An Open Letter of Envy and Reluctant Admiration

To the Woman in the Produce Section Who is Slowly, Carefully Picking Out Her String Beans One by One:

Oh, dear heart—if I had your capacity to focus so precisely on so mundane a task, without finding myself bored to the point of fury within the first fifteen seconds, I could gather all the pills I take for my ADDs and pitch them to the four winds.

If I had that—you fantastic creature—along with your ability to apply such clearly heartfelt dedication to the profoundly trivial, this blog would soon overflow the internet.

And if I had those things—my treasure—and, too, the free time it takes to do what you are doing—oh, sweet mercy! I would be utterly, literally and so, so joyously unmotherfuckingstoppable!

Thank you, apparition of pasts and futures unspeakable, for giving me a glimpse of the man I could have been; and may, one day, yet still be. I will carry your memory with me until my ultimate breath—and speak of you to the angels.

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Beards vs. brains: Zombie shark jumps zombie zombies.

“When it comes to an ironic re-creation of an iconic photo, my commitment to my beard trumps my commitment to my zombie schtick. You have to weigh your priorities, man.”

Hey, guys! So, can we all agree that the whole zombie thing has run its course and file it away in the attic next to the pirate stuff?* Solid.

I mean, I know Halloween is coming and I’m not trying to be all Captain Bringdown, but for reals, yo: Superhero zombies? Meh, fine; whatever. Kinda lame and blandly opportunistic, but par for the course.

But when Archie and Jughead and the gang show up at the party (via the Today show, guys?), it’s a hint that the party might actually have moved over to Applebee’s.

…Check, please?

* Being sure to leave a space for the box of beard combs, mustache wax and vests.

Poptimism in the truest, most graspingly desperate sense of the (made-up, hilarious) word.

Wow, Pitchfork; so, in the new world, do we really have to dig under Nickelodeon spinoff sitcom rocks to find the debuts of future pop starlet also-rans so that we can give them a 6 out of 10 next to music made by (and ostensibly for) grown-ups?

Apparently, we do.

Well, all right! Hell, let’s crack open the Night Train and get it over with! My friends; my good, good friends: Here’s to comparing Carly Rae Jepsen to—well, to anything in the world, out of haplessly ambitious ass-coverage and sheer desperation.

It’s okay, Pitchfork. The last ten years haven’t been a colossal waste of time—they’ve just been an exercise in discovering just how far down this thing can go.

…And here we are. See you on the other side!

P.S.: Just kidding; see you at “South By.” We’ll be the ones in the party tent rocking glow-in-the-dark label promo gear and doing shots!

Important office plasticware update: controversy in the breakroom.

So, I encountered this setup recently:

Now, I want to make it clear that the spoons shown here are spoons in the size and shape of every other regular plastic spoon you’ve ever run across. They’re not soup spoons or sporks—strictly normal, everyday plastic spoons; just like the silhouette on the dispenser there.

This is objectively perplexing, because the question that immediately springs to the mind of any rational person is: “What, plastic spoons are ‘multi-purpose’ Swiss army knives, somehow, but plastic forks and knives are just… what; jerks? In what desperate world is this possibly true?”

But beyond the immediate, knee-jerk bafflement it inspires, this nomenclature also implicitly undermines the iron-clad validity of the hierarchy I laid out in this breakroom breakdown, vis-a-vis the logical order of plastic-ware usefulness.

I’ve given all this some further thought, and I would contend that even if forks are not “multi-purpose” (and I’m certainly not conceding that they are), knives—as I went to great pains to point out in the above-mentioned post—are just as good at cutting solids as they are at stirring liquids. (In fact, they’re more likely to be better at stirring than at cutting, if you think about it.)

What do you think? Where do you stand on the relative usefulness of office breakroom plastic utensils? Please do not tell me.*

In closing, I guess the clear conclusion here is that the jury is still out, and opinion is divided. The conversation continues. I’m keeping an ear to the ground and will probably not be updating this blog with any further developments unless they’re genuinely hilarious.

*Seriously; if you even start to reply, think about what you were about to say and imagine yourself hearing someone else say it. That ought to do it.

Judge mental.

I fully acknowledge that I’m not getting the whole story, but—based on their overall demeanor and physical appearance—when I see people with tattoos, shirts, bumper stickers and/or sweet airbrushed vehicle art that reads, “Only God Can Judge Me,” I generally have the impression that these are people who God would probably judge pretty harshly.

Office surprise.

I love the charming, even adorable optimism that quaintly radiates from the little sections in grocery stores where they have Sharpies and Post-It Notes and little boxes of paper clips for sale—like, literally, with actual price tags on them.

They must know that everyone’s office has that stuff for free. Right? I mean—they have to be aware that we all get these things at work.

Why NPR is always picked last.

“Say, fellows, you enjoy sport, do you not?”

“But of course, Littlefield. Why do you ask?”

“A whimsical little notion just occurred to me: What say we have a regular series regarding sport on the NPR?”

“Oh, yes, let’s! We can cover Brazilian mountaineering and ladies’ hacky-sack!”

“And tennis?”

“Naturally, tennis!”

“And we can air it when nobody is listening!”

“Splendid! But what shall we name our little programme?”

“Aha; what about something delightfully puckish, such as ‘Come Along, Gents; No Need to Take It So Seriously—After All, It Is Only a Game!’ ”

“Oh, jolly good, Littlefield, jolly good. Let’s don some pantaloons and write poetry!”

“Last one to the locker room is a linebacker!”

“Why, you impish rascal, you!”

[Sound of snapping towels and high-pitched squeals of gym-teacher-infuriating glee. Fade to a lovely shade of mauve that blends nicely with the leather seats of a 1972 Saab.]