E-mail: Brian7Morris "at" hotmail.com Archives March 2002 April 2002 May 2002 June 2002 July 2002 August 2002 September 2002 October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 current Blogs Mandapants farkleberries Uranium City Records The C.M. Sienko Foundation Storyteller Musings Solotarian Views Lynne Wiora Tek Poker News Blog Some Biscuits Evil Eye Emporium Niggling Doubts Pressure Release Sara as Mommy runswithscissors Defective Yeti Afternoon Delight trancejen The Terrarium Bird Nird Slipperily Tofu Hut Stereo Gum Links Fixed Gear Gallery Get Crafty This is Grand Featherproof Books Gapers Block Chicago Bird Watching	No one must know my terrible secret... House of Noh! Saturday, September 28, 2002 Okay, I’ll admit it. Yesterday I snapped. It happened after about seven straight hours of reviewing documents in a conference room with some of my colleagues. Suddenly, I started talking about crayfish. I knew it was wrong to talk about crayfish but I couldn’t stop myself. It was like my consciousness was floating outside my body, watching my corporeal self make an ass out of itself and I was completely helpless to do anything about it. Nobody was interested in crayfish and that, for some reason, made me feel like I needed to say more things about crayfish. In my document-review-induced stupor I became convinced that my colleague’s disinterest in crayfish resulted from their lack of understanding of crayfish. I became firmly committed to helping them get what crayfish were all about. I went on and on about the kinds of rivers crayfish live in and what kind of rocks they like to live under and how they move when they have cause for concern (shooting backwards by curling their tail- see? fascinating!) and how I personally feel about crayfish and good surnames for crayfish and specific crayfish that I had known in my lifetime and how I once tried to feed little pieces of hamburger to a crayfish in a fishbowl with chopsticks and how the crayfish wouldn’t eat the hamburger and what it feels like to get pinched by a crayfish and how to avoid getting pinched by a crayfish and on and on until eventually somebody asked me to be quiet. The rest of the day I just sulked in the corner with my boxes of documents and crayfish thoughts. I couldn’t help but think that maybe I don’t belong in a place where people hate crayfish. Also, I’m pretty sure now that everybody I work with thinks that I’m some sort mental Frankenstein monster built from the very worst social skills of Rainman and Forrest Gump. Needless to say, I was feeling pretty low. But now I’m full of hope and resolve because last night I ran into my favorite street performer on the way home. He’s that guy with the guitar that frequents the Red Line stop at State and Grand in the evenings. His voice is all scratchy from trying to sing over the trains but he’s quite a showman. Like any good street performer, he realizes that the build-up is the most important part of a show and so he announces each song and tells the crowd what each particular song means and always dedicates it to various subgroups of the people waiting for a train. The thing I like about the street performer is that he only knows one song, that "sunshiney day" song. On Monday this is how he described his song: “This is a song for all the people out there who are trying to make it. It’s not always easy so this song is for those people who face adversity every single day. They keep getting out of bed each morning to face their adversity. Here’s a song about struggling to get by. (pointing at commuters individually) You and you and you! You’re all gonna do great! (singing) La La La. It’s gonna be. . . a sunshiney day. Sunshiney day. All the dark clouds have gone away. La La La. It’s gonna be. . . a sunshiney day." Tuesday: “Fall’s coming on and the nights are getting colder. This kind of weather reminds me of chestnuts. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Who like’s chestnuts? I sure do. Here’s a song about winter, and chestnuts. (singing) I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way. It’s gonna be. . . a bright sunshiney day. Something about a rainbow. Gonna shine all day." Wednesday: “Hello everybody, how’re y’all doing? There’s lots of people in this city, but it’s still easy to be lonely. And once you’re lonely, then it’s hard to not be lonely. Because, see, not being lonely is the absence of loneliness, think about it! This song is about being lonely in a big city. (singing) It’s gonna be. . . a bright sunshiney day. Here is the rainbow that I’ve been waiting for. Blue skies, are all over the place. Bright, bright, sunshiney day." Thursday: “How many of you live in apartments? It’s not always easy living in apartments. I know because the manager of my building uses his keys sometimes to get into my place when I’m drunk and I don’t know what he does to me after I pass out. It’s tough living in apartments, I know because this morning I woke up and there was diarrhea sprayed all over the toilet seat in the bathroom down the hall. But you gotta just wipe that poop up and sit down or you’re gonna be uncomfortable all day. You all gotta keep going on. This is a song for all you people who didn’t crap all over the toilet seat at the YMCA and didn’t wipe it up. (singing) It’s gonna be a bright, bright, sunshiney day! It’s gonna be a bright, sunshiney, rainbow gonna come my way!" Friday: When I saw my favorite street performer on the way home on Friday I hoped with all my being that he would sing his sunshiney day song again and make a full week out of it. I was worried for a while because he started to tell us what he was going to sing about and the sunshiney day song just didn’t seem appropriate to it. “This is a song about losing your virginity while you’re so drunk that you can’t even remembering it happening. (addressing commuters) How many people out there have lost their virginity? This is a song for you! This is a song about waking up in a pile of filth in a back alley and