It starts when we’re children, the desire to be older than we are. We “lie up” for the first two decades. We tack on a year or two depending on the situation, whether it’s to impress someone we’re talking to or to reap the benefits awarded to an older person. I used to lie about being older a lot. Somewhere though, and I don’t remember when exactly, I caught on. “I see where this is going,” I told myself.

You don’t get any of those days back. Not the ones that actually pass anyway. I’ve written a thousand things in the past explaining why I have ended up doing what I do for a living. The underlying theme to it all is that ultimately I cannot wrap my mind around the concept of waking up at the same time every morning and driving to some office to play some other person’s silly little games in exchange for a set sum of money.

I want to remain Pan.

I am content to continue to trick the world into paying me to do what I do now, which is basically just to travel and think. In my head I’m still a seven year old kid laying on the living room floor dreaming of dinosaurs and booby traps and foods covered in ketchup. I don’t want to grow up. I won’t. They can’t make me. They can make me pay taxes and tickets and they can hold me accountable legally for a bunch of ridiculous laws and rules, but they can’t take my days from me. I keep telling myself that anyway.

I may have found a way to keep the vultures at bay mentally, but physically… physically they are beating their wings at the walls and doors like the end of a Hitchcock movie. I wouldn’t say that I’ve been neglectful of my body, but I also have not done the greatest job of self-preservation. If the body is a temple mine is one of those that the Incas abandoned centuries ago.

Fifteen years ago I was in amazing shape. I was young. I had never touched a cigarette. I was running a sub five minute mile. When I think of the last fifteen years however, I am surprised any part of me is still mobile. A decade and a half passed where I ate fast food literally three times a day. That rhythm was only broken if someone I knew cooked. It certainly wasn’t going to be me. I was been anything but inactive over that particular stretch, but that was my competitive streak and not an attempt at actually exercising.

Even after all of that abuse, I managed to squeak out an eight minute mile a year ago, ending with me throwing up and almost drowning in fountain in Dallas while my “friends" Titus and Rachel laughed at my convulsions… but I was really proud of that eight minutes. **

And then I quit smoking. My body started making decisions for me. My body decided that if I was going to deprive it of one vice then it was going to force me to fix all the rest. And now we’re mad at each other.

We had an agreement, I thought. It would keep my metabolism an ungodly high rate and I would continue to feed it delicious What-a-Chicken sandwiches with cheese. That was the contract. You fix whatever I do to you and I’ll make sure it’s worth it. Well, one of us reneged on our end of the deal. I took the cigarettes away and it slowed down my metabolism. In return I had to cut out the relentless pursuit of double cheeseburgers. When those went my body decided it would jab at me with hunger pangs. I met those with attempts at running to distract myself and that was met with knee pain. My body is resistant to anything healthy. It fights it like a virus. We’ve battled every day for over a year now.

I still won’t eat vegetables but I am over the fast food part.

I realize it may appear a little whiny to be upset over what has never been more than a ten pound swing in my weight, but it is principle. Other people deal with these things, not me. The people with regular jobs and kids and mortgages. Not me. I have to find a way to justify growing up in this one regard. I have to convince myself that I have to make these adjustments now in order to better run my little Neverland.

That will all sort itself out though. I’m going to take my motorcycle out and go play in the sun. I’ve wasted enough of my day already.

-S

** The rest of that story can be read here:
http://www.sladeham.com/ra..nt_archive.php?act=more&ID..=172#172

It started at 3:00 am and it didn’t stop. Ever. It was relentless. It’s the second attack in as many weeks and my sanity may suffer for it. I am under siege from the most well trained, mosquito assassin on the planet.

I have forever been aware of the buzzing annoyance that describes most mosquitoes. This one though, this one is a special breed. With a regular attacker, you can isolate it by its sound. You listen to it as it gets closer and closer and then slap the last place you heard it. I’ve killed them by the thousands over my lifetime, and I’m afraid that’s why they’ve sent this demon warrior after me. The Uruk-Hai of the insect world.

If you’re confused, let me explain. This satanic little bug doesn’t buzz. There is no warning, no tickle of the ear, no sudden silence to notify an imminent sting. You just feel the injection of her tongue or beak or whatever it is as it punctures your flesh.

A thousand times in a single night.

I’ve read The Art of War. I know how to strategically fight something. Sun Tzu says to know your enemy, and I do. I know they’re attracted to white and things that expel carbon dioxide. I know I am both of those. I’m a target. We are natural adversaries. It knows how to prey on me; I must learn to prey on it.

But how do you fight something you cannot see?

