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. 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And I think that everybody involved was also embarrassed (even though nobody but me is to blame for what I’m about to tell you) because for all these years the people who knew about this have never ever mentioned this to me. For ten years this horrid act has been veiled with impenetrable silence. But now, after all these years, here it is, here is my shameful act: One time, during a really boring portion of a meeting in college, I picked a booger out of my nose and flicked it, and the booger accidentally landed on, and stuck to, my friend Matt G.’s knee, who was sitting about six feet away from me. It’s not that I pick my nose a lot. Okay. That’s a lie. I pick my nose, like, all the time. I’ve taken some heat for it throughout the years. But I refuse to conform. I mean, who’s the uncouth animal, somebody with a whistle clean nose who might happen to do a little picking from time to time to keep it that way, or some uptight prude on a moral high-horse with a snoz full of crust? You tell me! And all that crap people say about twisting up a corner of a Kleenex to probe boogers out as an alternative to bare-knuckle nose picking, and all those people who say they don’t get boogers to pick in the first place, - that’s all a bunch of bullshit. It’s BULLSHIT! Not being able to put one’s finger up one’s nose is a stupid and backward societal convention. And I, frankly, do not have time for a bunch of stupid rules made up by a bunch of dumb old puritans. Other cultures have a more healthy attitude toward fingers and nostrils. One of my friends who has been to Japan told me that she was on a bus in Japan and she saw a guy gently put his finger in his girlfriend’s nose. My friend told me that it was a very casual thing and nobody got all bent out of shape about it. That’s a sign of a healthy culture, if you ask me. However, booger flicking is like peeing through the window screen out of your dorm room window in college - while both activities are good ideas and healthy forms of self expression, if repeated too many times, they can eventually become problematic. Such was the case for me with booger flicking, actually, in addition to the peeing out through the window screen thing. So here’s how my booger flicking all began. As all the nose-pickers out there are aware and as all the people who aren’t FUCKING LYING about not picking their noses will admit to, the end of a successful nose picking adventure often finds a booger stuck to the ends of one’s finger. It all depends on the booger, of course, but oftentimes you will discover that you have harvested an incredibly sticky booger. These are difficult to rid yourself of, because if you try to dislodge it with your other hand, it will stick to that hand, and then when you try to dislodge it with your picking hand it will stick to that hand, and so forth. Boogers can be really quite magnificent objects in that respect. (I’m sure there’s at least a patent or two in boogers, somewhere.) Up until about fourth grade, my only way of handling these sticky boogers was to wipe them off, like on a tree, or on the sidewalk, or on the side of my desk at school, or on my math ditto or something. (I DID NOT eat them!) But in fourth grade, and I think it was during recess, I made a leap in booger disposal technology when some older kids pushed me down and flicked their boogers at me. A true scientist at that age, I wasn’t so interested in the warfare utility of such a technology, I was fascinated with the idea itself – that a booger, even a really sticky one, could be flicked and no wiping would be required. It took me some time (a matter of months) to reverse engineer the booger flick, not to mention developing the physical coordination involved. But then the technology of the booger flick was mine. Prior to my discovery, when I used to boogerwipe, sometimes later I’d find that booger again and be like, “Gross! A booger! I hope it’s mine!” But with the flick, booger disposal was consequence free, or at least so I thought. I don’t even really remember anything about that actual harvest of the booger that I flicked onto Matt G.’s knee. And to tell the truth, I really can’t imagine sitting there in a college meeting with all my peers, rooting around in my nose. But I suppose that I did. When I think back about being in college, I did all sorts of things that sort of surprise me now, when I think back and remember them. The standing on my desk late at night with a dorm room full of mixed company behind me and peeing out through the window screen is just one example. The first thing I remember about flicking a booger onto Matt G.’s knee was me, sitting on an old couch in a big room full of my peers, with a booger stuck to the edge of my finger. We were sitting around in a big open circle, and there was plenty of safe flicking backdrop, at least that’s what I thought. And so I flicked it. But something went terribly wrong. I knew it as soon as the booger had left my finger, but there was no bringing it back. I watched it all happen, helpless to do anything to stop it. The booger hooked to the right. After the flick it was like everything happened in slow motion. I remember seeing the booger tumble asymmetrically through the air, liquid mucus tail twirling around the crusty core while gyroscopic forces flattened the booger along the plane of the tumble. Something about the shape of the booger, or air currents in the room, kept pulling it to the right. Then it struck the knee of Matt G., whose misfortune it was to be wearing shorts. Matt G. must have felt the impact, because he looked down right away and saw the booger there. First he got a horrible look on his face and looked at me. I just shrugged, like, “wha’ happed?” Then Matt G.’s look of shock and disgust actually relaxed a little. I think that he was almost able to convince himself that this hadn’t just happened. But then he looked back at his knee, and saw that, in fact, the booger that I had flicked had stuck to his knee. He didn’t know how to react. He obviously was not in possession of booger flicking technology, but he did seem advanced enough to realized that if he tried it wipe the booger off of his knee with his hand, it would stick to his hand, and so he dared not touch it. So he just sat there in shock, and stared at it. Then