Autumn Is Here

And it makes me realize the smell of burning leaves is the most amazing smell in the world.
I took poetry in college - twice - I took senior level poetry, and I wasn't kidding.
Just typing that puts a knot in my stomach.  But why should it?  Let's get back to the way things should be. 

Poetry in Autumn.

A Real Poem

On the ground closer to

Everything smaller than you

He’s losing his mind

One second at a time

Under the blanket to block the ghosts

From entering his skin

Heating up

He burns

Overturns

There is more to it

There has to be.

You know what I think about too much?

That there's that scene in Ghost where Patrick Swayze is already dead, inhabits Whoopi's body, and makes out with Demi Moore.  I know I've said this to people before, but I mean, I think about this probably once a month.  That ain't Swayze, even though that's what they show you.  That's Whoopi.

Am I crazy here?  I've just always felt that was a really racist take on a love story.  They might has well have named Whoopi Quimbo.  I mean, she's already dealing with being named Whoopi Goldberg.

Fuck.  The Whoopster.

Holy shit, I just teared up a little from laughing in a wind gust:

Also, WTF is with that phone commercial with Phil Jackson and Whoopi (and others) and when they show what Whoopi's looking at on her phone you see...

WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING RIGHT HERE?

T-Mobile/Wyden Kenney Creative meeting:

Lights up, white stage, who's there? You know it, Hall of Fame Coach, linen pant wearing Living Legend, Mr. Phil Jackson.  What's he doing? Oh, he's just relaxing on stage, walking around barefoot on his white EnV2, texting Snoop Dogg and the Dalai Lama.  But wait, zoom in, what's he actually doing? Watching someone else standing on a white stage.  Who is it? Another sports icon? Sully Sullenberger? Cuba Gooding Jr.?  No, hang on, it's comedic Tour de Force Whoopi Goldberg.  What's she doing? Planning Comic Relief XVII with her good friends Mr. Billy Crystal and Robin Williams?   No. . . better.  Dana, can you just. . . .just lower the lights please?  I want everyone to get a look at this.  Next slide?

This is it. Whoopula.  Beginning in 2011, not only can T-mobile provide you excellence in customer service and industry leading global cellular technology, but now, with every 2 year contract and data package purchase, you can receive exclusive T-Mobile web content from your favorite stars.  The first three issues of the Whoopula online comic are ready to go live, and we've got nine hundred thousand boxes of Whoopula cereal ready to ship to top 20 US cities in our target profiles. 

Any questions?

"Um, I have a question, isn't that basically going to look exactly like the Count Chocula cereal? It seems kind of racist"

"Listen, this creative was done by Ms. Goldberg herself, and excuse me for speaking out of turn, but I don't think you, or me, or anyone in this room is in a position to tell Ms. Whoopi Goldberg what's funny, and certainly not what's racist."

Long silence.

"DANA, LIGHTS PLEASE GOD DAMMIT"

Cut to T-Mobile suits shaking hands with presenter.  They walk out, presenter shuts door behind them, immediately picks up phone:

"Ship it out"

Cut to trucks getting their door hatches shut and rolling out of a big loading warehouse en masse.

Cut to out takes of Phil Jackson in a Frankenstein suit painted even whiter than he is, still wearing linen pants, but with bolts in his neck, talking to ad guy.

Phil: I don't know, it just seems kind of racist.

Cut to grocery store cereal shelf:

Blankenstein Cereal Box

White Marshamllows with douchey glasses holding a clipboard surrounded by chocolate chips holding "B-Ball Berries"

Small round gold star on bottom right says "Free 200 minute T-Mobile burner inside!"

~Fin

Our house. . . .

Is a very very very fine house,
with two cats in the yard,
life used to be so hard,

WTF who has yard cats?

Life is easier with yard cats than without them?

It seems like even if they're banished to the yard you still have to look out for them a little bit. 

Or do they kind of mean they're like barn cats, who make their money eatin' up the field mice and spiders and shit?

I've seen cats like that.  Big feral bastards with a touch of affection for people.  I think maybe I'll breed cats the way people breed dogs, to perform and serve to complete specific tasks based on their breed's personality traits.  Some cats are bred to keep mice out of your basement, while others are bred to be firefighters.

