Saturday, January 30, 2010

Identity Indemnity

Identity Indemnity

Somebody stole my identity. I finally made it!

So there’s a standard stock joke that all hack comics tell in reference to identity theft since it became a popular term about 10 years ago that ends in some version of “I feel sorry for them” or “Now they have a ton of debt and bad credit.” It’s stupid, but effective, however annoying for those of us who can’t even aspire to the smaller debt and better credit that a comic likely has. That being the case, this little act of thievery could be my lucky break.

It started last night when I couldn’t sign into my iTunes library to play “I’m Different” by Randy Newman. In this day and age, I have probably 10 different passwords for different things and my computer has been ill of late, so I figured I just couldn’t remember the correct password. But when I went to retrieve it, iTunes told me that my account didn’t exist. That’s weird.

Cut to the following day. I got a phone call from a strange number at 8:53am and they didn’t leave a message. I got another call from them at 10:53am and they hung up before I could get to it. Then again at 12:53pm. I don’t know what kind of program calls every 2 hours on the 53rd minute, but I was curious to find out. I was able to get to it this time. It was indeed an automated message, but it connected me upon my answer to the Bank of America. I’ve had things like this happen before. It’s never been good. I figured I missed a payment or accidentally didn’t use my home branch to withdraw money and it cost me an extra $1,500 and overdrew my entire savings account and they were going to start seizing my assets, which at this point in my life is basically a television and half a container of sushi rice.

Nope. They told me there was some suspicious activity on my credit card and wanted to know if I made these purchases. I’ve gotten this phone call twice before, both times it was me. Once I had used a couple different ATMs to download the last $600 to buy a car that wasn’t even worth that much. Then I was called because I kept mysteriously buying gas at these stations all along route 70 every couple hours or so from Cincinnati to Baltimore. Weird, I know! But at the inconvenience of a phone call, I wasn’t too upset. This time, however, I think they were onto something.

I had allegedly made two purchases earlier that morning for $41 and $45 on iTunes. That rung a bell. They may be onto something here. Last night made a little more sense now. So what I surmised is that somebody hacked into my iTunes account and that only. Or else they made some really specific decisions with the credit card info they had. The end result of that conversation is that they would take those charges off my credit card (which were the only fraudulent ones made) and they’d cancel the old card and issue me a new one. Sweet. Back to normal.

However, I logged onto my Bank of America account today to find that the savings and checking account were still there, but the credit account was gone. I’ve lost my wallet several times and needed to cancel my credit card and have them issue me a new one, but I’ve never had an account disappear like that. And if $10,000 in debt just disappeared because of some bank error in my favor that isn’t in a game of monopoly, that would be the best thing that’s ever happened to me and don’t tell Jen I said that, because I’m not kidding. I love you, honey – but $10,000 in debt just vanished? That’s the kind of miracle only Fletch could pull off. Guess I probably should have banked with Chevy Chase (groans are welcomed and somewhat encouraged at this point).

Just in case it was the unwitting error of some intern, I’m not making a financial move. No debit charges, no downloading money, no logging onto my account for a while. I’m lying completely still like I was being attacked by a black bear. Or a brown bear. Or a polar bear, whichever one you’re supposed to play dead around. Wait. Brown, lie down – black, fight back. OK, scratch that. Make it a brown bear. A huge brown bear who is not going to eat me, but looking to give me my $10,000 in debt back. It’s about now, I realize I should have used a different analogy. The point is, those hack comics who all say they want somebody to steal their identity to inherit all their debt. Well, I may have the opportunity to live it. Which serves them right for being so much less funny and yet still having more stage time than I do.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Chasing Sanity

Chasing Sanity

I teach a college class to actual college people about how to be more intelligent. My particular passion is trying to get the students to understand the importance of perspective. A mantra throughout the class, as all would agree, was “What is important?” It’s been a life-changing view that I’ve adopted thanks to a three-year sanity-deprivation experiment with Arnos and Seth. I’m proud to have a sign hanging in my office that simply reads “Stay Focused.” And yet, if somebody cuts me off in my car, none of that means shit and that dickhead has to learn.

I was reminded of my kryptonite last week on my way home from work when I was not just cut off in the sense that somebody swiped in front of me – but somebody decided to make a right turn from the middle lane onto a narrow road right in front of me. I was in the right lane making that same turn, but legally and safely. What this guy did crossed whatever line I had drawn in my head about what is acceptable in traffic maneuvers. And justice MUST find its way to him.

