Yellow

Until Mr. Hatandcoat brought it up, I had forgotten that some people consider frequent pee-ers to be more feminine. I never bore the brunt of that insult, but I recall that some did. Long ago, if I had had a middle-school gym teacher as a father, I imagine this scenario:

(Driving to another state to see a sports game as a "family outing")
Son: Dad, can we stop at the next rest stop?
Fictional Gym Teacher/Father: What, again? Aw, c'mon! Hold it like a man, son!
Son: I... can't.
Fictional Gym Teacher/Father: What's wrong with you, boy? You got your mother's bladder?
Fictional Beleaguered Mother: Now, Gary...
Fictional Gym Teacher/Father: Don't take his side, Bethann! You're the main reason I have to stop this car ten times an hour!
Son: I really gotta go...
Fictional Gym Teacher/Father: If you wet that seat back there you'll be back in JV as soon as you can say "urinal." Hold it! Ain't no boy of mine got a pansy bladder. Be a man! Men don't need to pee as much as you do. Man up, boy!
Son: (losing urgency) ...fine
(Car screeches to the side of the highway. Fictional Gym Teacher/Father gets out, comes around to the back door, opens it, shoves Son over and curses at the dark stain.)
Fictional Gym Teacher/Father: Godddammmitt, boy! No, don't sit over there! You sit in it and you think on what you've done! Grow a pair, you pansy!

I think I'll work this into a screenplay. The Fictional Gym Teacher/Father will turn out to be having an affair with the coach of the team they were going to see, and that's why he was so upset about being late. The Fictional Beleaguered Mother will then kidnap her son, but she will turn out to be a psycho who is bent on committing suicide with her son at the place where she was born. The cunning Son leads authorities to rescue him, however, by "marking" their trail all the way. The Fictional Gym Teacher/Father is reunited with his small-bladdered Son and begs forgiveness for shaming him about his peeing frequency.

I think I'll call it "Yellow."

Blogger Boggler

That's just hilarious. I was gchatting with aak when he wrote some sort of japanese word meaning "okay" or "I understand" or something like that, and I wrote that gibberish back. Maybe if I were to do that a lot longer I could randomly happen upon some random languages like the philosophical monkey that could conceivably type War & Peace.

I was going to blog about what confuses the hell about me about the urinal where I'm working, but aak sort of talked me down. Perhaps mercifully for our vast readership.

That conversation did lead us to wondering why having a small bladder is somehow a sign of lower masculinity. If you pee a lot then you have a woman's bladder supposedly. I drink a lot habitually and pee all the frickin' time, so I don't judge people on that basis. My theory about it is that if you pee a lot then you have a smaller bladder which is a biologically feminine thing, and thus you are feminine with feminine parts. Truly insulting individuals may go ahead and put the toilet seat down for you.

In an issue like this we can only have theories and never really get to the bottom of it. That really bugs the s$%* out of me. Aak says that you can observe it over time in yourself or other people around you and see where that attitude stems from in that subgroup. Perhaps over time it will be representative of general human attitudes. And who knows, years down the road someone can make a thorough study of the issue and make this post a point in a timeline toward figuring it out. Screw all that. My issue is so much more riveting because it could potentially be figured out. Not realistically because the steps to make it happen would just be weird, but it's doable.

Screw it. Here's the deal (warning, this may be kinda gross for some). Whenever I go to pee at that urinal the sensor for automatic flushing makes a noise about 3 seconds in acknowledging my presence and letting me know that it will flush when I'm done my business. It then waits patiently for completion before crashing down like Niagara Falls. I tested it by moving slightly to the side once to see if it would activate, and it did. But the flushing took so long that it outlasted my work. Really, really long. I was actually annoyed that it was s'darn wasteful of water. So, the thing that confuses me is that most of the time I approach the urinal it's dark yellow from the previous patron. That thing flushes for so long after it has clicked on that even if it starts flowing at the same time you do (which it shouldn't unless you move to the side), I can't imagine it not outlasting you. And I certanly can't imagine someone peeing for so long that it can't at least be somewhat diluted and not so dark. And I damn skippy can't fathom that this happens repeatedly. Wtf, mate?

