cocktails with kevin

33, rue de Poissy, 75005 Paris FRANCE

2009-01-10T20:13:00.000-08:00

Has anyone else booked here? Has anyone stayed here before? If so, kindly shoot me an email to 4kevinblack@gmail.com.

Thanks

Retour à l'expéditeur

2008-08-03T13:42:00.000-07:00

A family member found this letter while going through some old items. While my French has become a bit rusty over the years, I believe this is a letter written to an unknown penpal.

Briefly the letter describes a technical school in Voiron, France. Worth noting is the author's description of the cafeteria and the dormitories. He says that the cafeteria is very very [his emhasis; not mine]well organized with approximately 60 marble tables arranged in two rows with a 150-meter aisle going down the middle of them. The dormitories he describes as having between 50 and 55 beds a piece.

Now check out the archival photos I found on the net of the very thing he was describing by clicking here and cyber-visiting the Lycee scientifique at technologique.

Wild.

Anyone know who Leon Berus is?

My toddler lost a tooth

2008-03-03T10:15:00.000-08:00

My child lost a tooth over the weekend, and I'm sure that had she been five or six I would have relished her right of passage into budding childhood but since she is not yet two, I was not overly ecstatic to hear about the incident. As soon as I got word, my mind went wild thinking about the various horrific possibilities. What about infection? Tooth fragments and such?

Besides, I'm a language teacher and I know we rely on our two front teeth for our interdental and labio-dental fricatives like in the words thimble and this or fairy and very. What would become of her speech development? Would she develop a lisp?

Anyway apparently she was sitting in a grown-up chair chugging happily on her sippy cup when she tried to scoot her chair back by pushing on the table with her feet. This trick works in her house but not at the home of the family where she was staying at the time. Instead of scooting back in her chair and getting down from the dining room table, the chair just toppled backward. She lifted her arms possibly to try and catch herself before hitting the floor, and because her tooth was wedged into the slit in the spout on the cup lid, the leverage of her arm along with the cup popped the tooth out clean as a whistle.

Yuck. Parental fears aside, just thinking about how it must have felt gives this dentist phobe the creeps.

Meryl is perhaps lucky that although she wasn't with her parents at the time, she was with my brother and his wife who have successfully raised two kids of their own and were quick to react. They mended her and comforted her the best they could and located the tooth to make sure it was indeed all out. Panicky phone calls were made, tears were shed, blood was mopped up. They even made Meryl scrambled eggs afterward and then gave her a bath.

And when a kid loses a baby tooth, that's all that can be done. I know because I confirmed this on the google. It was the F tooth for those keeping score at home. A maxillary central incisor, but now it's gone.

Well, it's not gone exactly. I have it in a Tupperware container which right now is still on the back seat of the car because I took her along with it to the pediatric dentist this morning. But the tooth is not going back in her mouth.

Taking a toddler to the dentist by the way is not an easy endeavor. While my daughter was quick to sit in the dentist chair, she was not particularly happy to be confined in it. When it came time for the hygienist to take x-rays, I had to sit in the chair with Meryl in between my legs. Then I had to fold my arms across my chest, grab her little hands and hold her legs down with mine. I felt like I was administering a wrestling hold, and let me tell you, my kid can squirm.

Nothing that anyone did to herat the dentist's office today was painful but for someone who's not yet two, I think it's probably scary to have Dad hold you down while two strangers force your jaw down on a bite wing. She also mistook the x-ray machine for a vacuum cleaner, something for which she already harbors an abnormal fear, so after it was all over she was tearfully crying vacuum . . . no . . . vacuum . . . no. Wouldn't you know the first x-rays didn't take which meant we had to go through the whole damn thing again?

She wasn't much more accommodating for the dentist, who himself couldn't have been nicer. Again his exam consisted mostly of wrangling and hog-tying and, at least in theory, looking at her remaining teeth. If I were this guy, I swear I think I would have just pretended to inspect them to appease the accompanying parent. I can't imagine how many times this poor dentist has been bitten.

Eventually Meryl will go back to be fitted with a retainer-like contraption that gets wired and cemented to her two-year molars. When she has two-year molars, that is. The dentist does color matching and bite molding, so school pictures will still feature a full set of nicely aligned pearly whites. All this to the hefty tune of $695. But right now she's without a tooth.

I am slowly warming up to her new smile, but damn, I miss the one she had. I have bad teeth and I wanted my kid to have good teeth, which I guess she does. She just doesn't have all of her good teeth.

Oddly enough though, she doesn't seem to care one way or the other. The next day when I asked her what she did at her aunt and uncle's house she said nonchalantly Bath . . . puppy. So instead I asked her what had happened at the dining room table to which she replied very simply:

Eggs . . .

Fatherhood - the other F-word

2008-02-29T11:06:00.000-08:00

Why is it that when a mother is pushing a kid in a stroller no one bothers give her a second thought yet when a father is out with his kid in a stroller he gets comments like Is Daddy babysitting today? If a woman takes her kid down to the mailbox to greet the mailman does the mailman hand her the mail with a smile and say Are you playing Mrs. Dad today? I didn't think so. Why is it then that our country can fathom electing a woman for president yet can't grasp the concept of a dad taking care of his kids?

My last babysitting gig was over several waist sizes ago and probably took place while Reagan was in office. Calling me Mr. Mom not only demeans what I do everyday but it also demeans what my wife does everyday. I know we might roll differently than you do in your family, but you know what? When my wife and I sat down to decide what was in the best interest of our household, we didn't consult you. If you see me out with my daughter I'm not babysitting her. I'm parenting her.

Even though it goes beyond emasculation (denigrating fatherhood to a high schooler who snoops through cupboards and eats from the fridge), I am not so much insulted by the babysitting comment as I am baffled by it. Does no one see the grossness in this? It's as though people who say it expect fathers to impregnate and disappear. And people wonder why so many babies are born out of wedlock? I'm not trying to alibi for so-called deadbeat dads, but maybe we need to start pointing the finger at the man in the mirror instead of the one on the Montel Williams Who's My Baby's Daddy episode.

I used to be a member of a list serve for at-home dads until I got sick of guys complaining that they and their kids weren't welcome into certain playgroups. A handbook written for at-home dads even has a letter from a guy offering advice and one of his suggestions is to not get bent out of shape when people call you Mr. Mom. But enough is enough already. It's insulting, yes, but the worst part is that people don't understand why.

The deep end is nigh and I can see myself going off it, so allow me to instead direct your attention to Mom-101 who's said it beautifully in the past. That post features a picture of her first daughter, who has a dad who stays home with her, almost two years ago. If you scan forward in her blog to present day you'll see there are more recent pictures of her, and begosh and begorrah, the kid looks like she turned out okay. Recently Denguy from Toronto responded here to two articles he found online talking about the sordid mystery surrounding at-home fatherhood and I think some similar frustration was voiced there.

Now to the defense of others I will say that although its not how we roll at our house, I do understand a presumption of a father who goes to work and a mother who stays home. That's how my siblings and I grew up, and it worked out well that way. Same goes for my wife. In the handbook I mentioned earlier in fact there's a dedication to the contributing fathers' own mothers who they say taught them how to do what they do. I would concur with that also. If I hadn't had a mother who was as effective as mine was, I don't think I would have been able to take on the role that I am right now.

My mother taught me the importance of things like reading to my child and engaging her imagination. I also credit my mother when I hear myself saying things like Look, it's 3:30 and I still haven't gotten this house clean yet and it's raining so traffic's going to be terrible and your mother's going to be in a bad mood when she gets home and I have no idea what I should make for dinner. I also usually add something like so quit screaming but I don't give my mom credit for that one. Maybe that comes from my dad's side.

You know what though? As annoying as it is to me, I'm not going to change the nation's attitude toward fatherhood in a single blog post and besides that it's now 3:30. It's not raining, but even still I've got to make the bed, get this kid a fresh diaper, and pull out our tax stuff because tonight's the night Elaine and I are going to try and figure out how we're going to put the fuck to the taxman. Come to think of it, this marks the first time I've used the F-word in my blog, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Fatherhood is not just for Michael Keaton anymore.

The day I joined the circus

2008-02-26T18:34:00.000-08:00

My wife has always held a certain affection for circuses, and while when we travel we don't necessarily go out of our way to look for one, we are quick to buy tickets once we spot one. Not counting Ringling Brothers and Cirque du Soleil which we've seen here at home, we've sat under the big top in France, Belgium and Hungary. While the circus in Budapest offered the most as far as animal exploitainment went (ice skating polar bears and kittens doing "tricks"), the Bouglione Circus we saw in Belgium was truly the greatest show on Earth, not just because I got to take part in it but because of the way Elaine and I got there.

Belgium is not really one but two separate countries, one part speaking French and the other speaking Dutch. While my Dutch is limited to the restaurant basics of red wine, white wine and check please, most Dutch speakers also speak some degree of English which made vacationing in a Dutch-speaking country easy. Even still, Elaine and I found ourselves venturing into the francophone Walloon region where I could dust off my college major. Sometimes we even went as far as northern France or into Luxembourg for the same reason. When we were strolling through Namur and spotted the poster advertising ticket sales for the Bouglione Circus at a nearby record shop, we took note of the directions and headed to the store.

Actually the purpose of visiting this record shop quickly became twofold when Elaine wanted to know if I could ask if they sold a CD by Princess Superstar. No matter that neither of us had heard of Princess Superstar before seeing her rap Bad Babysitter on Belgian MTV. Elaine still liked the song. It turns out Princess Superstar is American, but tended to fare better on the UK charts. Listen to the song, and I dare say you'll discover why. I did inquire, but the shop owner, to his credit, did not stock anything by Princess Superstar. Alas.

I had no problem scoring our tickets for the show that day but the proprietor of the record store explained that the circus started shortly and asked if we knew how to get there. We did not, and even with my wife's map reading abilities being as good as they are, I was worried that either my translation skills or my pisspoor sense of direction might get in the way of us arriving on time. And as parking spaces are a rare commodity in old European towns, we were probably at least a mile or so from the car at this point. Lucky for us, a woman in the store was sympathetic to our plight.

"If you need a ride, I'd be happy to give you lift," the woman said in her native French.

"We don't want to impose," I said in my broken French.

"It's no problem, " she assured us, "it's on our way home."

With that, her daughter, who must have been all of nine or ten years old, left the CDs in the pop music section and joined her mother's side smiling.

Now, of my wife and I, I am probably the gutsier of the two when it comes to forgoing stranger danger. I've picked up hitchhikers, I've accepted a ride from a stranger in order to fill an empty gas can and I don't mind striking up conversations in the checkout line at the grocery store. My wife on the other hand will typically not exchange more than three words with the guy sitting next to her on an airplane for fear that he end up wanting to make a woman suit out of her skin while Precious gnaws on chicken bones and the song Goodbye Horses plays in the background. My wife's not a size 14 by the way -- I'm just using this as an example. Regardless, being in a foreign country somehow invites you to let your guard down and when you come from one of the most violent countries on the planet, as we Americans do, you just are quick to bank on a mom and her kid in a record store not being serial killers. So we took them up on the offer.

Elaine and I sat in the backseat. Obviously the mom drove and the girl sat in the passenger seat next to her facing backward toward us for the duration of the ride. The daughter wanted to know where we were from, and when we told her we were American she asked us what the American euro looked like. The mother explained to her daughter that the United States, not being party to the European Union, did not have a euro coin. Then she explained to us that her daughter collected the different coins from the -- at that time 12 but now 27 -- member nations. Bully for her, I thought, for taking an interest in the Union and its currency. After all it was Belgium along with Holland and Luxembourg that invented the concept of the European Union back in the 1950s.

I pulled a dollar from my wallet and offered it to her as a euro substitute. The mother tried to politely refuse the offering, but when I assured her that it was essentially the same value as a euro coin, she let her daughter keep it. Interestingly enough, when I gave her that dollar back in April of 2002, had she traded me for a one-euro coin, I would have gotten the short end of the stick, having exchanged a dollar for what was equivalent at the time to a mere 85 cents. Were we to each have held on to our traded monies however until 2008, that kid would have taken a bath and I would have increased my investment by more than 50%. Ah, the curse of hindsight!

After a brief conversation and for the mere price of one US dollar, the mother-and-daughter team dropped us off at our destination just a short walk from the big top of the Bouglione Circus. Elaine forced me to pose for a picture with the two of them, and I obliged. The mother and I shared that we didn't much care for having our picture taken, but the daughter seemed to relish the opportunity. We exchanged email addresses as is the custom in the post-Y2K era and went on our respective ways.

Once Elaine and I presented our tickets we were escorted to our seats. Worth noting is that while the role of the venue usher has been all but quashed here in America, it's still taken seriously throughout Europe. The person who shows you where you sit expects a tip. Having already been party to a circus in Provence I was well aware of this, but another guy who was from who-knows-where refused and the scantily-clad shapely carny just stood there with her hand out asking, "De la service pour moi, monsieur?" until she reluctantly gave up and tended to other customers. I gave; He didn't. Guess who was asked to come on stage?

It was the last act before intermission and a very animated ringmaster was recruiting four volunteers slash victims to come down to the center ring, me being the fourth. There were four small stools, each about a foot high, arranged in a square and we were to each have a seat on one of them. I sat facing one direction while the guy across from me sat facing the other such that his left side was facing my left side. The other two guys were instructed to do the same so that each of us was sitting perpendicularly to the guys closets to us and each of our backs was to someone else's stool.

Being on center stage in a big top makes for quite an interesting perspective. For one thing it smells different than it does when you're sitting up in the stands. Sure, back in my original seat I enjoyed being surrounded by the aroma of cotton candy and my wife's sugared popcorn, but once on stage I had to breathe through my mouth just to avoid smelling the sawdust and animal dung. Spotlights shone on me also so even though I couldn't really make out anyone's face in the audience because of the glare, I knew that all eyes were now on me, so I didn't want to do anything to make me look goofy. Well, at least no goofier than I already looked sitting catty corner to three other guys in the middle of sawdust and circus excrement.

The ringmaster motioned for us to raise our hands above our heads, demonstrating with his own arms what he wanted us to do. Then he walked around our formation making small adjustments to our arms, basically just making a show and building suspense for the audience. Once he was satisfied with our posture he quickly went back around the circle only now as he passed each of us he put one hand on our forehead and took us by the hand with the other. As a slide whistle from the band played a descending glissando, the ringmaster gently pushed us backward so that now each of us, while still perched on our respective stools, was leaning back with our heads in the lap of some other guy we didn't know from Adam. So much for not looking goofy.

