I kick it root down

6:20 this morning

I woke from my snoring

to get myself ready

and hold myself steady.

A 7:00 a.m. cleaning, poking

and scraping, drilling and

chipping following by some

gaping tooth hole filling.

A root canal was the need

for what made my gums bleed.

It sounds wicked and painful but

I’ve had worse and more baneful.

So now I sit in my cube tasting

the foul cement, hating

the bitterness and hoping I can eat.

And that would be… a dream feat.

Now I will digress from this lame poetry,

Writing about dental work is beneath me.

-          Wow, that took me half an hour to scribble out. And it’s terrible. But I hope you enjoy it to some degree my dear reader.

Yes I did have a root canal this morning and it really wasn’t all that bad. I have a great dentist and I’m super happy we got this little problem taken care of. It was my last left sided molar and apparently I need it to mash my food up into swallow size.

I can’t stress it enough; take care of your teeth.

The Fourth of July is being celebrated this weekend and most of my office will be closed tomorrow, unfortunately I will have to be in the office. So I’ll have more on the Fourth tomorrow. Aren’t you excited by that? I hope so.

Fuel

I have had two late nights in a row and I am now paying for it. In fact, I might even say I’m paying for my insolence just like all the Hollywood villains said I would. I could sleep here at my desk with the greatest of ease, like the flying men on the trapeze.

I did find some comfort last night as I was finally able too meet up with one of my hearts affections for a drink or two last night. Nothing seems to soothe a bothered soul like fine and desired company. It gives me the fuel to keep it going for a little while longer. Perhaps I'll hold off on that whole, "Starting a Cult", thing.

I’m in debt to it though and this sleepy head blues has come to collect. I’ve been so distracted that I’ve hardly been able to focus on today’s piece. It’s kind of all mashed together in my brain box.

I think it’s time for a Coke. I love Coke. It’s my drink of choice. Although like most things I love, I’m certain it’s trying to kill me. Coke is very Hitchcock-ian that way. It builds and builds a long relationship and once you have nothing to fear, “BAM”! It hits you with some debilitating blood disease and the only cure is the blood of a virgin. So then you’re cruising high schools looking for dumb virgins. 

Did I mention that I’m very tired?  

I don’t think I did actually. Yes, I’m really tired but I have a satisfied feeling that it was worth it.  Being out with my friend last night was worth it, not the whole virgin sacrifice thing. Although I could see how that could be tiring too.

Time for that Coke.

It’s getting to me

Dating. Or at least trying to even get a date, is getting to me. I recently decided to try my hand at this whole on-line dating thing (real life dating hasn’t been working out) and signed up for one of the free sites. Face it, I’m not going to spend money on it, I’m too old fashioned for that.

Let’s just say that the whole thing is a terrible scam and wildly annoying. I just don’t get it and it’s just pissing me off.  I don’t know what my expectations were for this on-line experience, I figured that now that the internet has been around for quite a while maybe they got this whole on-line dating thing (or computer dating) figured out. It’d be slick and cool and highly regulated and easy to find someone to spend time with and maybe make out with a little. But no!

I was duped. I was fooled by these claims of dating miracles. It’s all B.S. I was pretty specific on what I am looking for and this dating site hardly comes close to showing me the actual types I’m into. I mean, if your beard is coming in thicker than mine, please reconsider sending me a message. It took all my strength not to vomit all over my own lap.  Plus, not even close to my specific descriptions of what I want.

In fact, I am apparently too picky for their search engines. I mean why even put certain things on the web site as a possibility if not a single one of the subscribers fits into that category. So there are no 5’, 7” blondes with a college education, owning their own car, living alone, with no cats, that enjoys quiet nights in or hanging out at the local pub and working in Chicago? Oh wait there are some, but not to be too harsh, they look like they were run over several times by an ice cream truck and then dropped from space only to get halfway charred by the upper atmosphere. And they all have cats. Is that too harsh?

