At a pre-birthday party (a.k.a. baby shower) this weekend, I was responsible for taking notes during the gift unwrapping.  This way, my brother and his wife would know who gave them what and they could send “thank you” cards.

However, I hadn’t met most of the guests before and didn’t remember their names.  So some of my notes read like this:

“Small pink outfit, given by Sexy Brunette and Sideburns Guy.”

I really hope that the cards are sent to the right people.

I saw The Passion of the Christ yesterday.  At one moment I was overcome with emotion--almost unable to look at the sight of one, heroic man facing startling violence and insurmountable odds in order to save complete strangers.

The movie itself hadn’t started yet, though; this was the trailer for Spider-Man 2.  If you can watch Dr. Octopus throwing a car through a plate glass window at Peter Parker without getting a little misty-eyed, you simply have no sense of spirituality.

I had a dream that I was being eaten alive by those little brown creatures who advertise Quizno’s subs in that TV commercial.

They rasped, “They’re warm because they toast them!  They’ve got a pepper bar!” and took a huge bite out of my leg, which was already gushing blood.

Playing poker can make you feel like a God.  But not when you win.

No, it starts to happen around 4 a.m. and you’re ready to leave the table.  Even though you’re doing pretty well, you’re old and your leg has a piece of embedded shrapnel from fighting overseas wars; it always begins to ache if you stay up too late.

(I made up that last part, but that would be cool.)

Anyway, to leave a poker table you have to go “all in"--wager your entire mother lode against everyone at the table.  Technically, you could win the entire game right there.  What’s more likely to happen is that you lose your chips in a few simple rounds, giving you a graceful exit.

However, going “all in” is like a meteor striking Earth, causing upheavals and volcanoes and tidal waves.  Nothing is the same afterwards.  The next day, when you talk to the players, you realize that a lowly life form that had only a few chips to her name had risen from the muck to become the dominant species of the game--the ultimate winner.  And someone who had enough chips to start his own financial empire was blasted from the evolutionary chain.

You are like a God, and all of your subjects regard you with appropriate emotions--awe, fear, gratitude, and revulsion.  And it was all because you wished to effect a massive redistribution of wealth.  Come to think of it, maybe you’re more like Ralph Nader.

When I drop guy friends off at home, I tend to just drive away.  When I drop off a female friend, I sit in my car and watch her walk to the door and fumble for her keys.  I don’t leave until her house swallows her up.

And what would happen if the unspeakable happened and some bad person actually jumped out of a bush and attacked her as she traversed the short distance from car to home?  I think it’s pretty obvious.  I’d spring from my car and do a flying kick, spinning madly around as I skillfully connected the tip of my foot with his solar plexus.  An uppercut to the chin later, he’d be a crumpled heap on the sidewalk.

Fortunately, history has proven that fisticuffs are never going to be necessary; my searching, steady gaze is enough to keep the evildoers at bay.  And then I drive home.

By the end of the month, over 3,000 same-sex couples will have received marriage licenses from the city of the San Francisco.  The scene at City Hall has been one of happiness and joy.  Couples embrace, onlookers applause, and history is made.

And it horrifies me.

I can’t tell you the gut-wrenching nausea I’ve felt as one marriage license after another is issued to beaming couples.  I can’t tell you how much it offends my moral beliefs.  It’s a kind of physical pain.  It sickens me.  I want to turn back time and erase the entire offensive tableau from reality as we know it.

Listen: the last thing this world needs is more marriage.

Long-term gay couples are great to hang around with, because as committed as they are to one another, they haven’t quite adopted the characteristics of married people.  But with these licenses, it’s bound to happen.

And let me tell you, married people aren’t pretty:

I also found a poem by Michael Madsen I was going to use in the below post, but then I remembered Reservoir Dogs and I thought, well, maybe I’ll just mention that Mr. White Mike is the best poet ever.  Better than T.S. Eliot, Emily Dickinson, and William Shakespeare rolled up into one.

“Teacher”
by Charlie (Charles) Sheen (star of Men at Work, Young Guns, Terminal Velocity)

Teacher, teacher, I don’t understand,
You tell me it’s like the back of my hand.
Should I play guitar and join the band?
Or head to the beach and walk in the sand?
Oh, teacher, teacher, I don’t understand…
... Teacher, teacher, the years have passed,
I never thought it would go so fast,
The things I learned they didn’t last.
I’m headin’ to sea as I raise the mast.
Oh, teacher, teacher, I’m a piece of your past.

---

“Criticism”
by Jewel (multi-platinum pop singer)

The savages are upon me
and I feel my flesh
Burn
beneath the teeth
of their indifference

---

“Pretty Little Girl in Red
by Amber Tamblyn (star of Joan of Arcadia, General Hospital, Port Charles)

The green umbrella blended into her face.
She watched the pretty little girl in red dance circles in her eyes,
like spider dust.
The golden whisper of her lips began to eat away the sand.
It was bright, as she cringed in pain.
She died later that afternoon.

Scene: A movie purchasing establishment.

Enter: Greg.

(Greg PEERS at DVDs, and smirketh.)

Greg:
Hah!  It is to laugh.  A director’s cut of Supergirl. 
That is not likely to find favor with those of my kind.
Behold, it boasts 24 extra minutes of footage!  Truly,
the movie would be better served by cutting out
an hour or two.

(PEERS at another one.)

And the same holds for Star Trek V.  Four hours of
special features? That is torturous and mean.  I would rather
be beset with scorpions.  I would choose instead to gargle
snake’s venom.

(Then he GASPETH.)

But the same does not hold true for The Day the Earth
Stood Still.  A special edition?  With a 70 minute
documentary?  Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude.

