Monday, January 31, 2005 :::
We're starting the week off right, which is to say you're going to get a big, fat link. You don't need to know where I found this game. You simply need to look at the pretty colors, let them sweep over you, and wake up blind in the dead of night.
Make sure you've got the latest version of DirectX, the newest drivers for your video card, and all the other tenets of good computer hygiene. Remember, as with anything on the Internet, believe everything you see.
Posted by Ben at 2:11 PM
Thursday, January 27, 2005 :::
Choose Your Adventure books. Do you remember them? They were mementos from our childhood, thin novels with equally thin plots that promised, in a dozen or so chapters, countless second chances with a flick of the page. You could find yourself in a ghost town, a decrepit warehouse, or even the steamy tropics, but variety would always give way to startling truth: death, it seems, accounted for a good part of your adventure.
A damnably bad choice would sentence you to a grisly end, and your character would lie in a crumpled heap at the feet of a serial killer or, if you were embarking on the tropical adventure, raped by a crazed yeti intoxicated with rotten guavas. Make the right choices and the hero would find reward in a poorly rendered drawing of himself.
I chose the South Evanston adventure yesterday evening. I also got to the end.
Around 5:35 PM, when I was checking my mail and doing some work, a man walked into my office. He was tall and heavy, around 6' or 6'2", a white fellow dressed cleanly and casually, with a loud voice and a confident bearing. "Mike" something, he introduced himself, and Mike wore a large beige winter jacket filled with treachery, as I later discovered, and possibly a gun or a knife, which I fortunately didn't discover.
"Are you the last one here?" he asked, and I pointed out my colleague in a nearby room.
Everyone in his office had gone for the evening, leaving him without a way home. His car, along with his belongings, had been towed because it obstructed a snow truck, so he needed a ride to the impound lot downtown. Otherwise, he would have to spend the night in his office and return the following evening to an angry spouse. He'd pay me tomorrow if I could help him. I told him I was busy, but perhaps my buddy could take him. My co-worker wasn't driving anywhere near where Mike wanted, however, and thank goodness for that.
A cab, Mike proposed, lend him some money for a cab. He'd pay me back tomorrow, 8 AM sharp, plus a little extra, which I said wasn't necessary.
"$20 should be enough," he calculated.
I didn't have any cash handy, so he suggested I pop by the bank across the street. Something didn't feel quite right at this point, yet I let the holiday spirit override my suspicions. We left the office for the ATM. He rambled on about his wife and work, listing a few companies in our building. This was made convincing because his alleged workplace keeps its door shut, complete with security camera, and even after a year-and-a-half you could still bump into unfamiliar faces.
"Actually, could you spot me $50?" he asked. "$20 might not be enough."
I knew Chicago cabs and their wily ways, having paid upwards of $80 for a single trip. Against my better judgment I hit the "$40" button. I offered to call him a cab.
"No, I'll just get one by the Holiday Inn," he said, pointing completely in the wrong direction. The circle by the train station, I suggested, probably had more cabs. We shook hands. Thanks. No problem. See you in the morning.
I'm a packrat for punishment, caught in a twisted reality inspired by Pokemon and baseball cards, inescapably compelled to catch them all. I'm a fool, a hypocrimeac, an ardent collector whose goal is to preserve these fuckers in mint condition. These were my choices, my dime-store adventure turned real.
After going to the police and making some calls, I met some familiar faces for dinner, the first time in a long time. I tromped through the snow, right shoelace untied, my mouth very dry, a little dazed and shaken.
"I'm alive," snapped my synapses. And that's not bad for a Wednesday.
Posted by Ben at 1:36 PM
Wednesday, January 26, 2005 :::
Just got scammed out of $40.00. I'm not dead, though, so that's something.
"You've got to stop being nice," said the officer.
Didn't get in the car, as if that were any consolation. Don't want to talk about it. Alright, maybe tomorrow.
Posted by Ben at 7:49 PM
Tuesday, January 25, 2005 :::
They say I've moved into the cursed office. I'm not given to superstition, gentle reader, but this is a label I've tucked carefully in the back of my mind. It isn't a bad office by any stretch of the imagination. I've got a spacious desk, a few filing cabinets, a pleasant view, and a whole bunch of skeletons crammed into my figurative closet.
