The Last "Dear Gregory" Ever

Home Street Home. I used to live in a '74 Mav just as ugly
as this one. It didn't have a 42-inch HD Plasma, but at least
the seats reclined.

Greg:

Settle down and stop weeping already. It's not what you think. I'm still going to write to you. It's just that this thing I use to write letters to you - Blogger, I think it's called - is asking me to upgrade to something called a "beta". As I am inextricably drawn with crow-like fascination to all thing shiny and new, upgrade I must. My viscera compels me. Be forewarned, though. My experience with the InterWebs has taught me that it is a capricious and multi-headed beast, and oftentimes takes all your hard work and makes it as though it never existed. So that means the hundred some-odd letters I have written to you could - and probably will - vanish as soon as I upgrade.

By the way, I'm lobbying to change the name of the InterWebs to ¡Shiva The Destroyer! I'll write more about this in the future on my soon-to-be-established technology HateSite, Dubba Dubba Dubba dot I Fucking Hate The Internet dot Com. There will also be an online petition to destroy all the InterWebs, and of course the usual number of hoaxes delivered with the appropriate authoritarian air. In the meantime, enjoy this incarnation of Dear Gregory while you can because as soon as I hit the big shiny "upgrade" button, in the terlit it all goes. Just you wait and see.

Speaking of in the terlit, Christmas is lurking just around the corner which means I'm not nearly done spraying the money hose on everything I see. As we all know, my shortcomings are legion, but chief among them are my ossum credit rating and my propensity for buying Christmas presents. It seems I'm equal parts miser and spendthrift. I have no problem whatsoever purchasing things for other people, but when it comes to myself, I completely freak out. Maybe it's that "deserving" thing, as in wondering if I really deserve it. I've really got that neurosis really bad. (And that one about throwing away bread, as in I can't or I freak out.) I spent a lot of time when I was younger feeling like I didn't deserve to eat. Man that's grim. No wonder I was 6'2" and 150 pounds at age 17. And it's no wonder I lived in a 1974 Ford Maverick when I was 27.

But all of those cheery thoughts aside, I've been entertaining the idea of buying a new TV for some time now (no pun intended), but can't quite bring myself to pull the trigger. (TV as you know is a necessary tool for football- , movie- and PBS-obsessed persons like myself.) On the other hand, if Teresa wanted me to buy her one, we'd've had it yesterday. But no. I took six years making comparisons and test driving before I bought my car. I've only spent about 18 months comparing TVs, so I suppose I have another (...plus nine, carry the five...) four and a half years to spend comparing sets before the suggested retail drops to my Magical Rock-Bottom Ultimate Dream Price of $59.99.

So yeah. And then to make matters more complicated, Aaron - who now specializes in digital video for Best Buy - told me that the best image wasn't from the plasma model I was thinking of. The best image was to be found on an LCD model which is umpteen pounds and tuppence more expensive. (Naturally. -Ed.) And then - and then! - this guy I work with, Mike Woo, gets all up in my grill about how the one I want doesn't have the right contrast ratio or some boo-shit. Daaaamn.

Look, either I'm going to have to reach deep into my magical ass and pull out a couple grand to spend on myself - HORROR OF HORRORS! Or I'm going to do the unthinkable. I'm going to shitcan my TiVo and go back to reading books aloud while Teresa recreates the action with sock puppets in front of an oil lamp. You know, just like we did when we were kids.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Feeding My Architectural Obsession

Strange But True Psuedo-Fact: My favorite type of roof is the rare
hipped gambrel. This morning I sprained my hip, which gave
me time to read up on gambrels. Coincidence? I think not.

Greg:

I'm sitting at my favorite writing chair - my only writing chair - wedged in by a sack of ice the size of Baby Jesus' head. I sprained my hip in the shower this morning, an injury I thought was reserved for geriatrics and prison romances. Luckily, I had an appointment scheduled with Calhoun. (...alternatively referred to as "Baby Jesus' Gift to Chiropractors" and "Dr. Brian Graham". -Ed.) Within half an hour of the incident, I was in his office having my ball and socket reacquainted with much limb-wrangling and a loud POP. Now I have to ice it and give it time to think about what it has done. The upside of all of this is that it gives me time to catch up on my reading, which is great because I just bought two new books on architecture.

Stop pretending to be asleep and pay attention. They're both actually very interesting books. And no, having a party boner for early 20th century domestic architecture does not make me a ponce. I don't pretend to snore when you start spouting off about the history of lint, so cut me some slack.

Okay. So. The Abrams Guide to American House Styles is a compact, complete and accessible guide to every manner of shack that has been erected on these shores since Cotton Mather was in knee pants. And it has lots of pretty color pictures, so you'd love it. Strangely absent: the late 20th century McMansions, or as I like to call them, Toilet Farms. If you're like me and you ogle Second Empire rooflines and Craftsman beamwork with a leer middle-aged men usually reserve for photos of the Olsen twins, then this is the book for you.

Incidentally, I picked it up at Powell's when I went to visit John last weekend. He says he can't recall having a brother named Greg, and seemed to be only feigning a recollection of me. He seemed happy enough, though, to receive the All Clad skillet I gave him for a Christmas present even though he kept calling me "Skip" and asking me about my time in The 'Nam. Speaking of music, John gave me an original model Waring blender (...invented by the Bandleader Fred Waring back in the '30s. I shit you not. -Ed.), the kind with the big, beefy chrome base and the glass pitcher. It has the only two speeds you'll ever need: "blend" and "pulverize a dachshund". This is no Procter Silex 25-speed made-from-plastic weenie model. It has enough torque to split wood. I'n so crazy about it that I don't think I'll ever use it. I'll just gaze upon it lovingly from time to time.

Oh - the other book I got at Powell's - it was The Most Beautiful House In The World by Witold Rybczynski. (...whose surname was horribly mangled in a blender accident. -Ed.) The book is about how we give life and meaning to the dwellings that we create for ourselves. Beyond that he has some very interesting things to say about the process of design being more like play than anything else, and in doing so, elevates play to a defining attribute of humanity. So you see, all the goofing off I do at work is actually an indication of my advanced evolutionary state. (No, actually it's not. -Ed.)

Maybe my obsession with domestic architecture has to do with the fact that I parted from my own home so early. What was it - at 15 the first time and then before my 17th birthday for good, I guess. Not that it bothers me, but I don't see other guys with architectural fixations unless they're in architecture school or co-starring on Queer Eye. Or maybe my fixation is so strong at the moment because this is the homey time of year and I live in a space that has no window frames (to speak of) and could really do with some crown moulding. You can practically hear the walls crashing into the ceiling. That's just not right.

So in closing let me say that if you're looking for the perfect Christmas gift for me, get me a gambrel-roofed, six-dormered two story Cape Cod with clapboard siding, a central brick masonry heater, a Japanese bath on the second story, a pergola on the kitchen end, cased doorways, box beam ceilings, quarter sawn cross-braced solid wood interior doors and plate rail wainscoting on the inside.

No, I haven't been giving this much thought at all.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Joy And Other Truly Depressing Shit

17% Receiving fruitcake
12% Sled and livestock parked on roof
9% Cranberry caught crosswise in own or others' craw
6% If another fuckin' person says fuckin' Happy fuckin' Holidays
to me, I swear to fuckin' God I'll park this fuckin' Buick Roadmaster
right on his fuckin' gizzard. You fuckin' see if I fuckin' don't!

