Yes, Folks, He's a Hummer

Perhaps it's due to the tons of rehearsal, or perhaps it's due to the fact that I am functionally retarded, but whenever I'm not in rehearsal, I find myself humming or softly singing some part of some song from the show. Now, while this is presently a pleasant thing, I can think of two distinct potential problems*:

1) One line of a song that I sing goes, "Dai dai dai dai," which, as you no doubt have realized, sounds suspiciously like "Die die die die." I can only imagine the pained looks/talk of "silent alarms"/outright weeping when I start mutter-singing that line at a liquor store/bank/child's birthday party, and

2) While it's all fun and games now to constantly have the music going through my head, I can only imagine a day when I will start humming a song from the show, and I will wish that someone would rip a hole in my stomach, insert a hefty-sized garbage bag full of live kittens into said hole, and then suture that hole shut while screaming at the kittens to "Claw your way to victory" and "Stay away from the acid; it'll just slow you down" in an effort to get my mind off of anything related to the show.

On that day, it will just be fun, and no games.

*In ninth grade, I was in a punk band called Potential Problem. Even as I sit here looking at that name, I can't help but smirk at the fact that I capitalized it. Our songs had clever lyrics like, in a song that talked about Sid and Nancy, "Why, why why? Why did you? Why did you have to, turn him into, $*&#? He was just fine, he was just fine, without you!"

While I guess I could say that the band's influence on me was a good thing in the long run, as being in the band is what made me pick up the bass guitar (when the three of us started the band, only one of us knew how to play his assigned instrument. That's right, assigned. We got together, decided we should be in a band, and assigned who should play what. For the record, I think that the first time we assigned instruments, we had the guitar player playing drums. We were maybe not as clever as we thought we were at that time), for a long time the stronger influence of being in the band was that I distrusted "preppy" brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, and Nike in favor of acceptable brands like Dickies and Vans.

Sigh. I'm such a poser. Do the kids still use that expression? Poser? Oh well, back to my Warped Tour cd.

p.s. This may very well be the best idea anyone has ever had, and that statement includes indoor plumbing and pigs in a blanket.

How to Feel Good About Yourself, AKA My New Year's Resolutions

1) Lose at least 1 pound -- As long as I don't go on a twelve month bender of overeating, overdrinking, and other assorted means of worshipping Dionysus, I figure I've got this one in the bag. At the very least, I can just not eat on next December 30th, and that'll probably get the job done.

2) Use allusions that people will get -- Dionysus was the Roman god of wine and frivolity, who is represented in a painting by Damon Denys like this:

Frankly, at the end of the day, in addition I should perhaps think twice about referencing a deity whose thumb ring, shirtlessness, crown of leaves, and pleased with himself look all suggest that he might be a little too eager to come over and watch Brokeback Mountain with me.*

3) Not get fired -- Again, this should be fairly easy to attain, so long as I keep up the good work, and I mean that in the biblical sense, like being kind and charitable and restoring sight to the blind. It could happen.

4) Invent teleportation -- This is, admittedly, the wild card of the resolution list, but it hearkens back to a time when I, as a child, was convinced, convinced that I could build a time travel device using solely the various leftover parts from washing machines that my grandfather had in his back yard. Though that plan didn't come to fruition, I am certain that this one could work because I just rewatched an old Simpsons' Treehouse of Horror and they had a teleporter on there, and (warning: abrupt shift) as Disney's Fantasmic show would lead me to believe, I am only limited by my imagination, or, in this case, other peoples' imaginations. Also, I just really want one because, really, who wants to be driving all the time? Can you drink while you drive? You can, but it's seriously discouraged in this so-called "free" country. However, while we're told not to drink and drive, I've never once heard, "Don't Drink and Teleport." Think about it; you'll see that it makes a lot of sense, and I think that you'll come on board.

*While I don't necessarily have anything against the movie, the prospect of watching it with a shirtless guy just kind of gives me the willies.

Laptop = Hours of Tears = Opportunity for Inanity

So, I tried to post yesterday from my apartment from my laptop, but either blogger or the laptop opted to, instead of post what I had writ, make my writing disappear into the darkness and the abyss of the world wide web. I tried surfing the net in order to find it, but I ended up worrying that I would get hacked and that cyberthieves would steal my credit card numbers and that I would end up in a commercial that featured my body being voiced by a fifteen year old girl who was talking about how she was excited that she got a whole bunch of new "Hello Kitty" schwag.

So, long story short, I cut my losses, and returned to my bottom line: "I did not have sexual relations with that woman...Miss Lewinsky."

Now, onto something that has merit: I have rehearsed for the show twice now, and it is just about the most fun that I have ever had. It also doesn't hurt the ego that I seem to be picking up stuff very easily, and that people in authority have commented happily on it.

I would say "Go Me," but I think that those first two paragraphs drove my nerd factor way up, and, frankly, I might just burst into tears if it goes up any higher. Or, if I may, I may just burst into one giant tear, and slowly dissolve and dissipate into the carpet, and, as I am looking forward to tomorrow, I don't think that that's the best idea.

Christmas Time Is Here

Though it's a few days early, I'll pretty likely be away from a computer until next week. Also, I'll be starting rehearsal for Fiddler at that point as well, which means that old AC is going to be a busy, busy boy who is loving what he's doing. Let's just hope that it doesn't kill me.

In any case, thanks for coming around here to see what's going on in my little noggin'. Merry Christmas to you and yours

Why My Roomie Is Funny

Me: All right, guys, I'll drive home. Why don't you guys just take a little nap?

He: Wuh? We only live like twenty minutes away!

Me: I was hoping you would fall asleep, and I would then take us to Vegas. You know, as opposed to going to work tomorrow.

He: I don't know, AC; that might get us the bad kind of unemployed.

Later...

Me: I think even the bad kind of unemployed might be nice.

He: As opposed to the good kind?

Blatant Self-Awesomeness

I had put this up on my myspace, but since I don't link to that here (for some reason that at the moment I'm forgetting, and I'm pretty sure you can get there through links on the video) I thought that I'd put it up. This is video of the solo that I had in a production of Godspell last summer.

In case you're wondering, I'm the large fellow with the solo. See? That's why I put a pig as my profile picture. Get it?

Prepare Ye

Add to My Profile More Videos

Why God? Why Today?

Why is it that a major program that we use in our office has a specified number of users that can use it at once? Why is it also that the number of people who have to use it on a daily basis exceeds said specified number by at least ten or fifteen?

It is because of questions like these that the insides of my head will soon be decorating the walls of my cubicle. It'll be kind of like, "Why? Why? Why?" KABOOMOWHAMMOBLAMO!!!*

*The sound of my head exploding. I didn't expect it to sound like that either, but how can I really argue?

My Brain's Redundant Thought for the Day

My Brain: Man, I'm sick all the time. That can't be healthy.

On Being an Adult

Did anybody else think that one day you'd just be good at making good choices and good with finances and good with all the things that we watched our parents and grandparents do well?

I know I did. One day I'll get there.

Coffee

In addition to the remodeled cafeteria, there has been added a little coffee shop. I go down there from time to time when I feel the need for some sugary sweet coffee goodness.

This morning, I felt such a need.

After the group I went with this morning finished ordering, the next person in line ordered a double shot of decaf espresso.

Why in heaven's name would you order a double shot of decaf espresso? Isn't espresso's point that, in exchange for drinking foul tasting sludge, you get extra caffeine? So, he just opted for foul tasting sludge?

Why? Are there any espresso drinkers out there who can enlighten me?

How I Get in Trouble

Yesterday morning, a few minutes before ten o'clock, a supervisor came over and asked to speak with me and another person for a moment. I had a meeting at ten o'clock, but that meeting was suppsed to have been in the conference room right behind my desk, and, to that point in time, no one had arrived. So, figuring it was safe, I went to speak with that supervisor who told us how the customer service line setup was going to be different.

I got back to my desk, and there was still no one in the conference room, so I rechecked the email invitation, and I found out that the meeting was on a different floor. So, I hurriedly packed up some paper and a pen, and rushed away from my desk. When I entered the meeting, some people were smiling, and I quickly apologized to the vice president who had called the meeting for being late. The meeting ended up not really concerning me.

However, when I returned to my desk from the meeting, I had a voicemail. It said: "Hi AC, this is the vice president. It's 10:05; do you know where you're supposed to be?" That message was followed by an abrupt hangup.

While I guess it ended up working out, I think that the moral of the story is not to be lulled into meetings with people talking about inconsequential things like phone lines when there are other, more important meetings that also don't really concern me to attend. That, or, you know, actually figure out where the meetings that one is supposed to go to are located.

Random Phobia That I Have, Number Two

Bloggerbetaophobia: The paralyzing fear that if you switch to blogger beta, something horribly awful will befall your precious little blog.

A Semi-Real and Partially Invented Conversation from Last Night

Me: What's today, Thursday?

She: Yup.

Me: Man...so I've got to go to work tomorrow? They can suck it!

She: Shh!

Me: What's wrong with that?

She: It's not polite to say.

Me: Well why not? I think I'm going to put it on my business cards: AC, Actor/Analyst, "I've got to go to work tomorrow? They can suck it!"

She: I'm sure you'll get a lot of business.

The Joy of Cooking, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Sauce

Recently, the girlfriend and I decided that it was important to eat at home more frequently in part because it's less expensive and more healthy, and in part because many of you, if you saw me, would have trouble not screaming "OH THE HUMANITY!" as I am approximately the size of the Hindenberg, and also because my apparently being on fire is forever immortalized in a film strip.

