My Confession!

I’m sitting here watching television. I have the windows open, because the state of Maryland is a fetid swamp, and I want to attempt to breath sometime tonight. A thunderstorm breaks, and the sound of the rain and thunder drowns out the TV. I get up, and as I’m about to close the window, I feel a deep shame. The sort of shame that bubbles up from your toenails and makes you feel like you’ve been drinking gin, all woozy and wobbly and shit. And I feel real proud, cause I go back to the couch and turn off the television, and I’m halfway through writing a blog post on the itnernet about it before I realize what a pretentious asshole I am.

Models

Okay. So, I spent last week at a conference in San Fransisco. I’d been there before, but it’s nothing like I remembered it, probably because I got out and saw some more stuff. But this post isn’t about that. This post is to complain about Revell’s crappy models.

A long time ago, I bought a P61, and it was hard to put together and also missing a page of the instructions. And the customer service guy was surly as hell about it, and I never got the instructions. Anyway, I bought a PBY Catalina. I thought it was sort of pricey, but it looks like a big ol’ model, so maybe it’s worth it. It’s not. A bunch of the peices are missing, but little tiny pieces that I didn’t realize were missing till I’d already done the primer and some gluing. Also, the fuselage was warped. And the instructions are vague enough that I made an embarassing mistake and put the wrong number of wheels on. The wrong number of wheels!

And the paint! All the yellow paint that Testors makes sucks. It separates out. So I got a can of the spray paint, to spray the wings yellow. And it looked lovely at first. But it separates out as it dries! So I thought I’d have a nice handsome yellow (well… zinc chromate, in theory) wing, and I’ve got this splotchy mess.

I feel like I’ve been ripped off all around on this, and will make up for it by avoiding these products to the utmost of my ability. Oh! Also! Guys at Hobbyworks in Rockville, MD – if someone spends $50 in your store, and they ask if you’ve got a bathroom, you’re jerks if you don’t let him take a dump in your place. You jerks.

An Inauspicious Start to the Week

So, I decide I’ll go get myself a physical. It’s real, real cheap on my new job’s insurance, so I figure to myself I figure, sure, why not? Find out what my cholesterol is, whether or not there’s a medical explanation for being so attractive. That sort of thing. So I go in, let them take some of the sanguinary fluid, wizz in a cup, tip my hat and I’m on my way.

Outside, there’s a kid with a clipboard hanging around the back of my truck. As I walk up, he eyeballs me sort of funny, like he’s trying to get my attention without trying to get my attention, if you know what I mean. He looks like I did in high school: skinny and not all that bright. So, as I open the door, I say something real classy, deep and philosophical, like “what’s up?” or “yeah?”. The kid looks at the clipboard, then at me, and points up the street and tells me he’s writing down licence plate numbers. Up the street, there’s a cluster of anti-abortion protesters. 3′ x 4′ posters of babies painted red, the whole nine yards. I saw them once before, when I went to set up the physical, and they seemed well mannered enough. They didn’t have the posters that first time. I think they like to come out between 8 and 9 AM because there’s a grade school up the street, and all the buses have to drive past them.

Anyway, I tell the kid to get out of here, rather I say to him getouddahereyo, and he says “smile for the camera.” I don’t really understand what he’s getting at, and as I’m driving away, I see that across the street there’s a bunch of middle aged men with a video camera on a tripod, filing everyone who goes in and out of the medical complex.

Now, I don’t really know who they’re protesting. I doubt my gastroenterologist gives abortions on the side, or that they’re being carried out at the travel agency next door to him. But I do know one thing: those protesters are trying to send a message, and the message is “We know where you live, we know who you are, and we’re going to find you.”

No, seriously, screw that. Maybe those guys were just trying to get leads on some sexually active young women, but I doubt it. Anyway, zealots! You have my face. You have my licence plate. Come find me! Why keep intimidating young, vulnerable women? Come try and intimidate a sweaty, hair covered nutcase with a screwdriver in his pocket. I will ruin your afternoon, assholes.

Glasses (beer and otherwise)

The homemade beer I put together using a kit my sister got me is finally ready. I’ve decided to call it Erdbebenbrau, which is German for Earthquake Beer. I called it that because it says in the booklet it ought to be 3.2 ABV, but if it is, I’m a tiny girl scout, because I’m only a litre into the batch, and I’m feeling the ground shake.

Anyway. I went to get new eyeglasses last night. There was an elderly Jewish optometrist, and two young ladies as his assistants. As I was trying on glasses, they kept saying flattering things, and I thought they were doing it to flatter me into buying a pair of fancy frames? At one point I tried on a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, and the one girl said I had a certain nerd chic “going on”. Before I could help myself, I told her she had terrible taste, since I look like the driver of a U-Haul filled with beard was hit by a bus from Fat City. There was an awkward pause there, and I got the impression that maybe they were just bored and trying to entertain themselves. Anyway, my head was too globular for almost all of the glasses in the place, and the whole thing reminded me of buying a car. I feel dirty and used now. Feh.

Ancestry

So. It’s a New Year. But one thing hasn’t changed: I’m a rather compulsive sort of a guy. And what’s the worst thing on earth that can be done to an obsessive compulsive? Introduce them to ancestry.com. So far, I estimate I’m roughly 1/4th done with my geneaology, having lost several dozen hours of sleep and several pounds from not eating.

