Ka-Ching

So far, I love the government in April. They should give us refunds every month.

Now, I suppose that it could be argued that we get refunds every month in the form of filled potholes, water sanitation, and the shipping of homeless people to Bahrain, but still, I'd like to have some more filthy lucre.

Mmm. Filthy.

This Was My Dream

I oftentimes can't remember what I dreamt, but last night, I had a dream so vivid and remarkable, that it actually managed to journey from my unconscious to my conscious mind.

And here it is.

I, and three young women and one young girl from the show that I was just in, were together in a house. It wasn't any of our houses, mind you, but I'll get to that aspect in a second. This house was fairly labyrinthine, in that moving from room to room was a lot like following the line at an amusment park: the turns were very angular and there was only one way to go without turning around. Further, much of what we saw as we were walking through this house was behind a mesh covering, much like most of the things that you see in line at the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland.

Now, for some reason, at the top of our lungs, we were all singing the Aerosmith song "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing," which is the song that was popularized by being played approximately twenty-seven million times in the late nineties and by being the love song in the movie Armageddon.

As we continued singing and walking, we realized (or, I guess, intuitively understood as there was no real reason to believe that we were where we were until a bit later) that we were making our way through Aerosmith's house. This really hit home to us when we passed by a couple of beds, one of which was occupied by Joe Perry and the other by Steven Tyler. Steven Tyler was in fact so impressed with our collective rendition of his song, that he gave us a big thumbs up.

Other than that the details are a little shaky. I remember deciding to go to head tone instead of chest tone for the one of the high parts (the "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah!"), and I felt shame in the dream as I thought that I had sounded ridiculous, and this fact was emphasized when one of the women gave me the stink eye after that note.

When we got to the end of the song, we all looked at each other as if to say, "What now?" And then I woke up.

I think my dream means that one day, soon, Steven Tyler will approve of me, and women will hate me. What else could it mean?

My Girlfriend Is Funny

"See, I look at traffic laws more like opportunities to be polite. People and the police should be honored when I obey them."

I Am A Thought Criminal

I came up with an excellent idea maybe a month ago. Actually, I can't remember if I was the one to originally think of this, or if it was somebody close to me. I find that this issue of origination is apparently frequently open to interpretation in my noggin'. For the life of me, I can't figure out why, as most of my day to day thoughts are a variants on four subjects:

1) When I'll be eating next,
2) When I'll be sleeping next,
3) When I get to hang out with my girlfriend again, and
4) Just how many staples I could get into my jugular vein before I passed out from blood loss/whether I could count said incident as a work related accident, and get paid while I'm in the hospital.

Nevertheless, the awesome idea that may or may not be able to be attributed to me probably struck me right around the time that I watched Casino Royale. I remembered that I had seen very few of teh other Bond films. This seemed like a shame as Casino Royale was so much fun. Therefore, I thought that it would be terrific to devote a weekend to watching all of the Bond films sequentially. Just the sheer quantity of movies would surely require nearly two whole days of no sleep.

However, after speaking with some friends and remembering what the second thing is that I tend to have on my mind, we decided to go with breaking the Bond viewing action up.

So, tomorrow night, I'll be watching From Russia With Love, and whatever the devil the first Bond movie is.

Mm. Sean Connery goodness. I can't wait

Uhm

Over the course of the last couple days, there have been multiple loud, crashing sounds coming from the elevator shafts.

Should I be worried?

Touche Karma, Touche

Last night I had an audition that for a couple of shows that are looking to promote local actors that are a part of a local acting organization. As I looked at the posting online, and went over the email correspondence for the audition, nothing was said about the necessity of bringing headshots. Further, as I am a part of the aforementioned organization, that organization has my headshots on file, and the audition was across the hall from that organization's offices, I figured I was safe to not bring them.

Can you guess the first question that I was asked when I got there? That's right, it was something to the effect of "So, did you bring headshots?"

Crap.

I immediately thought of saying something about how I was confused about whether or not I needed to bring them, but as I looked around, I saw that EVERY OTHER PERSON there was holding 8 x 10 glossy photos of themselves.

Crap.

The audition monitor then, while trying to be nice, kind of looked at me like I was barely functionally retarded. Maybe I'm not as smart as I think I am.

Just So You Know

This is going to come out sounding like it's pompous, but I am not overly concerned. I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person. I'm not exactly a genius (which I measure by the fact that I'm not curing cancer in my spare time), but I'm not exactly a dullard (which I measure by the fact that I don't constantly laugh at the fact that I have toes) either.

Because I consider myself reasonably intelligent, sometimes somebody else will do something to me that makes me think less of their intelligence.

Example: This morning, I walked into work carrying a book with a rich and beautiful story and an intriguing and thought-provoking set of characters. Someone asked me what I was reading, and I told her.

She (with minor disgust): What? Didn't you see the movie?
Me (trying to gauge and respond to her unspoken criticism): Yes. I guess the movie was probably too sissily romantic for someone like me to watch, but I thought it was ...
She: Romantic? I thought that movie was boring. (Laughs) I thought that movie was boring.

Response to She: First, let me say that your repeating your point twice doesn't really add that much to the conversation. I'm not sure if you were saying it for emphasis or not, but I suspect that you weren't. Second, if someone is reading the book of a movie that they've already seen, that probably means that they found a depth in the movie that they are looking to expand upon, and they hope that the book will provide that added depth. Thirdly, insisting that a movie was boring to a person who is reading the book will probably make you look like you are functionally retarded, and just barely so at that.

Sigh. Maybe I am pompous. I'll have to work on that.

An Open Letter to the Whole World

Dear Everyone,

Please do not use this:

If you do use it, the mere act of taking off your shirt at the end of the day will produce a smell so horrible that you will wish for the glorious ease of death.