Greg:

Hope you have recovered from your birdmeat-induced coma. I binged on stuffing, then attempted to purge by burning off a thousand calories on the HellClimber. Some quick math proved that I had ingested at least thrice that amount in one sitting. The point of that fact pierced the gunnels of my soul, causing darkness and despair to leak in.

The sleet outside the window of my garret continues unabated.

Speaking of which, Monday night it snowed about an inch, which meant that the entire town of Seattle came to a slushing, grinding halt. Buses jacknifed. Cars were abandoned. Bars were filled. Pregnancies were created.

So what better time to revisit one of my favorite subjects - positive thinking! Right now the ghost of Alan Watts is sitting in the porch of my ear, whispering that thought itself is the problem. "For if you're thinking, then you're always living in the world of symbols. Can you dig that, man?" I shall poo-poo him for the moment and turn my attention to the ghost of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale who I have trapped in acetate, viz., on a special four cassette edition of "The Power of Positive Thinking". I've damn near worn all the tapes in the collection threadbare in the seven or so years that I've owned them, and am now looking for a digital replacement set so I can rip it and carry it with me always on my Sansa e260R Rhapsody. (You're searching through your comedy bag for some witty way to use the term "Pocket Peale", aren't you?)

The reason I'm bringing it up is not just because the Happy Holidays are really a bubbling cauldron of hate and despair for most people. I'm also bringing it up because of an article I came across in today's paper about current research on happiness. Oddly enough, some of the research echoed what Peale said in his book over 50 years ago: if you want to experience more happiness, simplify the things that make you happy. The article goes one step further in suggesting a very simple exercise. At the end of each day, write down three good things that had happened and analyze how they had occurred, or rather, what about the event made you happy. It surprised me to find out that an idea that Peale formed through his philosophical and religious dialectic seems to have quantifiable results when put into practice. That's not an easy thing to do when working with something as elusive and subjective as "happiness".

It all sounds very naive and simplistic, I know. But so is Zen. (You knew I was going to get back to Watts, didn't you?) I thought I'd give the exercise a try anyway and see what happens. I'm going to put a notebook in the nightstand and see what I can recall each night before I go to bed. Hopefully I won't discover anything truly negative about myself...like that I become overjoyed at the sight of a well-heeled white Republican falling into an open sewer and dying.

Anyway, I'll let you know how it goes. I'll see if I can track the results somehow in my correspondence. In the meantime, I can say that I am positively gleeful in anticipation of my trip this Saturday to Portland. I'll be seeing our co-sibling John. You remember him, don't you? Gap-toothed smile? Boyish good looks? Swings a mean pipe wrench? We'll be having dinner together Saturday night at an East Indian restaurant called Plainfield's Mayur and doing an early Christmas thing. There's a joke in there somewhere. (Two non-Christian brothers meet to celebrate Christmas in an Indian restaurant. One turns to the other and says - I got nothin'. -Ed.) Let me know if there's anything you'd like me to pass along to him, like perhaps that he has a "brother" named "Greg".

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Happy Mycoprotein Loaf Day!

Please pass the steaming faux meat cylinder!
Who can resist a delectable slice of space age food science?

Greg:

Holiday related question: On this most meat-centric of all American holidays, who would not want to sit down to a steaming loaf of mycoprotein that is shaped like a marital aid and is roughly the color of GI Joe?

Just about everyone as it turns out. Since Teresa and I are vegetarians, we don't usually have people beating down the door to spend Turkey Day with us. As mouthwatering as the above description sounds, we are hard-pressed to have anyone take us up on such a feast. Nor do we get invited over often. It seems that people don't like to eat meat in the presence of vegetarians.

Don't get me wrong. We're not vegetarian zealots who preach the gospel of meatlessness. I think people like that should be humanely dispatched and then eaten. My perspective is this: I really don't give a rat's meatless ass what anyone besides me eats. I am the sole guardian of my own piehole. What other people put in theirs is their business. And people, please don't apologize to me for eating meat, or go into some lengthy explanation about how you eat less meat nowadays, or only eat fish, or ask me a thousand questions about where I draw the line on meat. ("Do bugs count?" "Oh fuck no. I eat cockroaches and earwigs by the bucketload.") Doing that only consumes too much of my favorite dish: air. So, let me say this as politely as possible: Please shut the fuck up and unapologetically eat your meat and leave me alone to eat my weeds, twigs and berries.

There is only one reason why I don't eat meat. I had a dream that freaked me out seven years ago and that was pretty much the end of my career as a carnivore. The dream was this. I had a beautiful white cow as a pet, one of those really pretty white cows from the Hindu paintings, you know, the kind that look like they had their makeup done at Elizabeth Arden. (Side note: Elsie the Cow chotchkes and ephemera make great Christmas gifts!) My cow was very dear to me and would come when I called her by name (Felice - not my favorite name, but who am I to argue with my subconscious?) and would give me big, wet, sloppy cow-kisses like she was some kind of gigantic Labrador retriever. Then one day I had to go away, so I left Felice in someone else's care. When I returned, they gave her back to me nicely butchered and wrapped up in several little white paper packages. And then they handed me her severed head. My shit was freaked out beyond repair. I haven't eaten meat since.

Teresa once told that story to a Malaysian woman who is Buddhist by birth and who works in the commissary at Microsoft. Her response was, "Whoah - that is sooo Buddhist!"

So yeah, my vegetarianism has less to do with being Buddhist than it has to do with how a dream I had "freaked me out hardcore" as we said back in the '70s. I haven't found an imperative in the Dharmapada anywhere that says that you can't eat meat and be Buddhist. Then again, the Dharmapada isn't about imperatives, and likely would not proscribe the placement of knitting needles in the ear canal either. It's real big on the common sense through logic thing.


No vegetarians were harmed
in the making of this product.

In case you were curious, here's what is on our bill of fare for the feast today. We switched gears this year and instead of the mycoprotein phallus, we'll be having Stuffed Field Roast brand Celebration Roast with homemade roasted vegetable brown gravy. Rounding out the ensemble cast will be skins-on smashed red potatoes, sauteed green beans, mixed wild green salad, my own special tangerine cranberry sauce, and sourdough bread stuffing with all kinds of leeks and nuts and shit in it. ("Shit" here is used in the Detroit Metropolitan vernacular, which translates as "various comestibles and gustatives of superlative flavor". Example: "Dat shit yo moms made for dinner was da shit, boyee!" -Ed.) For dessert, I picked up two large tarts at Le Panier in the Pike Place Market. (...which is something he also did back when he was single, however this time we're taking about baked goods. -Ed.) I got a traditional pumpkin tart, and just for the sake of decadence, also picked up a belle-helene which is a tart so delightful and all-consuming of the senses that it comes with a special knife so that you can commit seppuku after eating it because, hey, life just isn't going to get better than that. (Knife not included. Death optional. -Ed.)

One last note. There's a great essay by (say it with me now) E. B. White called "Death of a Pig" which describes his experience caring for an ailing pig, and in some points, bears congruence to my dream about Felice. ("He had evidently become precious to me, not that he represented a distant nourishment in a hungry time, but that he had suffered in a suffering world.") It's also interesting to consider while reading it that it comes from the author as "Charlotte's Web". Just don't read it at breakfast.

Happy Thanksgiving.

-Thaddeus

E. B. White Is The Grammatically Correct Shit

Kneel, bitches! Give it up for the O.G. of essay
writing! E. B. White in tha house y'all!