First of all, I had no idea what to do. I didn’t want to swerve into oncoming traffic to try to get around him. That would make me the bigger dick, enabling him to go home thinking “what a dick” and discredit my entire venture. I also might die, which would discredit a lot of things. Though I did look into the glass eye of a witch and that’s not how I go. So what choice was I left with? Flashing my high-beams? That doesn’t seem like enough. And we were coming up to my turn. I had thought of nothing. But there was no harm in following him until I figured something out, right? I had nowhere to be. And this is when I probably went a little too far.

I noticed that the driver was likely male and the passenger likely female. There was also a smaller person in the passenger’s back seat, the seat I almost plowed into as the guy cut in front of me from the middle lane. It was a Subaru Outback with a roof rack (I think that’s a standard Outback feature). So I surmised it was a married couple with their teenage or younger daughter in the back. And once I made it up in my head that the father was willing to sacrifice the life of the two women in his life to dangerously take what I learned was really just a shortcut, I was determined to serve up whatever my convoluted head had decided justice was. Which I still hadn’t figured out yet.

Now, I’m a reasonable guy. Like I mentioned, I was just seeking justice. Not wrath or divine vengeance. A rook for a rook; let the punishment fit the crime. However, I thought it should be my job to make sure he didn’t do that again. And as fate would have it, I had a few minutes on my hands. I decided to follow this guy home. Mostly for lack of a plan. This decision was surprisingly easy to come to. All I had to do was really not figure out anything else before I was supposed to turn back home. Once I was already following him and out of my way, what was too far? And I wanted to go far enough to make sure he knew I was following him or else, the project would be a failure and he’d be turning from the wrong lanes for the rest of his life and he’d pass that onto his daughter. And I couldn’t have this happen on my watch.

So here are some of the disturbing, however logical thoughts that went through my head during the next 7-10 minutes while trailing this Subaru around the back roads of Silver Spring, Chevy Chase and DC. I wasn’t sure if they knew I was following them. At first. After all, all I knew about him was that he was a reckless driver to begin with. But once he started swerving through left turns, signaling without turning and speeding up to get through yellow lights (I may have run a red light), I think he knew. Yet, I knew I wasn’t going to do anything so I wasn’t scared. I think that fear was the rook I was looking for. However, I started to get frightened for a second. But I figured if they were going to do anything crazy like get out at a red light with a baseball bat, they’d probably all have to agree to it. If it were just one person, I’d run the risk of that guy being crazy. But there are three of them and for all they know, I’m crazy. Shit, I’ve been tailing them for the last 10 minutes. They’d better stay in the car and try to run me out of gas. My entire goal of this activity was to hopefully make this guy realize that the next guy he cuts off might actually be crazy and it’s not worth the risk to his family at this point. That’s all. I’m not unreasonable.

It was about then that I realized that they probably caught on and my job had been accomplished. I didn’t want to necessarily follow them to their driveway. Well, at one point I should admit that I did, and drive by slowly so they definitely knew, pointing at them and putting three fingers up in the air to just confuse the hell out of them. Three what? Three days? Three times? Oh God, what have I done? But I didn’t want to walk into an ambush and I likely still had plausible deniability on my side should the cops show up. Plus, we were back on a road name that I recognized. So I let them turn off onto their (or likely some random) side street in peace. But I do know their tag number now. Though I have no idea how the hell I got there, so they’re probably safe anyway.

I got home and had to tell Jen exactly what I’d done, but not before I had a couple beers. She asked if what I had done had scared me. I was like “no, I knew I wasn’t in any danger.” But I knew what she meant. I like to think I maintained my cool the whole time, or at least I like to pretend I did. I guess the point of all this is that you shouldn’t go around endangering the lives of others. And if you do, prepare to suffer the consequences. Rook for a rook. I’m bringing vigilante justice to the roadways of the Greater Montgomery County area.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

The True Meaning of Giftmas: The 12th Day of Giftmas 2009

The True Meaning of Giftmas: The 12th Day of Giftmas 2009

So what the heck is the true meaning of Giftmas? Well, it’s a lot easier than the true meaning of Christmas, and certainly a lot easier than the true meaning of Moby Dick, which, according to the Cliff Notes I still have from high school, has nothing to do with a whale.

