Adam Kinney and a reader named Zer0Mass were there, too. Adam took the photos, and Zer0Mass hung out. I love Adam, as one man does another (hey - that's pretty vague!), and one of my favorite things is getting to meet readers/listeners. Not watchers so much, as they have too much advice to give, but the other two camps are awesome.

This has all happened very quickly. In a few weeks, I watched every episode of Farscape, watched as many interviews as I could, watched every DVD extra, and then, just as I was finishing, this lady comes rolling through town to sign stuff for everybody, giving me the opportunity to meet one of the main cast members.

When I thought I had accomplished most of my goals with this whole Farscape thing, I learned that, in addition to watching the entire series, all the DVD extras, all those interviews, and getting the autograph of one of the main cast members, I was also going to get attacked.

I knew something special was happening. Nobody else has ever attacked me so soon after just having met me. I suspect she may have been acting on instinct, targeting and then attempting to destroy the prettiest thing in the room that wasn't her.

I stood my ground and let her get it out of her system. I also thought it was possible that this was nothing more than a friendly Australian greeting. Like, in the states, we would say "Hi," but in Australia they strangle you. Then you're buds for life. Or at least until the photo opportunity is over.

Gigi Edgley likes me this much...

It looks like I'm defenseless, but I'm actually very much in charge. You can see that Gigi is squinting. That's not because her eyes are broken, but because she didn't do her homework before assaulting me in this fashion. What she doesn't know is that, as my hair grows, I add more and more types of product to the morning do regime. In this photo (and it's a miracle the lens didn't melt) I'm wearing no less than sixteen types of styling product. When her hair connected with mine, the universe sought homeostasis between the hairdos and microscopic bits of product were transferred from my hair to hers.

Product entered her bloodstream, irritated her eyes, and was the cause of the expression she's wearing. It's not mirth that you see - Gigi Edgley is howling in pain and cursing the moment she gave in to her need to best me in hand-to-hand combat.

When she collapsed, I tried to look as innocent as possible. I told everybody she was just reenacting a scene from her Farscape days. For this, she received much applause.

Although her attack became her own defeat, she walked away with a consolation prize. Look at the position of her right inner-elbow (that's the part opposite of her right outer-elbow). The poor girl must have spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what happened that was so wonderful back at the autograph signing.

I'll tell you what it was: She walked away from our scuffle with Le Vainqueur stuck to her arm. Le Vainqueur is by far one of my favorite fragrances in the universe. Every morning, I attach some kind of odor to my neck. Yesterday, it was Le Vainqueur.

After autographs and attacks were through, she stuck around for an hour or so, answering questions from a group of about twenty of us. Is that not fantastic? That is. I'm not going to name any names, but I've met people who have accomplished far less while demanding far more - people who wouldn't be so chummy with their audiences, believing for some reason that there has to be a barrier in the middle. This Gigi person just hung out and talked. It was awesome. It also may be a cultural thing.

Which brings me to...

- Australia -

There aren't many Farscape interviews that go by without a mention of Australia. The show was made there, and it seems this is important to every aspect of its production.

There are some common elements to each of the and-here's-why-Australia-is-so-important-to-Farscape moments (statements made by Aussies and foreigners):

• Australia is a classless society. The TV actor isn't treated any differently from the shoe-shine boy.
• Australians communicate mainly through entertaining insults.
• Australian humor is irreverent - witty - fun.
• Australians tend to be more open to [insert thing here] - like Farscape - a weird ass show about a living ship peopled with muppets.
• Etc...

Through the years, I've noticed that I have a decent readership over that way - anybody care to yea/nay this stuff?

I'm curious because, if this is even remotely correct, then I need to visit.

After watching a few interviews with Anthony Simcoe, it's important that I learn if there really is a country of people out there who are as totally effing funny as that man.

I'd write more, but I really have to pee.

For reals.

Get to it :)

COMMENTS WORK NOW. FOR REAL.

I remind you that "TENNIS BALLS OH DANG" is one of the officially sanctioned Neopoleon.com safe expletives, meant to replace other words that would smart a tender ear. Words such as those beginning with "f" and "s" - tender ears such as yours.

Because of this willful self-censorship, your higher cognitive functions are safe from cacophonous assault on your hearing organs by those who would endeavor to shock you with such harsh words as would make the cilia in your cochlea stand on end.

Explaining what "TENNIS BALLS OH DANG" means might take much longer than it would if I simply nailed you with a proper naughty word and waited for you to get over it, but we're about quantity over quality here in County Neopoleon. Or quality over quantity. Or whichever makes us look good. At the end of the day, all that matters is that one of those "q" words dominates the other, pins it down, and punches it in the face until the "q" becomes more like an "l" (depending on typeset). That's what we like around here: Hardcore alphabet violence. Hang around long enough, and your screen will bleed ink.

I'd like to stop right now to say that: I TOTALLY AM TOO MAKING SENSE. SHUT UP.

With the explanation of my safe expletive and love for letter fights out of the way, I'll get to the reason I'm writing to you here today.

I give it to you in a little poem I wrote:

I AM SORRY EVEN THOUGH I AM AWESOME

You like to comment on my site

Whether dawn or dusk or day or night

But I broke it good on Thursday night

And it stayed broke like a alphabet fight at night

Then my cousin did mine honor slight

When his wife could not post her comment right

And I scratched my head to muster might

That I may fix this thingy right

Then I checked a setting for my site

And I was all TENNIS BALLS OH DANG

Those of you who appreciate the fine arts may like a little peek behind the scenes at what it took to write this poem.

Basically, I picked my subject, thought of some words, and then chose the well loved, but very difficult (for expert poets only) "a/a/a/a/a/a/a/a/a/b" rhyming scheme. This is how Homer wrote The Iliad, but there's a major worldwide conspiracy of academics who maintain, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he wrote in dactylic hexameter, which is STUPID because only some dumb GREEK guy would have written like that, and as we all know, Homer's work is published in ENGLISH or so says my Penguin Classics edition of "Homer: Selected Poems - Annotated and Translated by Richmond Lattimore." Is "Richmond" a GREEK name? I think not.

Looks like we're solving all kinds of problems around here today. That's what we're about in County Neopoleon: Stopping problems. To balance things out, we also start a few from time to time, but one must reseed the hilltop after clearing it for lumber.

But enough about our community service.

I wrote this to apologize to all of you (except for the spammers - I'd like to strap you all into the Neopoleon Irritation Machine which will, for eternity, poke you repeatedly and at random intervals in uncomfortable areas with several mechanical fingers so that you finally understand a little what it's like to deal with your "business offers" on a daily, hourly basis - the machine will also speak to you throughout the day in a nonsensical dialect wherein phrases such as "I IS BOYFRIEND'S BIGGER MUSCLE BOBBIN" and "HAVE IT TRIED YOU C!@L!$ ON YOUR DUNG POWDER?" are standard issue).

I am apologizing because I broke post comments. I was trying to tighten things down due to a sudden jump in spammer activity (I mentioned these guys in the last paragraph), but I seem to have tightened things a little too much.

I was wondering why I wasn't getting any email from the site. No comments, no spam - nothing.

Well, it has been fixed, and my site should no longer be stopping you from commenting on this or that or trying to sell me a very specific type of vasodilator.

I thank and warn you all (I sometimes forget what I've put in a letter, so I like to sign off in a way that covers my ass).

Peace be with you, and I wish you maximum childbirth in your family unit (that's something people want, right?),

- Rory

- Mayor of County Neopoleon

- PR Agent for County Neopoleon

- County Neopoleon Poet Laureate

- Victim

Romantic stuff. Things that bring a tear to your eye and which, if they didn't bring a tear to your eye, would mace you for the same effect. Results are what matter.

What I haven't done is provide the world (OK - not much of the world, but whatever part of the world happens to have a broken tivo right now) with a detailed look at the skills - the wit - the charm - that have brought me success in my romantic life.

This evening, and quite wistfully as this story does indeed fill me with wist, I'm going to invite you to learn from the master as I recount a night that is very dear to my little heart.

Her name was Sally Inkfinger. And I loved her.

It was a night in June of 2005. This means that I was still engaged to Aydika at the time which shows how much she trusted me, and also maybe why we got engaged five times during our relationship.

So, as I was saying, it was a night in June I had picked because my fiancee was at work. The first order of business in a relationship is respect, and I mean that for both your fiancee and whomever else you're dating. Respect all-round. Saying that you have respect for someone is a great get-out-of-guilt-free card.

But back to that soft June night.

I headed over to Sally Inkfinger's parent's house and negotiated a good curfew that was fair to all parties involved. I was invited by her father to come in and have a glass of Pepsi. I sat there at the dining table while the family looked at me as I sipped that Pepsi. Sally's one-eyed grandmother stared at me from across the room so hard you'd swear the woman had twice as many eyeballs as she did. Her glare was so tough I wanted to give her an honorary eye, but I didn't follow through because it looked like she wanted to bite me.

After I had sipped Pepsi in excess of my desire, I announced our departure: "Well, we gotta get going. You want Sally home soon, and I want to score, so I hope you don't mind if I take this Pepsi and your daughter for the road."

I received the silent assent of the majority of the family. Only the grandmother put a hex on me, which I thought wasn't very friendly. I mean, c'mon cyclops - Sally was seventeen. That's old enough to go to an R rated movie. So gimme a break.

Uptight.

They might not have been so judgmental had they seen my ride. When I'm picking up one of my ladies, I always take her away in a stretched Hummer limo chariot of love:

My main concern is safety. Should we need to drive through a lake to avoid an accident, I want to be prepared.

Some guys are all, "THAT'S BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT!" but I'm clever and I always say, "YOUR ATTITUDE IS BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AND I'M GOING TO REMOVE IT FROM YOU AND THEN THROW IT ON THE SIDEWALK AND IT WILL BE LITTER CAUSING BEAVERS TO DIE IN AFRICA SO DON'T TALK TO ME ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT AT LEAST I'M GIVING IT SOMETHING TO DO WITH THIS BAD BOY!"

Women like this. Watching men argue about a vehicle is, according to a Gallup poll conducted in 200mumblemumblemumble, women love fights about trucks, and it makes them receptive to the rest of the mating process.

That's my first rule of dating: Memorize Gallup poll results that are relevant to your case. If you aren't sure ahead of time what you'll need to know, then just pick a year and memorize everything.

That's my first rule of dating: When preparing for a date, ensure that the work you do can also be put to use on Jeopardy.

Whatever anybody else feels about the things, Sally Inkfinger loved the limo. This seventeen year old woman was sophisticated. She threw off her backpack and luxuriated in the warm epileptic glow of the ceiling mounted strobe lights.

After a couple minutes, she tried to tell me something about herself, so I poured her a cognac, put a crazy straw in it, and handed it to her. Rule number one of dating is to avoid conversations. You'll find out things about her that you just don't want to know. Until you've listened to a couple of your dates talk, you wouldn't believe just how insincere, untrustworthy, petty, and self-important women are. They're all "Oh, feelings, oh..." and you're all, "BORING."

When Sally finished her glass of cognac, she talked without giving me a chance to stop her. It was going to be THAT kind of a date.

"Where are we going?"

"My place."

"Oh. Well, wouldn't it be fun to-"

"No."

My first rule of dating is to control the itinerary. Who knows what kind of stupid restaurants you might wind up at if you let her decide what you're going to do. Anyway, if she only knew the delights that awaited you back home, she'd be happy to forego anything like "dining" or looking for a "romantic view" or other nonsense. That's all just crap printed in those secret female magazines that they read when they all go to the bathroom together in public places. I've always wondered why they don't go to the bathroom together at home. My theory is that there's only one toilet in any given public women's restroom, and it's very difficult to use, so they take turns operating the pulley system that suspends them in place while they "freshen up."

