Zeroth

Piece of corn man

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 13:43:00 -0500

The old guy on the LIRR sitting across from you on the other side of the aisle looks out his window, no doubt reflecting on the hard life that’s left him that tattered flannel and weatherworn/haggard yet handsome face/beard. He looks not unlike the most interesting man in the world from those beer commercials save for a sizeable dose of refinement and the fact that he’s arguably currently engaged in the least interesting activity in the world. You don’t notice the duffel bag in his lap until he pulls his eyes from the window, unzips the bag and pulls out a shucked cob of corn.

He eats it. The whole thing. Pretty quickly no less. Not so fast that he failed to detach mouth from cob throughout the process but fast enough that any breaks were nothing more than a breath or two and a lick of the lips before tackling the next row of kernels. Man must’ve been hungry. When finished, he puts the naked cob back into the bag, zips it shut, strokes his beard to remove the few kernel particles that found haven there and returns his gaze to the window.

Show’s over. You return your gaze to your book or magazine or bluish pleather of the empty eat in front of you. A few minutes pass before you hear the unzipping of the duffel bag and witness your new friend pull out another cob of corn. He eats it. The whole thing. Pretty quickly no less. When finished, he puts the naked cob back in the bag and is careful to remove any errant corn particles from his beard in the same manner as before.

So that’s pretty interesting. Mr. two cobs. Big corn fan you guess. His preferred train snack perhaps. Fair enough. To each his own. Let’s not make too big a deal of it. Maybe 5 minutes pass. Maybe. Corn guy goes back into that duffel bag for number three. Same routine as last time. Quick. Complete. Empty cob back in bag. Zips it shut. Cleans the beard. Eyes back out the window.

You now have no choice but to evaluate the situation in a different manner. These aren’t snacks. That’s a duffel bag full of corn. That’s the situation here. But why? Is the corn strictly for sustenance? Seems unlikely. Is corn what this guy eats 24/7? That can’t be. Was the corn picked, shucked and bagged for the purpose of resale? Is that corn in route to a corn stand of some sort? If so, is he eating his own stash/profits? Do the ‘never smoke from your own stash’ rules apply to corn the same way as drugs? Is the corn laced with drugs? Maybe that’s why he can’t stop…

You ponder these questions and many others as you witness him tackle a fourth cob. Unbelievable. You notice that each time he finishes he zips up the bag as if to say, “And that’s that. I’m all done with the corn and my attention will now be wholly placed on something non-corn related” only to seemingly rediscover the bag a few minutes later, unzip it and pull out a fresh cob. He’s like the guy in ‘Momento’ except instead of forgetting who killed his wife he forgets he just ate a shit load of corn. Before you come to any answers he’s on to cob numero cinco.

The train arrives at your stop and you stand to make your way toward the door, leaving the old guy behind as he polishes off his sixth cob of corn. You make an effort to keep him in your line of site as best you can as you exit the train, trying to soak in the image of what has to be the most interesting man in the world.

"The old adage is not true. There is only one proper way to skin a cat; make a small incision at the..."

Wed, 03 Oct 2012 09:59:00 -0400

“The old adage is not true. There is only one proper way to skin a cat; make a small incision at the base of the neck and pull with force toward the tail until the skin has been removed.”

- ~me - June 2nd, 2012

Letter from friend long assummed dead

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 10:45:00 -0400

Dear Richard-

Bangkok is amazing. It’s so different from the states. The people are more polite and I swear there’s this sense of energy that just permeates from the streets. It’s like that time we went to visit New York but with Buddhist temples instead of Starbucks. I swear they’re everywhere and man those monks sure can kneel and pray with the best of ‘em. Not to mention they sell fried insects out of carts instead of hot dogs. Weird and wacky stuff I tell you. I really think you’d dig it the most!

