listened to it myself, so I may just have to let this one go. Could I have imagined owning one of the early works of Gloria E?

The Exorcist

Yesterday The Exorcism of Emily Rose was on television. I'd never seen it before, but it being nearly Halloween and there being nothing else in particular to do, I decided to give it a shot. It's a borderline-hilarious tale about the love affair between a college co-ed and the five demons who live inside of her. Tom Wilkinson stars as the priest who conducts the exorcism and acts kind of noodgey and crazy in the way that Tom Wilkinson often does. Laura Linney stars as his attorney, who wears way too much eye makeup and is alleged to be an alcoholic whenever it's convenient to the plot. There are some great lines that illustrate how Deep and Spiritual this all is, and some awesome parts where the possessed girl eats bugs and jumps out windows and stuff. All in all it's a pretty hot hit.

But the real show came last night when, upon coming home to my big, dark, empty condo, I became convinced that I was going to become possessed. Certain that demons in fact hide behind your credenza until they can seize control of your body, I checked every room in the house before bed. Finding nothing, I decided that the best way to stave off bodily intruders was probably to leave the Lifetime Movie Network running all night. (It would certainly scare me away.) I also found the tiny copy of the New Testament the Gideons gave to us in fourth grade and positioned it strategically near my bed.

Laugh if you want, but clearly my plan worked. I haven't eaten a single bug today.

Who Will It Be?

In just a few weeks, Americans are going to make a really vital choice. Someone new is soon going to hold the top office in the land. That's right, the season finale of America's Next Top Model is fast approaching.

Usually I'm really good at predicting the winner. I do it primarily based upon demographics. I knew that Whitney would win last season because a girl with actual breasts had never won before. The season (or excuse me, cycle) before that I knew that Saleisha would win because they'd never had an insanely perky black girl with a Tootie haircut. Also they tend to telegraph the winner from the beginning by giving her a lot more camera time than everyone else. Or at least positive camera time. Jade got all the camera time in the world, but since most of it was devoted to documenting her insanity, we all knew she was just a sideshow.

This cycle is pretty tricky, though, I have to say. Based on demographics I'd have to go with Sheena the sassy Asian, but the awful dye-job they gave her, combined with her tendency to shove her vag at the camera in photo shoots, does not bode well. Marjorie and Elina have both gotten a lot of praise for being weird and European, but the former seems to literally be terrified of everything and the latter has the world's worst hatchet face. McKey looks like Daryl Hannah, which hasn't even really worked for Daryl Hannah in over a decade, and Samantha looks like a younger, less-mannish Ellen Barkin, which really only works for bagging millionaires. That leaves Analeigh, who as my friend Paulina Porizkova pointed out, has a really tiny face. So I think ultimately they're just going to have to get rid of them all and give it to Jaslene again.

Election

So I'm going to be an election monitor in Indiana. I'm pretty excited. I'm hoping I get some kind of badge to wear and -- though I know there's little hope of this -- possibly even a taser. I think that would probably be the most effective way to get people to use the touchscreen properly.

It turns out that Indiana has a whole bunch of voting laws so I'm cramming like crazy. Stuff like you can't wear your Ralph Nader t-shirt to the polls or use your Hawaii driver's license as identification. And I think there may be a literacy test or something, I'm not sure.

You may wonder why I'm monitoring in Indiana as opposed to right here in Chicago. The answer is simple: there have never been any voting irregularities of any kind here in Chicago. I know this because we put it to a vote and even the deceased agreed that everything was simply hunky dorey. Democracy is totally the best.

Day in Review

This morning on the train a woman got into a screaming match with a panhandler that involved both accusations of racism and several colorful uses of the f bomb. Obviously the rest of the day was all downhill from there.

I got in at 8:30 and already had two voicemails. And neither one of them was from the McCain campaign warning me about Obama's ties to domestic terrorist William Ayers. I spent the morning struggling to complete the tasks those voicemails left me and trying to figure out how my work e-mail account got signed up for the Men's Health Daily Dose newsletter.

I also had a mentoring lunch today where I imparted all of my valuable knowledge on a first year attorney. She now knows everything about the law that Reader's Digest and Cathy comics can teach her.

Then in the afternoon I successfully pursued an important campaign to get my Chase gift card to actually work. With the help of an intrepidly sassy helpline operator, I learned that the card will work if, and only if, you spend exactly the amount that is on the card. If only I still had that calculator wristwatch I wore back in fourth grade.

Saturday Night Fever

I'm beginning to worry about what I'm going to be like when I'm fifty. If I already lack the strength to go out on a Saturday night at thirty, by fifty I'm going to be practically comatose. I'd better start learning to communicate through blinks right now.