Love,

AC

Myspace Ads

I just saw this ad over at Myspace, and I thought it was hilarious.

The ad may as well be subtitled, "Men, Making Women Suffer Since Before Suffrage."

Note to Self

When you go home for Easter weekend, and you remember that a friend of yours has taught you how to do a circus trick that looks like this except that one of the bodies is reversed so that the heads are pointing in opposite directions as opposed to the same direction,

and you decide that the best things to do is to recreate this scene with your brother, you will more or less succeed, and it will be pretty cool.

However, because you opted to be the base (the one with his feet on the ground), for the next few days following said circus-ery, your legs will feel like you spent the entire weekend kicking butt and taking names, but you will have neither names nor remembrances of butts to console your aching, burning thighs.

Be advised.

An Addendum

I mentioned that I needed and purchased deoderant in my last post. I needed deoderant because my last deoderant had an anti-perspirant in it, which was causing my sensitive armpits to rash up. As you may have guessed, when I used "sensitive" in that last sentence, I didn't mean that my armpits liked to sit around, drink read wine, and talk about how much they liked The Notebook. No, I mean sensitive in the way that if they rash up and I decide to move my arms, I could swear that the flesh beneath my arms was being grated off by a cheese grater.

So, I bought new deoderant (sans anti-perspirant), and this morning, I slathered it on my armpits, eager to see if my body would have any kind of reaction to it. In retrospect, it would have been smarter to just use a little bit to test it, but I'm an all or nuthin' type of guy. So far, no rash has appeared.

Unfortunately, the "fresh" scent of the deoderant is driving me crazy. I have never felt so much like puking at the office than I do right now, and I am effectively left with no recourse as there are no showers here (except for a theoretic one that I have heard legends about in the basement), and, even if I could find this mystical shower, I have no towel with which to dry.

With my only other option being left wet and naked, I am only left with the option of throwing up in my cubicle, which I can only imagine will elicit the following conversation:

"Hey AC, are you okay?"
"What?"
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. Just some deoderant problems."
"Hmm. Smells to me like some ODER-ant problems. High five!"
"I'm not going to give you a high five."

At which point, the puking will continue. On the upside, at least this shirt will smell like a fake pine forest for many, many years.

Stream of Consciousness in the Detergent Aisle

Last night, I was a little bit hungry, so I ran over to the grocery store for a couple of those delicious frozen pizzas that are always on sale and are always delicious. However, as often happens to those of us who don't make weekly trips to the store, I found myself remembering other things that I needed that I may as well pick up so that I don't have to make another trip in the near future. My internal monologue was going something like this:

"Mmm, pizza, that'll be delicious...what goes with pizza...I need something to drink...Sprite Zero?...Fresca...I wonder if I were to purchase Diet Orange Sunkist and I were to add a hint of vanilla vodka if it would taste anything like Henry Weinhard's Orange Cream soda...that would probably taste good...would it smell good?...I need detergent...detergent smells good...I need deoderant."

And so, ladies and gentlemen, for a brief period of time, I was a character in a Sylvia Plath novel.

God Bless Things I Find on Wikipedia

I need to move to one of the following states: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, or Wyoming.

Why is that you ask? I need to move there because these states charge no income tax on the state level. Sure, I will have to continue to pay federal income tax, but, because I live in stupid California, I am apparently paying 9.3% in interest tax like a re re (because members of the mentally handicapped community apparently like to pay high income taxes).

Further, I once heard from some family friends that Alaska even pays its citizens to live there. While it's not a whole bunch (I believe that they said that the state pays about $2,000 per person per year), I would assume that people that substain themselves primarily on whale blubber (as far as I can tell) don't care much about the physical comforts in life.

And while we're on the topic of state stereotypes, here are the things that I would look forward to in each of the other states:

Florida: Humidity, old people, and hurricanes, together at last!
Nevada: Free drinks and gambling! Can life get better? I submit that it cannot!
South Dakota: Had I a sister, I could marry her at Mount Rushmore with minimal condemnation from the other townsfolk.
Texas: I could be President of the United States.
Washington: I could live somewhere that provides me no immediate stereotypes!
Wyoming: I could be faced with the inanity of the chart over here (it's about half way down the page), that claims that 6.05% of the the state's Hispanic residents are white. How can this be? Are they lying ("Sir, I can see that you're white...")?

In summary, sucks to your asthmar, California! Get your hand out of my pocket, because I don't like you that way.

Ah, Lent!

Once a year, there is a magical time when well-meaning people deprive themselves of things that they enjoy in an effort to feel closer with the Almighty. This is known in most circles as getting up out of bed early on a Sunday morning and going to church on Easter Sunday, because we all know that God's only really watching that Sunday anyways. Every other Sunday He just catches the reruns.

I kid. He's watching you now and taking notes.

But seriously, with Lenten season running down, let me be the first to say that I just simply cannot wait until Sunday when I can go back to the thing I gave up for Lent: clubbing baby seals. Of course, by "clubbing baby seals," I mean drinking sugary soda. I sometimes question the correlation between fizzy sugar water and love from the Almighty, but it is at those times that I quietly pat myself on the back, and say, in soothing tones, "Shush, shush, it'll all be okay."

This brings me to my real topic of the day: my girlfriend. You see, a few weeks ago, my girlfriend did something that was actually quite loving. She bought a six pack of my very favorite specialty soda, Henry Weinhardt's Orange Cream, and said that I could have one when I came over for dinner. In my excitment over the prospect of something so delicious entering my gullet, I hopped in my vehicle, and hurriedly made my way over to said girlfriend's house. It was only once I reached her domecile that I realized that it was still Lent, and that there was to be no joy in Mudville that day. Well, at least not any joy that came from a sweet tasting nectar of the gods.

Mmm. Sunday's going to be delicious.