The Early Worm Gets Eaten

Man, I got a job so I am out the door before sunrise every morning and in bed by 10pm. It's hard to maintain a blog when going to bed by 10pm everynight, but don't give up on me.

I'll figure this out soon.

The West Coast Cold, Pessimistic, Emotional Deconstructionist

Someone has asked me to comment further on dating, and I will honor that request because it is one of the few things that can set off every human emotion.

Like life, you can only become really good at dating by being really bad at it. So, at this point I am only left to reason that I must be really good at it. Especially after heeding the only advice my mother has ever shared with me on the topic. You’ve probably heard me quote her before.

“If you find someone you like, run the other way.”

If you do not take this to heart, you will either lose the person you are seeing, or otherwise stall in your pursuit of being really good at dating.

Run the other way.

I hate it when people call this Playing Games. Civilization, work, family, physics, checkers, friendship, cooking; all these things have rules. So it doesn’t make sense that you have such a hard time accepting that Eagerness and Accessibility have the stench of rotted death. No one wants to be around that. Neither do you.

Fine, it may be a little messed up. As we’ve established, the truth is that everyone is messed up. You are messed up, and I am messed up. It’s only fitting that the process be messed up.

A close friend of mine said it best one evening as I was driving him home from the airport. Mind you, this friend has failed in his pursuit of being a really good dater, as he has found himself in love with a remarkable girl. I still place great value on his words, though. And he shared with me this:

“A relationship is really just two fucked up people trying to figure their shit out together.”

Beautiful and succinct. Riccio, you are a brilliant man.

Check him out at www.cathexismusic.net

As for me, I will return to the life of being a really good dater. I will head back out onto that meandering track. For the race is long, and it’s always best to kept your laces untied.

And remember, as you all should, the last moments of Chariots of Fire,

“God made me. But he also made me fast.”

The Culinary Landscape of America

The West Coast has a couple of fast food restaurants that you can’t find back East. The common thread of these eateries lies in their dubious names.

In and Out Burger
Jack in the Box
Astro Burger
Carl’s Jr.

Now, I’m sure this is not an original observation. As a matter of fact, Peter Farrelly wrote in The Comedy Writer,

“Carl’s Junior grammatically disturbed me, sort of like Howard’s Johnson.”

After reading that, I could never return to the place. But it was no big loss since, personally, burgers aren’t my thing. I’m more of a hoagie type of guy. Don’t even mention Subway to me, though. My loathing for that place is going to be a whole other posting.

So if you’re like me and have an undying love affair with subs, you’re really left with only a few choices. Any sub joint that’s possessive in title is bad news. Potbelly’s, Quizno’s, and Togo’s are so poorly ventilated that you’re essentially throwing your clothes in a dryer with burnt toast. So we have to rule them out. Instead, there are only two things I can suggest:

Wawa and Penn Station.

The meat and ingredients at these places are top quality. Wawa itself is regional, which explains why most people outside of Pennsylvania think I'm baby-talking when I suggest it. Well, that, and I also baby-talk a lot.

Then we have Penn Station, which is East Coast subs. It even says so right on its insignia.





Thing is, you can only find a Penn Station in the Midwest. This was the reason why I took such a winding route through middle America. I had to have it breakfast, lunch, supper, and dinner. It was my personal version of Chicken Trek. The sandwiches and the boardwalk fries are so good that it would explain, if not justify, why one third of all Americans in the middle of the country are morbidly obese. So please, reserve judgment on them until you have a bite.

By the way, Chicken Trek is a cult classic children’s book. Think Kerouac, only instead of the search for Subtle Profundity, it’s fried chicken. It’s also a book you’d actually want to finish. If you have not read Chicken Trek, that would explain why you’ve forgotten how to dream.

"Don’t Tell Anyone Anything, Or Else You’ll End Up Missing Everyone.”

I miss D.C.