There's space enough behind the urinal for me to park a lawn chair and watch what goes down over time. I envisioned a few moments of people zipping up, turning around, seeing me, and firing me. Or I could hunt down a very discreet camera to post there. That'd definitely go well. The thing is, though, that though this question cannot be answered because of social weirdness, it could be found out after a day or two of research. The above question that aak finds so much more interesting will never be definitively solved.

Did you mean: Wakdinvyv csbayfll a;owhfc KNICKNACK ?

Google, it's no secret that I love you. But sometimes you do things so endearing that I can't help but share.

Recently, Mr. Hatandcoat wrote to me in gibberish, but it could've been in Thai or something, or an obscure reference, what do I know?

He said, "oooyooo pikka pinda floo." So I Googled it. And Google gave me one of these:

Did you mean: oooooo pikka pinder floo

No results for either, unfortunately. Why'd you do that, Google? Why'd you offer me an equally-useless search phrase? Just to be cute? Aww, we already know you're the sweetest thing.

Do you have a translation for us, Mr. H&C? Or a blogpost, perhaps? I'll take either.

Too Many Exits, a Play by AAK

I am at a crossroads. Except it's not just a crossroads. It's a multi-highway interchange with 64 cloverleaf off-ramps and no signs. My only clear choices are to exit or not to exit.

This is about my job. I'm a paralegal, which sounds cool, like "paramedic," "paranormal" or "paratrooper." Unfortunately it doesn't train you how to be a supernatural, flying EMT but instead has something to do with lawyers.

Back to that maelstrom of highway concrete I now face: should I continue working at a job I have no reason to be at, or should I ______? Options include:

• go to school UBER-full-time, taking all the classes I can;
• work freelance as a pro-photographer;
• do editing work for a translation/publication company;
• become a wedding photog's assistant;
• return to Kaplan and teach;
• tutor ESL;
• find some bullshit job to do on campus

I guess the only reason to stay at my job would be "the economy," whatever that is. I just got promoted, and my job security increased tenfold. If I stayed a paralegal, even part-time, I'd be assured an income through the "recession" or whatever we're having.

I'm also afraid that any other option involves too much work for not enough payoff and might become a detriment to my studies.

I don't have an answer to this situation; just announcing the situation is enough for a blog, correct?

Disco Stu's Got a Blog For You

I wish I had better musical instincts, or a better ear, or whatever could fix the following. I was walking to the store today to buy ingredients for Lasagna. Along the way I had Staying Alive by the Beegees in my head. I was mentally playing the refrain: "stayin' aliiiiiiiiiiiiii-iiiiiiiiiiii-i-i-i-iiiiiiiiiiiiii-ive" and trying to figure out the penultimate note. I was about 80% sure that it was lower than the previous note, but had to keep repeating it to be sure. Some nagging part of my brain kept questioning whether or not the i-i-i part just ended up on the same note as before. The problem was that I had no way of knowing if I was right. I had no way of anchoring it to other notes in my head.

Ok, so it's "sequitur" and not "sequiter." I'm a pretty good speller, and a pretty good proofreader, but sometimes it just gets too tedious. The other day I fired off a cover letter that I later realized had a typo on it. Whoops.

Speaking of tedious, girlfriend is a scientist who fills pipettes and tubes and things. Today I helped her mix 12 samples then put them in containers, then mix them, then empty those containers carefully making sure that cells don't get stuck to the walls. Oh my GOD! Granted, when I do tedious things I obsess to a ridiculous extent which makes it like chinese water torture on my soul. And of course you develop skills to do such things more quickly over time. Maybe science simply attracts the meticulous type who notices things like spelling errors in blogs.

It's gonna be cool to see you without the facial fuzz again, aak. Well, to tell the truth I was indifferent to it. When I saw your moving friend's new beard I thought it looked cool because it gave him a strong chin (which he called the nicest thing I have ever said to him), but yours was just kind of a somehow unimportant facial feature. Come to think of it, it made your head look really huge. Like a tough boxer who could take a punch.

Tell me, was the Jason Bourne comment a reference to our last dueling blog?

I feel like your last blog had a rant about portmanteau words. This is apparently a thorn in the aak side. A Thaakside.

