The Deepest Secrets Of The Greg Revealed!

A Gargling(tm) of the term "deepest secrets" produces this trippy-ass image as a result.
It is rumored that The Greg lives in the basement of such a pyramid.

People:

Greg - as in the Greg, the one these letters are written to, not the noun Greg nor the verb, nor the infinitive "to Greg" - yeah, him. Well -

I have a hard time starting some mornings. Bear with.

Those stupid little questions that they ask you when you build your profile on a social networking site? The ones the writers (or Tom) work so hard to make clever, entertaining, provocative and revealing, yet fail so miserably? Greg tackled the tough ones and came out with - I think - flying colors.

And strangely enough, though his answers were so flip that standing near them would get you bitch-slapped, they are at the same time strangely revealing. After reading his responses, you may actually become possessed of the notion that you know The Greg. In his words:

"Here's my answers to one of those stupid profile question things found on some new social site - I think it was called like "FaceBlast" or "ClusterFuck" or "da.clitter.us" or some shit like that. I don't remember. Anyway, I'm pretty sure my answers will get thousands of friend requests instantly, especially from hot babes. (If by "hot babe" you mean feverish with infection. -Ed.) Check it out."

While less lengthy than the MMPI, the fusillade of questions below is no less probing, and has revealed things about The Greg that few have known, including me. And that's saying a lot, because The Greg lives in my basement. Least he did last time I looked.

Without further ado -

Q. What would you do if no one were looking?
A. Create a social networking group for people who aren't looking.

Q. Who would you like to see on a new banknote?

A. Groucho, Chico, Harpo, Gummo and Karl Marx.

Q. What should you be doing?

A. Creating a social networking group for people who aren't looking.

Q. Favorite place to be barefoot?

A. A wading pool filled with those little sausages.

Q. Time flies when you're _________________

A. traveling backwards through a space/time wormhole. I'm pretty sure.

Q. When you go to a party and someone says, "What do you do?", what do you say?
A. "I go to parties so people can ask me what I do."

Q. DVD or TIVO?

A. DEVO.

Q. What's the greenest thing you do?

A. Allow moss to grow in my underwear.

K. So. Here's your turn - and trust me, you don't get one very frequently as Greg and I are seldom wont to let a word creep in edgewise - gimme your best profile Q&A if you dare.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Next Time, I Swear I'm Not Coming Back

Click on the little word balloon thingy in the lower left corner to read the captions.

Greg:

The leaves turning on the maple tree across the street is making me pine for summer. I hardly got in any hiking this year. One of these days, when my dowsing stick finally hits the underground money stream, I'm going to hike my ass out of here and never come back.

When we went up to Deer Park in Olympic National Park this last time, I almost didn't come back. At one point John and I were sitting on top of Blue Mountain sharing the same fantasy. (You were somewhere downhill, avoiding the altitude.) In this fantasy, we call our wives, tell them to sell all our stuff, and to come meet us up there in the mountains where we belong. We live happily ever after. Cue sunset. Roll credits. (But who delivers the Indian food? You won't survive without Indian food. Or cable. Just sayin'. -Ed.)

That same mad, lycanthropic euphoria bubbles up every time I go into the mountains, the mania that wants me chuck it all and not come back. You know, like Col. Kurtz, but not quite so batshit homicidal crazy and stuff.

When I hiked out to Skoki Lodge in the Banff NP backcountry last year, my inner Amish almost got the upper hand and kept me there for good, too. If it were not for my very sane, very-disinclined-to-bathe-in-ass-freezing-mountain-streams wife, I’d prolly still be there, picking my teeth with a marmot or warming my hands over a blazing hiker.

Speaking of being on top of a mountain, I understand your concern about how I like to hang near the edge of the biggest drop-off I can find. I’m only doing it for therapeutic value. Honestly. I started going up into the mountains to help overcome anxiety. As folks like myself who have an anxiety disorder often do, I was becoming afraid of heights. Anxiety disorders often "morph" to include basic phobias. (The five basic phobias are water, spiders, snakes, heights and small spaces. And, if you're male, that list may include commitment. -Ed.) While I was educating myself on how to get over anxiety, I found out that the best way to deal with a phobia is through exposure. (Not of one's loins and whatnot, but exposure to the phobia-inducing stimulus.) So I started getting myself up as high as I could reasonably get without standing on the ledge of a building or filling a recliner with helium.

I’m not afraid of heights anymore, that’s for sure. But now it’s kinda like I have to get a little dose of the medicine that cured me every once in a while, lest it wear off. Call it a “booster shot”. At least I’m not doing anything truly goddamn crazy, like mountaineering. Mountaineering is not my bag, and and I’ll tell ya why. There are certain activities I abjure, chief among them:

• Falling into giant icy crevasses.
• Eating the dead.
• Sustaining frostbite injuries. (I've actually done this one before. I frostbit my face in 1984. Parts of it turned all black and fell off. And it fuckin' hurts like you would not believe.)
• Having a pulmonary embolism for dinner.
• Wigging out on hypoxia.
• Pooping in a bag.
• Starring in a book by Jon Krakauer.

These are all things that you either must do or may wind up doing if mountaineering is your cup of freeze-dried tea. But please don’t confuse me those peak-hopping, ice-axe-wielding bag-shitters. The things that I like aren't usually found where you find alpinists, f'rinstance:

• Fragrant alpine meadows.
• Piney pine trees.
• Surly marmots.
• Tranquil mountain lakes.
• Lunch.

In other words, if it's below the tree line, count me in. Likewise, if trees won't live there, why should I go?

The other reason I'm belaboring the distinction is because some hiker recently took a couple-hundred-foot drop and creamed himself into human chip dip on a pile of granite. This was of course covered in the paper which of course means Dad read it which of course means he gave me several stern warnings and admonitions (replete with the appropriate finger-stabbing of the appropriate story column in the local paper) about doing the same to myself. So I had to give him the requisite assurances that Mister Salad Bar Item was (or at least fancied himself to be) mountaineering whereas all I do is hike. I don't even use ropes. Hell, I wouldn't tie myself to something I liked, let alone some mountain.

Okay, so if I've done nothing more than set the record straight (assuming it needed to be set straight), me = hiker, not mountain climber. Hope that puts you at ease.

Picking up dog turds not as fun as it sounds

Before the monsoon season strikes (I mean strikes and any harder than is has already struck for the past few months of our goddamn soaking wet 58-degree "summer"), I'm trying to get things in and about the yard put away. This includes dog turds which - come to find out - are not as water soluble as you would think. I've been finding chalk-white turd carcasses all over the yard, or "turd bones", if you will. And come to think of it, there's no way our wee little Corgy can produce that many boluses. She must be recruiting help. She's not asking you to chip in, is she? If so, help me out and use a trowel. Or just scratch like a cat.

Hauling rat-pee-covered insulation to the dump not as fun as it sounds

Since I was over at E's house dropping off some stuff that she so graciously offered to store for me, I counter-offered to help haul another load of that rat pee covered insulation and wallboard that you tore out of her basement. I only mention this because I made an interesting discovery while at the transfer station. You know how I keep all those fancy essential oils in my truck so I can mix my own air fresheners? (Yeah, I do, so what? Shut up!) Well bitter almond oil effectively cancels the crushing, mephitic redolence that only a steaming hot garbage dump can produce. Might be a good thing to keep in your lunchbox next time you want to carry along another ptomaine-laced hot dog. Might make it easier to choke down.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Truck Sex On Satellite: Privacy in the post-InterWebs age

Exciting New Google Maps feature! You can now use Google Maps to find
all the placeswhere middle-aged men are trying to talk their long-suffering
wives into having sex with them in the cabs of their trucks.*

"A less appetizing Google feature has never been introduced." -CNET Reviews

*Not.

Greg:

Teresa and I were driving over to Lowe's yesterday in my bitchen new truck when a great idea struck me.

"Hey honey, instead of going to Lowe's, how 'bout we go have sex somewhere right now - just find somewhere shady to park and knock off a chunk right here in the cab of the truck."

You can probably already guess by knowing Teresa that the idea was less-than-enthusiastically received. I counter-pointed that the features of the 2008 Toyota Tacoma Access Cab (with Sport Package) would surely accommodate almost any position that a man of my noble dimensions and a woman of her diminutive stature could dream up. She said yeah, you go ahead and keep dreaming, Mr. Tetris.