having all your friends make fun of you for it and no matter how much you ask them they won’t tell you what she was like. This is a song about knowing that a little tender piece of you is gone forever. (singing) Here is the rainbow that I’ve been waiting for. Nothing but blue sky, all of the day. It’s gonna be a bright, sunshiney day. Bright, bright, sunshiney day!" See what I mean? He’s the best street performer EVER! If you see him make sure to give him some money because he’s the best. Brian 11:04 AM Tuesday, September 24, 2002 I’ve never used one of those personal calendars that people carry around with them before. I didn’t really see the point in it. I figured that the worst thing that could possibly happen to me without a calendar would be that I would schedule two important obligations at the same time. And I’ve watched too many sitcoms to not know what would happen then. Yeah! Comic hilarity would ensue! Accordingly, I found myself this morning with two simultaneous appointments, both with important partners at the firm. Luckily, I knew exactly how to handle the situation from years spent watching Alex of Family Ties make two dates for the prom, Carlton on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air accidentally schedule two interview appointments at prestigious universities in the same time slot, and that crazy up-tight Larry going against his cousin Balky’s goofy but sage pastoral brand of wisdom and schedule two job interviews on the same day on Perfect Strangers. So I wasn’t surprised this morning when, instead of laughing at my deliciously inappropriate and whimsical excuses for rushing from one office to another, both partners became rather terse with me. Besides, I knew my viewers (God sees everything) were laughing at home. And it didn’t really bother me when both partners started to scold me for my crazy behavior. That was to be expected as well. But the best part of the two-appointments-at-one-time scenario is that after my attempt to participate in each appointment failed, I’m supposed to admit my plan and reveal the way I truly feel. And then the partners were SUPPOSED to have an emotional breakthrough with me where our relationship would deepen with fondness and maybe we would hug each other. Instead, and you can imagine my bitter surprise, both partners remained extremely angry with me and they both said some really hurtful things about my commitment to the practice of law and my time management skills. Then they made me get a calendar and sign up for time management classes. Do you want to know what I’m doing next week at 3:00? I can tell you because I’m being forced to write that kind of thing down in a little square in my little book. That calendar is, like, putting me into a box, man. It’s making me into a robot. And being a robot, it’s not, like, who I am. I’ll make you pay for this Alex P. Keaton! Brian 10:08 PM Sunday, September 22, 2002 I was running down by the harbor today when I saw ahead of me a trail of beautiful bright-orange flower blossoms drifting across the water. It really struck me that there in that urine-smelling and polluted harbor there could be some kind of exotic and delicate flower growing along the banks amidst the cigarette butts, candy wrappers, and dog poop and that the flower would drop its delicate blossoms onto the grey water of the harbor so late in the summer. I stopped to get a closer look when I realized that the bright orange things weren’t flower petals, they were Cheetos. I still haven’t decided exactly how I should feel about the experience. Brian 9:19 PM Saturday, September 21, 2002 When I was growing up and started getting sick of high-school pep rally bullshit and the dirty feeling that the mandatory D.A.R.E. program left me with (even when I was drug-free) I was fortunate enough to find a group of gentle hippies that included various wiccans, scholars, and ex-greenpeacers. To this day I feel like they were my biggest role models and had the best and most powerful impact on my character, despite the fact that I only knew them for about a month before I left my hometown to go to college. Have you ever read Wally Lamb’s book “She’s Come Undone?” I have some criticisms for the book and it’s on the Oprah book club and has an embarrassing “O” on the cover but still I think it’s pretty good. My favorite part was a very good description of the impact that these sorts of hippies can have on a person. In the book the main character, a girl toward the end of high school who is struggling with self-loathing, encounters a couple of gentle hippies who don’t reflect her self-loathing but only radiate goodwill and love and it has a profound impact on her. The reason that I’ve been thinking about it lately is that I’ve been noticing things about the young counter-culture sect that make me wonder and worry that they don’t have gentle hippy influences in their life. For instance, over the last few years I’ve been noticing bumper stickers that say “mean people suck” on younger people’s bumpers. But, hey, isn’t that kind of a mean thing to say about mean people? So aren’t they saying that they, themselves, in fact do suck? Do they just really enjoy irony? What worries me is the possibility that the best way they have to deal with conflict is to call people names. A gentle hippy would never deal with a mean person by calling them names, name calling is only a way to escalate a conflict. A gentle hippy would try to understand why the mean person is acting mean and then help them through it. Another example I’ve noticed is that kids these days are calling really good pot “the Bomb” or “Chronic.” Back in my day we called really good pot “Kind.” I really liked using the word “kind” as a adjective for strength and power. And, come on, bombs aren’t good. “The Bomb” isn’t a good adjective for strength and power (and I’m also looking in your direction, Bush administration). I’ve also seen lots of bumper stickers that bear the motto “Kill Your Television.” This one’s bothered