I’m not a club guy. I’m not a meat market guy. I like meeting people normally, like, “Hi, my name is Michael. What’s yours? Candy? That’s awesome.” Or the even more old fashioned way of relentlessly wearing you down with platitudes of devotion that you eventually break down and settle for me.

Serious, I don’t even know how people actually meet anymore. And when they do meet, being honest with each other so no one feels like they’re just been led on. I don’t know, people. I’m so close to throwing in the towel and joining a cult; or at least starting a cult. Maybe I should devote myself to politics; there are a lot of senators and congressmen getting an awful lot of tail these days.  And those guys are crazy.

Maybe you just have to be a little crazy to meet someone? I take that back, perhaps you have to be A LOT crazy. And maybe I’m just too average and normal. I’m not a muscle bound dipshit or a Harvard professor. I’m just a regular guy trying to pass on his genetic code as defined by evolution.  So yeah, I might be a little impatient.

Time, time, time…

Last night, “Morgan Freeman’s Through the Wormhole”, on the Science Channel really got me thinking. It’s an excellent show for science nerds like me. I am fascinated by physics and quantum math and all that stuff. I can’t actually do any of those complex calculations. Hell, I don’t even know how to use a slide rule and calculus; you might as well be speaking Greek in French to a deaf mute in space. At least the way they present it all on the show makes sense to me.  

This particular episode of the show was about time. What is time specifically? Is time a perception of the human mind or a real force in the universe? Is time like Newton thought, that it’s always there, beating in the background of space or is it like Einstein thought and time is actually a fourth dimension? Big sciency questions that even the best minds are still trying to piece together. There’s so much about it we don’t know.

What I know about time on a personal level is that it’s short. And it’s getting shorter. Time for humans is finite. In fact, we seem to be programmed to be acutely aware of the passage of time and the rapidity it tends to achieve.

When I was a small boy in church, I felt like it was the longest hour in the world. It just went on and on and it really felt like a four hour ordeal. As I got older, I came to realize that it was only an hour and not very long at all, now (if I go to church) it feels like 15 minutes had passed instead of an hour. In fact, in the mornings before work my time seems to zoom by like a rocket. Eight minutes will vanish as I try to brush my teeth and comb my hair and get out the door to make it to the train on time. If I’m just getting ready for a casual night out, that same eight minutes is an eternity.  Time, then, is relative, it would seem. Relative to how important it is to us, personally.

There are a lot of moments in my life that I wished were longer and certainly some that I wish were a lot shorter. But I don’t think time, real time, actually cares. It’s not something that could care.  As one scientist said, Time is just the universe’s way of keeping everything from happening all at once.

All in all, I suppose all we can do is try to make the best of the time we do have, be it a pulse emanating from the center of the galaxy or a construct of our own minds.

Wow, that was one strong cup of coffee this morning. Zooooom.

Believe it or not

Remember that show, Ripley’s Believe it or not? I’m not talking about the recent version with Dean Cain. I mean the old one with Jack Palance doing the hosting/narration. I bet he wouldn’t believe how many frigging meetings I have to go to. Meetings about nothing.

Seriously, how often can people meet to talk about nothing? So please forgive the brevity of this. I’d love to spend writing an awesome Friday adventure involving jewel thieves and candy escape pods, but I have to go to another meeting instead.

Please enjoy this Friday responsibly. (Also, if you’re a beautiful woman reading this, it’s your duty to support the arts and love me.)

Believe it (deep raspy breathing) or not.

How fast can I do this?

I have another fun Thursday of meetings to attend so I have to try and crank out something insightful and witty in about 23 minutes. I know this usually takes about a minute or so to read but it usually takes me about ½ an hour to 40 minutes to piece an article together and make it somewhat coherent.

I suppose I could just ramble on endlessly about everything that’s going on in my brain. Like how I saw two women on the train today that seriously could have been separated at birth. They weren’t sitting near each other but when they stood up to de-train, I had to look back and forth between them to make sure I wasn’t having a stroke, causing double vision. They didn’t see each other though so it was just strange. I wondered what would have happened if they did see each other. Would they have screamed? Would the fabric of space/time warped?