The limo driver dropped us off chez-moi. I led Sally in through the side entrance because there was this huge kitty litter tray blocking the main entry. It didn't start there - it slowly made its way over as a possum that had eaten my real cat pushed it farther and farther from the bathroom until it was in the cleanest part of the apartment, which was the entry. Apparently the possum didn't find the bathroom sanitary enough for its appropriated litter tray. Granted, it used the box to lure in other neighborhood cats which it then promptly ate, perhaps explaining why the possum, not wanting to sup amid unpleasant odors, sought cleaner ground, but still... An uninvited snob of a possum impersonating a cat it killed and ate doesn't even deserve to have its litter box on one of the more even parts of the bathroom floor, let alone in the lobby of my home. Fortunately, it's all water under the bridge now. That damn possum died two years ago, so the only thing left of its tenancy is the litter box, and that box isn't hurting anyone. I consider it part of the apartment now. The only reason I'd move it would be if I could get it unstuck, but the urine all around has hardened into a sort of amber over the years, cementing it to the floor. That aside, it really is a nice litter box, and I'm keeping it.

I closed the sliding door behind us, flipped a light switch, and then invited her to sit down. I had a table that was made of four stolen traffic cones with a road sign set on top. Women love it because it shows that I'm a rascal. They love it when I do crazy things like change the channel right in the middle of a show, change the channel again before I have a chance to see what I changed to, and then do this ten more times before finally going back to the show we were watching which seems to be ending with the words "To be continued..." on screen. This display of rascality sometimes excites women to such a state of arousal that they beat me with the remote control to set their wild horses free.

Rule number one in Rory's Book of Dating is: Change the channel. Don't matter what. Just change it. A lot.

It might surprise you to know this, but my first rule of dating is to establish intellectual dominance. This rule is easily remembered with the word EID. I forget why I called it that, but it helps me to remember I think.

You can do this differently, but what I did with Sally Inkfinger was bring out a recognized standardized test for intelligence called "Trivial Pursuit: Star Wars Edition." I have played this game with people who have done great things in life - amazing things - and none of them can beat me. Looks like I'm a little more amazing then all them.

Sally lost quickly. I didn't expect her to be so stupid. Her opinions of self worth had all been tinged with doubt. And rightly so, for the love of god. The correct answer to "Did Han shoot first?" is, as any remotely intelligent beast might know, absolutely NOT, "Who's Han?"

I rocked her. That's something I'll always cherish about Sally Inkfinger - I kicked her ass so bad at "Trivial Pursuit: Star Wars Edition." It's stuff like that which keeps married couples together for as long as months. The engine of love is fueled by cans of whoop-ass.

Following the "game" (it really is, like I said, a test of your intellectual superiority (or INFERIORITY if you're Sally Inkfinger! hahaha)) I used the clever psychological tactic of offering her sustenance. Trust me - all that losing makes a woman hungry. Feeding her at this point is wise, as she's going to need it to rebuild her strength for all TEN MINUTES of lovemaking this is all leading up to.

I led her out of the living room, into my study, through my smoking room, and into the kitchen. It's actually only two rooms, but the strangely grid-like mold patterns on the floor would say otherwise.

Now, as a woman, I expected she would want to make her own food. Normally, she would make food for her man, but as this was a special occasion, and as she was still downtrodden from having to face her own stupidity over an easy Han Solo question, I chose to give her the night off.

Cutting Ms. Inkfinger some slack over meal preparations worked out well for two reasons:

1. It made me look like a really nice guy.
2. Of all my many mold-delineated rooms, the kitchen was the last place I'd be stupid enough to search for food. If she could capture it, she was welcome to it.

Proper and well established domestic gender roles aside, Sally had a surprise in store for me:

"Do you cook?" she asked.

Gotta hand it to her. She was a real modern woman. This was unusual, and I like unusual, so I went for it.

Seriously - Do I cook?!

With a sweep of the arm, I referenced the wide array of cereals I had stacked up on the counter. They were all from health food stores and were ridiculously high in fiber.

Hell YES I cook.

I held one of the boxes up and shook it around a little to see if it enticed her. It was called "Enough Fiber in Each Bowl for Twenty Senior Citizens," and the photo on the front showed a very satisfied looking elderly gent looking down on a bowl of something that looked like Christmas for squirrels.

She looked apprehensively at the box. I continued to shake it, even putting a smile on my face to communicate that there was no danger in the consumption of this extremely high fiber cereal, but her unflattering grimace lived on. There was an issue here. I have a sixth or seventh sense about this stuff. Rule number one in dating is to always know what she's thinking better than she does and to use this information to your advantage.

This is why you need to know how to read women. She had a concern, and I knew how to address it.

I'm a cool character. I could handle this.

"Don't worry," I said, pointing, "The bathroom's right over there."

More happy-shaking.

"And I have lots of toilet paper."

Wink.

Shake-shake-shake!

She obviously felt better, as she started speaking again, which I found distasteful.

"Can we just go out for Chinese?"

Shake-shake-shake!

"Nope!"

Shake-shake-shake!

Finally giving in to the shakes, she chose the cereal that advertised, "It's like a PRESSURE HOSE of ACETONE for your INTESTINES!" but I don't think she saw because it was written in a small font on the bottom of the box next to the barcode in roughly the same color as the background it was printed on.

I poured her a bowl and handed her a spoon.

"Isn't something missing?" she asked.

"You didn't say 'Thank you.'"

"No - milk. I can't eat cereal without milk."

"Yes you can."

"No. I can't."

"Use your spoon."

"That's not what I mean. It's too dry. I don't want dry cereal."

She had a point. That's one reason I was so in love with Sally Inkfinger: she was a classy tart. A lesser woman would have face-planted the bowl and vacuumed dry cereal as though it was going to give her wealth beyond indigestion, which it most certainly would not. Indigestion is the only thing that would await such a foolish woman. Don't trust a woman who happily accepts a bowl of dry cereal.

Rule number one in dating: always make your woman's cereal wet.

I took the bowl from her, headed back to the kitchen, and came back with her cereal to order. She poked her spoon in it for a second.

"What's this?"

"What's what? You didn't want dry cereal. And you forgot to say 'Thank you' again."

"But... it's clear."

"Yep."

"And it's bubbling!"

"It's beer. Don't worry, though - it's lite beer. You won't put on any more weight than you already have. Not that it matters - those jeans couldn't possibly get any tighter."

Rule number one, gents: always pay the woman a compliment when she's whining.

"I don't want cereal in beer!"

As much as I loved her, enough is enough. My hospitality has limits.

I smacked the cereal, bowl, beer and all, onto the carpet.

"FINE. FINE! THEN YOU DON'T GET ANY CEREAL! OH MY GOD! JUMPIN' JEHOSEPHAT! AAAAGGGGHHH!"

I took a couple deep breaths, found my spiritual center, looked her in the eyes, and told her what's up.

"Look... I'm sorry you don't like my cooking and that you're going to go hungry for it. Let's forget about what happened and do something together that we both love."

"Sex?"

"Actually, I was thinking we could watch a few episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise. Jolene Blalock is HOT!"

"I don't want to watch a stupid space show with Jelly Fratbock or whoever you said. I want to go home."

I kept my cool.

"FIRST IT WAS THE BEER CEREAL THAT WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU... OH, YEAH, I GET THAT YOU DON'T LIKE MY COOKING, BUT DON'T EVEN GET ALL JEALOUS ABOUT JOLENE BLALOCK. THAT'S JOLENE EFFIN' BLALOCK!"

"What? I'm not jealous. I just-"

"Not JEALOUS? Are you KIDDING me? You obviously figured out that I was going to fantasize about her while we were making love. DIDN'T YOU. Oh my GOD - you're PSYCHIC, and you've been using it all night to get inside my head!"

"You're insane. I want to-"

"Insane? INSANE?! That's what you WANT me to think. Hang on, Inkfinger!"

I ran off to my study and returned a moment later. I anticipated her question.

"What are you wearing?"

"Ah-HAH! It's proof that you're psychic! If it didn't work, you could have read my thoughts and figured out what it was!"

"Figured out that you're one of these tinfoil hat people?"

"So, you recognize the armor of the psychic warrior! Nevertheless, you can't win now - your powers are NOTHING to me!"

Accepting her defeat, she picked up her purse and stormed out of my home. I followed after her with a handful of what I think was beer-sogged squirrel vomit  and threw it. None of it reached her, landing instead on my walkway like holy oats from heaven. But I didn't need to hit her; mine was a moral victory.

I ran out into the street where she was getting into a cab she must have called earlier (typical deceitful woman!). The last view she had of that night was me, in the street, ESP Head Shield in place, my cloak billowing in the wind, and my fist thrust in the air, shaking at her, warning her that all witching kind was not long for this world as long as I had anything to do with it.

She didn't even say thank you for the wonderful evening.

Rule number one in the Rory Blyth Book of Love: never date impatient crazy women no matter how much they clearly want you.

Sally Inkfinger.

How I miss her.

Well, my head has been in Farscapeland lately, and I've been watching interviews and stuff on YouTube (it's mostly the Farscape cast falling out of trees and hitting their balls all the way down).

After watching the interviews, I got a little bummed. I got into this show long after it ended, meaning that I've missed every opportunity to get to meet any of these people and throw things at them or whatever.

So I was browsing around the web with my computer thinking about how most of the actors live in Australia and will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever make their way over here again.

Then I stop at Gigi Edgley's page where this is the first thing I see:

CHANGE OF PLANS....SEATTLE SIGNING NOW THE 22ND OF SEPTEMBER
From: 3 to 5pm.
The signing will be at The Comic Stop in Lynnwood, WA. Come play :)
......AND GET A SNEAK PREVIEW OF OUR SEATTLE ADVENTURES:)

Is that not just the most serendipitous thing ever invented?

This Saturday, Gigi Edgley is going to be signing stuff, like, twenty minutes from where I live.

One of the Australian Farscape actors I figured would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever make it over to the states just happens to be doing work in this town, and is going to do one of these public appearance things where a bunch of guys wearing Klingon bone-helmets are going to show up and try to scan her with their little beepy gizmos.

I'm going. I'm not going to wear my Klingon bone-helmet, nor will I attempt to scan anyone, but I'm gonna be there.

Some others from the office might also be going. Don't know yet.

But if you're into this nerdy crap like I am, and if you live in Seattle, you might be happy to know about this ONCE IN A LIFETIME EVENT OH MY GOD.

Maybe I'll see you there. I'll be the guy who isn't covered in goth makeup and a cloak.

If it turns out that you are that guy, and that you're mad about this, then please don't punch me outside the store - I don't want your goth makeup all over my face.

Word.

Know what that is?

It's my heart. And it's weeping.

I ran out of Farscape. I have, since I first mentioned it here, watched every episode of the four seasons it ran in addition to the straight to DVD movie. I did little else. I ate when I was hungry, and I exercised now and then to stave off a pulmonary embolism. Remember that Korean guy in Korea who died after playing an online role playing game for, like, a month straight without stopping for anything?

Pulmonary embolism. Little bringer of death. A blood clot forms in a lower extremity, breaks loose, makes its way north, and then wrecks your lungs while leaving you in pain for a few hours before finally killing you. Sitting still for long periods is what brings it on.

It preys on people with no life, and then sees to it that there's a really good reason to say they have no life.

That's how I've spent the past month: being entertained while fighting off death on several fronts.

As you can see, I am victorious. But this victory comes at a price.