he got up in the middle of the meeting (which there were strict rules against doing, you know) and ran out of the room. I’m not sure exactly how he removed the booger, but I think he went and got a Kleenex or some toilet paper or utilized some other unsophisticated approach to removing the booger from his knee. Despite my callous, “wha’ happed?” when I saw how deeply Matt G. had been affected by the booger I felt pretty bad. My booger flicking was in no way retaliatory for the previous evening during which Matt G. had made me drink a bunch of shots of gin that had resulted in my breaking a VCR and puking hotdogs into the bushes beside the front porch until first light. And also, part of me realized, deep down I think, that flicking boogers onto people is a pretty atrocious breach of etiquette. So I spent the rest of the meeting shouting to Matt in a stage whisper. “Matt! I’m sorry! Matt! Hey Matt! Stop ignoring me! Hey Matt! I’m sorry! I’m sorry that I flicked a booger onto your knee!” Matt G. spent the rest of the meeting ignoring me and not looking at me. Nowadays, possessing adult experience, wisdom and maturity, I usually just wipe my boogers on paper towels, or napkins if those are handy. Or sometimes I wipe them on the side of my desk at work. Or I pull up my pants and wipe them on the cuff of my socks. Or I wipe them on seemingly innocuous memos that I put in manila envelopes and intra-office mail to my friend Joe A. at work. But I don’t flick my boogers, not anymore. I’m too well-aware of the potential consequences. Those fancy-free youthful days of booger-flicking are behind me now. By the way, the secret to peeing out through window screens is to put yourself really close to the screen. That way you get less splash-back. Depending on the arrangement of your room and how you have your furniture placed, getting close to the window screen might involve climbing up and standing on your desk or other furniture. Then you have to sort of lean toward the window, which may involve putting yourself in a precarious position. This may require safety gear to ensure that you don’t accidentally lose your balance and tumble out the window in the middle of your whiz, especially if you’re peeing out of a window a few floors up. If you aren’t willing to put safety first, well, then you just aren’t ready to pee out through window screens, my friend. Brian 3:43 PM Monday, March 15, 2004 These last few months have been dark times for me. In fact, I was just thinking about this a few days ago, and it’s not uncommon for the last civil act or act of human kindness I witness in a day to occur at the bus stop in the morning. Usually the kind acts I see performed there are by this old retired lady who often waits at the bus stop with myself and the other people who commute from our neighborhood. I know that the old lady is retired because she’s got an I.D. card in a wallet with a translucent window that she wears around her neck in which she keeps her CTA card. The I.D. card that shows through the window says “Retired Person” and there’s a picture. I checked the picture too, once, and it’s that little old lady alright (or a clever forgery). Here is an example of the old lady’s kind acts: while the rest of us huddle in the bus stop shelter, the old lady stands out by the curb, waiting for the 80 or x80, and when she sees it coming from down Irving she turns around and tells us. She’s always especially concerned about the people at the bus stop who aren’t paying attention, like if they are reading or something, and she always makes a special effort to make sure that they are aware of the bus’s approach, lest they miss it. Sometimes she mistakes the 9 for an 80 when she sees a bus in the distance down Irving and sounds a false alarm. When the 9 gets closer she always shakes her fist at it and curses the 9 as it roars by and then explains her mistake to us. “It’s not an 80, it’s a 9! A motherfucking 9!” she turns and tells us. Oh! And here’s another kind thing that she did. About a month ago after a big snow, a car drove too close to the curb and splashed a bunch of melted sooty and road-salty slush and snow all over the people waiting for the bus. Everybody was upset, of course, but none quite so much as the old lady, even though no slush had been splashed onto her. She even unwrapped her scarf and helped a woman clean the slush off of her pantyhose! The old lady didn’t help clean any of the slush off of me, but that’s okay, I don’t blame her because about a week before that a car had splashed some slush on me and she had tried clean it off me by rubbing my shins with her scarf without asking my permission first and so I kicked her (but not really hard, and not in the face – I’m no ogre). So after the bus stop, my days pretty much suck and are bereft of any human kindness of any sort. And like I mentioned, these have been dark and trying times for me. But the good news is that every week I’m getting a little closer to realizing a lifelong goal - being terminated from my place of employment for overuse of the phrase, “Well, excuuuUUUUuuse me!!” For example: Person in Charge: What’s this red stain on these very important documents? Me: You mean the enchilada sauce stain? Person in Charge: (gesturing with very important documents) This is enchilada sauce? Me: (looking at very important documents) Oh! No, this stain is ketchup. Person in Charge: I thought we had spoken about eating while working. Me: Well, excuuuUUUUuuse me! I was hungry and wanted a snack. Person in Charge: There’s no need to get defensive! Me: Well, excuuuUUUUuuuse my defensive attitude!” Person in Charge: Look, this shouting is really quite inappropriate… Me: Well, excuuuUUUUuuuse my inappropriate workplace conduct! Person in Charge: So there’s an enchilada sauce stain somewhere too? Me: Well, excuuuUUUUuuuse my affinity for Mexican food! Person in Charge: Look, let me give you some mentoring advice, I think that you should know that people have begun talking about you and they say that you accept criticism poorly. Shouting “excuse me!” every time somebody offers some criticism is not acceptable behavior. Me: I don’t shout, “excuse me!” It’s “Well, excuuuUUUUuuuse me!” I shout, “Well, excuuuUUUUuuuse me!” Person in Charge: Whatever. Me: Yes, it’s “Well excuuuUUUUuuuse me!” and please don’t give my tragic catch phrase short shrift. Thank you in advance. Brian 12:14 AM