I remember being told as a child in Sunday School never to write out “Xmas” because it took the Christ out of Christmas. That makes a lot of sense. I wouldn’t want to take the meaningful words out of things that I care about and replace them with an “X.” X and Meatballs; X Me Tender; X History X. But I think too many non-religious folk are celebrating “Christmas” as a default holiday. You don’t see non-religious people celebrating Hanukkah or Kwanza. Or Good Friday. Or Pentecost Sunday. And yet, come late December, they don’t want to be left on the outside of the giving and receiving party that everyone else is invited to. So for those of us who forget to say the work-approved “Happy Holidays,” “Merry Christmas” is usually a decent bet.

Thanks to malls, Grandmas and guilt, Christmas has completely become a materialistic holiday, likely not what Jesus had intended when he was born on December 25th. Or January 6th. Or November 17th. This is fine because it’s fun. But let’s call a spade a spade. What Christmas really is is an outreach program for Christianity and Coca-Cola. First, let me explain the Coke part. See, there always was a Santa Claus – well, not always – but he’s been around for a while. But in the 1930s, Coke printed the image of the jolly fat man in the red and white suit drinking a coke and that’s become our picture of Santa Claus ever since. Probably even a better marketing tool than that whole Coca-Cola Original where they got 4 months of free advertising for their 4 new products simply by getting sued by Pepsi. And around this time of year, our image of Santa certainly pays dividends for the Coca-Cola Corporation.

Christmas is not all that different. What is really going on with Christmas is that people who have no religious affiliation, or at least no belief in the Christian faith, come out of the woodwork to participate in such a fun tradition. They’re pretending. And that’s fine because the Christians are all doing the same thing. They’ve got this awesome holiday that serves as a great marketing tool for their religion, and around that time of year, they like to think that all people wearing red and green are really Christians. It boosts their numbers, which is great for those all-important 4th quarter statistics. Just before the turn of the Fiscal year, when the boss is about to have to face a serious decline in membership numbers for his product for the year, He has a huge recruitment program which gets Him into the black just in time. So He can continue to operate within the same relative budget for the following year and won’t have to lay anyone off – which is huge because we all know what happened last time He had to lay somebody off. And just like in every job, those numbers aren’t real. They’re inflated for the sake of getting more funding and covering everyone’s ass. So now all the churches can get new organs and tetherball sets and the Pope can keep arbitrators from coming in. And as long as both sides are happy to play along for their own justifiable yet artificial reasons, Christianity will still boast 78% of the American population. And why not? Belief is a tough thing to prove or disprove even in one’s own head, which adds a degree of plausible deniability for both sides and makes it even easier to justify. But personally, just as I was told in Sunday School that you shouldn’t take the Christ out of Christmas, you also shouldn’t put it in. So a Merry Giftmas to all and to all a good night.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Steal Resolve: The 11th Day of Giftmas 2009

Steal Resolve: The 11th Day of Giftmas 2009

I was born on New Years Day 35 years ago, which makes me almost 28. So New Year’s resolutions have a little more meaning to me, as does New Year’s Eve and everything else that comes with the turning of a new year. For many years, I took great pride in getting together with Mike, Joe and Kevin every year on New Year’s Eve – whether in Baltimore, Boston or Edinburgh – so I could bring in the New Year with my best friends. Or maybe it was just habit. Or maybe I was just trying to cling onto a part of my life when I was actually happy while turning the page on not just a year, but an age. Or maybe they are my best friends and I try to use my birthday as an excuse to guilt them all into getting together. That sounds more like me.

I am one of the saps that makes New Year’s Resolutions though. And I’ve managed to keep a few of them too. My most proud accomplishment was giving up soda for all of 2006. With the exception of whatever they squirted in the top of a Long Island Ice Tea. I noticed I was going through a 30-pack of coke a week, which isn’t healthy or cheap. And guess what happened? Yep. I replaced it with beer and liquor. This was not any cheaper and cannot have possibly been any healthier. But I did it, nonetheless.

So now I’m back to about a 30-pack a week. But at least it’s diet coke. So I was going to try to do it again. And then I got the itch on Jan 2nd. And so I chugged a 6-pack of Yuengling. And a fifth of tequila. And did a line of cocaine. This is when I decided to take a different approach. So what I’ve decided to do is make a deal with myself. For every day I write one of these rants/stories/whiny diatribes and upload it to my website so that the five of you can read it, I’m allowed to have soda. Kind of an incentive laden contract, if you will, rather than a denial just for the hell of it. So instead of depriving myself of diet coke and getting drunk every night, I’m using my addiction to caffeine for the forces of good. Or at least for the forces of updating my blog. For the moment, we’ll call it good. Until I start to upload sentence fragments daily just to fuel my addiction. It’s only Jan 18th and I’m already 13 uploads in the hole.