me for a while. I mean, I'm all about watching less television, but first of all, a gentle hippy would never advocate an act of violence. If a gentle hippy didn’t want to watch television they would just turn it off. And a gentle hippy is all about sharing scarce resources, instead of smashing a television a gentle hippy would donate it to an elderly shut-in or something. And finally, “Kill Your Television” presupposes the bumper sticker reader being of an economic class which would allow them to own a television in order for the reader to participate by smashing it. Back in the day, gentle hippies didn’t care how much money a person had, everybody could join in. Brian 12:30 PM Tuesday, September 17, 2002 Remember in Star Wars when Hans Solo and Princess Leia and Chewbacca and the Droids went to the Cloud City but they were betrayed by Lando and imprisoned by Darth Vader’s Storm Troopers? Remember that part when the Storm Troopers tortured Hans Solo by binding him to that thing that pushed his chest against the sparking contacts of that torture machine? And then Hans Solo was like “Hot! Hot!” and then he was all messed up and the Storm Troopers dragged him back to that crazy circular jail cell where Chewbacca was trying to fix C3PO and Chewbacca saw how messed up Hans Solo was and he was all like “Arghghghg!”? Well, that’s pretty much exactly what it was like when I got caught in the copy machine today. I mean, I’ve dealt with a few copiers in my day. Back in school I spent quite a few discrete evenings with a sweet little model – it had some miles on it but we got to know each other’s idiosyncrasies and late at night after everybody else had gone home I’d feel a powerful lust for making copies coming on and I’d light a few candles, turn on some soft music, flip the rocker switch from “circle” to “line” and we’d GET IT ON! But there’s a copy machine at work and it’s a real brute. And it hates me too. It’s about as big as a soft-touch automatic carwash and twice as deadly. I tried to use it today and it demanded that I open it up. I pushed all the buttons and kept pushing them but it wouldn’t let me make any copies and kept telling me to open it up and take the paper out so I finally flipped open the door and started poking and pulling at things. Before I knew it something sharp and hot closed on me and sucked me in. It was totally like those video footages of “when animals attack” like when people get too close to the polar bear cage and the bear pulls them up against the bars and mauls them. The thing started making copies and burning my arm and shining its terrible laser light into my eyes and sprinkling toner dust all over my semi-clean shirt. If you’re making copies and the machine tells you to open the door and “clear a paper jam,” don’t do it! It’s a trap!! Brian 10:37 PM a Brian 10:36 PM Wednesday, September 11, 2002 There are three revolving doors in the building where I work. Have you ever been caught in a revolving door? It hurts. But aside from feeling like I was caught in the jaws of a shark, the worst part was yelling for that old woman to stop pushing on the bar. There were all these people walking past in the lobby and I didn’t want to make a big spectacle about being caught in the revolving door but eventually the pain wore me down. I couldn’t take it anymore and so I had to start screaming at that old lady to stop pushing on the revolving door. Not that it did any good, she couldn’t hear me because I was on the inside and she was on the outside, pushing to get in. I really attracted a crowd on the inside of the lobby. I could hear everybody talking about me. “Look at that guy! He’s stuck in the door! That weird looking guy is caught in the revolving door!” That old lady had a peculiar quizzical look on her face, like she wondered why the door wasn’t rotating around, but she just kept pushing harder and harder while I squirmed around like a worm on a hook, half in and half out the revolving door. Just before I began to black out I saw a security person run out the other door and get the old lady to stop pushing. Once the security person pulled the old lady out of the door I fell out of door’s jaws and picked myself up and tried to look at least a little dignified. I hadn’t been out of the door for like thirty seconds before a woman in the lobby with a big basket of little American flags tried to make me take one. Like I was going to skip and prance and wave my little American flag in the lobby. Fuck that little American Flag! I mean, I was just caught in a revolving door! I’ve got better things to do than smile a big idiot’s smile and wave my little flag while Bush threatens the kick the world’s ass. Brian 10:56 PM Thursday, September 05, 2002 I saw an interesting PBS research documentary about a week ago. It was all about the “single” lifestyle in North America. The makers of the show were sociologists that had gone out to do research on how single people lived their lives and to determine whether or not they were happy. They defined “single” merely as living alone - I think “single” to these sociologists is a concept that stands in contrast to living with some sort of family unit. The show said that the “single” lifestyle is becoming more and more accepted as a legitimate lifestyle choice, although the researchers acknowledged that some people living as a “single” don’t choose to (the sociologists implied that nobody liked those people, as if these lonely people didn’t have enough problems without being slammed by some sociology eggheads on PBS). The researchers said that the present day conception of “single” people is represented in society as two polar extremes. According to the show, society either imagines single people as lonely and miserable (and at this point the researchers played some footage of three old ugly miserable people sitting on a bench wearing winter parkas and raggedy knit caps and miserably waiting for a bus), or, society views single people as living exciting swinging lifestyles