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Mr. Kitty thinks the title is VERY clever. It’s almost as catchy as that dating show “Elimidate.” I elimidate all day long, and not just in the bathroom. When I come back to my desk at work and the coffee in my styrofoam cup is all cold, instead of just pouring it down the sink, I “elimidate” it. And just before I get off the L at my stop I tell the guy sitting next to me wearing the three old coats and carrying the duffel-bag packed with mangled 2 liter bottles full of cloudy yellow fluid, “Well, it’s been a great date so far. This was a really, really difficult decision for me to make. I just think that we are looking for different things right now and we didn’t seem to have a connection... I’m going to have to elimidate you, piss-bottle collection man.” Oh yeah, but back to Diagnosis Murder. I can’t help but think that perhaps Mr. Kitty and I aren’t the intended demographic. The commercials during the show advertise things like denture powder and some sort of device that seems to make peeing in your pants consequence-free. Mr. Kitty NEVER pees in his pants. I do so only infrequently, like when Mr. Kitty sings Def Leppard songs with new funny lyrics and it makes me laugh really hard and I happen to be wearing pants. I only have one reservation about Diagnosis Murder, sometimes that white-mustached Doctor Sloan gets a little too smug, especially just before he solves a murder. If Doctor Sloan diagnosed a murder around me in real life I think I’d punch him in the face and then shout, “Ralph Nader for President!!” really loudly. Brian 11:14 PM Wednesday, January 22, 2003 I had my third Zen class last night. The monk/teacher isn’t a native speaker of English and he’s kind of hard to understand at times. But so far he hasn’t hit me with a stick while I’m sitting there with my eyes closed, which I understood to be a major tenet of Zen practice, so I’m not complaining. I also sit on a cushion in back, and that compounds my monk comprehension problem. For instance, When the Monk was describing the meditating equipment I heard him say that our cushions are stuffed with “Deepak Chopra,” and that can’t be right. Later during the class the Monk showed us a variety of kneeling postures. The monk described one as having the benefit of “being good for hot summer weather because it closes the anus and thus helps one to feel cool.” The monk couldn’t have just said that! I wondered to myself. I couldn’t get it out of my mind, did that Monk really say that? It was my biggest Zen meditation challenge yet. I’ve made a new friend too. He’s this Russian Immigrant guy who rides the L in the same direction away from the temple as me. Based on our conversation on the train, I take it that he’s becoming disenchanted with our Zen practice. “It just doesn’t seem practical!” He complained. “That’s right!” I said gleefully. “I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense!!” He shouted. “Exactly!” I happily responded. The whole time during this conversation I was thinking to myself, Dude, I’m WAY more Zen than this Russian guy! Score one Zen point for me! Later, to make conversation, he asked me how I was liking this frigidly cold Chicago weather. “It sucks.” I told him. “How about you?” I asked. “Well, according to the teachings,” he spat bitterly, “we’re supposed to be enjoying it!” Touche, Russian guy! Score one Zen point for you! Brian 11:41 PM Wednesday, January 15, 2003 I had my second zen lesson class last night. The zen started as soon as I entered the temple. In the coat room where we have to take our shoes off there’s a sign that reads “not responsible for lost or stolen items!” That’s like, SO zen. At first I questioned myself for taking zen lessons, I mean, paying an amount of money so that I could just sit there in silence and all. But that was my pre-zen self, now I’m totally into zen lessons. I was sitting there at my cushion today after meditation and the person next to me was like. “Dude, your socks don’t match.” That was my big chance. “I KNOW my socks don’t match!” I said smugly. “Wearing socks that don’t match is TOTALLY zen!” I thought I was pretty cool except the teacher overheard me. “Uhhh, no it’s not.” The teacher/monk said. It totally blasted me, because I’ve been reading about zen for years and years and my whole world view was based on non-matching socks being zen. I don’t even have any pairs of socks left. I just keep singles all mixed together in a big green old plastic pickle bucket. I was suddenly filled with doubt. “So...that...SBD...during...meditation?” I asked. "What about that? Did that help to free us from illusion? Was that....?” “Silent but deadly!” The monk shouted. “That was you? I smelled that and it totally harshed my peace of mind!! That fucking stunk!! You reek!” “Reek of zen?” I hoped. “No.” He said sternly. Then he flipped out on an older woman two cushions down for wearing a wristwatch. Brian 7:33 AM Sunday, January 05, 2003 Sometimes I go too far. This Christmas I was at my parent’s, sitting in the living room with some relatives, and during a lull in the conversation somebody asked me how training my cat to use the toilet was going. “Fine!” I told them, “Mr. Kitty just has a tendency to forget to flush.” “Your cat really uses the toilet?” Another relative asked me. “Yep.” “Can cats really use a human toilet? It seems like a toilet seat. . . well, it just wouldn’t work for a cat,” a different relative told me. “Well, it may be true that toilet seats were designed for humans and not for cats.” I agreed. Then I shouted, “All I know is that Mr. Kitty ends up getting less poop on the toilet seat than I do!!” Among my gathered relatives there were some quickly controlled stunned faces and looks of disgust as well as some nervous laughter and attempts to change the subject. That’s when I knew: I had gone too far. Brian 10:57 PM Friday, January 03, 2003 Through intra-office mail today, as a part of office service’s