Greg:

I'd like to put some effort into this letter but I just don't have the gumption. I'm battling some poorly defined illness who's major aspects are dizziness, wretchedness, ennui, the dubiously correct usage of the term "who's", ( It's supposed to be whose, Typhoid Mary. Take a pill. -Ed.) and other things that end with "-ness". So what I'm going to do instead of composing some sort of cohesive epistle is just try to throw spots of thought on the paper, not unlike the tiny specks in the effluvium issuing from my head. Some of them are interesting. Hey, there's one that looks like a bas relief of Alexander the Great!

While I'm on the subject, how are you? Haven't heard from you. Limbs intact? Just wave if you can hear me.

E. B. White is the shit. He is a straight-up literary-pimp gangsta. (...and probably would not approve of multiple compound adjectives. -Ed.) I just picked up a collection of his essays from the library. It has made me re-think everything I was taught about essay writing. I love writing essays, (hell, I've got a hundred five of them on this here clog) though a long string of well-intentioned editors and teachers tried to bind, gag and exsanguinate that love over the years. Funny how the worst teachers can turn something you had a keen interest in into something you keenly despise. I guess my love of my own opinion has weathered the best criticisms ("You have become a fine and pithy writer - who won't miss any more classes!" -T. C. Boyle, PEN/Faulkner Award winner and six-time O. Henry Award winner) and the worst ("This sucks." -Former Editor-slash-Braying-Jackass).

Here's what I like about White. Instead of the standard "tell what you're gonna tell 'em, tell 'em, then tell 'em what you told 'em" approach, White's essays, at least in this collection, are more of the "March from The Love of Three Oranges" approach. There's very little fanfare at the beginning, everybody in the orchestra gets a shot at the staff, and then before you know it - brrump bump frrump SHRIEK! - it's done. Everything that needs saying is said, the stage goes dark - no punchline, but a great feeling of fullness and satisfaction nonetheless. By comparison, the former approach seems unecessarily didactic and condescending. The closer almost always comes off as, "Hey idjit! Didja hear what I said?"

I'm sure that if any English student nowadays tried to write an essay by the White method (my name, not his), they'd get their knuckles rapped, ironically no doubt, with a hardcover edition of Strunk and White. If the student protested that this was the way he or she had seen White do it, they'd no doubt get the cop-out tautology that White can do that "...because he's E. B. White."

It reminds me of a story that I heard from one of my profs at USC. When he was in high school - a military high school, mind you - he got an assignment to write a two-page essay about the meaning of two lines from Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: "And miles to go before I sleep,/And miles to go before I sleep". His essay itself consisted of one line: "It was to give the effect of echoing." His teacher promptly failed him. Righteously incensed, he put gathered up the literary balls to write Frost a letter and ask him directly what his intentions were when he wrote those two lines. Frost replied with one line: "It was to give the effect of echoing." He took Frost's letter back to his English teacher, who then convened a quorum of the English department behind closed doors to scrutinize the letter. Days later, they came back with their verdict: "Robert Frost does not know his own work." The student was promptly re-failed.

Brrump bump frrump - SHRIEK!

-Thaddeus

I'm Proud Of You, Son

Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto
(shown here at age 20) hid behind the pen
name Pablo Neruda so that his
father wouldn't have to bear the shame
of having a son who was a poet.
He went on to win the Nobel Prize in
Literature and is regarded as the most
influential poet of the 20th century.
He is also the most widely read author
since Shakespeare.

Greg:

I was digging around in the bowels of my computer looking for - hell, I can't even remember now - when I found a bunch of letters that I had written to Aaron years ago. Among them was one that I wrote to him about what it means to be proud of your son. I thought I'd reprint it here for your enjoyment.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus


8 September 2004

Dear Aaron:

I am proud of you. I mean that sincerely. Now let me explain what I mean by that auspicious opening line.

I always thought that I could do something or be something that would make my old man proud. I figured that if I could second–guess what he wanted me to achieve, I would have fulfilled my purpose in life: to make my dad proud. So I wound up doing all kinds of things that I thought my dad might approve of. Like going to an Episcopalian church, being a good student, being a writer, whatever. I don't know if any of that worked, even though I may have been the beneficiary of those actions in the long run. I really love being a writer, even if it was at first motivated by a need to make my dad proud of how literate and verbose I was. Then I grew up and had a son of my own and it changed my whole picture of what pride in one's progeny is and how it works.

I'm proud of you for who you are, not simply for what you do. There's a distinct difference. If you're only proud of someone for what they do, then your pride is poorly founded. Why? Because a single accomplishment will become meaningless over time, the merits of it may be offset by other accomplishments or failures, or it may not be relative at all to your current situation. For instance, if you're real proud of your kid for being able to make it to the toilet on time when he's two, what meaning does that have when he's five? Now it's expected. Now it means nothing. Now there's no reason to praise or be proud. So that makes pride fickle by nature, so what good is it? Why even make the effort to make someone proud of you?

What I'm talking about when I say that I'm proud of you is something far more firm and constant. Again, I'm proud of you for who you are, not for what you have done for me. I'm proud of you for what you have made of yourself, not because you have fulfilled some sort of expectation that I had of you. You have developed your character in ways that I could not have imagined on the day you were born. And all of the positive growth that you've done, although it may seem commonplace and unremarkable from your perspective, is truly stunning from my perspective as your dad. Examples? Your knack and natural enthusiasm for entrepreneurship is both amazing and authentic. Nobody could have taught you that. Your sense of humor is brilliant, sharp and original. And each time I see your artwork, your style becomes more and more distinct and unique. These are just a few, and they are also things that no one could teach you. Nor could anyone cause you to develop these talents by placing some sort of expectation on you and then hoping you'll fulfill it. You're an original, Aaron. That's you. And that will never change. And that's what makes me more proud of you than I can ever put into words.

So instead of placing an expectation on you and giving you the impression that if you fulfill it I'll be happy and if you don't I'll be mad or disappointed, here's what I really think. I do not have an expectation you'll accomplish this or that thing. Instead I have a wish, or prayer or blessing or whatever you want to call it. I wish you peace of mind. Whatever you do, wherever you go, however you make your life, I wish for you peace of mind as you go along your unique path. In my view, peace of mind is the only thing worth pursuing, and everything else in life is downstream from that. I know that any person's quality of life is only what they think and what they feel. It's not any particular thing that happened to them, it's not how much stuff they owned, it's not some job they had or where they went to school. It's how they thought and felt about it and that's it. So that's why I wish that no matter what you do or whatever happens to you in this life, that you always take with you a deep and meaningful peace of mind.

There's a little Dharma story that goes like this: A teacher asks a student, "What is the surface of the Earth like?" And the student says, "It's nice in some places, but it mostly rough and covered with rocks and it'll hurt your feet." So the teacher says, "Would the Earth be smoother and kinder to your feet if you covered it with soft leather?" And the student says, "Yeah, but that's crazy talk. You can't cover the Earth with leather. It's impossible." To which the teacher replies, "No, but you can wear shoes. That way, it's the same as the whole Earth being covered with soft leather wherever you go ." So that's what peace of mind is. It's shoe leather.

I love you and I'm proud of you, my son.

-Dad

Turn Me Into Buzzard Snacks, Please

Sky Burial: Why is it that at every party you go to everyone always
hangs out in the kitchen?