This female, ninja warrior trained in guerrilla warfare is unbeatable. From out of the darkness she comes, unrelenting in her hate for me, she tactically locates pieces of skin that extend past the protection of the comforter. I feel it sting and I tighten the muscle where it jabbed me, hoping to somehow capture the proboscis in my arm and smash the mischievous little sprite into a puddle of thorax and my own blood.

But it’s gone again.

I drift back to sleep, another fitful twenty minutes before the next salvo comes. Is there more than one? There must be. If it’s a lone wolf, it should be huge. It’s had over a pint of my blood. Lay in wait. Feel the sting. Turn on the light and look for the thing that’s the size of a softball. It’s not there. It hasn’t flown up to the light or landed on the wall like a typical soldier. It is simply gone, vampiric in her tendencies to bite and then fade into the night.

Am I going to turn into a mosquito now? I can’t see it, I can’t fight it, and I certainly don’t want to become it. My only resort is to cocoon myself in the covers leaving nothing exposed. It’s hot and uncomfortable but it will prevent further damage. Wrap up, tend to my wounds, and reassess the battle in the morning. She has to sleep sometime. I will be safe in my –

Ouch!

Are you kidding me? How did she do that? I just got stung again. Sweet Jesus, she’s in here with me. That, or her stinger is long enough to penetrate my blanket. Oh my God, what if it is? What if I’m really up against some vampire bird with a foot long pike and a cloaking device? I’m not going out like this.

Covers off, lights on, I roll out of bed and hit the floor, fists up. Let’s do this motherfucker.

And just like that, she’s gone again. Am I crazy? No, the marks are still there. Aren’t they? It’s 7:00 in the morning now. Maybe this is the product of my delirium. Maybe there’s no mosquito at all. How ridiculous am I being? There are no non-buzzing mosquitoes. I’m just tired. Go back to bed. Stop hallucinating.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world she did not exist.

And that’s how she beats you.

I’m off to train for the next time we meet.

-S

It’s like a flickering light in a garage. There’s a short in my wiring preventing me from latching on to anything concrete whatsoever. Every idea that flits through my head is fuzzy and unclear. It is writer’s block and it is aggravating. I scroll through 25,000 songs in my iTunes hoping that one of them will trigger something.

I put my feet up on the desk and drag my keyboard onto my lap. My fourth cup of coffee sits just within reach. Nothing will solidify. My dry erase board has topics scrawled on it from month’s back, things that have intrigued me or come up in something I was reading or things I’ve snipped from conversations or websites that I’ve stumbled upon. Islamic stoning deaths in Somalia, a girl named Placenta, Occam’s Razor, social networking and critical mass… Ft. Hood… The shootings in Florida this morning….

I am awash in frustration over the last two. I literally cannot stand to watch the news coverage of events like this. It’s stomach turning to know that this is where we’ve ended up. I went to sleep last night somewhat convinced that a guy had killed a lot of people in Ft. Hood, including a police officer, and was gunned down himself. I woke up this morning to hear that both the police officer and the gunman were in fact very much alive. I’m no journalist, and I honestly have no idea whatsoever the process “news” goes through before it hits the air, but how exactly did those two little nuggets escape detection?

It was originally confirmed that this was not an act of terrorism. Not an act of terror? Really? An act of compassion perhaps? An act of love? An act of what exactly, if not terror? Now the reports say that he yelled, “Allahu akbar” as he fired into the crowd. Lovely. What an amazing job, Major Hasan. Way to show people that Islam isn’t about hate. Certainly this will help people understand that “God is great”. He handed out copies of the Koran to his neighbors and then went on a killing spree that ended with four bullets in his own chest. Brilliant sales pitch, Nidal. You’re like the Ron Popeil of extremism. Where do I sign up?

People will inevitably cite this example alongside events like 9/11 to justify war on anyone that doesn’t adhere to a particular set of beliefs. It’s more reason to fear that which is different. Even I have to admit that it scares me a little. I don’t know how to process the mind set. I can’t figure out how someone could be willing to end that many people’s lives over anything at all. To protect my family, certainly, but not for an ideal.

That’s the reality we’re left with though. People pull the trigger every day for what I consider ridiculous reasons. People will spend months trying to figure out exactly why something like this happened, and more precisely, why it happens as often as it does. I am struck by the curious question of why this doesn’t happen MORE often. Certainly, considering that the Muslim faith is the second largest in the world, there should be far more attacks on “our way of life”. If Islam equals evil, there should be horrible acts committed daily. We shouldn’t be able to walk down the street without an explosion. But that’s not the case, and I think there is hope in that distinction.

