Zero Vents Plasma

So, I’ve been sickly and wussy with a weak flu this weekend.  Cathy’s done most of the housework.  Just now as I walked into the kitchen, she said to me:

Kitty: Sometimes you just can’t keep it cleaned up, you know, it’s just like syphilus.

Me: …!?

Kitty:  You know.  The guy with the rock.

Me:  …?

Kitty:  Oh yeah, Sisyphus.

I love malapropisms.  I really need to dig into my archives and resurrect the transcript of Jiyan on allergy meds…

Cathy and I are doing the first weekend of the Portland Jazz Festival via the KPLU Jazz Train this weekend.  It’s kind of a birthday thing, and kind of a recoup of last year, in which I also spent my birthday weekend in Portland.  We stumbled into several nice venues but found most of the shows we were interested in were already sold out.  I remember walking down to Sixth Avenue from a disappointing sushi lunch, listening to my sister’s “happy birthday rap” via voicemail — a message that totally transformed the afternoon.

Participation in the “Jazz Train” thing requires signing off an a lovely bit of legalischtick nonsense entitled “STATEMENT OF RESPONSIBILITY AND AUTHORIZATION WAIVER, RELEASE AND INDEMNIFICATION AGREEMENT.”  It’s even more fun than it sounds like up front.

…I hereby acknowledge that I understand that participation in a KPLU travel program involves many types of risks.

The risks include personal injuries and properly loss resulting from moving from location to location and other causes.  Injuries could occur depending on innumerable factors.  Injury can occur as a result of the risk level of activity, transportation, walking, equipment failure, weather, acts of other participants or third parties whether or not they were negligent, lack of or improper supervision, or disease.  The injuries could occur before, during or after the activity or when traveling to or from the activity.  Every type of injury could occur.  This may include broken bones, back or brain damage, death or dismemberment.

I always love signing documents like this — it makes me feel like I’m living dangerously, on the edge, taking my life into my own hands.  Just call me “Kevin Dangerously.”

Kudos to Chris (aka the Caffeinated Gypsy, aka the Texting Terror of DC) for recognizing today’s obscure cultural reference. Or at least, I thought it was obscure — perhaps I am so thoroughly immersed in popular culture that I would not know obscurity if it struck me at an oblique angle and lodged itself in my skull, or originality if it picked my nose. When Chris acknowledged and extended the reference, I went from feeling geeky to feeling relevant. Folks, that’s a great feeling.

In exchange, Chris offered me her favorite lolcat of the day — worth taking at peek at for sure.

(12:35:18 PM) Chris: are the help desk and outlook in any way releated?
(12:35:43 PM) Chris: b/c today, the mutual hated society for them is somethingelse
(12:36:14 PM) Zero: I would say they’re related the same way the Jets and the Sharks were related –
(12:36:19 PM) Zero: classic blood feud
(12:36:42 PM) Chris: where’s officer krumpke when you need him
(12:36:51 PM) Zero: 10 pts. to you
(12:39:02 PM) Chris: B-)
(12:39:15 PM) Zero: Chris, you are one cool cat
(12:40:46 PM) Chris: aww….thanky. for that, you get my fave lolcat link of the day: http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/02/14/funny-pictures-purrito/

And, for anyone unfamiliar with dear officer Krupke:

Given the right caption, I’m sure this image would beat Mr. Castle’s BBQ craving Ultra LOL Cat. It might even eat it for lunch.  I’m not sure what that caption might be, but for some reason “Run, Forest, Run!” keeps coming to mind. I blame Thomas Pratt, Esquire, for his bad influence on my cinematic tastes.

However, the image actually comes from an article in The Age titled The Secret Sex Life of Wombats, courtesy of Poem.

Mr Marks says he hopes his study will solve the sloth-like image problem of the common wombat, making the furry marsupials “the symbol of Australian male sexual virility”.

It turns out that Michael Dodd has an inadequate pipe. At least he has a plan to rectify the situation. After spending most of a week in the spam cesspit unleashed by our recent transition to Lanham’s exchange servers, one can see how he might have come by this idea honestly — my inbox has been deluged with

and other various and sundry threadbare marketing ploys.