But wait.  I am comparing silly extras on DVDs.  Have I
gone too far?  Have I passed through the boundary
between connoisseur and fanatic?  How far do I have
left to fall before I become a lost soul?

(Lights dim, SPOTLIGHT shines on Greg.  He prepares to
launch into agonized, self-searching Hamlet-esque
soliloquy--)

(But lights abruptly go up again as Greg is interrupted by
TWO INDIVIDUALS entering the scene.  Male and female.
They are of sizable mass and girth.  Their attire marks them
as employees of the movie purchasing establishment.
Both of them have the same nasaly vocal style as the
Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons.)

Man:
Yes, I only paid $20 for the whole set.  How much did you pay?

Woman:
Well, $32, but that included shipping and handling.

Man:
Yup, I got the whole set...Airport ‘79, Airport ‘77, and
Airport ‘75…

Woman:
And the first two Airports, of course, with Dean Martin…

Man (outraged):
What?  That is ridiculous.  Dean Martin was only in
the first one, Airport, in 1970.

Woman (defensively):
That’s not what my friend said.

Man (snapping):
Your friend is wrong.

(They EXEUNT...the woman to the employee’s room, nearly slamming the door, and the man bristling as he returns to the cash register.)

(SPOTLIGHT returns to Greg, who stands in stunned silence.)

Greg (triumphantly):
Klaatu!  Barada!  Nikto!

(Greg EXITS.)

-FINIS-

The Tennessee woman who filed a lawsuit against Janet Jackson for causing outrage, anger, embarrassment, and serious injury has withdrawn the suit.

No specific reason was given, but the judge remarked that it was unlikely the suit would have been heard due to a litigation backlog.  It turns out that hundreds of people file outrage, anger, embarrassment, and serious injury suits against Jackson every time ‘Rhythm Nation’ comes on the radio.

In other news, I was surprised to find out that someone made a “Geese Aplenty” button for his web site.  So if you want one, and God knows you shouldn’t, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if you right-clicked on it, saved it, and used it borrowed it.

Also notice that my button is sitting on top of Wil Wheaton’s button.  I like to think of it as stepping on Wheaton’s head.  Because really, is Wheaton so special?  Just because he saved the Enterprise every week?  I COULD DO THAT TOO, WHEATON, IF I HAD A SCRIPT THAT SAID ‘NOW YOU GET TO SAVE THE ENTERPRISE.’ YOU’RE NOT SUCH A BIG SHOT.  DAMN YOU WIL WHEATON.

I mean, his web journal has more fans than Jesus and he wrote a book and he always wins blog awards and stuff, but I could gain as much fame and adulation* if I ever bothered to get a web journal, so it’s no big thing.

Oh wait, I do have a web journal.

DAMN YOU WIL WHEATON.

*Although I’m a shoo-in for winning Most Likely to Make a Dumb Janet Jackson Joke at the Exact Moment Everyone Else is Sick of Dumb Janet Jackson Jokes.

Perversely fragrant.
Saucily irreverent.
Surprisingly histrionic.
Jauntily lackadaisical.
Resplendently refulgent.
Lethargically stentorian.
Chastely lascivious.
Soberly Dionysian.
Nose hair-ingly revelatory.
Non-mushroomy.
Better than Kool-aid.

Even when your hair is thinning like mine, you still have a window in which your latest haircut looks good--that point when it straddles the delicate boundary between being as short as the cropped pate of a ‘50s folk singer and the ugly, tangled mess of neglected pattern baldness (think David Letterman).  Today I had that window.  But because my hair is thinning, I only had today.  And furthermore, it looked absolutely perfect for only ten minutes--between 2:15 and 2:25 Pacific Time, if you want to know.

That was a great ten minutes.  I excused myself from my meeting and went to walk around the building.  I knew I looked good, and the world knew it too.  Women fell at my feet.  Men nodded approvingly.  I received compliments and wedding proposals.  My arms were sore from catching all the flying pieces of lingerie.

But then it turned 2:26 and everything changed.  A sales admin handed me the excel spreadsheet I needed, and her look said it all: For God’s sake, just shave the rest of it off.  You might as well try to look Vin Diesel, as opposed to Dick Van Patten.

Most people throw out those AOL CDs that say “40 Free Hours” on the cover.  Not me.  I mean, free hours are free hours, and life is precious.  So I hoard them.  I must have hundreds of them stacked up in my room.  By now, I estimate that I’ve given myself roughly 20 years of extra existence; I plan to use the time to learn how to make illuminated manuscripts.

A hangover from a four course meal, with accompanying wine, is different from a hangover caused by cheap booze. The latter just gives you a thudding headache. The former causes your head to feel like a large, empty dining hall, where you can shout and hear your voice reverberate around the hanging paintings and tapestries: “So, Little Lord Fauntleroy, how did you enjoy your fox hunting?”

When you wake up the next morning, you don’t remember that you didn’t actually pay for the meal and that it’ll be a long, long time before you have anything like it again.  You don’t even remember that you’ll be at the office in an hour because you still have to work for a living. Rather, you get out of bed and head for the shower, moving as though you’re swimming underwater, and you think “I need to be careful where I step. My last three servants worked themselves into exhaustion trying to keep up with me, and I don’t want to accidentally trip over the bodies.”

An executive at work:
“I’ll tell you something that I just can’t @*&*@&* stand--that ‘The More You Know’ campaign on TV.  That is the stupidest @*&*&*@ thing I’ve ever @#(*&*@# seen.  It’s stuff I already know, which pretty much defeats the point.  It’s like, ‘Don’t forget to breathe today.’ Thanks a @*(&*@ lot for that, you @*(&)*&@**&*%R&*$#&%*&&*s.”