Something keeps other Muslims from killing innocent people. Probably the same thing that keeps the rest of us from doing it. We operate under some sort of moral code. Major Hasan lost that. He snapped. Maybe it was his previous tours of duty. Maybe he was picked on. Something though, something pushed him over the edge, and it wasn’t something common. It was an anomaly.

It’s too easy top pigeon hole an entire culture simply because some people take it to a ridiculous end. Whether it’s a Muslim gunman at Ft. Hood or the hateful fanatics at the Westboro Baptist Church; whether it’s another exploding teenager in Baghdad or the KKK’s policies regarding “Christian Reconstructionism”, the edges of any belief are what make it impossible for the people in the middle to get along.

And that’s where my frustration comes in. I can’t wrap my head around it. I’m glad I can’t. In the case of Major Nadal, it’s been proven that my values are not necessarily those of others. The Beatles said all you need is love, and I disagree. You need love, some money, and the ability to get out of the way when the bullets start flying. I’d like to think Lennon knew that but just couldn’t make it rhyme.

On second thought, maybe he is a bad example of getting out of the way of a bullet…

Regardless, I suppose we’ll see where all the pieces land soon enough. I’m quite curious to see the spin on it all.

-S

I didn’t even get to finish my slushee. If you haven’t had a Sonic slushee, particularly a grape one, it will totally fix even the worst day. If I misplace mine or drop it or otherwise don’t get to finish it, it can put me in a horrible mood. Normally I reserve them for road trips when I can keep it right next to me for the entire drive. It’s hard for me to be in a bad mood when I have one though.

I was sipping one yesterday when a silver SUV swerved in front of me, violently. The engine revved again as the driver pulled up and cut off the next car on his homemade slalom track, his silhouette betraying the fact that he was on his cell phone on top of it all. My gut reaction was anger, followed by the desire to cut him back off immediately. Anyone that has ever been in the car with me knows I can be a slightly hostile driver myself, yet despite that fact, nothing makes me madder than other aggressive drivers.

I’ll admit, I have calmed down substantially over the years. I have far fewer places to go that require any urgency and I happily let my iPod occupy the extra time I take now. It’s a far cry from a decade ago when I showed up in Dallas with one shoe. Someone cut me off on a traffic-filled stretch of I-45 and I couldn’t find anything else to throw. I’m not proud of it.

I don’t have road rage per se. It’s more of a total lack of compassion for idiocy. Turn off your blinker after you’ve changed lanes. Don’t get in front of me. The speed limit is not 20 mph anywhere. Seriously? This isn’t a school zone. Have you driven a car before? What are you, ninety-seven? Oh, you’re Asian. God that was racist. Still, you really can’t drive. Maybe it’s not just a stereotype. What do you think you’re doing? Sweet mother of Jesus. Do it. Pull out in front of me. Do it. I dare you. I have insurance…

Ok, maybe it is road rage.

I blame my grandpa for part of it. I have vivid memories of him driving me to school in the 5th grade, occasionally telling me to hold the wheel of the thirty foot long, bright copper 1979 Mercury Cougar so he could lean out the window and curse other drivers in Arabic. It was amazing.

All of that is my past though. I still get angry when I drive, but I don’t act on it. I’ve tried to do a much better job over the last few years of attempting to understand people’s motivations for the ridiculous things they do. I honestly try to be more compassionate. You never know what’s pushed a person to behave a certain way.

So when that silver SUV came barreling by me and forced me to slam on my brakes, screwing up the
perfect vibe I had created with my grape slushee and the new Wolfmother album, I had to wrestle my first instinct into submission. Certainly that guy has an emergency. What if something happened to his daughter and he is rushing to see if she’s okay. I don’t want to interfere with that. Maybe someone broke into his house and he is on the phone with the alarm company. Have sympathy for him instead of animosity. He’s just regular guy having a ba-

Did that sonofabitch just turn into McDonald’s?

THAT was the emergency?  You fat, selfish bastard.  I wonder if I can make his heart stop with my mind.  Probably not.  I should try anyway.  No, that's immature.  HE deserves it though.  he deserves something.

And that is how I lost my grape slushee.  Left-handed and a little side-armed, my half filled, purple, Styrofoam grenade rocketed out of the open window toward the drive through.  I’m pretty sure it connected.  I had plenty of time to make the shot count and he was a stationary target.  I rounded a curve right after the shot but I heard a car horn blare loudly for a few seconds as I made the arc.

I know it was his and it made me smile.