It does not follow

After months of indecision, I broke up with my girlfriend last night. And you know what? I had a sudden impulse to shave the beard I'd been growing since my bike accident in March. A few minutes ago, I shaved it all off. I feel refreshed. Is this why girls cut their hair at the end of a relationship?

One of my roommates got on Facebook for the first time yesterday. She saw me on there but didn't "friend" me because she thought it would be redundant, living together and all. I'm like, that's what Facebook is for! If you can't be Facebook-friends with your roommates, who can you be Facebook-friends with?

I watched Batman Begins again last night. I keep liking it better each time I watch it. But it'll never become a top-5 favorite. The original complaint I had of BB was that its pacing was off. Dialogue was packed in too tightly, and there was no time for anything to really sink in. This is the most significant difference between the direction of Batman Begins and of The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight was paced perfectly, I thought. Moody buildup, sexy explosions, and tense action scenes were great, and moreover, The Dark Knight allowed the characters to reveal themselves at their own pace. See for example the minor characters on the boats, or Heath Ledger. Christopher Nolan probably learned a lot just from working with Heath. Dammit, now I want to see Knight again.

I went food shopping yesterday but still have very little consumables. I bought stuff like rice and frozen gyoza. Man cannot live on gyoza alone. Don't get me wrong, though; I adore gyoza. This past fourth of July, I was over my friend's house and we watched the hot dog eating championship. Kobayashi was robbed, dog. But anyway, I found the contenders' stats very interesting. One of the people had won the year's mayonaise-eating contest by consuming X amount of mayonaise, etc. But the stat that sticks with me is the gyoza-eating champion: Joey Chestnut ate 212 gyoza in 10 minutes. I could totally do that. I would do it, just for the love of gyoza. Bring it on, Chestnut.

Dude, I wish I could fight like Jason Bourne.

I'm probably going to study abroad next year. That means I have to move YET AGAIN. I am already stressing out. Maybe I should buy a 20'-by-20' patch of land out in Virginia, assemble a small shed, and store all my crap in there until I get a real home. I am so sick of this shit. Plus I just found a place I really like. This sucks! On the other hand, if I go, I will get fluent in Japanese. No doubts about it. That's a pretty cool feeling. But moving! Moving blows. Everybody feels this way, except I don't think people normally feel this way a year in advance.

Keep on with the posture updates, Hatandcoat! We will keep tabs on it. Maybe you should set up a web graphic, like people use for their moods, so that we can have live updates about how straight your spine is. That's what this blog needs: live spinal updates.

It's Working!!!

As I write this my back is straight. Occasionally I'll be completely ignorant of my posture while sitting at my desk, then just notice that I'm sitting up straight. Awesome! I don't know if it's a mental thing (my subconscious is warming up to the idea) or if my lower back is becoming physically stronger. Well, both, obviously.

When walking down the street I also put my shoulders back and my head up consciously. By default I normally walk staring at the ground, noticing things on the grounds like patterns for my footsteps to follow. It doesn't have anything to do with timidity or shyness...or at least I don't think. But in recent weeks it's been a totally different experience to notice all the people that I walk by. It's a little unnerving. For a couple of days I was following a challenge that I read somewhere to make eye contact with people that I see and not break it until they either pass by or break it themselves. I was astounded by the amount that people avoid eye contact, but I was completely unnerved by those who didn't. There was some random guy on a bench who fully engaged me in a stare down and freaked me out a little bit. It takes a new type of attitude if you're going to pull such a thing off.

Well, now my back's a little slouched. What do you expect?

I've gotten a little feeback on my blogging. Apparently the non-sequiter thing does not go over well with the reader sometimes. I've been treating this blog as a stream of consciousness receptacle and enjoy the jumps while writing them. I have wondered how annoying they can get for anyone reading it, though (the feedback came from a direct question: "are the non-sequiters irritating?"). Due to my habit, any given topic that I'm writing about feels like it's getting stale after a paragraph or two. That's how I converse, that's how I write, and that's how I read. I plan to write single topic posts in the future.

My back's straight again. I have a rotation of body positions while sitting, and the ram-rod straight option has inserted itself into the mix. This means that I have established my good posture beachhead, and I will now fight my way in from the shore.