The good news is that A Cinderella Story is on right now, and it remains terrible. I just saw a Swiffer WetJet commercial with a broader emotional range. Chad Michael Murray appears to be translating his lines into Esperanto and back as he delivers them. Hillary Duff makes you wonder if it's just barely possible that her sister is more talented than her. I'd call it a must watch.

I also completed the Sister Meg Mail Project today. Although my sister is currently residing in Champaign, she decided not to have her mail forwarded, which means I get five to ten charity solicitations for her each day. (I also give to charity, but I make all my donations to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood under the name "Sarah Palin," so I don't get any mailings.) I was saving them all for her, but Wednesday I finally got the go ahead to recycle any bulk mail. Take that, Feed the Children!

I have a headache. I took an Advil, but I think so far it's just made me cranky. Perhaps a glass of red wine will do the trick.

Occasions

So yesterday I was shanghaied into getting a GAP card. I was buying some khakis (since I'm white) and the guy was taking forever to ring them up and he would not stop talking about all the wonders of the GAP card. And I just really, really wanted him to stop talking. And the next thing I knew I was saving 15% on all my purchases.

I also nearly opened a savings account at Citibank yesterday based on the same sort of sales pressure. Apparently it was a very impressionable day for me. Luckily the woman and the new accounts desk was too busy to see me right away, or I might well have six or seven certificates of deposit crammed into a lock box somewhere.

Did you know that today was Bosses' Day, by the way? Our secretaries put together a breakfast buffet for us this morning in honor of the occasion. I told Lisa she should whip up some omelets on the copy machine, using the paper cutter to chop up the meats and green onions, but somehow my wonderful plan never came to fruition. I did eat a helluva lot of brownie bites, however.

Finally, Something to Live For

In case there was any doubt, Rock of Love Charm School is amazing.

Now I had my own concerns. Namely, I felt that white people are seldom as awesome as black people, and that Sharon Osbourne could in no way match the sass factor of Mo'Nique. I was entirely correct on these points. But ROLCS has its own charms. One of the contestants managed to be passed out drunk for the welcoming ceremony, and this after being passed out drunk for her elimination on her season of Rock of Love. Another contestant was involved in an apple chucking incident. And there was crying, crying galore. It was an auspicious start!

As for Sharon, let me say that she is nearly unrecognizable from her days on The Osbournes. Remarkably, she appears to have gotten younger in the intervening years. And her accent seems to have faded along with her wrinkles. But she does kind of seem to be a bitch, which is what we really need here.

We are cautiously optimistic.

Sick Day

So this weekend I was supposed to have my first utterly work-free weekend in months. So of course Friday night I came down with a horrible cold and have spent the better part of these two days lying in bed having Dayquil hallucinations and watching Degrassi. It was very weird. One minute I was talking on the phone with my sister and playing Poppit! on pogo.com, the next minute I was nearly passing out on the way to the fridge and hacking up something that looked like Linda Ellerbee. I have been vigorously self medicating ever since, with mixed results. On the one hand, my sore throat has been feeling better. On the other, I had a dream where I was married to Elizabeth Taylor.

My plans for the rest of the day include lying on my bed, trying to gather up the strength to take a shower, and finding out exactly what it means for nasal spray to be "expired." Maybe I'll even make it to the Walgreen's for some Diet Coke. It's an exciting time to be alive.

Programming Notes

I think I have to officially admit now that I am a bad blogger. I forget about this thing for days at a time. When I do remember, I tend to post random regurgitations of my thoughts, as opposed to the somewhat cogent (or at least organized -- as in there were thesis sentences) posts of days of yore. I'm often more observational than in the strictest sense funny. I almost never post pictures any more, mainly because I'm pretty sure that my digital camera is so old that it's only compatible with an Apple IIe. When I do, it's really just whatever strange shit I find on my hard drive, a fact I try to obscure by adding quippy captions. I've never once posted a video. I actually don't know how. And my video camera has been sitting under the shoe rack in my closet for months now. So yeah, I'm pretty much horrible in every way.

In my defense, I do have to say that it's not entirely my fault. My work has banned blogging from office computers, so I have to try to remember when I get home every night at 8 PM. (I had a dream last night that I got fired for violating Internet protocol, so I take this rule very seriously.) There's also a rule that I can't blog ABOUT work, so that cuts out a lot of subject matter. I live in fear that writing about how my secretary likes to answer my phone calls and talk to my friends will somehow betray a client confidence and get me canned. I'm also kind of reluctant to write about any of my friends, since most of them read this at least every once in a while, and God knows it would be the one day I write about how Judy is a bitch that she would read it and overdose on painkillers or something. I mean, clearly people are going to take the things I say very seriously to heart.

