ABSURD AND ABSURD.

Because I'm interested--and because it's part of my job--I've been following Team USA in the FIBA Americas Championship. It's currently round two and I'm watching a nail biter between the US and Puerto Rico. We're clinging to a slim twenty-nine point lead. Drama at its finest. Anyways, today I was checking up on the Brazil game stats (not that it was any closer) and was greeted on the FIBA Americas page by this badass FIBA mascot:


Huh. Nothing says basketball like a blue muppet in a backwards cap. With gold rings on every finger. And a sweet Lucky 7s necklace. Seriously FIBA, can't a cartoon muppet at least get some platinum? It's not costing you anything. And no earings?

Then I was browsing through an e-mail from Ad Age, an advertising magazine that sends out daily industry updates. In addition to the most recent buzz as to what's taking place in the industry, they sometimes offer what they consider to be helpful articles written by industry insiders. This was in the mix today:


You want one essential tip that will help you with your next phone interview? Never, ever, take tips from an article entitled, "How Can I Kick Some Serious Butt in a Phone Interview." If you're to the point where you're relying on a 200-word article to supply you with some magical formula to nailing a phone interview, you're a long ways from working in advertising. Hell, you're a long ways from working in anything. I mean, are you really going to ask Brad?


Really? Brad? Really? Come on now.

MASTER CLEANSE.

The master cleanse diet. Perhaps you've heard of it. Perhaps not. Basically, it involves a total halt to the eating of all foods. You survive on a regimen of salt water, lemonade (with Cayenne pepper and maple syrup) and a herbal laxative tea. Not for one or two days, either. For ten days.

If you know me, you know eating isn't my favorite thing. Some days I even consider it a hassle; deciding what to eat, going to get it, actually eating it. I just can't be bothered. Many are the day I've longed for a pill that would provide the same result as a meal. Yet, despite this occasional aversion to eating, I still like food. Chicken wings, pizza, cheeseburgers, anything BBQ or fried, McDonalds, anything soaked in butter, ranch dressing, beer, dr. pepper, steak, milk, salt, hamburger helper. My tastes are for food that will one day lead to my untimely death.

If anyone needs to cleanse their insides, it's me (well, perhaps Brandy needs it more). So I took great interest in tracking the progress of my friend and associate as he attempted to flush his system of all the accumulated shit. Literally. The result seems to be positive, though I'll let you decide for yourself.

Follow the adventures of Nicholas.

Note: It would have been helpful for Nick to provide before and after pics of himself as well as a poop by poop visual tracking of his excrement.

Could I do it? My non-eating lifestyle would lend me to believe I could. Instead of having to make a decision about eating, I would just drink some lemonade. But I don't quite have Nick's resolve. The things I do like, I like a lot. One thing I definitely do not like is having to shit frequently. Even worse is having to dump out strange things that could possibly make me bleed and cry. When Nick decides he's going to do something, he does it, no doubt.

I can barely decide what I'm going to do from one day to the next.

Maybe.

Possibly.

Perhaps.

That's about how committed I am to any one thing.

BAD KIDS. WORSE PARENT.

After arriving at the airport this evening to find that my flight had been re-delayed (an annoying story for a different time), I made my way to the seating area outside my gate and found a nice quiet place to sit and catch up on some work. No less than five minutes later, a big fat woman and her three fat kids decided the best place to wait would be in the row of seats behind me.

To be fair, there was some reasoning behind her choosing these seats. The same reason I picked them: they're kind of isolated from groups of people. And that's just the type of waiting area required for fat, loud, crybaby kids. It just happened to be my unfortunate luck that I had chosen to sit there first. I didn't see the "fat shouting crybaby kid area" sign.

Normally, I like kids; I think they're funny. But I guess once they reach a certain age (probably about 8-9?) they become loud and obnoxious and--though this may not typically be the case--obese. Of course the loudest of the kids and the mother decided to sit directly behind me, as close to my ears as possible, to ensure maximum annoyance. They began with a ten-minute back and forth about why the girl couldn't have a laptop. The mother's reasoning?