With these things in mind, a few evenings ago, we opted to make fajitas, under the assumption that nearly anything we made at home would be better for us than anything that we bought from a fast food establishment. My girlfriend was in charge of the meat, and I was in charge of the potatoes.

Now, I know that you're all thinking that fajitas and potatoes go together like creme brulee and a kick in the crotch, but I really wanted potatoes, and when you spend 2004 - 2005* making under minimum wage, you find that potatoes, and not Abba Zabba, are your only friends. Think about it: big bag o' potatoes on the cheap + doesn't go bad quickly + access to stove and spices = an economic piece of heaven. For ease of eating, I found that cutting potatoes up into little pieces and throwing them into a frying pan with a little olive oil gets the job done quickly and easily, with little clean up.

I'm pretty sure that by now you have realized that my potatoes were delicious, and if you haven't, it's probably because I haven't described them at all. I would post what I put into them, but then everyone would know my one cooking secret, and I understand that these things are supposed to be kept on the down low, and they should be passed from generation to generation in a cycle as beautiful as a waterfall flowing down the side of a mountain or a kidney stone passing from your body. The only comfort for you is that any of you ever come over, I will make up a batch, and you are certainly welcome to eat them, as long as you don't mind them being a little spicy, and I am certain that you will agree that they are, in fact, much better than a kick in the crotch, and, really, that's all that you can ask for in a meal.

* Actual year in your life not important. What is important is that you must think to yourself every day during this time period, "What a clever ruse, telling people that they will receive high paying jobs upon graduation from college! Those colleges must be making millions! If I ever have money, I'd like to invest in the idea of college."

Random Phobia of the Day That I Possess

Peetallerthanthouophobia - The irrational fear of using a particular urinal when there is a taller than average man using the urinal right next to it.

I Have a Confession

It's probably not that big of a deal. I mean, there's a huge segment of the population of this country that does it too, and yes, if they all jumped off of a bridge, I guess I'd have to give it some serious thought.

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but here goes: I'm starting to like country music.

I know the panic that you're all feeling right now. You're figuring that I'm going to start devoting this site to discussing the finer points of NASCAR, as well as weighing various conspiracy theories trying to figure out just who shot J.R., but I've got to tell you, it's not like that. This is probably going to make you call me Touchy McFeely, but the reason that I'm growing to like country is that it tells such beautiful stories.

For example, there's a song that's been around for a couple of years that I've just reheard recently that's about a little boy whose mother is lying in a hospital bed dying, and the little boy just wants to buy her a pair of shoes so that his mother can be beautiful "if mama meets Jesus tonight."

Objectively, this song is pretty ridiculous. Wouldn't you think that Jesus would have other things to care about than whether or not a pair of shoes makes a woman pretty?

But the thing is, it connects with me emotively. Shoot, even thinking about those lines right now gets me all teary eyed, and I submit that if you can listen to that song and not tear up, you must either hate your mother or else your heart is cold and black and should be given to naughty children in their stockings at Christmas.

On second thought, who am I kidding? I've got to embrace who I am. If anybody needs me, I'll be sitting in an undershirt watching a special on ESPN2 about what a great guy Jeff Gordon is. Don't even think about bothering me unless you've got a sixer of Milwaukee's Best.

Nine Things I've Learned in the Last Week or So

1) The spider that lives outside of my apartment may very well be dead in that he hasn't really seemed to move in a couple weeks.

2) I figure that the spider's lack of movement is a devious ploy to get me to come closer to eat, at which point it will surely devour me, because

3) A few weeks ago, I watched the spider eating a moth that was much larger than itself, which prompted me to think, "Huh. The spider's eating its way up the food chain. It's slowly eating things that are bigger than it is...OH NO! I'm bigger than it is!"

4) Today, I found that our network at work is blocking out sports sites, to which I thought, "Haha, silly sports fans, having to work."

5) The comment to myself was met with sadness when I realized that I was a sports fan.

6) The page that announces that I've reached a blocked site claims that I can either use the back button to go back to whatever I was doing, or I can proceed if it's for "work purposes." I'm sorry, but you've got to have pretty big stones to claim that you're going to si.com for "work purposes."

7) The tv show "How I Met Your Mother," while occasionally trying too hard to be clever, is really, really funny.

8) Casino Royale was awesome in a way, that if I were awesome in that way, I would be James Bond.

9) Thanks to number 8, I've invented what I shall call the "zero sum" sentence. It shall be used to throw one's readers off guard by having to ask themselves, "Did that last sentence even make sense? It ended where it began..."

Remodeled Cafeteria

The company I work for (which I will affectionately refer to as "my company" from here on out when I see that my roommate and I have received our electric and gas bills. I will say out loud, "Roomie, we've received the pleasure of my company," at which point he will likely look at me with disdain and a little bit of confusion, and consider locking his door when he sleeps at night) has just remodeled its cafeteria. One of the main bonuses now is that it features a salad bar.

At first, I was excited at the prospect of a salad bar, because I thought that opting for salad would be a healthier alternative to whatever greasy food I would normally have chosen, until I remembered how much salad dressing I put on my salad. After quickly doing the math (all right, I didn't really do the math, but I understand that English has these things called "subordinate clauses" that give your readers "clues" as to "where your writing is going to go next" because they "help form coherent thoughts", so I thought that I would include one, even if it was/were [subjunctive case, anyone?] fictitious. Unfortunately, I believe my grammar textbook also said that an "excessive wordiness" in parentheses will quickly "lose your reader's attention" and make them "consider suicide" because you've effectively changed the topic in your writing for something frequently tangential, oftentimes just dropping them back into what they call your "independent clause" without so much as a heads up), I realized that the number of calories likely exceeds the caloric quantity of a delicious honey baked ham.

My conclusion? I will write a book called Honey Baked Ham and You: How I Found Happiness and New Clothes by not Eating Salad, and market it to people who are looking to lose weight. I know that many of you will object and say that what I've done is just effectively re-invented the Atkins Diet, but if you tell me that in person, I'll claim that I've never heard of this "At-kuns?" diet you speak of.

Wow. Two million dollar ideas in one week. I'll just have to be sure not to use so many parentheses in the book, and it's sure to be a success (unless the Atkins people break my knee-caps with their bony fists, but that's a risk that I'm willing to let future AC take).

UPDATE: In my salad today, I added something that I thought was cheese but most certainly is not cheese. I am offended that this death-tasting-like, cheese-impostering substance is offered at the salad bar. OFFENDED!

Man Versus the Elements AKA Deep Thoughts with AC

When I awaken in my warm bed in my cold room in the morning, I realize that this will be one of the happier moments of my day.

I then hit snooze, roll over, and go back to sleep until my morning isn't so full of ennui.

A Snippet of a Conversation from the Weekend

"AC, you're a little bit of a pushover."

"Yeah, maybe."

Just Another Manic Monday

Behold, my next million dollar idea, or, at least, the formulation thereof. This last sentence is what you call "inserting an introduction that doesn't really tie into your major theme, but you want your post to tie itself up at the end, even at the riskof dropping the reader abruptly into a second paragraph that is only tangentially related to the first."

Lots of people like to read, right? Or at least, many people, like me, enjoy telling people that they've read important books. Unfortunately, many people also have this little commitment called "having to work in order to earn money." This "money" is then exchanged for goods and services, like "being able to live inside," and "eating everyday." Because of the huge commitment from work, many people just don't have the time or mental capacity left at the end of the day to really pore into a porous work of fiction.

But,

what if there were some way to get through books at a decent pace without having to invest long periods of time into it? Further, what if there were some way to market this?

Now, I know that many of you will say, "What about speedreading and/or books on tape? Would those methods not effortlessly help the precocious, pretentious reader to read without more effort?"

My rebuttal? Yes with a but. While both of those methods would help the reader get through books, they have flaws. Speed reading is, based on my understanding of it, more effortful than effortless, and, if you are truly trying to appreciate the beauty of the language of the classics, it seems that reading quickly would not help you achieve that fact. Books on tape might help you appreciate the language, but I find that it's difficult and expensive to find the titles that I want.

So what is the solution? I don't know, but if somebody could figure out a way to teach people to read every word with understanding , AND teach the reader to get through a book quickly so that it didn't seem quite so overwhelming, I think that that person would make a million bucks.

I haven't quite figured out the method, but when I do, I'm sure that you'll see me hawking it on late night infomercials. And by "me," I mean some celebrity who's down on his luck and is looking to earn a chalupa.

An Ode to a Fantasy Football Season Going Down the Toilet

I think that I shall never see,
A thing as lovely as week three,
When I beat my oppenent by twice his score,
And I thought to myself, "Why didn't I play more before?"

The weeks that I spent in first place,
Were the happiest for me of the race,
But now that I'm in place number four,
I find myself praying, "Lord, help Jacobs score!"

With only four weeks until playoff time,
I hope that my team can turn on a dime,
And remember how to score some fast,
So that I'm not left out on my ... butt.

New Elevators

My company has spent the last six months paying people to redo our elevators. They have just finished the first half, and now we get to use the newly refurbished elevators whilst they redo the other half.

The new elevators are pretty cool. The insides are a beautiful combination of steel and wood, as if the elevator were trying to say, "I am the best of both outside and inside, here to shuttle you between floors at your leisure."

