Waiting for Gouda

Figuring for some reason that we’ll soon need to be purchasing sundries in bulk, The Lovely Wife’s™ Moms bought us a gift Costco membership.

So we headed in to activate the membership and find out just why everyone goes crazy for the “shopping in a military hangar” experience.

We headed straight to the customer service counter, which is over by the food court area. Which leads me to ask:

Why is there a food court in the Costco? For that matter, why is there a Pizza Hut in my Target? Can we not make it through a 45 minute shopping trip without sitting down and eating? Are they trying to trick us into thinking that their giant, ugly, completely utilitarian acres of blinking fluorescent lighting, grimy floors, and zombified staff can pass for some sort of shopping and dining destination? Is it working? Are there people who actually PLAN on going to the Costco for shopping and lunch?

But, at the customer service desk, the man behind the counter is activating our membership. And what you may not have guessed is that the first step in activating your Costco membership is to discuss the purchase of another Costco membership. You see, our pre-paid membership was only a Gold Star membership. I know what you’re thinking. Only a Gold Star membership? Gold Star sounds pretty good. I mean, the card has got a freaking GOLD STAR on the thing! Nothing can beat a gold star, right?

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So we completed baby night school a few weeks back, and I think we did pretty well.  But after the last class, they did not give us a baby!  So I’m not sure what the hell the $300 fee went toward, quite frankly.

We did watch a lot of birthing videos.  Let me tell you, I have not seen that many vaginas since college.  And those were not nearly so… stretchy.  (Well, most of them.)

There were videos about pregnant ladies rocking back and forth.  There were videos about pregnant ladies screaming.  There were a surprising number of videos with pregnant ladies slow dancing.  There was even a video about pregnant ladies swimming with dolphins.  I’m still trying to figure that one out.

We also learned how to write a birth plan.  That’s where you write down everything that you want to have happen or not happen during labor and delivery.  For example, you write things like “We would prefer that someone qualified be prepared to catch the baby when it falls out” and “Please do not attempt to surreptitiously inject either of us with tranquilizers” and “No ugly nurses”.  So you write this all down and then you give it to the doctors and they immediately throw it away.  It’s a very worthwhile exercise.

Anticipation mounts.  Any day now, there will be a fourth cute little crying jerk living in our house.  The first without a tail.  One hopes.

I have finally trained myself so that anytime I see or hear the phrase “pink elephant”, I instantly picture nothing but a sepia-toned daguerreotype of Chester A. Arthur.

This way, the next time somebody is trying to make an idiotic point about the power of suggestion, I can tell them to stick it.

My next goal is a foolproof plan for dealing with gorillas of varying weights that may or may not be in the room.

I’ve got problems with public restrooms.

I don’t think that’s so unreasonable. They are almost always unattractive, they often smell, and you never quite know what you’re going to find when you open the stall door. Plus, many times they are full of strangers with their naughty bits out.

They keep the bathroom in my office building locked. You might expect that it features some executive-washroom-level amenities inside which warrant protection from the hobos who wander in off the street. Perhaps dozens of precious-metal plated plumbing fixtures, or fragrant hand creams, or soft terry-cloth hand towels handed to you by an elderly mustachioed man in a tuxedo.

No. Instead:

- a small number of plain old toilets and urinals (the latter being located approximately 2.5 inches from the door)
- sometimes, liquid pink hand soap comes out of the dispenser on the wall; sometimes only dry, odorless, invisible soap comes out of the dispenser
- a single hot-air hand dryer that (a) always stays on just long enough to almost get your hands dry, and (b) means, by virtue of its singularity, that if someone is already using it, you have to pretend to be doing a really good job of washing your hands and are totally NOT waiting for them to get the hell out of the way, until they give up and wipe their hands on their pants

Also, our entire building is locked at all times. That’s two layers of protection against the hobos. But why?

There’s a sign on the back of the bathroom door that encourages people to turn out the lights if they are last one out. I think that’s a fine idea. I’m all for energy conservation. But people, as you may know, are not perfect creatures. Even such a simple equation as “last one out = lights off” and its implied corollary “someone else here = leave the damn lights on” can be difficult for a certain segment of the population to obey 100% of the time.

For example:

Not long ago, [Read more →]

I really want to regale you all with exciting new tales of the banal and inane, but there is a bit of unfinished business first.

Not that anyone really cares (not even me, so I reckon that this post fairly well epitomizes most of the Wordpress site in existence), but I thought I would mention that the Silly Music Project wrapped up shortly after my most recent post.

What started on August 14, 2008 at 9:55 AM CDT came to a close on November 25 at 1:25 PM CST. (So says iTunes.)

From its humble beginnings (”About A Girl” by Nirvana) to its brief, weird end (”/=/=/” by Andrew Bird), the silly music project never failed to entertain.

There were songs I hadn’t heard in a long time, and there were songs I never want to hear again.

There were long songs. The Decemberists’ “Come & See/The Landlord’s Daughter/You’ll Not Feel the Drowning” clocks in at 12:26. Now, based on that title you might think that it’s really three songs. But believe me, if you listened to the track you would definitely think that it’s really three songs. But hey, they’re the musical geniuses. If they say it’s one song, then it’s one song.

