Men Of The World: Unite!

Have you seen them? Or, even worse, are you one of them?

You know the couples I'm talking about; those ones who are just so completely in love with one another that they couldn't fathom the thought of sharing an entire meal while seated on opposite sides of the booth. Yeah, sure, sharing a seat next to your significant other was pretty sweet in, say, the high school cafeteria. But the general public without the company of your three or four ugly chess club friends is quite another thing. Stop proclaiming your love of being in love in the public square ... please.

I say this knowing full well that women, for the most part, get the free pass here. Very rarely does it ever appear that it's the female who takes her seat and genuinely asks her boyfriend to take the open space beside her. Sure, it can happen; and if you're a dude who follows through with her shameless call for attention, well, you're a giant tool. Congratulations.

Not that any of that excuse makes you any better than the douchebags I all too frequently see performing what I'll refer to as the "insecurity trap." It becomes nauseating.

Nine times out of 10, some hostess at any given restaurant shows a young couple to their booth, the lady sits first, and then the male—as though he were a predator on some wildlife documentary—dives in to sit right beside her ... leaving the other side of the table empty.

This is an empty gesture in many ways, but a telling one about the male in the relationship.

Watch him put his arm around his girl. Watch the girl occasionally squirm and look around in a fascinating state of panic. Watch as the female is then trapped in a date situation in which she can:

A) no longer escape

or

B) welcomes the gesture as a sure sign of commitment

Option B is popular among uglier couples. That's who love to flaunt it the most, after all. "Hey ... We're fucking ... And you're not."

They need to tell themselves that. It's always a saving grace that no other employeee in the restaurant is envious at this point.

Option A is particularly saddening, however, because I tend to shake my head and try to think of the best subtle way to remind the poor fellow how uncomfortable he may have made his date feel. Suddenly, there's a spotlight cast upon her that the rest of the patronage sees, but only he does not.

Treating your date, your girlfriend, your "we-should-get-back-together" as a caged animal is a heartless, shallow manuever that I'm sure guarantees you more failure in the long run than you think it ensures in the here and now. But, you're oviously smarter than me, Mr. Pimple Face seated with Mrs. Double-Chin. Best of luck to the both of you.

For the rest of us that are smart enough to realize there are times when allowing some physical space isn't just necessary, but also productive, please pity these poor souls.

And then please tell that couple to get a fucking room if they really think we're into watching them be more in love with pretending to be in love than they are with actually being in love with one another. You can put it off for another couple of weeks, and we'll forget about it in about twenty minutes. Everybody wins ... Kind of.

One more viewing of behavior like this for me is enough to make me vomit, and hence, leave one unfortunate female who didn't realize how cornered she was, trapped in an entire room where she might not be able to stomach the smell of what I puke up.

Relationships succeed by knowing your boundaries; exploiting them to remind others that you're in a relationship ensures nothing but failure. It's too bad freckly-face will have to learn that the hard way.

We all know the rest of the world is having sex, but feeling the need to remind us that unattractive or overly sheltered goonies get to have it to doesn't impress anybody. To be honest, it's downright frightening.

(Another Edition of:) Adventures In Housesitting

I have just as much cash in my wallet as I recall leaving with before the previous night began, one cigarette left from that moment's fresh pack purchased following work, and now ... now I'm staring at the same sheet of itinerary I saw the last time I was at this place.

The instructions are the same, but I'm only now separating which directions the most attention be paid from those of lesser importantce. This is difficult in that the two pages are prited entirely in capitalized letters.

Early lessons in "nettiquette" taught me that the effect of writing a simple, innocent statement like—:

"HEY! HELLO! HOW ARE YOU?!"

—when entirely capitalized is the equivalent of shouting out every word that comes out of your mouth. If somebody came up to you on the street and trying to shake your hand, you'd turn and run as though they were a lunatic who'd mistaken you for a different N.R.A. buddy of theirs. That or a locally campaigning Republican. Same difference.

Point here is that these following days will not be as fruitfully rewarding as the times of the past.

Why?

Well, let's look at one warning about fucking Cosmo's seemingly constant battle with constipation:

"AUNTIE FROM SAINT CHARLES WRITES: 'SIGNS HE'S PLUGGED UP—HIDING UNDER THE BED, SQUATTING AND TRYING TO POOP OUTSIDE THE KITTY LITTER. IF NO POOP FOR 3 DAYS, CALL THE VET—'..."