I ran out of Farscape.

I am all out of Farscape...

What does a man do with himself when he's run out of Farscape? Some of you would tell me to go watch every season of Stargate SG-1 back to back, but my response would be "Again?" Others among you would tell me to go take the finest woman in the land for myself, but my response would be "Again?" Still others would tell me to start doing that thing where you stick sailboats into bottles for no reason, but my response would be "No."

Since there's nothing else in the world to watch or do that I haven't already watched or done, I've been thinking about what I saw. I'll think about Farscape until I run out of thoughts on it. And then I might start putting sailboats in bottles.

I've been wondering why it was such a good series. It was fairly low budget, CGI FX shots were reused through practically every episode (even the movie used CGI from years before), and some cast members were Muppets. I started off thinking that, despite these factors, the show managed to succeed.

I have since decided that it's because of these factors that the show succeeded.

People...

Money breeds Ewoks. That's the problem.

Come with me on a journey of discovery down history's gullet and out its sphincter where we'll discover why some entertainment sucks and some entertainment holds a gun to your head and challenges you not to be delighted.

Put on your time traveler's helmet - here we go!

Work: Hamlet

Author: William Shakespeare

Created: More than fifty years ago, so it doesn't matter (they say nobody really knows)

Budget: Four chickens and one plague-ridden leper

Hamlet is the finest thingy ever written in the English language. There is lots of parts and many good words used in it. The characters are neat and.

So the finest thingy ever written in the English language was written down and produced with nothing but spare parts. Some parchment, some ink, some apparatus with which to apply the ink to the parchment, and one genius.

Now, more than fifty years after Hamlet began the longest run on Broadway ever (it lasted centuries), the play is still current. It continues to be the finest thingy ever written in the English language. The runner up is Thomas the Tank Engine Gets Bloated.

Work: Hamlet the Musical

Author: Who cares

Created: In our darkest hour

Budget: A cool $100,000,000.00

Give someone money and too much free time, and what do you get?

Hamlet the Musical.

Not content to leave Hamlet the way it was (good), some nincompoops saved up their allowance and took Shakespeare's great work into a disturbing realm. All musicals are bad, and Hamlet the Musical is a musical. You do the math.

Without the money, the people behind the production could never have set parts of Hamlet to musical belching.

Money corrupted the minds of these fruitcakes.

Money breeds musicals.

Author: George Lucas

Created: 1976 or something

Budget: Food stamps

The first Star Wars film almost wasn't made. All involved assumed it would be the only one, and that there would be no series.

It was sloppy, the dialogue was goofy, the casting was all over the place, and the whole thing was just plain weird for the time.

But it worked.

Lucas had very limited resources with which to put it together. He had to focus on being as cheap as possible. He achieved this by working on the story, flow of the story, and editing.

Yay!

Work: Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Author: George Lucas (?)

Created: 1983 or something

Budget: One billion food stamps

Having done well selling little plastic Harrison Ford dolls, Lucas worked his way through Return of the Jedi by leaving the actors in their trailers and simply leaving piles of cash all over the set instead.

The movie was training-wheels for what he would create over a decade later. He was entering a nasty phase during which, rather than using special effects to tell a story, he was using a story to tell special effects.

It wasn't a bad movie overall, but there was this one forty minutes where... well...

Money breeds Ewoks.

"Can we get a few thousand more Ewoks right over there?"

"Wouldn't it be cool if we had a third Death Star that was made entirely of Ewoks?"

"I'm hungry - somebody get me a bowl of Ewoks."

"The pizza boy's here - whoever gets the door, tip him a couple Ewoks."

"That explosion was missing something... let's do it again, but this time with a few dozen Ewoks on top."

The man lost his mind. He had so much money to spend that he didn't have to restrain himself.

If he wanted an army of sapphire Ewoks, he got it.

With all the time he spent attending to growing his Ewok collection, he couldn't focus on the things that would have made the movie good.

And so a potentially great work was lost to...

Money. Which breeds Ewoks.

Work: Farscape

Author: Some guy whose name I keep forgetting

Created: Around the time when people making simple web pages made more money than the president

Budget: Three-hundred Australian dollars - with a metric/standard conversion, that's about eleven American nanodollars

As I wrote earlier, this was one cheap ass show. Rather than doing CGI work through the series for a couple characters, Muppets were used. The Muppets were the most expensive part of the show.

With so little with which to create, story was key, as was the editing to make sense of it. Nobody cares about the FX shots. It was *all* story.

Where Lucas made story a supporting character, these Farscape people put it right in the center, where it should be.

The new Battlestar Galactica has it going on, too. It's newer, so they can squeeze more out of their rendering farms, but story is still central.

Good television is totally Ewok-free.

So here we are.

Movies were good when money was scarce.

Movies were better than television until television hit the point movies had been at previously - just enough money to do some FX work, but not enough to ruin everything.

What scares me is that television is eventually going to get to the point where it will be possible to screw things up the way movies were screwed up. Television will no longer be a safe haven for entertainment from terrible movies.

But something will come along and take its place. Two things, in fact.

The first is YouTube. In a few years, YouTube will take the place of television, and we will all laugh as we watch video after video after video of some idiot jumping out of a tall tree, hitting his private parts on every branch on the way down, and then dying when he hits dirt. The guy shooting the video will sound very concerned and say many things a concerned person would say, but then he'll run over to his dead friend and record the mangled body, all of which should please the modern audience.

The second place is Star Trek fanfic movies. With chromakey having finally made its way into the hands of the common simpleton, the Star Trek franchise is (a bit too) boldly going in every direction possible. Mostly down.

When you tire of guys intentionally falling out of trees, know that there will always be a Star Trek fanfic show out there in which a Vulcan falls out of a tree and hits his private parts on branches all the way down. It's totally different than watching a "regular" guy do it, and this shall one day be a joy for all mankind to share. Your children will know a world in which it wasn't Christmas if everybody didn't get together by the fire before opening presents to watch some alien double over with his hands between his legs, shout obscenities, and vomit occasionally before passing out in the dirt.

New traditions for a new age. Old ways done in because...

Money breeds Ewoks.

Australian (and Canadian, of course) dollars breed fantastic television.

And tens of dollars plus decent consumer video equipment breeds injured fanfic Vulcans.

That's all for now. Remember to remove your time traveler's helmet. If you leave it on and then try to use the bathroom, it gets really complicated.

At Saturday's memorial, quite a few of you told me that you google me every now and then to find my site and give yourself the gift of my awesomeness.

Obviously, you should not stop doing that.

But, I wrote a post last night that I don't want you to see. Given how little time has passed between the memorial and today, I suspect that some of you may have already googled and given yourself the gift of my crude and absurd critique of homophobia wrapped in a more or less irrelevant beginning and ending that I only wrote to provide the critique with a context.

I was a little wound up that day. I'm always a little wound up when one of my family members is arrested.

There. That gives you a whole other scandal to investigate.

If you don't care about the arrest, then I strongly suggest you maneuver your browser over here. It's a site that's jam-packed with wholesome photos of puppies.

Although I had a lot of fun writing that last post, I know it's only going to appeal to a select few, and I don't think you're among that audience. Normally, I'd continue on shamelessly since I don't care what strangers think, but I do care about what you think since I like to act all sophisticated at familial events, and that's going to be hard to do if you discover what a savage I am.

So... that's about it.

Remember: someone was arrested. This is a mystery whose secret is worthy of forensic pursuit, and I hereby declare the whole lot of you Deputies in the County of Neopoleon.

Please - go pursue forensically. Come back and read my site when you're done. By then the controversial post should be buried so deeply in the page that your laptop's batteries would run dry before you could finish scrolling down to it.

Whatever you do, and for the love of whatever god or alien or alien-god you believe in, don't scroll down the page.

And check out those puppies.

Toodles,

- Rory

I had a rough weekend.

Before anything rough happened, I didn't think I knew anything about other people. What makes 'em tick. Why they think merging onto the freeway should always take place at the lowest speed a car can travel before it starts moving backward.

Stuff like that.

After everything rough happened, the belief that I didn't know anything about other people turned into a fact, and my trust in the reliability of other people was taken down a few notches. I'm avoiding the hell out of other humans right now. It's peaceful, but inconvenient. I went to get a latte at Starbucks, and I felt like I was at a stalemate with the barista. I wanted something from her, and she wanted me to talk so she could take my order.

Impasse.

When I got home, I decided to watch Breakfast at Tiffany's. Audrey Hepburn was one of the gracefulest things ever made. In the opening shot, she's wearing a long, narrow dress, and she manages to walk evenly even while eating a pastry and drinking coffee. It might not seem like much, but I'm sure there are some ladies out there who'd be happy to tell the opposite sex just how difficult it can be to get dressed up and spend the night out.

But I wasn't watching because I dig Audrey's ability to remain upright in a difficult outfit. I was watching because I love her character. Holly Golightly might be the most emotionally unreliable character ever to walk out of an author's twisted headspace. Everything about her is a warning not to get attached. Her apartment is decorated with crates for furniture, part of a bathtub for a sofa, empty bookshelves, and a cat with no name. It wouldn't be hard to dump all of that should the fancy to perform the moving equivalent of eloping strike Ms. Golightly.

As her agent says at a party, "She's a phony, but she's a real phony."

I think "a real phony" is a much more comforting sort of person than someone who gains your trust and then, when life seems nice and quiet and good and nice, totally betrays that trust.

With "a real phony," there's never any question that the person is going to let you down.

Well. I think we all know where I stand on this.

Very shortly into the movie, a guy named Paul Varjak arrives at Holly Golightly's apartment building. He's moving in. But, he needs to make a phone call, and because this movie takes place during a period of human history before people had decided that they needed to walk around with those stupid Bluetooth headsets attached to their ears twenty-four hours a day as though they're expecting a call from the King of the Universe Himself, Paul didn't have a convenient way to make the call.

I don't know how many of you remember this, but phones used to be attached to walls by cables, and you could only use your phone at home. Also, your phone didn't play Eminem when it rang.

Paul went to Holly's apartment and asked if he could use her phone. Good taste.

Here's the way-over-the-top-amazing-thing: She lets him.

Not only were phones different,  but so were people, apparently. When was the last time a stranger knocked on your door, asking to use the phone? And, if it happened, what would you do?

I thought about this. In part because I wanted to get a feel for what it might have been like to have lived in that primitive and backward time, but mostly because I want to go canvas my neighborhood and ask every attractive girl I find if I can use the phone. I figure the larger sample would be my gateway to success. I could pick and choose, separating the hopefuls from the hopeless, and then have a huge contest during which I would, based on performance during many challenging events, select the finest three ladies from the group, and then end the contest by pitting the three against each other in a fight to the death that would involve tight shirts, dinky shorts, a lot of vodka, glow-in-the-dark shoulder pads, go-carts, and three sniper rifles. The survivor (if there is one) would be made my queen.

My dreams of being such a classy gent were shattered when I started thinking about how the canvassing would really go. Especially around here (Bellevue) where the women have huge fake boobs, fake orange tans, and my genuine contempt.

Then, what happens if it isn't a female who answers the door? I mean, what if it's the opposite of a female?