full of adventure and spontaneity (and at this point the researchers showed some close-up footage of an obviously drunken woman at a 70’s disco club wearing a ruffled pink shirt and dancing wildly). The researchers concluded that the truth was somewhere between these two extremes. Although Mr. Kitty IS my life partner, I think that technically I’m still living the single lifestyle. Mr. Kitty and I think it’s cool that we’re worthy of sociological study. But we weren’t very impressed with these sociologists if their best finding on the single lifestyle was that it is “somewhere in between” those wildly contradictory extremes. I guess sociologists don’t really know what it’s like to live alone. So I was sitting there in my desk chair wearing my boxer shorts and eating fried potatoes out of a frying pan on my lap with the clean end of a pair of chopsticks that I had pulled out of a dirty Chinese food box and all of a sudden Mr. Kitty and I realized what an anthropological goldmine we were. I mean, Margaret Mead’s probably gonna leave like ten messages on my machine asking to study me and my lifestyle after reading this entry (which is why, Ms. Mead, my phone number is unlisted, thankyouverymuch). So anyway, I’ve been trying to document my single lifestyle in the name of science. Like, instead of washing my dishes just now I took a picture of them all stacked up and dirty in my sink. I also got an action shot of me fighting with Mr. Kitty over the last scrap of toilet paper in the house and I took a self-portrait of me sitting in my desk chair mixing orange juice in a cup held between my knees with the handle end of an old toilet brush. I’m hoping (fingers crossed) that I can sell my pictures and an article to National Geographic. Brian 11:18 PM Tuesday, September 03, 2002 I’ve told you about my childhood hero before, that guy who stood by the street in the town where I grew up flipping everybody the bird. He also collected half-filled bottles of hand lotion out of the trash and would count then and organize them while sitting in his booth at the Burger King. He was that guy who lived in a box behind Toys R Us and drank dented cans of simulated breast milk that he dug out of the trash. I think I’ve also already told you that I felt that it was to be my destiny to replace the guy after his middle finger grew aged and he had to step down. And that was good enough for me. It was just your typical small town ambition but it was good enough for me and seemed like a satisfying career. I never really dreamed about anything more. But I find myself here in Chicago. Yesterday I was walking down the street on the way to the grocery store to make conversation with people who’d rather be left alone in the canned goods aisle. Suddenly, as I watched the traffic roll past and everybody walking along the sidewalk and eating in street-side little restaurants and crap I was filled with an overwhelming sense of contempt that burned it’s way up from the coiled kundalini serpent in my sacrum through my spine and down my arm into my middle finger, which began to give off beams of light and twitch in an ecstatic sort of holy reverie. Maybe my life will be so much more than just flipping people the bird in a small Michigan town. Maybe I’m meant for something more, like flipping the bird to all of Chicago! It’s beautiful how I imagine it - middle finger unfurling like a beautiful butterfly emerging from the cocoon of my fist to dry its wings at passing motorists. And after I flip Chicago the bird, then, who knows, maybe the WORLD!! Suddenly everything seems possible. Brian 11:22 PM Sunday, September 01, 2002 I have an embarrassing confession to make. Remember that entry I posted a while back (8-25-02) with the hummus recipe? I was like, “Yum yum! This hummus I made at home all by myself is really fucking good!” I lied. It tasted like crap. I mean, I ate it and everything because I was hungry, but it really just tasted like ground up chick peas and lemon juice and soy sauce. I lied because I wanted you to think that I was this really cultured dude who knew how to make exotic dishes from Mediterranea. I just wanted you to like me. Is that so wrong? I’m so lonely! Well, the truth is that I made a crappy hummus – and the fact of the matter is that I’m just a normal guy with a big, uncleanable, wheat gluten mess in his kitchen sink. To make up for my lie I vowed to discover how to make a good hummus so I went down to the grocery store and looked at the ingredients list on a tub. The ingredient I missed before was “tahini.” I didn’t know what “tahini” was so I went home and got out my mortar and pestle and turned my kitchen into a laboratory. It was kind of like being a medieval alchemist because I had a laboratory in my home and I was trying to figure out something kind of silly, mostly motivated by having too much time on my hands. However, my experiments yielded some valuable information. Here is a list of things that I discovered tahini is not made from: Peanut butter Canola oil Nutmeg Cat food (Purina One tastes the best - I use it in all my recipes) Frozen Orange juice concentrate Moldy bread Margarine The following ground-up Flintstone vitamins: Fred Wilma Betty Dino Shredded ficus leaves Soap chips Cardboard (Mr. Kitty’s idea) Tums Toothpaste Tofu (extra firm) Pencil shavings Peanut butter (I tested this one again because I had to be sure!) Eventually I had to stop testing ingredients because Mr. Kitty and I had eaten so much ground chickpeas with crap mixed in that we were all stuffed and woozy like newlyweds at the end of a Hindi wedding. I finally had to face the fact that I was unable to discover on my own what tahini is. And I couldn’t ask people at the grocery store either because I recently embarrassed myself in aisle 10 by hotly insisting that capers were the same thing as pine nuts. I was at a loss. I finally got up the nerve to ask the wine samples lady after my eighth miniature cup. Tahini is made from ground up sesame seeds. Brian 9:44 PM