However, there is something kind of ... off about the new elevators, and it has to do with the voice. You see, the elevator now has a female's electronic voice telling us what floor we're stopping at, presumably to keep us from the incredibly tiring and trying task of having to look at the digital display of the floor number. But, the way the voice says it is questionable. It comes out, "Eighth floor," where "Eighth" is equal to a very normal way of saying the word, and "floor" comes out as it the elevator were saying, "Though you're a human and I'm a device, I'm almost positive that we could make attractive offspring if we tried."

This is disconcerting for several reasons, and one of the big ones is that due to the fact that I'm in a relationship, I don't find myself getting hit on very much, and so this machine is pushing me much further past my alotted number of "being hit ons" for the month. I can only assume that this will end in the unspeakable battle between my girlfriend and the elevator, which, frankly, sounds more like a title of a children's book than the climactic battle for my companionship, but I'll take what I can get.

Disclaimer: I don't know if she were going to write about this, and if she were, she should just tell me and I will delete this insipid post and allow all of you to marvel at her beautifully structured prose.

Disclaimer 2: If the "were"s in the previous sentence were incorrect grammatically, I would very much like to be advised of this, as I think that they are the subjunctive tense, which is supposed to be used specifically for hypothetical situations. That sentence is as confusing as poo with them, but I can't bring myself to change them to "was" because I think it would be incorrect grammatically. Mandy?

Disclaimer 3: Disclaimer 1 was written because I was going to include a conversation that I had with Red in this post, but later opted out of it. I should, then, therefore, remove all three of these disclaimers, but I will leave them as a monument to my own futility.

A Quote by Me While Shopping for Clothes

"There comes a time in every man's life when his 'fat pants' just become his 'pants.' I am there."

A Hypothetical

Let's say that I theoretically work for an energy company. Now, let's theoretically say that my boss gave everyone in the department tiny fridges for their cubicles last Christmas.

Now let's say that higher ups are making us take home any "extraneous electrical devices" for fear of running out of electricity on our floors. Theoretical electricity, that is.

Now, is this, in and of itself, theoretically funny to anyone else, or am I just a weirdo?

This Is Not Thought Provoking

My roommate is the best barbecuer ever to barbecue. The only possible exception is my father, who also cooks a mean tri-tip. For any of you who have not eaten tri-tip, please accept my condolences for your loss. Tri-tip is a big deal in the city that I grew up in, with our particular brand of seasoning having the name of the city in its title. Santa Maria Seasoning, mm-mm good.

For the last few weeks, my roommate have had a date on Monday night that includes sale priced beef, Monday Night Football, and the eventual meat sweats. It is absolutely delicious. I nearly cried one time, until I realized that crying over food in conjunction with drinking a wine cooler (What? If you're going to drink, you may as well drink something delicious.) and calling a barbecue with my roommate a date may just call for the revocation of my man card as well as all of the rights and priviledges thereunto assigned. You know, like heart disease.

Maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing to give up that card...

Facial Hair

In an effort to start the effort of effortfully exerting effort to grow a beard, last week I spent some time trimming back my goatee with the eventual goal of achieving a happy medium between beard length and goatee length. It was important to me that I not just cut the goatee to the exact same length as the beard hair due to the fact that I have, perhaps, the weakest chin on record. It's kind of like in that Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters where the main character has no lower jaw because it got shot off before the book started. In fact, other than the facts I still have my jaw, my jaw hasn't been shot off, and I'm not a girl, this story is almost exactly like that book. My advice to you is to go read that book right now, because you will be regaled by Mr. Palahniuk's grotesque, yet refined, sense of sardonic timing in his prose, unless of course you like to read stories about things that aren't horrible, in which case I cannot recommend this book.

(Now THAT's a tangent).

Where was I ... Oh yes, my beard, longer around the mouth, shorter on the cheeks, right.

Anyways, I was just playing with my beard while giving some serious thought to some of the things that I needed to accomplish today, and I realized that in my trimming, I left my left hand side of the mustache much longer than the mustache on the right hand side. I surmise that this leaves me looking like some kind of bizarrely mentally handicapped half-handlebarred mustache cowboy looking creature.

Oh, the press is going to have a field day with this one.

An Email

I just got an email regarding a spreadsheet that I and several coworkers were supposed to have worked on and have completed by this afternoon. The initiator of the spreadsheet sent out an email asking all of the people who do what I do and a few others, including my boss, if we were all finished with it.

I, being a good boy, as soon as I received the email, clicked "reply all," and quickly typed "I'm Done!"

Well, I thought that that was what I had typed.

You see, my fingers got the best of me for a moment, and, although I thought that what I had typed indicated to others that I had completed the task, what my fingers actually typed was, "I'm Dong!" which I think would have indicated something else about myself entirely.

Fortunately I caught my error in time, but how bad would that have been, huh? A lot worse than singing the wrong word at a funeral, I'll tell you that much right now!

This Is Why I Don't Get Invited Places

This morning I had the honor of singing a couple of songs at a funeral. While I didn't know the woman who had passed away, based upon the recollections presented of her by friends and family members, she seemed like she was a nice enough person, one whose memory makes people smile absent smiles.

I sang two hymns, one of which I fairly well, and one that I knew really well. The first song went off without a hitch, but for some reason, partway through the last verse of the second song, I started singing an entirely wrong word which I quickly corrected. Nobody said anything about it, and people even told me that I sang well, but you just don't want to mess somebody's funeral up, you know?

In retrosect, it probably wasn't a huge deal, but at the time, I felt that it was on par with asking a larger but not pregnant woman if she were pregnant or like Ross claiming time and time again that he and Rachel were on a break. It's just something that you don't do.

Sigh. Oh well. So it goes.

Why I Love California

Yesterday, the girlfriend and I opted to take a drive to go get something to eat for lunch, as opposed to our normal routine of walking to the cafeteria at work. Well, I suppose that that would be true if instead of opted, you put "had," and if you added nearly anywhere in that sentence that the reason was "because I'm a moron who forgot something at my apartment."

Go ahead. Add it anywhere. It's hours of fun.

In any case, the little shopping center we went to in La Jolla was jam packed, which I thought was odd at first, until I remembered that everyone who lives in La Jolla is independently wealthy/kings or queens of small European countries.

Obviously, because of the number of people, parking was horrible. When I finally saw that a car was backing up, I stopped a safe distance away, and waited for him to leave. When the car left, I allowed a few cars to pass, because, although I had a straight shot at the spot, I was technically on the other side of a little intersection in parking lot. However, in my act of generosity, I allowed another vehicle to notice the spot, and he started towards the spot. However, when he started to speed up to get the spot, I also sped up, as if to send the message, "If you think you're getting this spot, you've got another think coming. Also, I suspect you have relations with barnyard animals." Our mutual speeding up caused us both to slam on the brakes, thus halting our mutually assured destructions.

As I sat there wondering just how this dispute would work itself out, I noticed the other driver stick his fist out of the window, and started to shake it. While in some cultures, this might be regarded as a hostile act, I nearly immediately realized that he meant to play rock, paper, scissors for the spot.

The sweat poured down my brow as we shook our hands in unison. I tried to gather information about the man to help me in my battle. Was he cold, like a rock? Or skinny, like paper? Or was he sharp to the touch, like scissors? I somehow thought that he'd choose paper, and so I went with scissors. Unfortunately for our hero, I was soundly defeated when his bold and unexpected play of rock crushed my scissors.

I didn't get the spot that day. But I did get a smile.

Embarrassing Childhood Stories, Part One

I, like many of you, grew up as a small child. However, likely unlike many of you, I had a terrible fear of germs. I can trace this back to a time when my mother, in an effort to encourage my brother and I to wash our hands, told us that she had heard news reports that little children were dying in my hometown because of infections caused from germs, and this would apparently have been a non-issue had these children washed their hands after using the restroom.

Therefore, my childish intellect reasoned that germs live in the bathroom, and, could I avoid the restroom as much as possible, I could avoid the germs that were threatening the very sanctity of my well-being.

So, as a child of 5, I made the executive decision to stop going. Well, technically, I still went number 1, but not number 2. Peeing, I reasoned, was safer because I could, theoretically, not have to touch anything that was infected with germs. Heaven help me should the toilet seat cover be shut, because I would then just be forced to wait.

In any case, I made it nearly a week before I foolishly gave the game away by revealing to my grandmother (who I suspect asked why I was walking funny) the length of time that I had lasted without going. She, understandably, was distraught. I explained my dilemma that I needed to avoid germs because otherwise I would die from them, mom said. She countered with the fact that should I never use the bathroom again, I would likely burst and would then have much worse problems than germs.

With the thought of spontaneous combustion not at all that appealing, that evening I was given a laxative (I believe it was given to me orally; if this is not the case, I must have blocked out that experience, because I certainly don't have any real recollection of that portion of the event). I was told that this would help me go to the bathroom.

For about ten minutes, nothing happened. I laid down on the couch and watched a bit of whatever was on tv. I began to think that I was doomed to explosion, that my best days were behind me, and why, why couldn't I have a second chance.

Then. It. Happened.

All of a sudden, I felt like Santa and his reindeer had somehow ended up inside of me, and that they were looking for the nearest way out; I felt like everyone imprisoned in the French Revolution were in my stomach, and they were looking for a way to escape from the Bastille that was my lower intestine.