The audience loved this judging by the sound of their laughter and as silly as I might have felt I was chuckling too. So were my other three costars, one of whom made some comment in French I couldn't quite make out. Though socially awkward so far it was a pretty easy stunt to perform. Then there was a drum roll that I knew must have been foreshadowing some show-stopping feat that was going to involve the four of us. Indeed I was correct.

Again the ringmaster paraded around the four of us as the band's percussionist continued his drum roll and watched for his cue. Then, accompanied by the crash of a cymbal, the ringmaster swiped the stool out from under the first guy and tossed it aside. Guy number two? Same thing. Again with three and finally me. There we were, four strangers with our heads resting on one another's laps and each of our weight being supported by the guy whose lap we were laying in. More audience laughter.

Holding this pose wasn't terribly uncomfortable at first, but I could tell from the moment the last stool, mine, was removed from the equation that I was going to be limited in the time my leg muscles would endure this. This slight tension reminded me of a high school gym class exercise a coach would make us do where we had to sit with out backs up against a wall and our thighs parallel to the floor. I hadn't thought to size up the other three guys to see if maybe there was one of them who was less fit than I was, but somehow I doubted it. I'm not one of those self-deprecating Americans that thinks of Europeans as somehow more cultured and better than us, but they are on the whole more physically fit.

None of this would have mattered except that because I'm rather fair skinned and these guys were all three swarthy complected, I knew any audience member could have easily pegged me as the American in the group. I might have gotten away with passing for British, but Brits tend to wear clothes that look more like what the rest of Europeans wears while I wear typical American clothes with the signature Turget circles. To put it succinctly, I didn't want to be the weakest link in the chain whose knees buckled first. It was a matter of national integrity.

Apparently I was not alone in my patriotism. The other three men held out as long as I did. And so after about ten seconds, which apparently was starting to cut into the scheduled intermission time, a handler brought out an elephant into the ring. There was more laughter and applause from the audience which might have served as stamina for my staying power, but lucky for my legs another one of my three allies gave in. Because this formation is only as strong as the weakest link the rest of us lost our balance and came toppling down. Yet more laughter, more applause and then the music cued the intermission.

Elaine and I looked for souvenirs but the only things offered as I recall were children's toys that either sparkled or made noise. Nothing that denoted the circus we had gone to and basically all things that you could have bought at any circus on the planet. No posters to be found which is what we were hoping for. My wife was sure to snap several pictures though.

Once the circus was over Elaine and I decided it was time for dinner. After a leisurely walk down the hill which thankfully was guided by a Scottish woman who lived in the area with her Belgian husband, we found our way to a restaurant there in town called Brasserie Henry located at 3 place Saint-Aubain. Their business card also has a website which I'd link to if it still worked but apparently it doesn't. Oh wait, the powers of the google have led me to discover Brasserie Henry now has its own domain name. You can check them out by pointing your web browser to brasseriehenry.net. This place must be popular because we hadn't so much as sat down for five minutes before a large group came filing in. Then Elaine said, "Hey, aren't those the people from the circus?'

I wasn't quite sure at first but once I pictured these diners in glitter and grease paint I realized that Elaine was right. Indeed several of the performers from Cirque Bouglione were dining alongside us at this same restaurant. Always the table hopper, I didn't hesitate to go over to thank them for a such a wonderful time. We chatted briefly. One woman also spoke good English and was quick to tell me when I get home I should see her son who was at that time performing in a circus in New York. To outsiders, when you introduce yourself as American they often think New York is right around the corner and Hollywood is down the street.

Circuses do have a certain allure about them that I think is due not just to their entertainment value but also to the mystique they carry. I know some would find it unbecoming to travel in trailers and live around exotic animals. Some people I know couldn't get past having to attend weekly meetings with guys in bright wigs and floppy shoes. I on the other hand have always thought it would be an adventure to run away and join the circus. Sadly though I don't think there's much call for a contortionist whose abilities are limited to putting his feet behind his head and turning his tongue all the way around. Nor is anyone I know looking to hire a not-so-strong man. There's always the band.

Did I mention I can play the slide whistle?

Becoming her bad father

2008-02-25T05:09:00.000-08:00

I am quickly becoming the father I had hoped not to become. Sure my daughter and I are sitting side by side. She is standing up on the couch next to me with her arm on my shoulder. She is happy; I am happy. She's smiling, and I'm smiling.

Why?

The reason is because I am typing away on my laptop and she is looking at television. She was never immune to television, but I had hoped we could keep it a treat that only reared its ugly head when she went to go visit family or friends. I am not one of those people who thinks there are quality TV shows for children. All shows reflect varying degrees of badness, especially when it comes to children sitting in front of them. Television teaches children that everything should be entertaining and fun. Then when they are put into situations that are not entertaining and fun they get bored. Compare hours of television viewing and Ritalin sales in this country to other Western nations and see what kind of correlation you come up with. Also worth noting is the number of kids who win national competitions like the spelling bee or science bowl who also don't have a television set in their home.

OK, enough preaching. On with bloggery.

Today Meryl decided that she did not want to eat her breakfast at the dining room table where we normally eats. She wanted to head down the hall to eat her cereal bar in front of the boob tube. Because she already woke us up at five in the morning and my wife's car wouldn't start which caused further household upheaval, I just wasn't up for fighting a battle that early in the day. I acquiesced and here we are. I'm not telling you this because I think it's OK to plunk kids down in front of a TV set. I'm confessing so that I feel shame and maybe will then have the energy to get up and do something else.

Because I do think if I am going to minimize the badness my kid sees on television I should at least limit her viewing to things that have a marginal amount of educational value, we have begun watching some shows on PBS. Here's what I don't like about each of her favorite shows.

BARNIE AND FRIENDS- Why this guy is still on television after all these years is beyond me. Apparently his handlers changed his medication somewhere in the series because he's not as manic anymore and now he's easier to understand than when the show first debuted. Baby Bop also seems to have acquired more of a vocabulary and no longer babbles incoherently the way she used to. Even still this show just seems like one goob fest after another.

CAILLOU - Caillou is an animated Canuck who at the age of four goes around whining like an incompetent boob because he can't do all the things that the big kids can do. And he has no hair! Both his parents have hair. His grandfather has hair. Is there some genetic disorder about Caillou we don't know about? Is it something we'll have to figure out after having put together unrelated clues kinda like on Lost? This shouldn't bother me but it does.

CLIFFORD - Clifford, if you're reading this, it's not you. It's that cocky Emily Elizabeth who tries on every episode to usurp your stardom. If you are asked to do another season with her on the show, you need a new agent.

SUPER WHY - This is by far Meryl's favorite program. For those not in the know Super Why, Wyatt being his Clark Kent name, is one of the Super Readers along with Princess Presto, Wonder Red and Alpha Pig. Sure, they like to think they teach reading and all, but I have some problems with this show.

Why are three human beings running around Storybook Village with an anthropomorphic pig? Furthermore Alpha Pig is really the one who has most of the super power. Super Why just gets most of the credit because he's the one who plays captain exposition for all the slow kids who couldn't otherwise follow the storyline and then wraps up the show at the end. Super Why always provides the moral and gives the shakedown to the archetype, be it the big bad wolf or the witch or whoever.

Super Why does have a catchy theme song though, and I find myself borrowing lines from the show occasionally. When Meryl won't sit on the potty because the kid's been on a potty strike now for months, I'll refer to her potty seat as a Y-flyer which is what the super readers use to get from one place to another quickly. Or yesterday I shouted as I was taking off her diaper Super Meryl with the power to potty! She wasn't convinced.

Alright, show's over. The mush factor in our brains has just jumped three more points. Not only that, but people who complain about the quality of what's on television annoy me almost as much as the shows themselves. The solution isn't a microchip in the TV or, worse yet, relying on our government or third parties to tell us what's good and what's not.

The solution is turning the television off.

Antofagasta : Where happy feet and yankees meet

2008-02-18T09:35:00.000-08:00

On two occasions I got the opportunity to visit Antofagasta, Chile while my father was working with their major electricity provider down there. Chile is a long skinny country spanning the western coast of South America, and Antofagasta finds itself in almost the northernmost tip. Elaine and I weren't yet married but my parents were kind enough to invite her to come along as well which made Chile our first and second overseas trips together.

Each time we stayed there we lived the life of the Anglo expat. We ate homemade empanadas and drank pisco sours. My dad rented a house that was the former home of a previous Miss Chile and it came complete with some fine antique furniture, including a pair of velvety cushioned throne-like chairs. Rumor had it that one of the chairs had been loaned to the Vatican during the Pope's visit to the country in 1987. We didn't know which one, so we made sure to sit in both of them so that maybe we could pick up some of His Holiness's papal super powers. Additionally one of the neighborhood stray cats pegged us as the animal-loving softies that we are and adopted us as her new owners at least for the duration of our stay. We named her Chica.

One of the most memorable brushes with wildlife I had though while in Chile was during a tour my dad had arranged with a local fisherman who had one of his underlings take us out on his boat. We went maybe a mile or so off the coast of a smaller less affluent town called Mejillones. There were six of us in the group: my mother and father, my older niece, a bilingual coworker of my dad's and Elaine and I. Plus the fisherman's underling himself so that made seven.

We all strapped on life vests and climbed into the boat. Somehow my dad managed to bump into the fisherman when he was trying to steady the boat for us to make it easier to get in, and the fisherman fell into the drink. He quickly climbed back up onto the dock and tried to profess that it was not my father's fault. While I don't think any of us said otherwise, we all thought that it was. We managed to all board the boat just the same and were off to what would later come to be known in our family folklore as Penguin Island.

Penguin Island was just that, an island that was home mainly to penguins. Sure, they also had a few seals and gulls because the mor liberal penguins refused to build the fence, but the island was basically a chunk of volcanic rock covered from one end to the other with penguins and penguin excrement. Big penguins, small penguins and penguins of every size in between. I can tell you from personal experience that penguins are loud and penguins smell.

The part of the journey that most stays with me to this day though occurred after my dad's coworker had the boat captain turn off the motor. Once the engine was silenced there was a peaceful and yet awe-inspiring calm that I cannot readily describe. We were floating along the western side of Penguin Island so the mainland was out of our view. There was nothing but ocean, island and us. For a brief moment it seemed like nothing else mattered anyway. Nothing existed outside of our narrow perception.

I don't just mean there were no bills to pay and no bosses to answer to (after all mine was still on the boat.) What I mean is that somehow for those few minutes of my life I had no obligation, certainly no luxury, but most importantly no overbearing external stimuli to preoccupy my thoughts. This sounds silly I know but it was also as though I had no national identity. No Americans; no Chileans. No Bush, no Pinochet, no Castro, no Chavez. We were just seven people out on a boat. Money didn't have much meaning either. If we started to sink, no dollar amount could have bought us salvation and besides, the view and the sounds and the smells were all priceless.

In a sense that boat ride is as close as I've ever come to time travel also. Upon gazing around at the ocean, the island, the penguins, and the gulls and smelling the salt of the sea and the shit of the seals it dawned on me that of all the things around me, we, the seven human beings on that boat, were the only things in the picture that didn't belong. We were that thing that's not like the other. We were the interlopers. This small portion of the planet probably looked the same as it did thousands of years ago with one small exception. Us. We were looking at the majestic past.

My wife and I still talk about Chile sometimes. La Portada, the Shell Boy of Mejillones and Wally's Pub will always have special meaning to us, but at the same time we doubt we will ever return. That's a pity because Chile is probably one of the few remaining places on the planet where the dollar still has a good degree of purchasing power and we found Chileans ranked topnotch when it came to hospitality. It's just that our time on this planet is short and there's a lot of this planet still left to see. Somehow I don't know that I could convince a one-year-old that a nine-hour plane ride to Santiago and then another 3-hour flight to Antofagasta would make penguins worth the trouble.

Whenever I visit the ocean I like to dip my hand down into the water and taste it. A year ago I went to a wedding in Mendocino, California just north of San Francisco and I sampled their shore in the same fashion. As the salty water washed over my lips and down my throat I looked up at my wife smiling and said, "Tastes like Chile."

Chinese cuts, the ancient art of the no scalpel vasectomy

2008-02-16T06:22:00.000-08:00

This is going to be a very special episode of cocktailswithkevin so if there are kids watching, you might want to ask them to leave the room.

No, there are no graphic pictures forthcoming, so there'll be nothing that will require any library staff member to employ the shoulder tap. It's just that I'm likely to forgo clinical terms and instead employ such slanguistic gems as balls, nutsack, and peepee used as a noun. As far as the vas deferens is concerned I'll probably just refer to it by its proper name, as I can think of no four-letter substitute.

Also seeing as how this post will be mainly about my down there and, depending upon how well you know me, you may not want to hear anymore about my down there than you likely already have, this may be an ideal time to go check email instead. If you do not know me well enough to know the history of my nether regions and are feeling left out, you can learn more about it by clicking hither or yon. Enjoy.

Alright. Are those kiddies gone now? Good. Oh, wait. That one kid's still peeking around the corner. Also, if you're at work, make sure you don't read words like balls and nutsack out loud.

Speaking of out loud, in the waiting room at the urologist's office I sat next to one of those people who likes to take advantage of the lengthy wait time by sharing her medical history with anyone who would listen, me included. To her credit she was also quick to talk about what a good doctor the urologist was. I don't mean to be judgmental, but I'm just gonna say it. This woman was what we like to call Ivory Recycling.

When her immediate audience stopped feigning interest she dialed up someone on her cell phone and spoke volume ten to him about it. Annoyingly enough, the call recipient also spoke volume ten so everyone in the waiting room could hear him express the sympathies this woman was clearly seeking. As far as I'm concerned the less I know about someone else's kidney stones the better. I felt like saying Get a blog, lady. But I didn't because that would have been rude, and y'all know I'm not like that.

I had been instructed to bring an athletic supporter as well as the consent form bearing signatures of both me and my wife which I did. The consent form started out with I [write your name] being of -- and then there was a blank line. I asked the receptionist if I was supposed to have written something here such as "questionable moral character" or "low social standing", but she informed me that instead "sound mind and body" would do. So I wrote them words on that paper and handed it to her.