Just to clarify, I don’t need any help uploading anything into my hole. Thanks for the offer, Russ.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Like a Good Neighbor: The 10th Day of Giftmas 2009

Like a Good Neighbor: The 10th Day of Giftmas 2009

My life has been fairly blessed over the past five to ten years with one very obvious and distinct exception: my Sisyphean automotive life. The car gods have been making me roll a Buick up a hill, only to forget to set the emergency brake and watch it roll back down again every night. So maybe they’ve had a change of heart. Or maybe the god of the law of averages finally took over. Either way, I was just given a huge gift in the form of a fender bender last month.

Now I realize a car accident typically doesn’t qualify as a gift. It was the first thing in the morning, I was confused, and it wasn’t even a hot chick that hit me. It was some old guy in an Explorer used the front end of my Civic like a ramp. He was backing into a parking spot with apparently no knowledge that I was just sitting behind him, desperately trying to find my horn. On a 1994 Civic, the horn is located in two small buttons by the thumbs. I spent way too long desperately beating the air bag hoping it would honk, as I was not practiced in activating the stupidly-placed horn strips. By the time I looked down at the gear shift, the Explorer had already explored the hood of my car.

No one was hurt as this all happened at about 2 MPH. In fact, very little damage was actually done. My headlight was scuffed up a bit and the fiberglass was cracked. After a couple days of talking to the other guy’s insurance, an agent came out to inspect it. He left saying simply “We’ll mail you a check next week.” That was it. No mechanics, no lawyers and no bullshit.

I had completely forgot about it until I got the check a couple weeks afterwards. I figured on about a couple hundred bucks. $1004.46! Thank you, State Farm! And there’s no way I’m going to ever need that for the car. A little windex and a green sharpie and you can’t even tell anything happened. I figure that it knocks the resale value down a bit, but that doesn’t matter with me. I’ve run every car I’ve ever owned right into the ground, most of them literally. I’ve owned 5 cars before this one and I haven’t sold any of them. Unless you count scrap heaps. So this is basically free money. I’m going to start to look for people in tall cars and follow them around the city until they need to park. I figure if I can do this once a week, I can make a decent living and finally afford to quit my day job. I don’t know why more people don’t do this.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Cat Scratch Fever: The 9th Day of Giftmas 2009

Cat Scratch Fever: The 9th Day of Giftmas 2009

If wearing my kitten's collar as a bracelet to remind me of her while she gets her kitty surgery makes me less of a man, well then I don't want to be right.

Poe is fine. And I did wear her collar around all day, partly as a reminder, but almost entirely for the sake of telling this story to people. I’ve given away all my man cards already, no point in hiding my hand. And as I found out when I went to pick her up, she learned how to hiss at no extra charge.

I had this same surgery done with Clementine, my Ohio cat. And the greatest part of it was seeing her wake from her anesthetic-induced haze. She pushed open the rest of the kitty door, wobbled the 7 inches to the kitty box I had placed in front of her, and laid down with her head and one paw in the sand and the rest of her, complete with newly shaved belly, on the rug, tail still in the cage. After fighting with gravity for a few minutes , she then regained her balance and, much like a sorority girl in heels after a couple Water Towers at Brick Street on a Thursday night, fell back the other way. Like the good father I was, I made sure she didn’t hit anything as she fell and managed to take a lot of pictures of the event to eventually show to her boyfriends when she brought them back to the house to watch a movie in her room with the door open. This continued with varying levels of pleasure for me for a couple hours.

However, this time Poe was kept to be monitored overnight, depriving me of the one minor pleasure that came out of shelling out $200 and admitting to myself and the cute girl at the counter, who noticed my collar/bracelet, that I was now a cat owner. That sucked. They wouldn’t even take pictures for me. And when I showed up to pick her up, they said that Poe was “being fussy” and I would have to take her hospital collar off when I got home because they refused to do it. This wasn’t a good sign. The next sign that wasn’t good was the one where the first thing Poe said to me when I got her back, was “HHHHHHHH.” I don’t know how to spell the violent, cobra-esque hiss that came out of her mouth for the first time ever, but that’s how it sounded.

