I Away

I'll be in Iowa the next couple of days, doing a bit of getting the fuck out of Evanston and seeing one of my favorite bands, Wilco, perform for zealous Iowans.

I'm sure corn will somehow be involved in the story I tell upon my return at 4am on Monday. So no updates for a couple days. Sorry to disappoint, but you're just going to have to find some other way to waste your time for the weekend.

I suggest taking a few highly unscientific tests with your friends. Hours of fun and recriminations for all!

Wow

Canadians are generally a very nice, very easygoing people. So you really have to piss them off to get them to riot.

Congratulations, Axl Rose. You now own the title of second biggest asshole in North America (biggest will belong to G.W. as long as he's in office, which I hope to god will not be much longer).

Oh shit...

I graduate in a month and a day (my last final is December 9th).

I have not had a single job interview yet.

I have no idea whether I have a realistic shot at anything I've sent my resumé to.

I'm really, really fucked, aren't I?

Oh dear...

Fun with metaphors

I was trying to explain to my friend Nate the complexities of my sexuality (I have this minor tendency to go off on tangents and somehow we ended up on this subject), and I came up with what I think was one of the better metaphors I've come up with in a while.

I strongly prefer girls, but I do occasionally like boys. It's like beer: I'd rather have a domestic, but I'll certainly have an import every once in a while.

Thankfully, he did not make a crack about longnecks.

Hmm...

It's only after you finally realize what an asshole you've been being lately and start apologizing to people for it that they go, "Yeah dude, what the fuck has been up with you?"

X X - I Voted Twice

Ah, election day. The day when we see the end of all this ridiculous political campaigning, at least for another couple of months.

I actually went and voted today. It's a fairly mundane process, but little details can make it really amusing.

Like candidates who insist on putting nicknames on the ballot. The Libertarian congressional candidate in my district (IL 9th) was listed on the ballot as Stephanie "Vs. The Machine" Sailor. I shit you not.

The Tribune dutifully lists her as Stephanie VTM Sailor, which makes me think that she must have had her middle name legally changed to "Vs. The Machine," because I can't conceive of any other way she could have actually gotten that on the ballot.

I don't know which Libertarian is crazier, her or the Libertarian Senate candidate from Montana who accidentally turned himself blue.

The other thing that amuses me is that people are actually expected to make an educated selection on almost 30 judicial candidates that nobody has ever heard of.

I took the opposite tack from most people (who traditionally vote to allow everyone to stay) and just voted to throw all the bums out. I think Illinois could benefit from a bit of judicial upheaval. I could have abstained, but whatever. It's much more fun to make irrational and ill-informed snap judgements.

Alas, I didn't actually get to vote twice, which was somewhat disappointing, since this is Chicago, after all. I guess if I was dead I would have had a better chance of casting multiple votes.

But if I was dead, I wouldn't get to ridicule someone who legally changed their middle name to Vs. The Machine.

Procrastination Station

Even better than Poke The Bunny: Poke The Penguin.

I'd like to note that I was introduced to both of these sites by my friend Miyuki, who once poked me in the side all the way to Baltimore and back when we went to an Orioles game, laughing maniacally all the while.

Whoever said that normal people make good friends was nuts. It's way more fun to have totally psycho amigos, especially because they send you things like that.

And this: Who Wants To Buy A Used MiG?

Feel the the burn...Aah! It burns!

I finally started doing some real excersise today, and I think that what finally motivated me to get up off my ass says a lot about my misplaced priorities.

I could, and should, be doing this for my health, my appearance, my self-esteem, whatever. So what has possesed me to finally stop bitching and start working out?

I realized, I'm going skiing with my dad in about a month and a half. My dad (as of Nov. 10th) is 66 years old, and in much better shape than I am, because he walks four miles a day four days a week and does "cardiac rehab" (aka more working out) the other three.

He is retired (surprise!), and has nothing else he really needs to do with his time other than keep himself in reasonably good shape and go to eight thousand Big Jewish Functions with my stepmom, so he's in fantastic shape for a guy his age.

In fact, he's in such good shape, he has left me eating his dust when we go skiing on a regular basis since I left for college and he retired.

I decided, once and for all, I will not let a man three times my age leave me in his dust.

And that weirdly competitive thought, more than any real motivation to better myself, got me off of my ass. I'm going to be in good enough shape to take advantage of skiing for once.

Of course, this is all dependent on me keeping my resolutions. Hopefully, however, I'll be a lot better at keeping my November resolutions than my new year's ones.