I’ve learned some interesting things. First, it seems that my great grandparents on my mother’s side came from classy, classy stock. Half of the family were Jewish merchants from the Netherlands, who seem to have wanted to get out of that place ASAP because they got to the US in the 1600s. It is extremely satisfying to see “New Amsterdam” listed as a birthplace. Anyway, they seem to have a family tradition of building up a class, to become Sherrif of wherever or Colonel of something, only to have their children sqaunder it and a generation later be shit farmers. That’s happened like 8 times. The other half were a mix of Belgians and Britons.

As for the Britons, I’m not sure how far I buy that. There’s one or two sort of vague links where things get real hazy, but then you break through to one famous guy who can trace his lineage back to the Harcourts or something. So, two strong family trees with one shady link in between? It’s hard to separate out genealogical fact from someone’s fancy. If it’s true, though, I can get my ancestry back to at least 895 via Mr. Eadwulf Singleton. I, apparently, am also a little bit of royalty. According to ancestry.com, I am a direct descendant of the Third Early of Fartshire, Poopington, England. I’m not sure how much I trust that.

Fun side note: Every single one of my progenitors for several hundred years in the middle ages was born in Britain, and died in Picardie, France. Was there some sort of family feud? And after several generations, didn’t we realize we weren’t going to win? What on earth convinced Sir Hugh de Risley to think “well yes, four generations of my forefathers died in France, but I think if I go, things will end up different?” Oh! that reminds me. One guy died in Jerusalem during the first Crusade. That ain’t nothing to put on a commercial, ancestry.com. I’m descended from Barbarians. Fantastic.

Anyway, the interface is terrible. You have to add each mother and father by hand, and sometimes it gives you stupid, stupid, stupid options just because other people have done so. Some ancestors are listed as their own father. Some of my female ancestors died 10 years before their children were born. Some gave birth at the age of 12. So on and so forth.

What’s really struck me is the sense of overwhelming isolation. I mean, sure, I can trace myself backwards to a bunch of Belgians/Netherlanders. But if I were to meet my great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather, Pauwel Pauwelson van Aeysdale, late of Neurkiirk Belgium, what would we talk about? Not a thing, I tell you. Sure I’m a direct descendant, but these people might as well be strangers. Symon Janse van Arsedalen came to the New World in 1653 aboard the Dynasty in order to set up a kiln for china manucature? Super. I guess.

Anyway. Ancestry.com apparently also only works if you’re white. My mother’s british/belgish side of the family has records going back to the very dawn of time. On my father’s side, there’s not hide nor hair of anyone. Apparently the hairier, pierogie-eating races of the earth aren’t as fastidious about filling out their census and baptismal paperwork as the Dutch.

Maryland

So, it cost me almost $500 to register my car in Maryland and get a licence. I guess the part that confuses me is that Maryland’s streets are terrible compared to MICHIGAN’S. Michigan has, mind you, much poorer residents and much harsher winters. WTF is the MVA doing with the cash?

Date!

I had my first date in Maryland last night. It was a friend of a friend of a friend sort of thing. So we go out, and we’re having a lovely time, and we’re tossing back the pints and ounces until the early hours of the morning. So we go outside, and this is deep in Gaithersburg proper, so we’re waiting for a cab, and she starts to barf everywhere, on account of the whiskey and all that. And I’m, so to speak, several sheets to the ill wind myself, and I don’t want her to feel bad, so I look deep inside myself, and I barf. I mean, I force it, so it’s just a little, but I didn’t want her to feel like the odd man out, er, as it were, so I paint a bit of the curb. And we laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and I drop her off and promise I’ll call.

I call her this afternoon to see if she wants to go out again. The only part of last night she remembers is me barfing everywhere, and she wants nothing to do with me. I mean, what sort of cad barfs on the first date?

I’m not going to lie, I don’t like Maryland so far. This is some bullshit.

Maryland

I’ve moved to Maryland! People keep asking me what it’s like here. Let me tell you a story: Comcast was supposed to come install my internet and cable, and no one showed up. I called the 1-800 number, and they said they had no record of an appointment being set up, though they do have a record of their representative calling last week to confirm the address. Anyway, I ended up driving to Rockville to pick up the modem and cable box and do it my own damn self.

I go to the apartment office and ask how to get to Rockville. “I don’t know how to get there,” says the man behind the desk, “From here.” I start to leave, but that “from here” bothers me. “Where would you have to be to get to Rockville?” I ask. “Gaithersburg.” He says. Gaithersburg is the next town down the road, so, praying that my instincts are wrong, I ask “Do you know how to get to Gaithersburg from here?”

He says “yes.”

I ask “So you can get to Rockville from Gaitherburg, and from here to Gaithersburg, but not from here to Rockville?” He refuses to answer, just gives me the sullen hairy eyeball when I ask him the same question three times in a row.

Yeah, that’s how my time in Maryland is going so far.

September 26

It’s been a weird day. This post is a placeholder to remind me to tell you about it. What you have to look forward to: The Royalty of Plymouth; A Thousand Stars, All of Which Are Screaming at Me; and How I Ended Up Murdering The Big Lebowski’s Couch.

Gross

So, I stopped drinking Soda, more or less. I was a pretty avid consumer, but then someone pointed out that mineral water is a) cheaper, b) still fizzy, c) can get equally cold, and d) isn’t filled with caramel flavorants. So It’s been a week or two, and this new diet is having…. effects. Let’s just say my distribution center is shipping a lot of products. It’s like having a cold, except that I don’t feel sick, I just can’t unclog my nose.

Before you leap to your feet proclaiming that this is actually an effect from allergies, I would argue that I’ve never had allergies, and especially I’ve never had any allergy problems while I’m here in Michigan. So. I think that it’s soda withdrawl that is causing me to become the mucousiest man on earth.

Which makes the though of soda even more repugnant to me.