These skeletons belong to four people. Four. Four employees have worked in this office and met an ignoble end, by which I mean they got shitcanned. Fired. Pink-slipped without the pink. No hugging, horribly contrived farewell parties, or even the "get a box and pack up your things" shtick. They left without notice, and their belongings followed shortly after in the mail.
I've had a long, long day complete with a complementary headache. You know the kind, I'd wager. It wasn't a Monday, that's for sure, just a very busy Tuesday, a keen reminder of why I sleep eight hours each night. My ultimate goal is to slough off the pervasive dread cast by these ghosts from the past. I plan on doing this by mid-February. Cursed as this room may be, it will not claim me.
Posted by Ben at 7:07 PM
Monday, January 24, 2005 :::
The only thing better than trudging through salty slush in the aftermath of a blizzard, gentle reader, is avoiding giant icicles. The only thing better than trudging through salty slush and avoiding giant icicles, if we go a step further, is doing these things while not making eye contact with one of the village psychos.
I don't know how people manage to stay in the same place for decades. When you settle down, factors such as employment and children have a large say in the matter, but what about the city itself? Is enjoyment a prerequisite or an afterthought? I suppose it won't really matter in the end, because I'll likely be impaled by ice or jabbered to death by a crazy.
Now, these icicles, we're not talking about the half-inch dealies. We're talking about the one-and-a-half-foot variety, the kind that could shiv a man in the skull without warning. Nothing else so ably combines lethality and phallic imagery, with the possible exception of a gigantic column of lava. Intuition tells you to watch out for Old Man Winter, who's lounging on his throne somewhere in Ontario and watching you like a hawk, but your intuition will eventually fail and he'll be there. He's waiting for you to lower your guard so he can screw you in the cerebrum eight ways to December.
"That's right, come to papa," he intones. "Why don't you take off your hat? Or maybe you could just look up and open your left eye. Wide."
The second half of this wintry mix is the human element. Legend has it a recent President did something or another and effectively set all the mental patients free, flooding the streets with people who only know reason at the business end of safety scissors. While I don't remember which President did this, Reagan seems to ring a very faint bell, though I doubt he'd remember letting all the nutballs loose in the first place.
If you make eye contact with one of these folks, that'll be the end of you. You've made a friend for life. There was a man today, average build, thirty-ish, and he was yammering to himself about Russians and Bush. Most of the pedestrians ignored him or promptly crossed the street, which is why he settled on conversing with the Rotary building. No, that's an exaggeration. He was talking to the directory of the Rotary building, an eight-foot structure (similar to a mall directory) that might resemble a ridiculously tall person in a certain light.
The way the world used to work, you looked at a woman and thought, "Holy mother of Verizon, she's talking to herself!" You were proven wrong, of course, after you saw her cellphone kit, earbuds and all. These days, you look at a guy sitting at the bus stop and ask the critical question.
"Where are the earbuds?"
There are none, buddy, because the guy's talking to his imaginary friend on an imaginary cellphone with imaginary earbuds. How I long for the old days. Can't stop myself. It's a Monday thing.
Posted by Ben at 5:43 PM
Friday, January 21, 2005 :::
The game is afoot, gentle reader, and if you make a mistake you'll have nothing left but a chalk outline of your computer. See you on Monday.
Posted by Ben at 6:14 PM
Thursday, January 20, 2005 :::
Sometime in the past decade, as real diets and fad diets rose in power, a delicious corollary came into being. Well, delicious for others at least. There's been an influx of healthy restaurants that offer unparalleled culinary freedom, see, and I’m always struck with wide-eyed confusion when I frequent them. I'm referring to establishments like Flat Top Grill and Pita Pete’s, vendors who promise infinite permutations and limitless chances of constructing savory bowls of shit.
By no means have I consumed real servings of poop, merely entrees that taste like poop. There’s a difference. It all begins when you step into the eatery and bear witness to dozens, maybe even hundreds, of ingredients chalked onto a board. You’ve got carrots, shredded carrots, chicken, beefalo, donkey, cucumber sauce, sweet-and-sour sauce, sweet-and-not-sour sauce, purple onions, cigarette butts, goat cheese, feta, fetid onion cheese, chocolate, toenail clippings, and oh my sweet Aunt Jemima my taste buds just burst.
