I BLAME THE CRETACEOUS PERIOD!

Our favorite things, like midgets shipped Federal Express, come in small packages. The phrases that bring us the most joy are often just three words. There's: 'I love you', I need you', 'I missed you', pretty much the entirety of the 'I verb you' pantheon now that I think about. You have the more esoteric ones like,'You complete me', 'Strong Sexual Content', 'The Yankees win' and my personal favorite, assuming I'm on the winning end: 'You were right'/'I was wrong'.

I mention this because, despite all the amazing technological advances we've made since I was a child - I just bought my 7 year old nephew a pair of remote controlled helicopters, let me say this again, remote controlled helicopters, they fly!- despite all of it, it still doesn't take much to make me happy. Sure I'd like an iPhone an iTablet and the inevitable iClone, but I don't think I'd do anything with any of them aside from maybe looking at them and, if no one was looking, petting them (this may be a metaphysical question and thus a bit off topic, but does finding your own clone attractive make you gay or just a narcissist?).

I take pleasure from small things (Really? You found that funny? 'Small things'? I thought you were mature enough not to laugh at that), like the sign on the men's room door that says sprinkler valves located inside, seeing people misspell, misspell and the pain and suffering of others. Simple stuff really. Perhaps this is why the thing I most enjoyed this past week was a 10 second television clip.

I don't know if you've heard about this new show on Starz called 'Spartacus'. Essentially it's 'Rome' meets '300' meets 'Showgirls' only with more violence and nudity. Violence and nudity, you say; how could you narrow an hour's worth of violence in nudity into a favorite 10 second clip, you ask. The answer is simple, my ten second clip had neither. It didn't even have men wearing those breastplates with He-Man abs and Batman nipples. No, my favorite moment of the weekend was the 10 second disclaimer before the show even started. The disclaimer goes as follows:

“Spartacus is a historical depiction of ancient Rome’s society and culture. The intensity of the sensuality, brutality and language is to suggest an authentic representation of that period.”

Now aside from the fact that blood didn't fly in slow motion in ancient Rome and I doubt that getting freaky in the snow was particularly popular for people without the benefit of North Face gear, the disclaimer screams of 'Damn, did you know there was that much nudity and violence in this thing!?'  Still, you have to admire the resourcefulness of these people.  Rather than admit that sex and violence is good for ratings, they blame history, history, why didn't I ever think of that.  After all, is it their fault ancient Romans were intensely sensual?

CONSTIPATED

So I have a few ideas for posts germinating in my brain, but at the moment I seem to be incapable of turning those ideas into actual words so, for now, I'll give you a sample scene from the book.  Hope you enjoy.

Way back when, when the soon to be Israelites were meandering about in the desert for forty years trying to recall how they’d confused good old ‘I am who am’ with the oversized bull from Wall Street, Moses faced a similar problem. Jews, even then, were a litigious bunch, and with an entirely new set of codes and regulations, loopholes and their corresponding lawsuits abounded. Now this was fine - especially for the lawyers - but, much like today’s judicial system, the courts, or in this case, court, found itself backlogged and overburdened. You see, for all his laudable traits, and I’m sure there were many (personally I think humility is a bit overrated, but whatever), Moses was a bit of a control freak. I suppose it’s understandable, you commune with God for a few days, carry his tablet down a mountain twice and all of a sudden you feel like you’re the only one who can explain what God really wants. So, Moses goes off and becomes God’s own judiciary, adjudicating his butt off eighteen hours a day five days a week from the relative discomfort of a bench in a tent. As you can imagine though, standing in line in middle the Sinai desert waiting for your case to be called isn’t anyone’s idea of a day at the beach, sand notwithstanding, and whether Moses knew it or not his customer service rating was taking quite the hit on Amazon.com. Anyway, this goes on for a couple hundred sunburns when along comes Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law (and inspiration to every delegater and contractor since).


“Moses” he says, “your people are suffering.”

Now Moses was a man of God and like most men of that ilk he was a bit of an ascetic and so he responds, “I know it’s a bit warm Jethro, but it’s a dry heat.”

Jethro himself was a former pagan priest so he knew that without having ritual human sacrifice as a backup plan keeping the people happy was mucho importante (Jethro took Spanish in high school, and, little known fact, was actually the inventor of the chalupa), so persists.