Greg:

Last I heard you were moving and you were going to give me your new address. And that was definitely The Last I heard from you. Hopefully you're not living in your tuba. I can just see you burying that thing up to its bell in the desert sand, then crouching inside it like an ant lion, springing forth to snatch errant hobos as they shamble past, and pulling them down into the warren-like tubing to feast upon their tender innards. Don't tell me you haven't thought of it.

If you have fallen off the social grid into main shaft of the Mines of Endless Leisure (read: homeless), then hopefully either the Reno Public Library or Reverend Dick's Gospel Shelter has Web access and you're reading this right now.

So let me update you on a small family matter which also involves a change of residence: the folks have arrived on the door of their future mortuary. No, they're not dead. They're in Missouri.

I don't know if you spoke to them any time during the run up to their eventual departure to the Ozarks. It wasn't the lack of intellectual stimulus or the abundance of ticks, chiggers and hillbillies that sold them on the place. It was, in fact, the absence of laws governing where and how deep one can bury their relatives. Apparently in Missouri, once a person stops whittling and the corncob pipe drops from their slackened jaws, they're fair game for the mulch pile. None of those fancy rules about "coffins" and "water tables".

Don't get me wrong. Even though I'm clearly not on the Missouri Board of Tourism, I completely understand the motivation behind self-determination at the end of life. Aging is an undeniable process that robs you of functions and freedoms one by one. If you've been on life's stage as long as our folks have (over a century and a half at last reckoning), I think you oughtta be able to have a say regarding your exit.

So, while we're on the subject, and El Dia de los Muertos is right around the corner, I think I'll go ahead and publish my burial instructions right here and now. They're real simple: Don't bury me.

Here's what you do. Buy my corpse a ticket to Bhutan. (If I've planned things right, I should be there already when I give up the ghost. My current death fantasy is to die in Bhutan while hiking - quickly and and by accident, of course. Age of death doesn't matter. I'm in Bhutan, which is a fundamentally a Buddhist theocracy. I'm hiking and I couldn't be happier. What better time to kack?)

So once I've accomplished the kacking part, I want what they call a "sky burial". Here's how it works. The undertaker hauls your corpse up into the mountains. Then he whips out his Amazing Ginsu, flenses your flesh from your bones, and pounds it into meal with a little flour. (I'd like some cinnamon, nutmeg and sugar added. The idea of being turned into a meaty cinnamon roll appeals to me.) Then he feeds the Death Dough to the buzzards who have by now congregated close by and in great number. Once they've eaten all the dough and licked the plates, the undertaker hauls the leftovers - bones and gristle and whatnot - back down the mountain and throws it all into the crematorium. (Sometimes not. Sometimes your bones get pounded into meal too, which would be fine by me. I pray for an undertaker who can swing a sledgehammer like John Henry.) And there you are. The buzzards crap you onto the bottom rung of the food chain and your ashes go in the garden. I can't think of a more wonderful and fitting end.

Of course you're going to say, "It's your funeral. You won't be there. What do you care?" Yeah, so you're right. After I die, I plan to be in the bardo for the next 42 days playing single-platoon old school football with Grampa Teachout (that is until I'm reincarnated as a cold sore for my abysmally horrid karma). Let's just say I want to do this because I believe in recycling. As a matter of fact, I think I'll go have "Please Recycle" tattooed on my sternum, right next to my favorite haiku* and "Do Not Resuscitate" in twenty seven languages. I hope I have a broad enough sternum and enough skin.

So yeah, when I die, be a peach and get me a sky burial, wouldja?

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

*It is a dewdrop world
Surely it is
And yet
And yet -

-Kobayashi Issa

The War On Christmas Part I: Full Metal Teepee

If you can't take the day off to celebrate Indigenous People's Day,
(Monday, October 9th), at least find some time to pray in the
direction of Sherman Alexie.

Greg:

I'm pissed.

I fuckin' walked into fuckin' Lowe's fuckin' Home and fuckin' Garden fuckin' Center (fuckers), and what to my wondering eyes should appear but a quarter-acre CHRISTMAS DISPLAY. They got plastic Christmas trees, wreaths, garlands, lights, and those horrendous inflatable 6-foot-high snow globes with a blower in 'em that makes it look like Santa is in the eye of a Tony Montana-sized coke-storm. So what's wrong with that? It was SEPTEMBER FUCKIN' TWENTY-FOURTH! Last time I checked the calendar, we had a whole three months before I had to sit up all night with a shotgun waiting for the fat man. Fawk!

Look, do not for a second think that I'm siding with that toothless, gum-bumping douchebag-with-a-microphone who says there's some kind of ACLU-endorsed "war on Christmas", but goddamnit - I'm about to start one! Are you with me? Then rally the damn troops.

So like any war (with the possible exception of the invasion of Iraq), this war has a plan. I already brewed one up. I knew push was gonna come to shove, so here's how we're gonna shove Dasher, Dancer, and Jesus all the way back to December 24th where they belong.

1. Celebrate the shit out of every holiday between now and December 24th, starting with Indigenous People's Day on Monday, October 9th. (Thought Monday was Columbus' Day? Think again.) As an added bonus, Canadian Thanksgiving Day (or Thanksgiving I: Maple Leaf Rag, as I like to call it) is celebrated the same day. If you're not going to throw down a feast, at least go into Lowe's and ask them where the Indigenous People's Day decorations are. When they shrug and gape at your requrest, stage a sit-in until they give you donuts and beer.

2. Buy Halloween decorations. As a matter of fact, buy all the Halloween schwag you can, including those crazy little ghost candles and stuff. When retailers start seeing a "Halloween bump" in sales, they'll start painting their faces and worshipping Satan faster than you can say "revenue stream".

3. Celebrate Thanksgiving II: The Kreusening (November 23rd). I've given it this title to differentiate it from Thanksgiving I, and to underscore the fact that you should get =/~ drunk as a lord in celebration; that is to say, become "fully kreusened" by internalizing the final stage of the brewing process (or as my wife used to say, become "ale battered"). Honestly, it's the only decent and noble way to honor the brave Native American soldiers who vanquished the white teetotalers at Roanoke Island in 1590. It's either that or take a stone hatchet to a Puritan. Your call.

4. Celebrate Christmas. Yeah, I know, you're all "what the hell!" But hear me out. Just hold out on celebrating until December 24th, and then keep that party goin' 'til Twelfth Night on January 6th. Do not let up. Ya don't stop the punk rock, especially when it comes to the biggest feast of the year. And as a matter of fact, walk right the hell out of work on December 24th and don't come back until January 6th. If they try to fire you, tell 'em to go suck a yule log. Sue them for impinging on your religious freedoms. What're they gonna do, condemn you for celebrating a Christian holiday? Not in George Dubya Bush's America! Nosiree!

Here's my last thought: I'm thinking about creating a foam Baby Jesus In The Manger hat, kinda like those Cheesehead deals you see people wearing at Green Bay Packers games. I mean what screams "Christmas" louder than wearing a manger-nested Christ Child on your head?

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

This Is Your Brain On Yelp

Michelle B. at feeding time. Warm-blooded, good-natured and
exclusively frugivorous, Michelle is the person who is solely re-
sponsible for getting me hooked on Yelp.

Greg:

Look, don't expect much of me today. I'm tired and my brain power is at an all-time low. In fact, I'm experiencing what some might call "rolling blackouts" of the mental variety. I keep drifting off the subject and then not remembering what I was talking about. Might not be so bad except that people keep pointing it out to me.

