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Wednesday, September 29, 2004
The Mailbag, TwoLast month, I picked five emails. I think I'll only do three from now on, because it's hard to get good emails that don't say they want no part of The Mailbag anymore. I should start a new thing where people have to write a haiku about how great I am to deter me from quoting them in The Mailbag. Subject: Hey What's your secret? Samantha, New Jersey I see by the brevity of your email that you are aware I get this question all the time. I assume, then, that you are inquiring about my incredible sense of style, my stalwart tenacity for accuracy, the peculiar sheen of my hair, and my mysterious allure that causes flocks of ladies to hang off my arms. Did I mention my stalwart tenacity for accuracy? The secret: Payless Shoes. Subject: Whatever I wrote you last year and you hnaven't replied. This is an important question: How do you get so much traffic to your site? Not to inflate your head or anything, but I know so many people who know about your site. Do you buy ads or something? Patrick, Calgary No, I buy shoes. I'm glad that you're being careful not to inflate my head, Patrick, because I'm in dire need of it. You know the whole solar eclipse thing that happened last November? That was because I was in Greenland and my head unfortunately got in the way of the solar system's million-year trajectory. NASA called and told me that I have to go back next October so people don't get alarmed. So, really, I'm very, very appreciative that you are looking out for my head. Deep down, we both know that everyone loses out if my head topples Earth's gravity, spiralling us all into hellish oblivion. Anyway, if you must know, people come by because I wrote about arm-wrestling a bunch of girls. I'd say in the past month alone, 60 people have come by looking for "girls arm-wrestling". I don't know what this means, but I guess girls everywhere are arm-wrestling each other so, afterwards, they can hang off my arms for longer periods. Uh oh, I just looked out the window and the stars are now nothing but blurred lines. Subject: what a pig you did not arm-wrestle a bunch of girls in a new york bar. what a convoluted story. satire is satire only when there's some semblance of reality. you're not believable. AND you're such a pig. all those girls you publicly hit on are stupid, desparate, and 12. Catherine, Toronto Hey, baby, wanna arm-wrestle? (Well, I think you're too hard on yourself: You don't write like you're twelve.) Sunday, September 19, 2004
As many people already know, people come to this site only because they were looking something else up. For instance, and I'm not making this up, how do I "shave the back of my throat". Try this query (verbatim, with quotes) on Google. Because I'm not making this up two things come immediately to mind: First, somewhere, someone is actually growing hair there; secondly, gross.Yesterday, I went to go buy a toothbrush. Americans, unlike Canadians, don't have free health care. One might wonder how this affects their dental care. New Yorkers say, "Define dental care." And with that they pay $8 American for a toothbrush because, well, dental care is expensive. I suppose it's a good way to go through life. Today, Eric and I were walking towards Emmanuel Presbyterian Church off 120th Street. As I'm a fan of such healthy convictions as hot dogs for breakfast, we stopped by a stand on our way up. "$1.50," the man said. And then Eric totally impressed me; I have tried bargaining with New Yorkers before and it just doesn't happen for me, man. But this is what Eric does, in all his tactical persuasion: "We'll buy two for two dollars. C'mon." And the guy's all like, "Well, I don't have change so if you give me two dollars, okay." We don't have two dollars; I only have ten. And he's like, "Okay, fine. I have change. Here's eight dollars back." I looked at Eric, incredulous. That's it? That's all I have to say? C'mon? Come.. On.. That's the code word? That's how you get what you want? Eric shrugged, "You have to talk like a New Yorker." I thought of all the deals I've been missing. When we applied to our apartment, we had to write a letter to persuade the co-op that we'd be good tenants. I should have just written in bold, red crayon, "C'mon." Or I should have used that to get a bigger scholarship at Mannes. "Hey," I'd say, with a silent "H", because that's how the New Yorkers do it, "C'mon." And they'd be all impressed and say, "Okay, fine, you get to come free. And, like, take my car and here's food forever." I was talking to this guy at church today whom, prior to this, I had never met. We were talking and things were going fine until he said something and just stopped mid-sentence and stared at me. Like, for five seconds. I've decided that even though five seconds never really changes its incremental value, once you inflate the five seconds with the social phenomenon of silence, it's entirely too long. So, since he's probably trying to finish his thought, I stay silent and keep the eye contact. And then I'm like, "Man, that's some word he's looking for. It's been at least ten seconds." Finally, because this is entirely too awkward for me, I say, "Hey, did you.. Did you just finish your sentence? I mean, like, are you done?" And he's like, "Yes." And I'm like, "Huh." As in, man, you're stupid. What kind of sentence was that. It turns out the guy had asked me a question and I proceeded to stare with deep concentration into his eyes. I don't know what it was, but I guess I had interpreted the upwards inflection at the end of his question to be the natural trajectory one has in the midst of connecting the dependent clauses within a complete sentence. You'd think this would happen more often with more people. Okay, everybody buy a CD now. "C'mon." Wednesday, September 08, 2004
From Thoreau's Walden:"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer." Or maybe he has mad cow disease. A friend in New York was shocked to find that I would not only buy sidewalk hot dogs in the city, but I would also eat them. I'll admit that it was a little sketchy to buy a hot dog from a vendor who seemed to take pride in his sign emblazoned with the gaudy green letters: "All-Meat Hot Dogs!!" Maybe it's just me, but bragging about how your hot dogs are all-meat seems to imply that it's perfectly acceptable for hot dogs to be made of something else. It would have struck me the same way had someone told me their water was 100% wet. If it isn't wet, then it probably isn't water, is what I always say. But, alas, I wasn't about to complain that my hot dog vendor thought an all-meat hot dog was a great accomplishment -- I'm just happy I hadn't met him prior to his discovery that this could be done. I suppose because of the nitrates, fat content, and perhaps also the sign, my friend kept chattering about how bad these things are for you. In her florid descant, she said I have probably no idea what I'm shoveling down my mouth and I'm 'just one truck stop short of hell and mad cow disease'. People who have it could be totally oblivious, she warned. You eat one bad hot dog and then you're hit with the disease. She surmised, "And, without even knowing it, they just get gradually stupider." I stopped half-way across the street, the half-eaten hot dog half-way to my lips. It suddenly occurred to me that she might have unravelled a very important mystery in my life. Whether or not I'm stupid has, with me, never really been in contest; my shock was that the answer could now be in my hands (and the first stages of my somatic plumbing). You see, being stupid is not enough. I don't want to be just stupid; I want to have a reason. A few months ago I mentioned in Irretrievable, after a particularly disappointing Freestyle Sunday, that I might have BSE (which stands for bovine something else..). Anyway, I was rapping and about to pass the mic. I start, "I'm going to pass the mic to --" I look over at Ep. Suddenly, for the life of me, I cannot remember his name. He's too busy thinking of what he's going to say after I'm done, so, in deep thought, he stares at me too. Ep's wondering what rhymes with 'anachronism'. I'm trying to figure out who the heck he is and what I'm doing in his living room. People have often emailed me wondering how I could possibly be that 'dumb' or that 'stupid'. As I have always thought it convenient to explain away my stupidity on a bad meal, at least now I have something with which to reply. 
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