As I was thumbing through outdated magazines trying to pass the time I noticed a patient emerging from the exam rooms making his way to the checkout desk where he was then provided two prescriptions and a plastic cup in which to bring back a specimen in six to eight weeks. Having previously been childless and needing to undergo chemotherapy, I also was familiar with the plastic cup, so I already knew what he would eventually discover, namely that making love to it is about as fun as it sounds. Oh well. By the stunned look on this guy's face, ejaculation was probably the last thing on his mind.

When this guy walked back out into the waiting room I could see that he was wearing sweatpants. My wife made me pack some too, but I left them out in the car. If you're going to be impotent, you ought to look impotent. Get it?

A nurse finally escorted me back to an exam room and instructed me to undress from the waist down, climb up on the table and cover my nakedness with what was essentially a Kleenex the size of a throw rug. This was more than sixty anxiety-riddled minutes after my scheduled appointment time and easily another ten minutes before I would finally see the doctor. I just rested on the exam table alternating between sitting up and lying back. Two large gooseneck lamps shown down on my paper-draped peepee.

Hey, I warned you I was gonna say peepee.

The nurse eventually came back in, put on gloves and announced that she was now going to see, as she put it, how well I shaved. With that she lifted up the paper tarp and rearranged me so she coud fully inspect the surgical area. I couldn't help but chuckle at her phraseology.

"I think I nicked myself. Is that points off?" I asked.

She said that normally it would be but since my scrotum was free of blood I was still okay. Then she disappeared for a while before coming back in announcing that her next task was to clean my scrotum. Note here I'm using clinical terminology only because that's what she said. At the doctor's they say scrotum. They don't say nutsack and stuff like that.

Again she rearranged my man parts and scrubbed down my business with baby wipes. This time she put on latex gloves which is fine with me. I'm not really into latex gloves but whatever. Besides while I'm sure she gave the guy with the cup a good washing too, I do feel more comfortable knowing she changed gloves in between so I don't get his cooties. Before she left this time she got another paper throw rug and tied two of its corners to the gooseneck lamps to act as a screen.

Finally the doctor entered the room and greeted me. I have a good rapport with my urologist because I've seen him several times over the past few years. After Meryl was born, I visited his office just to show her off to him. On my most recent consultation with him he gave me a hug. Not this time though. We were separated from each other by a makeshift privacy screen and I was pantless to boot.

There was some polite small talk and he asked me if we were really gonna do this. I said we were and so the agreement was made.

Much like at the dentist office when the dentist is drilling directly into your nerve endings and he tries to fake some pointless conversation with the false hopes of taking your mind off the procedure, so did my urologist attempt to fake me out by asking about my wife and kid. I was polite and responded but quickly tried to change the subject to the woman in the waiting room who was singing his praises. More specifically I just wanted him to know that people out front were talking favorably about him. I guess deep down I had hoped this would somehow encourage him to make the procedure more pleasurable.

Fat chance.

He continued the banter and promptly grabbed my one remaining testicle so he could fidget around with it and find the vas deferens. Now up until this point my down there medical repertoire included having my nuts jostled, my epididymis squeezed and even a testicle outright removed and never before had I experienced as much discomfort as when this guy was rooting around in my nutsack trying to find the spermadic chord.

I don't know that there's much he could have done to make it more pleasant either. I think regardless of how skilled the physician is, if someone's fishing for such a sensitive part of your reproductive system through your scrotum aka nutsack it just hurts like a sonofabitch. Come to think of it it was kinda like the sharp pain a guy gets from landing wrong on a bicycle seat after having jumped the Grand Canyon. Just not good.

Then came the injection. At least I think that's what came next. You see while I tried to keep up the pretense of discernible conversation with this man, things from this point on just started to blur. I never lost consciousness or anything (try as I might have). It's just that one loses all concern for polite protocol and social graces when his man parts are being knocked about, especially when the person doing the knocking isn't some highly paid woman in black latex saying bad boy bad boy. I've just heard. I don't know from experience or anything.

But really, I remember the doctor saying I would feel a pinch and a burn, the pinch being from the needle going in and the burn being from the medicine entering the site of the injection. While this wasn't nearly as painful as the previous game of Here-We-Go-Round-My-Gonad, it was at this point that I started to feel the sweat bead up on my forehead and nausea churn up in my gut.

I've since read online that some guys go into the doctor's office for a vasectomy and choose to listen to music while the procedure is going on. Looking back, I wish I had chosen this option also. As it was all I got to hear was clamping, snipping and my own slow rhythmic exhaling while I was trying to keep myself from passing out.

Other guys report being in a room with a mirror on the ceiling so they can watch the whole show while it's going on. Kinda like getting to star in your own personal episode of Nip/Tuck, I guess. I can think of little else that I would want to see less than a doctor poking around at my genitals with mom's good scissors. Though maybe this would have expedited the passing out process which would have been just fine with me.

I did express to the good doctor that I felt like I might pass out. He told me to keep taking deep breaths and that if I were to faint, he would still go on with the operation. Hearing that made me feel better. I told that same thing to an endodontist once and he got all surly with me like I was upsetting his schedule or something. With the urologist, I knew that me losing consciousness wasn't going to upset anyone's apple cart.

As it happens, I did not pass out mainly because there wasn't enough time to. The upside of being a uniballer is that a vasectomy only takes half the time that it does for most men. The ballwasher lady had told me that because the doctor was very good at what he does the whole procedure would take less than twenty minutes, but during my previous consultation a week before the doctor had told me that indeed mine would be about ten. I have to admit though that although it seemed like a lifetime while the whole thing was going on, I think from start to finish the time it took to complete the procedure was really more like four or maybe five minutes.

My urologist used the no scalpel procedure that everyone raves about. I've also heard people refer to this method as the Chinese method because it's apparently been standard operating procedure in China now for the past 25 years. A few things come to mind here though.

I am hesitant to refer to any method as Chinese for a couple reasons. First of all it sounds like one of those things we say is Chinese not because it is but because somehow associating it with the Chinese makes it seem more exotic and therefore more marketable. Also for whatever reason the Chinese have often been victims of racial nomenclatures they had nothing to do with like the Chinese fire drill or Chinese red lights.

Mr. Lee, how do you get your shirts so clean? Ancient Chinese secret, huh?

When I taught elementary school and a kid wanted to break in line, they would sometimes engage in what they referred to as Chinese cuts. This was a setup where if one person wouldn't let you cut in line, you asked the person in front of him for Chinese cuts. If he agreed, he would let you cut in front of him with the understanding that he would then cut back in front of you, thus earning you the place in line you had originally hoped for. More often this technique was used not so much to score a place in line as it was just to piss off the person who originally told you no but that you still ended up standing in front of.

Aside from that, it's just silly to refer to any form of birth control as the Chinese method. We're talking about a country that accounts for less than two percent of the world's land mass and yet twenty percent of the world's population. Do the math, people. Saying a particular form of contraception is Chinese in my opinion doesn't really lend to its credibility.

Anyway, enough of that. I'm tired of googling land mass and population statistics. I'll have you know I even opened up an Excel spreadsheet to come up with my percentages. This is because I care so much about you the reader that I want to provide you with accurate information. And also because I suffer from Need-to-Know-Worthless-Information Disorder. OK, back to the operating table.

Instead of cutting into my scrotum with a knife to get to the nutmeats the doctor apparently used a pair of specially designed really really sharp forceps. You can see a picture of the instrument by doing an image search online. I don't know that the thing looks any less scary than a scalpel does. You go home with stitches either way.

After getting dressed I went to the checkout desk to collect my prescriptions and obligatory sterile cup. I pulled the cup out of the bag and asked the receptionist if I could bring the specimen in from home or would it have to be collected on site. My doctor, who was passing by on his way out of the office at the time, patted me on the shoulder and said, "Don't worry. We're not gonna make you do that here." Then the receptionist added that if I wanted I could have my wife do it.

Yeh, right.

Somehow I don't think this falls into the category of for better or for worse. Turning down the bed so I can go home and recoup I knew I could count on my wife for. She's a nurturer and all, but as far as collecting my bodily fluids in a cup, I think I'm gonna have to be on my own.

I drove immediately to the pharmacy to get my prescriptions filled. I tried not to walk funny but with every step it just felt like I had a ten-pound weight hanging from my scrotum. The athletic supporter I was wearing wasn't very supportive either except that the waistband in it was so tight it felt like it was cutting off my circulation. Upon taking it off later that day I'd realize it was a medium which is not the ideal size for a guy who sometimes has to rely on the Fatty McFat expando waistband so he can still squeeze into a 36" waist.

The pain I felt after that was really annoying. Not excruciating. Just annoying. It felt like I needed to make an adjustment only there was really no adjustment I could make that made things better. I tried both crossing and uncrossing my legs when I sat down. I tried the lift. The fidget. No matter how many rounds of pocket pool I played, I just couldn't seem to win. Furthermore I dreaded sneezing, coughing, laughing, shouting, walking, driving over speed bumps or even around sharp corners.

The weird thing was that my right testicle felt like it had sympathy pains for the left and the right one's not even real. It sounds like I'm kidding but I'm not. I noticed this same phantom sensation for the first few days after my original right testicle (the cancerous one to which I was biologically related as opposed to the saline-filled stepchild that's in there now) had been removed. They say people who have an extremity or a limb amputated go through the same thing. It's most unsettling to ache in a part of your body that doesn't exist anymore. Though, come to think of it you have to admit there is some resemblance here.

I also had this queasy feeling that I couldn't seem to shake for the rest of the day. I don't know if it was from the physical discomfort or just because I couldn't stop thinking about the procedure I had undergone. Maybe it's just psychosomatic, but for the whole day and into the next one I just felt like I could have thrown up at any moment. Thankfully I found that pain meds and booze helped alleviate the symptoms or at least render me happy to the point that I didn't care about them anymore.

I had the operation done on Friday at the direction of my doctor so that I could recoup over the weekend and return to work on Monday. I do have to teach that evening, but I'm giving a test and aside from that I'll probably do a lot of sitting at the desk and having students go to the board. Ahh, the joys of student-focused learning!

Vasectomy was a choice my wife and I made after having discussed it ever since our toddler was born. It just seemed like the most cost-effective and relatively easy form of permanent birth control. We are a family of three and my wife and I decided early on in the threesome that we both liked it that way. I also didn't feel comfortable asking my wife to undergo tubal strangulation when that's a much more invasive, expensive and uncomfortable procedure.

I got the vasectomy done three days ago. Sorry I didn't blog about it immediately but I just kinda thought my parents should find out from me directly as opposed to reading it in my blog. After all, I was carrying their genetic code too. I'm not 100% recovered yet, but I feel pretty good and I'm happy with the decision I made. If you're in the Atlanta area and want a referral to a great urologist, shoot me an email to cocktailswithkevin at hotmail dawt com and I'll hook you up.

That's basically it. Not much more to it. This is the exciting conclusion to what has been a very special episode of cocktailswithkevin.com I'll be back to my regularly scheduled mindless banter tomorrow. In the meantime thanks for having placated my ego by reading through all this explicit detail. I promise when it comes time to return the cup, I'll keep that business to myself.

Are you ready for your mystery date?

2008-02-14T10:06:00.000-08:00

Eons ago my wife and I instituted the concept of the mystery date into our courtship. No, not some 1960s Milton Bradley board game with a catchy jingle on the commercial. I mean once a month one of us would plan an outing and surprise the other with the date.

There really are no guidelines. A mystery date could be anything from dinner and a movie to tickets to some event or even champagne and a fireplace if it's done up right. Mystery dates seem to have fallen out of fashion though somewhere around pregnancy and childrearing, but we resolved to make 2008 the year we reintroduce them into the relationship.

In January I decided I should ease back into mystery dating somewhat frugally. Not only does it not make sense to spend money you don't have, but I also didn't want to start off with too big of a bang only to let the art of mystery dating fizzle because I did too much too soon. So I picked a movie that I knew Elaine would like, divvied up a four-pack of single-serve wine bottles into my jacket pockets and headed for the movie theater with my one and only.

We went to go see 27 Dresses. Apparently I did a decent job picking the movie because Elaine loved every sappy minute of it. I thought it to be kitschy at best and . . . well . . . cheesy at worst, but the wine made the blasé acting and storyline a little more tolerable. Better yet, we were able to purchase the movie tickets without having to first take out an equity line on our home.

Barely.

Anyway, this month it's Elaine's turn and she chose Valentine's Day to mark our second monthly mystery date of the year. I have no idea what's in store for the evening, but really being surprised is half the fun. On the other hand, for the person doing the planning, it's the secret machinations that are the most fun. So far all I know is that my parents are coming over this evening to babysit.

That reminds me. I need to lock the liquor cabinet.

My recent escape from Paris

2008-02-12T10:07:00.000-08:00

On my most recent trip to Paris I stayed at the Hôtel du Mont Blanc in the Latin Quarter on rue de la Huchette. My wife found it years ago when we were visiting the city with friends, and I highly recommend it if you're looking for a quaint yet affordable place to stay in Paris. It's in a pedestrian district around the corner from the rue du Chat-qui-Pêche, the smallest street in the city. Notre Dame is within walking distance and the neighborhood is a direct ride on the Métro from Charles de Gaulle airport.

I sprung from the bed that morning at 6:30 sharp thanks to a wake-up call I had asked the front desk clerk to set up for me less than six hours prior, and I quickly gathered my things after having shat, showered and shaved. OK, I hadn't really showered or shaved. Sorry, but no one wants to have to make an extended potty visit during an overseas flight.

Trust me. I've been there. You can't go back to the drink cart which for some reason is always inches away from the bathrooms without everyone staring at you with that look that says You're that guy in 23B who had the audacity to take a crizzap while the rest of us were bumping elbows trying to enjoy our partially hydrogenated Salisbury steak. Take my advice. Go before you fly.

When the hotel clerk wasn't to be found at the front desk I walked downstairs and found him on the lower level in the breakfast room where he was enjoying a baguette and jam with coffee. Upon seeing me he smiled and followed me back up the stairs to the front desk so I could settle my bill.

This was slightly awkward for me because I knew I didn't have enough money to pay for both my room and the phone call I had made the night before to Air France confirming my flight. I barely had enough cash to cover the room. I didn't have any credit cards either. I did have a debit card that was tied to our checking account which had a dollar amount I estimated to be somewhere in the high single digits.

Normally I would feel bad about this but I was still miffed from the night before when I asked the clerk how much a ten-minute phone call would be and he couldn't give me a direct answer. The call ended up being north of 20 euro (that's just over $30 to us impoverished Yanks) so I felt like the hotel was taking me to the cleaners already. Even still, I was clearly going to have to muster up some persuasive French if I wanted to leave the hotel without Inspector Javert as an escort.