It’s contagious, that aggressiveness.  I caught it from him, and he certainly caught it from somebody else.  I inadvertently fell into the pattern that day of passing all that negativity along.  I attempt to be conscious of that kind of thing, because I know it really only takes one person to interrupt the pattern instead of perpetuating it.  Next time, I intend to be less reactive.  Next time I will do the positive thing and simply side-step all of that bad energy.

But that’s next time.  This time I nailed it, and it was so worth losing the slushee.

-S

Here’s to smacking a lifeless equine with a stick...

The Heene family should either be electrocuted or applauded, and I can’t decide which.  My ire is definitely directed at the family, but I am far angrier with the media.   I flipped on the TV when I started seeing the blips on Twitter.  That fact alone scares me a bit, that people on Twitter had the story before the networks picked it up, but quickly every channel had the footage up and running.

I’m not an expert in anything at all.  My knowledge of balloons is not extensive.  I know that sucking in helium is hilarious, and popping them unexpectedly in bad neighborhoods makes people dive to the ground.  Still, my totally untrained eye looked at the television screen for about four seconds before I knew there was no kid in the sky.

It was a train wreck.  Every network jumped on board because they couldn’t be the only ones not carrying it.  What if there really was a kid in there?  They kept the camera trained on the craft the entire time, until it landed and rescuers beat it with a shovel.  They brought in hot air balloon pilots to talk about lift and air currents.  They continuously pointed out that young Falcon was hurtling 8000 feet above the Earth, neglecting to mention that even if he really was in there, he took off from nearly 6500 feet.  Officers said they saw something fall from the balloon.  Was it him?  How tragic!

There were experts on everything.  Meteorologists, and clowns, and people that have done studies on how high a child would bounce if he fell out of the sky.  Everyone spoke.  The parents fake cried on national television and the entire world bought it.

And that’s why I am leaning towards applause.

Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd, and the media definitely formed a very large circle on the playground.  If they are to be that easily led then they deserve to be.  Good for Mr. Heene.  He’s gotten his fifteen minutes of fame twice now, once with the show Wife Swap, and once by pretending his kid flew off to Oz in a homemade Valentine’s Day balloon.  Good for him.

I’ve been busting my ass for a decade and ten people know who I am.  He engineered a half-million dollar hoax and is a household name.  Kudos to that.  It’s reaffirming.  Anyone can make it.  You just need the right angle.  Who cares that you’re going to owe the State of Colorado $500,000?  You’ll make that up with the book deal.  There’s certainly an army of sheep that will pay twenty five bucks for a copy of The Mylar Falcon.

The family is the number one result on Google if you type in the word "balloon".  I'm not even the number one result if you type in the name "Slade".

He’s gotten a week of coverage out of this.  A day of the chase, two days of post-crisis interviews, a day where the hoax was revealed, and three days of discussion after the fact.  Banksy said, “I think Andy Warhol got it wrong: in the future, so many people are going to become famous that one day everybody will end up being anonymous for 15 minutes.”  The Heene’s cracked the code.

He’s a modern day Ray Kinsella.  If you pretend to launch a child into the atmosphere accidentally, they will come.  They won’t care that physics wouldn’t allow it in the first place.  They won’t care that there’s no door on the weather balloon.  They won’t even look for the kid until hours later.

I’m inspired.  I need a kid.  If anybody’s not using theirs and wants it to be famous, I’m scheming. 
God knows I need the TV credit.

-S

I’ve decided to post this list after having kept it scrawled in
notebooks over the years. The inspiration for it comes from one of my
favorite people on this planet, Tom Rhodes. He has a list of over 1000
things he simply calls “Happiness”. I started keeping my own list a
while back which has been edited and updated and deleted from
sporadically over time, but still serves as my own reminder that there
are far more good things than bad on these little paths we all stumble
down.



I desperately wish that I had thought to start my list all on my own,
but if I have to credit someone for inspiring me to do it, I am
thrilled that it is Tom. Do something nice for yourself and go to
www.tomrhodes.net sometime. But enough about that… here is my first 100.