E-mail: Brian7Morris "at" hotmail.com

Blogs

Mandapants
farkleberries
Uranium City Records
The C.M. Sienko Foundation
Storyteller Musings
Solotarian Views
Lynne Wiora
Tek
Poker News Blog
Some Biscuits
Evil Eye Emporium
Niggling Doubts
Pressure Release
Sara as Mommy
runswithscissors
Defective Yeti
Afternoon Delight
trancejen
The Terrarium
Bird Nird
Slipperily
Tofu Hut
Stereo Gum

House of Noh!

Saturday, September 28, 2002

Okay, I’ll admit it. Yesterday I snapped. It happened after about seven straight hours of reviewing documents in a conference room with some of my colleagues. Suddenly, I started talking about crayfish. I knew it was wrong to talk about crayfish but I couldn’t stop myself. It was like my consciousness was floating outside my body, watching my corporeal self make an ass out of itself and I was completely helpless to do anything about it. Nobody was interested in crayfish and that, for some reason, made me feel like I needed to say more things about crayfish. In my document-review-induced stupor I became convinced that my colleague’s disinterest in crayfish resulted from their lack of understanding of crayfish. I became firmly committed to helping them get what crayfish were all about. I went on and on about the kinds of rivers crayfish live in and what kind of rocks they like to live under and how they move when they have cause for concern (shooting backwards by curling their tail- see? fascinating!) and how I personally feel about crayfish and good surnames for crayfish and specific crayfish that I had known in my lifetime and how I once tried to feed little pieces of hamburger to a crayfish in a fishbowl with chopsticks and how the crayfish wouldn’t eat the hamburger and what it feels like to get pinched by a crayfish and how to avoid getting pinched by a crayfish and on and on until eventually somebody asked me to be quiet. The rest of the day I just sulked in the corner with my boxes of documents and crayfish thoughts. I couldn’t help but think that maybe I don’t belong in a place where people hate crayfish. Also, I’m pretty sure now that everybody I work with thinks that I’m some sort mental Frankenstein monster built from the very worst social skills of Rainman and Forrest Gump. Needless to say, I was feeling pretty low. But now I’m full of hope and resolve because last night I ran into my favorite street performer on the way home. He’s that guy with the guitar that frequents the Red Line stop at State and Grand in the evenings. His voice is all scratchy from trying to sing over the trains but he’s quite a showman. Like any good street performer, he realizes that the build-up is the most important part of a show and so he announces each song and tells the crowd what each particular song means and always dedicates it to various subgroups of the people waiting for a train. The thing I like about the street performer is that he only knows one song, that "sunshiney day" song. On Monday this is how he described his song: “This is a song for all the people out there who are trying to make it. It’s not always easy so this song is for those people who face adversity every single day. They keep getting out of bed each morning to face their adversity. Here’s a song about struggling to get by. (pointing at commuters individually) You and you and you! You’re all gonna do great! (singing) La La La. It’s gonna be. . . a sunshiney day. Sunshiney day. All the dark clouds have gone away. La La La. It’s gonna be. . . a sunshiney day." Tuesday: “Fall’s coming on and the nights are getting colder. This kind of weather reminds me of chestnuts. Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Who like’s chestnuts? I sure do. Here’s a song about winter, and chestnuts. (singing) I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. I can see all obstacles in my way. It’s gonna be. . . a bright sunshiney day. Something about a rainbow. Gonna shine all day." Wednesday: “Hello everybody, how’re y’all doing? There’s lots of people in this city, but it’s still easy to be lonely. And once you’re lonely, then it’s hard to not be lonely. Because, see, not being lonely is the absence of loneliness, think about it! This song is about being lonely in a big city. (singing) It’s gonna be. . . a bright sunshiney day. Here is the rainbow that I’ve been waiting for. Blue skies, are all over the place. Bright, bright, sunshiney day." Thursday: “How many of you live in apartments? It’s not always easy living in apartments. I know because the manager of my building uses his keys sometimes to get into my place when I’m drunk and I don’t know what he does to me after I pass out. It’s tough living in apartments, I know because this morning I woke up and there was diarrhea sprayed all over the toilet seat in the bathroom down the hall. But you gotta just wipe that poop up and sit down or you’re gonna be uncomfortable all day. You all gotta keep going on. This is a song for all you people who didn’t crap all over the toilet seat at the YMCA and didn’t wipe it up. (singing) It’s gonna be a bright, bright, sunshiney day! It’s gonna be a bright, sunshiney, rainbow gonna come my way!" Friday: When I saw my favorite street performer on the way home on Friday I hoped with all my being that he would sing his sunshiney day song again and make a full week out of it. I was worried for a while because he started to tell us what he was going to sing about and the sunshiney day song just didn’t seem appropriate to it. “This is a song about losing your virginity while you’re so drunk that you can’t even remembering it happening. (addressing commuters) How many people out there have lost their virginity? This is a song for you! This is a song about waking up in a pile of filth in a back alley and having all your friends make fun of you for it and no matter how much you ask them they won’t tell you what she was like. This is a song about knowing that a little tender piece of you is gone forever. (singing) Here is the rainbow that I’ve been waiting for. Nothing but blue sky, all of the day. It’s gonna be a bright, sunshiney day. Bright, bright, sunshiney day!" See what I mean? He’s the best street performer EVER! If you see him make sure to give him some money because he’s the best.

