I regret to inform you...

Danm, I have written a lot of emails lately that carried that header. That's what happens when over the weekend you decide to scrap everything and start over. I regret to inform you I will be leaving this soul-crushing excuse for a job (really, how is one's soul to survive subsisting on governmental janitorial practices?). I regret to inform you I will no longer be requiring your company. I regret to inform you I will not be needing my awesome writing coach. I regret to inform you that I signed up for your kung fu classes on a whim and can't do them now. Goodbye bed, goodbye furniture. Goodbye San Diego.

The Downfall

After watching the fiasco on TV last night, I am convinced the "tell the truth show" which I am too lazy to look up on dial up is going to kill more relationships than anything in the history of man. First, they up the tension and prolong the show by the cunning use of the PAAAAUUUUSSSSE. Never seen that before. Then, they show the reactions of the family members to the questions, which given their state of being in from of millions of eyes and a large audience is likely to be escalated. Then, they take morally relative questions and force everyone to think of the worst possible outcome.

Take the question: "Have you used the internet to flirt with a woman since you were married?" Given that the lie detector is going to pick up any hesitation on your part, you better answer that question "yes" or you ain't getting that $25,000. But, in truth, you could have spent five minutes flirting back and forth before you realized you were doing something wrong. Playful banter is a slippery slope, one usually doesn't they've gone to far until they look back and see the line behind them. Conversely, they could have solicited multiple nighttime rendesvous with ladies of questionable virtue. Either way, the answer is still a "yes".

This moral relativism transfers directly over to the TV audience. It gives people the idea that they should know the smallest innerworkings of their significant other. All those fleeting thoughts should only be discussed in confession or perhaps just saved for purgatory leaving the possibility that there is no High and Mighty.

There's a reason the Human Race isn't telepathic: we'd kill each other. All the evolution in the world can't erase the fact that we are impulsive little monkeys with dirty minds. I'm not saying we can't keep ourselves in check from being naughty, but we're certainly going to think about it. We're going to fantasize about bank heists, jewel thieves, running away to Mexico and leaving our families, cabana boys, jaywalking, streaking, flashing, starting fires, eating vegetarian, stealing puppies, buying those spinning rims for our cars, rapping, dying our hair green, following phish on tour and other evils. These are just thoughts concocted out of random neurons firing in the squishy grayness packed in our heads.

We are proverbial racoons with shiny pieces of tin foil clutched in our grasp. We'd have never got to the moon if we weren't so inherently curious. But we are also territorial, private creatures. Our general state of antithesis allows no rest for the conscious mind. Add to it a puritanical notion that the truth has always to be told, and the detante between the sexes will fall. There's been discussion of a battle of the sexes for generations. But I posit if you make it general practice to hook up partners to lie detectors, the slings and arrows shall be leased. The skies will turn black for their numbers. And, only the strong will survive.

Absenteeism is a symptom...

Sorry I haven't been around much lately. I have been playing with my side-project blog, The Daily Hypochondriac. It is much easier to post on there with the excessive daily interruptions that definine my work day. Plus, it's like getting to watch Scrubs if they would just kill off JD.*

* - Where the hell are they rounding up there test group subjects for that damn show? Apparently there is a subset** of American society that believes smugness, excessive male femininity, and overly polished facades mixed with tiresome physical comedy are damn fine entertainment.*

** - Upon pondering this, though, one finds it may not be a subset. Ross was pretty much the same character with a medical degree. And the whole thing just reeks of Everybody Loves Raymond if you really start to think about it. The Drew Carey Show devolved into similar antics, and MadTV is the same thing without character continuity. Don't get me wrong, I still love the supporting cast, but good ol' John Dorian has just got to go.

Ah, the school season is upon us...

Nearly 5 years out of college, and I can't help going back for more punishment. Perhaps it is my purgatorial state of existing in the southern california culture that rewards how much of your ass you can show through your shorts rather than if you got the smarts. Or, it might be the fact that my job requires 50 less IQ points than I currently possess. Okay, maybe 60. The fact remains if humans generally use 8 percent of ther brains at a given time, without these extra little classes, my squishy gray matter would atrophy like a coma patient's dancin' feet. Only problem is choosing which classes I will initially fawn over, then, weeks later, start to hate with every beat of my transplanted monkey heart.

A new category of dream

A darkened flightline across from a set of trailers. Ebony and Ivory in color, a normal dream of the drudgery of work showed last night in noir theme. Two women bedecked in pencil skirts and heels, only their legs seen as they sneak along the asphalt. A phone call. An order. Silent, eerie mood pervades and no storyline emerges save for the sense of being trapped without reason. We gave in and slept with handtowel sized blankets on concrete.

My apologies monsignior...

Loathe was I to note, yesterday, that I have neglected my blog for four weeks solid. Like all creatures bred in the north, I am subject to intermittent hibernation. I blame it on the military. Its evil hand swept us to the tundraland when we still traveled by smurfcycle. Trapped between snowdrifts and death-icicles hanging from the roof, something changed. When the sky darkens for too long, a profound laziness threatens. We can be found, curled like snails, under piles of blankets or pressed against heaters. Days, weeks, months later, the boredom sets in. We are forced to crawl out from our hiding space, squinting in the light, take up normal tasks such as blogging or spelunking.

All I'm saying is: t'ain't my fault.