Your bowl will always look delicious, make no mistake, and this illusion simply encourages you to pile on incompatible ingredient after incompatible ingredient.
“I’ve made a masterpiece,” you think as you pass your dish to the cook. “Man, it’s going to taste awesome.”
Eight minutes later, the waiter hands you a bowl you can’t quite describe. It’s like they grilled a whole lotta amnesia into your magnum opus. Half a dozen thoughts flash through your mind.
“I want an abortion.”
“I think someone already had an abortion.”
“Is…is that Captain Crunch?”
“I don’t remember dropping a Barbie doll in my bowl.”
“Who added nacho cheese?”
“Oh, so that’s where I left my watch.”
It’s like you went home with someone hot and woke up next to a llama the following morning. You made it, though, so it’s your fault. Now eat it.
We’re bound for a backlash of some sort, mark my words. One day, one day soon, you’ll stroll down your dining thoroughfare and discover a single item on the menu: totalitarianism. You’ll probably be forced to eat hamburgers, three a day, with ketchup. If you’ve been good.
Posted by Ben at 6:46 PM
Tuesday, January 18, 2005 :::
During German class one day, on a qualified lazy afternoon, somebody offered a compelling argument for why we should shower in the morning. She outlined the Microbial Agenda, the nefarious plan of microscopic creatures to cover you, fill every pore with pathogenic glee, as soon as you fall asleep.
I'd show you a picture to tickle your corneas, make you gasp in horror, except this theory isn't exactly what you'd call published. I mean, even if FEMA's loading the trucks as we speak, I still can't find a diagram of any sort. That means we'll have to make our own picture. With words.
Bedtime. Your room is lit. You reach, reach as far as you can, and turn off the lamp on your nightstand. Darkness. You rest your head deeply in your pillow, stretching contentedly after a long day.
“It's finally over,” you sigh.
How ignorant of you, because at that very moment a blanket of germs unhinges itself from the ceiling and lands on top of you, sealing your fate along with your nostrils.
If you had presented this theory to me a few years back, I would've snorted and conveniently grouped you with the rubes who believe all those other myths, such as the Easter Bunny and the legend of doing taxes before April 15. Pure poppycock, right? I'm not so sure.
Certainly I don't believe our parasitic friends host extravagant raves on our forearms at precisely 12:45 AM every night, but I do think something magical happens when you shut your eyes. You can spend your entire day cleaning your apartment, dashing around and vacuuming and scrubbing, and then wake to the same level of filth you enjoyed last Saturday. It’s destiny. It’s like Father Time looked at your work, tucked you into bed, and unapologetically swept your efforts under the rug.
They apparently make tools to combat the dirtiness, furnishings crafted to ward off hair and dustbunnies. “Brooms.” “Vacuum cleaners.” “Clorox Wipes.” I couldn’t be bothered with using any of these devices, and the clutter slowly won. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how many baseboards I licked or corners I inhaled, my apartment would turn messy in a week.
“You’ve got to be the vacuum to do the vacuuming,” says an old proverb I invented not long ago.
Try as I might, though, my efforts are always in vain. It doesn't matter how much double-stick tape I adhere to myself or how many hours I roll around my place, the muck will emerge victorious. Even the Shark Vacuum given lovingly by my mum is powerless.
How do you keep tidy, gentle reader? Unless we bathe our abodes in cleansing fire and mystic ululations, it seems we’re sentenced to cleaning every week.
Posted by Ben at 1:32 PM
Monday, January 17, 2005 :::
Outsourced, because yours truly didn't have any time today to reflect on civil rights, just ROI. I have a dream that one day, every site across our fair Internet will have advertising large and small, black and white, Flash and static HTML.
Free at last! Free at last! Thank God almighty, I can drive home at last.
Posted by Ben at 6:39 PM
Friday, January 14, 2005 :::
Right now? It's five degrees Fahrenheit. Five goddamn degrees, each of which should be treasured like a newborn child. Weather.com tells me it "feels like -8°F,” and I’m thankful for the tactile clarification. I probably would’ve preferred the temperature to feel more like “5°F,” but I guess Christmas is over.
