"I don't know about rotting corpses, but we both like picnics."

Mumsy is the winner of the first ever "blog" cartoon caption contest, and as such, she will be receiving the framed, signed original cartoon, along with a year of membership in "B"ARFO and the everlasting esteem of "blog" staff. Congratulations, Mumsy! You're wit and insight are unparalleled in the known universe.

Yet Another Coinkydink

Yesterday, I watched the episode of 'Dirty Jobs' where Mike Rowe learns how to tan hides at a tanning factory. While they are throwing the deer hides into a giant vat of something disgusting, Mike comments on the fact that one of the hides has hair on the wrong side and charmingly wonders aloud if perhaps he has discovered a new species of deer, one with the fur on the inside.

Then last night, I was in bed reading 'The Once and Future King', and I came across the following: "Said he was a wolf, only the difference was a wolf's skin was hairy on the outside, his on the inside."

Two references to animals with hair on the inside in one day? I wonder if the hair-on-the-inside wolves eat the hair-on-the-inside deer.

Macbook (hot) air

The other day I was planning on buying a new laptop. Nothing fancy.. Something for writing, music organization, graphic design and maybe some cool internet abilities.
I was looking at MacBooks avoiding getting overconfident in my trendiness, as rumors began to reach my ears about "The Keynote" referring to Steve Jobs' special announcement of his latest products for Apple. It was sounding almost too Willy Wonka to handle as I toyed around with the iPhone like it was an everlasting gobstopper and the ipod touch like a fizzy lifting drink. I had to know what was coming out the next day. After an hour of trying to crack the employees (no water-boarding) I went to circuit city to see what they might have that apple would need to out-do.

I found what I considered the best notebook interface I'd ever seen! A swivel screen, tablet laptop with built in mp3, touchscreen, perf-mouse board, high speed, thumb print security light, small and.... It was running... Windows Vista. True I could have installed linux on it but none of the functions would work.
I began to daydream about the potential of running music software like Ableton live or Riesen on a touchscreen could revolutionize the art of live music.

Not to mention, make DJs the first to live in Star Trek.

So I had been counting some chickens...
What did we get? Macbook Potato Chip!
I am sure there are uses for a computer that ninjas can kill you with, but what does this mean for the world of electronica? well, nothing really, except that everyone will buy one of these and by the time they forget its in the chair and sit on it...
Hopefully my dream computer will be there to replace it after weeks of anticipation for Steves secret keynote with all the little oompa loompas.

Dispatches from the Rotner/Uhr Basement: 2.2

I have two warts on my feet. They're either warts or something else, but I'm almost certain they're warts.

My stepmother says she thinks they're callouses, but I know that she knows they're warts. I also know that she thinks my warts are a direct result of my constant paranoid obsession with warts; I could see the judgmental glint in her eye as I pestered her to look more closely at my feet.

I'm sure you are all as appalled as I am by these recent developments, but let us endeavor to remain calm and rational, so that we can make it through this difficult time with as little disruption to our lives as possible.

I know you will all be praying for my speedy recovery, and as always, I appreciate your support.

A Publicly Transitory Misadventure with Sadie Hawkins: Part 2

Having googled 'Sadie Hawkins,' I am almost too disappointed to relate the information to you.

It seems she was a character in the comic strip, Li'l Abner. Described as "the homeliest gal in all them hills," she was still a spinster at thirty-five, so her father, Hekzebiah Hawkins, gathered together all the bachelors of Dogpatch and said
"when ah fires- all o' yo' kin start a-runnin! When ah fires agin - after givin' yo' a fair start - Sadie starts a runnin'. Th' one she ketches'll be her husband."

That was the first Sadie Hawkins Day. Thereafter, it became an annual holiday in which all the spinsters of Dogpatch participated. The event has led to many real life traditions, such as the Sadie Hawkins dance. Whatever.

A Publicly Transitory Misadventure with Sadie Hawkins: Part 1

Looking at them from the side, the numbers on the front of the bus looked like '206.' It wasn't until I was halfway to Gunbarrel that I figured out I was actually on the 205. Who knew subtracting 1 from the name of a bus could make such a big difference?

On the forty minute ride to the Gunbarrel shopping center and back, I had plenty of time to listen to the two high schoolers conversing awkwardly behind me. It went like this:

Boy: So you're a freshman?
Girl: Yeah.
Boy: Is everyone else mean to you?
Girl: Not really.
Boy: I'm always a total dick to the freshmen at my school.
Girl: (Tries to laugh.)
Boy: Does your school have a Sadie Hawkins dance?
Girl: No.
Boy: It's where the girls ask the boys to the dance. (Turns pink around the edges.)