The bastard child I'd rescued as a young, still-believing-Jesus-mighta-happened teenager has come back to haunt me. Not only is he crapping (all over the house, actually), but he's also HIDING UNDER THE BED, and SQUATTING AND TRYING TO POOP OUTSIDE THE KITTY LITTER.

So, there's reasonable belief for conern. But there's also reason for hope. Call uncle or vet first?

Phone lines NOW OPEN . . . (I'm screaming it, by the way, if it isn't already evdient.)

The Truth Lies Somewhere In Between ...

Blogs leaning to the left mostly conclude that releasing the recent National Intelligence Estimate should be one of—if not the—most urgent issues Democrats have on their plate, while those on the right predominantly reiterate it's a classified manner and the liberal media is (once again) running amok.

So it was refreshing, once again, to have Jim Lehrer sit down former CIA official Paul Pillar and shoot the shit tonight about what the real story is. And while Pillar said that what, basically, amounts to the most sensational of newsworthiness is what gets reported and helps "give a distorted impression," that final bit of dialogue exchange really tells me just how deep of an impression has been left that the Iraq War's done more harm than good:

JIM LEHRER: Back to the substance, at least as far as we know it at this point, and what Iraqi President Talabani told Ray Suarez in an interview we're going to see in a moment, he said that he doesn't agree with the finding that it increases the terrorist threat on the United States because the terrorists are on all now focused on Iraq. Does that make sense to you?

PAUL PILLAR: No, it doesn't. Well, it makes sense for the president of Iraq to say it because the president of Iraq has to have Iraqi interests uppermost in mind, and evidently President Talabani have concluded, as have many other Iraqi officials, that keeping the U.S. presence there longer rather than shorter amount of time is in Iraqi interest.

But his point about all the terrorists in the world are being attracted to Iraq -- this is the flypaper theory -- and therefore they're going to stay away from the United States, the flaw in that is we don't have a fixed number of terrorists in the world. I think the more appropriate comeback to that was what Secretary Rumsfeld raised the question in another leaked memo, a year or so ago, as you may recall.

JIM LEHRER: I do.

PAUL PILLAR: And the question was, "Are we breeding more terrorists faster than killing or incarcerating the ones we already have?" That's really the issue that is at stake here with the Iraq war.

JIM LEHRER: And if what's been in the press is correct, this intelligence estimate appears to suggest that we are breeding more than we're catching, is that right?

PAUL PILLAR: It does. And that's my judgment, as well.

Unless Karl Rove's supposed routine of having Bush pull a bunny from the hat next month scores big (sniff, sniff: I smell another bin Laden capture conspiracy theory), the Dems would have their incompetence upgraded to 100 percent if they fail to make up ground in BOTH the Senate and the House.

Period.

Adventures In Housesitting

I wouldn't call myself the most responsible person in the world (many assorted cops and bartenders would attest to this), but every now and then my aunt and uncle deem me to be the person they entrust with watching over their happy home when they leave town.

It's not all that difficult a task, really. There's but a single cat who needs to be fed twice a day. Oh, and the mail needs to be brought in.

So I've been spending the week here with the singular goal being not to let the cat die. And while that sounds simple enough, I should add that poor "Cosmo" has one wee little problem: He occasionally goes through periods of constipation. This was fully relayed to me in horribly graphic detail in a two page printed letter of itinerary for the week.

Until Sunday, I never knew cats could have an "emergency enema." Or that they would spend a span of days following such a procedure by, ahem, "cleaning" themselves in the privacy of the garage.

The house isn't any type of drastic upgrade from the folks' place (no cable television, dial-up internet service, etc.), so I've mostly been trying to finish reading a book and checking the litter box for a turd or two.

I had been told that if there was no fecal matter to be found—either in the litter box or perhaps on the floor somewhere—I would need to phone the vet, because the hell if I'm performing the procedure on a cat myself. When the first two days passed without Cosmo having a number two, I began to worry. I considered picking him up, embracing him, and quite literally squeezing the shit out of him.

And then I thought back to what additional food I could feed him that shoots right through me and basically spray the bowl. That food, as I hope you might not have had the horror of experiencing yourself, is of course jalapeno cheeseburgers from White Castle. There's a reason some people call this restaurant's sanwiches "steamers."

I'll make the regrettable late-night deperation decision about once every two years to go through the White Castle drive-thru for what, at the time, seems like an innocent post-midnight snack. One particularly memorable evening after leaving a party or a bar, I placed my order for what I thought would be a "sack" of five or six. Driving up to the window, I was asked to pay something like 20 bucks. "W.T.F.?"