Or maybe I could complain about the cost of clothes. I went clothes shopping last night to update my summer short sleeve shirt collection and ended up spending far too much. When I looked at the total and the amount of things I bought I started sweating. It was crazy. It’s no wonder I only buy new clothes every 600 years.

I watched one of the best TV shows on the planet last night, NOVA on PBS is still producing some of the best educational or news stories. Last night was all about the tragic Challenger and Columbia disasters and what steps NASA had taken. It was pretty powerful to be brought back to those moments and bear witness to those tragedies all over again. I love NASA and I hate to see them get run down by budgetary concerns. Exploration and science held up for the sake of penny pinching is so depressing.

In On This Day in History news, (thanks again History Channel) June 23, 1987 Tiffany, Tiffany Darwish, was launched into teenage singing phenomenon known as, “Beautiful You: Celebrating the Good Life Shopping Mall Tour ‘87”. Yes, Tiffany gave her first mall performance today. How could this momentous day not be recognized as a Federal Holiday is beyond me?

In real history news though, June 23, 1940 Hitler toured Paris in the wee morning hours stopping only to comment after seeing Napoleon’s tomb, “That was the greatest and finest moment of my life”. He was then heard to say, “Now, I think I’d like to make out with a koala”.

Okay, that’s enough for now, time for a meeting. Sigh.   

Wednesday the Milquetoast Barbarian

Wednesday can often seem so mildly cruel, jammed in the middle of the week like that. Its arrival indicates the incoming week’s end, but then gently pushes you back into your seat to make sure you know that the week is certainly not over yet. I can imagine Wednesday, loin cloth with a bulbous codpiece, ripped and muscular physique, long flowing hair, glasses, braces and a little acne.

He doesn’t carry the typical barbarian sword of medieval imagination, but a long thin epee that he wields like a cautious Zorro. He is very proficient at making the “W” mark on walls and the rear ends of pants but he makes the “w” very small. It’s a perfect “w”, but you really have to get close, almost with a magnifying glass, to see it.  It’s perfect but a nuisance.

He’s also very ineffective. He’ll arrive just in time to save the damsel in distress, but he’ll hem and haw in front of the castle gates trying to find a credit card to pay a locksmith to open the lock before realizing the gate was open the whole time. He’ll stand there, scratching his head as Thursday rides out of the castle on his white steed with the fair centerfold type damsel straddled across his lap.

Wednesday wakes up very early but usually drags his way through the morning, not really excited to do much of anything except get in the way of those of us that really need to move fast to make a train, bus or into work.  He’s the one walking very slowly at the head of the rushed crowd, log jamming us into slow moving cattle. He doesn’t realize it of course; he hasn’t had his coffee yet. Plus that loin cloth codpiece makes it hard to move very fast at all; chafes something terrible.

By mid-afternoon, Wednesday really hits his stride by accidentally knocking the clock off the wall. He didn’t mean to do it, but when he picks it up and puts it back he doesn’t realize it set itself an hour earlier than it was. We sit wondering, “I really thought it was two o’clock, felt like two o’clock, but according to that clock, it’s only one. Son of a…”

 Wednesday eventually decides it’s time to go home and maybe since it’s hump day, go out and get some mid-week relaxation going; maybe try to get some gal to help with his algebra hobby. Because the idea of even having sex is repulsive, sex is more of a Friday, Saturday or Sunday thing. Wednesday would much rather make sure you don’t have any either. He’ll make sure to interrupt any story you’re telling to an attractive individual with some inane anecdote about how he once helped an Indian woman look for her lost dog in the rain. It’s an hour and a half long story and they never find that dog.

By then, it’s nearly Thursday’s shift and he’s already got his horse fed and watered and ready to assault the day. Wednesday bids all a goodnight and heads home, only stopping to fix the clock he knocked down earlier so we all go, “11:30? I thought it was 10:30? Damn you Wednesday!!!!”