As I ran to that culture of cultures, I believe my parents and grandparents followed me. So I, always a private boy, now had an audience in this most private of places. I found this a little awkward, but being as I still wasn't wiping my bottom, and I had what can only accurately be described as a loaf of bread trying to exit my body, I didn't really care.

About the experience itself, I remember precious little other than the crying and the fact that it was over fairly quickly.

After all was said and done, I was obviously happy and relieved at defeating what had been my biggest conquest to date. In a sense, I had heard, responded to, and conquered this particular challenge. I had scaled my Everest. In retrospect, it was a shame that I conquered my Everest so early in life, but I will always take something important from this experience, something that money just can't buy: though I'm still wary of bathrooms and still scared of germs, I know now, deep down, that everything will work out ... in the end.

You Know Something?

Do you know what I hate more than actually being ill? I hate being on the fringes of it.

With that first statement in mind, I'll give you three guesses as to what my physical state is currently, and the first two don't count. And if you get your last guess wrong, you get shot in the face. No pressure.

But seriously, I feel like I'm straddling the fence between wellness and illness. And since I'm not sick enough to stay home nor well enough to function with all cylinders, I feel like my straddling is just giving me a white pointed board in the tookus.

Therefore, body, start working, I implore you. Otherwise, I may have to start asking scientists if they have the technology to rebuild me.

In other news, the city of San Diego came and tested one of the elevators in our building today, and by tested, I mean that they let one of the carriages go into a freefall. What I didn't know is that elevators apparently have an emergency brake that shoots out from the cart in the event of a freefall. I did not know that.

Something else that I didn't know comes from the fact that our company didn't really feel the need to tell employees that this would be going on, and so several people gathered at the elevators when we heard what sounded like one of the elevators falling. However, we, in our intrepid fearlessness, could only manage to muster a "That didn't sound very good" before resuming our normal activities.

That's the bravado of working in an office building. Inspiring, no?

The Denouement

The only catch that I was waiting on to fully celebrate the part that I got that I announced last week was talking with my boss about it. Because some of the shows are matinees, I needed to make sure that he would be okay with my working a slightly different than average schedule.

I spoke with him yesterday, and, despite any misgivings I might have had prior to the conversation, he said that it was all right so long as I kept my customers happy.

So, customers, if you're reading this, be happy.

Some Things I Learned This Weekend

1) If you ever wake up at 730 in the morning on a Saturday in San Diego, your first thought is, "Vegas?", and you have to go to church Sunday morning, you should probably do your very best to just roll over and go back to sleep.

2) Should you decide to throw caution to the wind and drive, you should probably take your roommate, both because it would be a lot of fun to have him with you and because it's a lot of driving for one person to try to pull off in one day.

3) Should you fail to observe step number two, you should probably leave no later than 7 at night, because leaving then will get you home at midnight, which is a reasonable time to go to bed.

4) Should you find yourself still in Vegas at 7, you should almost definitely leave by 9, because getting home at 2, while not ideal, still provides a reasonable amount of sleep.

5) Should you look at your watch, and should it, by chance, say that it's 10 o'clock, it is imperative that you run, RUN to your car to get the dickens out of Dodge, or in the case, the Mirage.

6) When you're driving home, and you are that tired, rest assured that two tail lights in front of a sweeping left turn ahead of you will almost definitely look like a giant octopus that is ready to attack you. This news will not distress you, however, and you will think to yourself, "Hmm. A giant sea creature. How odd. Hopefully he can't move as quickly on land as he can under the sea."

An Open Letter to Travel Agents

Dear Sir or Madam:

If your client asks to leave on a Friday, and you set your client up with a flight on Thursday and do not tell your client that this is the case, your client will become very unhappy when she gets to the airport only to find out that her flight left yesterday.

Just an FYI.

Love,
AC

My New Cubicle

My new cubicle is right next to the big conference room on our floor. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is a good thing in that the conference room has huge windows that are on the west side of the building, so I kind of have a view of the ocean if I turn around in my seat at my desk and look around the huge tvs that are kind of in the way. It is a bad thing in that the conference room is often used for, well, conferences, which really puts a cramp in my style of napping underneath my desk and my recently implemented policy of "no-pants" Thursday.

One of those last two items were true; I'll leave it to you to decide which one.

In any case, something puzzles me about the conference room. As most of the conference rooms in our building do, this conference room has a posted schedule of meetings that will go on during the given day. For the last two Wednesdays, there has been a three hour meeting posted that claims to be some kind of Spanish language class. However, when the time comes for that particular meeting to meet, no one is in there.

This leads me to two possible conclusions:

1) People scheduled the meeting and then it's been cancelled twice in successive weeks, or
2) The meeting is actually going on, but I can't comprehend it for some reason.

My possible explanations for why I can't understand it are either that the people learning are very small, or the people using the conference room are operating in some other dimension.

I, myself, lean towards the latter explanation, but if any of you find me tied down under my desk with tiny ropes a la Gulliver's Travels, I think that we'll know the answer.

Happy November 1!

I can only imagine that little children everywhere are running around in celebration of All Saints' Day, or as I like to call it, Wednesday.

I, however, have been celebrating it by laboring tirelessly over the following timeline, which I submit for your approval.



Key: A = Two days ago, B = Received a part at the Welk, and C = Worldwide fame and domination (hopefully me dominating the world, and not the other way around, but I'll take what I can get).

But seriously, thanks to those of you who left words of congratulations. It means a lot.

Insert Chorus Line Reference Here

They gave me a part.

The company that is putting on Fiddler gave me a part in their production.

One of the best regional theatre companies here in southern California gave me a stinking part.

Me. Your little old AC.

I'M THE KING OF THE WORLD!!!

Oh man, I'm going to be insufferable here for a while. You'll have to bear with me until I can fit my head through doorways again.

On Halloween

My roommate took this picture of the arachnid that haunts my dreams. Give it a click so that you can fully appreciate how awesomely terrible and terribly awesome it is.

My roommate also pointed out that the spider must be pretty clever if it got to be so big, and he pointed out that constructing a web right in front of the light outside of our apartment was a genius move on the spider's part, because it shows that the spider knows what the delicious bugs are attracted to.

So, great, now I've got a genius spider outside my door.

Although, come to think of it, I should have known when, as I was walking by, I heard a tiny voice say, "EUREKA! A squared plus B squared equals C squared! I'm a genius!"

In any case, here's wishing a very happy Halloween to you and yours.

The Audition

Friday's audition went well, and I was given a call back for later that same afternoon. They had me read for a couple of different parts, and I was then sent on my merry way with a "Thanks. That's all we need to see."

I anticipate that I will know by Friday whether or not they'd like to have me in their show.

If I were being judged purely versus those that were at the audition on Friday, I'd say that I had a pretty good shot. However, they are holding Equity (the actor's union) auditions up in Los Angeles today. From what I've heard, because the theatre is an Equity theatre, they must cast one more than half of the cast with union actors. Because the cast will likely be twenty people, that means that 11 must be union members. This leaves nine available spots for the likes of me.

I will continue to keep my fingers crossed because my type really is perfect for the show, but there's no way to really know my chances (as if there ever is). I will continue to hope for the best, and I will eagerly await Friday.

Big Audition Tomorrow

I have a big audition tomorrow for probably the biggest and most respected theatre in the area.

The show is Fiddler on the Roof.

Because of my body type, I think that this show is my best shot to get my foot in the door over there.

For those of you who don't know what I look like, I submit an artist's rendering.


If you'll notice, I even have a gimpy foot like the guitar player from Swing Kids.

I'll be a shoe-in! (No pun intended...all right, pun intended, who am I kidding?)

And, by a shoe-in, I mean of course that those of you who are pray-ers should pray, those of you who are wish-ers should wish, and those of you who are happy thought-ers should happy thought.

That's right; I made a noun a verb. Suck it.

It Is On

I came into work this morning with high hopes of working hard and not having to worry about the spider what lives outside of my house. However, somebody had a different idea for how I should spend my day. When I got to my desk, I found this sitting by my keyboard.

All I have to say is that this spider is intent upon terrorizing me. When you consider how far my apartment is from my place of work, this feat is even more amazing.

I believe that this explains why I didn't see the little guy the other day. He, like Vanessa Carlton, was making his way downtown.

Ah yes, but, spider, you have shown your hand too soon! I now know what you are capable of, whereas you know nothing about what I am capable of. To give you a hint, I submit, for your reading pleasure, a poem from that great poet of our times, Bullwinkle Moose.

Ahem.

"Little spider on the wall,
Ain't you got no brains at all?
Can't you see the wall's been plastered?
Oh, you stupid little...spider."

A Case of the Mondays...on a Tuesday

Normally, I come to work and I think to myself, "Well, while there are things that I could do that would make me happier and more fulfilled, I am thankful to have the job that I have that allows me to continue living in the manner to which I have become accustomed."

However, following nights where I, for whatever reason, don't get a good night's sleep, I think to myself, "Well, while there are things that I could do that would make me happier and more fulfilled, JUST SHOOT ME IN THE FACE RIGHT NOW! DO IT!"

It also doesn't help matters that my new cubicle has the odd distinction of being both very quiet and yet a very high traffic area in the office. This is due to the fact that I am pretty far away from all of my coworkers and right in front of the elevators. This becomes bothersome because, as we all know, tired + quiet = asleep, and asleep + work = fired.

I've only got a couple more hours, so let's hope for the best. If only there were a horrifyingly large spider in my cubicle that, through sheer terror of it, I would be forced to remain cognizant. That would be awesome, and by awesome I mean horrible.