The clerk gave me the total and, sure enough, I was short about 18 euro. Now in all honesty I had some cash still in my wallet but I knew I was going to need some airport monies to secure the last-minute travel essentials, namely two bottles of Coca Light and maybe a magazine, so I wasn't going to part with that very readily. Instead I explained to him that I would have to charge the remainder of my balance to the credit card that was used to book my room originally, a credit card that I did not have on my person mind you because I had left it with my wife in the Rome airport.

In the few minutes that followed he and I had an exchange of words that were typical of what two French natives might have shared under similar circumstances. You see, when and American argues with one of his fellow countrymen, he typically thinks himself to be in the right and hopes to convince his opponent of such. On the other hand, when French people argue they typically do so simply for the sake of arguing. They don't go for the win so much as they go for the thrill of debate. I played the game.

His position was that the hotel would spend so much money in fees to my credit card company that it would almost be pointless to charge it on a card. I proposed then that he let me keep my cash and then charge the entire amount to the card, thus minimizing the percentage of fees the hotel would endure. Truth be told, the hotel just didn't like accepting credit cards in the first place and our reservation confirmation even stated that they had a strong preference for cash. I'm not certain of the agreement merchants have with credit card companies but I think that if they require a credit card for booking a room (and this place did) they then obligate themselves to accept a credit card for final payment. I don't know for sure. I'm just guessing.

Anyway, I convinced him that he was holding all the cash I had. He already knew of my penniless plight because I had explained everything to him and asked for his assistance the day before in getting the phone number for Air France, googling information about the airline strike and finding out where in the neighborhood I could take my laptop to freeload someone's wireless connection (in French it's pronounced wee-fee.) This guy was far and away more accommodating than most Parisians would have been in his position, so I really couldn't complain. On the contrary, I appreciated his understanding and his willingness to converse with a non-native in what must have sounded to him like jet-lagged-half-awake-foreigner-at-the-buttcrack-of-dawn broken French. I plead my case, and he relented.

Métro St-Michel was a short walk from the hotel, and I had already purchased the subway ticket I'd need to get back to the airport. The only problem was that for whatever reason my ticket wouldn't clear the turnstile in order to let me in the station. I looked at the markings on it to make sure it hadn't already been used. I tried inserting it several different ways into the machine but every time the turnstile just buzzed and shot the ticket back out at me.

Another early-morning Métro rider saw me fiddling with the ticket and came to my rescue. Giving a quick glance around the station to make sure no one was watching, he then pushed the handicap gate open so I could pass through without validating my ticket. To this day I'm not sure why I couldn't get the ticket to work. I had paid the full amount for a fare from inside the city all the way to the airport and that ticket hadn't been used, but whatever, this guy gave me the courage to do what I wouldn't have had the courage to do otherwise. Hey, I like breaking the rules just as much as the next guy.

For the entire twenty-five-minute subway ride I held on to my unvalidated ticket trying to make it look like I was just another law-abiding passenger when in fact I was a ne'er-do-well law breaker who had already weaseled his way out of a hotel bill like some unscrupulous gypsy. Of the many times I had ridden the Paris Métro, I had never until then gone illegally. As guidebooks would have you believe, when you're caught without a valid ticket, you either pay a hefty fine on the spot or get carried off to jail. I've seen Les Miz enough times to know I'm not cut out for that French chain gang shit.

As my luck would have it I freeloaded successfully all the way to the station at Charles de Gaulle Airport.

Almost.

Just as I was about to enter the airport I looked ahead and noticed people inserting their subway tickets into the turnstiles before leaving the station. I had forgotten that while you need only validate a ticket once when traveling inside the city, if you ride the RER in order to get to farther destinations like the airport or -- God forbid -- Euro Disney you have to validate the ticket upon both entering and leaving the subway to make sure you've paid the full fare for the trip.

Shit.

I knew that as soon as I stuck my bootleg ticket in that machine it was going to announce to everyone around that I was cheating the French out of five euro and because at that point I had spent my last bit of cash in the station on Diet Cokes I really didn't have any money left with which to pay a fine. Keeping calm I quickly tried to pre-plan the French vocabulary I'd need to talk my way out of this one.

I should say at this point that while my French isn't bad, there are certain linguistic feats that require a very high level of language ability on the part of the speaker in order to succeed and lying is one of them. I pictured myself trying to play the dumb American who didn't know any better to the gendarmes and in the meantime missing my flight home. Oddly enough fate threw me another bone and I dove for it.

Of the many turnstiles at Charles de Gaulle Métro station there was one that was in the midst of being serviced by a transit worker. It wasn't out of order. Other people were going through it. It's just that evidently a ticket would occasionally get caught up in the mechanism and be rejected so the worker would have to manually let the passenger through the gate. Seeing this as a potential solution for my dilemma, I walked up, casually inserted my virgin ticket into the machine, and it spat the ticket back out at me with a loud buzz.

I pulled it out of the slot and gave the transit worker a puzzled look. Taking the ticket from my hand and flipping it over, he tried reinserting it back in the turnstile. No surprise. The machine spat it back out and buzzed again.

I thought for certain at this point the guy would have looked at the ticket and noticed that it hadn't been validated at the point of origin but he did not. Instead he just gave that Gallic shrug that Frenchmen do when something doesn't go as planned. Then he simply opened the gate with his key and motioned for me to pass through. I thanked him and headed promptly for the Air France ticketing desk without looking back.

I got the pat down a total of three times before they let me on the plane that day, probably because French Intelligence was on to my game. Suits me just fine. They did finally let me on and I made it back to Atlanta with no further difficulties. It's a good thing too. Otherwise I would have had to resort to being one of those homeless people that lives in the Paris Metro.

If you think airplane bathrooms smell bad, you should get a whiff of the Pigalle station.

Ascencia bank frustrates and disappoints faithful consumer

2008-02-06T12:16:00.000-08:00

Because some drug-happy criminal got a hold of my debit card number and used it to purchase pharmaceuticals from an online Filipino pusher I have been on and off the phone with Ascencia Bank for over a month. While I give Ascencia kudos for finally crediting back my money and untangling what could have easily elevated into a financial mess for me, I was quite disappointed with their bumbling when it came to doing something so presumably simple as getting me a debit card replacement.

Ascencia is strictly an online bank based out of Louisville, KY. We do all our banking with them over the innerwebs, and my wife and I monitor our accounts almost daily. When we noticed two transactions from Mercury Drug totaling around $50 we got suspicious and called the number on the back of the card to report fraudulent activity.

I honestly don't know who that number belongs to. I'm guessing it's some clearinghouse for debit cards issued from various banks. Anyway, I know it's not Ascencia Bank because the guy on the other end of the phone, who sounded like he was all of fourteen years old, had no clue how to spell Ascencia. Even after I spelled it for him. Twice. Frankly it wouldn't surprise me if he didn't know how to spell bank, but anyway I digress.

We didn't know which card, hers or mine, had been compromised, so we canceled them both. Unfortunately it was on Friday evening that we caught the transaction, so we had to wait until the following Monday to contact our bank. The service rep was kind enough to hear my tale of woe, inform me as to what should happen and then order replacement debit cards for both me and my wife.

So I thought.

As anyone with an ATM or a debit card is aware, before you get a new card in the mail, you first get correspondence from the bank telling you that the card is on its way and what the PIN will be when you get it. Well, we waited a week and no such correspondence ever came. No cards. No PINS. No nothing.

I called Ascencia and was told to wait a few more days, and we did. In the meantime we were asked to sign affidavits affirming that we were not the ones who had made the purchases. Incidentally I have no way of knowing what drugs the thief ordered but I hope for his own sake he got something good like Oxycontin or Valium and not just some antidepressant or fatty fatty Phentermine.

Still nothing from the bank so we called back. Again. This time I was placed on hold while the service rep called the third-party company that makes and distributes the debit cards to all the happy boys and girls. When the rep came back on the line she explained that for whatever reason no cards had originally been ordered to be mailed out, but she was going to order them now to be overnighted to us so that we would have them in due course. Well, sure enough, a couple of overnights later, the cards arrived via DHL.

But alas, the cards did not work. I tried a number of times to activate them through an ATM and also at the grocery store register where I'd have to key in my PIN. Each time I was told by the ATM that my transaction could not be processed, and my favorite crotchety checkout lady at Kroger just looked at me like I was some deadbeat dad with no money and a soiled credit record. This is the same lady that scolds me for not buckling my kid into the grocery cart seat or for not bundling her up well enough to protect her from the elements, but anyway I digress further.

Sorry, this whole thing just has me worked up.

When I called Ascencia back to tell them my further misfortune, they informed me that while my cards were overnighted to me, my PINs would not arrive for another week or so. Dearest Ascencia Bank, what EFFING good does it do me to receive cards in the mail I cannot use? What do you think I would do with a non-functioning debit card? Sleep with it like some attachment object the same way a kid goes to bed with a favorite teddy bear? Well, I don't. My Amex maybe, but not by bootleg debit card.

After several more days of waiting and making do with nothing but our 12.9% credit and good looks for payment, the PINs finally arrived. Hooray for PINs! Like a kid in a candy store with a blank check, I hurried off to the nearest ATM to activate the card with the newly arrived personal identification number.

No dice.

Apparently my multiple attempts at having previously tried to activate the card with the wrong PIN put a red flag on the card so that now when I tried to activate it with the correct PIN it was too late. I don't know what about this frustrated me more, that I still did not have a working debit card or that I was going to have to once again call my bank. With gritted teeth, I got Ascencia on the horn. The conversation went something like this:

"Hi, my name's Kevin and I just received the PINs in the mail for two cards I had already been overnighted, and I think my card is deactivated because I originally used an incorrect PIN."

"I spoke with you before. Remember, I told you you were going to have to wait for the PINs in the mail before you used the card?" the rep said.

Time out.

The phrase I told you is rather accusatory and therefor needs to be reserved for scolding children. Gentle reader, can you ever remember a time that someone said I told you and they weren't in some way admonishing you because you handled a situation differently than how they thought you should have handled it? I thought not. I worked in a call center. The phrase I told you, much like any use of the imperative form, shouldn't be used in any type of customer correspondence.

Secondly IF this customer service rep told me to wait until my personal identification numbers came in the mail (and honestly I don't remember being told that by her or anyone else), she would have had to have said that only AFTER I deactivated the card unknowingly by keying in the wrong PIN and not before. How wrong was it of me to assume that because my bank went to the expense of overnighting cards to me that they should work with the PINs I already had? Otherwise would that same bank have not also overnighted the PINs to me as well? Am I some super genious or should any monkey be able to figure this out?

Thirdly, even IF this customer service rep had warned me to not try and activate the new cards without first having received new corresponding PINs and even IF I ran out to activate them against her advice just to piss off my bank (I didn't, mind you, but I'm just saying for argument's sake) what damn difference does it make? That still wouldn't have changed the fact that I needed this rep's assistance in resetting my PIN. What good would it have done her or me or any of the other customers waiting on hold for her to take the time to shame me by saying I told you so?

And finally -- yes, I have as many as four reasons as to why this rep was amiss in her telephone behavior -- she did not run me through the security questions Ascencia normally requires of me before they dole out personal information about my account over the phone. She did not ask me for my Social Security number. She did not ask me for my mother's maiden name. She didn't ask me for so much as my account number, which by the way is readily available to anyone to whom I've written a check but at LEAST it would have been some form of verification on her part. She just happily went about her way admonishing this wayward caller whose ID she had no way of knowing.

For all she knew I could have been the man in the moon! Even if her phone is equipped with technology that identifies the number I'm calling from as matching the home number they have on file for me, she doesn't know that I'm not some crazy roommate pretending to be someone I'm not with the hopes of gaining someone else's personal financial information. How does she know my wife and I don't rent out a room and thus share a phone line with the Unibomber?

That shit is wrong.

I desperately try not to cop an attitude when I'm on the phone with a customer service rep for reasons I've outlined here. I like to think that when I had Ascencia on the phone that last time I maintained my calm demeanor. I did make a passive attempt to rectify my situation by simply mentioning another service representative in my response to the surly one with the hopes of getting passed on to someone I felt would be more willing to help out, and, by the way, this worked.

Surly Rep promptly kept me on hold while I assume she bitched to Much More Accommodating and Jovial Rep who ended up being more than happy to rectify my situation with little chitchat much less scolding, and she threw in some good ol' fashioned bless your heart. I don't care if when she disconnected the call Accommodating Rep made fun of me and joked with her next-cube neighbor that I was an incompetent dumbass. She was polite when she had me on the phone, and that's all that matters.

I don't know that I plan on firing my bank any time soon. Ascencia does offer some good rates and in all honesty this has been my first negative experience with them. And like I said, they did credit my account with money I never thought I'd see again which I appreciated. I just have little tolerance for those who can't adequately handle what should have been a simple customer request.

YouTube is my babysitter

2008-01-27T07:25:00.000-08:00

When I worked in a cube farm, I had coworkers who spent every off-task moment scrolling through the endless photos, profiles and bulletins they had found on MySpace. That site never held my interest for very long, perhaps because I am further on in years than the bulk of those who make MySpace their space, but I recently have found myself visiting and revisiting YouTube with a similar fervor. I use it mainly to entertain my toddler, of course, but I can’t say I’m immune to the hypnotic trance induced by the campy, kitschy and sometimes downright bizarre things to be found in this corner of the innerwebs.

Who are the people who make these videos?

Like many children, Meryl is amazed by animals. The sheep and the donkey, the geese and the goats along with kittens and puppies and horses and monkeys all make for suitable cybertainment judging by the look on Meryl's face when I click play after finding a video that features one of these creatures. This also gives me an opportunity to teach her new words and expand our conversations beyond what she’d like for breakfast or whether she wants to sit on the potty, two topics that become more and more tedious with each passing day.

Outside of watching creatures from the animal kingdom, Meryl also likes to watch human babies in various stages of pleasure or distress. I think in the past three weeks alone she and I have seen just about every laughing baby on YouTube there is to see. There are babies who laugh at throwing food, babies who laugh at a mommy making silly faces, and babies who laugh at other babies. Some babies have a giggly laugh, while some have a screechy laugh. Still others have what can only be described as a maniacal laugh. It's the ones in this last group that make me fear for our future. Well, I guess when it comes right down to to it it would have to be a tie between the maniacal laughing babies and this one kid who takes a huge Dora the Explorer doll on the potty with her while her mother films the whole thing. Then again, we can only blame the parent for this last one.