wellness program, I received a copy of “Vitality” magazine. I brought it with me so that I could make fun of it to myself on the L ride home. The feature article is a piece laying out a polite and gentle method for telling your spouse that he or she is becoming morbidly obese, they’ve titled it, “Help Your Mate to Stay Healthy.” There’s also an article on how to suck your boss’s ass, titled “Evaluate Your Year at Work,” and a calorie guide to the menu at Burrito John’s. Listen, “Vitality Magazine,” I’ve been to Burrito John’s and watching a dude with a rusty thumbtack pushed through his ear chop the ears off of a live alley cat in the back room provided me with all the guidance I ever need to have about the restaurant. I mean, thanks for the magazine, office services, but I can’t help but think that if they were REALLY interested in my wellness then somebody should probably stop me after my third morning cup of syrupy-thick black coffee from the urn in the kitchenette across the hall from my office. Because after five or so cups of the stuff my dopamine levels are so skewed that my heart rate speeds up and my mouth goes dry and I get all paranoid delusional and begin seeing a “mean face” on everybody who walks past my office. Most mornings I’m forced to retreat to under my desk where I spend my late mornings weeping uncontrollably. And if office services is going to do something about it, they better do it quick. My knees are always all dirty from underneath my desk and the woman in the next office is getting tired of me asking her, “can you tell that I’ve been crying?” as I scamper off to afternoon conferences with a pen and yellow legal pad of paper. And then there’s that guy who takes the really stinky dumps in the bathroom. That CAN’T be good for my wellness. I think it would be funny if the guy who takes stinky dumps in the bathroom shouted “suffer my wrath!!” whenever he heard somebody entering the bathroom. If he had a suggestion box on his stall I would write that on a comment card. Brian 12:23 AM Wednesday, January 01, 2003 I’ve played Monopoly for years and years in kitchens and across coffee tables with both friends and family but it wasn’t until a game this last Christmas that I realized what a subversive and anti-capitalistic board game Monopoly really is. First of all, it’s a board game patterned after the economic development of the United States and the WHOLE PREMISE of the game is that there will be one winner with all the property and a lot of losers with nothing, and sure enough, that’s how the game always seems to work out. I mean, sure, everything starts great, there’s a whole board full of resources and everything imaginable is for sale and affordable. Everybody’s got a bunch of printed money and each player just rolls around the board, collecting bank error proceeds, beauty contest winnings, and warranty deeds from the county recorder for various real estate. The top hat (aristocracy), battleship (military), and even the thimble and iron (representing the working class) can coexist peacefully in times like this. It’s the land of opportunity! But this idyllic period is fleeting. Before long houses begin to be built, railroads consolidate and freight rates increase, and then the first shiny new red hotels appear. It becomes hard to find a place to land on the board where you don’t have to pay five hundred dollars or more. Through the fate of dice rolls more than anything else, some pieces own more property than others. (Although if a player owns a sufficient amount of property, by aggressively leveraging property at the right ratio during a bull phase of the game and purchasing development at a faster rate than other players that player can garner major economic advantages.) For the most part, as pieces progress around the board the law of averages transfers the property from the players with less to the players with more. Before long the poorer players are forced to hock their houses for half of what they paid for them and participate in degrading unbalanced trades of their property to discharge the crushing debts they owe to their creditors. These players, washed up on the rocks of economic desperation, are forced to trade their self-respect to pay even the most meager electric company bill. While the richer players control the income stream from rows of hotels built upon the blue, green, and yellow properties, all the poorer players can do is work their lives away, rolling the dice and circumnavigating the board. But what they earn from passing Go isn’t a living wage. $200 won’t even pay for a night’s stay at Baltic Avenue, not after a hotel has been built upon it. The poor players are eventually forced to give up their stake in the game and drop out. The middle class players think they have it great, what with their three houses on Oriental Ave. at this stage of the game. They vote conservatively in board policy decisions but before long the middle class players find that their own wealth has been appropriated by the richer players. They are forced to stay in flop houses on Mediterranean before they too are eventually forced out of the game. It happens over and over again, its always the same old story but for higher and higher dollar figures until there’s only one player left. One winner and a bunch of losers. But consider even the “winner.” He or she owns a board full of housing developments and hotels, but, inevitably, there comes a time when the thrill of acquiring another railroad or erecting a hotel fades, the green plastic housing developments no longer shine so brightly, and even a pile of “get out of jail free” cards can’t help the player to escape the realization that he or she is sitting at the board alone and everybody else is in another room, having fun and drinking beer without him or her. There’s got to be another way to win at Monopoly where there aren’t so many losers, and I’m looking forward to playing again and trying to discover it. Brian 2:15 PM