“Moses” he continues, “couldn’t you train a few disciples, teach them what they need to know so they can handle the basic stuff?”

Moses was intrigued at this point because really, ascetic or not, how many times can you listen to people fight over who owned the nasal spray (Like I said, it was a dry heat), so he says to Jethro, “You might be on to something here dad (Moses was respectful like that), but won’t the people complain if they have to settle for some schnook judging for them instead of me?”

Now as I said, Moses was a humble man, but even humble men can take pride in their work, so Jethro knew he had to play it safe if he didn’t want to hurt his son-in-law’s feelings – plus Moses still had that plague wielding staff and, after the whole smashing of tablets thing, a reputation for having a bit of a short fuse. “Of course they’d prefer to have you judge them personally Moses, but we’re in middle of a desert, and for all manna’s wonderful properties it doesn’t have much in the way of SPF.”

“This is true.” Moses replied, recalling with a bit of shiver the manna disaster of 2 p.e. “That stuff is like body oil. Aaron was practically molting.”

“Exactly,” said Jethro, “this way people can go to men they know you’ve trained and who report to you for their all small claims stuff instead of having to line up from here to the Red Sea.”

“Reed Sea.”

“We’ll see about that one, Moses.”

Anyway, after a few tugs at his beard Moses told Jethro he liked the idea and so division of labor was born.

THE RUNS

Before we begin today I'd just like to take a minute to mention that the good folks over at The Vertex decided to carry a new and improved version of last week's post on the Mercedes commercial on their blog.  It's a cool site, mostly because they think I'm funny, so check it out and you know maybe you can try the commenting thing.  Anyway, onto the post!

Some people be allowed to shouldn't run.  I know this may come as a chock to some of you, but when a lot of you run, you, well, you look stupid.  I don't mean this to sound judgmental or controlling, because in all honesty if you running only made you look stupid I'd totally be OK with letting you run.  I would.  The problem is when some of you run, well you look SO bad doing it, it makes others wonder if that's what they look like when they run.  It's kind of like that uncomfortable humor from the first season of 'The Office', only more depressing.  Let me see if I can explain it better.  You know how when you're watching a movie and a guy gets kicked in the nuts and, if you're a guy or Cher's daughter, you involuntarily cringe and cross your legs?  Or like when you watch a guy ask a girl six 'mmm mmm's' out of his appropriate hotness mating index (AHMI for short; I like to pronounce it Amy and picture her as the brunette on Community because with the right hair and wardrobe she can slide in anywhere from average to damn she's Jewish!?) and you just know he's going to get humiliated and so you scrunch you face up all Renee Zellwegery and wait for the rejecetion to drop?  Yeah, it's a lot like that.

It's taken some time, but as a society we've come to a general consensus that singing, dancing and telling your friends supposedly funny stories should be limited to people with natural ability or years of hard work and training.  Sure we had the Karaoke club setback of 1988, and the American Idol casting episodes of the Aughts, but even they are more a tools for drunken mockery and self deprecation than genuine misguided belief in a non-existent talent.  And yes sometimes your friends will say oh my god the funniest  thing happened to me today, but now we've agreed that it's OK to tell them, "No, it didn't. Odds are it was barely even borderline amusing, I'm talking somewhere between Veronica's closet and a bad episode of Will & Grace. I'll tell you what, why don't you write it down and if you still think it's funny leave it in my inbox and I'll check it later."  (We did all agree to start saying that right?  Cuz if I'm the only one doing it I'm not really at the forefront of a revolution so much as I am the jerk about to get punched in the face.)  Somehow though, running never made it on the list.

Well, I'm here to fix that and tell those of you who let you arms swing, who hold one hand on your bosom, who lean forward like you're trying to cut the wind with your skull; those of you who let your messenger bag flop around you like hooked rainbow trout; those of you hold onto your hat and keep your elbow high; those of you jiggle in many unsightly place and ways; those of you who sweat copiously in dark colored dress shirts.  All of you, you have been put on notice.  So please, for our sakes, just be late.