Technically, it was only the longest of the non- “Hey, we stuck about ten minutes of silence at the end of the last song on the record so we could further stick a bunch of sonic garbage at the end of that and call it a ‘hidden track’” tracks. Let me just say to anybody making a record out there… please don’t do that. It’s stupid. If you really think that crappy recording of you and your drunk mates dicking around in the studio belongs on the record, then by God spend an extra five seconds coming up with a name for it and give it its own track number. Otherwise, have some respect and save that crap for the box set, where it will only annoy the people who are really asking for it.

For the record, the longest “Yes this really is all one normal song” track goes to Miles Davis “All Blues” (11:36). I had to skip Public Enemy’s “Superman is Black in the Building” which is the longest “Here’s a rap song that devolves into some weird spoken work sermon by Chuck D. type thing” track (11:51). Oh, and then came “The Crane Wife 1 & 2″ by… The Decemberists (11:20). What is up with those guys?

There were also short songs, led by Modest Mouse’s “Dig Your Grave” (0:15), although if I’m going to be fair, this is really just an example of what happens when my earlier advice about hidden tracks is taken and they stick it in the middle of the record. It consists of some plinky, plunky jack-in-the-box music laid against some very menacing whispering about how the whisperer either hopes that I am dead or hopes that I am not dead. Can’t really tell, what with the fact that he is whispering. Thanks, fellas.

Then there is a whole passel of Intros, Interludes, Postludes, Skits, and other assorted nonsense. Here’s some more advice: knock this crap out, too. Do you know how many times the average listener will play through your stupid “skit” on your CD without skipping it?

0.74 times. That’s right. Some people will play it all the way through once, and if it is funny or interesting, they may be momentarily entertained. But it will never be funny or interesting more than once. After that one time, it will be “that stupid f***ing skit that I have to skip every time”. Me, I skip that crap the first time. The second a track starts and I hear two or more members of a posse talking, and it doesn’t rhyme…. GOODBYE.

(You know who you are, Dr. Dre, assorted Doggs, coinage, and chocolate candies that don’t melt in my hands.)

So the project has been over for a couple months, and I’ve got a problem. For over three months, the alphabet decided what songs I would listen to. And now, left to my own devices, I am paralyzed with indecision. I simply can’t decide what to listen to anymore. There are too many choices.

Maybe I should do reverse-alphabetical by genre.

“Unknown”, here I come!

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Your Cyndi Lauper song of the day, brought to you by my ongoing moronic quest is:

True Colors

Originally on the album of the same name, released in 1986. But of course, I know it only through Ms. Lauper’s greatest hits album (yes, that’s right), entitled Twelve Deadly Cyns… And Then Some. It apparently came out in 1995 and then mysteriously ended up on my iPod some years later. Probably about Twelve years, actually!

Coincidence?!

Yes, yes it is.

But about that album title… the record has 14 songs on it. So, um… WTF, Cyndi? I’m guessing that the “… And Then Some” refers to the two “extra” songs. You had to throw that post-ellipsis text on there because you really wanted to cleverly play off the familiar phrase “12 Deadly Sins”, right?

Except, who the hell has ever heard of 12 Deadly Sins? There’s only seven. 7 deadly sins, everybody knows that. There’s Sloth, Pride, Lust… uh… Cantankery… and, well I’m pretty sure that putting Gwenyth Paltrow’s severed head in a box is in there somewhere…

Anyway, there’s seven, and everyone knows it. If you wanted to be clever, shouldn’t this album have been called “Seven Deadly Cyns… And Then Some… And Then A Few More, Too”?

Now sure, if you Google “12 Deadly Sins” you’ll probably get a bunch of stupid articles that people wrote about what not to do in a job interview or wrestling alligators or whatever. But if you’re just going to make a list of crap and then count them and then stick the word “Deadly Sins” after it, then shouldn’t this album have been called simply “14 Deadly Cyns”? I mean, what is wrong with you?

Dammit, Lauper, why are you always pissing me off like this?! Aaaaaaarrrggghhh!

So, anyway, True Colors.

Turns out that it wasn’t just a Kodak commercial, people. As best I can tell, it’s a song about a woman who sees somebody else’s colors shining through, and really likes what she sees. Or she’s sad about it. Frankly, I don’t know because I was trying really hard to not pay attention. But either way, anybody who looks like this should not be worrying about anyone else’s colors. If your very own colors are this god-awful, the last thing you should be doing is talking about colors at all.

In fact, it’s pretty evident that you don’t even really understand how colors work. So screw you, Lauper!

I know what you’re thinking. Why does this guy hate Cyndi Lauper so much? Well, I’ve never told anyone this before but when I was a young man, a grizzly bear killed my father.

And that bear was humming She-Bop.

Halfway through the T’s, the Silly Music Project brought me a moment of unexpected joy earlier today, and oddly enough, it has nothing to do with music. Something popped up on the old iPod that I’d forgotten was on there.

It’s probably my favorite bit of non-music audio of all time. Better than Armstrong on the moon, better than Dr. King’s speech, better than any single comedy or spoken word bit.