1. Having a job where I don’t have to shave if I don’t want to

2. Kona coffee

3. Listening to Collective Soul’s “Tokyo” while circling over Tokyo

4. Knowing that Miyajima Island is the most beautiful place on Earth

5. Feeding the deer there

6. Daishoin Temple

7. Walking through the Mayan ruins and realizing the genius that existed long before I ever did

8. Spawn comic books

9. The grass outside this particular church in Landstuhl, Germany

10. Seeing Prince play “Purple Rain” live

11. Getting a whole row to myself on an airplane

12. The resilience of The Tree of Life in Southern Bahrain

13. Skittles

14. The orphans in Djibouti and the way they still have fun despite their circumstances

15. Cheetahs, and how they remind me of race cars covered in really pretty, but dirty, carpet

16. Looking up at the CN Tower in Toronto like a total tourist, amazed
at the sight of it against one of the clearest, bluest skies I’ve ever
seen

17. The bank of the Ottawa River

18. Alexander Keith’s IPA

19. Seeing the Rolling Stones play for two hours with no break

20. Street vendor hot dogs

21. Applause breaks

22. Snorkeling the reefs off Onna Village on the Okinawa coast.

23. Skydiving, and the feeling of accomplishment that comes with having survived a two mile fall at over 110 mph

24. Tiger Woods

25. Spending the day with Abrahim in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, learning
about the city’s history, dodging donkeys in the street, experiencing
the coffee ceremony, and happy to have made an unexpected friend

26. How Ethiopia is not what I thought it would be

27. Injera and wat

28. October

29. Guinness

30. Daydreaming about having Anthony Bourdain’s job

31. Finally leaving Yemen

32. Not smoking anymore

33. Cafe Du Monde beignets

34. Walking the Corniche in Qatar, seeing green grass and blue water in the middle of 110 degree heat and lots of sand.

35. Getting to know Dimebag Darrell before he was killed

36. Ice water

37. Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero”

38. Sweet pickles

39. Wandering through a fishing village on the outskirts of an island
in Incheon, South Korea as the sun came up, wondering how I was going
to get to the airport but also not really caring

40. Beating my friend JR Brow mercilessly at pool, despite the fact that he is better than I am

41. Knowing that the billboards for the “Janis Joplin Museum” are
misleading and that it’s really just some of her clothes and a car
recreated by college students.

42. Knowing that Glenn Beck takes himself seriously

43. Ed Kowalczyk's lyrics

44. Going out for Turkish food in Saudi Arabia with Don and Bryan and
our friend Cliff, who made Saudi seem a lot less scary and a lot more
delicious

45. My mom’s lasagna

46. The fried shrimp my Dad used to make

47. Chocolate pop tarts

48. The way Kennedy’s laugh reminds me of someone ringing a glass bell

49. My bed

50. Paella and the other things Isaac surprises me with at Espana

51. Staring at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in person, and then laying in the
grass of the Museumplein on a perfect April day in Amsterdam

52. Winning at trivia with Dianne and Rob

53. Any beach on a clear night

54. Drinking Jameson and talking with my friend Jes at her beach cabin, until long after everyone else had left or gone to bed

55. Hanging out at Krumz Bar in Bahrain with Sam and Doug and Rod before it closed down, and thinking that if everyone could laugh that hard for that long, there would be less violence

56. Spinny rings

57. The bracelet Josh Wolf sent me

58. Blow pops

59. Grape slushees at Sonic

60. Sitting at the top of Turner Falls in the Arbuckle Mountains when the park is empty

61. My secret Mark Nason store

62. Sweet potatoes

63. Driving a tank

64. Blackhawk helicopters at night

65. Hitting golf balls off the third floor of Saddam’s old palace

66. Star Trek: The Next Generation

67. Saul Williams

68. Waiting for the day my friend Kevin admits I'm funny

69. Hunter S. Thompson

70. Paulo Coelho

71. Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”

72. Medium rare steaks

73. Watching Anderson Silva fight

74. Running a 4:54 mile (not anymore, but I did once and I will again)

75. Taking the train

76. Getting a Burger King double cheeseburger for $1

77. Fire

78. Lays potato chips

79. Angie

80. World music

81. Falling asleep watching recordings of Cirque du Soleil

82. Motorcycle rides on long, empty, autumn roads with Rise Against playing on my iPod

83. Everything that is Colorado Springs that isn’t the actual city: Garden of the Gods, Seven Falls, Pike’s Peak, etc

84. Big Paddy’s “Man You Don’t Meet Everyday”

85. Danny Elfman soundtracks to Tim Burton films

86. Mitch Hedberg jokes

87. Phone calls from my friend Joey Diaz once a week, like clockwork, just to say hi

88. Strong water pressure

89. The number twenty-seven

90. Leather-bound notebooks

91. Dive bars

92. Final Fantasy video games

93. Comedy, Texas

94. Adrian Fulton’s four foot tall painting of me

95. Recurve bows

96. New Sharpies

97. African masks

98. Didgeridoos

99. Rao's Bakery

100. The intro to Sweet Child of Mine



-S

Webstats keep track of who visits your site and what route they took to get there.  I regularly run through the ones for my website just to see what search strings led people to my page.  It’s predominantly always searches for my name and/or the word “comedian”, followed closely by queries for “Slade Ham and Dustin Diamond”.  For some reason my feud with him seems to live forever thanks mainly to XM Radio’s continued airing of the story.