CAN YOU AFFORD NOT TO READ THIS? ACTUALLY, YES, BUT PLEASE DO

So I was watching TV last night (and well, all the others) when a commercial for Mercedes-Benz came on.  I know what you're thinking, "You watched a commercial?  Is it the Superbowl already?" No, it's not, but, every once in a while, I like to eschew the use of my DVR and travel back to a simpler time, like say 2006 and watch commercials like the pilgrims did.  Anyway, unlike most car commercials which tend to blur into faceless melange of 34 highway MPG and 0% APR financing for people who have enough money not to need it, this one caught my attention and by the end of the 30 second spot I was officially (I don't know that I could tell you how this differs from unofficially, maybe it's notarized.) offended.

Now don't get me wrong, I think they make quite the attractive car -- its the walnut burlwood on the interior that seals it for me -- though, in reality, I think, for the most part, people buy a Mercedes because it's expensive and everyone knows it.  There's nothing wrong with that of course, if I had the money I'd arrange for a machine to make it rain every time I walked into a room.  Still, a commercial is a sales pitch, so let's call a spade an undersized shovel, shall we?

Given that premise, you'd assume that ad agency hired to sell you a Mercedes would make use of this knowledge.  I imagine slow languorous shots of blond maple wood grain would be involved, a bunch of people at the valet stand staring at you jealously as you climb into your Mercedes, maybe an impossibly beautiful woman going Anna-Nicole Smith on an old dude, you get the picture.  Instead, this commercial went a completely different way, safety(I don't know why I'm shocked I mean who wouldn't feel safe putting their lives in the hands of the Germans?).  It touted crash tests, reinforced cages, airbags in the trunk for your kidnap victims, a hydrogen peroxide dispenser to neutralize infection in case you get a paper-cut while counting your money, a digital face mask so that your more unfortunate relatives won't be able to recognize you and hit you up for cash at red lights and, I believe, brakes.

These are all well and good, necessary even if the trailer park's in walking distance to major roadways, but the part that really twisted my sheets (Note to self: I really will have to get into that whole top sheet thing sometime, it's like a Chinese finger puzzle in there) was the tag line.  After spending all that time going on about how safe their cars are the announcer says: "Given all this, the question isn't 'can you afford to drive a Mercedes Benz?', but whether you can afford not to."

Apparently, the people at Mercedes Benz think so highly of their car that if you don't buy one, you clearly don't respect the lives of your passengers.  It's true.  In their minds, if you ask a girl out on a date, swing by her place to pick her up and she comes out to see you in a Lexus, she would be completely within her rights to hit you in the face with a pitching wedge (Sorry, Tiger).  If you have kids,the good lawyers of Mercedes would advise them to seek early emancipation, or to perhaps call Angelina Jolie and ask if she's got any room left because you clearly don't love them.  Your wife should, of course, leave you and offer her services to any man with a Mercedes.  Now, obviously, there are more people who need to get around in cars than there are Mercedes owners so, it stands to reason, the good people at Mercedes think it's OK for Mercedes' owners to be polygamous and, if they aren't the committing type, to start their own harems.  (Little know fact, Utah leads the nation in Mercedes ownership.  Kidding.).  After all, safety first.

It's the way the announcer says "not" too that gets to me.  He's not just asking if you can afford not to but a Mercedes, he's accusing us of coming to the wrong conclusion.  It's as if he's read your mind and knows that you've looked at your yearly income, factored in your expenses and  decided to eat this year instead of buying a Mercedes and he's asking if you've really thought it through and if so, and somehow you still decided not to buy one, perhaps you need to talk it over with someone a little smarter than you. You know what Mercedes, I have a question for you, have you ever heard of Volvo!?

CRAZY SEXY... CRAZY

So this is going to sound pretty terrible.  It may even be terrible, all I'm asking is that before you say, "This is terrible!" and stop reading, you give the matter some thought.

I don't know if you've seen this story on the news yet, I myself only saw it this morning, but apparently some woman stole her son from her ex-boyfriend and disappeared with him.  She wanted to give the baby up for adoption and he wanted to keep their son.  Anyway she absconded with the kid (that's a great word isn't it? We should use it more often. Where's Mitch? Dude, he just ran out of here, I think he just absconded with your muffin. [While were on the topic of muffins, how did the muffin become an acceptable form of breakfast?  It's just a cupcake, right?  And cupcakes are really just single serving cakes. I feel like the cake lobby outsmarted us on that one.]). 