The upside is that I write crapmail for a living, which means that I know how to write a mean bullet-point list. Bullet-point lists are what you write when you're not smart enough to construct a meaningful conversation, and would just rather lob shit at people than talk to them. This is all fine by me, since most of my conversations nowadays seem to go like this:

ME: Hey, did you hear about the 'Hawks game?
YOU: No, what happened?
ME: What?
YOU: Huh?
ME: What was I talking about?
YOU: (Capitalizing on the opportunity) How you only owe me thirty bucks.
ME: You're goddamn right! And not a penny more. (Shells out $30.)

But check this out. What I'm going to write next is a modified bullet list that will talk at you about the several and diverse topics currently circulating in my world. The modified bullet list will allow you to see in a single glance the salient points of my utterly flavorless existence - with very little writing effort on my part! Hell, I could mash a monkey's face into my keyboard right now and it would probably result in the same quality and clarity of prose. Such is the beauty of the modified bullet list. So here goes:

My Latest Conspiracy Theory - A few years back, Bob Woodward cranked out a 400-page handjob-to-the-administration titled Bush At War. Then just yesterday he grunted out a six-and-a-half-pound hatchet-job on the same administration titled State Of Denial. If he wrote the former so that he could butter up the keyholes at the White House to get unprecedented access to write the latter, he is my new hero. God bless you, Mr. Woodward, you are a one-man Trojan horse.

Seahawks - Got shellacked (37-6) Sunday night by the Chicago Bears and are now 3 and 1. Oh look, you're already asleep.

The HellClimber 3000 - Each and every morning, I've been flaming off 1,000 calories on the HC3K (if I am to believe anything that LED readouts on exercise machines tell me). Then I go lift. I'm doing this so that I'll be ready for next hiking season. Why the intense preparation, you ask? Because next year on my hikes I intend to carry no bear spray, and eat whatever'n'th'fuck I want wherever'n'th'fuck I wanna eat it. That also means I'm probably going to have to wrestle some bears for my peanut butter and banana sandwiches. I also intend to wear a salmon suit and slather myself with dingleberry jam. Wish me luck.

Modern Drunkard Magazine - Puking is probably not really as much fun as I remember it being, but reading the brilliantly unapologetic Modern Drunkard Magazine makes me wish it were. In typically alcoholic fashion, I can't remember how I came across this little gem-at-the-bottom-of-a-shot-of-rye, but I'm very glad I did. Such unabashed praise of drunkenarianism is more than enough to send most former drunks like myself scuttling off to an AA meeting with flagellum in hand. But part of what I had to do in order to stop the guilt cycle that kept me drinking was to realize that I had some really good times being drunk. In a very satisfying and practical way, MDM lets me relive those giddy Bacchanalian days without the money-spendy-blacky-outy-auto-wrecky stuff.

Yelp - My latest addiction is a website that combines the personalization of MySpace with...oh I don't know...some other site where they review stores and restaurants and shit. Michelle - somebody who used to work here (meaning RealNetworks) got a gig over there (meaning Yelp dot com) turned me and a bunch of other folks around here on to it. I haven't been able to leave it alone. I've reviewed a ton of stuff and often turn to it for inspiration when I'm not even inspired enough to write a bullet list. It's fun as hell and will most likely cost me my job. Go sign up or I'll review you.

See ya on Yelp.

-Thaddeus

One Giant Biscotto With Dingleberry Jam, Please

Greg:

I don't know how you got your grubbies on that photo. I've had dozens of lawyers trying to track down that image and suppress it. Now my fascist inclinations are exposed. Damn you, Getty Images!

Apparently Getty can - and will - sell photos of just about anything, up to and including the moment when I brought the populace of Missoula, MT to its collectively quaking knees by threatening it with a mammoth Italian confection. Getty and its minions are everywhere. At least once a week they come by my door trying to peddle another snapshot of Fidel Castro rolling down Broadway in an Escalade loaded to the gunnels with boxes of high-end electronics and cookware from Williams-Sonoma. ("Products which fall from the back of a truck or that can be readily pried from the greedy hands of the capitalist oppressors shall become the rightful property of the people." -Castro.) Or you in your frilly under-drawers, huffing away on that tuba of yours. And I don't care what you say, that underwear doesn't make you a better tuba player.

Speaking of food and Missoula, check this out. At this restaurant in Missoula called The Shack, they have a crouton omelet. No, seriously. Jack cheese, veggies, and garlic croutons. And not small ones. Croutons about the size of Yahtzee dice. And I'm thinkin', who thought this shit up? I mean, c'mon, you gotta be pretty high on weed to think, "croutons - that's what this thing needs!" I should know. When I was in college, I used to spend all night playing the bong and then take a pair of scissors and cut a day-old Totino's party pizza into 5" by 5" squares. Then I'd spark up the toaster and drop it in. Once that popped, I'd put some jam on it and scarf it down. That may sound a little weird, but at the time, it seemed to me that anything that came out of a toaster should have jam on it - like there was some culinary law about that. So I know how these things happen.

But I must say that my hat is off to the members of the Missoula Montana Bong-estra who first cobbled this crouton omelet thing up because it's freakin' delicious. If the good people at The Shack told me they had an omelet that was made with a petrified jelly donut that they carved up with a door plane, I'd eat that too.

All this talk of food has made me hungry. I'm going to sign off now and go eat. I got a jar of homemade dingleberry jam from somewhere in Canada. (Teresa says it's huckleberry but I swear to God the guy said dingleberry.) I think I'm going to start at the east side of the kitchen with that jar of jam and work my way west. I'll let you know tomorrow what goes good with dingleberry jam and what doesn't - although I really doubt there's anything that doesn't.

Cheers,

-Thaddeus

Guns Don't Kill Writers. Bulleted Lists Do.

Me, hanging my fool ass off the side of a mountain.
Crypt Lake trail, Waterton Lakes, Alberta, Canada.

Greg:

I've been meaning to give you more detail on the vacation I just took, the one that was mostly comprised of backpacking in the Canadian Rockies, also known as the vacation that will go down in history as The Best Freakin' Vacation Ever, Eh?

Since my astoundingly lucrative career as a crudmail writer has compromised every writing skill I ever possessed, I will have to recap (See? I can't even write the word "recapitulate" any more) using bullet points. There's a real funny story about how I wanted to be a famous writer so I made this deal with this one guy. (Featuring: ●Crossroads ●Dead of night ●Banjo string ●Black cat bone ●PLUS - Guy with horns. -Ed.) The upshot is that though I make a load of dough and have literally millions of readers (...no really, he does. Why does no one believe that? -Ed.), nobody knows my name, and all I can write is poopmail that gets promptly deleted. You win some. Then you go to hell. I digress. Onward.

Here are the salient points (Read: ●Bullets. -Ed.) in brief of the places we visited. And by "salient", I mean "filled with salt".

Eastern Washington
● Major Industries: Dust devil farming; Asian automobile modification; shouting epithets from the porches of double-wides
● Major Foodstuffs Produced: Chicken-Fried Steak, Chicken-Fried Steak Substitute
● Ethnic Composition of Population: Bigot-O-'Mericans (Rednecks): 30%, Affluent Bigot-O-'Mericans (Rednecques): 11%, Next-Generation Bigot-O-'Mericans (Red Next): 3%, Mexicans (Voted Most Likely To Be True Americans): 68%.
● Recommended Lodging: My wife's brown-ness prohibited us from staying anywhere.