I felt horrible. I’d just taken away her spirit. Not to mention her woman parts. I wanted to assure her that we were going back home to mommy and the fat kitty, but sticking my hands in that cage seemed to have the same effect of that time I managed to take the safeguard off the pencil sharpener back in 5th grade. So I put on her favorite CD, the Bangles. Not even that made her feel better. I told her how sexy the lead singer was, but then I figured she probably didn’t even like girls. Or humans. Or sex. So I put on Air Supply, the most asexual band I had. Same disgruntled meow. I started to realize it had nothing to do with the musical selection. After about 20 minutes of meowing, she started at the cage like the wood-chipper again. At least this was a familiar response. Maybe she’d go back to her old Poeness after all.

And it now appears as though she has. She’s back up on the counter breaking wine glasses and Sweetie is shitting on the rug again. Poe, it’s good to have you back. Kinda.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Kitty Climax: The 8th Day of Giftmas 2009

Kitty Climax: The 8th Day of Giftmas 2009

I’m not a big fan of Drew Carey, but I’m not going to leave my cat unspayed just to spite him. So I scheduled Poe’s little kitty surgery for this Wednesday. Unfortunately, due to a poor miscalculation based on data I just kinda made up, my cat went into heat a month before I figured she would. So now I have a poor horny kitty struggling through her transformation into adolescence as I type. And if you’ve never seen a cat in heat, it’s unbearable both for her and her owners. It’s like she’s on ecstasy. She rolls around on the rug and the bathmat and rubs her head on everything she walks by – the table leg, the TV stand, the sharp corner of a bike pedal. Everything just feels sooooo gooood. And she walks around sticking her ass up in the air looking around for boy kitties to come up behind her. She’s scratching at our cabinets looking for them too. And she meows all the time, calling out to these boy kitties to come beat down the door and satisfy her newly discovered womanly needs.

I’ve been telling people she went into heat already and about 37 people said “Yeah, I know how she feels, heh heh.” No you don’t. And if you were thinking that same thought as I was typing, you can either feel bad that you’re as predictable as everyone else, or you can be excited you’re just like everyone else, depending on your own self-worth. Also, some people tried to compare it to when dogs go into heat. Though I appreciate you trying to sympathize, you can stop. Dogs in heat and cats in heat is as different as getting out-of-a-bad-relationship horny and getting-out-of-a-20-year-prison-sentence horny. Now you show me a dog in heat who just spent a hair shy of 3 years in jail, and I’ll give you that one.

The last cat I had in Ohio was in a really bad way, as they say. Like a life-sentence-with-no-conjugal-visits bad way. She was to the point where if she didn’t get her kitty surgery soon, she was going to die. Not because of that, but because Seth was going to kill her. But really, it was incredibly annoying. It was to the point where I was about to take care of it myself just to shut her up. Kill two birds with one stone if you know what I’m sayin. You don’t have to tell me. I know how wrong that is. But really, I was thinking about going out to find a boy kitty for her, but I’m not that generous of a wing man. If anybody was getting pussy in that house, it was going to be me. Relax, that one wasn’t as bad.

So I dropped Poe off at the Kitty Hospital today and I am picking her up tomorrow. And I caught a stroke of luck. On the way there, Poe was stuck in the kitty carrier. She hates the kitty carrier. After about 20 minutes of meowing and trying to dig out of the plastic bottom of the carrier, she went to work at the metal gate. Like a crack addict trying to get to her crack. Her claws were flying off her paws like a tree-shredder. That horrifying experience was apparently enough to snap her out of heat. I guess if you were thrown into a cage that you could barely turn around in and thrown in a van for an hour, you’d probably forget how horny you were too. Even after a 20-year jail sentence. So the surgery went fine and I am going to pick her up tomorrow. Looks like I don’t have to have that father/daughter talk after all. Maybe a different one. About how I took out her uterus just when she finally wanted to use it.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

The Hierarchy of Dorkdom: The 7th Day of Giftmas 2009

The Hierarchy of Dorkdom: The 7th Day of Giftmas 2009

So I feel I need to make a small addendum to my recent post about fantasy football. See, I started playing Magic the Gathering in college. I understand that some people thought it was dorky and I was willing to accept that. After all, I also played football and talked to girls. Of course I did wear a pink hat and didn’t drink. I can understand why I confused a lot of people.

So anyway, I played Magic in college. My friends who played Magic also played Dungeons & Dragons, known in and out of the dork world as D&D. I was willing to sacrifice the social status that I would lose playing Magic because I liked it. I did not have the same passion for the much dorkier D&D. After all, I also played football and talked to girls and I could ill afford the D&D hit to Social Dustin status. Let’s just forget for the moment about that pink hat thing again.