When I'm jumping around the internet and come across one of those big tv-screen-like YouTube links where the first frame of the video is visible and whoever orchestrates the site is inviting me to click on the link to view the video, I usually pass. What people think I should find amusing and what I actually do find amusing are generally two different things. Kinda like when someone prefaces a joke by saying I heard a great joke yesterday; wanna hear it? At least on the internet we can politely pass and not be socially forced into hearing a joke we don't want to hear.

With that disclaimer, here are links to a few videos I discovered that Meryl or I found either funny, moving or just plain baffling. Click if you will. If not, no hard feelings.

Laughing Babies

Devil Sheep

Patches the Horse

Woman Dancing to Dora's Theme She needs to quit dancing and clean that room!

YouTube is My Life

Gooble Gobble One of Us

Atlanta Center for Reproductive Medicine account is now closed

2006-04-11T05:18:00.000-07:00

I recently received a bill in the mail for $250, that unlike my more run-of-the-mill bills (water, electricity, garbage pickup, etc.) I will choose to no longer pay. Joy of joys, I am no longer in need of this service. The bill is from the Atlanta Center for Reproductive Medicine (heretofore referred to as ACRM) for 365 days of cryogenically preserved sperm storage, but guess what? I'm not paying it anymore. They can close my account. Freeze my assets -- or rather, thaw them. Unfortunately, while it's relatively easy to make a deposit to your ACRM account, it takes everything short of an act of congress to close it out.

When I provided the specimen almost two years ago the process was simple. I got my own small room complete with reclining chair, remote controlled TV/VCR, some heavily thumbed-through porno magazines, a 7-minute X-rated video and dimmable lighting to set the mood. Come to think of it, they had everything except Marvin Gay's Let's Get It On playing in the background. The magazines were pretty tame as far as men's secret reading material goes and the video was so bad (girl on girl, each of whom wore an ill-fitting wig) that when I returned to to the center to make a subsequent deposit, I seriously considered leaving one of my own movies behind for the next guy to enjoy. The funniest part to me though, aside from having to drive on three expressways and pay $250 to do what I could have stayed at home and done for free, was that the first instruction on their laminated list of things to do is wash your hands so as not to contaminate your specimen. Then they invite you to flip through their germy stack of last year's Playboys. If you took the CSI cam to this room, the TV remote alone would have lit up like a Christmas tree. Old germs and sperms aside, I couldn't wait to get out of there so within minutes of discovering Miss February's likes and dislikes I was dancing with myself.

Flash forward to present day minus 48 hours when I called and inquired as to how to close out my account. I was told that I'd receive a consent form in the mail to thaw and dispose of my 6 vials of mini-me's on ice. Low and behold the form arrives and not only do they need my signature on this paperwork that warns me that after signing I can no longer use these vials for a pregnancy -- no kidding -- but also I have to sign this before a notary. Furthermore if I myself am a notary, which I'm not but if I were, I must find another notary to notarize the consent form. Lucky for me, my boss who is a notary, was kind enough to sign it, seal it and not ask too many invasive questions.

Being the paranoid soul that I am, I pictured the kind people at ACRM not thawing and disposing of my two-year-old kevpops but instead just peeling the label with my name off the vials and sticking them in the anonymous donor drawer next to the samples from serial killers and third-year college freshmen. I called and asked if I could witness the vials being destroyed. Alas, my request was respectfully declined mainly because the vials aren't disposed of on site but instead sent in a medical waste container to a company that incinerates them. "So you don't just leave them out on the sidewalk," I asked. The woman on the other end of the phone assured me they did not. Additionally the ACRM claims to not accept anonymous donations so the likelihood of my future daughter having a half-brother raised by a kind loving lesbian couple is slim. I can't imagine someone would opt for a cancer-ridden sperm donation but even still, I wonder if there isn't some Isle of Dr. Moreau experimenting going on. Until some 18-year-old sheep-boy hybrid comes knocking on my door trying to collect unpaid child support I guess I'll never know.

One of my most recent fascinations is looking at the site meter at the bottom of my page to find out what words people typed into a search engine in order to find me. If you've stumbled across my blog as a result of googling the Atlanta Center for Reproductive Medicine because you have an upcoming (pun intended) appointment, let me fill you in. Yes, you will get a private room in which to self abuse. No, you do not get to ask the nurse for assistance. Yes, the door locks, but yes, you can hear people walking around outside so you presume they can hear you inside. Yes, you will be provided with a run of the mill lame porn flick in which women share adult novelties, but no, if you're into midgets or transexuals or both, the center will not have a video to suit your needs so you're advised to bring your own. Yes, you will first sit in a waiting room with at least one other guy, and if his ethnic makeup varies significantly from yours, yes, you will wonder what happens if they mistakenly swap your sample with his. No, you do not have to aim at an actual beaker or vial at the climactic moment, but yes, you will have to make love to a plastic cup, which in all honesty is about as enjoyable as it sounds. No, the lab tech will not comment about the amount or make judgemental statements after you hand her your cup like, "Just not in the mood today?" No, no one will be timing you. Furthermore, under no circumstances can you knock on one of the other closed doors before leaving and announce, "Your mom's on the phone."

If on the other hand you have stumbled onto my little corner of cyber space by googling midgets or transexuals or both, I'm sorry this blog did not meet your expectations. Keep hitting the "Next Blog" button in the upper-right corner. You're bound to stumble across such a site sooner or later.

Miracle of birth about to happen for 83rd billionth time

2006-04-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

Riddle me this: If women have been birthing babies since the dawn of time, why did I have to spend all day in a birthing class? Tis true that this is my wife's first pregnancy and therefore the first time I will be on the receving end of a slippery newborn, but won't our daughter come regardless of whether we've taken this class? If after my wife's water breaks (and I knew of water breaking before ever going to this class, thank you) are we going to show up at the delivery ward and be quizzed on what we were supposed to have learned in this class? I can just see it happening this way:

Me: (approaching the check-in desk) Hi, my wife's water just broke and our contractions are 10 minutes apart.

Receptionist: (typing furiously on an outdated PC) Your name, sir?

Me: Kevin Black

Her: And your wife's name?

Me: Elaine Black.

Her: How do you spell that?

Me: B-L-A-C-K.

Her: Did you say V as in Victor or C as in Charlie?

Me: B as in baby. We're having one. Can we go in now?

Her: Just one moment, Mr. Clack . . . (more typing) Sir, I'm afraid because you failed your birthing class we're going to have to ask you to return once you've received a passing grade. You can sign up for a retake at the next window.

Me: Wait a minute. What do you mean "failed my birthing class?" We were in there all day.

Her: (more typing) I see here you didn't actively participate in the rythmic breathing exercise and instead preferred to feed on the complimentary snacks. Is that correct?

Me: Look Lady, first of all the snacks were lousy. Secondly I don't need a class to teach me how to breathe. I can do that just fine on my own. I can even do your stupid rythmic breathing. See? (performing the rythmic breath with exaggerated head bobbing) Hee hee hee hooooo hee hee hee hooooo.

Her: You for got your cleansing breath, Sir. Now would you please either move to the next window for a retake or join the other non-birthing fathers outside the door. (She points to a group of jovial men chatting it up outside the hospital door smoking cigars and drinking scotch on the rocks.)

Me: Well, what about my wife? She is having a baby after all.

Her: (More typing) Wow! We don't generally see birthing scores this high. Ma'am, would you like one of the ultra-posh birthing suites complete with sitting area and mini-fridge? We can find you another birthing partner if you'd like.

Elaine and I stepped into the waiting room of her obstetrician's office at 9:00 Saturday morning with two pillows, a blanket and a packed lunch in tow. After signing in for our class, pinning on our nametags and setting down our birthing class accoutrements, we chose two seats near the door. At that point we sat down and half-heartedly watched a movie on baby's development immediately after birth. The movie served as background noise while we waited for fellow birthers to file in.

Once everyone was present and accounted for we went around the room introducing ourselves. I forgot people's names almost as soon as they said them. I could care less about who they are. I wanted to know things like how old people were, who was married, who wasn't, what pregnancies were planned, which ones weren't. I'm catty that way. Sue me.

Next on the agenda was a game of charades in which men were assigned a pregnancy syndrome to act out in front of the group. I lucked up and got swollen ankles, but other blokes were less fortunate and had to pantomime things like sore nipples or frequent urination. The guy who picked constipation, after confirming he could use words, grabbed his stomach and said, "I can go number one, but I can't go number two." You know, game or not, this falls into the category of things you don't need to hear a grown man say.

The bulk of the class was either listening to the instructor dish out candid information on the birthing process or watching a movie about it. She was informative enough. After all, birthing is one of those things you don't do every day, so much of it remains a mystery until you do. The movie was not one I'd add to my Top Ten list however. I never thought I'd finish watching a movie and wish that it had contained less female nudity. That's not to say I don't find pregnant women attractive. It's just that these were some really granola looking women. I'll say little else for fear of stepping on toes, but let's just say this movie could have served as corrective therapy for those pregnancy fetishists out there. You know who you are.

Next we broke for lunch. Elaine and I, along with what Elaine described as "the other old couple", opted to stay and eat our packed lunch. All others filed out and returned with bags from Wendy's and Chick-Fil-A. I imagine these same women bragging about how they aren't eating soft cheeses or drinking caffeinated beverages for the sake of their healthy unborn. For some reason however deep-fried fatty McFat sandwiches are still kosher. That's like parents who when their child is 12 months old have all the cabinet locks and outlet plugs installed in the home and yet when the kid is twelve years old the parents drop him or her off at the mall alone in the midst of perfect strangers for hours at a time. Selective safety. Just as a quick aside on that nutrition note, have you ever compared the information your child gets at school regarding nutrition and then looked at what he buys in that school's cafeteria and vending machines? OK, I'm rambling now.

Cleansing breath.

Which brings me to the next segment of class. Once everyone was through eating, the instructor said, "OK, now the women are going to get down on all fours and the guys are going to get behind them."

"Isn't that what got us here in the first place?" I said. It got a chuckle from some of the couples around us. Others were too busy arranging their pillows and getting into the position of the Milch Cow to pay me the attention I crave.

I forget exactly why we were told to get in this position. I seem to recall having to squeeze my wife's hips which she said felt good. We were also then given other squatting and squeezing positions to try out during the early labor period to alleviate discomfort. Early labor period is code for that time preceding delivery when the woman knows she's about to give birth but it's too early to show up at the hospital. The instructor discouraged us from showing up at the hospital too early because they don't provide food from the time you show up until after you give birth. Factor in the eighteen-hour labor that some women experience and you figure that's a hella long time to go without eating.

Eventually we reached the point in the course where we had to practice our breathing. This sounds as ridiculous as it looks. This is the famed birthing woman's breathing technique popularized by movies and television that I predict is used by absolutely no one. Think about it. If panting like a puppy helped to reduce pain, wouldn't we be taught to do it in the dentist's chair? Regardless, we all watched and repeated this silly rythmic breathing technique ad nauseum until we all got the hang of it.

The class ended after another video and some Q and A. All in all it was relatively painless, not like I imagine labor and delivery will be. I won't say I didn't learn anything, but what I learned isn't much more than I could have found via Google. As for the rhythmic breathing, I suppose if I ever find myself in the position of having to blow down the house of some pesky little pigs, I'll be well prepared.

Sam's Warehouse receives accolades once again

2006-03-28T13:02:00.000-08:00

As a wee lad, all of 16 years old, I worked at the world's biggest toy store, Toys R Us. Like the working crew of any other retail establishment, my coworkers and I had developed dislikes for certain types of customers that came into the store. Parents who initiated their conversations with things like "I have a son who's eight but he has the intelligence of a twelve-year-old" spring to mind. Another was the tearful mom who showed up at our door sobbing on Christmas Eve after the store closed begging to be let in and buy some trendy tchotchke her kid had seen an ad for on TV. We always let her in, but I imagine the toy usually wound up in pieces at the bottom of the kid's closet by Valentine's Day. One of the most difficult parts of my job however was dealing with people who wanted to return an item. You would be surprised at the number of people who hope to return something after it's been subjected to months and months of abuse. On many an occasion I had to turn away the forlorn cash-seeking customer trying to return just such an item. Bearing that in mind, you can imagine how hesitant I was this weekend when I had to return a computer to Sam's Warehouse Club that I had owned for barely under 90 days.

I hated having to take the computer back because I not only had recently installed $70 worth of virus protection software on it but I had also gotten the computer for a steal. In December when I bought it, the original price at the Gwinnett Place Sam's was $750, and that was probably a good $40 cheaper than it would be in any other retail store. All they had available however was the floor model. The Mall of Georgia Sam's, also in my area, had it on sale for only $700, but they had no more in stock. When I asked a manager at one store if he would match the price of the other, he not only agreed but also lowered the price of the floor model to a mere $650. When I complimented him on how well his store was handling the post-Christmas rush, he took the handwritten price tag from my hand, scratched out the $650 and wrote $600. Floor model or not, this was a whopping $150 savings, the last $50 of which was due to nothing more than simple flattery on my part. So pleased was I with the courteous service and generous discount that I received that I sent an email via samsclub.com expressing my gratitude.

Sadly, the computer had issues from the start. Somewhere in the inner workings of the machine I would hear a ticking sound. This being the first desktop I had owned in a long time, I thought maybe that's just how they behaved. I let that slide but the Compaq Presario's errant demeanor didn't stop at mysterious noises. It refused to burn CD's, and let's face it, in this modern era of bootleg music and movies and disrespect for that antiquated thing we used to call copyright, making CD's is one of the main reasons many people use computers. If it can't make endless copies of Barry Manilow's Greatest Hits, what good is the thing? Did I mention that it corrupted several files on a flash drive I had received as a Christmas gift? This thing wreaked of bad juju, and try as I might, there was no taming the ghost in the machine.

I knew obtaining a cash refund was a near impossibility, and because technology outdates itself every twelve minutes getting an identical computer (minus the Poltergeist activity of course) was also out of the question. I would have been happy with a store credit. I did want another computer after all, and I was happy to get it from Sam's. A coworker had suggested having my visibly pregnant wife accompany me into the store which I thought was a novel idea. What self-respecting clerk would deny an unborn baby 512 megabytes of memory and a 17" flat screen monitor? With no box, incomplete paperwork and a receipt showing I purchased a big-ticket item just two days short of the 90-day return cutoff, I headed to Sam's to plead my case.