Five degrees Fahrenheit. In human terms, that’s 27°F below freezing. Death. In dog terms, it’s death. In dog years, it’s about 265. In cat terms, it’s -9. In bird terms, it’s a clean glass window. Even for bacteria, we’re talking about streptococci gathering at their local bar, frozen flagella clasped valiantly around cups of TheraFlu, and dying. I know because I asked them.
I started scraping my car windows this morning, heartily so, until I realized the frozen sheet of water was inside. Disheartened but not defeated, I pried open my doors and dutifully removed the ice from the windows. I finished the last one, tossed my scraper in the car, and shut the door. I shut it again. I shut it a third time, a fourth time, even a tenth. It wouldn’t close. The inner workings had somehow frozen, and the stupid little latch that held the door closed had given up the ghost.
After slamming my door about two dozen times, half of which were accompanied by a string of very cold expletives, the latch finally took. I had won. And woke half the neighborhood in the process.
Stay indoors today, gentle reader, lest you fuse yourself to some metallic object or simply crumple to the ground. Stay indoors and play this. If nothing else, it’s a fascinating sociological experiment. Do people build up each other, bolster one another’s literary efforts, or do they actively try to foil other spellers’ attempts at “dick” while trying to construct “tits” in their own feverish rush?
Posted by Ben at 10:38 AM
Thursday, January 13, 2005 :::
This feeling I'm trying to verbalize, it's like walking out of the store with ill-fitting shoes you intend to keep. You saw them, tried them, decided they were a bit too small, too big, too narrow, yet you bought them anyway. From anyone else's perspective your choice was a study in absurdity, a decision wrought from illogic and ridiculous whimsy, but to you those shoes continue to have an irresistible draw.
You know what I realized? I must describe that irresistible draw, lay it bare on the table and parse it into compelling morsels. Having the shoes isn't enough--I need to know the why's behind them. That's what I need to do, and that's what I plan on doing.
I was sitting at the House of Blues one day, trying my darndest to hold forth about the more exquisite points of direct marketing. This was a business lunch, after all, and damn it if I wasn't going to secure the deal. At one point, right as I was munching on a steak fry, a thought struck: I really don't care about any of this.
"This is just like a date," declared my internal commentary, "except we're only talking about pop-ups. Fucking pop-ups."
Does this mean I despise work and desperately want to torch the building? Of course not. I'm still here. I've actually been looking forward to work recently, so I'm still wearing the shoes. But why? I think it's time to dust them off and take a look.
Posted by Ben at 6:44 PM
Wednesday, January 12, 2005 :::
Outsourced.
Posted by Ben at 6:30 PM
Tuesday, January 11, 2005 :::
A few months ago, I walked into a pet superstore and emerged with two guinea pigs. A few months later, on this particular morning, I woke to a piquant smell that reminded me of long-forgotten public pools and New York subways. You see, gentle reader, I adhere to a twice weekly schedule of cleaning their cage, but for some reason they've been extra smelly recently.
This will necessitate a third litter changing, and I've narrowed the cause down to two possibilities: either guinea pig constitutions aren't built for Cinnamon Toast Crunch (the kind with 75% less sugar, don't you fret), or they've been having bottom-of-the-bottle vitamin solution. I'm leaning more toward the latter, because it just occurred to me I haven't been shaking their vitamin bottle well--or at all, come to think of it--for the past month or two.
I'm going to swing by the pet store now, but not before introducing my pigs. One looks like a skunk, so I named him Le Pew. He's slick, slick like a rat, and sports a perennial cowlick sure to woo all the female rodents. I'd even let him out of the apartment once in a while, if he were neutered. The other guinea pig is gray, white, and functionally retarded. He struck me as endlessly fascinating when I first saw him, a four-legged vision of devious brooding perfect for those Byronic moments. Turns out he just likes to sit there and stare aimlessly for hours on end. I named him Falfa, short for Alfalfa and reminiscent of Falla, Roosevelt's beloved terrier that was prone to being left behind.