Oh, by the way I’m not dead. Yeah I’m totally still alive! Sorry it’s been so long since since we talked. I lost my phone right after the explosion and with it, the phone numbers of everybody I knew. What a hassle! Do you happen to have Linda’s by the way? I’m guessing she thinks I’m dead too - such the drama queen. Anyway I was walking down the sidewalk the other day and passed a video store that had an old, faded poster for ‘Love Actually’ still hanging in the window and I thought of you. Remember that scene at the end in the airport with all the people hugging that made you cry and I totally made fun of you? Ha Ha! Well it occurred to me that I should look you up and see how you were doing and that I should also let you know that I didn’t die in that horrible boat crash.

Are you still in veterinarians’ school? I suppose you’re done by now. Do you still have that that dog, Noodles, or did she drown trying to navigate her way through the flaming wreckage?

Which reminds me, you never finished that dumpster story. I remember you were telling me how you found what appeared to be an entire uneaten and unblemished pie sitting on top of the plastic lid of the dumpster outside of Perkins and you were seriously considering taking it to Gina’s party and offering it as a dessert but then you were interrupted by Doug screaming “Richard, watch the fuck where you’re going!” Did you end up eating that pie? Did Gina eat any? Did you really not see those sharp rocks? Hilarious!

Speaking of Doug, do you guys still hang out? If so give him a ‘what’s up’ from Janine and tell him that I bailed right before the boat hit the rocky outcropping and exploded into a fire ball. I don’t think he saw me and I never really had the chance to say goodbye or give him shit for those ridiculous shorts he was wearing. What a tool!

Are you seeing anyone? Knowing you I’m sure there’s a couple ladies in the picture. I swear as the river’s current mercilessly dragged my broken body out to sea and I used my last ounce of strength to grasp a dangling tow cable of a passing fishing barge en route to La Habana I couldn’t help but think how lucky you’re going to make some lady. And when I woke up out of my coma four months later and relearned to walk and speak I made it a point to remember to tell that lucky lady of yours that you pooped your pants in Mr. Kilner’s class sophomore year. Ha Ha! You’ll never live that one down.

Well I suppose I should get going. The gypsy pirates who overtook the fishing barge and nursed me back to health before teaching me the trade of fake sponge smuggling while traveling from port to port across the eastern hemisphere are getting together to toss a few back and talk about old times. And here you probably thought my corpse was rotting at the bottom of the Okeechobee River or had been ripped to shreds by barracudas. Yikes. My bad for not writing sooner. I guess things just got crazy.

Write back soon OK. We have a lot of catching up to do!

Your Pal,

Janine

P.S. Do you happen to have my Fendi sunglasses? I think I left them on top of the picnic basket by signal flares (which didn’t work by the way).

Top 10 awkward moments to spontaneously combust

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 10:27:23 -0400

1. The moment after the waitress returns to your table and asks you how everything is tasting.

2. The moment your barber starts cutting your hair.

3. The moment you finally give in and try your coworker’s famous potato salad.

4. The moment in the morning when you’re making breakfast and your significant other has just said something extremely hurtful and you’re now looking at each each other with eyes full of pain and resentment. Each of you is waiting for the other to speak, to break the deafening silence, when the toaster pops.

5. The moment you trip and fall into a campfire.

6. The moment you sit on a whoopie cushion.

7. The moment after your dinner date accidentally sneezes, burps or farts.

8. The moment 4 hours into your trip to the cabin up north when you make eye contact with the guy driving next to you in the Toyota Camry.

9. The moment at your funeral when your grandson reaches into the casket and touches your face.

10. The moment after the person standing next to you on the elevator apologizes for accidentally pushing the button to the wrong floor.

Welcome

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 11:53:00 -0400

Hello unique user! Read what I wrote!

Some (most?) of it will be new.

Some (most?) of it will be from my old blogspot in order to create the illusion that I’m writing much more than I actually am.

All of it will be from the heart.

Girls

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 11:50:00 -0400

The temptations you’ve grown accustomed to. So many damn women in this city. Thoughts of unrealistic and poorly executed rendezvous flow like a faucet in an empty airport restroom. This one is particularly bad however - one of those touchless faucets without a handle to turn to the left or right that just keeps spraying thoughts of general depravity despite your best efforts of using your hands to plug the spout.