So I had a conversation with my old roommate, John, about how I met somebody who did this live role playing thing. Instantly, he and all of his entire campaign of fictitious elves and wizards laughed a loud chuckle and told me that LARPers, or Live Action Role Players, were dorks. It was amusing to me to hear someone I considered a dork calling another group of people dorks. And I was telling this to a friend of mine who I play fantasy football with, who started laughing at this Magic-playing dork talking about these other dorks. The argument that Magic is a strategy game and in no way do I ever pretend to be a fire-breathing goblin was lost on him. And I’m sure somewhere, there’s a poker player laughing at that dork. And this is when I realized there aren’t just dorks and cool people. There are levels to dorkdom and a hierarchy to which we perceive each other as dorks based on our gaming preferences (the fact that I even used the word “gaming” bumps me up to a 3 on a dork scale from 1-10).

So there is a dork hierarchy and at the top of this hierarchy, we have professional lumberjacks and Bear Grylls. And at the bottom, we have Furries. For those of you that don’t know – first of all, congratulations. That makes you that much cooler. But Furries are people who dress up like animals and go into a park at night and all have sex with each other. I know what you’re thinking. Dorks.

So provided that you don’t go into the park at night dressed like Fozzy the Bear looking to do it prairie dog style and you also don’t skydive onto glaciers in your boxers, you likely fall somewhere between 1 and 9 on the dork chart. Where exactly that is likely is exactly where you think it is. Plus 2 or 3. And maybe one day, I’ll make that chart. But that would add another level of dorkiness I can ill afford, as I’m currently planning a date to play Munchkin with a couple 30-year-old men.

Friday, January 1, 2010

4/11ths Life Crisis: The 6th Day of Giftmas 2009

4/11ths Life Crisis: The 6th Day of Giftmas 2009

I’ll be honest. I woke up crying today. Apparently that’s natural for people who turn 35. It’s also natural at this age to, no matter how long you shake it out at the end, have a little bit of pee drip out when you pull your pants up at the urinal. Don’t fight it; embrace it. Fall in love with denim. But anyway, I did a little research yesterday and found out that Paul Reiser was 35 when he came out with Mad About You. Now I know this is just the first day of the year, but I don’t think I’m on pace to even have a pilot episode of my sitcom ready by the end of 2010. I’m probably more likely to get my pilot license.

So I started to think about how I meant to do something with my life by now. I should have been Paul Reiser by now. Even just his earlier stuff from Aliens and Beverly Hills Cop would have sufficed by 35. Heck, I’d even settle for Greg Evigan’s career (the other father from 2 ½ Dads). But instead, I’m toiling around in the obscurity of the Greater Columbia Stand-up scene at best, forcing intellectual humor on people who want dick jokes 5 minutes at a time. So what the hell happened?

Well, in the midst of my crying fit a couple hours ago, I figured something out. I don’t know Paul Reiser. I don’t know his life. The real guy I fell in love with was Paul Buchman, his character on Mad About You. The one married to Helen Hunt (or I should say Jamie Buchman). That’s the guy I am. Every day. And Jen is my Jamie Buchman. I briefly fell victim to the Reiser/Buchman Inversion. This is what I aspired to be back in high school and college, Paul Buchman. That was my dream. Not Paul Reiser. That was a fantasy, and one I don’t even know that I’d want to live out. Though it would be nice to bang a young Helen Hunt. I still hold on to that fantasy.

So I controlled my uncontrollable sobbing with the realization that I am living out my fantasy. One of them at least. The one that involved two cats, not two hot college chicks dressed like them. And I’m not blind to the fact that this could all be justification and a poorly disguised coping mechanism, but I’m OK with that. The reality is that the alternative is spending 10-15 years of my life in poverty dedicated to busting my ass just to possibly make it in a world I’m not sure I’d enjoy – with no guarantee of success. And that’s just to give myself the best chance at success in the entertainment world. I could live out my happy Paul Buchman life and accidentally backdoor my way in anyway, maybe through this blog or forcing intellectual humor on people who want dick jokes. Who knows? And in case you didn’t recognize it, that’s the hope portion of the coping mechanism, necessary for survival at my age. That and denim.

Quote of the Day 1/1/10

“In show business, it takes 10 years to create an overnight success. You’ve heard that, right? But what you don’t hear is that that’s the exact same amount of time it takes to create a bitter failure.”

- Marc Maron


It only took me 2 years. Think of all the time I saved.

I don’t have the answers, I don’t have a plan,

Dustin Buchman.


Still Standing Right Here…