Bizarre

My friend Adam Henkel was participating in the always-entertaining practice of self-Googling when he discovered the truth: He is actually a clone!

Well, not really, but he found a guy with the same name, disturbingly similar looks, and the same bizarre fixation on showers (see: Henkel and Coop's Surround Shower).

As the real Henkel would say: This is not my beautiful Adam Henkel!

Please, God, Let Good Things Come In Threes

Two people I know got jobs today.

Eric, my friend and the former bar manager at the hideous bar I quit (hideousness totally unrelated to him, related to upper-level management having their heads inserted firmly up their asses) got a job today.

So that made me a) happy, and b) realize people my age actually can get jobs right now.

The bigger piece of news is that my mom finally got a big job. She's a philanthropy consultant (basically, she advises ridiculously rich people on how to give away their wads of money), so her definition of "job" is a little different.

She got offered a contract by the Herb Block foundation. Herblock, for those not in DC and not as nerdishly into political cartoons as I am, was the legendary Washington Post editorial cartoonist who worked there for the better part of five decades, and died about a year and a half ago.

He left a huge chunk of Washington Post stock to create an educational foundation in his name, and my mom is basically going to help the people who are setting it up, since most of them don't know much about the ins and outs of philanthropy.

I'm really glad she got this job, because she's been bitching about needing to get out of the house (gee, where have readers of this blog read that before?), and this will definitely do that, and it matches up pretty well with her experience.

Plus, maybe she can swipe me a book of his cartoons. Yes, I am that much of a geek.

Anyway, I'm hoping these two developments are a sign that I will be the third to find gainful employment, though I have many other friends seeking it, so who knows.

I'm clinging to the hope because otherwise going around do dozens of bars and having two thirds of them tell me "Oh, we're not even accepting applications," and the other third take the application but say, "Well, I don't really think we're hiring right now..." is really discouraging.

But who knows. Perhaps some non-deceased legendary newspaper figure needs a personal bartender. It could happen. I know enough alcoholic journalism students to extrapolate that there are still alcoholic newspapermen...right?

Picture and Correction

Okay, I don't know why I thought the reporter doing this report was Peter Arnett, since he got fired by CNN years ago. It was, in fact, Martin Savidge, whose name is even funnier given the circumstances.

Courtesy of Coop, a picture of the stubborn Saddam statue mentioned previously.

War Can Be Funny

I'm watching CNN, and a story they keep going back to is a group of Marines a CNN guy (I think Peter Arnett, but I'm not sure) is embedded with who are trying to take down yet another Saddam statue, but this one refuses to come down.

They had tried tearing it down by chaining it to a tank, and that didn't work, so they thought, "Hey, let's use some C4 and blow the legs out from under it!" They put a shitload of explosives on it, and lit a five-minute fuse.

CNN cut in with about 2 minutes left on the fuse, and as the anchor was talking to the reporter, the explosives went off...and there was then the sound of laughter, both from the troops and from the CNN reporter.

The smoke cleared and so did the reason for the laughter: They didn't make the statue fall, but it did blow a sizeable chunk out of the statue's...pelvic area.

Trying to supress laughter, the CNN reporter said to the anchor in Kuwait, "Well, I guess they're going to have to try something else."

Indeed.

Blogaversary

One year ago today, I started this weblog, fully expecting to get sick of it within a few weeks and find some more useful way to waste my time. I don't think I ever thought when I started this that it would last even three months, let alone a year.

It's strange that I've actually stuck with this, mostly because I have a horribly short attention span, and I almost never stick with anything (witness my current career crisis). But for some reason, this stuck.

I think part of it has to do with my love of performance. Granted, this is a remote sort of performance, but the numbers slowly ticking up on the counter validate it and tell me that at least someone is listening.

God knows I played enough empty bars and coffeehouses (back when I was still actuall performing regularly) to appreciate an audience.

I looked back at the rules for the first time in a while, a document I wrote when I first started this silly little journal.

I still don't link this page off the main site, mostly because I haven't actually gotten around to updating the main site since last May, but also because of my weird attempt to convince myself my relatives don't read this page.

This has become far more of a diary than I ever intended for it to be, though I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, mostly because I seem to be equipped with a Weird Shit Magnet, and it usually keeps this record of my life fairly entertaining.

How much longer will this last? I have no clue. Probably until I fall into another serious relationship and am too busy bitching at my significant other to post here. Maybe I'll decide to channel more of these weird stories into music instead of venting here.

But I'm glad y'all are along for the ride, whether you've just been bounced here by the Blogger random blog generator, if you stumbled across this from a link from a friend, or if you're one of my friends who's put up with this narcissistic horseshit from day one.

If you fall into the latter category, however, I owe ya. Big time.

Thanks, guys. And I promise, there will be far, far more weird shit to come.

Signs It's Time For Me To Get A Job

I have finally caught up on every magazine I subscribe to. This is a far more impressive accomplishment than it initially sounds like.

I started falling behind in my reading when I got a girlfriend, since really, what would you rather do, read a magazine or go out with your girlfriend? Tough decision. But she dumped me over a year ago, and I was left with a broken heart and foot-tall stacks of reading matter.

This time last year, I was at least six months behind in Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated, Spin, and Rolling Stone. Now I'm caught up...in all of it.

Newsweek was the first thing I caught up on, mostly because it's the one with the information that's the most time-sensitive. It's a bit silly reading about the War in Afghanistan several months after focus shifted to Iraq.

The last thing I caught up on, which I finished today, was Rolling Stone, mostly because I knew of its fall into an abyss of suckiness since the former editor of the "lad mag" (read: soft core porn mag) FHM took over last summer.

The plunge in quality is far more evident when you read six months' worth of magazines in two weeks, actually watching what used to be a great magazine decline into utter stupidity. The decline is directly proportional to the shrinkage of the clothes on the cover tartlets.

Needless to say, I haven't renewed my subscription. So at least if I get another girlfriend (the chances of which right now seem about as remote as me running a marathon tomorrow and not keeling over of a heart attack), I won't have quite as much to catch up on.

But hey, I guess there actually are some good things about being single, unemployed, and stuck lying on your stomach for weeks at a time.

I Knew It!

Kermit The Frog finds a way to make it easier to be green.

Thanks to Dave Barry

Billing Fun

Good news: I got my car back, and it wasn't $1000 to fix.

Bad news: It was $999.42.

The kicker was when the woman who ran my credit card spaced for a second and accidentally hit 333.42, necessitating a second charge.

My total? $666.00.

This is so not a good sign.

Hilarious Insult To Injury

I was cleaning up my desk and I found something I had forgotten to write about, since I was kind of pissed about it at the time:

When the Braves rejected me, they mailed me a letter with the usual blah blah blah thanks for interviewing but we've gone another direction. Except the letter, while in an envelope addressed to me, was not mine.

They sent me someone else's rejection letter.

At first I was really pissed about it, since I was all pissy about not getting the job in the first place and was like, "Oh wow, they must really respect me to send me the wrong damn rejection letter." In retrospect, however, it's hilarious.

Especially because the Braves got swept at home by the Expos and then lost 17-1 to the Marlins(!) on Saturday. They did manage to beat the Marlins in the other two games, but reasonably competent apes could take 2 out of 3 from the Marlins this season.

Seems like that voodoo curse I put on them worked....mwahahahahaha!