It’s the immortal radio call from Russ Hodges of The Shot Heard ‘Round the World, Bobby Thomson’s home run to win the NL pennant for the New York Giants in 1951. Without a doubt one of the most joyful and exuberant play-by-play calls in history, it never fails to make me happy.

Take a listen, if you’re so inclined.

Every time I listen to it, these weird waves of nostalgia flow over me, even though I was about negative 22 years old when the event took place. Plus, how could you not get chills when Hodges screams THE GIANTS WIN THE PENNANT! over and over again?

Because you’re a heartless automaton, that’s how. Or maybe you just don’t like sports.

Also, I think that Hodges saying “I don’t believe it! I don’t believe it!” is sort of the spiritual predecessor of another of my all-time favorite baseball calls: Jack Buck’s radio call of Kirk Gibson’s pinch hit homer to close out Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. You know, that’s the one where Gibson limped around the bases and pretended like he was trying to start a chainsaw or something.

Now that one carries a bit more legitimate nostalgia for me as I was actually present for the game. Even though I didn’t hear the call at the time, I remember watching it on the television at my grandparents’ house and NBC’s Vin Scully didn’t say a word as Gibson circled the bases, preferring to let the crowd tell the story. I actually was rooting against the Dodgers at the time, because Orel frickin’ Hershiser and the rest of them had just downed my New York Mets in the NLCS. But still, it was a pretty great baseball moment.

In addition to the “I don’t believe what I just saw!”s, and his checking with his broadcast partner, Bill, to make sure that he was not hallucinating, the best thing about Buck’s call is that toward the end I think he realizes he might be overdoing it, and throws a couple awkward qualifiers:

“I’ve seen a lot of dramatic finishes in a lot of sports, but this one… might top… almost every other one.”

You can actually watch video clips of both of these plays here, if you don’t mind first being pelted with a commercial for stinkin’ Phillies merchandise.

Ah, good times. Only about 14 weeks ’til pitchers and catchers report!

So Circuit City has a new series of television ads in which relatively normal looking people go out on dates with large, walking, talking pieces of audio/visual equipment. Remarkably, this is even stupider than it sounds.

In one spot, a woman and a giant digital camera sit at a table at a restaurant, or perhaps a diner, and she’s breaking up with it, apparently because he can’t seem to settle on how much he costs. That’s right… despite the rhetoric, it’s not really a date. It’s a bizarre human/machine prostitution deal gone wrong. (Just like Jude Law in A.I.! Oh, damn… I’m sorry I brought that up. Never mind about that. Do NOT start thinking about a creepy Teddy Ruxpin robot bear. Focus…)

But regardless of how you feel about robot sex, there is one thing that is always self-evident:

Use of anthropomorphism in commercials can only lead to feelings of intense guilt, fear, and/or disgust.

Yessir, whether you’re chewing in horror on that cute little bi-polar shredded-wheat guy or heartlessly flushing hundreds of mustachioed bubbles down the drain, you can be sure that your dark, murderous thoughts are probably not what the psychopathic ad men had in mind.

The new Circuit City ad is no exception. A man gets a phone call from some sexy-voiced female TV (which he orders online, bringing the anthro-machinal sex trade into the 21st century!) and agrees to meet her at the store. Then we see him happily walking away with “her”, as she has evidently been factory-installed with creepy spindles for perambulation.

As they head toward his car, he looks at the widescreen beauty with a happy gleam in his eye, and we realize that he must be thinking the same thing that we’ve all thought, about halfway through a good date:

“I can’t wait to get you home, cut your legs off, and hang you on the wall.”

Circuit City recently announced that they were closing a lot of stores all across the country.

Good.

Well, would you look at that. You see that thing over there?

Do you realize what this means?

Now I have to start to care about stuff.

You know, stuff like… global warming, and the national debt, and sexual predators. And “No Child Left Behind”! I don’t even know what the hell that means, except a vague sense that it really sucks. And now I have to look it up and start caring about it.

And strollers! Do you have any idea how many different kinds of strollers there are? Because I surely don’t.

I know things like Playstation and football and zombie movies. All very valid and useful bodies of knowledge, of course, to a certain point. But this?

Plus, there’s college to think about.

Please send cash.

I am deep into the S’es now. I can almost imagine that the end is approaching. To the left you’ll see the current slider bar from my iTunes…. yes, it looks like we’re about 4/5 through the silly music project.

The sad part is, my iPod is actually less than half full, capacity-wise. Who knew it would take me so many weeks to listen to about 9 days worth of music? Of course, that’s nine straight twenty four hour days, more or less (and accounting for the approximately 35 hours of Rifftrax on there). Turns out that life doesn’t really allow one to listen to their iPod for more than a few hours at a time.

But here’s a weird note from within the S’es. I’ve just listened to two songs back-to-back that each have 25 letters in their titles (not counting spaces). And yet, only 3 letters out of 25 are not exactly the same, in the same order. The songs are from completely different artists, sound nothing alike, and were released decades apart.

Any guesses? Do you need a hint? Okay… one artist is a band from across the pond.