"Well, you could have had a vacation to Las Vegas or a laptop."

Now, I'm not parent, but I'm pretty sure Las Vegas vacations are for adults. If you bring your kids along, they'll have fun because they're kids and there are pools. That's all kids need. But don't pretend that you "gave" them this vacation instead of a laptop. I'm not fooled. That's just poor logic.

Then, after some nonsense babble from the young girl (something about how a girl asked God to kill her brother but she really just wanted her brother to get better and blah blah blah, I tuned out the moral), came the part that made me realize a child is only as bad as its worst parent. A one-way conversation that almost ended with me punching a 45-year old woman in the mouth.

Keep in mind that I couldn't see what was taking place, but this is roughly the conversation that took place and my rough estimation as to what was happening:

MOM: Lauren, your doll is crying. Stop that. Lauren.

I can't hear the doll crying. The youngest girl is lying on floor doing something to her doll that I can't see. She also makes a whining noise.

MOM: Stop doing that to the doll. Stop it. Stop.

Kid apparently does not stop.

MOM: Stop that. Stop doing that to his leg. Stop. The doll wants to sleep. Let him sleep.

The kid doesn't stop; the doll doesn't sleep.

MOM: Stop now. Look at the doll's leg; it's all red. Look what you did to his leg.

Kid continues doing something.

MOM: Stop that right now.

No stopping.

MOM: I'm taking the doll. The doll is mine now.

Mom possibly takes doll. Kid whines. Mom possibly returns doll to kid.

MOM: Lauren, stop that. Stop now. Let the doll sleep. Stop.

Lauren continues.

MOM: Stop mistreating that doll. Look at that leg. Look what you did. Stop it. That's it, it's my doll, I'm taking it.

Mom retakes doll, maybe.

MOM: It's my doll now. You can't take care of it, it's my doll. No, it's my doll. It's mine now. It's my doll.

Mom possibly returns doll, possibly keeps holding doll, kid makes a little crying noise.

MOM: Stop that. Stop it now. Stop. Stop. Lauren, stop that. You're acting like a spoiled little brat. Stop it.

Kid must have gotten the doll back.

MOM: Give me the doll. Give it here. Give me that doll. It's my doll now, no, the doll is staying with me. No. Stop.

If you think this is annoying to read, imagine some fat lady shouting it in your ear. And you might think I'm exaggerating the length of this exchange. But I'm not. It was probably even longer, because when I left the area in a fog of fury it was still taking place. I could see no end to this sequence of ridiculous discipline--if you can even call that discipline--so I had to get up and leave before I shoved that fucking doll in the mom's mouth. It probably would have been better for all involved if I had just taken the doll from both the mother and the daughter, since neither of them seemed to be able to handle having it around. Maybe then they could be quiet and not incite murderous feelings in others.

Holy hell. That was awful. But now I'm alone again in a quiet area several gates from that fat family.

Hopefully they'll sit next to me on the plane.

ADULT DANGER.

Being an adult does not make you immune to the dangers of fireworks, especially when beers and a parachute soldier are involved.

YOU KNOW WHAT?

You know what I don't ever want to hear about again?

Barry Bonds breaking the home run record.

You know what I think would taste good on pizza?

Fried chicken.

You know what?

I like you know what.

JOHN AND SEBASTIAN.

I've been watching a new HBO show, John From Cincinnati, since it started. And until about three episodes ago I was really liking it. It's random, kind of funny and pretty mysterious. Then--and I'm not sure if it was written in the script or a director decided this should happen--Sissy, the mother/grandmother on the show became a complete nut job. I don't care if you want a character to be overly protective and prone to fits of hysterics, but sometimes she has to shut the fuck up. All she does is scream and shout and kick things; she's constantly pissed and flustered. There's nothing endearing about that. There's not even anything entertaining about that.

Nevertheless, I still like the show. And even though I think it's a common assumption that John is some sort of Jesus, I'm waiting and hoping there's some strange twist we didn't see coming. My guess right now is that the stick figures are foreshadowing that if John is indeed Jesus, the rest of the characters will become John's apostles.