During her time on the run she she sent her ex-boyfriend text messages saying she'd killed their son and he'd never see him again.  She's since been captured and maintains that the kid is dead.  Now I'm not particularly interested in this story, don't get me wrong, it's horrible, but you know, these things happen and my wringing my hands won't really help anyone anyway.  The reason I'm bringing up this story is that they happened to put some pictures of the baby stealing mother and well, she's kind of hot. So here's my question and I apologize to my female readers, but this question is limited to the male audience and Tila Tequilla.  Let's say the kid isn't dead; after all, the police believe she gave the kid to a nice family she found while on the lam (or is it lamb? It'd be weird if it was lamb, they seem peaceful). Let's just say they find him and he's healthy and happy and no worse for the wear, would you, and I ask this in all seriousness, tap that?  I mean yes, she's clearly a bit troubled.  Yes she may have stolen a baby, ransacked her boyfriends apartment and perhaps even put a frying pan through his flat screen, but, and this is key, she wouldn't be a murderer.  I guess the question is how crazy would you have to know she is before you lost interest in seeing her naked. I don't mean this to be salacious, I just want to highlight that we, as a society, tend to tie the importance of personal attributes to physical ones. If she's crazy and pretty well the crazy becomes less important, if she's kind of nice and pretty, she's Mother Theresa reincarnated.  I remember when Columbine happened 13 kids were killed four of them women. One of them was a drama student, and an actress.  I know this becuase I saw about 6 retrospectives about her life, why her and no one else, well, perhaps because she looked like this (not that I'm saying a teenage girl was hot, I wouldn't do that, I'm just saying she'd be cast in a commercial or something, God, this is kind of terrible, oh well.).

2001 A GYM ODYSSEY

 I, like most people just shy of thirty (really more frightened than shy, but I'm not the one making up colloquilisms... yet), tend to view anything I did in my twenties as the recent past.  For example, I thought it'd be fun to play basketball for an hour last year.  A friend asked me if I wanted to join him in the game and, being mindful of the fact that I used to play all the time, I said sure.  One collapsed lung, two pulled hamstrings, and several bouts of dry heaving later (This is a tangent but any time I make a list like that I think of the 12 days of Christmas song.  Now I'm not one to bash Christmas songs, I think they're great, heck, I'd be loath to bet against 80% of the songs on the third Christina Aguillara Christmas cd being better than 'Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel', still I recently looked up the lyrics to the 12 days of Christmas and I have to say I was left wondering about the song's intended audience.  Ostensibly, this is about someone getting their 'true love' a gift corresponding to the day of Christmas. Only, on the eighth day, the gift is eight maids a milking and the ninth day's gift are nine ladies dancing.  I don't want to read to much into this but I'm pretty sure the number of people who'd thank you for getting them dancing girls and women with tireless forearms are limited to those blessed with the Y chromosome.  Anyway back to my sentence.) I realized that the last time I'd actually played basketball had been about 7 years prior, which while recent in my mind, wasn't exactly the kind of pre-game warmup that prevents you from asking those circled around your prone  borderline corpse if it's possible for your intermal organs to spontaneously combust.

I bring this up because I went to the gym yesterday. I used to go to the gym, granted I was 21 and playing basketball at the time, but I went.  So when a friend called me out on my whole 'I'm going to start going to the gym next week', rather than saying, I forgot to bring sneakers and workout pants, I went out and bought some (Don't buy the Reebok workout pants, they have elastic at the bottom and well, I looked like a white MC Hammer). I don't want to say this was a mistake, but after work today I plan on filing for social security disability. 