Brian 11:04 AM

Tuesday, September 24, 2002

I’ve never used one of those personal calendars that people carry around with them before. I didn’t really see the point in it. I figured that the worst thing that could possibly happen to me without a calendar would be that I would schedule two important obligations at the same time. And I’ve watched too many sitcoms to not know what would happen then. Yeah! Comic hilarity would ensue! Accordingly, I found myself this morning with two simultaneous appointments, both with important partners at the firm. Luckily, I knew exactly how to handle the situation from years spent watching Alex of Family Ties make two dates for the prom, Carlton on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air accidentally schedule two interview appointments at prestigious universities in the same time slot, and that crazy up-tight Larry going against his cousin Balky’s goofy but sage pastoral brand of wisdom and schedule two job interviews on the same day on Perfect Strangers. So I wasn’t surprised this morning when, instead of laughing at my deliciously inappropriate and whimsical excuses for rushing from one office to another, both partners became rather terse with me. Besides, I knew my viewers (God sees everything) were laughing at home. And it didn’t really bother me when both partners started to scold me for my crazy behavior. That was to be expected as well. But the best part of the two-appointments-at-one-time scenario is that after my attempt to participate in each appointment failed, I’m supposed to admit my plan and reveal the way I truly feel. And then the partners were SUPPOSED to have an emotional breakthrough with me where our relationship would deepen with fondness and maybe we would hug each other. Instead, and you can imagine my bitter surprise, both partners remained extremely angry with me and they both said some really hurtful things about my commitment to the practice of law and my time management skills. Then they made me get a calendar and sign up for time management classes. Do you want to know what I’m doing next week at 3:00? I can tell you because I’m being forced to write that kind of thing down in a little square in my little book. That calendar is, like, putting me into a box, man. It’s making me into a robot. And being a robot, it’s not, like, who I am. I’ll make you pay for this Alex P. Keaton!

Brian 10:08 PM

Sunday, September 22, 2002

I was running down by the harbor today when I saw ahead of me a trail of beautiful bright-orange flower blossoms drifting across the water. It really struck me that there in that urine-smelling and polluted harbor there could be some kind of exotic and delicate flower growing along the banks amidst the cigarette butts, candy wrappers, and dog poop and that the flower would drop its delicate blossoms onto the grey water of the harbor so late in the summer. I stopped to get a closer look when I realized that the bright orange things weren’t flower petals, they were Cheetos. I still haven’t decided exactly how I should feel about the experience.

Brian 9:19 PM

Saturday, September 21, 2002

When I was growing up and started getting sick of high-school pep rally bullshit and the dirty feeling that the mandatory D.A.R.E. program left me with (even when I was drug-free) I was fortunate enough to find a group of gentle hippies that included various wiccans, scholars, and ex-greenpeacers. To this day I feel like they were my biggest role models and had the best and most powerful impact on my character, despite the fact that I only knew them for about a month before I left my hometown to go to college. Have you ever read Wally Lamb’s book “She’s Come Undone?” I have some criticisms for the book and it’s on the Oprah book club and has an embarrassing “O” on the cover but still I think it’s pretty good. My favorite part was a very good description of the impact that these sorts of hippies can have on a person. In the book the main character, a girl toward the end of high school who is struggling with self-loathing, encounters a couple of gentle hippies who don’t reflect her self-loathing but only radiate goodwill and love and it has a profound impact on her. The reason that I’ve been thinking about it lately is that I’ve been noticing things about the young counter-culture sect that make me wonder and worry that they don’t have gentle hippy influences in their life. For instance, over the last few years I’ve been noticing bumper stickers that say “mean people suck” on younger people’s bumpers. But, hey, isn’t that kind of a mean thing to say about mean people? So aren’t they saying that they, themselves, in fact do suck? Do they just really enjoy irony? What worries me is the possibility that the best way they have to deal with conflict is to call people names. A gentle hippy would never deal with a mean person by calling them names, name calling is only a way to escalate a conflict. A gentle hippy would try to understand why the mean person is acting mean and then help them through it. Another example I’ve noticed is that kids these days are calling really good pot “the Bomb” or “Chronic.” Back in my day we called really good pot “Kind.” I really liked using the word “kind” as a adjective for strength and power. And, come on, bombs aren’t good. “The Bomb” isn’t a good adjective for strength and power (and I’m also looking in your direction, Bush administration). I’ve also seen lots of bumper stickers that bear the motto “Kill Your Television.” This one’s bothered me for a while. I mean, I'm all about watching less television, but first of all, a gentle hippy would never advocate an act of violence. If a gentle hippy didn’t want to watch television they would just turn it off. And a gentle hippy is all about sharing scarce resources, instead of smashing a television a gentle hippy would donate it to an elderly shut-in or something. And finally, “Kill Your Television” presupposes the bumper sticker reader being of an economic class which would allow them to own a television in order for the reader to participate by smashing it. Back in the day, gentle hippies didn’t care how much money a person had, everybody could join in.