If you've never ventured into a Sam's Club, it's worth a visit. Yes, I know their corporate cousin Wal-Mart is trying to snatch away people's property by way of imminent domain to build more stores, but as long it's not my backyard, what do I care? Much like Wal-Mart, Sam's always has a senior smile and greet customers at the door. Apparently his job description is just that: smile and greet. Occasionally you'll see him perform more physically demanding tasks like coo at a baby or pick his nose, sometimes not in that order, but for the most part he smiles and greets. When I walked in with pieces of a computer in tow, I thought for certain red flags would go up and sirens would blare, but nothing of the sort happened. The greeter smiled, offered a hearty greeting, put a sticker on the monitor and directed me to the return desk.

Once at the return desk I presented my receipt to Claudia Cashier and explained that I had purchased the computer as a marked down floor model. She listened as I nervously explained that the drives weren't working and that I had attempted to rectify the issue several times myself by using Compaq's online chat support. Allow me to interject here that trying to communicate with a non-native English speaker halfway around the planet about technology via a medium that was designed for tweenagers to tell who hearts who is an utter waste of one's time. At any rate, Claudia at Sam's was most helpful. She called someone over from the computer department who gave a cursory glance at the cart of failed technology. Without being prompted I rehashed my story of trying to repair it according to the transoceanic cyber-tech's shoddy directions. I went on to explain that I regretted having to return it after buying it for such a bargain basement price. I maintained the calm and courteous composure I usually find gets me what I want in negotated retail transactions, but I was also prepared if need be to defend myself against potential accusations of computer abuse. No, I didn't download any malicious software; No, I didn't stick peanut butter in the disk drive; No, I didn't trust Dotcomma BinLaden to tell me how to fix it. But the Sam's computer guy just nodded saying that all the components were there.

"Do I have to get store credit?" I asked Claudia.

"You paid cash: You're getting cash," she said counting out hundred-dollar bills. Sweet.

I returned to the Mall of Georgia Sam's that day and purchased a nicer computer than the one I had returned. It only set me back $700. Three months ago the upgraded model would have gone for around $900. I also successfully reinstalled the virus protection software on the new computer without much ado. In fact, I'm really floored at how little to-do there was regarding the whole transaction. The way I see it, I got three months worth of free computer use. I even restored the gifted flash drive to its original unblemished state.

Sure, I had to reformat and wipe off all the tunes, but in the age of modern technology Barry Manilow's hits are just a mouse click away.

Standing eggs on end for the vernal equinox

2006-03-20T05:30:00.000-08:00

Well begosh and begorra! Another truth falls the way of myth. Before getting to the bulk of what I want to say, let me preface by stating that I never believed Elvis Presley was alive after 1977, nor did I trust in that whole Neimann Marcus cookie recipe fiasco, and it never would have dawned on me to believe Mikey from the Life cereal commercial died from mixing Pop Rocks and Coke. As a kid, that last one might have seemed more plausible to me until I watched my younger cousin Adam mix the two deadly ingredients while riding in the back seat of his parents' car. The carbonated sugar muck bubbled over the neck of the green bottle and got all over the car upholstery, but after drinking what was left, Adam went unscathed. I have always prided myself on not being the gullible type, and I'm not one to buy into the latest meme just because everyone else does. There is however a popular myth that, until this morning, I took as scientific truth. You can imagine my bitter disappointment when I discovered evidence to the contrary.

The actual year eludes me, but I distinctly remember taking a Polaroid picture of three eggs all of which I successfully righted on end out on the front porch of my parents' home. Although this may be a fabrication that I later came to believe as true, I also seem to remember them falling over one by one in order from right to left. I think it was my mother who had introduced me to this concept of standing eggs on their end during the vernal equinox, but there had also been a news story on it one year, so I was sure it must have been true. I wasn't a scientifically minded kinda kid so I didn't understand the process behind it, but it was supposedly due to some special gravitational pull and consequently some ultimate cosmic order to the universe unique to that particular calendar day. It all sounds hoaky now that I think about it, but until recently I bought it hook, line and sinker.

What's so special about an egg anyway? Why wasn't the rumor propagated that you could stand a cucumber on it's end on the first day of Spring? Or a light bulb? Any round-ended object? Count Chocula? After all, if you could stand an egg on it's end one day out of the year, why wouldn't a Weeble stand on his head that day also? I imagine the incredible edible egg came into the picture as a symbol of fertility during the equinox the same way we worship plastic eggs and chocolate bunnies for Easter. Millions of years ago one fine Spring day some caveman steps out of his hovel and sees that since the weather has warmed up chickens lay more eggs and rabbits do it bunny style. Apparently he was so excited he decided to paint the egg and stand it up on it's posterior. If you think our fertility rituals are weird, get a load of this: When we were in Prague, my wife and I saw men coming home from the florist with willow branches. According to Czech legend, the men beat their women with the sticks to increase their fecundity. Then the women, as a thank you I guess, offer the men an egg. Wild, huh? I suppose anything's better than marshmallow Peeps though.

But anyway, back to the vernal egg balancing. It's a sham, folks. Well, not a total sham. You can balance an egg on it's end during the vernal equinox if you work at it hard enough, but -- NEWS FLASH -- you can do that any day of the year. Equinox, solstice, tax day; it doesn't matter. There is absolutely no rhyme or reason or gravitational anomaly or special order to the cosmos on March 20th or 21st that doesn't occur every other day of the year. During both equinoxes, there are equal amounts of light and darkness. That's it. That's the magic.

If you're wondering how I got wind of this debunking, or if you too are one of the mislead sad sacks rushing out once a year to balance eggs on end and you're not yet convinced that your efforts are fruitless, click here. That's a link to a site I found via Google that dishes out the scientific truth about this widespread theory and offers up evidence to the contrary. The author also gives links to other sites that go into even more detail about the equinoxes and why they're not much more special than any other day. It's on the internet, so you know it's gotta be true.

Movie reviews on Netflix get two thumbs up

2006-03-14T17:12:00.000-08:00

Who is the patron saint of the internet? I don't know either but whoever he is, I give him a standing rogation. Through what other medium can a highschooler be a master hacker, or a serial killer masquerade as a horny cheerleader or yours truly be a published movie critic? That's right. Thanks to the wonderful people at Netflix, my reactions to cinematic blockbusters and time wasters are posted right up there with the likes of Roger Ebert and Eleanor Ringel. Netflix, for those not in the know, is a paid service whereby subscribers go online and select movies they want to watch. The movies are then mailed out with a postage-paid envelope so the DVDs can easily be returned once viewed. My wife and I have subscribed to this service for a few years now and can't say enough wonderful things about it.

Most recently I've been exploring the write-your-own-review feature. This is where I get to express my thoughts about what I've seen and it gets broadcast via the innerweb to anyone on the planet who values my cinematic opinion (and really, who wouldn't?). There are a few guidelines Netflix asks me to keep in mind, i.e. no profanity, no spoilers and no misspellings, the latter of which is probably the most abated rule. They also ask that I refrain from submitting one-word commentaries. In their estimation "Sucks" or "Excellent" does not a movie review make. Submissions should also be greater than 80 characters and less than 2000, so the review "Not since Ishtar have I seen such a pathetic excuse for a movie as this" with only 71 characters should be amended to "Not since Ishtar have I seen such a pathetic excuse for a movie as this dog squeeze" (82 characters).

So far I've reviewed twelve movies, some of which are foreign, some not, some funny, some not, some dog squeeze, some not. All movies get a star rating between one and five stars, five being the best. Whenever I click on the number of stars that corresponds with my vote, I picture Ed McMahon shouting out rankings on StarSearch. Wedding Crashers gets . . . [insert dramatic pause] . . . three stars! And Broken Flowers gets . . . [insert dramatic pause] . . . FOUR STARS!!! I have awarded five stars to a number of movies, only one of which I've reviewed, and sadly a number of movies have merited one star in my book. Admittedly, some of these one-star movies I haven't actually seen, but I'm sure if I did, I'd give them one star. This is the case for anything with either Hellraiser or VeggieTales in the title. I have absolutely no interest in watching people killed by Pinhead or accepting a talking legume as my lord and savior. Magnificent acting and budding sexuality in a film however as in the case of both Fat Girl and Me and You and Everyone We Know, if satiating enough will get five stars. My average rating is between three and four stars.

The reviews people write on this site are sometimes more interesting to see than the movies themselves. Like anything else you find on the internet, the material is only as good as the person providing it. One subscriber who identifies himself only as RupertPupkin writes the following about Veggie Tales: Bible Heroes:

Vegitables rock. i like vegitabels. I like to eat vegtbles.. vegie movies are; fun becase they have carrots. I want more vegtbles 9 s i can eat more arsparugus have to seethis computrw movie its like watching real vegitlbes movie

Doesn't that just beautifully capture the whole essence of the Apostle Paul's letters to the Corinthians?

About Breakfast Club, a movie I rated five stars, a reviewer Def American writes "Judd Nelson. He is soooo cool." Why the superfluous O's? Is Def American stretching to meet the 80 character minimum? He also claims to have "cried like a girl" when the closing credits came on. Gene Siskel must be rolling over in his grave.

Expressing thoughts on a movie comes easily when the film is one I'm not overly crazy about, but I struggle with reviewing my favorite flicks. How many different ways can one say a movie rocked? Well, there is that old extra O's on the word "so" trick, but frankly I think that's played. Self consciousness kicks in, and I worry that I overuse certain words or expressions. "Cinematic masterpiece" is fine for one review, but after that I feel like I should employ another turn of phrase. "Awesome film" would work for Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure but not for Schindler's List.

My hope is that I convey my thoughts well enough in a review so as to give the reader adequate information. This way they can decide whether they want to rent the film. Visitors to the Netflix site do have the option of clicking on an icon to acknowldge my review was helpful (hint hint), but because I'm fairly new to the whole thing not a lot of people have reviewed my reviews. Most of my blurbs have the endnote that one person found the review helpful. Some show no response at all. I'm very proud of my review for Chumscrubber however. A whopping five people found that review helpful. Five! Ok, I may have clicked on the icon a few times, but that's still two people who found it helpful.

One not counting family.

Dinner at Eno and Michael Bublé

2006-03-09T10:00:00.000-08:00

Last night my sexy thang of a wife and I ventured into the city to enjoy a dinner at Eno before heading to the Michael Bublé concert at the Atlanta Fox Theater. Elaine had given me the tickets as a Valentine's Day gift and we had been looking forward to this ever since. As thirty-something suburbanites we save trips into Atlanta for those special occasions like going to the theater, taking in a nice dinner or seeing what's on the sale rack at Ikea. With a license plate that identifies our SUV as hailing from north of Spaghetti Junction, we stick to the main arteries in town and avoid stumbling into the parts my mother would refer to as "lock your doors." We try to put on our hipster faces and prepare for the disdainful looks we receive from the uber-urbanites wearing their designer clothes and walking their designer dogs. Ah, the pretense of it all.

The Fox is located on Peachtree Street (as opposed to West Peachtree, Peachtree Circle, Peachtree Center or Peachtree Crack Cocaine Lane) but getting off on the Peachtree exit from 85 South to get there is a mistake. Doing so at rush hour will dump you right in the middle, nay right at the tail end, of the infamous downtown race that cruises along at the breakneck speed of four blocks per hour. When you factor in the road construction delay at the 800 block and the road destruction delay at the 900 block, you regret not packing a picnic lunch and some sleeping bags for the trip. The only thing more humiliating than being passed in traffic by a blue-haired octogenarian is being passed in traffic by a blue-haired octogenarian on a HoverRound. I dropped Elaine off at the restaurant to secure our table and paid a whopping $15 to park.

Eno (pronounced "Eno") fancies itself all of a sidewalk cafe, wine bar and an intimate fine dining restaurant. Too many notes? Maybe, but this turned out to be a nice place to get our eat on. The restaurant's smack dab on the corner of 5th and Peachtree, so every seat offers a view of business people, the occasional homeless and theater-going SUV drivers from outside the perimeter. My wife alerted our waiter to the fact that we had concert tickets, so when I joined her at the table he promptly suggested we order as soon as possible to assure getting out of there before the show. Elaine ordered salmon while I got the North African inspired lamb shank with fregula. What's fregula, you ask? It's like cousous but coarser and rougher. What's couscous, you ask? I like to think of them as Arabian grits. What are grits, you ask? Be gone with you, you culinary plebeian! I also got a glass of Château Redortier Côtes du Rhône. She snuck a sip from my glass and it reminded us both of our trips to the South of France. Good good stuff, that provençal libation.

Twenty minutes after we ordered, we still had no food. Meanwhile another couple sat at the table behind us. When our waiter approached them and learned they too had concert tickets, our waiter pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration and sighed. His suggestion to them was that they only order appetizers. They one-upped him and only ordered drinks. Too bad too, because if they had been shoving food in their mouths we wouldn't have had to listen to this man's diatribes on how much he makes and how good he looks. For those interested, and by the level of his volume he must have thought that included everyone in the restaurant, his commissions this month alone would amount to a little over $4000. What's more is that by his own admission he looks good enough to have dated pretty much everybody he's ever wanted to date. When he said this to his dinner companion, Elaine and I both laughed audibly. I felt a little bad for the guy because this was obviously a first date and the romantic in me always roots for the guy on those occasions, but this guy was doing more than nervously rattling off at the mouth. He was nervously rattling off at the mouth about how wonderful he was. Gross. I hope for his sake his date was more impressed with him than we were. My back was to him, but Elaine thought he overestimated his appearance by a longshot.

Our food did finally arrive. My dish looked like something Wilma would serve Fred Flintstone. It was a huge hunk of meat with the bone sticking out served on a bed of the aforementioned pasta and diced carrots. The whole dish was swimming in some sort of reduction sauce, but I didn't pay enough attention to know what it was. I'll tell you this though: It was tasty. The meat practically fell off the bone and melted in my mouth. As big as the mutton shank was, the chef was kinda frugal with the fregula though. I downed this like a famished trogladyte and ordered a second glass of wine. Elaine and I both ate in a matter of minutes, not because we were worried about making it to the show on time but because the food was just that tasty. Too good for talking, we like to say. The bill came to $70 which for two entrees and two glasses of wine ain't too bad. We'll go back.