I think this came to my mind because, besides the weird ass lyrics to that song, the other night I had a dream I was in one of those really big commuter train stations with stores and shit in it, and went into a seedy exotic pets store expecting to see sugar gliders and weird fox ferrets and shit, but instead found a bunch of lucky bamboo electric water fountains, and the whole place was basically the exotic pet store in Gremlins and childhood best friend's living room, with a back room that had a baby lion in it the size of a kitten.

I about shit my pants in the dream.

You know, this is what's wrong with our world.  We spend all our money on scientific research that gets us nothing. 

"Oh ketchup spills this way when the bottle breaks." 
Useless.

"Oh this is how you can make tiny particles collide in space, maybe."
Please.

"This is a tiny lion you can keep as a pet."
Entire world immediately levels up.

"Here's a 1200 pound Black Lab that you can ride around on like a horse."
People ride dogs, world declares all wars over forever.

We have the technology to do this, but we use it on NONSENSE!

We need to convince science (the entire subject and all its affiliates) to stop focusing on extending our miserable lives (temporally (making us live longer) and spacially (Mars, bitches), and start focusing on how to make our time on earth amazing.  I suggest beginning with the development of teacup sized elephants.

I think in general one of the globally classic jokes is things being the wrong size.  You have one guy pull a giant sword in a really slow and dramatic way, and then cut to the other guy doing the same dramatic move but pulls out a 2 inch knife, you've got gold.

A couple gets nervously naked  for the first time and woman's clitoris is bigger than man's penis, woman has clitoris sex with man's pee pee hole.

You write that into a 90 minute Rom-Com, and you've got yourself an MTV Movie Award for Best Kiss.

If anyone has any ideas for title of this potentially epic film, please let me know.  All I can think of is "Urethra Invasion"  "Clam Jammers 1:The Way Home"

What am I wearing?

Red flannel, brown corduroys, brown suede/rubber weird fisherman's shoes:

That is the correct answer, I am dressed like a New England area lesbian.

If only I was wearing my Smartwool socks. . .

There's this woman (approximately 42, sweet looking, slightly frumpy, tiny laptop that she types on at great speed to the point I think she might be just smashing keys) at the Starbuck's by my house.

She wears a yarmulke (the Jew beanies for those who have never seen it spelled).
A couple of things regarding this choice:

1.  I guess you can wear that, but it's not like chicks wearing baseball hats, it'd be like chicks wearing a 3 piece suit and not doing it because they're strippers and the suit is made to snap off.

2. You're clearly wearing a little boys yarmulke, made of quartered black suede with like, little fire trucks and Hebrew on it.  So now you're not just wearing a 3 piece suit, you're wearing a child's sized tuxedo with a red bowtie, and you're not a Fabulous Baker Boy or the evil wood doll from Saw.

I don't consider myself too heteronormative (look it up Jack, it's a word), but that annoys me.

Again, if you want to change the gender expectation on something, that's fine, but the first black people who registered to vote in the antebellum south didn't go in wearing Batman costumes (this would also mean that Batman was originally created in the 1800's, which would be crazy! (especially because of how advanced it would the Batmobile seem (not to mention the utility belt stuff))).

I don't know why I love doing that open and close parenthesis thing, it just seems more organized than it would be otherwise.

Like writing a mathematical equation on how to read Toni Morrison.

I just texted this to my girlfriend:
"I tried to clean up my beard on the cheeks a little, and now I look like a gay demon."

You know what I mean.  I look like a bad guy from an early 2000's WB witch/warlock show.

The reality of Lupe Fiasco is that it's like listening to great production quality music while your 15 year old cousin is trying to sound complex talking about world issues and you're just like "you're in ninth grade, you were born after Seinfeld went off the air."

I'm trying to think of a screenplay to write on my own.  The problem is the two or three things I have the most interest in planning and following through with both sound like a joke.

Like the first time they had the meeting about Memento?  It's a great movie, but if you were a big time producer and the elevator pitch was "So, stay with me, it's a murder mystery, but . . . and here's the kicker, THE WHOLE THING GOES BACKWARDS!"