At this point my mind wandered off, and I lost track of the conversation. Who was Sadie Hawkins? I wondered. Was she just a brazen hussy who foolishly asked a boy to a dance, unaware that her infamy would live on for more than fifty years after that unthinkable act was committed, or was she a shrewdly intelligent and vain seductress who, in a Hari Seldonesque display of prognostication, birthed a wicked scheme to get a dance named after her and have high schoolers mentioning her name long after she was too wrinkly and senilely tactless to attract an adequate dance partner? Or did she just not know that the boys are supposed to ask the girls?

Public Service Announcement

Never, ever post an anonymous comment.How can I ask to borrow your Ouija board if I don't know who you are?

Dispatches from the Rotner/Uhr Basement: 2.1

I'm painting a picture of the big red armchair in the living room. We got it from my stepmother's parents when they moved to Long Island. It's one of those iconic big red armchairs that would fit in better at 221 B Baker Street or that Inn at the beginning of 'The Turn of the Screw'. It's my favorite chair, but tonight I found out that Grandma Minna died in it.

Grandma Minna was my stepmother's father's mother. She was quite a character, and there are lots of stories about (and by) her floating around in the world. You've probably heard some of them. Anyway, she died in my chair, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

My parents tried to make me feel better by saying it had been reupholstered, but minutes earlier they had also told me they'd never smoked pot, so who knows. Is there such a thing as haunted chairs? Maybe in painting the chair, I've also been unwittingly painting a postmortem portrait of the step-great-grandmother I've always been so curious about. Would it be insensitive to have a seance in the living room?

A Hat Rack is Not a Home

This is why cliches do not reveal underlying truths about the world:
"You can never go home again," is a cliche,
and "Home is where you hang your hat," is a cliche,
but "You can never go where you hang your hat again," is stuff and nonsense.

What's Wrong with Overalls?

I wasn't technically lying this afternoon when I responded to my friends' comments about my outfit with "It's laundry day." I did do laundry today, but the whole truth is that I only did one load, and there were plenty of other things I could have worn.

That's right, guys. I chose to wear overalls today.

My brown corduroy overalls are warm and comfy, and they have a big pocket in the front where I can put the things that I want to keep track of, like notebooks and pens and my phone and a Seattle's Best punch card and some Burt's Beeswax.

I like wearing overalls. Furthermore, I enjoy the words "y'all" and "reckon," and I like gettin' down to bluegrass, especially when someone's playing the spoons. But that doesn't mean I don't also enjoy Ian McEwan, Satie, and Jimmy Choos. Be as judgmental as you like, because I can find my nail clippers way faster than you.

But don't misconstrue this and think that, by wearing overalls, I'm trying to make a statement... like "I don't care what you think," or "I meditated for five hours before breakfast this morning, and my spirit guide told me my life would be more fulfilling if I gave up superficial conformist habits like dressing attractively."

The trouble with trying to subvert the dominant paradigm by dressing unfashionably or, for instance, getting an obscene, pus-excreting eyebrow piercing (you know who you are), is that, as a form of communication, it necessarily accepts the language of the dominant paradigm, reinforcing that which it attempts to destroy and blowing up in your face like a gigantic self-defeating bomb of suckiness.

One might get an eyebrow piercing in order to say "I'm a hardcore deviant punk," but the only reason one would expect it to say that is because, according to the dominant paradigm, a person with an eyebrow ring is a hardcore deviant punk.

Real radicals say "I'm a hardcore deviant punk" by hanging out at the mall, wearing Abercrombie hoodies and drinking grande vanilla lattes from Starbucks, because refusing to accept the language of the dominant paradigm is the only effective way to subvert it.

The overalls aren't saying that though. I just like them is all, and the point is... I'd appreciate it if you'd stop making fun of them, OK?

Coinkydink

I was reading The Better of McSweeney's: Volume One while sitting in the car in the 45 minute waiting area at the airport last night and waiting for my family to get in from Puerto Vallarta. One of the stories in The Better of McSweeney's: Volume One is 'K is for Fake' by Jonathan Lethem. In the story, "The SciFi channel was in the course of a Twilight Zone marathon," which is interesting, because I recently watched a Twilight Zone marathon on the SciFi channel, and so did you, if you have any taste. It seems like an innocent coincidence, but is anything ever a coincidence in... The Twilight Zone?