You see, I'd apparently forgotten alot about gymming.  First, someone with a mouth as big as mine should probably be a lot more scared to be in a room filled with heavily muscled people and blunt metal instruments.  Second, I'm very white.  It used to be a gym could only humiliate you in one way; make you look weak and impotent.  Not that I was OK with that,  but it comes with the territory (plus, and I have no scientific data to prove this, but I'm incredibly virile, so my confidence in my boys was never too shaken).  After yesterday however, I remembered there's a second way a gym can strip you of your manhood.  Kickboxing.  I know there are plenty of white people familiar with rhythm, but on the white spectrum they're more seashell to my cosmic latte (I'd call myself 'anti-flash white' but I know the words to 'Gangster's Paradise' and made an MC Hammer reference so I'm obviously disqualified).  My point is, kicking is difficult for my 29 year old groin.  Kicking high is both difficult and painful.  Kicking high to a beat, is hard, painful and apparently, impossible.  Only, everyone else, including about 20 women, half of whom have never seen the hungry side of a diet, seemed to think it was decidedly possible (Yeah, I'm not feeling to proud right now).  Third, it's hard to respond to an instructor with witty banter when you're crying.

All of this is to say, is it possible 2001 was that long ago?

P.S. Yesterday's post was reprinted with a new intro and 100% fewer masturbation jokes on thevertexblog.com. It's a cool site, check it out.

IN THE LAND OF BLIND MEN, MASTURBATION IS PROBABLY AN ISSUE

Happy New Year Readers.  After doing some research I've discovered that this blog wasn't active last New Years season or in 2007, and well for that matter while it was active in 2006 I didn't actually do a post on it, so while this post isn't actually a blog tradition, its still a pretty good idea and those are rare for me most Mondays.  So I give 2010's first list:

TOP 5 NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS TO AVOID

#5 - Don't resolve use your gym membership - You can resolve to join a gym, I think that's a perfectly reasonable use of the money you were going to give to charity. Going to the gym and actually using the machines, however, seems like it might be biting off more than you can chew. I mean it is, in actuality, three resolutions. First, joining the gym, then getting undressed, redressed and venturing out into the cold, then, once you get there, leaving the smoothie stand and, you know, pushing machines across the floor, or whatever it is people do in gyms.

#4- Don't resolve to learn a new language.  First, you won't.  I'm not calling you stupid (today).  I'm just being honest with you.  Unless you're moving to a new country where they speak said language, or you just came back from vacation from said country with a walking talking fornicating souvenir you will lose interest in your new hobby.  It will begin to feel like work and you'll ask yourself why you're working in your free time.  You'll ask yourself what possible upside there is for you in all of this anyway.  You can't afford to go on vacation to anywhere where they speak the language and you don't know anyone here who does speak it, well there's that person at work and sure you could talk to her in some other language, but she already speaks English, and besides she talks too damn much as it is! Unfortunately, before all this happens, you'll think learning a new language is so interesting that you'll feel absolutely compelled, as if by the almighty hand of God Himself, to share all the little "fascinating" factoids you come across on your journey to failing at your resolution.

#3- Don't promise yourself you'll finish your book this year.  Honestly, haven't you disappointed yourself enough already?

#2- Don't resolve to do something everyone wants anyway.  That isn't a resolution.  It doesn't count.  We all want to stay healthy.  We all want  to make more money or 'be in a better place next year'  Unless you have a plan for accomplishing any of the above we're just going to go ahead and call them wishes. Mkay?  Though I'll tell you what you can  resolve to do.  You can resolve to have better wishes next year.  What? You've never heard of superpowers?  Eye lasers have no appeal to you?  Do you even have a pulse?

#1- Don't become more emotionally open and available. The world is a cold hard place populated by people who make fun of the elderly and mentally deficient (why is everyone looking at me?). It is a place where a textlogue can turn your favorite friendship into an acid tipped knife that rotates in your gut with metronomic disinterest. You are trading safety and, at worst, mild discontentment for disappointment and rotating gut-knife pain. This alone should probably be reason enough for you not resolve to fill up the moat around your feelings, but since some of you are stubborn I'll mention this as well. Even if everything works out and your openness doesn't allow for the sacking of your emotional castle, it's still really annoying for everyone else who has to listen to you. At most, and most of you aren't this lucky, there are two people in this world who want you to share more, everyone else is on their knees praying hoping you have the decency to limit yourself to "not bad" when they ask "how's it going?". How about resolving to cut them all a break instead?

P.S. No, the title has nothing to do with this post but it popped in my head and I didn't want to forget it.