Undaunted, I pressed on by pointing out that not only do the front seats fully recline, I had proven on more than one occasion that the jump seats afforded me more than enough room to nap (albeit in the cannonball position). And for the truly adventurous and outdoorsy, the suicide doors could be utilized to create a veritable -

"No," she said.

"Why?" I said.

She explained that here in the Age of the InterWebs that some damn satellite would whiz by and snap our picture, and there we'd be in flagrante delicto on Google Maps. She has a point, but I shan't be deterred. Besides, I am already on a quest to be the most privacy-compromised individual on the InterWebs.

Not like I haven't had my privacy compromised already. I have. My identity has already been stolen once. Back in nineteen-ought-ninety-two, I received a very politely-worded warrant in the mail from the Silverdale County Sheriff asking me to turn myself in for felony forgery. I called them up, said what the f, they said you wrote a bad check for $400, I said joke's on you, I don't have a checking account, they said so sorry to bother you - our bad, but keep the warrant as our lovely parting gift to you; but then that kinda shit kept happening until February '98 when I had to have my name and my birth certificate and my SSN card changed, and then my credit was completely dicked until about two or three years ago - true story.

But I figure in this day and age of Facebook and MySpace and Twitter and what the hell all else, the only defense you have of your privacy is to put so much information out there about yourself that eventually people will be hard pressed to figure out what's fact, what's rumor, and what's legend - you know, kinda like it is with Bigfoot, the chupacabra, and Britney Spears.

Some people might say, "Hey, isn't that called obfuscation and inveiglement?" To which I reply, "Only if you're smart and use big words". I have my own name for this tactic, and I call it "Hornswoggling the InterWebs".

So far I'm on a pretty good pace to accomplish my goal. Last time I vanity-Googled, damn near all the results on the first page were me - the real me. Oh wait - there was some English novelist who had a character named Thaddeus Gunn, a name she undoubtedly stole from me, Thaddeus Gunn.

Of course I ran this whole "hornswoggling" idea past my wife if only as a transparent last-ditch ruse to get some truck sex. She usually supports all my crazy notions, but not this time. She was steadfast in her refusal.

"And how does us - as you so eloquently put it - "slamming ham" in the cab of your truck figure in to all of this?"

She had me there.

"It'd be fun."

"No."

"C'mon. You know what rhymes with truck?"

"Yes. You're out of luck."

She said that the real danger was not really in getting snapped by a satellite or in footage of us "in progress" winding up on YouTube. That was a foregone conclusion. The world is rife with electronic eyes in the 21st century. The real danger that once the footage was posted, we'd be arrested for boring the crap out of everyone on the planet. She said that there's a good reason why you don't see porn videos with titles like "Middle-Aged Married Couple Having Consensual Sex In A Mid-Life Crisis Truck".

I suddenly lost the urge.

Seahawks place me on injured reserve list

The Seahawks made a fan-cap saving move this weekend when they placed me on injured reserve. Seems I pulled that plantar fascia thingamadeal in the bottom of my foot as I was running up the stairs to my seat in row II (as in "aye aye") in the 300 level of Qwest Field. I was quoted as saying, "Shit that hurts!" The Seahawks dispatched the Raiders 23-16 in preseason action. In response to the 'Hawks victory, I was also quoted as saying, "Whooooooooo!" and "Go Haaaaaaaawwwks!"

The Indescribable Oomph - Part 2

The search for the Best Goddamn Copywriter In The Whole Wide World continues. As it turns out, the phenomenally well-written "Look At This Fuckin' Product" series of print ads is not written by one, nor two, nor three different copywriters, but is the product of a distributed cognitive system comprised of a lot of people everywhere. (Or more precisely, all over hell and gone. -Ed.)

The latest opus from this Unstoppable Mass-Mind of Advertising has been channeled through its humble servant eon. Observe his omnipotent flex-action on life-giving fluids:

• Iced Tea

I Should Be In Jail By Now, Part 2: Choking The Chicken

Careful. That shit can get you fired.

Greg:

K. So. Like I was saying about stuff I did that prolly shoulda landed me in jail. Remember back last time when I told you that bit about getting fired for 'malicious compliance'? Here's how that went down:

Chilly the Weather Chicken

Way back before there was a radio format called 'Alternative' (which is now anything but), there were teeny tiny little AM radio stations that held the torch for such gittar-pickin' surrealist enclaves as The Church, Alien Sex Fiend, Robyn Hitchcock, and Midnight Oil (as well as Johnnycomelatelys Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and fuckin' Nearvanna). And since these wee little alt.alt.alternative stations were usually the poor relation of some FM AOR juggernaut (because no one can have enough Skynyrd), they got the snotty end of the stick day in and out until they were sold for chump change to televangelists.

In the case of the late KJET-AM, (which thanks to the immortalizing power of the InterWebs you can still listen to on Live365 and MySpace) it was sold to a bunch of chumps with a wad of change who thought that b-side oldies was the format of the future. This was way back in nineteen-ought-eighty-nine. Never mind that these tracks sucked too hard to be on the a-side forty years ago, and that the intervening decades had not redeemed them. The folks who bought the station thought they had some sort of statement to make and that they were all going to be able to purchase at least one solid gold rocket car apiece.

Here's a spoiler: If you're not listening to b-side oldies right now, it means the experiment failed.

Now 'tis a little-known fact that if you work in radio, you can expect to get fired about every twenty minutes or every time a station changes format, whichever comes first. But the upside of this was that since this was happening everywhere in the industry, you could always migrate elsewhere. Plus you always got a big fat severance check.

So we're sitting there in this meeting, THE meeting, the one where they tell you that the station is changing format and boo hoo hoo and here's your big fat severance check, when I'll be go to hell if they didn't say, "...and we'd like to keep you all on." You could've knocked us all over with a mangy feather plucked from the soiled pillow of Kurt Cobain. It meant we would get no big fat severance check. And that would not do. We had all promised ourselves that we were going to binge drink, and there's no way we could do that on regular salary. There was only one way to get the big fat severance check and that was to get fired.

So we hatched a plan - a plan that would fix us good. We were all going to change our air names and do the worst puking boss-jock horseshit radio we could possibly do. (See also: The Real Don Steele. -Ed.) They would have to fire us. And then we'd get our big fat severance checks. And then we could get all get fried to the hat and stay that way, at least for the afternoon. I changed my air name to Big Rick Hardy.

Since the new station's call letters were KQUL (Cool Oldies!), I figured we needed a mascot with an arctic theme, so I created Chilly the Weather Chicken. Then I put together some outrageously bullshit contest centered around him. To wit, if you out-guessed Chilly on what the next day's high temperature would be, you got to 'choke the chicken' on the air. This meant that I mentioned your name and played a cart of a chicken buh-gawking along with some wild sound of me gagging, perhaps captured during one of my drunken afternoons at the Five Point.

So along comes my new boss Danny Holiday one day and throws the cart down in front of me. "Can't do this anymore," he says. "Whyforhowcome not?" I says. "Because 'choking the chicken' is a euphemism for masturbation," he says. "Nooooooo waaaaaayy!" I says. "Yep. S'a'fact," he says. "Can't bleeve you dinnint know that."

So I came back the next Monday with a new on-air quiz called "Beating the Bishop". I got crap-canned hyper-quick, and I got a little triplicate form showing that I was terminated for 'malicious compliance'. HOW SWEET IS THAT?!!

Oh yeah, I got a big fat severance check.

Next time: On a whim, I create "Karnation Kem-Kreme" on the job and get a large piece of my ass chewed off for my trouble.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

I Should Be In Jail By Now, Part 1

There once was a town called Nantucket. (Shown here, smaller than actual size.)
The guy with the gimongous schweinstucker lives in the third shack on the left.
Note the wheelbarrow.

Greg:

Somebody is going to send me to jail. And not just for shit I did. For shit I still do all the time. And I'm not talking an overnighter in King County. I'm talking like prolly a stint in the Chateau d'If. What for? Because I pull mildly pernicious pranks that bring me volumes of that special joy one can only get from peccancy. And I pull them on a regular basis...in the workplace, no less. And I'm a grown-ass man.