They spend their time eating, drinking, sleeping, eating, squeaking loudly for food, eating, defecating, occasionally eating their defecation, and humping each other. That last part doubtlessly piqued your interest, so let me elaborate. Le Pew is usually the aggressor. He will climb on top of Falfa, who simply sits there and continues to think his deep thoughts. Now, my boys never came out to me--I think they decided to skip that step--and the crux of the matter is whether Falfa's being raped. Since he seems content with not moving, and since he sometimes eats while acting the bitch, I've concluded it's no big deal.
They're hardy little bastards as well. There was this one time when I left my stove running the entire day, filling my apartment with more carbon monoxide than my detector, which was still at Target in its blister pack, could detect. Le Pew and Falfa lived, believe it or not, and they were hungry. Thank goodness I didn't light the stove, eh? Then again, I don't think you can die in a fiery explosion in Wilmette. It's just not classy enough. The viable options are old age, boredom.
Posted by Ben at 7:12 PM
Monday, January 10, 2005 :::
As far as Mondays go, gentle reader, this one is the shits. Literally. I thought today couldn’t get any worse, but reports filtering into the office have confirmed that, no joke, someone had a major accident in the stairwell leading to the parking garage.
One of my buddies theorizes a bum ran into the stairwell, evacuated his bowels, and then fled the scene, effectively transforming the two-story structure into a concrete toilet. It wouldn’t be so bad if we were talking about, you know, solids. A far more accurate description, if you'll let your mental canvas stretch, would be EXPLOSIVE DIARRHEA.
I heart Evanston, truly.
Posted by Ben at 2:41 PM
Friday, January 07, 2005 :::
The Red Baron would cry softly into his propellers, gentle reader, were he to see how his exploits have fared in the face of modernity. Twenty years ago, we relived the glory days of biplanes from the comfort of our couches, in a manner of speaking. Some of my fondest memories as a toddler involved watching my pop turn on the ol’ Intellivision, blithely oblivious to the impending explosion of technology. We would discover in less than a decade that you could have more than five colors on the screen. Simultaneously, even.
I’m going to throw you a bone today, gentle reader, and it’s going to take the place of conversation. We’re having a company meeting in a few minutes, and more to the point they’re letting us out early. See you on Monday.
Posted by Ben at 5:13 PM
Thursday, January 06, 2005 :::
“Don't eat the yellow snow,” goes the old winter proverb, but the ancients who first uttered this didn't tell us how to contend with the white snow. I left my apartment for an ironic sight today: a man who had set out with plow firmly attached to truck, ostensibly to dig us poor schmucks out of a foot-and-a-half of holiday cheer, stood idly by while he waited for help. The foul white stuff had ripped the plow clean off his truck. Happy New Year indeed, gentle reader.
I used to like snow, liked “playing” in it, which meant my sister and I would prance around in freezing weather for two or three hours, marveling over our poor attempts at impenetrable forts and hideous facsimiles of snowmen. We would invariably return with every possible strain of flu available to the public, only to repeat the process the following year.
I don't like snow anymore. When you wake up to consecutive mornings, consecutive weeks, of dreary weather and--I don't want to hear this term for another month, so help me Santa--wintry mix, things start to happen. Strange thoughts and even stranger stirrings creep into people's minds, and the construction of snow art feverishly begins. All euphemism aside, we're talking about a giant snow cock here, a 15-foot monstrosity erected from nothing but frozen water and hubris. This is a hallowed tradition for one of the dorms at my alma mater. I've also witnessed ice sculptures celebrating other bacchanal acts, seemingly willed into existence out of boredom. This is the stuff you don't see in the viewbook.
How do you deal with all this snow? After wracking my brain for fifteen minutes, I've concluded you've got to get the hell out of town. Move. Move far, far away.
Posted by Ben at 7:04 PM
Wednesday, January 05, 2005 :::
We were originally scheduled to discuss the vagaries of cleaning one’s apartment, and that’s going to take a backseat because I’ve acquired a copy of this baby. Before I attempt to run it on my crappy computer, however, I’m going to play the “Scrape the Goddamn Snow off My Car” game, a fun diversion similar to Twister with hypothermia.
Worry not, gentle reader, as I’ve purchased a retail copy of this game. I simply need the other version, the special version you can only find in Asian bazaars and filthy alleyways, because it doesn’t require an Internet connection.
Why don’t you download the demo and join me? I figure it’s got to be loads and loads better than talking.