This Weekend

The show that I am in opened this weekend, and, despite my complaints about it in an earlier post, something funny happened.

I started to like it, and I started to understand why other people like it.

Don't get me wrong, I think that there are a few places where the book of the show could be better, but the show itself is fascinating for many reasons, but one of the biggest is the character of Eliza Doolittle.

The act 1 Eliza is stupid, though not necessarily in a bad way. It would, perhaps, be better to refer to her as ignorant in act 1, except some of the mistakes that she makes cross the line of being not at all intelligent. However, once Eliza hits act 2, she seems like she has received a Masters degree in interpersonal relations over the course of the intermission. She has somehow gained a depth of understanding so rich, that she is transformed from the lovable Eliza of act 1, to the brooding, suddenly unhappy Eliza of act 2.

Depending on how you want to look at it, it's either like she's changed from caterpillar into a butterfly, or from a butterfly into a caterpillar.

While I obviously understand that the fact that she changes is at the crux and essential motive of the show, her change is so big, that it is almost unbelievable. Almost.

How many of us, after screwing up or going through some particularly rough circumstances, have thought to ourselves, "I wish that I were someone else." The character of Eliza is compelling because she gets that chance, and we, as the audience, get to vicariously experience how changing into a different person is not always what we expect it to be.

As a side note, I can't imagine anyone doing as well at the part of Eliza as the actress who is in this show. As an actor, I can only imagine how difficult it is to make this change believable, and our Eliza seems to do it effortlessly.

An Update to my Cubicle

Dear Cubicle,

We have to move today, so you have been cleaned, and by cleaned, I mean that all of my stuff was indiscriminately stuffed into boxes leaving bits of dirt and dust for the next occupant.

Because I'm a jerk like that.

You're welcome, Red. Also, welcome back to this place of employment.

heeheehee

AC

It Puts the Fear of God in Me

So, for the last couple of days, going to my domecile has been a harrowing experience for me. This is due to the fact that a spider, who is probably not as large as the one pictured but is nevertheless just as, if not more, scary, has decided to take up residence at the top of the stairwell that ends just before the door to my apartment.

You may be asking, how can any spider possibly be as, if not more, terrifying than the pictured one?

I'll tell you.

Upon a somewhat close analysis of the spider, I discovered that the creature was furry. Therefore, the creature is not only overflowing with deadly poison, it is also able to keep itself warm in the winter.

This haunts me; it is as if this creature is saying, "My luxurious winter coat will keep me quite warm and content during this cold season, and so, given the opportunity, I will be able to sneak into your apartment, lay eggs in your ear, and bite you repeatedly in the eye. Suck it."

So, if any of you enjoy both enjoy being petrified and helping old AC out, I would sincerely appreciate it if someone would take care of this mother before it grows anymore.

Or lays eggs in my ear.

Technology

I know that I don't normally post about things that you would call "technological," or even about things that you would call "worthwhile," but this is freaking sweet. The article says that scientists have managed to make a copper cylinder virtually disapper.

You hear that, Kyle? That's even better than telekenesis. Scientists are making things invisible.

That's awesome. I can't wait to see further advancements with this.

A List for Thursday

For lack of anything better to write about today, I thought that I would list some folks that I would like to punch in the back of the head.

Because that's how I roll.

1) Joe Francis: He is the creator of the popular Girls Gone Wild video series, and he has likely taken advantage of at least one girl.

2) Adam Corolla: He used to be on Love Line, but he has since gone on to the greener pastures of collecting unemployment.

3) Randy Moss: He has a lot of talent, but he's just a big sissy who jogs his patterns in an apparent honest effort to make the Raiders lose.

4) Eli Manning: Didn't want to play in San Diego, huh?

That's it. I understand that this wouldn't fall under the category of being especially creative, or constructive, or even healthy, but I just needed to make myself a list so, assuming I ever run into any of these people, I'll know just what to do.

Who would you like to punch in the back of the head?

An Open Letter to the Utilities

Disclaimer: In the interest of keeping my job, I have opted to not fully disclose the issue that irritates me about the utilities. Just rest assured that they are buttheads. Thank you.

Dear Sirs and/or Madams and/or Both:

It really irritates me when you refuse to work with me, and it especially irritates me when you refuse to work with when the company I work for owns your company.

Come on people, now; smile on your brother! Everybody get together, try to love one another right now!

The afore mentioned irritation just leaves me feeling sad and empty, because there is apparently nothing I can do about it, other than to cry, quietly into my napkin as I sit at a cafe eating lunch, and then, as I twirl my napkin, think back on how my dresses twirled in the wind when I was growing up in the Swiss Alps. Ah, how much simpler life was then! As I am daydreaming, you, Mr. Utility, would walk in, and you'd look at me and smile in a way that implies, "I'll only be bad for you," and I will smile, and avert my gaze, as if to say, "I know that it's wrong, but what choice do I have?" As the camera fades to black, but before the credits start to roll, the audience will see one final tear roll down my cheek, and they will be left to wonder whether it all worked out.

Maybe in a better world it would work out, but here on earth, we are left to quietly cry, and wish for words to express the unfathomable.

There, are you happy, utilities? You've made a late Bill Murray movie.

Also, I'm serious that you are buttheads.

Regards,
AC

Tech Week

Tonight officially marks the start of tech week for the show that I am in. This will mean long evenings of reading backstage and sometimes coming onstage to stand.

Good times.

I anticipate that the show will be pretty good, though, and by pretty good, I mean of course that people who are watching the show will likely enjoy it.

In other news, I came up with the basic melody line for Sub-Zero's song for my Mortal Kombat musical on Saturday. On Sunday, I proceeded to forget most of what I had worked on on Saturday. In any case, it's still pretty funny, or at least, I think it will be funny with how I am imagining the video will go.

Odd News of the Day

Here is an article copied from Yahoo! News:

MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish woman staged fake kidnappings of her son four times and got his father to pay her more than a million euros ($1.26 million) in ransom money, newspaper El Mundo reported Friday.

Police in the southern Spanish city of Seville arrested the woman and five accomplices, including the 15-year-old son who cooperated in the deception by calling his father on the telephone and begging him to pay up.

The father paid ransoms after the first three fake abductions without realizing the involvement of his son's mother, from whom he had separated. He became suspicious the fourth time and hired a private detective, El Mundo reported.

First, this is as cold as a woman of the night is to an ugly man without money. To have the separated wife trying to get money from her husband is one thing, but to have your own son go in on it with her? That's horrible.

However, I kind of think that maybe the dad didn't have a whole lot going on upstairs, and I think that the most obvious evidence of his lack of understanding comes from the fact that the father didn't get suspicious until the fourth time. I don't know about you, but after two times of paying, what, nearly a third of a million bucks a pop, I'm gonna start getting curious. Further I would start asking myself questions like, "How much do I really like this kid?" and "What is the implied happiness that I would have with my son versus the definite lifestyle that I could afford with all this money?" The fact that he didn't call a private detective until the fourth time makes me think that maybe he shouldn't have that money anyway.

I also makes me think that I should go into the kidnapping teenagers in Spain business, because, if you'll notice, the article curiously leaves out any information of police involvement during the first three kidnappings. It wasn't until the group got greedy the fourth time that police came in to bust some heads.

Three out of four times a group of people in Spain can get away scot-free with kidnapping?

I like those odds.

An Open Letter to My Cubicle

Dear Cubie,

I give up; you have won. The frightening amount of paperwork that you have stacked all over you scares me.

I work to clean you, and yet, the next day, more paperwork appears on my desk.

I am flying the white flag. You win.

Love,
AC

AC's Money Making Idea of the Day

I've figured out how to make a million dollars.

First, you need to be in the skin care industry, and you need to spend particular time trying to come up with face creams that smooth skin. Second, you have to come up with an excellent product, although really, this idea is so genius that even a mediocre product probably couldn't fail.

Now, it is imperative that you make the product's tag line:

We pore our time into thinking about your skin.

I ask you, how could you not buy a face cream with that tag line? I know that if I were wandering the face cream aisle, and I came upon a face cream with that phrase written on it, I would be forced to say, "That's a ****ing clever line; I don't ****ing even ****ing use face ****ing cream, but I ****ing need some of this! ****."

What can I say, really clever advertising makes me swear.

Now, if any of you really do make a million bucks off of this idea, I only ask that you would give me $21,000. Why 21,000 you ask?

Why not?

Dieting

As I'm sure everybody knows, when you diet, you take out some of the foods that you would normally eat and replace them with foods that, although they are better for you, you wouldn't normally eat. However, by taking out foods that you normally eat, you start to miss those foods, and you start to crave them, as if you were some kind of junkie food addict.

Stupid being addicted to food.

For me, when I do miss food, I don't tend to miss the higher end stuff. I don't sit at work jonesing for a filet mignon covered in sauteed mushrooms. Nope, gutter-gut that I am, I miss the cheap easy; that is to say, I miss fast food.

The last time I was dieting, I did pretty well. I was eating lean meats, vegetable, and fruits for just about every meal. I felt better. I looked better. I smelled better. Overall, I was a better person.

However, one night, a friend's car had broken down in front of a Jack in the Box, and he called me to go pick him up. When I got there, he said, "Before we go, let me run in and get something to eat."

Oh vile tempter! Wherefore draw'st thou me thither to yon place of zero recommended daily value of important supplements, and gargantuan recommened daily value of heart stopping ingredients?