Once you get past those search strings, there is always a series of weird phrases that get hits on Google based on random words I’ve written in blogs over the years that have nothing to actually do with me or my comedy, but it doesn’t change the fact that I still get to see what the actually request was.  For instance, I’ve written separate blogs in the past about the things that happen to me this time of year, wanting to sail a ship around the world, and Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain.  It’s possible that you could find my site by looking up something as ridiculous as “gay pirates born in October”.  That may not be the best example actually.  Still, this month provided my all time favorite:

“ham comes from what bird”

Re-read that sentence and then let your mind marinate on it for a few seconds.  It was typed by a living, breathing human being into a search engine in the hopes of receiving an answer.

Someone really searched for that particular group of words last week, which disturbs me greatly.  Let’s break this down.  We can start with the understanding that I am no Rhodes Scholar myself.  Sure, I read a lot.  I also know a lot of random stuff about a lot of random stuff, but I would hardly consider myself an expert in anything at all.  I am definitely no butcher or animal meat specialist.  I don’t know anyone that is actually.  At best I might know a guy that used to work in the meat department at Kroger.  Despite being a very devout carnivore though, I’ve never seen much of a need to take pride in the fact that I know ham comes from pigs.

I didn’t research it because it’s my last name.  I didn’t happen across the information while doing a research paper for college.  For that matter, I didn’t even finish college.  I pieced that little nugget together with only a high school education.  I also don’t know because I like it more than other meats.  As a matter of fact it’s probably one of my least favorite meats, far behind beef and lamb and probably even chicken.  Ham is really only good shaved super thin, sitting in a sandwich with white bread and lots of cheese.  That, or covered in some sugary holiday glaze.  Still, despite no particular fondness for the meat, I know where it comes from.

My three year old niece knows where it comes from.  You could give a slice of ham to a retarded Eskimo and while he may never have seen a pig in his life, even if you told him it came from a parrot, I would bet a pack of Oreos and whatever Canadian change I have in my backpack that he’d call you a liar.

I am trying to work out how that ended up getting typed in the first place.  It’s quite the enigma.  One has to assume that the person in question was simultaneously dumb enough to think ham comes from a bird, yet competent enough to work a keyboard and understand Google.  It seems like a very unlikely scenario, yet it is pretty indicative of the state of our nation’s youth.  Computers?  No problem.  Just don’t ask them about anything in the real world.

There has to be some situation that could account for this.

Maybe it was a small Muslim child trapped in the wilderness with only an iPhone.  Starving, he managed to hurl rocks at a flock of birds until he killed one, and desperate not to displease Allah he entered this very important spiritual question into Bing.  I would think he would have tried “pork comes from what bird?” instead though.

Maybe it was done by real pigs in a Chik-Fil-A-like anti-pork operation.  Maybe they’re intentionally running an internet campaign designed to make us all think that birds are more delicious.  I guess we’ll know when the billboards start popping up.  In sticking with the fast food theory, it’s also possible that it was entered by someone who truly believes McDonald’s has served billions and billions of “hambirders’.  It would be a simple mistake. 

Perhaps it was the founder and CEO of a large turkey farm that was upset that ham keeps cutting into his holiday profits.  Maybe he was homeschooled and raised in the family business and is now such a workaholic that he really never has stopped to learn the simplest facts about other food.  In an effort to track down the competition he sifted through Yahoo for the answer.

Regardless of the explanation, that person exists.  He’s real.  She’s out there.  It may be the girl ringing up your groceries or the man trying to cut in front of you at rush hour.  Tread carefully.  That person - that sad, sad soul who doesn’t know where ham comes from – he’s functioning unchecked in the same world the rest of us live in.  The proof is in my webstats.

Keep your eyes open.

-S

I’ve written about October before. I have a morbid attraction to it for some reason. It always seems to be ten months into the year when my life changes. I started my radio career in October. At the time it was as a board op running the Rick Dees show, but it was the launching pad for a career I would dance in and out of for the next ten years of my life.

Of course my life in radio ended in the same month a decade later. I had just come back from Mexico to find that the station where I was doing a morning show had closed down in the week I was gone. They simply went off the air in my absence. In October. It’s probably no coincidence that my first paid gig as a comedian was opening for Thea Vidale. Guess when? Yup.