Idaho
● Best Feature(s): Doesn't take long to cross going east to west; has trees
● Biggest Boast(s): Great potatoes; fewer Nazis than before
● Dirtiest Children Found Anywhere In The Continental US: Wallace, ID
● Highest Concentration of Crap Merchants Per Square Block: Wallace, ID
● Most Fucking Depressing Place On Earth: Wallace, ID

Montana
● Greatest Attribute: It's huge
● Place You'll Think Is Really Nice Because You Haven't Been To Canada Yet: Missoula, MT
● Best Thing To Do While Visiting Glacier National Park: Shoot the guy who runs his gas generator in the campground right after you shoot the guy who cranks his freakin' radio day and night in the campground; ride the bears.

Waterton Lakes, Alberta, Canada
● Do Not Stay At The: Prince of Wales Hotel
● Why Not?: Because despite stunning photo portraits to the contrary, it is rife with shitholiness. And it costs USD$290 per night and you can hear the Kentish couple next door doing their laundry in the bathtub just as plain as day.
● So What Should I Do Instead?: Stay somewhere else. But definitely go on the Crypt Lake hike.
● Whuffo I Wanna Do That Fo'?: Because you have to take a boat, then hike six miles up above the treeline, then a walk a ledge that has a 600-foot dropoff on one side, then scramble through a tunnel in the rock, then grab a cable and toe-hold your way around another rock face (with another dropoff), then freak out when you see now beautiful Crypt Lake is. And there are bears. In short, it's ossum times Fear Factor. I peed all of my pants - every single pair I own.

Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada
● Definitely Stay At: Deer Lodge.
● People Per Hectare on the Shore of Lake Louise: Over one thousand. No, really, over a thousand. It's gross.
● Best Thing To Do In Lake Louise: Leave and go someplace nice, like...

Skoki Lodge, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
● Talk To Me, Goose: Hike back in the park about 8 miles, go through two mountain passes, gain a shitload of altitude (Shitload: about 8,450 feet. -Ed.), and find yourself at the sweetest backwoods cabin you've ever seen. No electricity, no running water. Wood heat, kerosene lamps, homemade food and the best hiking on earth.
● Who Runs This Joint?: A bunch of very excellent Canadians.
● Why'd Ya Come Back?: That's a very good question. I was thisclose to chucking it all and becoming the Canadian version of Apocalypse Now's Colonel Kurtz.

● Thaddeus

Merry Gregmas!

Oyez, oyez, oyez!

Faithful rise, be counted, and be of good cheer!

'Tis Gregmas, the Greggiest day of all Septembertide!

This would be totally appropriate attire for any Gregmas celebration.

Dear Multitude:

Even though Dear Gregory has been published since the dawn of the Jet Age, precious few Touchers of the Hem, Adherents to the Peanut Butter Diet, or Readers of This Blog realize that September 13th is the Feast of Gregmas. To wit, it is Greg's birthday, just as Christmas is the birthday of my friend Chris T, or Criticalmass is the birthday of J. Robert Oppenheimer. (J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, or in his words, "Shiva", once gave his teacher a poisoned apple. I shit you not, and neither does last week's New Yorker. Look it up. -Ed.)

I assume that you who are in the majority are now confounded and befuddled. On one hand, you have a whole new square on the calendar to devote to revelry - such a boon! Ut hoy! you cry, and reach for the hookah. But in a trice you realize that you spend every other weeknight practicing the hookah, and this holiday begs for both uniqueness and propriety. What to do?

Fuddle no longer. Below I have compiled a short list of Gregmas facts, customs and traditions. Most of the objects required for celebration (...and worship, if you're so inclined... -Ed.) can be found in the average home (...the exception being the tuba. -Ed.) Enjoy, revel, and Merry Gregmas!

TRADITIONS
Tradition The First: Immediately upon arising on the morning of September 13th, make a very strong pot of coffee (it should absorb 98% of the available light), fashion a sandwich from peanut butter, bananas and mayonnaise on Roman Meal bread, and grumble while eating your solitary breakfast over the kitchen sink.

Tradition The Second: Six to eight times during the day, seize your tuba with a great deal of ardor and play the piccolo part from "Stars and Stripes Forever".

Tradition The Third: Suffer from the ill-conceived notion that drinking an entire 8-pack of Little Kings Cream Ale won't get you drunk because "the bottles are so small". Re-think your original hypothesis later when you find yourself in an unrecognizable quarter of the Detroit megalopolis (specifically Hamtramck), surrounded by surly Poles demanding to know there whereabouts of their pierogis and their daughters.

FACTS
My brother Gregory Ives was born on September 13th, 1671. Try as they might, the folks went quite a stretch with no kids - that is until 1962 when I was born. That's why I was named after the patron saint of lost causes. But that's beside the point. The amazing fact about Greg is that although he is three hundred and thirty five years old, rare pharmeceuticals with uncanny moisturizing properties have preserved his ancient flesh. He doesn't look a day over 53.

Greg subsists entirely on peanut butter. "If it's good enough for the koala bear, it's good enough for me!" he has been known to shout.

Do not be misled by his sunken chest and chalky legs. He often crushes Volkswagens with his bare hands.

His favorite movie: Fitzcarraldo. Or is it Nosferatu? Can't remember. Maybe it's Nosfitzcarratu. Anyway, he has a huge poster from Aguirre: The Wrath of God which he can scarcely tear his gaze away from, and he often tries to emulate Klaus Kinski's evil leer, even going so far as to don a tin conquistador helmet at times to heighten the effect.

CUSTOMS
On Gregmas Day, it is customary to write The Gregory a letter, which he will respond to with silence by the bucketload. So sayeth the lore of Gregmas. Believe me, I've been writing to him for years, and I have yet to see one blot of ink on a shred of paper in reply to a single one of my epistles. On the other hand, he does call "all the gol-damn time" as they say in the red states. Anyhoo, if you like, you can write to him by posting a comment to this blog. (Clog. -Ed.)

It is also customary on Gregmas Day to spend a great deal of time in the bathtub. (That is after the sandwich and the tuba thing. You don't want to do either one of those in the bath. -Ed.) This is to re-enact the Miracle of Gregmas. After six to eight hours in the tub (something Greg does each and every day), your skin shall be verily furrowed with wrinkles from stem to stern, much as The Gregory's skin was once. Then one fateful day, he combined lanolin with turpentine and methyl-ethyl-ketone (MEK) and created the Burnishing Glaze of Brass Instruments and Eternal Youth. And lo, his smooth and youthful hide didst shine like the horn section of the Burbank Police Boy's Band during the Bataan Death March, and he aged no more. You can accomplish the same effect by rubbing yourself down with Mop-N-Glo. Give 'er a whirl. It's a holiday, after all.

And finally, it is customary to purchase several if not hundreds of items from The GregMart for your self, friends and family. Because hey, why give Jesus all your money?

Squirrels The Size Of Rump Roast - OR - What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Grizzlies, hell! Watch out for this little bastard. He'll go straight
for your jugular. And he carries Bubonic Plague. Or so the guide
book I read ("Nature Wants To Fucking Kill You!: A Guide to the
Wildlife of the Canadian Rockies") tells me.

Greg:

Two weeks immersed in alpine splendor have completely robbed me of the power of speech. To get a gander at the splendor of which I speak, click on the picture of the tiny, tiny bear (above). I'll write more when my sprrch gerz bhurn drrr. Frr? Hack! Kaff! I'll write more when my speech crrrmss brrr.

Shmerr vrr brrrz,

-Thaddeus

REMOVED: Why Must The Horse Suffer?