To make a long story short, I buckled. It's not like I fell off the wagon completely; I just opted to be dragged along for a while. I purchased a chicken sandwich, and let me tell you, it was one of the most delicious things that I had ever tasted. My abstinence from fast food had given my taste buds a greater appreciation for it. I took slow, conscious, deliberate bites. I simultaneously explored the greasy bun, the breaded chikcen, the wilted lettuce, and the special sauce. I appreciated that sandwich not only physically, but abstractly. The concept of the sandwich made me thank the heavens for it.

An orchestra of taste sensation was exploding in my mouth, and I was powerless to stop it.

I drove away a much more contented man, albeit one with about 600 more calories than absolutely necessary.

Which brings me to my philosophical quandary of the day. Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has a theory about why people are overweight. Contrary to popular opinion by many who are in shape, he surmises that overweight people don't have less self control than skinny people. Rather, he believes that fat people simply receive more joy from eating than they do by exercising; conversely, he thinks that people who are in shape receive more joy from being in shape than they do by eating a hamburger.

I tend to agree with him, as is evidenced by my above story. What do you think?

Announcement

The elevators are out at my place of employment.

Over the lunch hour.

This equals at least five flights of walking for lunch.

Maybe I'll burn some of my calories from lunch.

Or maybe I'll just be kind of sweaty and sticky for the rest of the day.

We'll see.

Death to Infidels, or What Was That Again?

I work in a cubicle. I have adjacent cubicles to my left and behind me, and to my right, I have the hallway of the office, which is kind of awesome because I'm really close to free coffee, and it's kind of not awesome because I'm about as far away from the window as a person working in this office can be. I assume that they did this because they consider me the most likely to attempt to jump, and they think that the few extra strides will make me reconsider that choice.

Stride 1: I've had it.
Stride 2: I'm going to jump.
Stride 3: There's no turning back.
Stride 4: I wish I would have brought a sandwich.
Stride 5: I wonder what the cafeteria is having for lunch.
Stride 6: Well, I guess I'll just grab these papers I printed.
Stride 7: Oh Ziggy! The situations you find yourself in!

However, and back on topic, the man in the cubicle behind me is, I believe, in the process of training others, and, because of this, people frequently come to his desk to ask him questions.

I understand that we all have to learn, and normally I wouldn't have a problem with this, but one of the people that frequents his desk is a woman with a medium high voice who is incredibly soft spoken. So, when she comes over to ask a question, all that I can hear is a high pitched murmuring. This is because I am virtually unable to discern any of the individual words, let alones the ideas they are forming.

To give you an idea of what it sounds like, think of Beeker from the Muppet Show.

Imagine him gibbering along as he often does, without actually saying any words. Now imagine that his personal volume has been turned down to just a click or two away from inaudible. You now have an idea of what I'm dealing with over here.

While I appreciate her efforts not to be loud and annoying, because I am guilt-prone and suspicious by nature, I often wonder what it is that she is saying, and I wonder especially whether or not it has to do with me.

For example, while she is likely saying, "So, how is it again that you insert rows with accurate prices into this database," I suspect that she is saying, "Now is the moment to raise our scimitars and issue death to the apparent Apple-hating infidel behind you."

I'm just saying, that you never really know who leaves anonymous comments. If you never hear from me again, it's been a fun ride and I regret nothing.

An Open Letter to Apple

Dear Apple,

Your company is cool and hip; well, it's at least as cool and hip as a computer company can be, and you have done a good job of marketing this point. From your commercials that contrast your operating system as a trendy young man versus Windows being portrayed as a stuffy old man to Lieutenant Dan's revelation at the end of Forrest Gump that he had purchased stock in Apple and he has become rich, you do a good job marketing.

In that vein, what I'd like to talk to you today about is the ipod. I have one, and I enjoy it. I too was lured in by the heavy advertising that led me to believe that I needed one. This, again, was good marketing; who would have thought that dancing silhouettes could be so persuasive?

However, the ipod has a dirty little secret, which is, namely, that its battery gradually dies. The normal lifespan of an ipod battery is just about two years. When it dies, it either leaves the purchaser to just lose all the music on his portable hard drive, or he can order a replacement for a generous fee.

With the normal lifespan being two years, and the most heavily marketed period being just about two years ago, I fear that there may be an ipod holocaust soon. Here are the seven steps that I imagine this will take.

1) People will realize that they are going to have to sink more money into the device than their original couple hundred dollar investment, and they are going to be ticked off. They are going to be angry in a way that they are going to want to break things: Apple things.

2) Apple will say, "I'm sorry folks, you should have realized that the battery died. Don't you know that even a two to three hundred dollar device won't work forever, or in this case, no longer than two or three years?"

3) People will respond, "Hmm, though I appreciate their flashy ad campaigns, perhaps Apple, the apparent consumer voice of the anti-establishment by being the anti-Microsoft, isn't so great after all."

4) People will stop buying Apple goods, and your company stock will slowly fall.

5) People, desperate for a change, will flock to Zune, Microsoft's answer to the ipod, despite its unfortunately lame name.

6) Microsoft's stock will rise.

7) Steve Jobs will roll over in his grave.

Apple, I enjoy my ipod, and I think your products work reasonably well, but I think that it's just downright dastardly to pull this over on your customers.

I am ashamed of you.

Love,
AC

Some Notes for Lerner and Loewe

As this is meant to critique the composers and not anyone ever associated with a certain show that shall remain nameless, I feel that it is safe to issue the following notes to the writers and composers of this show that must not be named.

1) If you're going to spend most of act 1 talking about how you need to improve your main character's speaking so that you can show her off at a ball, you should show this ball on stage, and not just have it take place during intermission. By only talking about it afterwards, you weigh your drama down with tedious exposition. This is especially the case when, during the ball, your protagonist has a life-changing experience that incredibly alters and matures your main character.

2) If you start your show off with a solo that lends itself to being spoke-sung rather than actually sung, you will turn off just about anyone from your musical who was born after 1975. Why not start the show with a big group number? Something that gets the audience going? I'll give it to you that the song has its funny moments, but you have to remember that your audience can only laugh at funny moments if it is still awake.

3) If a secondary character spends the show talking about how it is good that he is not married because he is poor, and then he suddenly becomes rich, and now feels like it is his duty to get married, might I recommend a sentimental song, and not a rip-roaring good time song? While I appreciate that everything else in Act 2 is very serious and distressing, this song just seems like you said, "Hey, everything else in this act is heavy. Let's insert an inappropriate light number."

4) By writing all of your tertiary characters as caricatures, you confuse your audience as to whether or not one should believe that this show is a comedy when everything going on on stage is serious.

Having said all that, I believe that our production of this show has some real promise. Our lead, in particular, is an excellent actress that I enjoy watching on stage. Let us hope that we can overcome these intrinsic flaws of the show.

Does This Happen to Other People?

Did you know that spiders live in trees? Further, did you know that spiders apparently like to drop down on me at times when I don't expect it? I certainly knew neither of those things, as those things have never really happened to me before in my life.

I now know that this happens.

The first such instance occurred as I was walking to check my mail in the early evening. As I was walking along, singing a song, and peeing on all of the bushes, I suddenly felt something drop on my chest. Upon looking down, I saw a spider who, with its legs, was probably about the size of the wine glass at the top of this page.

I'm not going to lie: I was afraid. The fear touched me in a way that if the gf touched me in that way, I would say, "Don't touch me in that way; it scares me," to which she would respond, "Don't you want to be scared," to which I would respond, "Maybe, but the way you're scaring me scares me like a spider unexpectedly dropping on my chest." This would, of course, be a picture of infinity, much like a snake eating his own tail, and I don't think anybody wants either of those things to happen.

Nevertheless, and fortunately for my noble bloodline, my survival instinct kicked in, and I brushed the spider to the ground. As it lie there, I noticed that it wasn't moving, which leads me to believe that it had a miniature heart attack.

Did you know that spiders have heart attacks? Now you do.

In any case, this really shook me up for the rest of the evening, and by "shook me up," I mean that I was literally shaking for at least ten minutes afterwards. It was as if I had just successfully grappled with a bear, when in fact, I had just brushed off a spider that was already on its last legs.

Now, has something like this ever happened to you? If yes, why didn't you warn me that it could?

I Never Thought That I Would Be Excited By This...

I recently had to re-order checks. This was largely due to the fact that I was running out of the old ones, the address on the aforementioned old ones was very out of date, and the checks themselves were turning yellow.

I never would have figured that I would have spent money slowly enough to make my checks turn yellow, but I suppose that you learn something new every day.

Nevertheless, I needed new ones. Fortunately for me, a box of plain checks was just as expensive as a box of designed checks, and so I perused my options with care until I found the design that was perfect for me.

Superman checks. That's right, Superman. And they even came with a vinyl Superman check case.

And I'm very excited about this. Now, as my money flies away, and I can calmly think to myself, "It's how Supes would have wanted it."

The Problem with Diet Soda

At work, we have various beverages that we can snag for free from our floor's fridge. There's usually Coke, Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, and water. Lately, they've also been adding Sprite and Mountain Dew. I take these free drinks as a sign from the company that they appreciate us and that they don't want us to be dehydrated.

When I'm not on the diet, I drink one to two sweet nectars of the gods daily. Coke is delicious, and I might marry it if it were legal in the lower 48.