Just what the hell is wrong with me? If you ask my son, I'm fourteen on the inside. That's what's wrong with me.

OK - maybe not jailed, but perhaps fired. But if you're gonna get fired, get fired for something, right? You know honestly, I got fired for malicious compliance once. That's one hell of a Jeopardy category, I tell you what. I even got a triplicate form with that on it, proving my transgression to all the English-speaking world. Too bad I lost it. I'd've liked to have that bastard framed.

But there's been a load of stuff that I didn't get fired for that I prolly shoulda. Like for instance:

THE REHAB GAG

When somebody at my place of work is gone for an extended period of time, I like to go around the company telling people that they're in rehab. And when people ask me "What for?", I like to say that "...they got Hooked On Phonics, ate a bunch of phonemes, and careened their Beamer into the kiddie pool. That was pretty fucked up, so the court remanded them to treatment." And then the other person will say, "No way! Did anyone get hurt?" And I'll go, "No, the kids were all inside drinking Scotch and watching Teletubbies. But not the real Teletubbies, the porn Teletubbies - you you know, the TeleChubbies. I think it was 'TeleChubbies Do Manhattan'. But anyway, s'all good."

Now is that so wrong? My old boss seemed to think so. I was all like, you think I'll get fired? And she was all, I don't know, we'll have to talk about that when we fire you.

By the way, I don't work there anymore.

And then there's:

THE NANTUCKET GAG

When I first started working at my new job, I noticed that everyone talked at the same time in meetings. It blew my mind. It was cacophonous. I couldn't imagine how anything ever got done. So just to see if anyone was even listening at all, I started reciting the "Man from Nantucket" limerick during meetings when everyone was uber-blabbing. In case you have lost familiarity with this particular limerick (as I know you have a veritable trove of them brewing and at the ready in your noodle), it's filthy. It goes like this:

There once was a man from Nantucket
Whose **** was so long he could **** **.
He wiped off his chin
And said with a grin
"If my ear were a **** I could **** **."

Did I tell you that a lot of people I work with are kinda churchy? And I don't mean that to be pejorative. Nice folks. But prolly not the kind of people you'd find reciting this kind of filth. So when I pointed out to them one day when we were all gathered in the lunch room that I was reciting this horrifying limerick and that none of them could hear it because none of them wanted to give up the floor, they were shocked. And then meetings got pretty doggone polite. Now "Nantucket" has become a code word in my cube pod for, "shut yer trap, you're interrupting me".

And as a bonus, after these nice people fire me, I'm going straight to hell.

Is that all? Oh, mais non. I've just cracked the seal on this. I have any number of years to recount, and you, sir, shall be my confessor.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

PS: The Indescribable Oomph

You know I've been writing copy for nigh on to twenty years. Well I've just met my match. Doesn't matter what product it is, there's nothing this guy can't handle. Whether it's bacon, peppers, or some space-age Microsoft technology shit, this guy captures that indescribable "oomph" that all clients are clamoring for. His ability to provoke desire is uncanny. He needs a $1 to $2 million dollar a year gig. Fuck yeah he does. Check out his inimitable stylings and muscular prose in extra-spicy five-star not-safe-for-the-workplace language:

• Bacon
• Peppers
• Microsoft
• Obama

Lunch

Holy freaking shit! Is that a sandwich!? What sort of life must one lead, I wonder,
that they are amazed by the contents of your lunch box.

Greg:

We have a really big kitchen at MRM (McCann Relationship Marketing, part of the McCann-Erickson world-gripping octopus), so everyone - including me - avails themselves to it to cook and eat their lunches every day. And every day, somebody or bodies develop an almost preternatural fascination with my lunch. Why? Beats me. I'm not eating shiny rocks or live squirrels, so why anyone would have such a keen interest in what's on my plate is beyond me.

So what I've decided to do is to write down standard answers to the usual questions that I get regarding my lunch and post them here. Then I'm going to have the URL to this post printed on the back of my business cards and hand one to the first querier that pops open their gob (because Wee Lil' Huggies(tm)-Bound Christ Our Lord and Savior knows that I have yet to hand one of my business cards to a client and I want to feel like that tree didn't die for nothing). So here goes. And rest assured, these are real questions that were actually asked of me at lunch time

Q: Hey, is that your lunch?
A: Holy shit! I have no idea. Let's watch me and see if I sit down and eat it.

Q: You eat salmon?
A: No, I am eating salmon.

Q: But I thought you were a vegetarian.
A: Was. Still am for the most part with the exception of salmon. Guess that makes me a vegaquarium.

Q: Is that a real word?
A: Oh for crissakes.

Q: But why salmon?
A: Doctor's orders. Seriously. They took a look at how high my cholesterol was and shat a kitten. Then they told me for the third time that I have to start eating fish.

Q: What made you become vegetarian in the first place?
A: I had a dream about a cow that completely freaked me out. Never touched meat again until the kitten-shitting doctor told me I had to. So I've never been so much "vegetarian" as "meat-phobic".

Q: So doesn't eating salmon freak you out?
A: Thanks for reminding me. Can I puke in your shoes?

Q: That's not an answer.
A: And that's not a question. And look! Now there's puke on your shoes.

Q: Why are you so grumpy?
A: Because I never get to eat my freakin' lunch in peace.

Q: Ha ha ha Thaddeus, you're so funny.
A: Thank you. But seriously, can I eat my freakin' lunch in peace?

Q: Are you going to eat that whole salad?
A: Yes. Are you going to eat all the oxygen in the room?

Q: Is that an omelet?
A: Nope. It's a placenta.

Q: Gross!
A: You asked.
Q: Is that white rice? That's weird. You eat white rice for breakfast?
A: Yeah, rice for breakfast is pretty rare and exotic. Only me and and six billion other folks are doing it.

Q: Do you put butter on everything?
A: Just about, but there are some things that even butter can't fix. Like when you make toast out of wood. Or you date a Russian.

Q: What?
A: Nothing.

Well...How Did I Get Here?

Say hello to Pearl. My utterly bitchen new Toyota Tacoma is outfitted precisely

as the one pictured here - right down to the black pearl paint job, Bilstein shocks and

skid plates. The only thing missing is the dirt bike in the back and the kid with the

mullet who is undoubtedly driving it.

"And you may find yourself at the wheel of a large automobile."
-Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime

Greg:

Somebody once said that good things come to those who wait. I'd like to expand on that sentiment by saying no they fucking don't. How do I know? Because back in the early 90s, I lived in a car. And not even a cool car, Greg. It was a 1974 Ford Maverick with a mild case of cancer and a severe case of every other fucking thing that can go wrong with a car. Way back then, I used to fantasize about having a brand new Toyota truck that I could drive up some of the more treacherous dirt roads in Olympic National Park and camp and hike to my heart's content. It represented all the freedom that my poverty and completely misguided and chaotic lifestyle was denying me. And each day as I was desperately trying to collect enough change to buy a Slurpee, I knew that was never going to happen.

Well now I have a bitchen new Toyota truck with 4 wheel drive and all kindsa shit I didn't even know I wanted until the salesman pointed out to me that I did. He said if you think you don't want it, just keep throwing bricks of cash at me until you realize that you do. And I'll be go to hell if it didn't work just like he said.

I have digressed. The point I am driving at is this: I have some pretty amazing stuff in my life right now, some of which I actually planned. But I'll be hornswoggled if I can figure out how things actually turned out the way they did.

For instance, it's no secret that I'm no fan of The Secret - you know, that book that tells you that your thoughts create invisible tractor beams that shoot out of your head in every direction and attract the things that you covet most, like parking, fame, and bulging pectoral muscles. I did, however, do a "creative visualization" exercise, Wayne the hell back when I was unemployed and lived in a 400 square foot studio apartment in a building where the guy down the hall got murdered completely dead with a real knife and I occasionally had crack rocks show up at my door completely unbidden. I really did the whole exercise. I cut pcitures out of magazines that represented how I wanted my life to be and wrote a letter from the future about what my life was like, and featured prominently in that cardboard cutout fantasy was a brand-spankin' new Toyota truck...and I was the guy spankin' it.