For the record Michael Buble puts on one hell of a great show. Not only does he sing in that crooner fashion the Rat Pack did back in their heyday but he also has that same showman quality on stage that Frank, Dean and Sammy must have had. Michael Buble was even funnier than the comedian who opened for him was. Great White Northern comedians take note: the fact that you're Canadian isn't all that funny. The main act upstaging you by improving upon your lame jokes however, now that's funny. Michael Buble awed his audience with some great musical impersonations of Johnny Cash and Michael Jackson. Elaine was hoping to hear the Spiderman theme which he didn't sing, but the stuff he did sing was incredible. For the last encore he turned off the mike, stood on the edge of the stage and just belted out the last stanza ino the audience. That guy's got some pipes on him!

Women swoon over that Michael Buble and he knows it. I think the reason he allows flash photography is because the more photos he lets people take, the more likely they'll post them up on his message boards and drive up ticket sales. He says at the beginning of the show that he knows it's the women who drag their guys out to see him. Granted, he was right in my case, but I loved the concert nonetheless and I got to take my date home and snuggle up next to her. As for the guy who had dined next to us, whether he can say the same thing I'll never know. At least if he can't get a girl to go to bed with him, he's still got his commissions and overinflated ego.

My dad turns 65

2006-03-01T13:24:00.000-08:00

My old man celebrated his 65th birthday today, so I stopped by my folks' house on my lunch to ~~raid the fridge~~ express my congratulations. Chocked full of anecdotes and always willing to share them, my father has always made for a fun conversationalist. To those who've told me I have the gift of gab, I'd have to say that I inherited it from him.

Today he remembered something he had done some forty-odd years ago. When he was a young sailor on night duty somewhere over the Atlantic, he pulled a small notebook from his pocket and wrote If I live to be 65 years old, the date will be March, 1 2006. I wonder what I'll be doing on that day?. I found this thought-provoking. Afterall, who hasn't stopped and wondered what they might be doing at some point in the future? It immediately brought to my mind the day in 1980 I proudly proclaimed to my bus driver that I would live to see the turn of the century. Then seven years old and awed at having seen the calendar turn from 1979 to 1980, I too had calculated how old I would be at some seemingly far-off point in the future.

When we crystal gaze like this, we tend to fancify things. When I envisioned the year 2000 as a seven-year-old, I'm sure I thought of jet packs and androids. Now as an expectant father I foresee my daughter being a master violinist or a state senator -- maybe even a violin playing senator riding around on a jet pack with an android. While serving in the military my father had considered emigrating to Australia. Maybe sitting in the engine room that night in the mid-1960s, he pictured himself at age 65 a retired admiral running with kangaroos or playing sea shanties on his didgeridoo. Whatever the vision we conjure up, it's almost always grandiose and flattering.

As for my dad's question as to what he'd be doing on this day , he said that now after all this time he finally knew the answer. "On March 1, 2006, " he said to me, "I'll be walking my dog."

I loathe grocery shopping

2006-02-26T10:49:00.000-08:00

When I was dating, few phrases made me cringe as much as the dreaded We need to talk. Looking back, I didn't hear it all that often, but when I did, I knew that what would insue would likely be a string of events leading to my frustration, confusion and immasculation. Strangely enough, the marital parallel to this has nothing to do with break-ups or strained relationships, yet for me it evokes the same psychological upset. I'm talking about that other dreaded phrase: I need you to pick up a few things at the grocery.

I didn't always fear the grocery store. Before I was married, I looked at the supermarket as a necessary but harmless venue to visit when staples were getting scarce. It served as a seemingly healthier alternative to fastfood, healthier because to a young single guy living on his own healthy food means having to turn on the oven before dinner as opposed to shouting into the clown. During those stretches when I wasn't dating anyone (it seemed like eons,) visiting the grocery store forced me to go somewhere other than home and work where I spent the bulk of my time. I would interact with people at the grocery store. Once I purchased a rose from the floral department and ostensibly left it at the register by accident. When the young and nubile cashier called to me that I had forgotten the flower, I announced, "It's for you," and smiled. As clever as I thought this was, it really never led to anything other than a nervous thank-you, so the next week I left the Don Giovanni mask at home and went back to having her ring up my soft-core men's magazines. What can I say? Just as the grocery had served as a healthy alternative to fastfood, so did eight-and-a-half-by-eleven glossies serve as a healthy alternative to actual dating. But I digress.

In all fairness to my adoring spouse, my distaste for the supermarket really has nothing to do with her. The root of the problem lies in the list, I think, or rather the things on the list and their location in the store. Before marriage, a trip to the grocery store was brief. There was never a list, because for most visits I could count all the things I'd need on one hand of a three-toed sloth. A typical visit would yield . . . well, pretty much what I'm consuming right now while my wife's at work and I'm at home, i.e. red wine and peanut M&Ms. Having grown up in the age of Saturday morning cartoons and MTV, I feasted on junk food, so I can easily locate the candy aisle. Wine is easy to find too. You just head to the neon Budweiser sign and step up a few notches. The whole trip could be completed in a matter of ten minutes.

Now, when I venture into the pandemonium we call Kroger, I usually have a list in tow that outlines with varying degrees of specificity the items I'm expected to bring home. This list isn't composed of just wine, women and peanut M&M's either. It lists things like whole wheat bagels, Inglehoffer™ mustard and two different kinds of shredded cheese. Then there are the non-food items like toilet paper, chapstick ("3 tubes"), and our prescriptions. Now sure, there were times I'd buy toilet paper as a single guy, but chapstick never. And God help me if I needed a prescription! Did I mention this list is front and back?

I used to think parking at the grocery store was a hassle because for some reason I take issue at having to park more than five spaces away from the entrance. I think, at least on a subconsious level, I see the parking lot as a large social paradigm indicative of a hierarchical class structure, and the farther away from the store one parks, the lower down on the chain one is. I used to be one of those people who would circle the lot over and over looking for the right spot. Now that most groceries have stooped to littering their lots with diaper ads disguised as designated spaces for expectant mothers, I'm most often assured a parking spot right up by the handicap loading zone. Why more shoppers don't pooh-pooh the occasional ostracism and looks of disdain I experience and park in these spots I'll never know, but as it stands, most people don't. Fine with me. I'm not apologetic. The most I've ever gotten is a tongue lashing from a woman who -- get this -- WAS PARKED IN THE FIRE LANE! I promptly educated her to the fact that only one of us was breaking the law. Enough said.

Certain items I can quickly and easily locate at the grocery store: produce, cokes, men's magazines, etc. These however account for an extremely small portion of the list I'm clutching concernedly in my hand each time I go. I usually will go in search of these items first, aisle by aisle, taking comfort and feeling self-assured for an ever-so-brief period in knowing where certain things are. Potatoes, milk, cokes, frozen pizzas, orange juice, cashier, exit, trunk. I don't have any problem with those. It's the other things like Chili-O's spice mix, salsa, the three tubes of chapstick. Where these and most other things are in the grocery store is beyond me. I try and match the desired item up with the directional signs hanging in each aisle, but for some reason I don't comprehend. Why is salsa in a different area than ketchup? Isn't salsa just ketchup with a Mexican accent? And the Chili-O's, shouldn't they be next to the soup? They're not. My wife, being the kind-hearted soul that she is, does remind me of certain idiocies in grocer logic. Canellini beans for instance are no closer to baked beans than they are jelly beans. "In the Mexican food aisle," she writes on my list. Sure enough, she's right. The canellini beans are right next to the tortillas, the albondigas and the Our Lady of Guadelupe novenas.

I have no problem asking a grocery store employee for help, but I've found that different people provide different levels of assistance. I usually seek out someone I've asked before and who's provided me with successful directions in the past. Have you ever noticed that grocery stores more than most other establishments extend the definition of diversity to people with mental disabilities? These people aren't Mensa geniuses, but I've often found they're the most willing to help, and if they can get me to the item I'm looking for, who cares what size bus they rode to school? On my most recent trip, my usual guy (flat face, upward slanting eyes, you get the picture) wasn't there so instead I asked a manager whose mug and bad haircutI recognized from that blown-up photo that greets you near the entrance. My demand was simple enough, I thought. I simply asked him where I might find paper towels. "Paper towels, " the dumpy manager said with a puzzled squint, "should be on the aisle just past the pickles, I think." Great! Thanks, Dickweed. If I don't know where the paper towels are, what makes you think I have the slightest clue where the pickles are? I swear, I think some of those people purposely set out to make me feel stupider than I already do.

Once I've located the correct aisle, I still need to locate the item itself. Furthermore, I then have to decide on a more pressing issue, that is whether I want to purchase the name brand or the more economical store brand. As a rule, I opt for the Kroger brand whenever possible. I don't care that my cookies aren't Keebler or my milk's not Mayfield. After twenty years of drinking only Diet Coke, I decided to switch to Kroger's diet cola. A twelve-pack of the name brand stuff sometimes goes for as much as $4.00, whereas a twelve-pack of the bootleg variety in the not-so-jazzy can costs a mere $2.12. And when it's on sale the price shoots down to $1.95. Having replaced my nicotine addiction with caffeine eight years ago, I go through anywhere between four and six cokes a day. Even at my lowest intake, I save almost $5.00 a week on beverage expenditure. That's $5.00 I can spend on toilet paper, which by the way I don't entrust to Kroger. Why should dancing bears have nicer bathroom tissue than I do?

Once my cart is loaded to the gills after nine or ten trips down the aisles and I've finally found everything on the list, I make my way to the registers. Without fail I usually wind up in the line behind a fellow shopper needing three price checks from the cashier in training who can't locate a barcode on a bag of dog food and doesn't know the produce code for grapes (it's 4022.) Sometimes I do this on purpose because young and dumb cashiers are more likely to accept coupons for items I didn't purchase. A young feckless cashier will happily zap all your coupons in a slapdash fashion without even noting that you're trying to pass off a Desitin coupon when you really bought the Kroger brand diaper cream at half the price. A more seasoned cashier will not only check to make sure you're buying the right brand but also to make sure you're not purchasing the 8-ounce can when your coupon says you have to buy the 12-ounce. Granny's line might move faster, but you pay for that convenience in lack of savings.

As soon as the last bag gets loaded into the trunk, I make a beeline for the house. I can't leave the grocery fast enough. I would even rather drive home on an empty tank than stop and get gas, I'm in such a hurry to get home. If at all possible I try and get the groceries put away before my wife returns. Cheese in the meat drawer; meat in the crisper drawer (I don't know why we organize our fridge this way but we do, and after 6 years of marriage I don't dare change the system now.) Toilet paper goes in the bathroom. Frosted animal crackers (the Nabisco rep had to find them for me) go in the pantry, and pizzas go in the freezer. In just a few minutes all things are put away. Moments later Elaine gets home, checks to make certain things are where they're supposed to be (they are . . . relatively). She rearranges a few things in the pantry, wanders into the bathroom and comes back into the kitchen. Then with a sad look on her face she asks, "You didn't get my chapstick?"

Shit.

Employees need written reminder to flush twice

2006-02-22T14:36:00.000-08:00

Someone on the maintenance crew where I work has taken to affixing notices to the stalls in the men's bathroom. For several weeks now each of the two stalls has had a posted sign instructing visitors not to leave any waste or paper in the commode and to flush twice when necessary. Apparently some guys still weren't getting the hint because recently we were greeted with a new sign that reads:

Gentlemen:

Please do not leave paper or waste in the toilets. If necessary, please flush twice to clear the bowl.

Please do not leave the seat or floor wet. This is unsanitary and inconsiderate to others who use the facilities.

Thank you.

The maintenance lady, whose written English is apparently much better than her spoken English, didn't bother to take the old sign down before posting this new one. The two are just scotch taped to the wall side by side, both in large Times New Roman letters. If it had been me, I would have taped one to the inside of the stall door and one above the tank. That way regardless of the reason for one's visit, a person could still read the notice. That's just me.

I don't frequent the stalls unless someone is already at the urinal, so I can't vouch for their day-to-day cleanliness. However of the few times I have ventured into one, I haven't noticed anything out of the ordinary. As a rule, I don't have lengthy restroom visits at the workplace so I might not know if the seat was wet, and because I don't have lengthy restroom visits at the workplace, I probably wouldn't care if the seat were wet. Some things you just let ride. As for a wet floor, sure it's gross but how wet can it be? A drop here and there? It's not like people are stepping knee-deep in the stuff. Step over it. Then again, if our maintenance lady is having to get on her hands and knees to unstop a backed up toilet, maybe any amount of alien bodily fluid is too much to be face to face with. Anyway, my point is that I've yet to walk into the bathroom and found that it didn't meet my expectations. Are these signs really merited? Are the men in this building really so haphazard when it comes to elimination that they need to be reminded of what you'd think is just general common sense?

I discretely removed one of the signs from the bathroom for the sole purposes of bringing it back to my cube and copying it verbatim into my blog. Holding up the sign, I then flagged down a female coworker on her way back from the bathroom to ask her if the ladies' room also contained such explicit directives. She looked at me shamedly. "Do you mean to tell me you put your hands all over that paper with everybody else's fecal germs on it?" After she wiped the look of disgust off her face she went on to inform me that indeed the women too were subject to these gentle reminders, only theirs included additional warnings not to throw feminine products into the commode. I've seen similar signs in some unisex bathrooms. Again, do women really do that? Try and flush tampons down the toilet? Even the industrial flush has its limits.

Since I now have the one sign at my desk, I have a good mind to doctor it up or rewrite it altogether before posting it back in the stall. Maybe I could incorporate a little Charmin-inspired jingle of my own. Hey there, bear, you're not done yet. You better wipe that seat. Don't leave it wet. Hmm, is that a double entendre I see? Part of me wants to come up with something off beat and put it up there like PLEASE REFRAIN FROM USING THE COPIER PAPER AS TOILET TISSUE or maybe PLEASE DO NOT LEAVE YOUR EMPLOYEE EVALUATION IN THE COMMODE. Or what about this: وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب ?

Come to think of it, maybe I should leave well enough alone. I like to think I enjoy a fairly wholesome reputation at work, and a stunt like that might jeopardize the image. Who knows how much havoc I've already caused just by taking down the one sign? Will the night watchman still know to flush twice if necessary? Besides, my coworkers have enough to worry about without having to put up with my shit.