In other news, troubled basketball phenom (or former phenom) Sebastian Telfair is taking steps to clean up his life and make a new start in Minnesota.

"I have not been charged with anything," he said. "I've been in some unfortunate situations where I've been in the wrong place at the wrong time. I fully take responsibility for that. I grew up learning how not to be in those situations." Telfair also said he's moved out of New York City and into Las Vegas in order to stay out of trouble and "concentrate on basketball."

Um, nice try Sebastian. But don't you think that if you wanted to stay out of trouble you could find somewhere more appropriate than Vegas? Like, sayyyyy, Minnesota? I bet you could stay out of trouble there. No one goes to Vegas to stay out of trouble. People go to Vegas to FIND trouble. It's like the world headquarters for trouble (or maybe the US headquarters, I'm pretty sure Amsterdam is Europe's).

The only logic--and it's pretty poor logic--that I can see in this is that Telfair has placed too much stock in commercials claiming, "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." I don't believe that should be taken literally.

WILL POWER AND ANGER.

Recently my roommate went home for the weekend and I volunteered to watch the little dog, Ralph, who lives in our apartment. I did this freely and of my own free will, thinking it would be good bonding time for me and the little fellow. He spent years living with only ladies, so a weekend alone with the boys would do him some good.

The first day went great. We went for a walk and aside from the fact that he kept eating grass and rubbing his face on urine-soaked walls, we were getting on just fine. I've taken him for walks before and am no longer annoyed that he has to smell everything. Other dogs seem to understand the concept of walking as a form of travel, while Ralph sees it as a thirty minute, one block smell tour.

Anyways, it was a Saturday. It was hot outside and I really had nothing to do. So I sat around the apartment watching television. Ralph sat with me. I thought he would be anxious and want to play or something, but that's not Ralph's style. Ralph is more like a cat than a dog. He walks around the apartment, occasionally tries to eat trash, but mostly just sits and watches you. Today I wasn't doing anything, so he got tired of watching me and went to sleep instead. He slept basically all day. But so did I. After a long day and night of lounging around, I figured it was time for bed. In order to keep the trash safe, I put the trash-eater into his cage (where he lives all day when no one is home) and went to bed. The time: 2:30am. No sooner had I turned out my light, than the crying began. Little yelps coming from the next room.

At first, I resolved to let him yelp for 10 minutes or so and he would probably get tired of it and go to sleep. But no. Yelp yelp whine cry yelp. Until 3:00am. At that point I thought maybe the little guy had a legitimate gripe. It was hot, so he was probably thirsty. I got up and let him out. He bolted straight to the kitchen, only not to the water. He ran to the middle of the floor and began licking it. Annoyed, I grabbed him up, grabbed his cage and moved it into my room. I thought maybe he just wanted a person in the room with him and he would go to sleep.

This did not stop the crying.

Next logical problem solving step: let him out. He probably just wants to sleep in the bed with me. Wrong. Apparently what he wanted to do was run around my room, crying, sit by the door snorting in anger, climb onto my bed to lick my hand and basically do anything but sleep. Shit, he had slept all day; he just wasn't tired. At around 6am, after some on and off sleep, I put him back in his cage and went to sleep.

The next morning, after a few good hours of slumber, I got up and let the fuzzball out of his cage. As soon as I cracked the door, he bolted into the kitchen and began licking the floor again. Whatever was on that floor was like a drug to Ralph. All night long, all he could think about was getting back to that spot on the floor to lick it. Maybe if I had let him finish his first bout of floor-licking he would have gone right to sleep. But I've never really owned a dog, so I don't know how they work.

Regardless, it was a rocky first night. One in which I learned I can not lie still and listen to a dog cry, which makes me feel weak. I also learned that when something is keeping me from going to sleep it makes me very angry, which does not bode well for any children I may have in the future. They better learn to cry quietly from their cages.

In related news, my other roommate dropped a chicken parm sandwich on the floor that night.