Fast forward fifteen years and I now have everything - tangible and intangible - that I put together in that creative visualization way back then. Job, house, wife, kid, bitchen outdoor gear, bitchen truck, freedom to hit the road and have bitchen adventures. Everything. I wish that I could tell you that I had a plan or that there was a direct and well thought out correlation between my thoughts and actions and the acquisition of my dreams. But the fact of the matter is that there wasn't, and I still have no idea how any of this came about. It was planned inasmuch as I did the exercise, but by the same token it was not planned at all. So while I can say without a doubt that the exercise worked, I have no fucking idea how. I will say that I know that none of these good things came to me because I waited, because I sure as shit did not. I whined, pissed and moaned and wondered how my life could be taking such wrong turns and how I never got what I wanted until BLAM it suddenly existed all at once.

I do not mean to endow my new truck with more importance than it is due. It's not supernatural. It's just a truck...although I have named it Pearl and often find myself kissing it on the hood. (What, is that so wrong?) It is more what it represents. It shows that I must've done something right, even if I don't know what that is.

Any insights you have are welcome.

Cheers, -Thaddeus

SPROING! / Later That Same Day

Sprout faster, you cotyledonous bastard! Spring comes not when
the calendar says it does, but when I'm damn good and ready to
get on my bike and speed it into existence.

Greg:

It's spring, goddamnit. It is because I have proclaimed it so. The fact that I laid in my driveway and installed a new bike rack on my car yesterday (just like this one) without either getting soaked to the bone or freezing my treats off is my proof. Today the forecast calls for sun - real sun, not that half-assed ice-cold "mock" sun that you get in the winter - so I'm planning on spending my entire day on my bike, wind in my teeth, pollen in my hair, manufacturing vitamin D until the cows roost.

Speaking of which, there was an article in the Seattle Times recently on the impact of living in unrelenting dankness. I think it was called, "Winter Dankness: Sucky, Or Really Truly Sucky?" or something to that effect. It was 'duh' sort of proposition. Of course living in dankness can't be good for you unless you're a salamander or porpoise or some other sort of critter who can't retain bodily fluids unless partially submerged at all times. (Or a Scandinavian, for instance. -Ed.) The interesting-yet-shocking point that the article brought up was that we (meaning Pac Northwesterners or "Mossbacks") have a notable increase in or susceptibility to diabetes, heart attacks, and multiple sclerosis. The Times points the finger at vitamin D3. There's just no way the tiny amount of solar radiation we get between October and March is enough to maintain a healthy level. Since I don't drink milk, I don't have a real good source of D3, so I figured I'd just go out and buy some and start taking it and see what happened.

What happened was SPROING! It was as though spring bloomed full-force within the very garden walls of my being. People who know me well claimed that I had positively annoying amounts of energy. I don't know about the annoying part as I believe that I'm pretty annoying to most people most of the time, what with my constant baying and hooting and "raise the roof" gestures in otherwise serene-to-languid settings as, say, the workplace and, say, mortuaries. But I can tell you that I got that feeling that I only get when the sun comes out - specifically when I'm hiking in the sun. I'm talking like toddler-esque amounts of joy.

Sure, it could be placebo effect. Or it could be that I'm finally experiencing Garcia Effect for the taste of winter.

Look, I'd love to stay and chat but the sun just came streaming through the front win-

(EPILOGUE: The author's chair was found empty, as was his bottle of vitamin D3. His bike was nowhere to be found. -Ed.)

LATER THAT SAME DAY:

Greg:

I had a heck of a bike ride. Tested out the new bike rack by taking our bikes down to Myrtle Edwards Park which is about 8 miles south of here, and is also a place where a portion of my proposed bike commute to and from work will pass. Since the bike route maps of Seattle are incomplete in places, I thought I'd start at Myrtle Edwards and find my way going north to the Hiram Chittenden Locks. From there I figure I can pretty much by guess and by golly it the rest of the way home. The one-way distance from my workplace to my home on my proposed route is about ten miles. I did about that much today (I think) going from Myrtle Edwards to the Locks and back. Or maybe it was only six. It felt like thirty. The important thing is that I learned that it's mostly uphill with one vertiginous downhill block and slippery wooden bridge just before you get to the locks. I'd better grow and extra lung.

After our ride, Teresa and I went and purchased many more (necessary) doo-dads and knick-knacks for our bikes (rear view mirror so I can see if my sweet, sweet Muffin has fallen too far behind; panniers and a trunk for my laptop and work clothes). Then we came home and treated ourselves to a cigar in the sunshine whilst reclining in our camp chairs in the back yard. She entertained herself with some thirty-pound novel and I read The New Yorker.

Which brings me to the subject of nicknames. There's a rambling article about nicknames by David Owen that's definitely worth reading, should you happen upon the latest issue of the NYker at the dentist or bail bondsman's office. Owen suggests that we give nicknames for different reasons. We give them to teachers and other adults when we're young to limit their terrible authority. We give them to our peers out of affection that lends us the ability to see something in them that those who christened them never saw.

When I was in high school, all my friends had nicknames: Bilm, Pro, Rocky, Little Rock (Rocky's brother), Cork, Megaton, Oatface, Nielsaroni Face, Big D (alternately Big Dez), Bish, Looter, Mack, Bills, Lizard, DKR (alternately Dra Kay Ra, acronymous for Daniel Kenton Reasoner), and Hercle Ivy. (Hercle Ivy even gave nicknames to his family: sister Jive, mother Jive Senior, and The Bear.) I simply went by T, the least colorful of all nicknames. Perhaps it was because I was enigmatic in some way since I was the only kid I knew who didn't live at home. I also often carried a "bag of tricks" with me to class which at any given time contained a length of jute rope (for who knows what), a jar of vaseline (for greasing doorknobs), a fifth of Seagram's gin in the "ancient" bottle and some Tom Collins mixer (for fun), a hemostat, and several dozen condoms (for wishful thinking). I was known from eighth grade on as the inventor of the most complicated handshakes imaginable, some taking almost two full minutes to execute. I was an honor student, by the way.

I don't know many people who have nicknames now, other than old bosses and co-workers who I've bestowed nicknames on behind their back - Kaptain Kaos (or Double K), for instance. Or the pestiferous duo of product managers who had the habit of buzzing into my office and telling me how to write copy. I dubbed them Thing One and Thing Two. I have affectionate nicknames for former co-workers who I consider friends - Francie, for instance, for Francesca who in turn calls me Gunny Sack. I'm pretty sure everyone who has ever worked with Matt "Douchebag" Lange calls him either Lange or Douchebag (lovingly, mind you). Given his unique and consistent penchant for blowing things off, we actually verb-ized his last name. If you inadvertantly stand someone up for a lunch date, you have "totally Langed" on them. You've met Elizabeth, of course. How she got the nickname Becky was a stretch. When I was really excited over something I'd say to her, "Ohmigod Becky!" (which is naturally a reference to the opening line of the Sir Mix-A-Lot classic "Baby's Got Back"). To which she would reply, "OhmiGAWD my name's not Becky!" So of course from then on out she was Becky to me. However if anyone else called her that, I'm sure they'd get at least hissed at.

Which now brings to the reason why I absolutely hate being called "Thad" - always have, always will. I know that relatives do it out of habit, and acquaintances do it out of a need for familiarity, like automatically calling someone "Bob". But it's not a name. "Thaddeus" is a name. It means "big hearted". "Thad" is a sound effect. It is the sound that horse poop makes when it hits pavement. I'd rather be called by one of the nicknames I've heard before (T. Gunn, Gunnie, Gunny Sack, or Teresa's reciprocal nickname for when I call her Muffin, which is Stuffin') than be called Thad.

And with that, I bid you a good night, my dear Bonus Lips!

-Thaddeus

Positively Tripping Balls

Scrunchy The Bear, ShopRite's cereal mascot and
CEO of Scrunchy's Bunch Kids Club which purports
to be the "Coolest Club Around" (much to the chagrin
of the Lankershim Crips of LA's San Fernando
Valley). Members of Scrunchy's Bunch are afforded
such expense-free premiums as downloadable
activity books that will show you how you can just
fuck shit up and totally blow the lid off your family's
Hanukkah celebration. Give up the dreidl, bitches! I
fidda take all y'alls snap!