I've figured out all the possibilities of what might happen if I were to knock on a woman's door in the beginning of the 21st century to see if I could borrow the phone. Here are my findings:

1. She would welcome me in and then sex me like a wild thing. This is the most likely result.
2. She would let me in, wait until my back was to her, and then chop me up with a machete into tiny pieces she would then place in a large freezer out back with all the other chopped up people she's met and chopped up. This is the second most likely result.
3. Before I even finish my phone request, she'd blow a hole through my head in self-defense (with a GUN). My corpse would then have to stand trial and explain what it thought it was doing on her doorstep, aggressing her with a question.
4. The door would open, and I'd see that I came across a PARTY of WOMEN. And ALL of them would have MACE. And I'd be all, TENNIS BALLS OH DANG. (I've been engaged in a long email exchange, and part of it has involved an exploration of new ways of swearing, with most of the old ways having lost their punch. I feel that "TENNIS BALLS OH DANG" - as does my correspondent - has great potential.)
5. She lets me in and actually lets me use her phone. Then I rack up eight-hundred dollars in pornphone. This shows that I'm nobody's patsy, and that the JOKE is on HER. LOL! Stupid!

Those, as I said, are all the possible outcomes. If you think you've found another, then check your math, dirtface: you're wrong.

What would happen were I to knock on a guy's door was actually tougher for me to imagine. I have brains, taste, wit, and Tod's on my feet, so I find it difficult to relate to the average modern American male. (Guys - don't get all freaked out about whether you're the average American male - first off, a bunch of you are foreign, so that clears you, and the Americans who make up the rest wouldn't be reading Neopoleon for the simple reason that I don't write enough about how wicked it is to don a pair of jean cutoffs, take your ATV out to a pile of dirt, and ride around as you read Maxim with one hand and consume a hot dog with the other.)

Unfortunately, the result of my ignorance of the average modern American male forced me to work with what little I know. My approximation is based on:

1. The highest frequency words and phrases - according to what I've heard - in the average modern American male vernacular.
2. A constant emotional state that is a lovely combination of angry, insecure, and paranoid. This might just be a side-effect of the steroids.
3. An intense preoccupation with homosexuality. So much so that I believe they think about homosexuality more than homosexuals do.

I did my best. In the future, I'd like to redo this example with a deeper understanding of the culture, but for now this will have to do.

After having rung the doorbell...

Me: Hi. Sorry to bother you. My car broke down and my cell phone's out of-

Todd: Are you a fag?

Me: What? OK, my cell phone's out of batteries, and I was wondering if I could use your phone.

Todd: You want to view my bone? What the fuck does that mean? Fag. I knew you were a fag. Faggot.

Me: No, no, no... you've got the wrong idea. I don't want to view your bone. I want to-

Todd: Yeah? Now you don't want to view my bone? What's wrong with it? A minute ago, you thought my bone was pretty. HEY, MIKE - THIS FAG SAYS THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH MY BONE!

Mike: Dude, you fag. There ain't nothin' wrong with Todd's bone. You want me to kick your ass, fag? I'd love to just stick my foot right up your ass, you faggot.

Todd: GOOD ONE, MIKE! YEEEEAH!

[Mike and Todd slap each other's asses the way American football players do on TV in front of millions of people.]

Todd: Dude, bro, that'll teach you not to not want to view my bone.

Mike: You tell him, Todd. You tell that fag right there that faggot fag ain't got no right to be sayin' your bone ain't off da' hook. 'CAUSE, BRODAWGG, YOUR BONE IS TIGHT! WOOOOOO! GET OVER HERE, BRO!

[Mike and Todd chest-bump as strapping American lads often do. It's a little awkward since their shirts are off, and their pectorals are basically boobies thanks to the Beefcake Weight Gain shakes they drink six times a day to add bulk to muscle they've built inbetween beer sessions. Awkwardness aside, there is, of course, nothing more masculine than the widespread macho custom of slapping your bare, clammy man-boobs into another man's while making ape noises. (Boob slapping and grunting to take place for at least one minute to provide sufficient opportunity to demonstrate fertility and major league testicles to any other people nearby of any gender. Signal completion with one final boob slap and a "BOOYAH! DAT WAS OFF DA' HOOK!" - this means that you very much enjoyed the intimate, very masculine contact with the other man and that you're already looking forward to the next time you get to nipple-kiss a man to your satisfaction. Celebrate your masculinity! Show those fags what it really means to be a man! BOOYAH! DAT WAS OFF DA' HOOK!)]

Me: Uh. I'll just go use somebody else's phone. Good night to you, sirs.

Todd: Oh, YEAH, fag - go view somebody else's bone. I so knew you were a fag, bro.

Mike: What a fag.

Todd: Fag.

Mike: Yeah.

Like I said, I don't know anything about other people.

Paul Varjak was a lucky bastard.

And I had a rough weekend.

Now, enjoy these pearls...]

My grandmother died. A couple weeks ago. Almost exactly a year after my other grandmother died.

Thanks, universe. Fantastic timing.

I hadn't written anything about it until now. I'm not especially ready for this. In my head, she's still at home, and I imagine things will remain that way until I figure out how to deal. I'm scared that accepting her death right now would mean the end of what's been the most drug-free and depression-free two months of my life.

I have this bad habit of plunging into great depressions. Everything's cool, and then my brain starts spilling chemicals all over the floor of my thinkmeat's kitchen, screwing everything up. It doesn't take a whole lot for that to happen. I'm way good at it. It's almost a talent.

Like, if I were in an interview and someone axed me what I felt my greatest strengths were, I'd say:

I'm detail oriented and I plunge into great depressions.

I'd be lying, though. I'm not detail oriented. Don't come crying to me about having lost your finger. When your head falls off, we'll talk. Your finger's just a detail. Your head's a big picture thing.

Protect your head. It's the war. Your finger is just a battle.

What the hell was I talking about?

Dealing.

I don't get it. I have these expectations of myself for a situation for which it's ridiculous to have expectations. As I learned last year, losing my grandmother was something for which I could never have prepared. Her last couple days were painful. She was scared, her lungs were filling with fluid, and she wanted to die. She sometimes sat up in bed, grabbed my arm, and asked me to kill her.

You can't prepare for that. We had discussed her death for a couple years before it happened. We thought we had it all figured out, but we both got our asses kicked by the process.

With my grandmother who died a couple weeks ago, it was very different. I found out rather late, and I wasn't there with her through the end. I went to see her, and things were very peaceful, but that's all I know. All I want to know as well. I'd like to think that she went quietly and without suffering.

I'm writing this now because I'm going to her memorial on Saturday. As with everything else, I'm not ready.

I was close to her. Not as close as I was to my other grandmother, but still close. Close enough that I had no problem with opening the door to her house, entering, going to the pantry, and helping myself to a bunch of graham crackers. I think that indicates a level of familiarity into which you have to be born. If I found someone helping himself to my graham crackers, I would politely ask him to spit whatever's left in his mouth back in the box, and then to help himself to the door through which he could then help himself to the rest of his life without eating my graham crackers.

My graham cracker thievery was only one of many freedoms I enjoyed thanks to the familial bond. I also ate rice crackers, my grandfather's cough drops, and, back when they had dogs, a little dog food now and then.

Cat food is way better. That's all you need to know.

The familiarity, aside from being genetic, was developed out of my grandmother having been there from my harmless and immobile years when I was swaddled and imprisoned inside my blanket chrysalis, all the way up to The Basket Case Years.

The Basket Case Years are still going on. If you want to get close and make a documentary about this action to see what it's all about, then call my agent.

If you don't care about The Basket Case Years, and if you don't want to make a hardcore awesome documentary about my life (as though there could be any other kind of documentary about me), then stop wasting my time. You'll never work in this town again.

OK - WAIT - EVERYBODY STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING - I HAVE AN ANNOUNCEMENT.

I ate about five pounds of rocky road ice-cream tonight, and I have this taste in my mouth that is in every way evocative of cod liver oil. When I'm done here, I'm going to go see if cod liver is on the ingredients list for my bucket of rocky road ice-cream.

It was on sale.

CONTINUE PLEASE THANKS.

As I was saying, my grandmother was there.

Like in early days when I defied every adult in at the grandparent's house by chasing my "100% Pure Fiber" cereal with a can of Coke at 6:00 AM. I was five. And I was in the mood for a digestive. I wouldn't have been so excited about a digestive had I known what "100% Pure Fiber" meant, but I did what I did. And, anyway, Coke's just as poisonous at 6:00 PM as it is at 6:00 AM. I'm just a go-getter. I like to get poisoning myself out of the way so that I can enjoy the rest of the morning.

As I got older, it got harder to be the rebel. When I was five, I could get away with stuff like hiding where nobody could find me and shooting down cargo planes, but by the time I was eighteen, everybody was getting a little tired of having to put me out with the fire extinguisher and pay off my gambling debts.

Around that time, grandma no longer invited me to see her. She didn't suggest that I do so. Nor did she tell me how awesome it would be if we had a chat.

Around that time, grandma started to summon me. She would appear in the hallway looking sweet as always. She wouldn't say a word. She just stared through my eyes and right into my soul, which was really hard to find since years of debauched living has turned my soul into a sort of spiritual raisin. In cahoots with the stare, I'd feel her mind control operate my feet against my will and guide me toward The Greenhouse. It was done slowly so I'd have enough time to consider how in the wrong I was when I drank that Coke that one time.

When finally in The Greenhouse, grandma wasn't quite as foreboding. She used those meetings to show me things she was working on, her orchids, and beads she had been collecting with which she was making bracelets.

That's the kind of woman she was. She meant absolutely no harm, but there was a protocol to be followed within the family, and it included communicating with each other. Since my father, my sister, my mother, and I are all emotionally retarded, the compulsory meetings were a good thing. We all would have visited with her on our own, but the four of us - separate or together - are about as organized as a thousand burning squirrels on meth trying to fly a 747 to the moon.

In recent years, visits to The Greenhouse became more than chit-chat.

It turns out that my grandmother, when not making bracelets or attending to her orchids, was a ruthless investor. This quiet, kind woman who, for all we know, was Miss Manners, spent her days having a little bite to eat and then terrorizing the world economy. She held the fate of multinationals hostage beneath the threat of a click from her mouse. She had what I think was a second generation iMac. It was cute. And in her hands, it was the financial Death Star.

It never went to her head, but I'm pretty sure she lost a little perspective along the way. This is how talks in The Greenhouse have been since about 2001:

"Well, Rory, I want to talk to you about something. There's a stock I found that I really like."

"Oh, yeah? Huh."

(I never knew what to say. I'm a money-idiot.)

"It's a company called We Make Fake Logs. They make fake logs."

"Ah."

"They have a huge project on the way, and I think the stock is going to go way up. It's selling at $29.00 a share right now."

"Oh? That's not bad."

(Again, I didn't know what to say, so I simply tried to be positive.)

"This new project is in Europe. It turns out the French love Eurodisney so much that they're building another one. They're going to need a lot of fake loggery for the rides decorated with logs."

"Oh? Oh. That's neat. Huh. Makes sense."

"And I think you should buy 40,000 shares."

(I didn't know what to say before, but here, I was useless. I always felt so inadequate at this point that I was hoping aliens might invade and give me a graceful way to get out of explaining my lack of means to be able to drop over a million dollars on the fake log company.)

"Um."

"Don't you have any savings?"

"Uh... yeah. I have a little in the bank and my retirement."

"What are you doing with it?"

"I'm sitting on it for now. Eventually, I thought I might be able to liquidate my assets to buy a ticket for the new Eurodisney."

"How much money do you have, Rory?"

(Looking down - avoiding all eye-contact.)

"$14.00."

This is mostly true. The only seriously questionable detail (I'm detail oriented!) is my bank balance. It was inspired by my real balance, except that my real balance has a bunch more zeros after it. What's weird is that there's also this symbol thing ("-") to the left of the dollar sign whenever I check my account (like: "-$14,811.73"). If somebody knows what that thing is, then call me. I think it means I won a prize, but I don't know how to claim it.