Brian 12:30 PM

Tuesday, September 17, 2002

Remember in Star Wars when Hans Solo and Princess Leia and Chewbacca and the Droids went to the Cloud City but they were betrayed by Lando and imprisoned by Darth Vader’s Storm Troopers? Remember that part when the Storm Troopers tortured Hans Solo by binding him to that thing that pushed his chest against the sparking contacts of that torture machine? And then Hans Solo was like “Hot! Hot!” and then he was all messed up and the Storm Troopers dragged him back to that crazy circular jail cell where Chewbacca was trying to fix C3PO and Chewbacca saw how messed up Hans Solo was and he was all like “Arghghghg!”? Well, that’s pretty much exactly what it was like when I got caught in the copy machine today. I mean, I’ve dealt with a few copiers in my day. Back in school I spent quite a few discrete evenings with a sweet little model – it had some miles on it but we got to know each other’s idiosyncrasies and late at night after everybody else had gone home I’d feel a powerful lust for making copies coming on and I’d light a few candles, turn on some soft music, flip the rocker switch from “circle” to “line” and we’d GET IT ON! But there’s a copy machine at work and it’s a real brute. And it hates me too. It’s about as big as a soft-touch automatic carwash and twice as deadly. I tried to use it today and it demanded that I open it up. I pushed all the buttons and kept pushing them but it wouldn’t let me make any copies and kept telling me to open it up and take the paper out so I finally flipped open the door and started poking and pulling at things. Before I knew it something sharp and hot closed on me and sucked me in. It was totally like those video footages of “when animals attack” like when people get too close to the polar bear cage and the bear pulls them up against the bars and mauls them. The thing started making copies and burning my arm and shining its terrible laser light into my eyes and sprinkling toner dust all over my semi-clean shirt. If you’re making copies and the machine tells you to open the door and “clear a paper jam,” don’t do it! It’s a trap!!

Brian 10:37 PM

Brian 10:36 PM

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

There are three revolving doors in the building where I work. Have you ever been caught in a revolving door? It hurts. But aside from feeling like I was caught in the jaws of a shark, the worst part was yelling for that old woman to stop pushing on the bar. There were all these people walking past in the lobby and I didn’t want to make a big spectacle about being caught in the revolving door but eventually the pain wore me down. I couldn’t take it anymore and so I had to start screaming at that old lady to stop pushing on the revolving door. Not that it did any good, she couldn’t hear me because I was on the inside and she was on the outside, pushing to get in. I really attracted a crowd on the inside of the lobby. I could hear everybody talking about me. “Look at that guy! He’s stuck in the door! That weird looking guy is caught in the revolving door!” That old lady had a peculiar quizzical look on her face, like she wondered why the door wasn’t rotating around, but she just kept pushing harder and harder while I squirmed around like a worm on a hook, half in and half out the revolving door. Just before I began to black out I saw a security person run out the other door and get the old lady to stop pushing. Once the security person pulled the old lady out of the door I fell out of door’s jaws and picked myself up and tried to look at least a little dignified. I hadn’t been out of the door for like thirty seconds before a woman in the lobby with a big basket of little American flags tried to make me take one. Like I was going to skip and prance and wave my little American flag in the lobby. Fuck that little American Flag! I mean, I was just caught in a revolving door! I’ve got better things to do than smile a big idiot’s smile and wave my little flag while Bush threatens the kick the world’s ass.

