Irrational exuberance and the counting of chickens unhatched

I gave my girlfriend a computer virus. I haven't had one myself in years upon years despite refusing to pay for anything resembling protective software, so needless to say I was caught by surprise when I got nailed, simply by loading a site that Google Images told me had a 'YO DAWG I HERD YOU LIKE CARS...' pic. I insist on showing her these things, despite the fact that her most common response reminds me of a 7 year old opening socks and underwear on Christmas morning. It's a nice grounding, I think. A reminder that the real world has no time for the kind of shit that I make time for even during an 80 hour work week.

Anyway, I got her a virus for Christmas. So I traded laptops with her, so that she could have one that worked in her apartment while I tried to make better that which I had made worse. And then I kinda forgot about it, because ol' Vundo beat my ass badly on my first few half-hearted tries, and I had Left 4 Dead to play.

Then there was a 1929-themed New Year's Eve party, which billed itself as a real production with a password to get in ("Irrational Exuberance," how clever) that they never even asked for, because the real password was a cover charge. I took some more awful pictures there that I didn't even try to make a nice face in, and then I made a resolution not to do that anymore. And then I made another resolution not to let things sit around undone forever, even if it means I don't get to play video games every time I want to. Also I got a new iPod that can scrobble what it plays and I can't really use it to do so until I get my MacBook back, which lit a fire under my ass.

So tonight I spent all night manually digging a trojan out of my girlfriend's registry. And I guess I should wait until the full scan that's running right now comes back clean before I start flexing all over the web, but it wasn't a resolution this year not to brag about things without any reasonable justification. So yeah, I did it. I'm a genius. Who smiles in pictures, even. For the time being.

A little somethin' for the ladies

Sorry girls, I'm spoken for.

Honestly, I don't know when it happened, and I couldn't tell you exactly why, but it's become an insurmountable compulsion at this point to make a shitty face like this whenever a camera is pointed my way. In my twilight years, I will wistfully browse through pictures on my whizzbang-o-matic, and refer to my mid-to-late twenties as my "who farted?" period.

I am offended by your casual disregard for my basic psychological needs.

One of the few things I remember from Intro to Psychology (though I don't remember what it's called) is the fairly obvious fact that people fear unpleasant things more and more the closer they get. Which is why most people make dentist appointments a few weeks in advance, so that they can lock themselves into something they know they need to do, before the prospect of actually going becomes so daunting that they just forget about it.

With that in mind, I got up the nerve to call the dentist's office yesterday for one of the first times since my mom stopped making appointments for me. Imagine my surprise/disgust when they offered me an appointment for 10 AM the very next morning. As in today. Haven't you people taken Into to Psychology? Have you no decency?

I go now, to walk through The Valley of the Shadow of Sharp Metal Pokers alone. Farewell.

Watching the wagon roll away, dusting myself off.

So, I'm drinking coffee again. Which isn't really such a big deal, except that I was pretty successful in quitting it for a pretty long time. I was prepared to chalk my most recent transgressions up to temporary relapses and not full-monty abandonment of my commitment, but then the other day I didn't just have a few sips of the stale pot in the office that someone else made. I paid for it. With money. Twice.

That was nice while it lasted.

In related news, Dunkin' Donuts Egg White Veggie Flatbreads are kinda gross.

In completely unrelated news, I finally got around to purchasing one of these Mad Peck Providence posters, only 4 years after moving out of Providence and thinking to myself that I'd like to have one. If it was concern that they might be expensive, and I'm not sure that it was, it was probably just inertia, then that was a very silly reason to wait so long, because it turns out they're actually only $5 before shipping. F'ing sweet.

O.

WMD

In a week in which many of my most persistent character flaws have been cast into stark relief and I've been compelled to finally learn some big-boy lessons instead of continuing to expect different results from the same behaviors, I seem still not to have learned one thing that I really, at this point, should know very well. No matter how funny it seems in my head before I say it out loud (or, honestly, how funny it seems to me even after I say it), it's a mistake to expect anything other than polite smiles and cricket sounds to follow a good pun. Which is completely unfair.

Hi, I'm Mike, and I'm a Weapon of Math Destruction.

::chirp chirp::

brainclog.

Man, I've been sitting here for the past 2 hours trying to put down some ideas I've had lately for...something. A song, maybe? Do I still write those? I was actually thinking of making it a short story, but if the still-young day of 10/23/08 has taught me anything so far, it's that when you completely neglect your old resolutions to write whenever you have time, your writing skills suffer. Oh I know, I couldn't believe it either.

I went to my first show in forever the other night and had one of these absolute only-in-NY kind of moments: a Jaymay show punctuated by a bordeline raving lunatic joining her on stage to make sure that everyone in the audience knew that (among other things) the black man depicted on his jacket was Martin Luther King, and not Barack Obama. I was slackjawed the entire time he was on stage, as the audience streamed out of the venue, at what I was witnessing. It was all I wanted to talk about afterwards. And then I sat down at a keyboard to type something about it and all I could come up with was this dreck. Frustrating.