Less than two months ago I went cross-country and visited a few places. And all I really have to say is that the world’s largest McDonald’s was a major disappointment. It couldn’t have been more unimpressive and was clearly something done in principle, like everyone who goes around wearing those yellow Livestrong wristbands. Principle in accomplishment; in saying “I Care,” while not really caring.

Donate 75 cents to cancer research and then vote against universal healthcare. It actually makes some sad sense.

As for the rest of the country, I loved it, but you have to see it for yourself. Commenting on cross-country is like going through a photo album of strangers. Unless you want to sleep with the person involved, you could hardly care less.

The point is I miss D.C.

Last month I spent a little time in a few other cities. While a friend was showing me around Louisville, she told me that it was trying really hard to be a big city. We even passed a billboard that boasted Louisville recently becoming a Top 25 city in the U.S.

Louisville seems to share with all small major cities this ambition to be big. But even the big cities have their own identity anxieties. A few years ago Philadelphia applauded itself for no longer being the fattest city in America, and Los Angeles celebrated no longer being the most polluted. Seattle is making itself into a hip space station, while Boston is applying to be its own accredited university. Chicago hopes to be New York City, and New York City is just busy trying to be itself.

Meanwhile, Washington, D.C. is content.

And I missed it, and I miss my friends and family. So I made reservations to fly back for the weekend, though there were some initial missteps since the last days of the calendar year are the most confusing time to book a flight online. You forget to change everything to 2005. But I eventually found my way home.

It was weird being back. Great to see my friends and siblings, but sad to spend so little with each. A weekend is the perfect amount of time to inspire you to want to catch all you can, but guarantees that you will fail and drop pretty much everything.

Of course, part of me wanted to stay, but the automated warning said it best while I was struggling to book my flight:

This airline cannot make reservations in the past.


Fine, this may be a little much. But be wary of those you come across in your life who aren't sentimental. It only means they've surrounded themselves with people they don't really care for. And there's no need to mix with that sort.

Mark, The Other White Meat

The female has a strange way of communicating. She speaks in code and uses unintelligible phrases. This posting hopes to serve as a small piece to a greater cipher.

It was my last week at ###, and it was my last Friday lunch. On occasion, a few people from the department would catch a bite together out in Arlington. But since it was my last Friday lunch, I wanted to gather everyone I could; all the department guys and girls and their significant others who worked close by. So I also invited my little betty, who by the way is wonderful and has caring and attractive friends that watch out for her.

She replied with an email saying that she wouldn’t be able to make, it, and that I should spend this last lunch with my friends anyway. I asked why she couldn’t join, and she offered a befuddling response.

“Because I have an appointment with Brazil.”

As lunch approached, a few friends in the department asked what time we would be leaving, while also inquiring if the wonderful girl in the office I was dating would be joining us. I told them that she wouldn’t be, and they asked why not.

In all sincerity, my response was that I supposed she was busy with work or on a conference call or something. I shrugged, “She told me she had an appointment with Brazil.”

The girl seated across the hallway gave me a wry look. It was a look that I had grown accustomed to, since I may have been guilty for delivering a tactless joke or two in my dark past. As one female co-worker will tell you, I actually injured myself once while humping the frame of her office door.

So the expression of my co-worker warned me of something. And I also found it odd that the publicly-funded ########### for ###### ############ would allocate any resources to the ###### ############ ####### for dealings in South America.

Fueled by my suspicion, I called my significant other and asked her what was going on. And that’s when she clarified the situation to me.

Not to be a philosophical stickler or anything, but can the absence of something really be something?




Brazil


Not Brazil


Metaphysical pleonasms aside, this is how members of my department came to learn the style, or non-style, of a certain colleague’s pubic region.

And so, too, can you consider yourself among the edified.



Permission to publish this posting was granted under the sole stipulation that I would point out something nice about the girl in mention.

She, like each of her friends, is caring and attractive and not averse to censoring my blog in passive-agressive ways.