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House of Noh!

Saturday, March 20, 2004

Okay, so here it is. I think that I’m finally ready to talk about this now. This is something incredibly shameful from my distant and buried past, but I think it’s time to clear the air, and it’s time to type my soul bare of this to you, my gentle reader. What I’m about to confess to you… it’s something that happened…well, it happened almost an entire decade ago. For years I was too ashamed to even think about it, much less mention it. And I think that everybody involved was also embarrassed (even though nobody but me is to blame for what I’m about to tell you) because for all these years the people who knew about this have never ever mentioned this to me. For ten years this horrid act has been veiled with impenetrable silence. But now, after all these years, here it is, here is my shameful act: One time, during a really boring portion of a meeting in college, I picked a booger out of my nose and flicked it, and the booger accidentally landed on, and stuck to, my friend Matt G.’s knee, who was sitting about six feet away from me. It’s not that I pick my nose a lot. Okay. That’s a lie. I pick my nose, like, all the time. I’ve taken some heat for it throughout the years. But I refuse to conform. I mean, who’s the uncouth animal, somebody with a whistle clean nose who might happen to do a little picking from time to time to keep it that way, or some uptight prude on a moral high-horse with a snoz full of crust? You tell me! And all that crap people say about twisting up a corner of a Kleenex to probe boogers out as an alternative to bare-knuckle nose picking, and all those people who say they don’t get boogers to pick in the first place, - that’s all a bunch of bullshit. It’s BULLSHIT! Not being able to put one’s finger up one’s nose is a stupid and backward societal convention. And I, frankly, do not have time for a bunch of stupid rules made up by a bunch of dumb old puritans. Other cultures have a more healthy attitude toward fingers and nostrils. One of my friends who has been to Japan told me that she was on a bus in Japan and she saw a guy gently put his finger in his girlfriend’s nose. My friend told me that it was a very casual thing and nobody got all bent out of shape about it. That’s a sign of a healthy culture, if you ask me. However, booger flicking is like peeing through the window screen out of your dorm room window in college - while both activities are good ideas and healthy forms of self expression, if repeated too many times, they can eventually become problematic. Such was the case for me with booger flicking, actually, in addition to the peeing out through the window screen thing. So here’s how my booger flicking all began. As all the nose-pickers out there are aware and as all the people who aren’t FUCKING LYING about not picking their noses will admit to, the end of a successful nose picking adventure often finds a booger stuck to the ends of one’s finger. It all depends on the booger, of course, but oftentimes you will discover that you have harvested an incredibly sticky booger. These are difficult to rid yourself of, because if you try to dislodge it with your other hand, it will stick to that hand, and then when you try to dislodge it with your picking hand it will stick to that hand, and so forth. Boogers can be really quite magnificent objects in that respect. (I’m sure there’s at least a patent or two in boogers, somewhere.) Up until about fourth grade, my only way of handling these sticky boogers was to wipe them off, like on a tree, or on the sidewalk, or on the side of my desk at school, or on my math ditto or something. (I DID NOT eat them!) But in fourth grade, and I think it was during recess, I made a leap in booger disposal technology when some older kids pushed me down and flicked their boogers at me. A true scientist at that age, I wasn’t so interested in the warfare utility of such a technology, I was fascinated with the idea itself – that a booger, even a really sticky one, could be flicked and no wiping would be required. It took me some time (a matter of months) to reverse engineer the booger flick, not to mention developing the physical coordination involved. But then the technology of the booger flick was mine. Prior to my discovery, when I used to boogerwipe, sometimes later I’d find that booger again and be like, “Gross! A booger! I hope it’s mine!” But with the flick, booger disposal was consequence free, or at least so I thought. I don’t even really remember anything about that actual harvest of