Operation Big Boy.

I was recently told that my absence is the blogging world has been noticed. Suffice it to say, the world will begin to spin wildly off its axis if I don't get off my ass and write something for my readers. So here goes.

For those who don't know, I argued at a federal sentencing hearing back in February. The ins and outs of the legal stuff are wholly inconsequential. But in the end, our client got sentenced to thirty-three months at a medical facility in Kentucky. So. About a month ago, I get this email from my supervising attorney. For narrative purposes, I will call this individual Hobart. So Hobart emails me and wants me to come up with a proposal for how to get Big Boy (not his real name), the client, to Kentucky.

At this point, I'm sure many of you have stopped reading and are thinking to yourselves, "Get him to Kentucky? Isn't that the job of the Department of Corrections?" If you had this thought, I applaud you. Yes, it is DOC's job to get Big Boy to Kentucky. But right after the hearing, a marshall approached Hobart and said, "You know, Hobart. We really don't have the resources to get Big Boy out to Kentucky. Perhaps you should consider alternate meas of transportation."

At this point I could stop for a moment to write a small rant on how DOC sucks. But I have work to do, so I'll skip over that. However, feel free to submit your own. In fact, best rant regarding DOC wins. What do you win? Hmmm. That's negotiable. Submit your rant for review, and along with it, submit a proposal on what you'd like to win. There you have it. Now back to the story...

Alternate means of transportation. But why? Well, as it turns out, Big Boy isn't called Big Boy without reason. Big Boy weighs 467 pounds. Big Boy's IQ also places him within the borderline range of intellectual functioning. It should be no surprise to you that Big Boy cannot read. So after throwing email back and forth (and after being inappropriately chastised by Hobart), I got approval to drive Big Boy to Kentucky in my car. So on April 12 at 5.30 pm, my driving companion and I picked up Big Boy and made the long trek to Kentucky.

I really wish I had something interesting to say about the trip, but it was fairly uneventful. We did hit an electrical storm of some sort on the way out (in West Virginia, I think), accompanied by torrential downpours. That was not fun. But we made it. We dropped Big Boy off before 9 am on the 13th, stopped for breakfast at a local Waffle House, and then drove right back to Connecticut. My driving companion drove about two-thirds of the way there and back. So I just mostly sang songs and told bad jokes. Somewhere in Pennsylvania (on the way back) I noticed a billboard. "Jesus will come back as lightning." Holy shit. Jesus lives in West Virginia. Who knew?

Right, so this story really wasn't so exciting. My apologies. But wait, there's more. Now for some excitement.

Kentucky trivia, courtesy of my friend Trivia Boy (also not his real name. I'm sorry, ok? I couldn't come up with a better name. I'm tired.)

Kentucky is the 15th state.

Kentucky is known as the Bluegrass State.

Bluegrass is not really blue. It's green. But in the spring, it produces bluish-purple buds that when see in large gields, give a rich blue cast to the grass. Early pioneers found bluegrass growing on Kentucky's rich limestone soil, and traders began asking for the seed of the "blue grass from Kentucky."

"Poop" is a palendrome.

Then again, so is "A man, a plan, a canal: Panama." Of course, without the punctuation. But I just couldn't help myself.

So. It appears that there is this ongoing battle between good and evil. Wait. Let me be more precise. There is an ongoing battle between crazy bitches and assholes. It appears that according to men, all women are insane; and according to women, all men are complete jerks. What I find interesting is that men would never even deign to understand women -- this is something they openly admit. But women? They actually purport to understand men.

Well, it's time for the truth to come out.

I don't get men.

Wait. Let me rephrase that. I don't understand men. Actually getting men is very easy to do if you're willing to let them ejaculate in your vaginal canal. But I digress.

The point here? It's not the "poop" is a palendrome, or that women are crazy (which I admit -- they drive us to it). The point is that I don't think think I'll ever understand men. At all. Feel free to shed some light on this. And if you need clarification, lemme know.

PS - I just felt like writing in color tonight.

I am an alien!

I've been trascribing seven years of old journals. You know, getting them on the computer just in case anything should happen to the books. This is my favorite entry so far:

April 18, 1994

Dear Diary,

It’s time I told the truth. It’s time I came clean. I’m really a space alien. I only pretend to be human. In reality, I am a loathsome, tentacled, squid-like creature. One look at my face would kill anyone with eyeballs. I’m that ugly. I also eat my boogers.

I'm going Bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

I have but one question for Ms. Stefani: why?

The other day I was cruising along I-91, listening to the radio, smoking a cigarette and enjoying my ride. The day was pleasant, the window was down, and I was lost in thought. Things were groovy. And then it happened. "Hollaback Girl" came on the radio. I quickly changed the station.

Alas.

The same song was on another station. I changed again. To a third station.

Damn. Not again.

Will I ever escape this song? It's driving me, well, bananas.

But hey, as I was told the other day, it's a good thing she wasn't singing about pomegranites.

I am dead. I am pregnant.

Prepare yourself for a grammar rant:

Alright, people. The word of the day is: unique.

It means: "Being the only one of its kind."

Therefore, unique does not come in degrees. Something cannot be "a little unique" any more than it can be "very unique." If something is the only one of its kind, there are no levels.

