I strongly believe in religious tolerance, but I can’t figure out people who worship the Devil.  There’s no way to do anything that will make the Devil happy; he’s just pissed off in general. Why would you want to do the bidding of someone whose sole purpose is to lie and be evil?  Devil worshippers should ponder this question carefully, and so should people who work for Karl Rove.

I suppose the Devil could give you riches and fame in this earthly life or something, but I’m not convinced he actually does that.  For example, have you heard anyone give thanks to Satan after winning an academy award?  I was pretty sure Jennifer Hudson was going to--she loses on American Idol and goes on to win an oscar?  I sensed the presence of dark forces.  But no, she thanked God profusely, and despite the win I’m not convinced she’s a very good actress so I believe her.  (There is a theory, however, that you can play Marisa Tomei’s old oscar acceptance speech backwards and she says “I owe everything to the Lord of the Flies and also I want to give a special shout out to my man Belial.")

What kind of payoff do Satanists expect? With the other guy there’s eternal happiness and no canker sores and all that.  What is the Devil going to say when you finally show up?

“Well, uh, thanks for all the worship and sacrifices and whatnot.  Okay, you’ll be located in Pit of Agony #137.  Asmodeus will take you down there. Okay, so long and have a nice eternity.”

“Wait!  I was faithful to you my whole life!  Isn’t there a reward for me?”

“Oh, uh. Well.  This is awkward.  No, basically, you get to writhe in eternal torment just like everyone else. I mean, hello, I’m the ruler of Hell--not Fiji.”

“But I did so much for you.  Don’t I get any special consideration?”

“Oh, uh, right.  I did install a CD player over your pit to help drown out the screams of the damned.  You should dig that.”

“Cool, thanks!”

“Right, but uh, unfortunately it only plays Abba’s Greatest Hits.”

(with apologies to Robert Herrick)

Spread your blog postings while ye may
But your future do not shirk
That which amuses today
May one day put you out of work.

That YouTube video full of skin
Such revelry, drunken shows!
A grim visage may chance to find
And think: “My employees should wear clothes.”

Nothing is lost upon the Interwebs
Not one sexcapade nor shouting row
Even if deleted, it’s always cached
And spread viral to and fro

Oh ye Washington intern! Blog your antics
Put politicians to shame
But if your treachery discover’d
Land an agent to secure your fame.

Oh ye stewardess!  So free in flight
Bored with passing out meals
But pose in airline duds?
If fired, you’ll need a book deal.

Oh ye ex-Mormon!  If you lose your job
Due to aspersions cast upon your employer
Well, actually, you’re now self-employed
Your site makes more than many lawyers.

But the rest of you, guide your actions well
They may come back to haunt in time
And if you must post your birthday suit
At least make sure it’s not past its prime.

GIRL IN BAR: There’s certain books I hate to look at.  Because you turn it over and you see the author’s picture, and she’s beautiful and her bio shows that she’s written four other books and she lives with her husband and her dogs in one of two houses on either coast and she’s my goddamn age.

----

DRUNK GUY (sitting and tearing up credit card): Heh. Heh.  Heh.  Look, I’m tearing up this credit card.

FRIEND: That’s good, as long as you’re not planning to use any credit cards.

DRUNK GUY: Well, not this one.

(long pause)

DRUNK GUY: I have another one, though.

---

GUY #1: Here, use these matches to light the birthday cake.

GUY #2: Whoa, that’s a Franz Ferdinand matchbook!

GUY #1: Uh, yeah.

GUY #2: If I had a Franz Ferdinand matchbook, I wouldn’t be actually using the matches. I’d probably put it on my bookshelf next to other geek ornaments such as my bowling pin.

GUY #1: Here, take it.

GUY #2: What? No, I was just kidding.

GUY #1: Seriously, take it.  I work in a music store; they send them to me. I’ve got a ton of them.

Sadly, I was Guy #2.

I heard that some people suffered strange reactions to the daylight savings time this year.  I don’t know about that, but on Monday I slouched into work and started the coffee, as I have probably hundreds of other times.  But this morning I somehow put in the filter and pressed “Brew” without actually putting the coffee pot in place.  Then I staggered away to check my email.

I came back a few minutes later to find the VP of Sales and another co-worker frantically scooping up and bailing out the coffee as it cascaded onto the countertop, as though they were sailors aboard a submarine in a coffee-filled ocean, and the hull had been breached by a gigantic sugar cube.