However, when I am on the diet, my choices are limited. I'm trying to drink water more regularly, but I just want some kind of soft drink taste in my mouth from time to time, and so I find myself reaching for Diet Coke. This tends to be a bad idea, because the drink should have the slogan, "For something that tastes as bad as random debris from the Tijuana dump, at least it has zero calories."

However, as I walk back to my desk, I feel ashamed. I feel like people are looking at me and saying, "Oh, look at him; he's overweight. If he's drinking diet, I surmise that he has trouble fitting through doors."

Now, being a normal member of the human race, I'm not real big on feeling ashamed or having my ability to fit through doors questioned, so I tried to think of a way that I could get zero calories AND not feel badly about doing so.

I'd like to announce, I've come up with an invention. It's called, the Can Cover. With this device, I could walk over to the fridge, grab a Diet Coke, and then quickly cover the can with the can cover so that people would think that I was drinking something else.

I will come up with different designs, from the normal "Coke" cover, to designs a little more exotic, like, "Johnny's Kentucky Bourbon" or "Pig's Blood."

Therefore, if people were to talk about me as I passed by, their comments would change from, "I bet he can't fit through doors" to "I didn't even know we had bourbon in the fridge."

And I will smile, knowing that I have hoodwinked the best and the brightest of my generation.

An Open Letter to Rachel Ray

Dear Rachel Ray,

You probably don't remember me. The main reason this is is because we've never met in person.

I, however, remember you.

It was a warm summer day in 2002, and I was home from college. As I was flipping through the channels, I came upon the Food Network, and, though I normally would have skipped by, I saw that the title of the show that was on was called 30 Minute Meals. I, having never really consistantly had to prepare food for myself in the past, was not immediately sure if this was a long or short time for food preparation, but I decided that this must be short, because why would you have a show about food taking a long time? I mean, unless you're a world class difficult food preparing show-off, in which case I salute you and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

In any case, I left the tv on Food TV long enough to see you, and I was amazed. Here was a woman who not only seemed to enjoy quickly making food for two, but also a woman who was fairly young and attractive, with a cute little voice and an even cuter laugh that gave away the fact that she likely knew the difference between a jedi knight and a jedi master. It only took a couple of heartbeats for me to fall in love, which later caused some consternation in my friend group as I insisted on watching your show whenever it came on.

However, as time went on, I realized that maybe we weren't in fact meant for each other. The first thing that made me think that was the fact that you didn't answer my calls or reply to my letters. The second was the restraining order. However, your message didn't really hit home until I woke up in an abandoned restroom with my foot chained to a pipe and a note in my pocket that said that I was there to teach me to stop bothering Rachel. In addition, the note said that the person who did this to me wanted to play a game and that my only desperate gambit for freedom was to saw off my own foot.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I can't dance well.

But I digress.

In addition to the above, I found a new love in my life, and, in doing so, realized that former relationships, no matter how one-sided or imaginary, needed to be pushed aside. So, with a heavy heart, I packed away your cook books, and I accepted the fact that my meals would now likely take at least 31 minutes.

Flash forward to last week when I found an article in the news about you that said that you were going to put together soundtracks for different holiday occasions that Epic Records would then promote and distribute.

I was shocked. Could this person that I cared so much about in the past really have sold out?

When I went back to the Food Network to investigate, I saw that the number of your shows had multiplied, which was not in and of itself a bad thing as they all had something to do with food. However, when I caught a little snippet of your show, I was distressed to find out that the cute little voice that you once had now sounded suspiciously like the voice of Harvey Fierstein.

Now I don't mind you making a lot of money. Heck, if I made a lot of money, I'm sure that I would take advantage of it too, and then take that money down to the local gambling establishment and bet it on black, because that's just how I roll. Of course, by black, I mean that I would bet on a foot race of some kind where all of the competitors were of different skin complexions, because in addition to being a sell-out, I'm also a racist, apparently.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah.

I just mean, Rachel, that it seems like you have turned into a different person than I knew you to be. Now, I don't have any hard feelings, nor do I bear you any resentment in my heart. However, I think that it would be best if we were just friends, and by "friends", I mean associates, and by "associates", I mean that I would like to pull off an elaborate diamond heist with you.

While I know that you don't need the money, please rest assured that I could use it. I think that it's the least that you can do.

Your friend,
AC

My Body Is Revolting or How to Overuse Malapropisms in Your Writing or The Most Frustrating Post You'll Ever Read

And by "revolting," I mean it stinks, and by "it stinks," I mean that it is staging a revolution against me. Even after just one whole day on the diet, my body has decided to hit me where it hurts the most: my tiny glass figurines collection.

And by "tiny glass figurines collection," I mean my enjoyment of my sleep.

For example, when I awoke this morning at the predetermined time necessary to get to work between the times of "AC is a model employee" and "AC should at least be fired from this position, if not actually thrown into a kiln and fired into some sort of pottery/statue as a warning to others who would even dare to think about getting to work late," I found myself tied to my bed with tiny little ropes apparently tied by the little people who were going on and on about how they had finally outwitted the giant, Gulliver.

And by, "I found myself tied to my bed with tiny little ropes apparently tied by the little people who were going on and on about how they had finally outwitted the giant, Gulliver," I mean, of course, that my body felt like it was taking conscious, deliberate action to destroy me. It wasn't that I ached; it was that, even after sleeping a good number of hours, my body felt more exhausted than it did when I had gone to sleep and, either in addition to or because of this, I felt the onset of sickness.

Now, I don't know about you, but I am a busy AC. I don't have time to deal with illness. So I did what any reasonable person would do: I took the morning off and slept some more. However, even the extra sleeping didn't help me out as much as I had hoped because I still feel like I'm dragging worse than a cave man who didn't quite manage to knock out his future wife.

As the only change in my life has been the diet, I have no choice but to blame it for this sleep deprivation.

Curse you diet! Curse you and your kind! So on, so forth, etc!

Weight Loss Contest

Yesterday, I signed up for a weight loss contest at work. Everybody put in twenty bucks, and the person who loses the largest percentage of weight gets the pot which is just shy of $500 right now.

Little does the company know that they, in one little gimmick, have combined two of my greatest loves: gambling, and the ability to, just this once, lose my title of being the world's fattest man.

I'll let you know how this progresses. In some ways, I have the edge because, theoretically, because I am larger, I have more excess weight to shed. However, the flipside of the coin is that because they are basing it on a percentage, I have to lose a lot more weight than someone who weighs less than I do.

Oh well. If worse comes to worse I'll just have to amputate.

A Dentist Appointment

I have a confession; I am a liar. Well, I guess I should clarify that I'm not a liar all the time, it's just when I have to go to the dentist.

Why do I lie to the dentist? Why, when he asks about flossing, do I feel the need to upgrade the frequency from "About as often as you hear about Kirk Cameron in the news" to "Oh, once or twice a week"?

Now, some of you might be confused. Some of you are probably asking yourself, "Why not tell him you floss more frequently? I mean, if you're already on the slippery slope of mendacity, why not go all the way?"

The answer to your question, gentle reader, is the fact that I am always afraid that he is going to call me out. It is one thing for a lie to be far fetched, and it is quite another for it to be unbelievable. I am always afraid that if I tell him that I floss every day, and he looks into my mouth, my oral care claims are going to be as unconvincing as OJ Simpson at a convention of innocent people.

Further, when a person legally uses implements of torture as part of his job, you kind of want him to think well of you.

For the record, I'm not all that scared of the dentist; I am just perpetually amazed at how frequently moral dilemmas arise in the seemingly most unlikely of places.

Another Hasselhoff Post

It is being reported that a scene in David Hasselhoff: The Musical will include a scene in which an apparent live baby is thrown into the audience. Fortunately for parents everywhere, the apparent live baby is just a balloon.

In the first place, how are they going to make a balloon look like a baby? I've seen some pretty elaborate balloon animals at your local county fair or at your friendly neighborhood pizzeria on a Friday night, but I have never seen one that makes me yell, "Everyone! Run for your lives! This man works an evil magic that transmogrifies normal balloons into beasts!"

In the second place, I would like to meet the creative brain who came up with this idea. Who is sitting with a group of people brainstorming about this show and comes up with this idea?

Brainstormer 1: Well, we should spend some time talking about his marriage.
Brainstormer 2: Right, and we should definitely talk a bit about Knight Rider.
Brainstormer 1: Brilliant assertion, Einstein, I think that that's about as obvious as talking about Baywatch in this show.
Brainstormer 2: Oh, and your marriage idea is so good?
Brainstormer 3: Guys, guys, hang on. I've got it! What we need for this show is to stage a birth on stage...
Brainstormer 1: Ooh! Like they do in Wicked!
Brainstormer 2: Genius! People love Wicked!
Brainstormer 3: Guys, I'm not done yet. The best part of the scene will be that we will, after the actual birth part, throw a live baby to its death out in the audience. It'll scare the bejeezus out of them.
Brainstormers 1 and 2: ...
Brainstormer 3: Did I say a live baby? I meant a fake one.
Brainstormer 1: I don't know. Even fake babies are going to be expensive.
Brainstormer 2: Word.
Brainstormer 3: It's all right fellows, we'll just use balloons.
Brainstormer 1: I've got to give it to you, balloons do look like babies.
Brainstormer 2: He's right, they do.
Brainstormer 3: So it's settled then; balloon babies to be thrown out at performances. Well, gentlemen, as it is now ten a.m., I propose that, since we have had a very full day so far, what say we all go to our respective homes and sleep on our mattresses stuffed with fifties?
Brainstormers 1 and 2: Agreed.