Quote

From my Golden God of the Month, no less:

Joel: this thanksgiving will put the "fucked up" in "let's get the fuck away from these people"

Good thing my resolution to quit drinking for a month expires directly after Thanksgiving.

Come si dice...

Many weird things come up when you don't adhere to standard sexual preferences, some easily anticipated, some not. This week's unanticipated weirdness: Learning a new language.

You obviously have to learn the words for husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, etc., and the professor generally goes around the room asking what the girls want in their ideal husband and the boys want in their ideal wife.

Except when you're a girl who wants an ideal wife, problems arise. Fortunately, I've so far managed to escape unscathed when my Italian professor goes around the room, inquiring as to the dating status of my various classmates.

I think he tends to skip over the people he strongly suspects are not of standard sexual preference (me, a girl I think could bench press me, and a guy I keep getting vibes off of) because he doesn't want to embarrass people.

However, I could be wrong, and he could hit me with "Ha un ragazzo?" (Do you have a boyfriend?) and its constant follow up question, "Perché non?" (Why not?) when we review for next week's quiz.

I think I've worked out something of a response (well, other than turning bright, bright red): "Non ho un ragazzo perché io preferisco le donne. Capisci?" (I don't have a boyfriend because I prefer women. Understand?)

At the very least, this will make him turn redder than I do, and that's enough to satisfy me.

Although I do give mad props to the girl in my class (a rather unassuming sorority girl) who, when it was our turn to ask the questions, asked one of the biggest frat boys in the class if he had a boyfriend. He turned Santa-suit red. It was hysterical.

That was random...

I had my first athsma attack in about a year this evening.

I was sitting around trying to read an excruciatingly boring book on Goldman Sachs for (of all things) my sociology class, when I started coughing for no apparent reason.

And then I realized, oh wait, the breaths that I'm taking are significantly shorter than normal. Huh.

Then the few brain cells I haven't managed to kill off with alcohol managed to shout out "Hey dumbshit, you're having an athsma attack!", leading me to go track down my inhaler.

My athsma is normally "excercise induced" (i.e. induced by trying to run while fat), so this isn't generally the first thing that comes to mind when I have breathing problems, though this isn't the first time I've just had a plain vanilla no explanation attack.

But it certainly did lend an interesting note to the evening.

New November Resolutions

"Raymond Chandler, drunk and depressed
Tennessee Williams, drunk and depressed
I think I'll just get drunk and depressed."
-Jill Sobule, "Heroes"

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Take the following with a grain of really drunken salt. And also beware of toxic amounts of self-pity.

1. I will not consume another goddamn drop of alcohol in the month of November.

That's it. I'm tired of feeling like shit and being totally goddamn broke. I am not drinking any more alcohol for a month.

I'm a manic-depressive drunk: I feel on top of the world when I'm starting to drink, but if ever I should stop, oh, whoa, look out. I'm a total fucking drag and I decide that well, if I feel like shit, then so shall everybody else.

I am not putting myself nor anyone else through that for at least the next month.

2. I will not define whether I am a good person or not by whether or not I can get laid.

Because I can't, and I need to accept that. And I'm fucking tired of feeling like a terrible person because of it.

3. I shall not blame myself for not being the pick of what is clearly a meat market when I am decidedly not filet mignon.

I went out with some friends and we went to some bars and, oh, what a fucking surprise!, absolutely nobody was interested in me.

This should come as a total fucking shock to me because:
a) I was drunk and depressed.
b) Every girl there and 85% of the guys were hotter than me. A few of the guys were fugly, but all the girls were hot. Well, except the one who was dancing on the bar to Christina Aguilera. She was more wasted than I am.
c) Self-pity is not exactly a chick magnet.
d) I weigh at least double some of the girls I was hitting on.
e) I incessantly apologize for nothing when I'm drunk, which I realize is really obnoxious, but is a reflex I can't control too well.
f) I don't understand the concept of pacing myself. In anything.

I should not allow this to drive me totally insane when I know goddamn well what's going to happen.

4. I'm going to fucking kill my landlord if he doesn't turn up the goddamn heat.

It's fifty-nine fucking degrees in here, according to the thermometer on my wall. 'Nuff said.

5. I will not drag my friends into this bullshit anymore.

Especially Joel, who is my Golden God of the Month for November for helping me get home in one piece. And I guess October, too, since I never named a Golden God of the Month for October.

6. No more drunk blogging.

See entire rest of post.