the booger that I flicked onto Matt G.’s knee. And to tell the truth, I really can’t imagine sitting there in a college meeting with all my peers, rooting around in my nose. But I suppose that I did. When I think back about being in college, I did all sorts of things that sort of surprise me now, when I think back and remember them. The standing on my desk late at night with a dorm room full of mixed company behind me and peeing out through the window screen is just one example. The first thing I remember about flicking a booger onto Matt G.’s knee was me, sitting on an old couch in a big room full of my peers, with a booger stuck to the edge of my finger. We were sitting around in a big open circle, and there was plenty of safe flicking backdrop, at least that’s what I thought. And so I flicked it. But something went terribly wrong. I knew it as soon as the booger had left my finger, but there was no bringing it back. I watched it all happen, helpless to do anything to stop it. The booger hooked to the right. After the flick it was like everything happened in slow motion. I remember seeing the booger tumble asymmetrically through the air, liquid mucus tail twirling around the crusty core while gyroscopic forces flattened the booger along the plane of the tumble. Something about the shape of the booger, or air currents in the room, kept pulling it to the right. Then it struck the knee of Matt G., whose misfortune it was to be wearing shorts. Matt G. must have felt the impact, because he looked down right away and saw the booger there. First he got a horrible look on his face and looked at me. I just shrugged, like, “wha’ happed?” Then Matt G.’s look of shock and disgust actually relaxed a little. I think that he was almost able to convince himself that this hadn’t just happened. But then he looked back at his knee, and saw that, in fact, the booger that I had flicked had stuck to his knee. He didn’t know how to react. He obviously was not in possession of booger flicking technology, but he did seem advanced enough to realized that if he tried it wipe the booger off of his knee with his hand, it would stick to his hand, and so he dared not touch it. So he just sat there in shock, and stared at it. Then he got up in the middle of the meeting (which there were strict rules against doing, you know) and ran out of the room. I’m not sure exactly how he removed the booger, but I think he went and got a Kleenex or some toilet paper or utilized some other unsophisticated approach to removing the booger from his knee. Despite my callous, “wha’ happed?” when I saw how deeply Matt G. had been affected by the booger I felt pretty bad. My booger flicking was in no way retaliatory for the previous evening during which Matt G. had made me drink a bunch of shots of gin that had resulted in my breaking a VCR and puking hotdogs into the bushes beside the front porch until first light. And also, part of me realized, deep down I think, that flicking boogers onto people is a pretty atrocious breach of etiquette. So I spent the rest of the meeting shouting to Matt in a stage whisper. “Matt! I’m sorry! Matt! Hey Matt! Stop ignoring me! Hey Matt! I’m sorry! I’m sorry that I flicked a booger onto your knee!” Matt G. spent the rest of the meeting ignoring me and not looking at me. Nowadays, possessing adult experience, wisdom and maturity, I usually just wipe my boogers on paper towels, or napkins if those are handy. Or sometimes I wipe them on the side of my desk at work. Or I pull up my pants and wipe them on the cuff of my socks. Or I wipe them on seemingly innocuous memos that I put in manila envelopes and intra-office mail to my friend Joe A. at work. But I don’t flick my boogers, not anymore. I’m too well-aware of the potential consequences. Those fancy-free youthful days of booger-flicking are behind me now. By the way, the secret to peeing out through window screens is to put yourself really close to the screen. That way you get less splash-back. Depending on the arrangement of your room and how you have your furniture placed, getting close to the window screen might involve climbing up and standing on your desk or other furniture. Then you have to sort of lean toward the window, which may involve putting yourself in a precarious position. This may require safety gear to ensure that you don’t accidentally lose your balance and tumble out the window in the middle of your whiz, especially if you’re peeing out of a window a few floors up. If you aren’t willing to put safety first, well, then you just aren’t ready to pee out through window screens, my friend.

Brian 3:43 PM

Monday, March 15, 2004

These last few months have been dark times for me. In fact, I was just thinking about this a few days ago, and it’s not uncommon for the last civil act or act of human kindness I witness in a day to occur at the bus stop in the morning. Usually the kind acts I see performed there are by this old retired lady who often waits at the bus stop with myself and the other people who commute from our neighborhood. I know that the old lady is retired because she’s got an I.D. card in a wallet with a translucent window that she wears around her neck in which she keeps her CTA card. The I.D. card that shows through the window says “Retired Person” and there’s a picture. I checked the picture too, once, and it’s that little old lady alright (or a clever forgery). Here is an example of the old lady’s kind acts: while the rest of us huddle in the bus stop shelter, the old lady stands out by the curb, waiting for the 80 or x80, and when she sees it coming from down Irving she turns around and tells us. She’s always especially concerned about the people at the bus stop who aren’t paying attention, like if they are reading or something, and she always makes a special effort to make sure that they are aware of the bus’s approach, lest they miss it. Sometimes she mistakes the 9 for an 80 when she sees a bus in the distance down Irving and sounds a false alarm. When the 9 gets closer she always shakes her fist at it and curses the 9 as it roars by and then explains her mistake to us. “It’s not an 80, it’s a 9! A motherfucking 9!” she turns and tells us. Oh! And here’s another kind thing that she did. About a month ago after a big snow, a car drove too close to the curb and splashed a bunch of melted sooty and road-salty slush and snow all over the people waiting for the bus. Everybody was upset, of course, but none quite so much as the old lady, even though no slush had been splashed onto her. She even unwrapped her scarf and helped a woman clean the slush off of her pantyhose! The old lady didn’t help clean any of the slush off of me, but that’s okay, I don’t blame her because about a week before that a car had splashed some slush on me and she had tried clean it off me by rubbing my shins with her scarf without asking my permission first and so I kicked her (but not really hard, and not in the face – I’m no ogre). So after the bus stop, my days pretty much suck and are bereft of any human kindness of any sort. And like I mentioned, these have been dark and trying times for me. But the good news is that every week I’m getting a little closer to realizing a lifelong goal - being terminated from my place of employment for overuse of the phrase, “Well, excuuuUUUUuuse me!!” For example: Person in Charge: What’s this red stain on these very important documents? Me: You mean the enchilada sauce stain? Person in Charge: (gesturing with very important documents) This is enchilada sauce? Me: (looking at very important documents) Oh! No, this stain is ketchup. Person in Charge: I thought we had spoken about eating while working. Me: Well, excuuuUUUUuuse me! I was hungry and wanted a snack. Person in Charge: There’s no need to get defensive! Me: Well, excuuuUUUUuuuse my defensive attitude!” Person in Charge: Look, this shouting is really quite inappropriate… Me: Well, excuuuUUUUuuuse my inappropriate workplace conduct! Person in Charge: So there’s an enchilada sauce stain somewhere too? Me: Well, excuuuUUUUuuuse my affinity for Mexican food! Person in Charge: Look, let me give you some mentoring advice, I think that you should know that people have begun talking about you and they say that you accept criticism poorly. Shouting “excuse me!” every time somebody offers some criticism is not acceptable behavior. Me: I don’t shout, “excuse me!” It’s “Well, excuuuUUUUuuuse me!” I shout, “Well, excuuuUUUUuuuse me!” Person in Charge: Whatever. Me: Yes, it’s “Well excuuuUUUUuuuse me!” and please don’t give my tragic catch phrase short shrift. Thank you in advance.

Brian 12:14 AM

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Saturday, March 20, 2004

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