Greg:

I'm feasting on a positively baroque delight right now, a concoction that I cobbled out of Rice Dream, bananas, and Scrunchy's Cocoa Bombs, a chocolaty breakfast staple that can be found for 87 cents a box at the local Ghetto Mart. This means that in no time at all I'll be positively tripping balls, running around the house screaming, trying to avoid the Sugar Weevils that claw at my soul every time I have a wee too much of the sweet stuff before bedtime. That also means that tomorrow sometime around 2PM, my head will slam into my desk and I will not be roused by either lemon juice to the eyes nor repeated applications of the whip to the tender, tender flesh of my nape.

Speaking of desks and tender napes, I have a new job! I alluded to this in my last post, but now I am allowed to speak freely (although not too freely, as I have not yet received my last check from my old employer). I'm inclined to do some mourning on behalf of my former colleagues - really good people caught in an untenable and utterly dysfunctional situation - and some lambasting of my former keepers, viz., anything VP or above in that organization. However, I will not engage in the latter because it's pointless, not to mention bad manners, to air one's bile-covered laundry in public. I already said anything that I needed to say during my exit interview, much to the disbelief of the interviewer. ("That incompetent?" "Yes, that incompetent." "Should not be..." "...be managing let alone exposed to humans; right - that's what I said. Write it down.") Not that RealNetworks is going to make any sweeping changes based on the peevish ranting of a departing employee. Let me just say that I really miss my former colleagues. But thanks to the magic of email, I can still badger them from afar. And I do. Lovingly.

Onward.

How would I best describe my new position? Lemme put it this way. At the end of a 13-hour day, when you can walk out of a five hour meeting that adjourns at 9:30PM and say, "THAT'S THE STUFF, LAD! TEAR ME OFF ANOTHER PIECE OF THAT!" without a hint of irony (but with a thick Glaswegian brogue), then you know you're in the right place. How can I make this claim? Because I did it. Ask anyone who was driving on 1st Avenue South last Tuesday night. Or simply Google the headline "Crazy Fuckin' Scottish Guy Has Excellent Day At New Job". I think it'll take you to a video link on CNN.com. I told my former boss this and she said, "They must be doing something right. I was hard pressed to keep you from falling asleep during a ten minute conversation, fer crissakes!"

Diversion: the oil change notification sticker from my local Jiffy Lube says "have a excelant day" on it. They have openings. Valedictorians need not apply.

The sun peeked out for more than ten minutes today, so I seized (Soze? -Ed.) upon the opportunity to ride my bike. I rode 200 blocks. That's about 12 miles, but it sounds more impressive as blocks, dunnit? The map of Seattle is diced with bike trails, and there's one - the Interurban Trail - that starts a block from my house and runs...hell, I think it runs all the way to Canada or something now. I just rode it up to the county line, then stopped and wistfully pondered what suburban wonders must lie beyond before heading back. The best part of the ride was when I saw a guy reading the Sunday paper in his living room. Not too unusual except for the fact that he had an 80-pound tabby cat lounging on the back of his neck. He seemed not to notice, although the cat looked pretty goddamn smug.

It's getting late. I should probably wind this up before - The Weevils! The Weevils! Quick, someone hand me a Shoggoth!

-Thaddeus

After The Deluge

Answer: Holy fucking shit. Question: What are three words that describe the
second rainiest day in Seattle history?

Greg:

Here's a shocker: it rained in Seattle yesterday. That's not the big news. The big news is that it was the second rainiest day in Seattle history. A very angry, very soggy god sent a deluge which wiped out our evil and iniquitous storm drain system, turning manholes into geysers, city streets into raging rivers, and severely dampening my mother-in-law in her basement apartment. (I can't imagine what my mother-in-law Lucy, who is as sweet as sugar candy, could've done to offend the rain god. As she described it over a cup of coffee early this morning, "I was baptized by Seattle yesterday".)

So to recap - I got a call from Aaron yesterday morning telling me that Lucy woke him up to tell him that something was wrong with her refrigerator. He went downstairs to find water coming from underneath it. I told him to handle it with towels for the time being and I would be right home. By the time I got home, there was no mistaking this for what it was: a flood and not a simple refrigerator malfunction. There was standing water in the apartment and more coming from underneath the baseboard on the north wall. Lucy and Aaron were working like champs to keep it at bay. Wise and experienced homeowner that I am, I saw fit to call our contractor John and get some advice. I tried to keep the hysterical shriek in my voice to a minimum as I explained the situation to him. (Hysterical shriek: think triple-high C on the shriekiest stop of the famous Wanamaker Grand Court Organ.) He swung by post-haste and he, I and Aaron worked to move dirt and dig channels in the driveway to direct water away from my north wall. (You should see my driveway now. It's criss-crossed with a drainage network that would make the Dutch fight the Venicians for my honor. To quote Aaron, "It looks like war.") Speaking of which, Aaron and Lucy fought like Spartans against the water yesterday, Lucy mopping and wringing to beat the band and Aaron bailing with a strength and determination that might have saved the Titanic.

Our brilliant network of canals worked eventually, although the downpour overwhelmed it at the beginning. John and I surmised that there was nowhere to send the water except into my neighbor Shawn's yard which was already underwater. After inviting Shawn to take a look at the situation, he offered to bring over his rotohammer and blow a few holes through the low concrete wall that separates our properties and let the water drain over on his side. John took me aside and whispered, "Holy cow. Now that's neighborly!" I'm glad our drainage channels worked and that Shawn didn't drill holes in the wall because the water in his yard made it all the way to his front door sill. I don't know if it made it into his living room or not.

Speaking of neighborly, John L. Scott multi-award winning real estate agent Gloria Lee drove all over hell and gone to track down a submersible pump for us yesterday. She finally got one from Hertz. She has firmly established how much she rules, and everyone on earth should buy a house from her. Aaron was all too glad to hand over the bailing work to the pump, as hucking bucketloads of water out of a basement doorwell for hours on end is a Sisyphean task at best. Elizabeth was a rescuing angel for us as well, and brought us the three essentials of flood survival: homemade Ethiopian food, my cell phone charger (t'was dead during during the storm - not good), and her carpet cleaner.

So today I will be continuing the cleanup work that was begun yesterday, wet-vacuuming the carpet in the downstairs apartment and generally douching the rest of the basement before mold sets in. I have COIT services coming over on Thursday to give the place the Hurricane Katrina cleanup treatment. Hopefully we won't be growing mold by then. Today I'll also have to throw myself upon the mercy of the Boeing Employees Credit Union and beg them subsidize new roofing, siding, and at least one French drain for this splendid-yet-soggy house that I have amassed precious little equity in so far. Wish me luck.

Cheers, -Thaddeus

Zombie

Sleep Apnea Spokesmodel. Every CPAP device now comes
with a complimentary cranky old fat dude.

Greg:

Quick update. So I got the results of the sleep study. I'm not completely dead. Only mostly dead. Here's how they know. I wake up from having my airflow interrupted about 27 times an hour. (No, seriously, that's a completely crapless fact. 27 times an hour. That's about once every two and a quarter minutes for those of you who are playing along with your abacus at home. -Ed.) That's called sleep apnea, of course, but the real interesting thing is the sleep hypopnia. That's when you just stop breathing altogether without an airflow interruption, necessarily. I do that too. However - and here's the good news - it's not from lack of trying on the part of my brain. That would be cause for concern, but I'm glad that's not the case. Perhaps I'm just being stubborn. Or perhaps I have no brain at all. Look at our mom. She has a calcified brain tumor the size of a walnut. (That's about 4 inches in circumference for those of you playing along at home with your calipers. -Ed.) It hasn't harmed her not no way not nohow. Me not having no brain couldn't not do more any less harm to me, right? It must be genetic. I'm not re-tarded. I'm pre-tarded.

Other interesting fact. My blood oxygen level while I sleep is 89.5%, which is not great, but not awful. It's not until you get down to 85% that you start talking about heart attacks. Good/normal is 98%. ("Blue In The Face" is #1208AF for those of you at home playing along with your hexadecimal codes. -Ed.)

