If you have a lot you intend to accomplish in a day, and if one of your close college friends arrives in the middle of that day from France with a backpack full of bottles of French wines, odds are, you won’t actually accomplish any of what you intended.
Lucky me, I’m getting audited!
Fortunately, I’m being audited for a year when I was still a student, and consequently had such little actual income that no matter how brutally they reject my deductions, I can’t possibly owe more than a few hundred bucks of additional taxes. Still, in an effort to better prepare for possible questions, I requested some additional information from my Revenue Agent, who was kind enough to fax over the relevant documents.
If I was at all worried before, however, the cover page of her fax set me completely at ease:
“Gee golly,” the featured clip art seems to say, “despite what everyone says, we’re really just a swell bunch!”
One major goal in my life is to reach the point where I could walk into a dusty saloon and have the bartender glance briefly in my direction, turn to the nearby patrons and say: Here comes trouble.
Two uses of the word “the” sure to piss people off:
1.
Where: Before “MTV”.
Why: A fast route to cantankerous old-skool street cred!
How: “That little Lavigne hussy was on the MTV again; why, back in my day, a band without a synthesizer wouldn’t even have dared to show up at the recording studio… [adjusts false teeth]”
2.
Where: Before “Central Park”
Why: Piss off New Yorkers and look like a clueless tourist!
How: “I think Earl lost his fanny pack somewhere in the Central Park; we’ll never be able to find other tickets for Phantom!”
During the first two month stretch of my beard experiment, I have learned:
1. If I don’t condition regularly, my beard gets split ends.
2. While setting five on a Remington Precision MB-30 Beard Trimmer says “I have a mysterious, indie rock edge,” setting six says “I have spent the last five years living in the mountains, eating small animals hunted with a crudely fashioned wooden spear” and setting four says “like, zoinks, Scoob!” Apparently the desired space between looking shagging and looking like Shaggy is remarkably small.
3. Men with beards are perceived as stronger, more masculine, dominant, competent and composed, and more socially and physically attractive then men without facial hair. (See Reed, J.A. and Blunk, E.M. (1990) The influence of facial hair on impression formation. Social Behavior and Personality. 18 : 169-175; and Addison, W.E. (1989) Beardedness as a factor in perceived masculinity. Perceptual and Motor Skills. 68: 921-922.)
3. If you’re negotiating a business deal, and the other party’s point catches you way off guard, so long as you stroke your beard pensively during the ensuing protracted silence, you look sage and thoughtful rather than moronic and wholly unprepared.
4. With a beard, I no longer get carded at bars. (Extensive field research continues on this front.)
5. Finally, nearly everyone I’ve spoken with (and even those I’ve heard whispering behind my back) have given the bearded look positive reviews. I’ve therefore decided to stick with it for a bit longer. If for no other reason than I kind of want to shave it in September for the resulting few weeks of inverted beard tan.
Watching the inimitable Singing in the Rain this evening, it occurred to me the world would be a much better place if more people spontaneously sprung into elaborately choreographed song and dance numbers.
Why do Oreos stick to your teeth more than any other type of cookie?
I’ve recently started seeing the same strangers in two or three different places over the course of a week. It’s rather odd and slightly disconcerting, as though the movie of my life couldn’t afford enough extras.
About two months back, I stumbled across Que Sera Sera, a weblog hosted by one Sarah Brown. As it was better than most, I bookmarked the site, heading back the following week. And then again at the end of the next week. And again two days later. After two or three weeks, I was visiting daily, and had undeniably developed a weblog crush.
Which is why I was particularly shocked to discover that Ms. Brown had been (as I) invited to the upcoming wedding of (I Love Your Work on-set blogger) Helen Jane Yeager. Sure, there’s a good chance Sarah won’t be at the wedding at all, as she (so far as I can tell, at least) lives in Oklahoma. And even if she is, the odds are probably in favor of her being involved with someone, or middle aged, or hideously ugly. If not all three. But, still, I was oddly thrilled.
Which led me to an excellent, groundbreaking idea. Why not build an online dating site around weblogs? After all, weblogs and dating sites are the two fastest growing segments of the web. Here’s why it works: a dating site is really just a simple database (searchable by gender, age and location) that pops out paired pictures and profiles meeting the search criteria. Why not swap in a weblog link for the profile, I reasoned? As doubtless informative as those profiles are (Oh, you enjoy fine dining and long walks on the beach too? We have so much in common!), I’m certain spending a bit of time diving around a prospective paramour’s archives would be infinitely, infinitely more so.
If my always meager coding skills hadn’t further atrophied through years of disuse (the real reason I have to keep starting companies rather than just getting a job – I have no actual skills), I’d buckle down and bang the site out myself. Since I can’t, I’m heading over to post an ad on Craig’s List in the hopes of finding a programming partner in crime. This is going to be the biggest thing since Yenta.
At any given time, at least one person you know is at Disneyland or in Central Park.
[As observed by Cyan Exec VP Colin Spoelman this afternoon as we shirked work and enjoyed the warm weather, drinking beer at the Central Park Boathouse.]