My first overseas trip happened in October many years ago as well. I remember walking through the streets of Germany, a clueless Texas kid realizing for the first time just how small this world really is. It was on a cobblestone street there that I first fell in love with seeing the world.

Then a few Octobers back, just after midnight on the 1st actually, I met a girl that would occupy my mind in a way I had forgotten was possible. It ended poorly unfortunately, but it also served to remind me that my fascination with October is not one-sided. It appears fascinated with me too. I somehow can’t escape its pull and I realize that now.

The whole month is green and black to me. The leaves change, the weather changes, and I change. For better or worse.

And I also am acutely aware that things do happen to me in the other eleven months of the year, but not of this magnitude. Two years ago I walked into October completely apprised of the change it intended to bring. I was cocky. I knew my club was going to shut its doors and I would not be caught unawares by that fact. Where’s your curveball now, October? The club closed as planned, but before it did October threw the 11th at me... my biggest “wow” moment yet. It is never the little things.

As a matter of fact, I haven’t escaped the pull of that day yet and probably won’t. Then last October I flicked away my last cigarette butt for good, somewhere in the Baghdad night.

I got on a plane at the end of September this year headed for Canada, silently wondering what this year was going to offer up. Today I found out that the siren song of October had officially claimed the lives of my two best friends, Athens and Isabella. They’re cats, not people. It sounds stupid to be as upset as I am over two animals, but they played very specific roles in the last chunk of my life. Some strange disease found both of them within a week of each other while I’ve been on the road. I’ve been privy to updates via instant messenger and nothing more. I wandered the streets of Ottawa a few days ago looking for a place to wire money back home for a vet visit, but in the end, some things remain unfixable. They’re very deserving of a longer story than this honestly, but I will save it for another time. I have to go be funny for other people in a few hours and really shouldn’t attempt to dig into it now.

They are, however, added to the collection of paintings hung on my wall by this ridiculous month.

The thing is, sometimes I think we make things like this happen. I think it’s something very subconscious that we do, and it has a way of manifesting itself. Am I obsessed with October because of what happens, or do the occurrences happen because I’m obsessed? Still, you can’t mentally control life and death.

Maybe I do predispose myself to big things happening in October, good and bad. Maybe it’s when I feel both the most empowered and the most vulnerable. I just find it a little strange that all my big events happen at this exact point on the calendar, ten months in, in some vortex of luck and anti-luck.

I’ve started pulling for next year already.

R.I.P Athens and Izzy

-S

Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Regardless of which definition you read, the phrase “valid inference” comes up. That’s pretty much what we do every single day when we make decisions. We take the information that we have, we feed it into a formula, and we reach a conclusion.

I apologize ahead of time for rambling off on another psychological tangent, but I am incredibly intrigued by all of this. Feel free to skip it if it’s not what you’re in the mood for today. I just need to loft it out there so it’s not in my head anymore.

Anyway, the syllogisms we create don’t take into account a lot of variables. We think we’re doing the right thing a lot of times because we’ve plugged in all of the data we have at our disposal and reached an end. But what if we’re skipping a huge element? What got me started thinking about this in the first place was something I remember reading about a study that was done on people that participated in speed dating. I wish I could remember where I read it or who did the study, so I’ll attempt to paraphrase what I do remember.

They had a girl fill out a questionnaire before her speed dating rounds, asking her what traits she looked for in a man. Then she went on her speed “dates”. Afterwards, when they looked at her top choice, they noticed that she had chosen a completely different type person that what she said she was looking for most. Her original criteria for what she wanted in a partner were legitimate. They certainly came from past incidents or current conditions or genuine wants, but in the end they turn out to just be a piece of it.

What we say we want can be total bullshit sometimes.

It makes sense when we don’t challenge it. The girl’s standards and expectations were her identity. They were very real. They didn’t hold up to practical application though. The minute she sat in front of someone that went against it, her subconscious, the real her, took over. All of our rules and supposed guidelines for who we are and what we’re supposed to do can go completely out the window when they get tested. Sometimes they’re right, don’t misunderstand. Most times probably.

But not consistently enough to bet the farm on.

You have to squeeze a set of parentheses into the equation, in which you multiply everything you logically feel by how you actually respond. I can pretend all day that I don’t like poppy dance music. I don’t even have to pretend actually. I can cite specific examples of what I despise about it and how I find it unoriginal and uninspiring and I can defend that stance with every ounce of my being. I dodge autotune and 808’s and hand claps like a matador. Despite all of that, let the Black Eyed Peas “Boom Boom Pow” play somewhere in the background and my foot will tap. I can’t stop it. I can hate it, but ultimately I can only go with it.