Post removed at Greg's request.

Instructions For Life: Ever-So-Slightly-Abridged Version

Research shows that the elderly (pictured above) often spend their autumn
years quietly reliving fond memories of getting hammered and chasing tail.

Greg:

You know that hackneyed old email that's been orbiting the InterWeb since the UNIVAC was a big deal? The one about how the Dalai Lama supposedly gave a bulleted list of "Instructions for Life" or whatever that read like Chicken Soup for the ADHD Child's - Hey, Let's Go Ride Bikes! Well anyhoo, somebod(ies) are sending it to me again, no doubt in good faith and humor, knowing that I'm, like, all Buddhist and stuff and a huge fan of His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama of Tibet. Supposedly this list of instructions comes from a man who is the reincarnation of the Buddha of Compassion, yet if you fail to forward it to 96 friends in 36 hours, your pee-pee is supposed to fall off or something. Conversely, if you succeed in co-spamming a mega-gaggle of your friends, then you're supposed to win the lottery. Or something. As the drawing for the $49 million dollar MegaMillions jackpot is tonight, and inasmuch as I hold a ticket for it in my callous-free palm, I figure why fuck with religion? I can use this blog (Correction: clog. -Ed.) to spam all 682+ of the Dear Gregory faithful.

I figure that also means that everyone on the mail list has to forward the link to this blog (Correction: clog. Ed.) to 96 of their friends, so if you do the math, that means by tomorrow, everyone on Earth will be reading this except for that one guy in Bethel who refused to get a phone and had a honey bucket in his living room. Remember him? So yeah, I figure that'll generate enough mojo to win me that $49 MegaLarge easy.

And will I insert my own comments? Oh mais oui. You can count on it. I can't resist. Feel free to forward those, too.

Here's the email (below) as it appeared at the turn of the 21st century. I call it LamaSpam 2000 for short. Enjoy.

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

This is what The Dalai Lama has to say on the millennium, all it takes is a few seconds to read and think. (Even less if you're a UNIVAC. -TRG) Do not keep this message. The mantra must leave your hands within 96 hours. You will get a very pleasant surprise. This is true even if you are not superstitious. (However, it may work even better if you are superstitious. I'm a firm believer in illusionary correlation. -TRG)

INSTRUCTIONS FOR LIFE (Abridged)

Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
(There's a joke about condoms in here somewhere.)

When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
(Wait - what was that first part again?)

Follow the three Rs: Respect for self Respect for others and Responsibility for all your actions.
(Fourth R: Reaving Ras Vegas.)

Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
(...but most of the time, it's just a stroke.)

Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
(Same goes for windows if you're a burglar.)

Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
(...like whether somebody was somebody's girlfriend when somebody else slept with her. Get over it, Dan! Jesus! It's been like 20 years or something!)

When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
(So if you made a mistake by like having a gram bottle fall out of your pocket during a company meeting, immediately step on it. I heard somebody did that once back in 1984 and it was a real life-saver.)

Spend some time alone every day.
(And if you enjoy it, you may have a future in solitary confinement.)

Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
(...by like, opening your arms when you forgot to button your shirt, and then you realize that you also "forgot" to wear a bra. And then you realize, hey, I didn't forget, I'm just kinda that way! And I'm okay with that! Fuck you and your Puritan bullshit! And then the boys start throwing money.)

Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
(This is a very diplomatic way of saying "shut the fuck up".)

Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.
(Point of contention: I often sit back and enjoy memories of the things that I did that were far from honorable...if ya know what I mean.)

In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.
(For instance, "I'm glad you're not as much of an asshole as you used to be" is always a good thing to say to someone when they're homicidally pissed off.)

Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.
(Fuck that. Carve a 90-foot statue of yourself in titanium and then shoot two presidents. Now that's a way to achieve immortality!)

Be gentle with the earth.
(Fuck that too. Dude, the earth hates you. It's going to turn you into humus some day. I mean look, the weather tries to kill you every time you walk outside. That's why I carry around a mattick and beat the shit out of the ground every chance I get. And I wear solid iron stilletto heels everywhere. I'm all, "hey Earth, how about a poke in the eye?!" And then somebody always says, "Man, that's the craziest miner I've ever seen!")

Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
(Last year, I went into my wife's closet. I'm sure as shit never doing that again. I got all tangled up and thought I was going to wind up in Narnia or some shit. And that's scary because, hey, did you see those British kids' teeth? Fuck sakes! They're like nurse sharks or something!)

Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
(I'm a man. My "love" ganglion has my "need" gland in a stranglehold. I can scarcely perceive the difference.)

Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
(I gave up $1 to buy a lottery ticket. Then I won $49 million in the lottery. What a total goddamn failure.)

Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.
(People who believe that have burns in very tender places.)

Cheers, and forward this email to Marie within 96 hours or your pee-pee will fall off.

-Thaddeus

The Patron Saint Of Grumpiness

Even the most mild-mannered among us may don the demeanor
and raiment of King of the Grumps on Saint Churlemond's Day.
After consuming a Fuji-sized mound of cocaine (a traditional holiday dish),
Tony "Ever-So-Slightly Peevish" Montana celebrates
the anxiously-awaited arrival of Churlemondtide with his little friend.

Greg:

First things first. Sorry I haven't written in so long, but it is now the NFL preseason and I have been all ghey for the football. You will notice (if you put down that greasy turkey leg and click the link in the previous sentence) that I have moved all of my football-related correspondence over to a blog (no - clog) designed specifically for that purpose. Hereafter I won't bother you with it, as it only falls on deaf ears in this forum. I often fancy that I can actually see the disinterest cloud your eyes like snow on a dead TV channel the minute I so much as mention the word "football". So there, I've done you a favor. Thank me. And I'll try to stick to my word and not mention football here. (Offer may not be valid in Seattle, and may be complete bullshit elsewhere. Check your local blogroll for details. - Ed.)

May I say this, though? I have tickets to 6 of the 8 Seahawks home games, the exceptions being the two Monday night games. Don't matter none to me. In a completely sold out season, I'm happy to have what I got. Oh wait. Your eyes have gone completely back into your skull. I'll stop with the football.

So - work. We're building up to a product launch. Everyone is stressed out and grumpy. And let me preface my comments that follow by pointing out that I, of all the people in the office, am King Grump of Bitch Island. I rule the grump roost because it doesn't take a product launch to make me grumpy. I'm grumpy on principle - that principle being that mere humans to not meet my exacting standards of excellence, and as such, are as annoying as clouds of stinging gnats, what with their "talking" with "words" and asking me "questions" like "how are you" and making "statements" like "boy don't you look nice today". RRRG! Jesus! Talk about knowing exactly how to piss me off! Inasmuch as I hold myself to the same standards, I also piss myself off with my "being pissed off". Grump without end, amen.

So yeah, so it seems that not only are people stressed out and grumpy, it seems that the expectation of stress and grumpiness was set long before the product launch ever occurred. (Pre-postscript: I wanted to put the phrase "Don't freak out. It's only work." in my email signature just to point out what ridiculous stress levels we were maintaining, but I was told not to because that alone might freak people out. 'Zat give you any idea? In a week, people will be crapping diamonds around here.) Weeks ago, everyone was already talking about how stressful launch was going to be, and regaling each other with nostalgic tales of grumpinesses and stress festivals past. So it looks as though we're living up to that projection so far, so that means we oughtta be happy, right? Tell me I'm crazy. Things are exactly as screwed up, bass-ackwards and stress-inducing as we expected them to be, so we should revel in our astounding prescience and good fortune! Otherwise we're like people going to a bull fight and wanting our money back because the bull was too mean to that poor man.