Posted by Ben at 6:12 PM
Tuesday, January 04, 2005 :::
You want to stay, you want to go, there are ample reasons for either choice, and the indecision grips you at times, yet it also retreats--out of sight, out of mind, as vanilla as a dozen overcast days. The bottom line, if we had to simplify things, is restlessness, a feeling shared by many I’ve asked, myself included, and I’ve concluded it’s endemic to younger people. Maybe older people as well, I don’t know.
You want to be happy, but you also want drama. Single but married. Freedom and a three-car garage. You want to be unique, as if there’s any room left for that, but you also like the box. If you actively commit to settling down, are you somehow compromising? Because we never compromise, not like so, not in this lifetime, right?
I believe there’s enough nervous energy circulating to thwart at least two laws of thermodynamics, don’t you think? In the end, though, it all balances and we’re back at zero. It will. It must. Right?
Posted by Ben at 7:19 PM
Monday, January 03, 2005 :::
There comes a time in every man's life when, right around Christmas, the desire for denim seizes him like a reclaimed birthright. It tempts him, causes him to go mad, and when the insanity settles he awakens with a new pair of jeans. I woke like this a few days ago, and the story of how I arrived at this precise condition is one speckled with discovery and pain.
Denim is not entirely foreign to me, because I spent the better part of my childhood wearing it. I had a falling out with my jeans in high school, every single one of them, but I changed my tune after one of my khakis died recently. This much I've learned: as far as clothes are concerned, I should’ve lived during the 50’s or 60’s. That does it for the discovery part, now for the pain.
Walk into Abercrombie or Aeropostale and you will behold, in snapshot after contrived snapshot, men and women immortalized in moments of time, all of them grinning like idiots because their clothes have presumably negated their cares. Cares like bills. Getting along with people. Getting into college. Getting tetanus from sitting half-naked on top of a rusty vintage truck. What these vignettes don’t show is how these people obtained their clothes. You see, dear reader, this process is what reduces grown men to tears and grown women to fits of anguished wailing.
I went into the store hoping to leave in 15 minutes and promptly tripped on a table of jeans. My pride slightly bruised, I marveled over the fantastic deal upon which I'd stumbled. $34.95 for honest-to-goodness pants. What a steal! It's not like I wanted to spend my money on something else.
Then I tripped, figuratively so, over the absurd number of choices offered to me. Distressed. Classic Distressed. Bootcut Distressed. Obliterated Vintage. Obliterated Bootcut Distressed. The state of denim, it appeared, was on a nihilistic rollercoaster bound for an empty display table that could only burst into unholy flames. I selected a pair from the Destroyed line and headed to the fitting rooms.
My first thought went, “It really smells in here.” After making sure I wasn't the olfactory loser, I proceeded to try on these professionally decimated pants. And then my toe caught in one of the craters of destruction and ripped the jeans a little bit.
“Well, shit,” I said under my breath.
Without going to fashion school or any centers of chic, I had upgraded this specific pair from Destroyed to Freaking Awesome. I reasoned they could only charge more for them at this point, and back to the rack they went.
About 40 minutes elapsed before I decided to purchase two pairs from the Vintage line, which basically meant they weren't torn to shreds by some wretched 4-year-old paid $0.17 hourly. Since the line had grown to a sizable length, it was perfectly logical to reduce the number of cashiers to a single woman, who insisted on looking you straight in the eye (even though you were a mere three feet away) and shouting, “Can I help the next person?”
I paid for my haul, but not before tripping over a partition. I hadn't felt this ungraceful since 10th grade, a chilly afternoon, when my coach roared over the din during football practice.
“CATCH IT WITH YOUR FACE, WU!” he screamed.
I'm just kidding. It was actually soccer practice. Irrelevant tangents aside, though, I left the store noticeably poorer but also accoutered for the times. Next stop? We all get naked, charge ourselves $149.95 a pop, and call it “Completely Dissolved Outrewear.” That's right, you read correctly. The “r” goes before the “e.”
Posted by Ben at 6:56 PM
Saturday, January 01, 2005 :::
Well, gentle reader, only 365 days to go. Blogger demands we converse today in order to archive an entire week’s worth of discussions. That is so Y2k.
Posted by Ben at 1:00 AM