That’s why when a drunk person pulls you to the side to divulge something, you should listen. They’ve silenced the logical side and are running on pure emotion. You can take whatever heartfelt sentiment they pass along to the bank. They’ll deny it in the morning when it comes back up though because that’s what logic does.

There are people I have dissociated from in the past for very legitimate reasons. Whether friendship or relationship, I’ve stepped away because everything in my head told me I should. There’s just the other part of us that says otherwise. The part we don’t listen to ever. That’s the part that’s real. The inside part. The part that acts and feels. When the logical left half of your brain is angry or hurt or wants to choke the life out of someone, but the right half, the half that cuts through all of that, knows otherwise. All that logic and rationale folds like a cheap lawn chair when it gets around that person.

Why such stark contrast? What subroutines run below the surface and create these conflicts? Which half do you trust? I lean towards the latter. The right half. The subconscious. It’s still me, it’s just me with the filters off. It’s Super Me. That’s why I like it. It really does take everything into account, whether I want it to or not. It’s what makes our guts right so much of the time. It’s looking out for us.

The surface me will find a way to get out of almost anything that might appear painful. The deeper side will make me explore it however. It’s the adventurer. And the more I trust it, the more it proves itself. It’s just as self-preserving as my conscious mind is, it just has a better knowledge of what I’m really capable of.

And that sounds like a hell of a lot more fun.

-S

*Listening to: Muse – The Resistance

They’re called spandrels. 

I didn’t know they even had a name until I looked it up.  I had a dream last night that found me in a church I used to go to with my dad as a kid.  I could never wrap my mind around the people or the concept of that particular church but I was always fascinated with the sanctuary.  The ceiling above captivated my imagination many Sunday mornings.  Eighteen stained glass angels stood in the gaps created by the dome’s construction.

Eighteen, placed in the spaces in between.  What’s fascinating is that they are decorations designed to fill the empty space that gets created when you build something structurally sound.  The dome wasn’t assembled to accommodate them.  No structure was erected to show them off.  They were fabricated simply to fill in the holes.

They’re accidents.  Leftovers.  By-products.

And they can be wonderful.

I know nothing about architecture really so maybe I’m wrong.  Still, the concept intrigues me; how something amazing could be so inadvertent.  Certainly the artisanship behind them was intentional and well planned, but the artist was brought in because the gap existed.  They didn’t create a canvas for him, though it appears that way.

The point is that somewhere in the dream I realized that these things, that I now know are called spandrels, exist in the real world just like they exist in the architectural world.  Side-effects.  Something happens and we react to it, not always taking into account what else might have been created.  You can come up with all sorts of pretty labels and clichés out of the concept.  Closing doors and opening windows.  The reality is that it occurs.

Munchkins at Dunkin Donuts.  Peacock tails.  Eighteen angels.  Somewhere life seems to gravitate toward creation.  The irrelevant is made beautiful and useful, thus making it relevant again.  I wonder sometimes how many of these formations I’ve overlooked in the past because I was too obsessed with the original structure.  I wonder how many empty spaces I could have covered with something stunning and alive, but didn’t because I couldn’t take my eye of the original occurrence. 

So now I look for them.   I can’t anticipate these consequential offshoots as well as the architect, but I can guess.  I can know that they’re coming.  I can count on the fact that with every decision something new and unexpected will occur.  A physical change or an emotional development, sometimes the furthest thing from our intentions happens anyway.  Sometimes good opportunities come from really bad situations.

Unforeseen results that arise from a victory, and more frequent, all the additional shrapnel that flies off of a failure.  We can dodge it or we can willingly catch it.  Some of it is useful.  Some of it is even necessary.  We aren’t the same people we were ten years ago or five years ago or even a year ago.  We sometimes find out that we picked up something we didn’t intend to.  We acquired it because something left a gap when it was built and our natural tendency was to fill it, with stained glass or flashy feathers or a new business venture that might not have worked otherwise.  The person you meet when your father is in the hospital.  The freedom to explore that you gained when your job laid you off.  The relationship that could only come after two people were totally broken down.

Everything we do leaves a space to be filled.  Do you put something there?  Do you build on it?  Or do you leave it empty and unexplored, simply acknowledging the accidental development and then ignoring it?

These things are ours to play with; to fill in as we see fit.  Lighthearted little canvasses or massive cathedral ceilings, have fun with them.

-S

*Listening to: Alice In Chains - Black Gives Way To Blue