I'd be like, "get the fuck out of my office."

I understand when an established guy comes in and says "Hi I'm David Lynch, I want to make a nonsensical movie that, as usual, has a totally lackluster ending because I don't know how to finish", you say "OK David Lynch, whatever."

But if you're just some guy and you walk in and say "I want to write an hour long, HBO drama, it's Terminator 2 meets Buffy The Vampire Slayer meets My So Called Life" I feel like you probably don't get a second meeting.

Shhh. . . .OK, I'll write it.

I'm not good at computers.

Let's be clear about a few things:

My poor aptitude for all things software and all things computerized is similar to my poor aptitude for anything else I encounter which is a conniving evil lie.

You see, computers promise us a better, faster, and lazier world, so what the fuck?  It's 2010, the Japanese are getting ever closer to the technology that will allow them to make Cherry 2000 a reality, but if I try to open Itunes and 2 websites at the same time, my laptop almost demands I hit alt+escape a hundred times in frustration, only freezing it further with repetitive commands.

I remember the times of me standing at the newly purchased computer screen for 4 minutes with my newly found pud in my hand waiting for the picture of the newly famous Cameron Diaz to finish downloading off our Prodigy internet.

I was a real tissue destroyer in those days.

Again, it's not that it goes slow, it's (am I using this it's shit the right way? I HATE THAT ONE GRAMMATICAL THING I'M INCAPABLE OF DOING PROPERLY) that I want it be my slave.

Right now I'm looking at the sixty-ish year old, cigarette smoking, anchor tattoo should be having (let's call him Guapo) manager of this restaurant shaking trees before he (I assume) sweeps up the fallen leaves.  I guess that's a good idea if you don't want anyone to see evidence of the entire world's favorite season, idiot.

OWNER: I don't understand Guapo, our sales are down 15% over last fall, can you explain this?
Guapo: No, I mean I've been doing everything I can, I've even been shaking the trees to make sure the . . .
OWNER: YOU'VE BEEN DOING WHAT?

I mean, come on Guapo.

You know what pigs' favorite food is? No shit, Milk and Oreos.  Not just cookies, Oreos (and perhaps Hydrox)

Growing up, I was always worried when at a 100% Jewish kids' house that having cookies would result in us having to eat Hydrox.  It also always felt like the more Jewy the family, the more likely it was there was Crystal Light in the house.  You want me to tell you why, I can't, but I can tell you that statistics don't lie.

Menorah in window = higher likelyhood of:
Hydrox, Crystal Light, Brisket before black people and the food network made it cool again, seafoam colored things, copies of the book "Why A Duck?", those tiny bathroom Dixie cups, Costco cookies.  Formica furniture.

There are others. . . so many others, but who has the time?

I'm pretty sure Del Monte fruit salad in a jar/can/whatever had grapes in it that, while steeped in the syrup waiting to be placed in a bowl after a barbecue at my next door neighbor's house, would turn pink.  I'm pretty sure for about 15 years I thought there was a fruit in this fruit salad I never saw anywhere else.  It looked just like a skinned, split pink grape, and tasted kind of like a grape mixed with pineapple and pears.

I still can't know for sure if they were grapes or something else as described above.

I feel like Top Chef and the food network has forced us all to start referring to meat as "protein".  I understand it is in fact protein, but let's not overdevelop our sense of food science.  "Hey, this dish was great, but where's your carbohydratic legume?"
Neighbor, please.

I went to Istanbul this year for basically my first "real" foreign trip.  Real refers to anything that's not obvious to Americans which includes Canada, less questionable parts of Mexico, and study abroad in Australia.

Listen kids who did study abroad in Australia, get real.  In a lot of ways you're worse than the kids who did study abroad in London.  At least the kids in London probably still got a good education while they were there.

Shut up Australia, you're out there alone for a reason.  Even the Phillipines doesn't want shit to do with you.  You're the cousin everyone thinks is kind of cool but never shows up to family shit and eventually dies way before everyone else your age in the family and nobody's that surprised.  You're a non-contagious leper.  We can't get what you have, but we're still skeeved out.