Brian 10:56 PM

Thursday, September 05, 2002

I saw an interesting PBS research documentary about a week ago. It was all about the “single” lifestyle in North America. The makers of the show were sociologists that had gone out to do research on how single people lived their lives and to determine whether or not they were happy. They defined “single” merely as living alone - I think “single” to these sociologists is a concept that stands in contrast to living with some sort of family unit. The show said that the “single” lifestyle is becoming more and more accepted as a legitimate lifestyle choice, although the researchers acknowledged that some people living as a “single” don’t choose to (the sociologists implied that nobody liked those people, as if these lonely people didn’t have enough problems without being slammed by some sociology eggheads on PBS). The researchers said that the present day conception of “single” people is represented in society as two polar extremes. According to the show, society either imagines single people as lonely and miserable (and at this point the researchers played some footage of three old ugly miserable people sitting on a bench wearing winter parkas and raggedy knit caps and miserably waiting for a bus), or, society views single people as living exciting swinging lifestyles full of adventure and spontaneity (and at this point the researchers showed some close-up footage of an obviously drunken woman at a 70’s disco club wearing a ruffled pink shirt and dancing wildly). The researchers concluded that the truth was somewhere between these two extremes. Although Mr. Kitty IS my life partner, I think that technically I’m still living the single lifestyle. Mr. Kitty and I think it’s cool that we’re worthy of sociological study. But we weren’t very impressed with these sociologists if their best finding on the single lifestyle was that it is “somewhere in between” those wildly contradictory extremes. I guess sociologists don’t really know what it’s like to live alone. So I was sitting there in my desk chair wearing my boxer shorts and eating fried potatoes out of a frying pan on my lap with the clean end of a pair of chopsticks that I had pulled out of a dirty Chinese food box and all of a sudden Mr. Kitty and I realized what an anthropological goldmine we were. I mean, Margaret Mead’s probably gonna leave like ten messages on my machine asking to study me and my lifestyle after reading this entry (which is why, Ms. Mead, my phone number is unlisted, thankyouverymuch). So anyway, I’ve been trying to document my single lifestyle in the name of science. Like, instead of washing my dishes just now I took a picture of them all stacked up and dirty in my sink. I also got an action shot of me fighting with Mr. Kitty over the last scrap of toilet paper in the house and I took a self-portrait of me sitting in my desk chair mixing orange juice in a cup held between my knees with the handle end of an old toilet brush. I’m hoping (fingers crossed) that I can sell my pictures and an article to National Geographic.

Brian 11:18 PM

Tuesday, September 03, 2002

I’ve told you about my childhood hero before, that guy who stood by the street in the town where I grew up flipping everybody the bird. He also collected half-filled bottles of hand lotion out of the trash and would count then and organize them while sitting in his booth at the Burger King. He was that guy who lived in a box behind Toys R Us and drank dented cans of simulated breast milk that he dug out of the trash. I think I’ve also already told you that I felt that it was to be my destiny to replace the guy after his middle finger grew aged and he had to step down. And that was good enough for me. It was just your typical small town ambition but it was good enough for me and seemed like a satisfying career. I never really dreamed about anything more. But I find myself here in Chicago. Yesterday I was walking down the street on the way to the grocery store to make conversation with people who’d rather be left alone in the canned goods aisle. Suddenly, as I watched the traffic roll past and everybody walking along the sidewalk and eating in street-side little restaurants and crap I was filled with an overwhelming sense of contempt that burned it’s way up from the coiled kundalini serpent in my sacrum through my spine and down my arm into my middle finger, which began to give off beams of light and twitch in an ecstatic sort of holy reverie. Maybe my life will be so much more than just flipping people the bird in a small Michigan town. Maybe I’m meant for something more, like flipping the bird to all of Chicago! It’s beautiful how I imagine it - middle finger unfurling like a beautiful butterfly emerging from the cocoon of my fist to dry its wings at passing motorists. And after I flip Chicago the bird, then, who knows, maybe the WORLD!! Suddenly everything seems possible.

Brian 11:22 PM

Sunday, September 01, 2002

I have an embarrassing confession to make. Remember that entry I posted a while back (8-25-02) with the hummus recipe? I was like, “Yum yum! This hummus I made at home all by myself is really fucking good!” I lied. It tasted like crap. I mean, I ate it and everything because I was hungry, but it really just tasted like ground up chick peas and lemon juice and soy sauce. I lied because I wanted you to think that I was this really cultured dude who knew how to make exotic dishes from Mediterranea. I just wanted you to like me. Is that so wrong? I’m so lonely! Well, the truth is that I made a crappy hummus – and the fact of the matter is that I’m just a normal guy with a big, uncleanable, wheat gluten mess in his kitchen sink. To make up for my lie I vowed to discover how to make a good hummus so I went down to the grocery store and looked at the ingredients list on a tub. The ingredient I missed before was “tahini.” I didn’t know what “tahini” was so I went home and got out my mortar and pestle and turned my kitchen into a laboratory. It was kind of like being a medieval alchemist because I had a laboratory in my home and I was trying to figure out something kind of silly, mostly motivated by having too much time on my hands. However, my experiments yielded some valuable information. Here is a list of things that I discovered tahini is not made from: Peanut butter Canola oil Nutmeg Cat food (Purina One tastes the best - I use it in all my recipes) Frozen Orange juice concentrate Moldy bread Margarine The following ground-up Flintstone vitamins: Fred Wilma Betty Dino Shredded ficus leaves Soap chips Cardboard (Mr. Kitty’s idea) Tums Toothpaste Tofu (extra firm) Pencil shavings Peanut butter (I tested this one again because I had to be sure!) Eventually I had to stop testing ingredients because Mr. Kitty and I had eaten so much ground chickpeas with crap mixed in that we were all stuffed and woozy like newlyweds at the end of a Hindi wedding. I finally had to face the fact that I was unable to discover on my own what tahini is. And I couldn’t ask people at the grocery store either because I recently embarrassed myself in aisle 10 by hotly insisting that capers were the same thing as pine nuts. I was at a loss. I finally got up the nerve to ask the wine samples lady after my eighth miniature cup. Tahini is made from ground up sesame seeds.

Brian 9:44 PM

<< chicago blogs >>

Archives