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House of Noh!

Monday, January 27, 2003

I almost didn’t make it home in time tonight for “Diagnosis Murder” on T.V.. Mr. Kitty gets cranky if he misses the beginning. Nowadays I’m at work during “Miracle Pets” and Mr. Kitty and I have seen all the episodes ever made anyway so “Diagnosis Murder” has become Mr. Kitty’s and my new favorite television program. It’s about this old guy with a white mustache who is a doctor and who also solves murders in his spare time - Diagnosis Murder, get it? Like, the DOCTOR is DIAGNOSING MURDERS! Mr. Kitty thinks the title is VERY clever. It’s almost as catchy as that dating show “Elimidate.” I elimidate all day long, and not just in the bathroom. When I come back to my desk at work and the coffee in my styrofoam cup is all cold, instead of just pouring it down the sink, I “elimidate” it. And just before I get off the L at my stop I tell the guy sitting next to me wearing the three old coats and carrying the duffel-bag packed with mangled 2 liter bottles full of cloudy yellow fluid, “Well, it’s been a great date so far. This was a really, really difficult decision for me to make. I just think that we are looking for different things right now and we didn’t seem to have a connection... I’m going to have to elimidate you, piss-bottle collection man.” Oh yeah, but back to Diagnosis Murder. I can’t help but think that perhaps Mr. Kitty and I aren’t the intended demographic. The commercials during the show advertise things like denture powder and some sort of device that seems to make peeing in your pants consequence-free. Mr. Kitty NEVER pees in his pants. I do so only infrequently, like when Mr. Kitty sings Def Leppard songs with new funny lyrics and it makes me laugh really hard and I happen to be wearing pants. I only have one reservation about Diagnosis Murder, sometimes that white-mustached Doctor Sloan gets a little too smug, especially just before he solves a murder. If Doctor Sloan diagnosed a murder around me in real life I think I’d punch him in the face and then shout, “Ralph Nader for President!!” really loudly.