How can this show fail? It's bulletproof!

An Open Letter to the Women Who Were Laughing in the Stairwell

Dear Ladies,

First off, let me say that I enjoy laughter in general. In fact, I believe that the office, and the stairwell in particular, should be all fun and games. After all, we all remember the great old adage, "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye; then it's just fun."

However, you need to understand something. I work on the eighth floor, and I, two to three times a week, need to go down to the sixth floor. It should also be noted that I'm sure that I have the blood pressure of a mouse being chased by a cat, and that currently, the most exercise that I get is my walk down to and back from the sixth floor.

Something else that you need to know is that, for some reason, I react unreasonably to laughter when I don't know specifically what is being laughed at. My unreasonableness manifests itself in the form of a monologue in my cerebrum that goes like this: "Are they laughing at me? They're laughing at me, aren't they? Here I just wanted to take a walk, and now I'm being laughed at. What's next? Will the Venezualan President call me the devil?"

It stands to reason, therefore, that by hearing you laughing, I can no longer take the stairwell. I will need to escape to the safety of the elevator, where, even if anyone else is riding, one is too much in someone else's personal space to really find very much funny. By not walking, I am not getting exercise, and, ergo, I am not lowering my blood pressure.

Now, as I will, likely, one day be a father, and all of you pretty definitely had a father at one point, I want you to consider something. When I keel over from massive heart failure next week at the ripe old age of 24 due to my lack of a walk today, I want you to consider my theoretical little daughter crying her theoretical little tears at my theoretical premature departure from this plane of existence.

Those are her theoretical exact thoughts; she's theoretically deep.

Once you think of that, think of how your father would feel if he knew that you had killed someone, and about how the knowledge of such a death would almost definitely lead to his own theoretical demise.

So, by not allowing me to walk, you're killing your father. Take a moment to ponder my flawless logic.

Now, I am not an unreasonable person, and I have come up with what I think is a reasonable and attractive option for both parties. The next time you find something funny in the stairwell, by all means go ahead and laugh. However, when you hear a door opening into the stairwell, please shout out whatever you were laughing at, to let whoever is entering the stairwell know that it is all right, you were not laughing at them.

For example, if you were laughing about how your coworker Joey Joe Joe Bobalu's nose is like the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range due to his adult onset acne, when you hear someone entering the stairwell, I would advise you to first ascertain if the person entering the stairwell was Joey. If it is, come up with another funny story on the fly. If it isn't, shout out the story. Whether or not it the person who is entering the stairwell knows Joey or not, you can be sure that that person will enjoy the the simile of a nose looking like a mountain range.

See? This way everyone has a good laugh (except possibly Joey) and I get to take my walk, therefore saving my own life for further generations.

Your dearest darling,
AC

An Analysis of Self-Worth in Regards to Human Relations, AKA Blatant Navel-Gazing Starring AC as the Village Idiot

People like me as a person, or, as the gf recently mused, as an abstract concept. I measure this by the fact that when I see people that I haven't seen in a while, I am greeting more often by smiles than I am by pitchforks. I realize that in this sort of measurement, there is the possibility for great error, but, what can I say, I'm an optimist.

However, the more that I think about why people like me, the less I understand it. The primary point of confusion for me that I don't understand how people get over is that I am horrible, horrible at conversations.

Now, this doesn't mean that I say horrible things, at least not on a consistant basis. If you are around, and I know that you are of, say, a different creed than I am, I will likely go out of my way to not say anything offensive about it. However, sometimes I forget who I'm talking to, and my results are less than dignified.

Consider this snippet from a conversation that I was having last week. The players in the scene are myself, the gf, and two friends. The setting is a trendy dessert restaurant. The conversation thus far has been about various topics, but at this moment, we are discussing Martha Stewart.

The GF: I like her. She's my hero.
Friend 1: All of the things that she does are so creative!
The GF: She is creative, and yet she still has time to make her house spotless.
Me: Maybe if she would have spent a little less time on crafts she wouldn't have ended up divorced.
*Slight, but awkward pause in conversation*
Friend 2: What's wrong with being divorced?

In between the cold sweat and the string of profanities now running through my head, it is at this point in the conversation that I realize that my comment is, at best, a tangent, and that both Friend 1 and Friend 2 are semi-recently divorced. This is also the point that I start to feel a slight pain below the belt but above my knees that generally only happens when I see photos of gruesome accidents.

Because that's what I turned the conversation into: a gruesome accident.

Luckily, the conversation moved on, and I believe that no long term feelings were hurt, but that conversation put this thought of why are people my friends if I'm bad at conversation in my head which I have been mulling around ever since.

I feel that it is important to note that I don't really have anything against people who have gone through a divorce; in fact, I tend to have a lot of empathy for those who have gone through a divorce, especially the ones who have been blindsided by one. I simply saw an opportunity to take a cheap shot at a celebrity (because that's how I roll), and I took it to obviously disastrous results.

So, my advice to friends of AC is RUN AWAY AND DON'T LOOK BACK!

Should you decide to stick around, I'll see you tomorrow, at which point you will again be regaled by my brilliant observations on the human condition. If not, thanks for the memories.

Maintenance

The owner of this site regretfully informs you that he is experiencing some unexpected maintenance issues. Upon waking up this morning, he realized that his body wasn't worked like it was supposed to.

Certainly by tomorrow he will be back to his bright and witty self, and by "bright and witty," we mean of course that he will go back to making jokes that only he really thinks are funny.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

The Management

The Promised Analysis of Kiss Me Kate

First things first, if you're looking to have a bad time at a movie, or you want to leave a movie feeling badly about yourself, I don't recommend this one. If you want to feel badly about yourself and how all of your supposed problems are pretty non-problematic, I recommend watching this show which I came across when I got home last night. Nothing that is more sad comes to mind. But, the movie that is in the title of this post will leave you feeling pretty doggone happy. In fact, as long as you don't just outright despise old movie musicals, you're probably going to love this movie, and even if you have your reservations about them, this one will grab you by the ears and shout at you, "I'm really funny, dang it! Go make me some pie!"

The basic premise of the show is that a composer and an actor are looking to do a musical remake of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The actor has the brilliant (and awfully cheeky) idea to cast his ex-wife in the part of the shrew (Get it?). She has her reservations at first (especially when she realizes that her ex-husband's new girl friend will have another large part in the show), but she eventually acquiesces when she realizes that the part of the shrew really is a part that will show off her acting and singing skills.

The rest of the movie is a mixture of opening night of the show itself and the backstage hi jinx that ensue as various miscommunication occurs.

Oh, and, as the movie poster would suggest, there's spanking.

Act one ends with the actor's ex-wife realizing that a bouquet of flowers that she received from him prior to the show were meant for someone else. This causes her to be furious, and understandably so. From the moment she realizes this, she starts beating him up on stage.

By "beating him up on stage," I, of course, mean slapping him around on stage every opportunity she gets.

And what is a 1953 actor to do? Why, just prior to the fall of the curtain signaling intermission, he puts her over his knee and takes great joy (as the movie poster would suggest) in spanking her.

This naturally leads to the following questions: did men in 1953 really spank their wives in an effort to chastise them for wrong-doing? Did President Eisenhower slip that that was okay somewhere into his Presidential acceptance speech? If it were at one point acceptable, at which specific point did it become unacceptable?

I will accept any reasonable answers to this question, and take them as truth.

Also, one of my favorite scenes is one in which two gangsters who have been sent to collect on a debt for their mob boss sing a song about how, in order to impress the ladies, one should "Brush Up your Shakespeare." I will leave you with a stanza from said song:

"Brush up your Shakespeare, start quoting him now.
Brush up your Shakespeare, and the women you will wow.
If your goil is a Washington Heights dream,
Treat the kid to "A Midsummer Night Dream."
If she fights when her clothes you are mussing,
What are clothes? "Much Ado About Nussing."
If she says your behavior is heinous
Kick her right in the "Coriolanus."
Brush up your Shakespeare
And they'll all kowtow,
And they'll all kowtow,
And they'll all kowtow."

I'm Going to a Wedding

I thought I would let you all know that I am leaving early tomorrow morning to make a several hour drive north to see a buddy's wedding. Therefore, there will likely be no post tomorrow.

However, I will leave you with something to mull over.

While I was doing tech work for a show (and I was the best dang spotlight b there ever was, I might add), a couple of friends and I got to talking, and we thought that it would be hilarious to work on a musical based on the popular video game and movie franchise Mortal Kombat.

We also decided that the character Sub-Zero:

should be the main character, and, though he is definitely not presented this way in the video game, we envisioned him as a delicate romantic character, who may or may not have slightly effeminate tendencies.

Unfortunately, as such conversations about the most awesome idea ever often end up, nothing has yet come of our idea.

Until now.

This is your challenge, gentle readers. It is my belief that Sub-Zero should sing a romantic ballad about how frustrated he is in love in this show. I think that this song should be titled, "Black and Blue (on the inside)."

With these things in mind, I challenge you, my readers, to submit stanzas of verse or ideas about how this song should flow.

And what will the winner receive? Well, the winner can rest in the knowledge that they have helped to make the world a better place, because once I have the lyrics, I will write music for this song. Once the song is written, I will video tape myself (dressed as Sub-Zero) performing the song, and I will post it on you tube for all to enjoy.

This is your challenge for this weekend. Good night, and good luck.