So yeah, the next step is to send me back for another sleep study, this time with a CPAP. (That's Constant Positive Airway Pressure for those of you from NASA, "Home of the Acronyms", who are following along with your 2nd edition Acronomicon. -Ed.) While I was in for my last study, somebody was in there with one of those things getting the pressure adjusted on it or the tranny pulled or some damn thing. All I know is that it sounded like a freakin' paint sprayer. Anyway, the doctor told me that I'd probably have to do two things to get rid of my snoring: 1) sleep with one of those damn paint sprayer things and 2) lose 30 pounds. Using the CPAP machine will facilitate weight loss and weight loss will help relieve the sleep apnea. It's a win-win, a "kindly cycle", if you will. Problem is, at 6'2", 230# and 16% body fat, I can probably lose 30 pounds. (Or if your math is wrong - which is likely - that's not possible. That is unless you don't mind being freezing cold all the time and having the wind whistle through your ribcage. -Ed.) I will either look completely ripped (sweet!) or like Skeletor the 2nd (which is sweet if you like Skeletor). Looks like I'll be riding my bike the 17-mile round trip to and from work every day. Either that or I have to cut off one of my calves and all of my hubris to get that skinny.

I know it's going to be difficult, but here's what I'm dealing with now. I have very little short term memory left. Or at least that's what it feels like. What was I saying? Oh yeah. They say sleep effects memory, and right now I feel like the guy in "Memento". I also have that sleep paralysis thing going on a few times a week, which is something that you get from chronic sleep deprivation. Imagine not being able to move, speak or breathe - in other words, being completely paralyzed - and being completely awake. Now I know what people who die of fugu poisoning feel like.

So if I get this CPAP thing, no matter how cumbersome and silly it looks (Yo! Snuffleuppagus! -Ed.), perhaps I won't get so damn tired every afternoon that I practically fall face first onto my keyp0[qawfp9wef'pwiaeh089234q07tq0[gfqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq348y---------------0[

il Purgatario di Morpheus

Before: Wired for sound.
The great part about it was that I could receive
all 789 channels of DirecTV
in my sleep.


After: "You didn't knock me down, Ray."
And then I had to wear those damn wires
all damn day.

Greg:

So I went in for my sleep study night before last. They should really call it a Lack-Of-Sleep Study, or Sleep Jail, or the Purgatory of Morpheus since someone obviously spent a lot of time dreaming up ways to fuck with people while they sleep. To wit: the thirty-six miles and forty eight leagues of wire that they attach to everything but your taint. I was right. They really do wire the hell out of you and put tubes up your nose, then put you in a strange bed and tell you to go to sleep. Not that the bed's so bad. It's a Tempur-Pedic, just like the one I have at home. But apparently Tempur-Pedic's "revolutionary support at an unmatched value(tm)"
freaked some people out (they thought that memory foam felt weird and kinda hard) so the good people at Sleep Center Northwest made the beds even more comfortable by frosting each mattress with a thin layer of futon. The result is a delicious sleepcake of unmatched comfort for the highest quality in somnolent repose. Too bad you don't get no somnolent repose, what with all the wires and the wires and the more wires and them waking you up because "oh shit one of your wires came off". They even had a tiny wire attached to the end of my left index finger. What they failed to tell me was that it had a tiny red LED in it, so when I went to rub my eye in the dark I was nearly blinded by its laser-like brilliance.

So I was in for two things, an overnight sleep study (polysomnogram) and the daytime sleep study (multiple sleep latency test). At the end of the overnight test, an EEG tech, a skinny Asian fellow, came in and woke me up and made me go into another room and get on a treadmill. I thought that was kinda weird, but I played along because, hey, what the hell do I know about stuff? It's my first time. So I'm on the treadmill with all the wires hanging off of me and I'm puffing along and the tech starts complaining about how he has intestinal gas and asks me if I have any Tums or anything. I say yeah, I think I have some in my toilet kit in my room, so I get off the treadmill and go into my room to get him some Tums. Well while I'm in there rummaging around in my toilet kit, I'm looking at my comfy, comfy sleepcake bed and thinking about how groggy I am and how nice it would be to snuggle back down between its creamy layers, and suddenly I'm all "fuck it, I'm going back to bed". So I crawl back into bed and nod off, and in about ten seconds another EEG tech opens the door and gets me up. But this time I notice that he's a real EEG tech and that the other guy was, well, kinda imaginary. And there's no treadmill anywhere in the building. I dreamt that whole thing.

The real guy's name was Grady and turned out to be a boon companion in what was an otherwise purgatorial experience. He was charged with performing my MSLT. That means that he made me take a series of five naps throughout the day and about two hour intervals. The rules were that if I fell asleep in the first fifteen minutes, I got to sleep for another fifteen minutes before they woke me up. But if I failed to fall asleep in the first fifteen minutes, then he'd come back in and get me out of bed. (And he'd know if I fell asleep or was just faking because something called "K spindles" would show up on my EEG if I nodded off.) I don't know if you've ever taken a nap in the middle of the day and then been woken up against your will, but it makes you so you're not quite awake or asleep for the rest of the day. OK - now imagine doing that five times. Yeah. Harsh. But I did manage to fall asleep two or three of the five times. I don't really remember. But what I do remember that I had a dream where I was attacked by a giant Reuben sandwich in outer space. (No, seriously, I actually dreamt that.)

One thing I forgot to mention is that there was an infrared camera in the room so they can laugh when you roll over on your morning missile and squeak with pain. I also forgot that it was there when I was buck-ass naked, getting into and out of my pajamas. I apologize to anyone at the front desk who may have been traumatized by either event. Just be glad the monitors are black and white and not color.

I managed to kill the time between naps by watching the "Empire of the Air" episode of Ken Burns' America series (good, nerdy stuff) and "Junebug" (Amy Adams is awesome and the Oscar nomination was well deserved, however the rest of the movie sucked a big, fat southern stereotype). Once those were gone, I was left with nothing to read but trade rags for the sleep industry. Not very compelling stuff, as you can imagine. Prolly great for inducing naps, though.

I get my results back next Tuesday. Until then I'll probably just continue in this half-awake state that has been become my living nightm -

GIANT SANDWICH! WHY DO YOU TORMENT ME!?

KatyDreams

Old Flat Katy was pretty hot, but she's nothing compared to what the
horndogs over at Archie Comics are rolling out nowadays. With any
luck, I'll see her in my dreams when they put me in the sleep lab.

Yes, I know. I'm a bad person.

Greg:

I'll dispense with formalities. This is too important for opening bromides. Much as you often do, I was making my sesqui-monthly visit to the Archie website this morning. Not as much has changed as you think it might for that underfed ginger kid with the checkerboard on the side of his head. I mean he's looking pretty good for someone who's been 17 since 1941. All the Botox in Dick Clark's medicine cabinet couldn't make you or me look so good. But look, I said this was important and here I've digressed from my original point which is that Riverdale gang member KATY KEENE (gang as in "pals" not gang as in "banger", FYI) is suddenly WAY THE FUCK HOT. Betty and Veronica are gravy munching old hags compared to this chicquita whose measurements can only be described as whammitty-slammity-bang. And on top of that, she's the only Archie character that is drawn with relief shading. (Who dropped a quarter in the ink and paint guy?) That is also to say that she has voluptuous roundnesses, whereas Betty and Veronica are flat. HAH! Get it!? Anyway, don't take my word for it. Just take a gander at her ass. (By clicking this link, you certify that you are twelve years old or younger. -Ed.)

Other Archie news: several characters have come out recently, among them Moose Mason, Mrs. Beazly, and Hot Dog. And on a bittersweet note, hilariously Scandinavian janitor Mr. Svenson left the comic five years ago to play the part of "Jamie Hyneman" on the Discovery Channel's hit show "Mythbusters".