Turns out I must have mistakenly said "case," which is why I begrudgingly shelled out the dough (I was really that hungry) and was handed a gigantic cardboard box filled with probably about 25 of the burgers. Upon returning home, I tried to choke down as many as possible and probably got through about ten before passing out.

I slept fine, but going to work the next day, my stomach rumbled its displeasure. And drinking the second-most effective laxative, coffee, along the way didn't help matters any. Seeing as I was working at a country club that was an hour drive, the journey was unbearable. It's hard to cross your legs and steer at the same time.

Upon arriving (late, I add), I burst into the facility, clocked in, and ran directly to the member bathroom. It was what an old boss referred to as "pissing outta your ass." And the member entering the bathroom after I emerged had to turn away as though he'd just been punched in the face.

So if White Castle has a proven track record for cleaning out my system, it would certainly work for Cosmo.

But on Tuesday, as I began wondering what time I should wait until to call the vet, sure enough, there it was on one of the small area rugs in the garage: sloppy, wet brown goo. Normally, you'd run to find something to clean up the mess and kick the pet across the fucking room for something like this. But I just stood and smiled, placing the phone back on the set to charge, relieved that this might have to be the only "cleaning" I'd have to deal with.

Hey, shit happens.

That's So Gay

Okay, explain this one to me, God:

The image to rhe right is the cover of a recent issue of an American entertainment magazine that is actually published and then read by many, many readers who clearly have far too much time on their hands.

As I'm sure you're probably aware, the man on the cover is Lance Bass, a former member of the boy band *NSYNC, which broke up so the commercial whores involved could presumably pursue opportunities to suck individually rather than continue sucking collectively. They were popular among young girls who were just learning to masturbate and record company executives who realized that you don't need talent to appear on MTV. It's hardly a coincidence that the group's rise to stardom came at a time when the flagship show was hosted by certified tool Carson Daly (whose own admission of homosexuality is surely imminent).

Now, we've gotten into this habit as a society of applauding people of such high profile for their courage in "coming out." But when I first read about this on the internet—actually listed as a "news" item—my immediate reaction to the two word title of "I'm Gay" was another two words: "Yeah," and "So?"

Why would anybody find this the least bit surprising? Or interesting? Did People really uncover something here? It seems like a pretty clear-cut case of restating the obvious. Perhaps Lee Greenwood will appear on the cover in a few weeks to admit, "I'm untalented."

It's not as though I ever really held People magazine up to particularly high standards (Jesus, I could finish their crosswords when I was five at the dentist's office), but it's amazing how pivotal a role the publication plays in furthering the circular nature of celebrity life: get famous, suffer backlash, go away for a while, and come back with some sort of new quality (i.e. "I stopped doing drugs," "I overcame my eating disorder," "I had children," etc.).

My guess is that Bass has one terrific publicist for some sort of forthcoming project who placed the call to People, offered an exclusive, and knew all along that now this skidmark of recent pop culture can now be sold to the public on similar entertainment "news" outlets with the standard line of, "Lance Bass, who recently admitted that he is gay ..."

So the pathetic attempt to earn a few more bucks by disclosing what was an already widely held assumption isn't what really has me holding back from a violent stream of projectile puking of blood. No, it's the fact that so many people are actually following right in line with it.

I've had the misfortune of working in a restaurant that doesn't get cable, which makes channel choices rather limited during daytime hours. In the morning, the news is on and that works for a while. Around 1:00, you're really kinda fucked. Soap operas, numerous Judge Fill-in-the-blank shows, and of course, daytime talk shows. That last category is what really proves my point: I saw Martha Stewart standing next to a chalkboard on her show trying to speak to her homies about ghetto slang with P. Diddy ... or Diddy ... or whatever the hell his name is (if a giant light fixture had come crashing down on them, killing both, I would have wanted to declare the day a national holiday). A couple weeks later, Tony Danza, also having convinced somebody that having his own talk show was a good idea, was talking to a parrot. Women in the audience hooted and applauded.

It's hardly any surprise that on some days, I actually prefer Sesame Street and the Teletubbies. "It's for the kids in the place," I tell myself.

Sure enough, a new issue of People on the newsstands this week. And yet, there's Barbara Walters on that great bastion of power to feminism, The View, still holding up a copy of the People issue with Bass on the cover. Make matters worse, you say? I actually overhear a young girl ask her three friends, "Did you see Lance Bass is gay?"