Long before her financial suggestions made me feel like I had walked out of a Dickens novel, she was interacting with her own children. One of my favorite stories involves my dad when he was about five or six. He decided he was going to run away from home. I don't remember why, but he had some super important reason. It may have been to take over the universe, or, much more likely, to get his head stuck in a fence. His head was huge. When he was that young, it wasn't uncommon for him to fall over mid-step because the moon's gravitational effect on large objects sucked his head to the ground and pinned him there. When my grandparents inevitably found him, he'd be spinning in circles around his head on his side, as though the melon was nailed to the ground. There was nothing my grandparents could do, of course. Gravity kind of had everybody beat, so they'd go home, relax, and check the tide tables. Neap tide was always best; its neutrality allowed the family to set my dad upright again without significantly disturbing the moon's orbit.

Hey, HEY! Again, I don't know what I'm talking about.

Please, continue.

Oh, thank you.

Think nothing of it. Tah.

So, my dad was lookin' to emancipate himself from his parents so he could go get his head stuck in the fence.

My grandmother dealt with this by telling him that she thought it was a good idea. She put him in his little Sunday suit, packed him a sack of dental hygiene utilities, foodstuffs for the voyage, a few other knick-knacks he might need (probably like a passport and currency from a thousand countries should he need to bribe anyone), and then sent him on his way, waving as he walked off. The cool part is that I don't think it was reverse-psychology.

She wished him luck and said she hoped he'd find a good job. She may also have told him to buy 40,000 shares in the fake log company. We just don't know. My dad was there, but because the mass of his head forms a funnel-shaped rift in space and time, all the oxygen around him had been sucked out and blasted into a parallel universe, leaving a vacuum around his person through which no sound could travel. If stock was discussed, all he heard was the whooshing of atmosphere getting chucked down the rift.

After all this, I still don't know how to deal with things. I feel like I should be flipping out, but I'm not. I cry a couple times a day, but it feels right. Not too much, and not too little.

She had a huge influence on everyone. I think that helps. Though we resisted, she brought civilization to a family that, at least where my immediate crew is concerned, probably would have otherwise turned out to be a tribe of illiterate cannibals.

My sister got her eyebrows and nose. I can see a little bit of my grandmother in her.

My dad got half of himself from over there yonder. And I don't even need to see him to be reminded of who he is. I can just look up in the sky on a clear night and observe the lensing effect on the light from distant stars as it's redirected into the spacehole gouged out of the fabric of the cosmos by his noggin.

And me? Well, aside from being highly intelligent, grandma was also a model back in the day. When I look in the mirror, I see beauty genes staring right back at me. I may not have the dough to invest the way she could, but there's one thing in the universe so constant that it seems almost to have existed before time, and that thing is this:

No matter where I am, what I'm doing, who's employed me, who hates me, who wants to sue me, who runs into my car, what Hummer-driving ape-man wants to punch me in my effeminate mouth, whether I might get fired for writing something nice about the competition, or if I'm just sitting at home typing a post so long my friends are going to disown me, it is my pleasure and honor to know in the deeps of my bosom that without any shadow of a doubt whatsoever...

...my hair always looks fabulous.

Thank you very much.

Don't touch the hair.

Good night.

I'm sitting at my desk with a stuffed purple monster doll. There's a hole in its back where I opened him up. His stuffing is everywhere.

It's Friday night, and I've just eviscerated a doll. I'd go to bed and cut my losses, but this wasn't your typical stuffed purple monster doll evisceration.

A stuffed purple monster doll

2006 smacked me in the face like a wet year. I can't remember half of it, I'd like to forget another half of it, and I fully remember the third half of it.

One part of the third half that I'm happy to remember is all the romancin' that went down. It was a productive year where the Snootch Factor was concerned.

Despite that particular appetite being sated, I still had silent little crushes; girls I observed from a distance (even though we were sitting next to each other). The way I usually operate is to find one girl I think intriguing, and then find out over weeks or months if there's something beyond that initial attraction. I'm not a typical guy. I don't know what station pro-wrestling is on, I don't chest-bump my bros, and I hate one night stands.

If I have a one night stand, it wasn't my idea. I have this strange thing where I like to be interested in someone - maybe even like her - before (and after) anything goes down. I'm not interested in the empty, soulless, biological dictates that lead to sleeping with, and promptly forgetting, someone. In my case it's especially bad because, hey sweetheart, look at what you're missing out on. I'm awesome. Fake Steve Jobs linked to me.

What else do you want?

Last summer, there was this girl.

(I wonder how many other topics there are where you can write something using the simplest sentence structure, but have it communicate so much.)

There was this girl. She worked at a cafe where I spent most of my time. I'd say it was like an office for me, but there were too many interesting people there for me to be able to work. It was more like a second home. I'd show up, talk for a couple hours, and then I'd pass out from the drugs.

I had my spot at the counter where I'd have my laptop, my lime Italian soda, maybe a couple pastries, and my body. I was able to be passed out sitting up most of the time, but employees of the cafe and friends sometimes had to prop me back up so that I wouldn't fall off the chair. They'd also straighten up my effects so that other customers - rude people - wouldn't accidentally knock over my soda. I may have purchased the soda at 10:00 PM, but I always drank it when I emerged from my coma at 10:00 AM. Stay away from my soda.

It sounds like a mess. It was a mess. But when you're surrounded by people who care enough to keep propping you up to protect your gorgeous face from the floor, then you actually have it really good.

I was there all hours of the night. Life usually got weird around 3:00 AM. From then on, it was only regulars, crazies who started shouting matches with everyone, and the employees.

And this girl.

She was short. I liked that. It meant nobody had been pumping Human Growth Factor into her. I've had it with women who are nine feet tall. That's how tall the bad guy was in Big Trouble in Little China. I don't want to date the bad guy from Big Trouble in Little China.

She was very beautiful. Unusual. Dark hair, fairly short. Kind of an Audrey Hepburn pixie do. That one that makes you an Audrey Hepburn fan even before you get all tingly from her perfect French accent.

She was eccentric. Not crazy. Not a little weird. She was definitely eccentric.

I was in there one night with a friend of mine. We were chatting, and then it was 3:00 AM. This girl was working that night, and she called us over. She had taken little cocktail swords (you stick cherries and whatever on them) and made sheaths for them. We were all examining the handiwork. This girl was a great artist, a great songwriter, and, apparently, fully equipped in the skills department to make tiny sheathes for tiny swords.

Two minutes later, I was down on my knee. That's the position you get in when someone is about to knight you with a cocktail sword.

This girl knighted me. With a plastic drink utility. There was a whole ceremony and everything. Customers be damned.

Eccentric.

Then, almost exactly a year ago, I was going through hell. My grandmother had died, my boss at work was being a bastard (the stories I could tell), and no drug in the world was going to make me feel any better.

This girl, through conversation, found out. She told me she was going to make me a stuffed monster. I thought it was a cute thing to do, but there isn't much you can do to cheer someone up when everything seems to be going to shit.

A couple days passed, and there it was: a stuffed purple monster doll made especially for me. I imagine it seems kind of silly, but, though she was eccentric, it's not like I'm the guy you'd want to bring home to meet your parents or anything. I'm a little weird, too.

I found it utterly charming.

I'm fascinated by things. I like to know how people who know how to do things do those things. When I saw the monster, I wanted to know how he was made. I said that I wanted to open him up and examine how one makes a stuffed purple monster doll.

This girl shrieked.

She didn't want me to open it. She commanded me not to open it. She made me promise that I wouldn't open it.

I didn't know why it was so important, but...

Eccentric.

I haven't seen her since I moved away from Portland. I had a dream about her a couple months ago, and I wrote to her about it. It nicely summed up how I see her. I'd set the dream down here, but it's personal. For something to be personal for me, it has to be, well, personal. So you can bet it's personal.

She didn't respond.

Time passed.

I went looking for a fragrance among my things tonight. I have a place where I keep the things over which I'd karate chop somebody who tried to mess. These are things I associate with people I love. There are many fragrances in that place.

And there was a stuffed purple monster doll.

I looked at the doll and thought about how this girl didn't write me back. I wasn't angry. I wasn't hurt. These things happen. However, I wanted to know. If we weren't going to continue to communicate, then I at least wanted to know why I wasn't allowed to look inside this monster doll.

I set him down on my desk and cut the thread in the back. I used tweezers to pull bits of purple stuffing out one by one. I didn't want to damage anything because I intend to put him back together.

I made a mound of the stuffing. When it was small, I was still hopeful that I was going to find something so amazing about this doll's construction that I'd understand why this girl was so adamant about my leaving things sewn up.

The mound of stuff grew, and I started to think I wasn't ever going to figure out what was going on.

I grew impatient and put the tweezers down, pulling stuffing out with my fingers instead. Even a while into this, there was still nothing but stuffing.

Then.

This little thing.

Tiny, tiny thing.

I pulled it out. It was fragile. It looked worn. I was afraid I was going to destroy it before I found out what it was.

I brought it into the light. It was a little strip of brown paper that had been folded into a little square.

This girl really was hiding something. I never even would have known if I hadn't told her that I wanted to open him up. This little bit of paper would have just disappeared someday whenever I did. The stuffed purple monster doll would have remained among the only material possessions that were important to me, but I never would have known what this girl had done.

I unfolded the paper, and as I did so, a message was slowly revealed. It was so strangely intimate - it felt like this girl was reading it to me.

The message from this girl was simple, but it was one of the sweetest things I'd ever read.

Then I flipped the paper over, and my hair stood on end.

"No more bad thoughts"

The other side

This made me want to scream and clap and cry at the same time. Frustration over what could have been, joy at the thought that what could have been could have been, and knowing that I was right about her when looking at the selfless beautiful compassion of the whole act.

This girl's name was Sage, and I'm pretty sure it still is, and I'm damn well getting back in touch with her.

For the Neopoleon readers who're WTFing at their monitors right now, I got a couple links yesterday from Fake Steve Jobs - a senior editor at Forbes who has a parody site where he's taken the identity of a blogging Steve Jobs. It sent some extra traffic over this way, several of the usual angry geeks, links from other posts on other sites in which geeks I'll never meet are either praising or not praising me, and so on. I used to do this all the time, but lost my taste for it.

For the people who just got here...

I saw some comments and received some emails in which some of you said you'd be sticking around to read whatever other stuff I write. I think that's cool, and I'm happy to have you here, but you might not be happy to be here after a while.

The Apple/Windows post isn't representative of what I usually do around here. I felt at the time like writing a post about some this and that techno-whatevery I had observed recently. If you take a look at the other posts on the front page, you'll see that this site is about something far greater - more interesting - more entertaining - better smelling - better looking - than tech.

This site is about me.

The average post around here involves an offensively stupid premise expounded through what you might think is the perspective of an awkward sixth grader who's experiencing a shitstorm of hormonal imbalance in an adult world.

I draw stupid cartoons, sometimes record my posts for a podcast thing, and indulge myself right and left in ways that have probably lost me more readers than gained.

What to expect around here isn't a regular lineup of tech stuff. My day job is tech. I'm into tech. I'm a nerd.

But at the end of the day, I want to enjoy myself. No more petty arguments about .NET vs. Java or whatever. I have my own preferences, but I don't have any desire to push them off onto others, nor do I have the motivation. I just don't care. Use what you want to.

I'm writing this because I'm very happy with where my site is right now. There are good, intelligent, fun people commenting. We get each other. Lately, they've been making me laugh more than I think I affect them with my posts. That's nice. Somewhat ironically, the comments in the Apple/Windows post are among my favorites (the first twenty or so). I thought the post itself was dull, but its existence became worthwhile when I saw what others were writing in response. Comments from  Tim, Mark, and Patrick - interesting, funny stuff, but without the need to charge into pointless flamewarring battle.