Of course, the messaging is right at home in my work environment — when someone is sucking up too much of our bandwidth, we say they’re “chewing our pipe.” If someone has a lot of bandwidth, we say they have a “fat” or a “thick” pipe. If my home server cannot deliver data adequately to Google’s crawler, I would say “my pipe is flaccid.” (Naturally, I would certainly never admit this publicly — this blog is password protected, right guys?)

In my opinion, hyperbole is a naughty metaphor, a metaphor gone out for a night on the town — or possibly a metaphor that has metastasized and invaded territories of meaning in which it does not belong. I am a reasonably hyperbolic person. Granted, anyone who watches television or uses the internet (or receives spam) in this country knows, or should know, that we’re living in an unreasonably hyperbolic culture. I don’t feel too guilty about it.

At the same time, I do worry periodically about my dependence on it. I often employ hyperbole strategically — to annoy Jed, to distract in the middle of an inquisition, to allay tension in certain circumstances. But my abuse of metaphor extends far beyond the limits of practical use. I wonder periodically if I am hyperbolic to cover up a fundamental inadequacy. As I age, sometimes I feel like I’m drying up — like my personality is following the bad example of my hair and thinning towards the point of extinction.

Sometimes I am afraid that I am turning into a boring person. A drudge, a zero, a cipher.

My friends, please don’t let that happen to me. If I do go over to the other side… there’s a crowbar under the passenger side seat of my car, and a couple of rolls of duct tape in my trunk; there’s a can of shaving cream beneath the bathroom sink at work, and you can buy a package of a dozen cheap safety razors for $0.79 at Rite Aid. If I turn boring, please knock me unconscious and shave my hair to form pithy and amusing emoticons, preferably vulgar in nature.

You would be doing me a favor.

This will not be an exhaustive list, mind you. However, there will be an exam.

These are things I have learned recently:

1. Terry Kaye (whose malapropisms deserve more than the singular blog post I have devoted to them) has a dirty mind. While I was in Lanham the week before last, she IM’d me to ask if I was “in the orifice.” Needless to say, I did not dignify her query with a response. Tsk, tsk. Terry, I feel certain that you are the recipient of divine disapproval right now.
2. That I cannot pat my head while rubbing my belly under stress. If I am calm and relax, sure, I can do both simultaneously. If, on the other hand, you ask me to do the same thing while one person is shouting insults at me and another is trying to knock me senseless with a wiffle bat — no. I can not do it.
3. That age will inevitably humiliate me. While hacky-sacking recently, something terrible happened in my spine — one can only imagine that it was the vertebral equivalent of a train wreck. Three days later, I found that I could not stand up without propping myself up against a building. I have recovered greatly since then (partly with the assistance of massage) but I have learned to live in fear of what my body might do to me if I fail to treat it right.
4. That air travel doesn’t just kind of suck, it really truly madly deeply sucks.
   • Addendum 1: going through security in Bellingham is approximately three times more civil and less painful than doing the same at SeaTac. Likewise, Reagan is far more civil than Dulles or BWI.
   • Addendum 2: laptops are a major liability at security checkpoints because they effectively turn one item into 2 and multiply the number of items that need to be repackaged at the end of the line. Nothing makes me feel more foolish than dropping my laptop while hopping on one foot trying to tie my shoe with my belt unbuckled. Ugh.

   On the other hand, there is something almost godlike about seeing the world from 37,000 feet — well, a god with terrifically bad eyesight and a bad case of indigestion.

5. That it is possible to accidentally stumble across a decent sushi restaurant by accident. This has never really happened to me before, and the sushi restaurant in question (whose name I have already forgotten) also did quite decent Thai food. Actually, I fear I am reversing things — it was a Thai restaurant that, like Bellingham’s Pad Thai, offers decent sushi. In any case, good company and good food make a welcome and comfortable oasis on a cold night.
6. That is is impossible to make cats do anything useful.  Except for gourmet cats who may be willing to be involved in food preparation.  I initially considered myself very fortunate to possess one of these rare felines, but I have discovered that they generally consider their work well done after they have shared their opinions with you…  at length.