You will be meeting an attractive member of the opposite sex at a bar after work for a drink. The reasons are 100% work-related and the topic of conversation likely won’t deviate from alternative digital revenue streams but nonetheless, you will be meeting an attractive member of the opposite sex at a bar after work for a drink. Far too much has already been set up (she knows your name, you’ll be at a bar, alcohol will be consumed) so the number of dots to connect between the handshake and a hotel room are relatively few. Your mind can now spend less time focusing on the tangled mess of possible circumstances that would have to magically sort themselves out in order to present a situation in which you could feasibly see this woman’s breasts and focus more on the woman herself. Her features. How she’s different from your wife. The acts you would perform that would best accentuate those differences. Yes, this could happen.

You’re standing there in Starbucks contemplating how you’d react if a woman besides your wife tried to kiss you when she gets in line behind you. Not the ‘she’ you’ve been fantasizing about but a whole new ‘she’. You check her out. Now THIS girl is JUST your type. Perfect body. Meat on her bones. She looks like she’d be cool too - laid back, able to make fun of herself. And just like that you realize how foolish you’d been the minute before, entertaining the thought of cheating on your wife with that girl you’re meeting at the bar. That girl couldn’t hold a candle to this girl. You laugh at yourself there in line and shake your head and all is OK again because you’re a good man after all.

TOO MANY STEVES* *I do a google image search on these words and...

Thu, 31 May 2012 11:36:00 -0400

TOO MANY STEVES*

*I do a google image search on these words and share my favorite from the first page.

FIGHTING AIR* *I do a google image search on these words and...

Sun, 20 May 2012 11:00:54 -0400

FIGHTING AIR*

*I do a google image search on these words and share my favorite from the first page.

Day Ja Voo

Sun, 20 May 2012 10:54:00 -0400

You’re certain you’ve never been here before but consider this.

I happen to know you’ve worn that same outfit on more than one prior occasion and the bar of soap you used this morning in the shower you’ve been using every day since last Thursday.

Furthermore, the seat you’re sitting in, 18E, just happens to be the same seat you were assigned to on your connecting flight for your trip to Australia back in 2005.

And on top of that, the air currently residing in your lungs happens to be the same collection of molecules you breathed 47 hours ago when you were walking your dog. After you exhaled it it made its way south, following a low-pressure system, where it got sucked into a 4-bedroom home’s air conditioning unit in a suburb of Atlanta where it was flung into the air and rose, rose, rose until this aircraft’s engine turbine sucked it in, compresed it, and allowed the plane’s environmental control system to direct it once again to your lungs.

So while your eyes may be telling your brain that the images residing outside that double-paned plexiglass window of Cancun Mexico are new and therefore reason to celebrate due to the material relocation of your body to a place it has not yet been, everything tangible in the immediate vicinity that makes up what it is to be you has been endured before. This is old hat. You could have at least worn a new shirt.

Enjoy your “vacation”.

The reach ratio

Mon, 14 May 2012 15:43:00 -0400

The best thing about time, distance, amounts, and really any unit of measure is the brief interval between 1/3 and 1/2. Because if you think about it, 1/3 isn’t very much. I mean if you take any whole entire thing, say a foot or a song or an elephant, and chop it into 3 equal pieces and then consider just one of those pieces your really not talking about a lot in the grand scheme of things. I mean that’s something anybody can handle. 1/3.

Even the most daunting of entities such as demons or torture or helping a friend move, when broken into thirds, suddenly seem quite manageable. And 1/2 is the real milestone if you think about it. That’s what you’re shooting for. Once you hit that halfway point it’s all gravy from there. Once you hit .5 all you need to do is add another millimeter, another ounce, another hundredth of a second, another .00001 of anything and all the sudden you’re OVER half way through/done/complete/there and that’s something special.