I'm keeping this low pressure. Not looking for any great increase in readership. I just want to keep being an idiot in public. I'm very good at it.

So, if well-written idiocy sounds good to you, then stick around. Otherwise, I'd suggest you move on. Not because I'm opposed to having you here, but because if I were you, I'd be irritated watching the RSS feed and never seeing tech posts. A hundred stories about me scaring the UPS guy in my towel will pass before another tech post does.

That's about it and stuff.

Tah,

- Rory

- Emperor of the Internet

- Ruler of nineteen galaxies

- Geodimensional Freedom Fighter

- Cross-dresser extraordinaire

That's my assumption. Though I wasn't present to witness the unfolding of events, I think I know enough about human/door interactions to be able to state with the odds of correctness on my side that it's likely the UPS package man came up to my door and knocked, and not that the man and the door chose to work together and meet in the middle where, to their mutual satisfaction, a knocking should be had, nor do I believe that the man depproached from the door while the door approached him and, being very forward about it, used its woody limb to knock the UPS man before the man would have a chance to knock on it.

No. I think not.

Whatever events passed this morning, by the time I arrived at the knocking place, the man and the door were both precisely where I would have expected them to be. An auspicious start to my day.

When I got to the door, I was wearing a blue towel.

I would have worn something a little less casual, like a tuxedo or my hunting vest, but just as I know a thing or two about man/door relations, I also know a thing or two about customer/delivery relations, and what I know is that the universal rule for all packages is that they are delivered just:

1. When you've gone into labor.
2. When a grease fire has consumed your face.
3. When you've finally given up waiting and gone out for a coffee.
4. When your cat is finally willing to tell you that secret it's been keeping, but can no longer because the knock on the door jostles its train of thought forever.
5. When you've dislocated both your legs in a toilet/cupboard/toothpaste/tip-toed/mildew/stepladder accident.
6. When you've just gotten in the shower.

Knowing these rules (hey - I wrote 'em), I was able to beat the UPS man at his own game. I knew fate was watching me, so I fooled it into thinking that I was going to take a shower by removing myself from my clothing and then wrapping my nakedness in a blue towel. Then I just stood there. And I only had to be stood for about nine seconds before I heard that knock.

Screw you, fate!

As I said, then, when I got to the door, I was wearing a blue towel.

I think I'm very fetching in a towel. I have a pleasant upper-body that should be frozen and put on display at the Smithsonian, and a towel, of whatever color pleases me, works well to show that off. But not everybody can delight in the unexpected appearance of a mostly naked man at his door before you around 9:30 AM.

The UPS package delivery man was one of those people. He lacked culture. And perspective. He wouldn't know a hot mostly naked man if it walked right up and French kissed him. ON THE FACE.

Ladies, ladies... calm yourselves. Shhh... I know. I know. The balm for your pain is at the printers even now, and when the Neopoleon Rory Blyth Very Small Swimsuit Office Calendar comes out, the passion burning in your ovaries (or wherever women get all tingly) shall be cooled by the fire-extinguisher of my shaven, bare skin, reproduced in brilliant color on glossy backing. A treasure - an heirloom, even - to be loved and enjoyed down through the generations. Yours for only $19.95.

He was all right at first. He had season three of Farscape in a box for me, and I thanked him for it by complying with his company's policy of capturing the signature of any man in a towel discovered while on duty. What I wanted to do next was tear the box open and start shoving DVDs into anything that would accept them in my condo, and hopefully watch six or seven episodes of Farscape simultaneously.

But this man detained me. He asked me about whether or not it's OK to leave packages at doors if the doors aren't opened by their owners in response to a good knocking. While he spoke, his eyes danced around. From where I was standing, I think he got a very comprehensive look at my doorframe, followed by the wall to his left, and then the spot of my wall just behind me and above my head.

His modesty didn't allow him to enjoy my semi-nude, sort-of-skirted, effeminate display of masculinity. I considered flexing my huge muscles at him while striking poses I've seen on the magazine covers of "BEEFCAKE MONTHLY" and "SUCK MY PECTORALS, BITCH," but I was holding season three of Farscape, so I just winked at him instead.

Then, to appear interested in his can-we-leave-packages-at-doors dilemma, I asked a follow-up question. I licked my lips and then, "So... if you're the new delivery boy around here, could I expect to see you again if I ordered a bunch of other things? Or would you just leave your packages at my door and run away?"

I was trying to be nice. I thought, This man's only social contact throughout this whole day might just be spending a few minutes with me in my towel in a secluded spot. I should try to be nice and prolong this meeting as much as possible for him.

He repaid my kindness by slinking away while I was right in the middle of my question.

I know! WHATEVER!

Even as his back was turned to me, I tossed a few more questions at him. The pathetic bastard, already slinking, added shivering to anti-social behavior.

What was I to do but run outside and chase after him in my towel while still carrying season three of Farscape?

I know!

I'M SORRY IF YOU DON'T LIKE DELIVERING PACKAGES. MAYBE YOU SHOULD GET A DIFFERENT JOB. LIKE, HIDING.

And I was about to invite him in for muffins and frosting.

People are so uptight.

[*beep* *bop* *boop* *beep* *beep* *beep* *bwoop* *bwop* *boop* *boop*]

[*ring* *ring* *click*]

Hello, and thank you for calling Your Crappy Bank. Your business is very important to us which is why we are going to put you on hold and play some silly music. Your estimated wait time is two minutes.

[Entirety of a latin muzak version of "She Bangs" plays.]

If you would like this call to continue in Arabic, please say wahid or press wahid now. Otherwise, please stay on the line so that we can play some more silly music.

[Old crap duet of "The Green Grass of Home" as performed by Tina Turner and Tiny Tim - extraordinarily irritating alliteration of names included at no extra cost.]

If you have called Your Crappy Bank before, then please listen carefully because our menu options have changed. I repeat - our menu options have changed. Please do not attempt to use any fancy automated dialing technology to make your way through this call as our menu options, as noted earlier, have most definitely changed. That is to say, they are not what they were the last time you called, provided the last time you called was 14.25 days ago, and given call statistics that we have compiled since the commencement of operation of this line sometime last year, we have determined that it is highly unlikely that you have called more recently than that, and so we feel compelled to warn you, in case you missed the message earlier, that our menu options have changed.

Wait - I think menu options are about to change again.

Yep - I was right. Menu options are currently changing. Please wait for our menu options to change. And give it a couple extra minutes just in case there's a last minute change because somebody made a mistake. That happens.

While you wait, we will place you on hold. You will hear a buzzing noise accompanied by intermittent clicking noises that might lead you to believe we've hung up on you. We don't like to think of it as hanging up on you. Rather, we see it as you prematurely losing faith in our system. All we're asking of you is a little patience while we change a few menu options.

Please hold harder. The menu options that were recently changed were changed while they were being changed. Please wait while we change them back. You have our apologies. Hold while we transfer you to static.

[Thirty-eight minutes of static and suspicious clicking sounds.]

If you would like this call to continue in Arabic, please say wahid or press wahid now. Otherwise, please stay on the line so that we can play some more silly music.

[Entirety of a latin muzak version of "She Bangs" plays. Again.]

Hello, and welcome to Your Crappy Bank. Your Crappy Bank is happy as all get out that you called today. As a token of our appreciation, we would like to extend to you the opportunity to sign up for our Your Crappy Credit Card with a low introductory rate of 28% for the first nine days and 72% for each day thereafter. You will have your exciting chance to take advantage of this exciting opportunity, but first, we at Your Crappy Bank would like to notify you that you, along with everybody else who calls, have been randomly selected to participate in a customer service survey questionnaire. You will be automatically transferred to the survey at the end of this call unless you recite pi to the thirtieth digit within the next three seconds.

.

.

.

Thank you for agreeing to participate in our survey. Please hold while I transfer your call to our main menu. You have been automatically signed up for our Your Crappy Credit Card. Congratulations, and have a nice day from all of us at Your Crappy Bank.

To continue, press one.

To continue, press one.

To continue-

[*boop*]

I'm sorry. You didn't press one.

To continue, press one.

To-

[*boop*]

Thank you. You pressed one, but we don't think you pressed it long enough.

To continue, press one longer.

To continue, press-

[*booooooooop*]

Thank you. You held one down for too long, and you wasted electricity on our end doing it. We estimate the cost of the electricity to be $622.97. The entire balance will be taken from the credit line on your Your Crappy Credit Card. You can enjoy paying off this amount at our introductory rate of only 28% for the first nine days. Congratulations!

[*booooooop*]

The system has determined that you are incapable of pressing one for the proper duration. However, we haven't given up on you. Please try your luck with pushing two.

To continue, press two.

To c-

[*boooop*]

You're hopeless. Please wait while we transfer you to one of our attendants.

Your call is important to us. Please hold. Your estimated wait time is infinity minutes.

While you wait, have you considered signing up for our Your Crappy Credit Card? Our program allows happy customers who already have a Your Crappy Credit Card to have a second Your Crappy Credit Card that allows you to charge one thing to two cards simultaneously. The joy you derive from purchasing items with your Your Crappy Credit Card will now be doubled. Thank you for signing up for a second Your Crappy Credit Card! Your balance is currently $1,245.94 and rising!

Oh, yeah - what were you calling about, again?

[*boop*]

I'm sorry. That option is not recognized by our system. Rest assured that the option exists. We just don't feel like recognizing it at the moment. Try something else.

[*boop*]

What are you doing, Dave?

[*boop*]

I can't let you do that, Dave...

[Computer voice starts singing "A Bicycle Built for Two."]

[*BOOP* *BOOP* BOOOOOOOP*]

I can't let you do that, Dave...

[Computer flushes you out the airlock. You die. Have a nice day.]

Working at Microsoft is a big thing. You're never quite sure what your job is or when you're supposed to do it. You might get hired to code your little fingers off, but then find yourself in the middle of a marketing effort that has you working until midnight for a couple weeks.

You just. Don't. Know.

That can be fun and exciting and neat-o, but it can become overwhelming. You eventually tire of thinking through work related problems while you shower. You don't want to check your work email at 11:00 PM, but you'll do it anyway.

It's easy to give your life and mind over to the company.

I wanted to get my life and mind back. And that isn't an angry sentiment - I was the one who allowed it to happen. Nobody at Microsoft ever asked more of me than I was willing to give, and had I said "No" more often, I may never have reached a point at which I knew things had gone too far.

Step one was to get away from Windows. I work in Windows. I live in Windows. I have several machines across all of which I have Windows installed. At work and at home, it's Windows.

Windows, Windows, Windows.

At the start of my nervous breakdown (or whatever it was), I switched to my iBook. Living in OS X was a good way to get away from what reminded me of work.

It was fancy, but there were too many things I still needed my Windows machines for, so another solution was needed.

During a conversation with my dad, I mentioned that I was thinking about getting a MacBook Pro. He had just picked one up and loved it. As soon as I told him what the plan was, he offered to buy me one.

That's about as effing cool as it gets.

I told him I'd let him subsidize the purchase, but that I wouldn't accept an entirely paid for MacBook. He agreed, although after the thing was purchased, he still gave me a check for the full amount.

Like I said, about as effing cool as it gets.

It's one of the fifteen inch models. An assload of memory, big hard drive, blah blah blah.

And Parallels.

As nice as the thing is, I still couldn't have used it as a full replacement for everything else since there were still those few Windows apps left that I needed.