Ok. So. When I'm not on the verge of a mental wank over pulp-printed princesses, I'm signing up for scientific experiments. True story. The doctor is sending me in for a sleep study to figure out why'n'the hell I can't sleep right and howcome I keep having that "sleep paralysis" thing where my brain is completely awake and my body is totally paralyzed. (Yeah, it's scary.) They're going to do two tests: a PSG or polysomnogram, and a Multiple Sleep Latency Test (MSLT). The PSG is the one where you go in at night and they hook you up to all kinds of wires and put tubes in your nose and then tell you to go sleep in a strange room. Then they shoot night-vision video of you freaking out like that girl on The Blair Witch Project and they put it on YouTube. Then they charge you money to take it down before all your friends see it. It's a scam I know, but hey - free bed. Oh yeah, and then the MSLT is a whole different deal. It takes place the following day. Between 6:15 AM and 6:30PM, they make you take a series of five naps. And they leave all the wires and stuff on. (And they don't even give you milk and graham crackers first - I know, I asked!!) And if you're bad and get up and watch Bugs Bunny instead of taking your nap they'll know, even if you turn the sound way down and draw the curtains. So you gotta watch out or you could get a spanking. Kind of a shitty deal for a full-grown man like myself, but I've heard that other full grown men pay good money for spankings. So there you go.

Speaking of sleep, in the run-up to this whole sleep testing thing the doctor made me take Rozerem ("Your dreams miss you(tm)") which is a new - well, new to us, old to Japan - sleeping aid that doesn't make you drowsy and doesn't have any dependency risk. Every night, you put one tablet in your ear and it tells you that you should probably turn that crap off and go to bed. It's only TV for crissakes, and it'll be there tomorrow, so why the hell are you staring at it night and day? It'll rot your brain. Your mother and I need some sleep, goddammit! So yeah, they had me on that stuff for two weeks and it was really fascinating. I didn't have anything I'd call truly remarkable results. I still woke up for no apparent reason exactly six hours after I went to bed, which is about par for me. But I fell back to sleep much more quickly. And I did sleep for about twelve hours one day and only woke up twice in that time for a couple of minutes each. And then - and THEN! - I found out that it's not even a controlled substance. Sheesh. (In America, we call it "Placebo". -Ed.) I was so hoping that there would be weed or something like that in it.

Okay so yeah, I'm taking a camera with me to the sleep study, so I'll have all kinds of embarassing photographs to show you next time I write - like a picture of me with Johnson, the tiny plush stuffed buffalo doll that I sleep with. And probably a photo of what a sleep center nurse looks like after I ask her if she wants to touch my Johnson. Stay tuned.

Cheers, -Thaddeus

Punched In The Love Donut

The Brothers Hieronymous: A recent sighting in Portland, OR.
Clockwise from lower left: Thaddeus, Gregory, John. Rumor has it
they all have prostates.

Greg:

Hello. How are you? I'm fine except for getting punched in the prostate yesterday. No, seriously, I had to go in for an overall physical exam because I've had ringing in my ears for about three weeks now. And I don't mean just a little. I mean like somebody testing a smoke detector in the next room all day, every day, every night and on weekends. Yes, it's disturbing. Yes, I know that my prostate is a long-ass ways from my ears. Tell my doctor that. Maybe he was just getting fresh with me.

I went to an Ear-Nose-Throat guy (who did not punch me in the prostate) to see what was up with the ringing. He took a good look inside my noggin and threw his hands in the air. Then he told me to go get the physical so's to rule out anything metabolic causing the ringing. He also made me stop drinking coffee for a month. Why? Because my blood pressure is up as well. And perhaps because he just likes to fuck with me. He knows how much I love coffee. He probably just wants to see me cry.

And I don't get the whole blood pressure thing. Last March when I went in for my regular exam, I was the picture of health. Now my blood pressure is one fifty five over way the hell too much. What gives? I'm a vegetarian and I work out way the hell more than most people. I've always had 120/80 for as long as I can remember. Maybe it's just my simmering rage that has finally taken its toll on my blood vessels. Or maybe it's the salt lick that I keep in my office.

On the up side, I have a new regular physician now - a sports med-slash-GP who's real personable. You like a guy to be real personable if he's going to put a fist up your Hoosegow and try to rip out your uvula. Makes it less awkward. Anyway, he's not like that grumpenstein Dr. Fisse that I've been going to for the last six or so years. My last exam with him...well let me just say that I've had friendlier bar fights.

"You examine yourself do ya?" he says.

"Yeah," I says.

"Oh yeah? How often?"

"'Bout once't a month."

"Bullshit! Ya do not!" he shouts. "Gimme those! You don't know what you're doin'!" And then he grabs my junk and goes over it with the care and thoroughness of a jeweler who has the touch of a goatherd. Ouch. Cough.

But my new doctor Dr. Pitt (like the University, not the actor) is real cordial and gives you the whole rationale behind the effectiveness of the manual prostate exam coupled with the blood test before he winds up and punches you in the love donut.

"Put your forehead on the table," he says. I oblige. "Now I'm gonna touch - "

What comes next is nothing that I'd describe as a "touch". So I says, "Next time, you're gonna buy me flowers first."

Anyway, it's a necessary evil and all, I know. And I shouldn't complain too much because I'm almost walking straight again and it's only been about twenty four hours. Plus, since he's a sports med doctor, I got him to look at my right Achilles which has been sore ever since I attacked that pampas grass in the front yard last month with a spade and a lot of swearing. The prognosis? I damnshit near ruptured it and have to get ultrasound therapy on it for the next eight weeks. And he says no jumping off of stuff or sudden sprinting or I'll damnshitsure rupture it for real. Thanks for the tip, doc!

I tire of this topic. It makes me hurt. Allow me to change course.

Not to turn this correspondence into an ongoing review of self-help books (File under "general grooviness". -Ed.) - but this particular nugget was too good to pass up. As you know I'm in the habit of trying out various exercises in self help books and passing the savings on to you. I think that's probably a better way of reviewing that genre than to simply comment on the writing style, don't you? Otherwise, it's kinda like reviewing a new car based on its looks alone. One has to kick the tires, as it were. Or in this case, kick the therapy model. I think that people should try out therapists the same way. And by that I mean by kicking them. Onward.

"Wishcraft - How to get what you really want" by Barbara Sher has been around a while, probably since the late eighties, anyway. I picked up a used copy at Horsepucky Books (or whatever the name of that place is down in central Greenwood - the place I just found). The upside: it has some very potent exercises that will reveal things about yourself that you scarcely knew. The downside: there are so goddamn many exercises that you will probably die of writer's cramp before you finish the book. I mean, c'mon Barbie! I'm a writer. I write all damn day every day for business and pleasure. And even I cannot muster up the either the verbal ganglia or the manual fortitude to write the seven-odd concurrent journals you're asking us to write. Simplify it, wouldja? Cut it down to one journal that contains everything.

Okay, so all of that said - here is one exercise from the book that I would highly recommend doing. No, it's not easy. Yes, it will make you squirm. Yes, it will be some of the best stuff you've ever done to or for yourself. I guarantee it. If it is not, I will send you a full set of Bridgestone whitewalls for your Lincoln. (Tires not included. -Ed.)

Ready? Begin. Sit down with someone whose opinion you trust implicitly. Ask them to tell you everything that's good about you. Just the straight dope. No qualifiers ("you're really excellent BUT..."), and no backhanded compliments (viz., "you don't sweat much for a fat girl" and the like). You need someone who is going to take this seriously. All you do is sit there and write down every word they say. Go on like this for about three minutes or until they're all talked out. Like a good cup of coffee, it will blow your mind. It's also extremely enlightening and energizing. After I did this exercise with Teresa, I sat down and edited 235 pages of my previous work. (No seriously, I did.) Try it and see how it changes your life.

And you know what? I think next year at my annual exam instead of getting pounded in the Dark Side, I'm going to ask Dr. Pitt to sit down and tell me everything that's good about my prostate.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Kitchen Lust

My precious. The four oven AGA range makes succulent
roasts, delicious toast, and cures leprosy.

Greg:

Teresa and I have discovered the most covetable object on Earth: the AGA (pronounced AWW-guh) 4-oven range (pictured above).

Okay, so you're saying, "Buh-whuh-huh? It's a goddamn stove!" Nay, my friend. It is not just a goddamn stove. It is a scientific marvel invented by Gustaf Dalen, an honest-to-Sverige Nobel prize-winning physicist that can - and does - make enchanted toast.