In that precise moment the future becomes easier than the past. The proverbial scale has tipped in your favor. The difference between 1/3 and 1/2 is only 1/6. 0.166666 repeating. That’s nothing! You just did 1/6 of something reading this sentence.

So if we’ve established that 1/3 of anything isn’t anything to fret over and 1/2 of something is the ultimate threshold one needs to attain, and 1/6 (the difference between the two) is barely more than zero, then any task or aspiration set before you is magically within reach.

I call it the Reach Ratio.

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG* *I do a google image search on these...

Sun, 13 May 2012 15:59:00 -0400

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG*

*I do a google image search on these words and share my favorite from the first page.

International travel

Sun, 06 May 2012 10:47:34 -0400

The most frustrating aspect of international travel is the true lack of meaningful variety. Sure, the accents and currency may be different and take a day or two to get used to but if you ask for a bottle of ketchup at a restaurant chances are if it’s not already in the middle of the table the waitress will know what you’re talking about and have it for you in less than 20 seconds. Where’s the international intrigue in that?

You go to these other countries looking forward to being exposed to different cultures and customs yet every corner store has the same cigarettes behind the counter, every hotel the same bar of soap wrapped in plastic. Just for once I’d like to see something really different like, oh I don’t know, topless taxi drivers. Think about it. You’re in some foreign country at some hotel (like every other hotel) and after speaking with the concierge (like every other concierge) you’ve gotten the inside scoop on the hottest club in town (like every other club) but when the taxi comes to pick you up the driver is topless! Boom!! Now we’re talking! We’re not in Kansas anymore!

Or how about a hotel where the cleaning ladies don’t wear any pants. Their carts can be the same with the extra towels and rolls of toilet paper and such but below the top half of their standard starched uniforms - no pants whatsoever. I think something like that would serve as a refreshing reminder that you’re truly miles away from home and really experiencing something worthwhile.

Look, I admit that I’m no jet setter by any stretch of the imagination. I can only assume that there are incredible places in far away lands I haven’t been to where you’re expected to eat with your feet or sleep standing up. I get that. All I’m saying it would be great if these types of experiences weren’t so hard to come by. I think every time you go through customs into some foreign country you should be subjected to something truly distinct and unique, like topless custom agents.

A few other ideas:

International airline where the flight attendants don’t wear any pants.

Restaurants where the waitresses are topless.

Hotel where the front desk personnel are all topless.

Bustling market where the local merchants never where pants.

Look, the world is a wonderful place. I don’t think it’s too much to ask that foreign countries step up and show us just how wonderful it can be.

Point redemption

Sun, 06 May 2012 09:42:39 -0400

There’s me, yelling at one daughter to pick up the Teddy Grahams she’s spilled all over the couch while chasing down the other before she crawls her way down a flight of stairs. Meanwhile there’s my mom, sitting at my computer, filling out online surveys that pay her points she can redeem for airline miles that help her pay for trips to New York where she can spend quality time with her grandchildren.

ICE CREAM BONE* *I do a google image search on these words and...

Fri, 04 May 2012 09:50:00 -0400

ICE CREAM BONE*

*I do a google image search on these words and share my favorite from the first page.

hero's dilema

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 10:16:00 -0400

If I wake one night to the screams of my children, after running to their room through the smoke and flames to gather them in my arms, I sometimes wonder if I’d waste the precious few moments it would take to set them back down for a sec so I could tuck my dick back in my boxer shorts before carrying them outside to safety.

TAILOR MADE BALL SUIT* *I do a google image search on these...

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 10:08:00 -0400

TAILOR MADE BALL SUIT*

*I do a google image search on these words and share my favorite from the first page.

EATING A BAG OF TRAIN CRASH* *I do a google image search on...

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 09:45:00 -0400

EATING A BAG OF TRAIN CRASH*

*I do a google image search on these words and share my favorite from the first page.