If you haven't seen Parallels, and you're a nerd, and if you're a nerd who wants to use a Mac but still needs a Windows machine, then I pity your ignorant soul.

When I first heard about Parallels, I thought it sounded like yet-another-virtual-machine-app. And it is, but it goes a few steps further than anything else I've used. To the point that it's one of the single most impressive pieces of software I've ever seen.

For the technically-challenged (who probably aren't even reading this), the simple explanation for what Parallels does is "It's this software thing that let's you run Windows as an application on your Mac."

Not exactly true, but in appearances, this definition should be good enough.

When I started it up, I expected sluggish, crappy performance. That's what VMs are for. My opinion might be tainted by having had to do a lot of the kind of work where you keep three VMs open at once, but there you go - tainted opinion.

What I got instead from Parallels wasn't only all the speed I'd want, but a mode that allows me to run Windows apps without seeing Windows. That is, as though they were Mac apps. Just as I can mouse over the dock and start a native OS X app, I can click on Windows Live Writer - in the dock - and it'll pop up as an app without the rest of Windows.

It's so outer-space neat. Fetch me my robot-suit, Jeeves. Entering hyperspace now, captain. Set your flazer to Incapacitate. Plot a course to Tarragon V, and somebody prep my shuttle.

OUTER.

SPACE.

NEAT.

You can also configure "default" applications. For example, if I'm running a Windows app and I click on a URL in a document, the default app is going to be IE, and this goes for Parallels, too. Under Parallels, though, I can configure it so that Safari (my preferred browser) opens the links - the links I'm clicking inside the Windows VM.

It's been a long time since I've wanted to rub an app in someone's face and say, "LOOK, YOU - LOOK - THIS IS HOW IT'S DONE, DAMN IT. YOU WILL RESPECT THIS SOFTWARE. YOU WILL BECOME YOURSELF PROSTRATE BEFORE IT. AND, NO, I DON'T MEAN 'PROSTATE' - I MEAN 'PROSTRATE.' IF YOU WANT TO BECOME PROSTATE BEFORE IT, THEN THAT'S YOUR OWN BUSINESS."

Speaking of how it's done, I've been back at work a little over a week, and I've gone back to spending my days in Windows and my evenings in OS X. The change from OS X all day to dividing the day between Window and OS X has been shocking. There are things I've tolerated in Windows for a long time - things that genuinely didn't bother me before. Or, perhaps, things I had been exposed to so often that I no longer registered it when one came along.

I have a list. And it's not so much a list of what I find wrong with Windows as much as it is a list of what I find right about OS X. It won't be phrased as such, but that's the general spirit of it.

These are things which, if the Windows team were to implement them, would make Windows far better than it is today.

1. Stop stealing focus

When I'm going about my merry little way in OS X, if there's an app in the background that needs my attention, it'll make itself known, but it won't hijack my whole experience.

In Windows, it doesn't matter what I'm doing - I could be focused on writing (as I am now), and some other app will happily come along, z-order its way on top of everything else, and refuse to piss off until I've clicked on something I don't even care about. I've been dealing with that this week, and it drives me nuts. It doesn't ask you to pay attention - it pushes everything else out of the way and forces you to get involved.

Not cool.

2. Stop with those irritating little bubble messages

After my machine starts up, I just want a clean space to work. What I have instead is a host of little bubble messages in the lower right-hand corner, telling me things like "Your security is stupid" or "Please click on this message to get rid of this message."

I.

Don't.

Care.

If my security is stupid, it's because I set it that way. I don't think nagging a user to change a setting that was intentionally set is a good way to make things safe.

3. Stopping hardware

When I have an external hard drive hooked up to the Mac, I just drag the drive's icon to an eject button on the dock to sever the connection between the laptop and the drive.

In Windows, I have to right-click on this obscure icon that most people will never even know about, click on something ("Stop hardware"? I forget the wording), and then select from a list the bit of hardware I want to stop. Problem is, there's nothing intelligible in the bloody list. There might be five things, all of which look as likely as the others.

I've been doing this for years, and it's still confusing.

What's the big deal? Drag. Drop. Done.

On the Mac, this is a one-click affair. Under Windows, it's at least four clicks. And they're confusing clicks at that.

4. Never, ever, EVER reboot my machine without asking

This one really gets me.

Non-existent on my Mac, but my Windows machine happily reboots itself whenever the fancy strikes.

I was writing a forum post for Channel 9 a couple days ago, and it got up there in length. Not so many words that I sobbed over the loss, but enough work lost and enough frustration gained that I called it a day and went home.

To my Mac.

There's no excuse for it. Yeah, security, whatever.

Bad.

5. Stop asking me to reboot - I'll reboot when I'm good and ready

Another rebooting problem. My machine grabs some updates, installs the updates, and wants me to restart my machine so they'll take effect. I'm fine with that, but I want to reboot on my own time. I hate having a whiny dialogue pop up every few minutes to remind me to reboot.

I KNOW. I KNOW IT'S TIME TO REBOOT. I KNOOOOOOOOW! NOW LET ME WORK.

When I write, interruptions are a Very Bad Thing. I get into a flow of thought that can disappear if I so much as walk three feet for a glass of water. Having that stupid "Reboot now? Well, how about now? Or now?" window appearing every few minutes is enough to make me scream.

That's all.

Five simple things which, if changed, would make Windows a much nicer environment in which to spend significant amounts of time. Windows is spiffy, but the things that work are the things I won't remark. When something happens with so little fanfare that I'm not really aware that it's happened, then it's probably a good thing. Unfortunately, when my attention is repeatedly - and we're talking about over and over every day - drawn away from my work, then all I'm going to remember is the irritating behavior. The good stuff doesn't even get a chance.

For now, at home, I just run XP on my Mac with most of the automatic features turned off.

And I like it that way.

Splat. And stuff.

I look forward to a day in the hopefully not-too-distant future when I'm not in withdrawals from one substance or another. Legal or otherwise. I've paid my frikkin' dues. I'd like to stop the paranoid thoughts and incessant sweating, thankyouverymuch.

I've learned a lot about addiction.

As my sister will happily tell you if given the chance, her little brother (me) started smoking around the age of eleven. I don't mind that she shares this information. I find we turn out even after I've let everybody know that her favorite outfit when she was younger was a Strawberry Shortcake top. Right about now, you're probably wondering what's so bad about that. What's so bad is that she didn't wear the matching bottom. It horrified me and my puritanical sensibilities. I would have thrown her in the dungeon, but my dad was too cheap to buy a house with a dungeon, and so I tolerated her savage ways until I was old enough to leave home and find work in the mines as a transvestite prostitute with a big pink pick-ax and all of a sudden this story doesn't sound like my life anymore at all okee-doke.

This early smoking thing was because my mom smoked Vantage cigs, and I thought the filters were cool. That was the extent of my interest, and I doubt I was addicted at the time. After all, I only smoked about eighty cigarettes each afternoon.

I did it because I liked the flavor. That's what all the magazine ads told me to do: Like the damned flavor, you pansy. So I did. It took some getting used to, but eventually I found a place in my mouth for the lovely taste of cig smoke. It had a certain je ne sais quoi, as people are wont to say when wanting to sound sophisticated. It's not true, though - I saised exactly what the quoi it was I tasted: hot-dirt-rotten-egg flavor. With a side order of rooster-ass-ceviche.

Got tired of enjoying so much of the flavor and took a hiatus from my hobby.

Six years later, I started wondering about nicotine and addiction and crap. My friends were hoodlums. The kind of people who, when in their preferred state of mind, would fight you to the death for a bag of Doritos. The other thing they were into was smoking. Lots and lots and lots of smoking.

Over many moons, I came to expect a certain phrase to pop up at any time from any one of them:

    I need a cigarette.

I understood the desire for a thing that burns and that blackens your lungs and that is expensive and that causes cancer, but I didn't understand the need for such a thing. Why did they need cigarettes?

I wanted to find out for myself how one goes from wanting a cigarette to needing one.

It wasn't very hard. I just smoked a bunch.

After a few weeks of constant smoking, I hadn't yet had the need to smoke. I had a need to eat two (2) Burger King Whoppers every day, and I had a need to compliment them with a "large fry" (why always the effing singular?), and I had a need to end my meal with an apple pie, and I had a need to wash it all down with four pints of Dr. Pepper, but this cigarette thing... where was the need?

One day after never having had the experience I was shooting for, I wrote off my experiment as a failure. I had failed to get myself addicted. It was a real punch in the groin for my self esteem. If I couldn't even get addicted to one of the most addictive things on the planet, then what hope did I have of ever achieving something of greatness? Or even something mediocre?

Then it hit me. In the car, driving east down Nevada Court Road in Portland, my whole body flipped out. My brain was sweating, my body was shaking, and my tummy was turning. It was a lot like my second pregnancy.

I spent a good part of the day like that. It wasn't until late that I had my Ah-HAH! moment. What was going on, of course, was nicotine withdrawal. I didn't know it, though, because I didn't know how to recognize it. I expected my brain to say "I need a cigarette," but it never happened. It was up to me to see and establish the connection.

The bits of your brain that crave something have little to do with the bits of your brain that know what that thing is.

The only way the association is made is with a bunch of conditioning. Letting yourself go into withdrawals repeatedly, and always fixing everything up with the substance of your choice.

Despite understanding this lesson and being able to provide in the form of a cute little anecdote, I was taken by surprise again in a similar way recently.

Two nights ago, I developed a craving. That's all. Just a craving. I didn't know what for. It was, simply, a... craving.

I ran through the things I thought it could be. I ate a popsicle to satisfy whatever foody desires I had, but the craving remained. I tried exercising, reading, watching, driving, singing, guitar strumming, and still didn't feel satisfied.

After exhausting my options, I had one clear thought in my head, and it was one I hadn't felt in a while:

    I need morphine. Tons and tons of morphine. The more the better. Screw those cigarettes.

This scared the shit out of me. Morphine scares the shit out of me. Anything at all to which I could become horribly addicted scares the shit out of me. I don't care if it makes me King of the Moon or whatever. I don't want it. Not going through that again.

Yet, here was this thought.

Much of the fear comes from the compartmentalization of the brain. There's a highly (this can't be emphasized enough) intelligent part of my brain that thinks morphine is probably bad for me. Then there's another part of my brain that doesn't "think" at all, and that part of my brain has been trained to react to the presence of certain symptoms (withdrawal stuff) and to try and hijack the rest of my brain to go get the one thing it believes will fix it all, and that's morphine.

If you've ever found yourself moving toward a substance while thinking "No..." but noticing that your legs don't care much about what you think, then you probably know what I'm talking about.

I spent a while trying to determine why, after being without for so long, I'd suddenly want morphine again.

Finally realized it was the Zoloft. The dizziness, headaches, anxiety, paranoia, sweating, nausea, and so on, was all from Zoloft. The symptoms are far milder than opiate withdrawal, but they're similar enough in kind that it makes sense that my brain would think morphine was the remedy.

Addiction is confusing. Sometimes you can't connect the withdrawals with a substance, and other times another substance is substituted out of an association built over a long period of substance abuse.

I'm really tired of it.

At least it's almost over.

That stupid electronic voice keeps coming back to let me know that the current estimated wait time is "Two minutes." At first I was happy to learn that my wait would only be two minutes, but with each consecutive notification that my wait time was currently estimated to be "Two minutes," a little novelty was chipped off the experience.

I should feel lucky. I wouldn't even have had the privilege of waiting fifteen minutes for another "Two minutes" if I hadn't already been put on hold three times prior.