I wanted to chime in, right there. "Yes, we always saw it. Do you want proof?" And then I would have shown her a picture like this one:







But I didn't do that because I work for tips. And if you offend somebody, even by being honest, you're penalized. So instead I'm forced to silently cater to their misguided concerns about completely irrelevant matters by saying nothing. They're products, after all, of a culture celebrities and items like People magazine have created. And in doing so, I've ultimately become one of the victims as well.

What's Old Is New Again

Hey Higher Power,

Listen, I've heard about this "fork in the road" metaphor B.S. before, and I really can't wait to get to it. Because if this summer's letdown was spurred by the path I chose when there was a choice about where to be employed, it's leading me right back to the exact same fucking fork.

Let's see; last summer, I took a shitty door-to-door sales job and didn't find anything else until mid-August when I started at the waffle house. Shortly after taking that job, seemingly every single place I'd sought employment began ringing my cell phone off the hook to say things like, "I've got your application in my hands" and "If you're still looking for work ..."

And now this summer I took the first shitty door-to-door sales job I was offered and here we are, in mid-August again—back at the waffle house. Why do I get the queasy feeling that every place I sent resumes out to is suddenly going to be holding a copy in their hands when I'm now working my ass off? It's a fair question.

When I was finishing out what I thought would be my final days at the restaurant, they'd hired a hot young girl to replace me. Wondering why it took so long, I told myself, "Figures."

But now that I'm back at the pancake place for the time being, I'm getting to know her better and finding that the gig wasn't really all as evil and subhuman as I had made it out to be. And while I'd hope for something better, seeing as I, you know, fucking graduated and all, it's okay just being able to make some cash again. Money has that effect on you.

I've gotten to know a local cabbie who has had the incredible luck of driving me the short distance from the bar to my house on select weekend afternoons. Those occasions usually found me entirely shitfaced because I had just completely gotten my ass kicked all day at the restaurant and found the local barkeep—who claims he cannot function each day without getting stoned—makes me vicious Long Island Iced Teas ... or a variation of the recipe. Whereas a traditional Long Island uses a splash of Coke to offset its five other liquors and sour mix, my buddy behind the bar uses Chambord. If there's sour mix in it all, I sure as hell don't taste it.

When the cabbie and I last met, I detailed my pathetic summer of unemployment. He knew I was going to Columbia and had a career in radio himself. He keeps telling me to hound the Kane County Chronicle, for whom I had delivered papers as a kid. When he found out about my most recent string of luck—back at the restaurant, a shitty sales job—he shook his head and said very plainly, "How much are you going to let you distance yourself from what you really want to do?"

It's a good point, but here's the thing: I'm not really sure what exactly I want to do. Yes, writing would be ideal. But while that's pretty broad, so is my acceptable mediums I think I could be happy doing it for: newspaper, magazine, online. You get the idea.

For now, I'm content with just being employed again. I don't see how I would let myself be sucked into any great length of time back at the waffle house. And the simple pleasures of flirting with a girl 10 years less than me who doesn't flee in terror has me thinking that if the phone does start ringing like it should have two months ago, I'm not jumping immediately at the first "fork" I come across. The worst thing I could do would be going down another path of similar unhappiness that only ends up bringing me back to exactly the same place when I could have been satisfied still waiting for the right "fork" to present itself.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before, Vol. 2

Of course, the week before that flattering e-mail I was talking about below, I was giving myself a birthday present by really laughing in print at the asinine anti-foie gras movement that had been gaining steam. The fact that there was actually legislation against a certain type of food production—and a small one in America, at that—was totally indicative of just how much time elected officials piss away.

My mentor told me he didn't agree with me and warned, "You're going to get some mail about this."

And, boy, he wasn't kidding.

Perhaps I was most flattered by actually having a senior writer from PETA take the time to tell me how much "compassion" I lacked. Come to think of it, a majority of the e-mails used that word—even though I'd specifically mentioned how much they overused the term.

Well, you could imagine my delight in the Chicago Tribune's recent coverage emphasizing the delicacy's final days in the Windy City. But today's editorial really got my day off to a good start with what could be a startling reality to the reality-deprived:

"So it could turn out that instead of reducing the local demand for it, the City Council may have made foie gras more popular than ever. In that case, the ducks won't be much better off."

Got that, veggies? You likely did more harm to one major city's economy—and all those precious ducks—than you did help.

For all the nauseating self-righteousness of your lost cause, I have but two delicious words: Eat it.

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before, Vol. 1

A couple of days ago, Brian Flemming had a link up to a study with some news that was rather, well, alarming.