Helium balloons -- gotta love 'em

2006-02-20T15:57:00.000-08:00

This morning at work I walked into the break room to find the ceiling covered with helium balloons of assorted colors. I had been summoned there for a one-hour presentation on something that bore absolutely no relevance to my job duties, so instead of paying attention to the presenter I stared up at the balloons. Since childhood I've always liked balloons, helium balloons especially. There's something about the bright colors and squeaky sounds I think, or maybe it's the association with parties that makes me like them. Balloon animals intrigue me to a degree, but plain old round balloons are my balloon of choice. I prefer the rubbery ones over the metallic Mylar balloons. Call me a simpleton, but a bright red inflated balloon just makes me smile.

For Valentine's Day, members of some fund-raising committee walked around soliciting us to purchase a helium-filled heart shaped Mylar balloon for a fellow coworker. I declined, but someone apparently thought enough of me to cough up the dollar. I came to work that day and found the balloon in my cube. It was on a red ribbon weighted down by a gum-filled sucker. I kept the balloon all of Valentine's Day and then took it home to let it go and watch it float up into the clouds. Almost a week later, our building is still filled with these balloons, though now many of them are partially deflated and sad. While I like bright new balloons, wilting balloons are just depressing like dying flowers or a sad clown. I want to run down the rows of cubicles with scissors and snip the ribbons that hold the balloons hostage. I would gather the ribbons in my hand and lead the balloons outside. I work right by the interstate and I can just picture the looks on hundreds of people's faces as they watch red heart-shaped balloons float up into the air over I-85. Think of the diversion to Atlanta traffic this would create and how many smiles it would evoke!

Once when I was a third grader at Lawrenceville Elementary, every student was given a helium-filled balloon to which we were to attach a hand-written note giving our first name and the name of our teacher. Whoever found the note was asked to write back announcing that they had recovered the balloon. We all let our balloons go roughly at the same time. I held on to mine for a brief moment longer so I could more easily distinguish it from the hundreds of other balloons and follow its path into the sky. For the next couple weeks, students walked by a bulletin board in the front hall to see if someone had responded to their particular note. Someone wrote from as far away as South Carolina. My note never got a response, and I sometimes pictured my balloon coming down in a field or in the middle of the woods.

At the meeting today, if we asked the presenter a question we were awarded with a stress ball or some other office bawble to either display in our cubes or, in my case, discretely discard into the trash when no one was looking. Afterward when the crowd was filing out I grabbed the ribbon of one of the balloons. I'm sure these weren't meant for the taking, but no one was going to miss one. I marched it to my cube and tore off a sheet from my notepad and wrote Dear Recipient, Kindly email me at cocktailswithkevin@hotmail.com letting me know you found this note. Thanks, Kevin. I promptly took it outside, let it go, and watched it sail over the milieu of motorists wondering if I'd ever get a response.

Hints and tips for naming a baby

2006-02-14T15:59:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in the midst of crib buying, nursery painting and gimmie-gimmie gift registering a more pertinent decision has to be made when expecting a baby, namely what to call the kid. My wife, Elaine, and I know from vicarious experience that this name game can be the source of indecision, frustration and sometimes even chastisement from well-meaning friends and family. A name follows a person through life. Pick the wrong name and you subject your kid to a childhood of finger pointing and playground ridicule. A good choice in names paves the way for memorable introductions and positive first impressions. This being our first, naming a kid is new territory for us. Nevertheless, there are some things we've learned in the process.

People are finicky about names for newborns. I'm no exception. Most know from having been an elementary schooler that a kid with an overly common name will have to go by his first name and last initial in school. I know from having taught elementary schoolers that while the teachers may say to the class "Johnny A" and "Johnny S", what they say to other teachers is "Johnny with the constant cold" and "Johnny with the crazy mom." Johnny's designated identifiers are seldom positive, so unless he's the only Johnny in the class, his commonly sweet name gets amended with a not so sweet characteristic. My rule of thumb is that if the name appears on the Top Ten Baby Names list, it’s out. Regardless of how nice a name Aidan and Dylon might be, I don’t want my child to be one of three Aidans or Dylons in class. We’re also expecting a daughter, so that makes Aidan or Dylon even less likely, but you get the point.

Naming a girl Dylon illustrates another point however. While we laugh at the lyrics to Johnny Cash’s “Boy Named Sue”, sadly there are people who in fact do such cruel things to their children. Let’s face it: when a girl is named Lynn, Leslie, Ariel, Dominique or Madison, she has a name that at worst might be looked at as androgynously trendy. When a boy has one of these names, he has a girl’s name. Remember the playground ridiculers mentioned earlier? He’s their first mark. Worse yet, classmates might rename the game Smear the Queer to Smear Leslie. Girls are generally not bound by the same restrictions, but many sources suggest giving Madison and Dakota girlish middle names just to clarify gender, if in fact they’re girls. If they’re not, well . . .they’re boys who have girls names. See above.

As a language geek, somebody who thinks in fricatives and plosives, I have other qualifications in a name. My last name begins with a B for instance, so I won’t want my daughter’s first name to end with a B. Granted, there aren’t many girls’ names that end in B (Deb is the only one that comes to mind), but Deb Black poses pronunciation problems. Will people hear Deb Black? Or Dehh Black or will they hear Deb Lack?

I also check for anagrams of new babies' names. An anagram is what you get when you rearrange the letters of a word or words. LATES is an anagram of STEAL for instance. My sister- and brother-in-law were at one time considering naming their baby an anagram of FETAL GREMLINS. They opted instead for an anagram of MELTING AFRICAN. My wife and I are considering one of THEREZ BILLY CLAMBAKE. Were we to have been expecting a boy, his anagram would have been BROADMINDED CLAW KICK. I'm not gifted enough to come up with these on my own. Instead I rely on wordsmith.org's anagram server. Even still, this is probably one of my eccentricities better characterized as a disorder.

Regarding the internet, there are several sources for baby names online that parents of yesteryear didn' have access to. It's easy to pull up the popular names, ethnic names, historical names and trendy names. The net is chocked full of people who enjoy nothing more than sharing their choices of names and asking for others' input on names. Often they come up with such jewels as Brayden, Makynzi, Karsyn, Kamaria and Jayln. Half the names these people throw out sound like characters in a J.R.R. Tolkien novel. It's enough to make you puke!

Worth checking out though is the baby namer on oxygen.com. Not only will it tell you how high a name ranks in popularity, but it will also give drawbacks or what they call "teaser names" for a name. Gotta love these. Teasers for my name include Kevout, Seven, Kevie Wevie, Revvin' Kevin, Schmevin and Heavy Kevvy. This site is most enlightening. If you're a family member or friend, you can rest assured you will now never hear me call any of you Care Bear, Krusten, Droolia, Mattitude, Kyley Wyote or Philip the gas tank.

Preferences for naming babies vary from person to person. For every rule, there's a kindhearted soul out there whose name doesn't follow that rule. Before I step on too many more peoples' toes, let me just say that while I don't want my kid to have one of the top ten baby names, I've known some wonderful Emilies and Ashleys; there's a nice woman named Kevin who works at my voting poll; Bob Barker and Jeb Bush both could probably care less about the multiple bilabial plosives in their names; and though I've never met Orangello and Lorangelo, I'm sure they're great guys. As for teasing names, kids are going to tease regardless of someone's name. That being said, I'm giving MELTING AFRICAN'S mom fair warning. When I see her at the shower, I'm gonna shout Queenie, Queenie Caroline, Washed Her Hair in Turpentine. That one's just too good to pass up.

I want to pull out my cowlick

2006-02-07T11:57:00.000-08:00

Burning inside me is a strong desire to pull out my cowlick. Looking at me, you probably wouldn't even be able to tell I have a cowlick, but I know it's there. Oh yes, it's there. It stands out ever so slightly, leaning defiantly at an abnormal angle against the other well behaved good little hairs. Like a weed in a rose garden it grows seemingly out of sheer spite, mocking the gardener/groomer who debates whether to prune around it or pull it out entirely. I had hoped one of the benefits of chemotherapeutic baldness would be that the cowlick would not grow back. Apparently weedkiller can wipe out both plants and cancer, but not unruly tufts of hair.

There is a scientific name for this. It's called trichotillomania (pronounced puhl' ing owt yoor hehr''). I'm not generally one for psychoanalytic labeling, much less self-imposing such labels, but this is one I can't readily deny. According to healthAtoZ.com (by the way, I strongly encourage you to obtain all pertinent health information from the innerweb) trichotillomania is thrown into a category called impulse control disorders along with things like kleptomania and pyromania. Wow! I feel like I ran a red light and have been thrown in with the serial murderers. I've just pulled out a few wayward hairs and I'm on the same level with thieves and firebugs?

I first acquired this habit when I was nine at which point I gradually pulled out enough hairs to create a bald spot on the top of my head about the size of a half-dollar. My teacher was disgusted by this and referred me to the school counselor because of it. I don't know that she and I were able to reach any remarkable discoveries. The appeal of pulling out my hair soon waned and it grew back. I can't recall why I did this. Some theorize that pulling out one's hair is associated with stress, but how much stress can a nine-year-old really have? Though, come to think of it, there were those times when I had to wait an entire week for the exciting conclusion of Diff'rent Strokes.

Some twenty years later I revisited pulling out my hair, only this time the target was my cowlick. I wanted to believe this was merely for purposes of beautification, but since later attempts to shave out the cowlick with an electric razor just didn't yield the same gratification as wincing and pulling, I can only assume that there is some psychotic reason I do this. Whether shaven or pulled out, extracting my cowlick really resulted in little if any esthetic improvement. Because it was shorter than the rest of my hair, it just stuck out even worse as it grew back. My hairdresser would admonish me each visit saying, "It's gonna grow back the same way." She was right.

Further evidence that this is a neurotic behavior and not just a harmless pastime is found in Dr. Steven Phillipson's paper Hair Pulling a.k.a. Trichotillomania: a simple habit or a complex diagnosis? You see, prior to pulling out hair, I spend several minutes trying to separate out the individual hairs that constitute my cowlick. Sometimes I stare in a mirror and determine that what I think of as my cowlick is actually two cowlicks, one small and one big, seperated one from the other by a few strands of hair that actually go where they're supposed to. At times I'll wrap them around my finger and just pull -- not pull them out, mind you. Just pull. I didn't think much of it until I read this in the good doctor's paper:

Prior to hair pulling, most persons engage in a self-stroking behavior otherwise known as the "grooming" response (i.e.,hair twirling, eyebrow caressing, pubic hair tweaking, etc.) This repetitive action sets the stage for finding the specific hair or clump of hairs that become the target for the future pull.

Yikes! I fit the profile to a T. Like I said, I'm really not into psycho-self-labeling or psycho-anyone-else-labeling for that matter. I'm constantly sickened by people touting their recent diagnoses of OCD, ADD or LMNOP, but even I have to admit there may be something to this. I wonder if the manifestation of the disorder lets up when the Moon is in the Seventh House and Jupiter aligns with Mars? In the meantime, I'll have to explore Trich.org and see what I can learn. With any luck I'll find a group of caring and cultish people in front of whom I can someday stand up and proudly announce, "My name is Kevin, and I'm a trichotillomaniac."

Search for interesting blogs yields few results

2006-02-01T11:54:00.000-08:00

I recently have begun dedicating a portion of my work day to checking out other people's blogs. This is because until recently I suffered from blogroll envy. You know that sidebar on people's sites where they list the blogs of roughly a quarter of the world's population? Though many people out there have on their sites links to umptine million other bloggers, I only link to a select few. So with the assumption that there must be a slew of enjoyable blogs out there I'm not sharing, and worse yet not reading, I set out on a mission to find them and use them to extend my list of likable blogs.

I started with two local people whose stuff I find funny and witty. Between the two of them they had roughly sixty other blogs listed as affiliates. I clicked them, one by one, to uncover what I expected would be more funny witticisms. Baloney! What I found was a cyber string of blase drivel. Not all drivel was alike of course. Some was political drivel, some sophomoric drivel, and some was just plain vulgar drivel. How sad. What began as a novel way to express one's views via the internet has now become a breeding ground for boring drones, conspiracy theorists, and illiterate nitwits. It reminds me of the cyberfodder people used to send through their email. Remember the Neimann Marcus cookie recipe and all that fill-this-out-and-send-it-to-seventy-friends crap? That's what this is like.

I didn't keep score of the blogs I ran across in my fruitless search, but here's the breakdown. Lots of people write about nothing but their own dull lives. In and of itself, that's not bad. Most all of our lives are dull and reading about someone else's dull life can help satiate some voyeuristic tendencies. But people, when you're writing something you want someone else to read, jazz it up a little. We're not expecting illiteration and double entendres, but why not throw in some sentence variance and maybe the occasional adverb? A guy can only read so many blogs that read IwenttoworkmybossisajerkIneedanewjob before drowning in a puddle of his own drool. I've found more intriguing reading in the Yellow Pages.

Another thing you see a lot of is the political soapbox blog. Much of the stuff found on these blogs is simply rehashed versions of what you hear on talk radio. Each time I stumble across such a site, I have to fight the urge to leave a comment asking if the author has formulated any political opinions of his own. I swear I think most of these people just regurgitatie the same angry poli-rants posted by everyone in their sidebar of supposed noteworthy blogs. The political soapbox blog generally falls into one of two categories, either Bush sucks -- pass it on or Bush rocks -- pass it on. It's like a second-grade game of Telephone.

You know what else you see a lot of in blogdom? Profanity. I'm not offended by it, and sometimes it truly adds to the story. I pride myself on being quite the potty mouth at times, but posting locker room talk just so you can say you put naughty words on the innerwed is just plain stupid. Worse yet is that most of the profane parlance is from people trying to be funny. Vulgarity gets courtesy laughs at best. Most often it just detracts from what you're trying to say. Then again, some use it because they have nothing to say.

My conclusion is that many people are simply whoring out their blogs in the hopes that the affiliated blogger will return the favor resulting in both bloggers getting more hits and thus a slightly more inflated ego. It's like some huge mutual masturbatory cyber aggrandizement. Obviously I'm grateful to anyone who links to my blog, visits my blog, or leaves a comment. After all, I write my blog to ~~advance my plan for world domination~~ share something that people might enjoy reading or possibly rouse a response, but I'm not going to link to someone's blog if I find it overly dull, There are of course some blogs I find worthwhile. My proposed readings are limited to a sibling, a friend, a few locals, a few nonlocals and an admitted schizoid. The one thing these people all have in common is that they write stuff I truly enjoy reading.

If you've got a blog worth reading, I want to know about it.