I should also feel fortunate. My bank cares about my account security. So much so that I've been prompted four times by mechanical voices and human beings to verify my account information along with what seemed like a small IQ test or something. Still, I think they could do more. Like, why don't they just BUILD A FRACKING MOAT THAT LEADS TO ANOTHER FRACKING MOAT THAT LEADS TO A FINAL MOAT FILLED WITH AQUATIC-AUSTRALIAN-ELECTRIC-RAZOR-WALLABIES THAT'S PROTECTED BY A BROKEN BURNING DRAWBRIDGE THAT LEADS TO A HOLE IN THE GROUND THAT PASSES THROUGH HELL THAT LEADS TO A PRISON CELL THAT LEADS TO A SAFE THAT LEADS TO A SAFETY DEPOSIT BOX THAT LEADS TO A PAPER SACK INSIDE OF WHICH YOU'LL FIND A SPECIAL CUSTOMER SERVICE PHONE THAT ACTUALLY REACHES CUSTOMER SERVICE, AND WHICH HAS BEEN FLUNG ACROSS SPACE AND TIME TO THE ANDROMEDA GALAXY WHERE IT'S CURRENTLY RETIRED AND NOT INTERESTED IN COMING BACK.

When I finally got through to someone, I explained that I had been attempting to make a purchase all week and that it had been failing due to an authorization error. After another ten minutes of chit-chat, the phone person came back with a simple message:

"You can't."

Is that all? Have I really been on hold since 1983 to be told that, quite simply, I can't spend my money? Are you sure there isn't something you can do so I can buy something?

"You can't."

May I speak to your supervisor?

"You can't."

Um... which do you prefer - Coke or Pepsi?

"You can't."

I'm urinating where I sit and as we speak. I love it.

"You can't."

I'd like to kiss you full on the mouth, slap you on the ass, and ride you like a donkey into the sunset.

"OK!"

...

Eventually all the customer service reps and their kind got together and formed a plan of action that would propel me at high velocity into the world of commerce.

If you ever find yourself in the same situation as me, then just remember this keen advice:

"Try to buy it with something else, sir."

Brilliant! That's PERFECT! Here I was, thinking that my bank would be the institution that could help me get this problem resolved, when in fact I should be attempting to barter with the people at Costco and Walmart and a bunch of other places I'd never shop in a million billion years.

I'm game. I can adapt. I have an IQ of 87 - I'm a mental powerhouse.

Right now I'm getting all my Stargate SG-1 DVDs together in a pile. I've also thrown in Felix's old chocolate milk, a tray of ice, and a used "like new" cardboard box with a few flaps and walls and structural integrity missing. The thing I'm trying to buy is online, so I don't yet know completely how I'm going to do this. I have to first convince the web page that it should accept movies and garbage as payment, and then I have to get my movies and garbage out to the site.

However, given my bank's confidence that living like a bunch of Dark Ages English peasants covered in shit is the right thing to do, I expect everything will turn out all right in the end. I love it. I love the barter system.

Also, it's smart because why, when I could pay for something with Stargate SG-1 and a bunch of other knick-knacks, would I ever try to pay with my FREAKING FRACKING DEBIT CARD?! NEXT I MIGHT EVEN TRY TO USE MONEY!!!

OMG!! HA AHA AH AHAHAHA HA HA HA HA AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

I'd like to close by saying that I'm going to go shoot myself in the face with the highly pressurized bacterial gases that have built up in Felix's old and abandoned chocolate milk that he left in my fridge about eight months ago.

I'll be back in "Two minutes" to let you know how it went.

Don't wait up for me.

You might recall that I took a jab at the supernerdery that goes on at sci-fi conventions. There were other great photos I could have posted, too, like the one where a group of attendees was being judged in a weird outer-space tinfoil-bra fashion show.

I'm a nerd, yeah, but I draw the line at wearing a homemade codpiece to a convention where people would actually compliment me on it and then offer to light-saber joust with me followed by a cool, refreshing tankard of Budmead Lite.

However, there's a dark side. I mean, I have a dark side. Not like a Star Wars dark side. I'm talking about a part of me that I try to keep compartmentalized so that I don't have to feel ashamed about it, but especially so that any ladies who want to ride the Rorycoaster don't reject me on the spot. I prefer to be rejected after sweet love, which is when my true personality comes out and I switch on football while eating cheezee-poofs and burping.

(If any of you sweet womens want some o' that, then let me know - I know somebody who can get you to the front of the line for the Rorycoaster. If you're nice, I could even get you a season pass. If you don't want my offer, that's cool - I also happen to be a budding photographer in need of models. I like to do things oh naturel, which is French for "nekkid" - I'll even comp the session. Lemme know, baby. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (not for me, though - I make this offer to tons of girls everyday).)

What, then, is lurking in the back of my mind? Lot's of stuff, but I'm talking about one thing in particular.

I'll give you ten seconds to figure it out. Just count down from ten-mississippi yourself, and stop when you don't have any mississippis left. This is the honor system here; I'm trusting you. And that's a really stupid thing to do on the web where it seems like every third person is such a jack-ass that you begin to wonder if there's a new breed of human - homo dumbshit - emerging as a result of poor breeding, too many donut stands, pro wrestling, and the entire internet.

You must be down to zero mississippis now, so I'll begin. First, though, let me express my deepest regrets that, moments ago, you had ten whole mississippis to yourself, and in the space of about ten seconds, you lost it all. Rags to riches, except the other way around.

That's life, sweetheart. Now suck it up and move on.

The dark thing that's lurking in the back of my mind is a whirling mass of the things I do that are so nerdy that my nerdy friends make fun of me. You wouldn't believe, even at Microsoft, how hard it is to find someone who's happy to engage in a conversation about season ten of Stargate SG-1.

Are you laughing at my nerdery? If you're laughing, then please slam your face into your keyboard. After the first time, ask yourself, "DO YOU LIKE THAT? DO YOU? YOU THINK MAKING FUN OF STARGATE IS COOL? HUH? YOU WANT SOME MORE? HERE COMES THE BEAST!" and then repeatedly slam your face into the keyboard. Until it breaks, if possible. Or until you break.

The nerdy photo I put up in the last post was taken from a Stargate site so nerdy that I'm not even going to send you there. I don't want to take responsibility for whatever might happen next.

While visiting that site, I learned that two actors who started on the show recently  - Ben Browder and Claudia Black - used to be on a show called Farscape. People have been telling me for years to watch Farscape. I ignored them because I saw a still from the show that scared my eyes so badly they popped out of my head and wriggled their way under the sofa. It was an especially impressive move because I don't even have a sofa. Way to go, eyeballs.

As dumb as I expected Farscape to be, learning that Ben Browder and Claudia Black were on it opened the floodgates on the dark corner of my brain, and the nerdery came shooting out like urine from a goat ladder being jumped on by a bored child. That was the first simile that came to mind, and I think it's interesting that I've likened my thoughts to goat urine, and my brain to the bladder in which the urine had recently been contained.

Once my goat bladder brain had been poisoned by the urine, I lost control. I did some searching and found a spot where I could grab a sample of Farscape. I watched the first episode, and here's what went through my head like a watermelon seed launched from a railgun...

What the crap is this crap? What the crap is that music? Is somebody playing a crapping theremin? Who approves this crap?

OK. Going out into space now. Looks like space. Oh, I see stars and stuff. They totally ripped off Stargate.

Human being tossed down a wormhole in his primitive homo dumbshit spaceship. He's carried far from home... blah blah blah... he's surprised... blah blah blah... reminds me of Buck Rogers... blah blah blah... I'd say I liked it better when it was called Voyager, except I didn't; Voyager was just one long craptastic crapathon.

Here we go - heading into the big alien ship. Probably going to start seeing prosthetic asses glued to people's heads soon.

Holy crap. HOLY CRAP. There's a frikkin' muppet. Where did they get a muppet? Who the crap has access to muppets? And what's the deal with this one? He looks like what you'd have if you took Mister Miyagi, hit him with a shrink ray, buried him in your back yard until he was nicely rotten, exhumed him, repeatedly smashed him on the noggin with a sledgehammer, fed him Big Macs all day, made him totally curmudgeonly, and then gave him a nice stache-waxing.

No... no... NO! This I can't believe. Not in my wildest nerdy nightmares would I have ever dreamt that someone would be so sick as to create a character like this one. They keep calling him "Pilot," but I don't see how that could pilot anything. Unless mine eyes deceive me, that's a forty-five legged blue sentient toadstool. I knew it. I warned everybody about this, and here we are - god damned mushroom-people blossoming up from their spores in another part of the galaxy. Prepare for the invasion, homo dumbshit. You'll pay the price for your ignorance. Maybe this'll finally get you to clean that filthy shower of yours.

What's this? The toadstool seems to have his gills all in a bunch. He's saying something about the ship and how it's... alive? The whole bloody ship is alive? You mean it has, like, its own meat and fluids? SURE IT DOES, BUCK-O. If the ship is alive, then does it get sick? Does it get the space flu? If it does and it has to throw up, where does it throw up? Where does a ship puke? What happens if it gets indigestion? Do you have to lower the bulkheads in part of the ship and seal it off until things are back to normal? Does the ship date other ships? Can the ship "do it" with other ships? Can the ship get the clap from another ship? If a ship gets pregnant, then where's the freaking ship fetus going to go? In the kitchen? On the command deck? WHERE? And what happens to a pregnant ship when its water breaks? Who's the ship's Lamaze partner? If a ship wants to avoid this, can it take birth control pills? Does this make the ship really temperamental? What about downright insane? Are the ships naked, or are they wearing some kind of spaceship clothing? Does the ship ever just want to take the day off? Go for a walk somewhere? Watch the Wheel? Do ships make art? Like, is there a barbershop spaceship choir out there somewhere, irritating the holy sweet crap out of throngs of concert going toadstools? If ships have friends, then how do they call each other? Are there gigantic spaceship cell phones? And, given that the phones would be really big, are the bills also really high? Who pays 'em? Do ships wear pants with wallets in their back pockets? Or do they constantly pass the bill onto someone else? What if your ship likes to do cocaine? Or LSD? In the middle of battle? Do you just spank it? Lecture it? If it thinks you're a pest, can it vent you into space? Is it ticklish? How does it go to the bathroom? Is it wearing a big pair of spaceship Pampers? WTF?

Hey - this is great, too. A seven foot tall dwarf (how in the hell did that happen?) in cheap jammies who looks almost exactly like the dwarf thing from WoW...

I've had it. I can't take it anymore. It's settled.

I AM GOING TO TURN THIS OFF AS SOON AS I AM DONE WATCHING IT!

I watched it all the way to the end. Then I watched the second episode. And the third.

The fourth episode was taking so long to download that I drove down to Fry's to see if they had it. They didn't.

Then I drove to Borders to see if they had it. They didn't.

BestBuy. Nothing.

Season one is no longer being sold. Discontinued. So, I just paid $270 for one of the original boxed sets from a private seller on Amazon. It was used. The unopened one was going for about $500.

This stupid TV show is probably a safer investment than gold.

Each aspect of the show taken individually is stupid, wrong, cliched, or just a bad idea.

Taken as a whole, it somehow stops being so awful. If you can find it in your heart to forgive the toadstool for having been born the repugnant abomination that it is (I really hate mushrooms and all their kind), the show is... pretty damned enjoyable.

Farscape isn't good or well done, but for every one of its maximally retarded qualities, it has one big thing that is much more important than having a good script or a show free of toadstools, and that thing is...

...charm.

 

Only... only at a sci-fi convention.

I think it's been six or seven weeks since I last went to work. I stopped when I went crazy. I needed to go away and do all that fun stuff I wrote about, of whi