Actually, let's not screw around. Since these events seem to come with so much anticipation and folklore attached, let's just put them on the calendar as movable feasts dedicated to Saint Churlemond the Fractious, Patron of Grumpiness. Then we can all don costumes of hairshirt and steel wool, drink bile, and give each other the bras d'honneur when we pass in the hallway. I think that sounds like a capital idea, don't you?

So on a final note, I'll probably get fired tomorrow for throwing this into the middle of what sounded to me like a rather, shall we say, contentious email string regarding some ball that got dropped somehwere on some damn thing or other. (I'll save you reading the rest of the string and just put in the good part.)

DATE: August 17th, 2006
SUBJECT: Stakeholder review - 8/17

Going forward, could we change the spelling of "stakeholder" - at least in internal communications - to "Steak Holder"? I think it might make things, you know, funnier. Besides, a "stakeholder" sounds like half of a vampire-killing duo. (The other guy would be the "stakepounder" of course.) And besides... Mmm! Steak! Know what I mean?

-------

Wish me luck at the welfare office, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus

The Follow-Up Letter

You are familiar with my handiwork, no?

Greg:

We've been brothers for, oh, any number of years, right? But here's something I bet you didn't know about me. I interview for jobs, like, all the time. I think it's good practice. For instance, it's a good method for seeing what's really out there, knowing how much you're really worth, knowing what the market is really like and so on. In a way, it keeps me from becoming myopically negative about my current work situation every time it becomes frustrating. Every job on earth is frustrating some of the time. Don't get me started about when I was a jail guard. (No seriously. He really was a jail guard. Back in 1982. Why do people not believe that? -Ed.)

Don't get me wrong. I don't do it because I hate my current job. I don't. I really like my job. I love the bunch of silly nutbags that I work with and it would make me genuinely sad to leave. Besides, I love it when I'm talking to a recruiter at some company and they ask me why I'm unhappy with my current position and I tell them I'm not. I tell them that I love my job. And then they choke. (See, they're always counting on low-balling you because you're desperate to leave your stinkin' job.) And then they ask me what my "compensation requirements" are. And I tell them a bazillion dollars, a solid-gold rocket car (chauffered, of course), and a trilingual helper monkey (also chauffered). And then they tell me that's probably outside their compensation range. To which I reply that it's okay because I noticed a funny smell on the way in to their office that I probably couldn't live with, were I to get a job there.

Just for shiggles, I thought I'd pass along an actual follow-up letter that I actually sent to somebody that I actually interviewed with. (No really. He did. Why do people not believe that? -Ed.) One quick read-through and you'll no doubt see why these interviews seldom result in offers. Enjoy.

12 July 2006

Dear E~:

As I said at the end of the interview yesterday, I knew I'd think of something on the way home that I should've said then. And it happened. I remembered something.

You asked me a question about my previous work experience, and just last night I remembered a nationwide campaign that I spearheaded on behalf of the band Iron Maiden.

It was a simple plan, really: arm legions of surly teens with ball point pens and have them inscribe the name of Iron Maiden in bathroom stalls from coast to coast. The creative was concise and divided into three distinct messages: Iron Maiden ROCKS, Iron Maiden RULZ, and simply IRON MAIDEN. These messages were to be presented in the distinctive Iron Maiden™ sans serif block style ironclad death 'n' mayhem font in BOLD. The talent was recompensed on a pay per message basis. Each twelve messages fully inscribed were paid for in trade by one (1) Bud Tall Boy and a pack of GPC menthols. As most teens are wont to leave a job "half assed", the churn on my talent pool was something astounding. But that also means that the breakage on my payouts practically left me money ahead. In the end, I only had to cash out four and a half Bud Tall Boys, four packs of GPCs, and a couple drags off my last Marlboro Light for approximately four million seven hundred seventy three thousand nine hundred eighty one messages placed.

While a failure in my tracking mechanism – a simple stroke sheet that I carried from bar to bar during my tenure in the "high life" – stymied my attempts to fully quantify the impact of the campaign, I feel that I can take at least partial credit for a few of the current 300,000 registrants on IronMaiden.com. Likewise, the ensuing repetitive-motion injury class-action suit on behalf of the teens was dropped when none of them appeared to testify – point in my favor - and I have it on the best authority from Bruce Dickinson's roady's ex-girlfriend that Bruce himself thought the whole bathroom wall idea was "awesome". Therefore I number the Iron Maiden campaign among my most successful to date.

If you have any other questions regarding my previous experience, please don't hesitate to ask.

Sincerely,

Thaddeus R Gunn

Auto Da Fe

Now this is my kinda heatwave!

Greg:

The South has risen again, right on the west coast of Washington, where we are sweltering under an Al-Gore-nodding-his-head-with-I-told-ya-so-smugness heat wave of nearly Orleanean proportions. (And then the author was crushed under a falling stack of modifiers. -Ed.) I have been forced to leave my windows open each night, which has done a great job of welcoming in (and amplifying) the hoots and bellows of the sweating, gleeful Chinatownians. Somehow the 90-degree temperatures and giant flapjacks of 100% humidity falling from the sky bring out their best. Under such conditions, they are wont to expound loudly and at length upon their personal virtue, the size of their man-parts; the fecklessness and moral turpitude of their enemies, as well as their enemies' significant others, parentage, etc. - late into the steaming, acrid night.

Fawk. This is not just a heat wave. This is a trial - a trial by fire which I have failed egregiously. I have proven myself to be both a pisser and a moaner. Can you mail me something that I can stab myself with? They don't let me have sharp stuff because I'm "depressive", if you can believe that. I have to shave with a cat's tongue and cut my bread with that one magical word from Dune.

As you can plainly see, the heat has made me go completely mad. But it's not the heat, really. It's the lack of sleep. And the fact that I feel like an old man because I'm whining about the heat. Just last weekend, I was laboring - laboring, I tell you! - with a pack at nearly 9,000 feet at 87 degrees F. And did I whine? Nay. Perhaps because I couldn't summon the breath. But more likely because I was in the toolies, huffing the pine-rich air, frolicking with Don Lagarto and his pals by the shores of Crater Lake. I've found that stunning natural beauty can make you choke down a shitload of heat without complaining.

So that is why, dear brother, I have decided either to a) stab myself in the whoknowswhere (not likely) or b) purchase myself a piece of dirt somewhere up in the high pineys whereupon to swelter joyfully in the summer months. The heat has driven me to it. Spending summers withstanding blazing sciroccos of dumpster stench is not as appealing as it once was, and the tonic effects of nature are too self-evident on my heat-knackered corpse to ignore.

To that end, I have alerted John L. Scott Emerald-Award-Winning agent Gloria Lee of my intentions, and am arranging viewings of 20-acre parcels within the Olympic National Forest. I've found one that seems to be unbelievably cheap, so she is going to do a little research to find out exactly how much nuclear waste is stored on the premises, exactly how much anthrax is still living in the soil, and whether the ancient Salish curse in those parts applies to this particular piece of land. Those issues resolved, I plan on first completely freaking out, and then second, crapping out the largest stack of $20s I can muster for a down payment. Then I'll march up there, throw down a double-wide, and subscribe to Guns 'N' Ammo.

I'll let you know how this one turns out.

Cheers, and give my best to Marie.

-Thaddeus