I have a couple of justifications I’ve been giving about the incident:

- Studies show that caffeine is good for the countertops; I’m doing my part to protect the integrity of the company’s internal infrastructure.
- It was abstract art. Medium: coffee on countertop.
- I wanted to foster teamwork and cooperation among my colleagues, so that they would join together in service of a common cause.

Regardless, it was worth it to get those extra daylight hours a few weeks early.

A friend of mine who works as a healthcare provider told me that sexually transmitted diseases aren’t referred to as STDs anymore, but rather STIs.  “They’re not diseases, they’re infections,” she said.

As a former English major, I am completely on board with the idea that words have power and that we should carefully modulate our use of words so as not to cause undue harm.  For example, I encounter an unbelievable amount of stupid people on a daily basis.  But I don’t call them that.  I don’t even call them cretins.  Instead I refer to them as “competence impaired.”

However, I’m not sure that STIs is a more positive term than STDs.  When I think of STIs, I think--well, to be honest, the phrase makes me think of a Satellite Defense System.  If someone told me they had an STI, I’d say “Cool!  How does the laser tracking system work?”

But when it comes right down to it, the word “infection” and the word “disease” aren’t all that different to me.  Is one really going to make someone feel better?  Plus, I mean, they’re diseases.  It’s not like a lifestyle choice where someone decides to wear speedos to a public swimming pool and therefore we need to respect his individuality.  Rather, it’s something that someone doesn’t want to get that they’d like to be cured.  That’s a disease.

I think I’d be the first to say that if I got one. I’d say “This is a disease, and I’m fully comfortable calling it an STD because that’s what it is.  However, I’d prefer it if you didn’t refer to me as a ‘victim’ of the disease. I prefer to think of myself as ‘gonorrhea capable.’”

It probably doesn’t speak well of my character when I’m doing a run and my iPod randomly shuffles in “Funky Town,” and for a few moments I’m not sure which version it is because I happen to have several.

CAPTION #1:

Hilary: “Natalie, sweetheart, let me put my hand up your back and make you recite my favorite lines of Queen Amidala dialogue.”

CAPTION #2:

Hilary: “You don’t have psychotic to pose for this picture--but it helps!”

CAPTION #3:

Natalie: “Well, Hayden, now you know why our love scenes were so unconvincing.”

CAPTION #4:

Natalie: “Hilary, I’ll vote for you--as long as you pass a law that forces everyone to turn up the heat.  I’m freezing in here.”

Hilary: “But I’m trying to fight global warming.”

I didn’t expect to end up at a club after work on Friday, but it was just that kind of day. The problem was, I was dressed for a casual day at the office and so I was wearing my Murrells.  Not exactly club footwear.

Merrells are my new favorite shoes. My parents discovered them in India, and then my brother started going off about how great they were, so I got them for Christmas and now I am a convert.  Merrells are like slippers you can wear outside.  They feel like someone you love is hugging your feet, all the time--except without the creepy foot fetish part.

I was surprised they let me in the club, and then I had to explain to my friends about my shoes.  This led to someone delivering a monologue on what makes trendy shoes:

FASHION EXPERT: They have to be black and pointy. See that guy over there?  His shoes aren’t pointy enough.

ME: Pointy.  Check.

FASHION EXPERT: It’s because you want elongation in your shoes.  It makes you look taller.

This was genuinely new information, and very useful because at 5’8” I can use all the optical illusions I can get.  It’s just that I thought guys liked long shoes because it made them seem as though they had...well, y’know.  Long strides.

The next day I went with my friend Stephanie to Wondercon, a general comic book and pop culture convention.  I was pleased to see that not everyone in attendance was a paunchy 40-year old.  In my day, actual young people went to these things.  Nowdays they’re speaking stops for celebrities.  Well, not celebrities but Ali Larter.  And also Hilary Swank, who was promoting some upcoming horror movie that will likely not add to her horde of Oscars.

The point is that now everyone wants a piece of the pop culture pie.  But won’t someone please think of the children? If you actually pick up a comic book these days you realize that they have become extremely dark--supervillains raping and murdering the wives of superheroes, civil wars, etc.  The problem with making those stories more sophisticated is that you sound the death knell for the medium, because then the stories won’t be accessible to young readers and eventually all the current readers will grow old and die. Therefore, it was nice to see that a few young people were still showing up:

Of course, the guy behind him may have been his truant officer, so who knows how long he got to stay?

On the way back home, I saw a parade full of strange people dressed in bizarre costumes that was so completely disassociated from reality that I figured I had made a wrong turn and was back in the convention:

Whoops, no, just the Chinese New Year’s parade.  Next year they ought to combine the camps. I would really love to see the X-Men beat the crap out of that dragon.