But I've had my say about the preposterous debate involving evolution before. And I remember after writing that article, I received an e-mail from one reader I don't think I'll ever forget. Considering I was still dealing with hate mail from the previous week's piece, it began with the author telling me that he was in fact writing me from Kansas. He thought that by telling me that, I probably assumed he was some loony Bible-thumper (and he was, unfortunately, probably right).

As it turns out, he wasn't.

Instead, he was just as outraged that his home state's science cirriculum was being thrown into a regrettable national spotlight—again.

Despite the fact that 44 percent of Americans actually believe Jesus Christ will return to Earth in their lifetimes, Kansas looks like it will probably go back to realizing how important an issue this is to their science standards are:

"[Janet] Waugh said she supported both evolution and creationism being taught in the appropriate settings. Waugh said that the current conservative board’s decision to include criticism of the theory of evolution in its science curriculum had made the state a laughing stock.

'I think it’s unfair and tragic because the reality is we rank in the top 10 of the nation in every category educationally, but if we continue the path we were on with radicals and conservatives, I think the ranking would be lower,' Waugh said."

Getting the Intelligent Designers off the board isn't just another step in evolution; it's further proof of it.

Timing Is Everything

Okay, this was pretty fucking wierd.

I was at the library today to do that routine of combing the local papers and the internet for jobs. And after a cigarette break, I was looking over the magazines on the shelves. And I grabbed this month's Vanity Fair because Hilary Swank is on the cover and I still can't forget Roger Ebert writing in his prediction that she'd win her second Best Actress Oscar, but her not being the best-looking actress. And I remember thinking how totally out-of-place that mention was. Even more so than Jamie Foxx coming out this year and referring to the nominees as four lovely ladies and "one great Dame," which I took to mean he was calling Judi Dench, essentially, a fucking dog. And especially since I remember while watching this year's past Oscar ceremony, another fellow and myself agreed that, lately, Hilary Swank's been looking pretty fucking good lately.

And while I was flipping through for Hilary's photo shoot, I came across a rather interesting little article about a little film called "Loose Change."

I should've noticed the "9/11 CONSPIRACIES" thing on the top of the cover, but, hey, I'll admit I wasn't really looking at the words.

Nonetheless, I spent too much time today glossing over filmmaker Dylan Avery's site. Then, of course, I went and sought him out as a friend on MySpace.

And while I'm awaiting the final cut of this film, and I've previously expressed my hesitance to jumping at the numerous conspiracy theories about 9/11, I really couldn't stop going through all the material. I have long been suspicious about how much the government tells us in the interest of basic damage control. It's hardly ever honest or the truth we'd want, but that makes sense. I'd cover my ass too if I was hiding information from the public.

Naturally, there's the right-wingers who've long dissected "Loose Change" and similar theories. But there's also some other organizations that are similarly critical (more or less so by specific group) of what's been reported as the explanation ... and there are actually an awful lot of them.

But I've also noted before being equally hesitant to go fully off the deep end about the government actually being directly responsible for these deaths. I know that tragedy struck us all in a significant way, but there's a difference between your officials suffering from willful ignorance (more likely) and having a blatant hand in the attacks (less so).

But, at the same time, I can't ignore a good question. And with 9/11, there's still an awful lot of them ... unanswered.

This, of course, is not to mention that the news today was dominated by the whole matter of a plot to blow up American-bound airliners. So, don't plan on bringing your iPods, BlackBerrys, or, well, anything aboard a plane ever again. We're at war, we'll always be at war, and basically, I'm expecting a day to come soon that we're all just going to have to just fly naked with one another in order to secure our nation's security. Otherwise, you're a threat.

I had a nightmare recently about planes sharply falling from the sky. As a person who rarely recalls their previous night's dreams, you could say this one stood out. But when the vision turned into a canoe (or some other boating vessel) whisking by my head while my friends and I were seeking cover in our moment of panic, I realized this was not happening. I sat up, in my bed, shook my head, and went back to sleep.

And, no, I hadn't done any drugs that evening.

The only other dramatic end-of-the-world scenario that unfolded in my mind before that was one in which I was downtown in Geneva and buildings were inexplicably collapsing. But those were nightmares, and the only actual thing that came close to being real images of such was 9/11. Those visions probably wouldn't have occurred without that unbelievable day. But if that horror rooted anything deeply in me, it's probably not the rush to blame the whole day on a conspiracy ... rather, to demand answers to an awful lot of questions that should have, at the very least, better explanations.

I won't jump to conlusions, but I'll never stop listening to others' ideas either. You can do both, you know ...

Helluva Entertaining Interview