Brian 11:14 PM

Wednesday, January 22, 2003

I had my third Zen class last night. The monk/teacher isn’t a native speaker of English and he’s kind of hard to understand at times. But so far he hasn’t hit me with a stick while I’m sitting there with my eyes closed, which I understood to be a major tenet of Zen practice, so I’m not complaining. I also sit on a cushion in back, and that compounds my monk comprehension problem. For instance, When the Monk was describing the meditating equipment I heard him say that our cushions are stuffed with “Deepak Chopra,” and that can’t be right. Later during the class the Monk showed us a variety of kneeling postures. The monk described one as having the benefit of “being good for hot summer weather because it closes the anus and thus helps one to feel cool.” The monk couldn’t have just said that! I wondered to myself. I couldn’t get it out of my mind, did that Monk really say that? It was my biggest Zen meditation challenge yet. I’ve made a new friend too. He’s this Russian Immigrant guy who rides the L in the same direction away from the temple as me. Based on our conversation on the train, I take it that he’s becoming disenchanted with our Zen practice. “It just doesn’t seem practical!” He complained. “That’s right!” I said gleefully. “I mean, it just doesn’t make any sense!!” He shouted. “Exactly!” I happily responded. The whole time during this conversation I was thinking to myself, Dude, I’m WAY more Zen than this Russian guy! Score one Zen point for me! Later, to make conversation, he asked me how I was liking this frigidly cold Chicago weather. “It sucks.” I told him. “How about you?” I asked. “Well, according to the teachings,” he spat bitterly, “we’re supposed to be enjoying it!” Touche, Russian guy! Score one Zen point for you!

Brian 11:41 PM

Wednesday, January 15, 2003

I had my second zen lesson class last night. The zen started as soon as I entered the temple. In the coat room where we have to take our shoes off there’s a sign that reads “not responsible for lost or stolen items!” That’s like, SO zen. At first I questioned myself for taking zen lessons, I mean, paying an amount of money so that I could just sit there in silence and all. But that was my pre-zen self, now I’m totally into zen lessons. I was sitting there at my cushion today after meditation and the person next to me was like. “Dude, your socks don’t match.” That was my big chance. “I KNOW my socks don’t match!” I said smugly. “Wearing socks that don’t match is TOTALLY zen!” I thought I was pretty cool except the teacher overheard me. “Uhhh, no it’s not.” The teacher/monk said. It totally blasted me, because I’ve been reading about zen for years and years and my whole world view was based on non-matching socks being zen. I don’t even have any pairs of socks left. I just keep singles all mixed together in a big green old plastic pickle bucket. I was suddenly filled with doubt. “So...that...SBD...during...meditation?” I asked. "What about that? Did that help to free us from illusion? Was that....?” “Silent but deadly!” The monk shouted. “That was you? I smelled that and it totally harshed my peace of mind!! That fucking stunk!! You reek!” “Reek of zen?” I hoped. “No.” He said sternly. Then he flipped out on an older woman two cushions down for wearing a wristwatch.

Brian 7:33 AM

Sunday, January 05, 2003

Sometimes I go too far. This Christmas I was at my parent’s, sitting in the living room with some relatives, and during a lull in the conversation somebody asked me how training my cat to use the toilet was going. “Fine!” I told them, “Mr. Kitty just has a tendency to forget to flush.” “Your cat really uses the toilet?” Another relative asked me. “Yep.” “Can cats really use a human toilet? It seems like a toilet seat. . . well, it just wouldn’t work for a cat,” a different relative told me. “Well, it may be true that toilet seats were designed for humans and not for cats.” I agreed. Then I shouted, “All I know is that Mr. Kitty ends up getting less poop on the toilet seat than I do!!” Among my gathered relatives there were some quickly controlled stunned faces and looks of disgust as well as some nervous laughter and attempts to change the subject. That’s when I knew: I had gone too far.