Anyway, apologies for all the terribleness. Not that it's necessarily going to change. God, I kind of sound like the Republican party right now.

News & Notes

The Hills -- Heidi's sister is a character now? Really? If they start importing Audrina relatives, I'm done. At least Justin Bobby cut his hair, though.

Facebook Scramble -- It's just like Boggle, but without the fun sound the dice always make when you shake the container. Also without the possibility of someone chucking the container at you when you get overly sassy.

Sheer Athleticism -- Today my trainer made me try one-armed pushups and I literally did a faceplant. Luckily, I believe a bloody nose instills confidence in my clients. It shows I'm a fighter.

Sarah Palin -- Apparently science has now given us the ability to create sarcastic, folksy robots. And they will rise up and destroy us all.

The New Kids On the Block -- Did I mention that they appeared to be wearing the same exact costumes they would have worn 15 years ago when they were still somewhat relevant? I halfway expected them to hand out slap bracelets, but no such luck.

Around The Block

So last night I went to the New Kids on the Block concert. Of course I had no desire to see the New Kids on the Block perform, but I thought it would be a hilarious sociological study. It was, for about five minutes. Unfortunately, the concert was three hours long.

The ominous feeling for me began we we arrived and two of the arena personnel immediately decided to have some fun at my expense. "So, you lost the bet, huh?" one of them asked. "There aren't going to be a lot of guys here tonight," the other one helpfully clarified. "In fact, we've turned all of the men's bathrooms except one into women's for the night, so I wouldn't have much to drink." I gave the fake hearty chuckle I give when I secretly want to strangle someone.

Things worsened as the New Kids took the stage. (Given that the opening act was Natasha Bedingfield, who actually stayed to sell t-shirts after her set, that's saying a lot.) As the opening video montage rolled, a horrific shriek rose from all around the arena. It was a like an air raid siren. Thankfully, it drowned out the music, but still. It was then that it occurred to me that this was not a joke to most of the people there. It was very much real to them. They thought the paunchy, thirtysomething New Kids were sex symbols. They knew the words to all of the songs. Even those from the dreaded "newest album." A girl in the row in front of me actually fell to her knees in a partial swoon as one of the ballads began. I would say it was like the Beatles in 1969, but it was more than that. It was like Jonestown.

Random people kept saying weird things to me. The aforementioned swooner kept turning around, touching my arms, and saying "You don't even know what this song is, do you? Oh my God, it's incredible." Someone's mother was immediately on my right, and she kept coaching me through the show, telling me "oh, they're doing 'Forever' now," or "they're out in the audience." A security guard asked me how long it took my girlfriend to convince me to come and if I was making her go to a hockey game in return. I was utterly at a loss for words.

There was pregnant woman in the row behind me. Apparently she thought it was a great idea to expose her fetus to exceedingly high decibel levels. On the concert floor there was, I kid you not, a girl with a hand-drawn sign that said "NKOTB: I swallow." I kind of wanted to be sitting with her.

After about two hours I couldn't take any more. They were delving into the solo work of Joey and Jordan, and I feared it would never end. Jordan was singing with his white shirt flying open in an artificial breeze and a bright white light showing off his heavily-made-up abs. I told my friends I would wait in the hall. I visited the one and only men's restroom and had a hot pretzel. When the next Rick Springfield concert rolls around, I will definitely be taking a pass.

Social Studies

So on my way home on the train the other day I had the pleasure of sitting in front of two particularly great critical minds, a sort of Ebert & Roeper of social issues if you will, who gave me a great deal to think about on any number of topics.

"Mmm, hmmm, you know they're going to hell," I heard as I got on the train. "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve, you know it."

"Oh I know, girl. I tell you what, there's two things I don't like: gays and being mean to old people. I just don't get it."

"Me neither, girl. I mean, why would you want a dick up your butt? It just don't make no sense."

"You know what else don't make sense? All them immigrants with their marching. I mean, if you don't like this country, leave, that's what I say."

"I know. And then you get on the bus and they're all 'moojie moojie.' You live in American now, you got to speak American."

"Mmm hmmm. I think they should make it a law to speak American. Just like it's a law that you have to salute the flag."

"You're right, girl. I got a flag in my living room. And a picture of Jesus."

"Girl, you know I like Jesus, too."

I almost wish I hadn't gotten up and moved to another car of the train. Sure, I got a lot more reading done, but think of the education I missed!