Hungry like the... Wolf Boy?

Before I begin, I must give credit to the source of my inspiration: Marissa. Marissa is a friend who attended Emerson College with me. She started her own web 'zine. www.bucketmag.com. I was perusing it today and found a piece about Wolf Boys.

When I saw this, I stopped my browing immediately and focused on the Wolf Boy exegesis. Hungry Like the Wolf started playing in my head - and still is. I was interested. I was invested. I know some Wolf Boys. And I had to see if what the article said was true.

Thus, what follows is a detailed Wolf Boy analysis. I have taken the primary points in the article, and compared those points to the Wolf Boys I have encountered personally. Thus, I put together my own Wolf Boy composite. For narrative purposes, I will call this composite "Bob". What follows is a step-by-step process to determine the validity of the Wolf Boy stereotype as promulgated by the author.

Always strong, the stench of wolf envelops those who pass within a four-foot range of the Wolf Boy. My Wolf Boy at work chose a cologne of the urine odor variety, but many others opt for simple, designer imposter musk.

Okay. Bob does not smell like urine OR designer imposter musk. I tend not to go around sniffing others (I attempt to act like a human, and not a canine - when possible). However, if Bob could be assigned a smell, it would be a heady mix of cigarettes and incense - an essence I tend to enjoy, and one that doesn't require the voiding of a bladder.

If a Wolf Boy, for some unearthly reason, has cut their mane short (balding, dress codes, and accidents while cooking are just some of the reasons why this would occur), they almost always appear in public wearing a shirt, usually black, depicting a painting of their spirit animal.

This, obviously, must be addressed in two parts. (1) I hate to admit it, but Bob did at one point have long hair. The mane. And it was scary. (2) Doesn't everyone usually appear in public wearing a shirt? Though Bob does have a few black shirts, only one is ALL black. Also, I've never seen Bob wear a shirt with his power animal on it. He sticks to fading t-shirts with dumb bands on them, or Calvin Klein. Oh, and Bob showers regularly. Bob is very well groomed. And when I say groomed, I do not mean that his wolfy brethren lick him back at the den. Though if they did, I may be apt to watch.

His cubicle allowed room for artistic expression, which Wolf Boy eagerly adorned with photographs of other fellow members of the order of the wolf, as well as with pictures of wolves themselves.

Bob is way cooler. No wolf pictures. Just blacklight posters.

There are two main categories of Wolf Boy when it comes to socializing: those who are loud, and those who are quiet.

There are generally two categories of people as a whole: those who are loud and those who are quiet. I'm not sure that this relates to Wolf Boys in particular.

Many wolf lovers celebrate their love of the moon through Goth clubs, Wiccan or pagan festivals, and magik (always with a K).

Yes! At last. Another magik-hater. Yes, it's true. Bob does frequent goth clubs, but only for the dollar drinks. Bob also likes spiritually-based activities. But he doesn't paint the Japenese symbol of the wolf on his forehead, and he doesn't do the whiteface thing, nor does he sport a cape to any sort of social event. No nipple clamps, either. At least not that I've seen. But I'll check on that and get back to you.

His only other method of enticing women- scotch. Oftentimes he could go on for upwards of twenty minutes about blends of his favorite beverage...

Bob likes scotch. But he's never used it as a means to seduce me or get me into bed. Except for that one time. Oh wait, no. I used scotch to try to seduce Bob. And it didn't work. Bastard.

And thus ends my Bob/Wolf Boy analysis.

Finding: Like all stereotypes, this one just doesn't hold water. So I'll keep my Wolf Boys to myself. And the author of that piece will never know what she's missing.

Breakfast of Champions.

My friend was telling me yesterday that she's trying to get her fourteen-year-old daughter to read Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions. Since I'm not a big fan of Mr. V, I told her what the real breakfast of champions is:

Devil Dogs and Diet Mountain Dew.

Fenced in.

When I was about fifteen years old, a close friend of mine told me that I put walls up around myself in order to block out the rest of the world. He told me that I draw invisible boundaries that don't really exist in order to protect myself from people. He called me silly. He called me crazy. He told me that if I remained that guarded, I would never be able to be close to anyone. Ever.

He was right, of course. Ah, the wisdom of a seventeen-year-old boy.

But he was right only insofar as my guarded nature applied to people I never wrote to. For some reason, once I start writing, I stop thinking, and the walls come down. I've always known this, I suppose, but it wasn't fully realized until today, when I was perusing the Web site of my college newspaper and found old articles and columns I'd written. I would say anything. Anything at all about what I was feeling or thinking, and it never seemed to matter.

So in that manner and spirit, I throw this thought out there into the World Wide Web - a strange faux-Universe unto itself.

Advice to all you men out there.

Men:

In case you were ever wondering, "Let's fuck" is not an effective pickup line.

Do you believe in magick?

I'm well aware that there are many people out there who are spiritual who enjoy gallivanting with faeries and wizards and whatnot. But does that mean they have to spell incorrectly? Magick. What the hell is that all about?

According to a close source, "magick" is about to be included in Webster's Dictionary. This fact makes me even more irate.