Brian 10:57 PM

Friday, January 03, 2003

Through intra-office mail today, as a part of office service’s wellness program, I received a copy of “Vitality” magazine. I brought it with me so that I could make fun of it to myself on the L ride home. The feature article is a piece laying out a polite and gentle method for telling your spouse that he or she is becoming morbidly obese, they’ve titled it, “Help Your Mate to Stay Healthy.” There’s also an article on how to suck your boss’s ass, titled “Evaluate Your Year at Work,” and a calorie guide to the menu at Burrito John’s. Listen, “Vitality Magazine,” I’ve been to Burrito John’s and watching a dude with a rusty thumbtack pushed through his ear chop the ears off of a live alley cat in the back room provided me with all the guidance I ever need to have about the restaurant. I mean, thanks for the magazine, office services, but I can’t help but think that if they were REALLY interested in my wellness then somebody should probably stop me after my third morning cup of syrupy-thick black coffee from the urn in the kitchenette across the hall from my office. Because after five or so cups of the stuff my dopamine levels are so skewed that my heart rate speeds up and my mouth goes dry and I get all paranoid delusional and begin seeing a “mean face” on everybody who walks past my office. Most mornings I’m forced to retreat to under my desk where I spend my late mornings weeping uncontrollably. And if office services is going to do something about it, they better do it quick. My knees are always all dirty from underneath my desk and the woman in the next office is getting tired of me asking her, “can you tell that I’ve been crying?” as I scamper off to afternoon conferences with a pen and yellow legal pad of paper. And then there’s that guy who takes the really stinky dumps in the bathroom. That CAN’T be good for my wellness. I think it would be funny if the guy who takes stinky dumps in the bathroom shouted “suffer my wrath!!” whenever he heard somebody entering the bathroom. If he had a suggestion box on his stall I would write that on a comment card.

Brian 12:23 AM

Wednesday, January 01, 2003

I’ve played Monopoly for years and years in kitchens and across coffee tables with both friends and family but it wasn’t until a game this last Christmas that I realized what a subversive and anti-capitalistic board game Monopoly really is. First of all, it’s a board game patterned after the economic development of the United States and the WHOLE PREMISE of the game is that there will be one winner with all the property and a lot of losers with nothing, and sure enough, that’s how the game always seems to work out. I mean, sure, everything starts great, there’s a whole board full of resources and everything imaginable is for sale and affordable. Everybody’s got a bunch of printed money and each player just rolls around the board, collecting bank error proceeds, beauty contest winnings, and warranty deeds from the county recorder for various real estate. The top hat (aristocracy), battleship (military), and even the thimble and iron (representing the working class) can coexist peacefully in times like this. It’s the land of opportunity! But this idyllic period is fleeting. Before long houses begin to be built, railroads consolidate and freight rates increase, and then the first shiny new red hotels appear. It becomes hard to find a place to land on the board where you don’t have to pay five hundred dollars or more. Through the fate of dice rolls more than anything else, some pieces own more property than others. (Although if a player owns a sufficient amount of property, by aggressively leveraging property at the right ratio during a bull phase of the game and purchasing development at a faster rate than other players that player can garner major economic advantages.) For the most part, as pieces progress around the board the law of averages transfers the property from the players with less to the players with more. Before long the poorer players are forced to hock their houses for half of what they paid for them and participate in degrading unbalanced trades of their property to discharge the crushing debts they owe to their creditors. These players, washed up on the rocks of economic desperation, are forced to trade their self-respect to pay even the most meager electric company bill. While the richer players control the income stream from rows of hotels built upon the blue, green, and yellow properties, all the poorer players can do is work their lives away, rolling the dice and circumnavigating the board. But what they earn from passing Go isn’t a living wage. $200 won’t even pay for a night’s stay at Baltic Avenue, not after a hotel has been built upon it. The poor players are eventually forced to give up their stake in the game and drop out. The middle class players think they have it great, what with their three houses on Oriental Ave. at this stage of the game. They vote conservatively in board policy decisions but before long the middle class players find that their own wealth has been appropriated by the richer players. They are forced to stay in flop houses on Mediterranean before they too are eventually forced out of the game. It happens over and over again, its always the same old story but for higher and higher dollar figures until there’s only one player left. One winner and a bunch of losers. But consider even the “winner.” He or she owns a board full of housing developments and hotels, but, inevitably, there comes a time when the thrill of acquiring another railroad or erecting a hotel fades, the green plastic housing developments no longer shine so brightly, and even a pile of “get out of jail free” cards can’t help the player to escape the realization that he or she is sitting at the board alone and everybody else is in another room, having fun and drinking beer without him or her. There’s got to be another way to win at Monopoly where there aren’t so many losers, and I’m looking forward to playing again and trying to discover it.

Brian 2:15 PM

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