Anyway, it hasn't all been just that I'm so busy (though that's a lot of it). It's partly that lately whenever I sit down at a computer I can't tear myself away from all the snark and vitriol and bile spewed into the Internet with regards to the election long enough to write anything. Between Michele Bachmann calling for McCarthyism 2.0 and...holy shit sandwich watch that video. Could there be anybody worse than Michele Bachmann? I mean honestly. She is completely unhinged. The point is, I've been distracted. The point also is: vote.

Seriously.

Thanks.

In recent years, I've made it a point to be low-key about birthdays. It makes me uncomfortable to be the center of attention for an entire day, especially when it's just for being born (which is simultaneously totally cool and kinda unremarkable), and not for something boss like how stupefyingly good I am at high school level algebra and geometry. I have successfully hidden my birthday from coworkers a few times, even.

But Amy threw me a surprise party this year. She tricked me (really had to twist my arm) into going into one of my favorite bars to wait for a fancy dinner reservation, and a bunch of my friends were there. They were all waiting in the back for me, and I'm sure they (and Amy) imagined me walking back there and freaking out when everyone yelled "Surprise!" all at once. I foiled that plan by making a beeline to the bar as soon as I got inside, so instead of a big surprise, I was the jackass thinking, as the first of them revealed himself, "Oh, crazy, what a coincidence that Jeremy's here." Slowly, though, it dawned on me that more than mere happenstance was at work, and what was already shaping up to be a very nice night evolved into one of the best nights I can remember having in a very long time.

As if that wasn't enough, a few of my Facebook savvy students found me out too, and for the past 2 nights I've been touched by some very thoughtful and unexpected gestures that, honestly, caught me completely off-guard. And then, today, the steady stream of calls, cards, texts, emails, and Facebook messages was really nice. I heard from a bunch of people I hadn't heard from in a long time.

Anyway, this is mushier than I usually get, especially in the tubes, so I should wrap it up before I lose my nerve. I sat down to write this tonight to thank everyone that made me feel like my 27th birthday was something worth celebrating. So, thank you. I'm lucky to have such good friends.

Brain Teaser

One of the cool things about my job is that once in a while, my boss will throw some sort of ridiculous brain teaser my way, just to keep me sharp. I was digging through some old stuff because I recently switched offices (movin' on up...) and found this one, which I remembered thinking about for days before solving it drunk on over-sized mudslides at a Dallas BBQ. So I looked at it again, and for the life of me couldn't remember where to start for another day. This shit is hard.

Working alone, Holmes puts two coats of paint on a wall, one before lunch and one after lunch. One day, Holmes began at the usual time, and two hours before lunch he was joined by Watson, who paints at the rate of 600 square meters per day, and who left when they finished the first coat. Holmes promptly began the second coat, and then he broke for lunch at the usual time. One hour before his normal quitting time, Holmes had painted a second coat everywhere except where Watson had painted that morning. If each man works at a constant rate, what was the area of the wall, in square meters?

Have at it, if you dare.

Can anything stop The Animal?

When I lived in Queens (coming up on 2 years ago now), the street parking market was so competitive that I would have nightmares about it. I would also end up settling very often for a spot that would allow me to get a few quick hours of sleep at the end of a long work day, knowing that I would have to wake up and move my car to another spot that surely would not exist before 7:30 AM due to the unfortunate timing of my neighborhood's street cleaning schedule.

Last night, for reasons I'm not sure I understand yet, I decided to park in the one place in my current Brooklyn neighborhood that would require me to have life prior to the hour of 7 AM: a school zone. And so here I am, wide awake at 6:45, an hour wondering who I am and what I've done with the Mike that I used to know and sort of like.

And since my early rising has me nostalgic, I happened across a familiar face the other night, one I figured I'd never see again as long as I lived. Which is funny, because I hadn't realized that I'd thought such a morbid thought until I actually saw her, and thought to myself, "Okay, I guess I'll really never see her again after this." Anyway, I'm not sure if she saw me too, but I like to think that she did, so that I can sleep soundly under the blanket of assumption that despite us both ending up in the same place at the same time against all odds, I wasn't the only one who (out of debilitating social awkwardness, not malice) couldn't muster a hello.

My relationship with Fantastic Contraption started slow, but has quickly devolved into borderline obsession. I played it until 2 AM last night even though I knew I would be waking up at 6 to move my car, and went to bed still thinking about it. My designs are -- generally speaking -- quick, dirty, and unimpressive, but I did pat myself on the shoulder briefly for this one, inspired by the fantasy toy of anyone who was 6 years old in 1987 and ever dared to dream: The Animal. Sing it with me now: The Animal, The Animal, Can anything stop, The ANIMALLLL?