But you're saying, "Right. It's a goddamn stove." Oh ye of little faith in toast. Attend to mine word. For I have been to the Sacred Place (read: Luwa Distributing in Renton) to witness the Miracle of the Checkerboard Toastage (read: product demonstration) and to bask in the countenance of the Blessed Appliance (read: AGA range). So stop your grinnin' and drop your linen whilst I evangelize you with my new found faith.

First of all, t'was none other than Sergeant Rock locked me in the thrall of this Questing Beast of Glazed Cast Iron. He and I went into Sutter Home & Hearth in Ballard because I needed a fireplace screen. As it turns out, they're AGA dealers. As it also turns out, Sgt. Rock is a hardcore AGA enthusiast. I never woulda pegged him for being all ghey for high-end appliances. Nonetheless, he began to witness and was soon joined by Clint The Sales Guy, and soon they were swapping stories, high-fiving, embracing, and weeping openly over the wonders of this appliance.

When it came to his toast, Nobel prize
winning physicist Gustaf Dalen did not
fuck around. One look at those wicked
shades of his will tell you that.

Of course, you can find out everything I'm about to tell you if you just go to www.aga-range.com, but let me give you the crib notes first. This is what I found to be astounding about the AGA, and why I must have one toot sweet! 1) It has no knobs or dials at all simply because you never have to turn it on or off or set the temperature. Like our life-giving sun, it is always on. 2) Despite the fact that it is always on, it doesn't burn a ton of fuel. It is a super-insulated thermal mass of cast iron, so once it gets up to speed, it remains hot and "coasts" as it were, and doesn't keep sucking down gas. By comparison, standard open-flame gas ranges are unquenchable gas-huffing beasts. If you prepare six meals on a standard gas range, you will have used all the fuel an AGA uses in a month. 3) You can cook right on the burner, just as though it were a flat-top grill. 4) It makes enchanted toast.

And speaking of kitchens, we're planning on redoing ours not just so that it can accommodate a 1,290 pound, ten foot square AGA range, but also so it can accommodate other modern appliances, like a refrigerator and a dishwasher. You know, the little things. As you know, my house was built during the Depression. Apparently people didn't eat during the Depression so they had no use for kitchens. Mine is the size of a mouse's hind teat. Teresa and I resolved that while the rest of the house should be left as it was in that era, the kitchen was going to have to be expanded. The downside is that we really don't have the cash on hand necessary to do a kitchen remodel at the moment. We decided that we should start doing the groundwork and cost estimates anyway so that when the Giant Cash Meteor lands in our yard some day in the future (or more likely when I decide to vampirize my home equity), we'll be ready to start work. We went ahead and met with an architect who told me (much to my surprise) that I could do the plan myself.

Speaking of home equity, we got a notice in the mail telling us that the county has decided that our house has increased $30,000 in value since we bought it on April 30th. How they figure that stuff out, I'll never know. They probably drove by the house the day I set the two dead toilets out front for pickup and figured that I was putting in two new restrooms or a Roman Bath or some goddamn thing.

We got some good news last night. A certified AGA fitter came over to do a free survey and told us that no, the ponderous weight of the AGA will not make our floor joists to snap like a sparrow's leg and cause the stove to crash right through crust of the earth and down to the Mohorovicic discontinuity as we had feared. But he'll have to come back after we get the addition framed in to make sure that he'll be able to install the venting properly.

But anyway, the best news thus far is that our kitchen remodel has cost us nothing but the calories necessary to fuel full-blown kitchen lust. When it starts to cost money, we may have to turn to crime.

Speaking of crime, I have to get to work.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

13:54 Of Fame Left

WARNING - MAY BE FRIGHTENING TO CHILDREN: My visage has been digitally
de-hanced to include wobbly jowls, extra eye baggage, and lemur-length fingers.
Oh, and my hair has been replaced by a digital overlay of JFK's famous 1961 atomic blast resistant pompadour.

Greg:

It has finally happened. There is a clip of me gibbering away like a disembodied clown head on YouTube. It is surely a sign of our Internet-infused times when a person's visage can dribble onto the Web and into the eyeballs of tens of persons without them having to lift a single greasy finger out of the Cheeto bag.

How the hell did this happen? Well I'll tell you. I was one of the test subjects for something that's actually really cool (and might be cooler still were it not for my face being on it) called Interview Studio. It's like Monster on Bovine Growth Hormone. Posting your resume on the Web is now passe. You must now back up your claims with video clips and scientifically sound skill and personality test results. The profile that Interview Studio creates for you is so thorough and lifelike that you might want to email an exam glove to your prospective employer along with a link to your profile.

In all seriousness, I'd much rather use a tool like this than go through the cornea-chafing process known as resume reading. Last time I had to hire someone, I had to read something like 100 resumes. (100 resumes = 1 shitload. -Ed.) Being a fan of the cinema, I'd've much rather sat down with a bag of popcorn, dimmed the lights, and let Interview Studio roll while I occasionally lobbed half-chewed Hot Tamales(tm) at my monitor. What more relaxing way could there be to screen candidates? Boo resume reading! Yay Interview Studio!

But enough about me and more about my latest invention: The Shiva Pile.

I am become Shiva, the destroyer of shrubs.
The bones of mine enemy (foreground) lay
at my feet while I brandish the tools of their
demise.

As you know I have a yard now, and as you also know I have been waging a (losing) battle with the shrubs and various other flora 'round about the Gunn estate. Last weekend, I waged a bloody campaign against a camellia bush that was threatening to eat my house. No, seriously, the sumbitch had got to be about 20 feet tall while I wasn't looking, and had almost completely blocked all sunlight from coming through my living room window. With every implement of destruction at my command, I hacked it down to a humble 4 feet. However, this also meant that I was left with a ponderous stack of leaves and branches that I would have to bribe either the city or an itinerant pack of beavers to destroy for me. Being the cheap-ass with a scientific bent that I am, I decided that I was going to devise away to rot the whole pile down to mulch without paying a cent to either the city or the beavers. Here's what I did: I got some landscaping fabric and some Stump-B-Gone (or whatever the shit they call that noxious powder that will supposedly rot tree stumps down to oatmeal). I made a neat pile of all the camellia detritus, soaked it with the hose, and generously dosed it with the Stump-B-Gone powder. (NOTE: Stump-B-Gone powder does not feel good in your eyes or nose. Do not use it in a high wind or a slight breeze. -Ed.) So of course a stout summer breeze sprang up and shot a handful of the powder into my eyes and nose, much to my chagrin. Undeterred, I covered the whole schmear with the landscape fabric, pinned the edges to the earth, heaved the remaining camellia branches on top to help hold it in place, and took a moment to marvel at my handiwork. In this fashion, I effectively created the conditions of the underside of a rotting log. Hopefully this will cause all that crap to compost into a dark and handsome mulch in the next six months or so. Then I will uncover it and spread the remains under my lilac bushes as a horrific gardyloo to all the other shrubs in the yard, lest they conspire to eat my house as well. I think that fear is an excellent gardening tactic.

Wired for sound. The little dealio on the right is not a pushbutton switch. It's
actually the depression era's answer to the InterWeb.

And one last thing - I found the coolest thing in my living room. No, not my wife, silly! There's some sort of outlet on the wall that I've been wondering about for the longest time. It looks like one of those old-fashioned push button light switches. Problem is that it's too far down on the wall (about six inches above the baseboard) and it's right next to an outlet. So last weekend I let my curiosity run away with me and I attacked it with a screwdriver. Pulling it away from the wall, I discovered two things. One is that the original tenant of this house had horrible taste in wallpaper. It was some kind of crazy black and silver "gothic" pinstripe, no doubt inspired by the gangsterwear of the era. Second is that subsequent tenants were lazy bastards and didn't even bother to pull the wallpaper from behind the plate to paint the walls. And then I discovered a third. Third is that there were two braided copper wires trailing from the back of this thing and going up the inside of the wall between the studs - not horizontally or down between the floor joists. And all of a sudden it occurred to me that what I was looking at was antenna wire. This little dealio I found was where you plugged in your floor console radio's antenna wire. This was the 1930s equivalent of having your house wired for Internet. If I can get my grubbies on a decently restored floor console radio of the era, I just might try reviving that antenna plug. How bitchen would that be? Maybe there are some radio shows from the 1930s still living inside my walls somewhere.

Crap. Gotta go to work. More later.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus