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 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 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 The Terrarium Slipperily Tofu Hut Stereo Gum Links Fixed Gear Gallery Get Crafty This is Grand Featherproof Books Gapers Block Chicago Bird Watching Thieves Jargon	No one must know my terrible secret... House of Noh! Thursday, June 29, 2006 I'm also an amateur futurist. You probably knew this. Amateur futurist, which means I'm not so much like professional futurist William Gibson, who coined the term "Cyberspace," even before Al Gore invented the internet. And I'm not even like Neil Stephenson, who (otherwise a great author) came up with a totally derivative idea called (the metaverse?). Those guys are science fiction authors. - oh OH! And here's two more different kinds of professional futurists, but they don't make money off their particular predictions, rather, they make money of periphereal book deals and donations from their television audiences and whatnot: Nostradomaus and that Roberts guy (not Oral Roberts) who both predicted that somewhere, sometime, a storm will "lash" something. The above mentioned are professional futurists. I am an amateur futurist. My futurist predictions are more in line with that guy on the El platform the other day who launched into a desperate portrayal of his own horrific vision of the future for me while I pretty much just did my best to ignore him and keep reading. So I didn't really catch all the particulars of his horrifying prophecy of the future, but I did gather it had something to do with the mysterious dispearance of the semi-colon. This is my prediction for the future: In tens years everybody will have microchips in their brains that allow them to read the MSN homepage, with a real time stock ticker and a direct portal to sign into their hotmail accounts, just by closing their eyes! This will then become the question: how did those microchips get there?* But at this point, will anybody even think to ask it? Or will that questioning part of our brains be occluded by clickable thumb-nail photos of Tyra Banks? P.S. I totally bluffed my way through a sports conversation (something about some sort of NBA basketaball draft?) on the elevator the other day despite knowing absolutely nothing about any sports besides flyfishing and falconry. Here is the secret: you have to politely express cynicism about everything the sports talker says and that will keep him or her going until you reach your floor. * The answer is Ralph Nader and flouride. Brian 7:30 AM (1) comments Saturday, June 24, 2006 I've told you that I don't like public pens, right? In the checkout line at certain grocery stores where they make you sign the screen with their electronic stylus I have to suck it up and pull my sleeve down over my hand to grip the pen. I call that move my public pen protector. Or I wrap some paper towel I carry in my back pocket around my hand before gripping the stylus (similar to the practice of putting a strip of toilet paper down on public toilet seats). But when I'm at a store that uses a paper credit card receipt system I always use my own private pen that I carry with me instead of the public pen that's usually kept at the checkout. This is not a problem if I can pull my own private pen out faster than the cashier can offer me the public pen. Because if I don't already have my private pen in my hand, and the cashier is offering the public pen right there in my face, the cashier inevitably has hurt feelings when I turn down the public pen to take out my own, EVEN IF I explain, "it's not you, I just have this thing about public pens." It happens infrequently but sometimes a cashier's hurt feelings will turn into rage. If there's somebody there for the cashier to roll his or her eyes at, the cashier almost always does that. Sometimes though I look up at the cashier just before I sign the receipt with my private pen and I can tell that the cashier is trying to think up a way to FORCE me to use the public pen. To date, no cashier has ever been able to force me to use the public pen. What could they say? A pen's a pen, right? I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. The only thing I think a cashier could say to make me use the public pen would be to accuse my private pen of having dissapearing ink in it. This, I think, would be a legitamate reason for a store to compel me to sign my name on my credit card receipt with the store's public pen rather than the private pen I carry. If a cashier ever says that to me then I know I'll be beat. I'll just hang my head, put some paper towel in my hand, and take the public pen offered to me. You know those metal turnstiles / slurry makers that you have to go through to get off / out of the platform on some El stations? I saw a woman go through one the other day with her hand raised way up so that she was pushing the bars ahead of her and only making contact with the very top bar. I thought that was a good idea, because what if somebody went through one of those things with barf all over them? Those bars would have barf on them and get barf all over you when you pushed through. I think the top bar has the best chance of being the most barf free. And I don't want to give anybody any ideas here... but seriously, I see people spit in revolving doors all the time. Revolving doors are really very similar to the turnstiles. And it's not just normal spit either, it's the spit of bitter, drunk, socially disenfranchised and that's seriously going to never come out of your dry clean only sweater. Brian 2:16 PM (0) comments Sunday, June 18, 2006 I don't like pizza parties. Does that make me un-American? Even if it makes me into some sort of ill-informed Bolshevik to say it, I'll say it anyway. I don't care. I despise pizza parties. I mean, I like pizza. I just don't office parties built around the arrival and disbursement of pizza. Pizza parties fill me with dread. I don't know why. But anyway it was a nice gesture when T from the main office called to organize a pizza party that included our little office last Friday. Nine times out of ten when that phone rings it's a wrong number. I guess the previous company that had that space, or at least that phone number, was a Talent Agency (called something creepy, like "Herberts and Assocs."). Talent hopefuls are still calling the number. We get at least three calls a day like that there. One time I picked up the phone and a guy said, in a deep, resonant masculine and commanding voice: "HELLO. (pause for return greeting) FROM THE DAWN OF TIME THE LACK OF TALENT FOR NARRATIVE SUCH AS I POSSESS HAS PLAGUED THE DOCUMENTARY MOVIE INDUSTRY!" I was like, "what?" "DO YOU REPRESENT VOICE-OVER ARTISTS?" Then I realized it was a talent agency call so said sorry he had the wrong number and I didn't know what happened to the talent agency. Then another time a guy called up who had a really thick accent. He was talking really fast, and said something like, "something something living monkey?" I was like, what? And then he was like, "something something frozen statue?" I said, what? Then he said, "are you looking for living statute?" So I knew at least then this was a talent agency call. I told him he had the wrong number. Later though I regretted it because it would have been totally cool to have a living statute guy in our office. People would come in and then do a double take and be like, "What's that guy doing just standing there in the corner?" and then we could be like, "he's a living statute, man! Go ahead and wave your hand in front of his eyes or something, he's really good!!" Most of the time when I answer the office phone on these talent agency wrong numbers (normally it's young women) I feel like a really fucked up and capricious Ed McMahon, because no matter what sort of hard luck story I get on the phone, or how talented the caller tells me they are as soon as I pick up the phone, they never get any stars from the judges - I just don't have that authority. So nine times out of ten when the phone rings it's one of the talent agency calls, but late last week I picked up the phone and it was T, calling from the main office to organize our pizza party. T asked who she was speaking to, and I said it was me. Then she asked to speak with L. This was a pattern that repeated itself over the rest of the day as T called repeatedly to iron out plans in the multi-office pizza party she was organizing. It became apparent that T only wanted to talk to L – even though it's not like he outranks either S or I (me). So after the third call in which T insisted she speak with L, S from our office got up from where she usually sits by L and sat down in one of the empty chairs on my side of the room. S announced that she was going to sit on my side of the room from now on. L, who figured the comment was barbed toward him but not fully understanding how, was like, "What? Why are you moving?" That’s when I stood up and pointed to L's side of the room and shouted, "because that side’s for jerks!!" which I thought would be funny but L got really upset. L immediately launched into this speech about how he doesn't care what we think about him where'd he kept saying "I don't care! I don't care what you think! I don't give a rat's ass what you think!!" He said it in a way that was sort of mostly kidding, but maybe a little not kidding, but he said it with enough of a kidding kind of tone so that both S and I (me) couldn't address any hurt feelings he had. Later that day he left early. He was packing up his briefcase and said again how S and I (me) had hurt his feelings. But again he said it like he was just kidding. Kidding or not, it was obvious that he hadn't forgotten it. I felt bad but what could I do? I've had my feelings hurt too, you know. Workplaces are cruel, cruel environments. Brian 4:57 PM (0) comments Thursday, June 08, 2006 If anybody knows any non-lethal squirrel tips then do a brother a favor and shoot me a quick e-mail. I would be asking for both non-lethal and lethal squirrel remedies but this particular squirrel is completely un-killable so even if you know a great way to smoke a bushytail it won't do me any good. This squirrel is like the terminator. He's got a computer chip in his brain. A computer chip that can only be destroyed in an iron smelting furnace. I'd be happy if I could just keep him from digging in my plants. The woman who lives two floors below me gives that little fucker peanuts in a cute little dish. He tears the shit out of the plants on her porch too. I don't know if she's made the connection or not. One time I saw that squirrel run inside through her window. I know! Home invasion! And one time that squirrel backed me up on my porch giving me his look like he was going to bite my ass if I didn't give him a peanut. I didn't have any peanuts and my hand was shaking too hard to fit the key in the lock to my door so I used the hockeystick I keep on my porch to get in his face and he leapt off the porch, glided three floors on outstreched arms, hit the pavement and kept on scampering. Then the next morning I left my place for work. I was walking to the El when I felt a shudder go through my body. I looked over my shoulder and there was that squirrel spying on me all angry from behind a telephone pole. Where my grandma used to live circa when my brother and I called her "Farm Grandma" there were mean dogs that were always running around and so she carried a stick whenever she went outside. I've got no ideas where all these pack-mean feral dogs were coming from, but I saw them sometimes running in the distance together all bunched and tossing the maimed body of one of my grandparents' farm cats between their jaws. My grandpa was like fuck the stick and he carried a gun when he went to the barn. Once time a dog charged him. My grandpa tried to punch the dog away with the muzzle of his gun but the dog bit onto the barrel. My grandpa got freaked and pulled the trigger. My grandma really likes telling that story. I'm just saying that if you think I'm mean for showing that squirrel the hockey stick it was only in self defense and that hockey stick I pulled out of the trash a few months ago is sort of like the stick my grandma used to carry for dogs, except this is the city, you know, so I don't have a farm stick I have a hockey stick. And it's for squirrels. He's a grey squirrel. I think that's the worst kind. I read in a falconry text somewhere that grey squirrels have the toughest hide and strongest jaws, and I guess they're really making a mess of England by chewing into homeowner's eaves and defecating in pub owners pie warmers or something. The other day I was keying into my back door on my porch and again I felt that shudder run through my body. I looked up over my shoulder and that same squirrel was in his nest up in the rafters of my porch. He had only just his fatty little face pushed out between two boards. All I could see was his face and I thought he was some kind of soft grey fungus at first. The squirrel was staring at me silently. When he saw that I saw him, he pulled his face back into his nest quick. It shows he's no innocent woodland creature. First, why would a squirrel want to spy on me in the first place? And second, he was aware that he was spying covertly, or why would he otherwise dart his head back in his nest as soon as I saw him there? I think this is how samaurais felt when they first became aware they were being hunted by ninjas. Brian 9:47 PM (8) comments

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House of Noh!

Thursday, June 29, 2006

I'm also an amateur futurist. You probably knew this. Amateur futurist, which means I'm not so much like professional futurist William Gibson, who coined the term "Cyberspace," even before Al Gore invented the internet. And I'm not even like Neil Stephenson, who (otherwise a great author) came up with a totally derivative idea called (the metaverse?). Those guys are science fiction authors. - oh OH! And here's two more different kinds of professional futurists, but they don't make money off their particular predictions, rather, they make money of periphereal book deals and donations from their television audiences and whatnot: Nostradomaus and that Roberts guy (not Oral Roberts) who both predicted that somewhere, sometime, a storm will "lash" something.

The above mentioned are professional futurists. I am an amateur futurist. My futurist predictions are more in line with that guy on the El platform the other day who launched into a desperate portrayal of his own horrific vision of the future for me while I pretty much just did my best to ignore him and keep reading. So I didn't really catch all the particulars of his horrifying prophecy of the future, but I did gather it had something to do with the mysterious dispearance of the semi-colon.

This is my prediction for the future: In tens years everybody will have microchips in their brains that allow them to read the MSN homepage, with a real time stock ticker and a direct portal to sign into their hotmail accounts, just by closing their eyes! This will then become the question: how did those microchips get there?* But at this point, will anybody even think to ask it? Or will that questioning part of our brains be occluded by clickable thumb-nail photos of Tyra Banks?

P.S. I totally bluffed my way through a sports conversation (something about some sort of NBA basketaball draft?) on the elevator the other day despite knowing absolutely nothing about any sports besides flyfishing and falconry. Here is the secret: you have to politely express cynicism about everything the sports talker says and that will keep him or her going until you reach your floor.

* The answer is Ralph Nader and flouride.

Brian 7:30 AM (1) comments

Saturday, June 24, 2006

I've told you that I don't like public pens, right? In the checkout line at certain grocery stores where they make you sign the screen with their electronic stylus I have to suck it up and pull my sleeve down over my hand to grip the pen. I call that move my public pen protector. Or I wrap some paper towel I carry in my back pocket around my hand before gripping the stylus (similar to the practice of putting a strip of toilet paper down on public toilet seats)*. But when I'm at a store that uses a paper credit card receipt system I always use my own private pen that I carry with me instead of the public pen that's usually kept at the checkout. This is not a problem if I can pull my own private pen out faster than the cashier can offer me the public pen. Because if I don't already have my private pen in my hand, and the cashier is offering the public pen right there in my face, the cashier inevitably has hurt feelings when I turn down the public pen to take out my own, EVEN IF I explain, "it's not you, I just have this thing about public pens." It happens infrequently but sometimes a cashier's hurt feelings will turn into rage. If there's somebody there for the cashier to roll his or her eyes at, the cashier almost always does that. Sometimes though I look up at the cashier just before I sign the receipt with my private pen and I can tell that the cashier is trying to think up a way to FORCE me to use the public pen.

To date, no cashier has ever been able to force me to use the public pen. What could they say? A pen's a pen, right? I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. The only thing I think a cashier could say to make me use the public pen would be to accuse my private pen of having dissapearing ink in it. This, I think, would be a legitamate reason for a store to compel me to sign my name on my credit card receipt with the store's public pen rather than the private pen I carry. If a cashier ever says that to me then I know I'll be beat. I'll just hang my head, put some paper towel in my hand, and take the public pen offered to me.

* You know those metal turnstiles / slurry makers that you have to go through to get off / out of the platform on some El stations? I saw a woman go through one the other day with her hand raised way up so that she was pushing the bars ahead of her and only making contact with the very top bar. I thought that was a good idea, because what if somebody went through one of those things with barf all over them? Those bars would have barf on them and get barf all over you when you pushed through. I think the top bar has the best chance of being the most barf free. And I don't want to give anybody any ideas here... but seriously, I see people spit in revolving doors all the time. Revolving doors are really very similar to the turnstiles. And it's not just normal spit either, it's the spit of bitter, drunk, socially disenfranchised and that's seriously going to never come out of your dry clean only sweater.

Brian 2:16 PM (0) comments

Sunday, June 18, 2006

I don't like pizza parties. Does that make me un-American? Even if it makes me into some sort of ill-informed Bolshevik to say it, I'll say it anyway. I don't care. I despise pizza parties. I mean, I like pizza. I just don't office parties built around the arrival and disbursement of pizza. Pizza parties fill me with dread. I don't know why.

But anyway it was a nice gesture when T from the main office called to organize a pizza party that included our little office last Friday.

Nine times out of ten when that phone rings it's a wrong number. I guess the previous company that had that space, or at least that phone number, was a Talent Agency (called something creepy, like "Herberts and Assocs."). Talent hopefuls are still calling the number. We get at least three calls a day like that there.

One time I picked up the phone and a guy said, in a deep, resonant masculine and commanding voice: "HELLO. (pause for return greeting) FROM THE DAWN OF TIME THE LACK OF TALENT FOR NARRATIVE SUCH AS I POSSESS HAS PLAGUED THE DOCUMENTARY MOVIE INDUSTRY!"

I was like, "what?"

"DO YOU REPRESENT VOICE-OVER ARTISTS?" Then I realized it was a talent agency call so said sorry he had the wrong number and I didn't know what happened to the talent agency.

Then another time a guy called up who had a really thick accent. He was talking really fast, and said something like, "something something living monkey?"

I was like, what? And then he was like, "something something frozen statue?" I said, what? Then he said, "are you looking for living statute?" So I knew at least then this was a talent agency call. I told him he had the wrong number. Later though I regretted it because it would have been totally cool to have a living statute guy in our office. People would come in and then do a double take and be like, "What's that guy doing just standing there in the corner?" and then we could be like, "he's a living statute, man! Go ahead and wave your hand in front of his eyes or something, he's really good!!"

Most of the time when I answer the office phone on these talent agency wrong numbers (normally it's young women) I feel like a really fucked up and capricious Ed McMahon, because no matter what sort of hard luck story I get on the phone, or how talented the caller tells me they are as soon as I pick up the phone, they never get any stars from the judges - I just don't have that authority.

So nine times out of ten when the phone rings it's one of the talent agency calls, but late last week I picked up the phone and it was T, calling from the main office to organize our pizza party. T asked who she was speaking to, and I said it was me. Then she asked to speak with L. This was a pattern that repeated itself over the rest of the day as T called repeatedly to iron out plans in the multi-office pizza party she was organizing. It became apparent that T only wanted to talk to L – even though it's not like he outranks either S or I (me). So after the third call in which T insisted she speak with L, S from our office got up from where she usually sits by L and sat down in one of the empty chairs on my side of the room. S announced that she was going to sit on my side of the room from now on. L, who figured the comment was barbed toward him but not fully understanding how, was like, "What? Why are you moving?" That’s when I stood up and pointed to L's side of the room and shouted, "because that side’s for jerks!!" which I thought would be funny but L got really upset.

L immediately launched into this speech about how he doesn't care what we think about him where'd he kept saying "I don't care! I don't care what you think! I don't give a rat's ass what you think!!" He said it in a way that was sort of mostly kidding, but maybe a little not kidding, but he said it with enough of a kidding kind of tone so that both S and I (me) couldn't address any hurt feelings he had. Later that day he left early. He was packing up his briefcase and said again how S and I (me) had hurt his feelings. But again he said it like he was just kidding. Kidding or not, it was obvious that he hadn't forgotten it. I felt bad but what could I do? I've had my feelings hurt too, you know. Workplaces are cruel, cruel environments.

Brian 4:57 PM (0) comments

Thursday, June 08, 2006

If anybody knows any non-lethal squirrel tips then do a brother a favor and shoot me a quick e-mail. I would be asking for both non-lethal and lethal squirrel remedies but this particular squirrel is completely un-killable so even if you know a great way to smoke a bushytail it won't do me any good. This squirrel is like the terminator. He's got a computer chip in his brain. A computer chip that can only be destroyed in an iron smelting furnace. I'd be happy if I could just keep him from digging in my plants.

The woman who lives two floors below me gives that little fucker peanuts in a cute little dish. He tears the shit out of the plants on her porch too. I don't know if she's made the connection or not. One time I saw that squirrel run inside through her window. I know! Home invasion! And one time that squirrel backed me up on my porch giving me his look like he was going to bite my ass if I didn't give him a peanut. I didn't have any peanuts and my hand was shaking too hard to fit the key in the lock to my door so I used the hockeystick I keep on my porch to get in his face and he leapt off the porch, glided three floors on outstreched arms, hit the pavement and kept on scampering. Then the next morning I left my place for work. I was walking to the El when I felt a shudder go through my body. I looked over my shoulder and there was that squirrel spying on me all angry from behind a telephone pole.

Where my grandma used to live circa when my brother and I called her "Farm Grandma" there were mean dogs that were always running around and so she carried a stick whenever she went outside. I've got no ideas where all these pack-mean feral dogs were coming from, but I saw them sometimes running in the distance together all bunched and tossing the maimed body of one of my grandparents' farm cats between their jaws. My grandpa was like fuck the stick and he carried a gun when he went to the barn. Once time a dog charged him. My grandpa tried to punch the dog away with the muzzle of his gun but the dog bit onto the barrel. My grandpa got freaked and pulled the trigger. My grandma really likes telling that story.

I'm just saying that if you think I'm mean for showing that squirrel the hockey stick it was only in self defense and that hockey stick I pulled out of the trash a few months ago is sort of like the stick my grandma used to carry for dogs, except this is the city, you know, so I don't have a farm stick I have a hockey stick. And it's for squirrels.

He's a grey squirrel. I think that's the worst kind. I read in a falconry text somewhere that grey squirrels have the toughest hide and strongest jaws, and I guess they're really making a mess of England by chewing into homeowner's eaves and defecating in pub owners pie warmers or something.

The other day I was keying into my back door on my porch and again I felt that shudder run through my body. I looked up over my shoulder and that same squirrel was in his nest up in the rafters of my porch. He had only just his fatty little face pushed out between two boards. All I could see was his face and I thought he was some kind of soft grey fungus at first. The squirrel was staring at me silently. When he saw that I saw him, he pulled his face back into his nest quick.

It shows he's no innocent woodland creature. First, why would a squirrel want to spy on me in the first place? And second, he was aware that he was spying covertly, or why would he otherwise dart his head back in his nest as soon as I saw him there? I think this is how samaurais felt when they first became aware they were being hunted by ninjas.

Brian 9:47 PM (8) comments

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