Num Lock battle royale

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 22:05:00 -0400

The keyboard of my father-in-law’s computer has two options for typing numbers. There’s the top row where the keys 1 through 9 are listed in numerical order (except for the 0 which is after the 9 for whatever reason) and there’s an area over to the right where the same numerals are arranged in a nifty three-key-by-three-key box (except for the 0 key which is its own row underneath the 1 and 2 for whatever reason). When typing digits, in order to take advantage of those number keys over on the right there’s a ‘Num Lock’ key that needs to be ‘turned on’. If this ‘Num Lock’ key hasn’t been activated the number keys below it won’t work (for whatever reason) and instead of the number you pressed appearing on the screen as you’d expect, the cursor jumps around the page in apparent random fashion and for the few seconds it takes you to realize what the hell is going on it’s all quite upsetting. Luckily, there’s a little green indicator light situated just above the ‘Num Lock’ key that let’s you know if the ‘Num Lock’ is currently ‘on’ or ‘off’.

I have a theory regarding that indicator light.

My father-in-law despises the site of that green indicator light. He will not tolerate it. I believe this because every time I sit at my father-in-law’s computer I have to turn Num Locks back on.

We typically fly out to visit my in-laws for a few days every summer and every Christmas - total of about five or six days a year. During those days I’ll use the computer five or six times a day. My phone gets terrible reception so I use the computer to check my email, twitter, facebook, the weather, sports scores, soft-core porn and pretty much anything else that’ll kill ten minutes to break up the monotony of a day spent at the in-laws. Since it’s not my computer, any accounts that I log in to I make sure to log out of when I’m done. All my passwords incorporate numbers so each time I sit down at the computer numbers must be typed. When typing numbers I like to take advantage of the Num Lock controlled real estate to the right of the keyboard as the familiar arrangement of the digits allows me to type numerals with greater speed and accuracy then that damned top row of numerals ever could. Yet every time I attempt to do so, every goddamned time, I find that I must first turn Num Locks back on.

I should state for the record that I’ve never actually seen my father-in-law turn Num Locks off (hence it being only a theory) but he’s the only other one using the computer. It has to be him. Sometimes a mere hour will pass between my computer sessions yet still the Num Locks must be reactivated. The computer resides in the kitchen, the hub of activity in the house from which my father-in-law rarely strays so while I cannot with 100% certainty confirm it is him I similarly cannot rule him out as the primary suspect. I’ve gone so far as to research the default setting of his Dell computer to see if it Num Locks might be automatically turning off after a certain amount of inactivity. It does not. On particularly boring evenings I’ve gone so far as to sit at the computer and stare at the green indicator light for well over an hour so to see if it turns off by itself. It does not. He is turning it off when I’m not looking.

This shit has been going on for eight years. Given that my efforts to confirm my suspicions and crack the case have thus far failed, I can only assume that the same level of dedication to remain undetected exists on the other side. We are in a full-fledged stealth and unspoken Num Lock war. And while my theory is that the battle wages on because my father-in-law abhors the site of the green indicator light, I can’t dismiss the possibility that the only reason he turns it off is because he knows who is turning it on.

Now I’ve always considered my relationship with my father-in-law one of mutual respect, toleration, and lack of understanding. Regardless of our differing views on politics, religion, food and lord knows what else we both love his daughter and my children and that’s more than good enough for me. But I can’t speak for Bob. Perhaps striking that Num Locks key and watching the green dim to black is Bob’s way of voicing whatever points of contention he may be harboring towards his son-in-law.

I hope I never catch him.

I'll say this

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 21:28:56 -0400

Now I’ll say this. True, I may have just owned up to the fact that I’ll never punch another man in the mouth regardless of the circumstances, despite what he might have said about my wife or children. But the fact that I’m standing here today, bold enough to make such a claim, shows true courage, as no man can ever presuppose any future event if he does not have the determination to live the rest of his days seeing it through. Now THAT, my friend, is saying something… and if you don’t agree with me, well… then I guess I’m sorry.

MY NOSE IS UPSIDE DOWN* *I do a google image search on these...

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 21:05:00 -0400

MY NOSE IS UPSIDE DOWN*

*I do a google image search on these words and share my favorite from the first page.