CPUnk I write right. Right? Aye.

Fear and Loathing in the Nation of Me

So — in my mad­ness, I chose to add to my reg­u­lar work­out by train­ing myself into run­ning. Of course, as all things start for me — I Googled “how to run” to find out why I hate run­ning. It turns out I am a “heel striker” (*shud­der*). We heel strik­ers not only over­stride — we also slam down on our heel enough that we actu­ally kind of “micro-stop” on every stride — ergo, a killer work­out that even­tu­ally exhausts you com­pletely because you are work­ing against your­self at every step.

Well — know­ing that — thank you Inter­net — I changed my stride on Sun­day, start­ing land­ing on that lit­tle tri­an­gle just behind the ball of my foot and lo and behold — I’m a run­ner! Woot. I ran 3 miles that day — with­out major strain — it was like dis­cov­er­ing a dusty old Super­man cape in my closet and real­iz­ing I can leap tall build­ings (well, at least two-story build­ings). I was psyched.

Well — since I’m a type Super-A per­son­al­ity — I acti­vated my magic Nike+ shoes so they could talk to my iPod and start track­ing all the won­der­ful­ness. Once I saw that — I was off to the races because some flash-based web-page named “5k Jay” tells me I have to run a mile a day for the rest of my life so I can get a good time on my next (first) 5k. Well — if the com­puter says I have to do it — I do it … because I’m stu­pid and crazy that way. (This is the part where all my “girl­friends” “friends that are girls women” start yelling that I’m stu­pid and I should ease off (shout-out to Heather and Hillary)).

So … in the last three days, I’ve run 7 miles — three on Sun­day, one mile to the gym on Mon­day and one mile back — one mile to the gym on Tues­day — and since time was tight — a mile on the tread­mill Tues­day night.

Today I did not run to the gym because it’s rain­ing — but I expect I will run tonight — what’s a mile — I walk that dis­tance to the office from the ferry every time I come to the office … and yes, that’s included in Tues­day as well — but not counted by my magic shoes… so add 2 miles of walking.

Now — here’s the thing…
While I’m on that new run­ning reg­i­men — my Nike+ Flash web­site coach doesn’t know that I’m also enslaved to my iPhone iFit­ness coach — so now I serve more than one mas­ter — and they’re like machines, man — they just work me and work me … the result is that, while each mus­cle sys­tem is enjoy­ing its work — and get­ting worn out — there’s this new sort of “all nation” weak­ness that’s tak­ing over my entire body and life… it feels the way you feel when you don’t get enough sleep dur­ing a big project… and all the same voices are start­ing up in my head as well (and I think they’re plan­ning a rev­o­lu­tion­ary uprising!).

I’m absolutely exhausted and can’t even get it up to kit­ten mode for some mus­cle workouts.

I mean — iPhone dude wants me to work my legs (and granted, I’m doing 185 on my 3x10 squats, which doesn’t suck for a reg­u­lar day, but still…) in the midst of all this — I believe I’m fac­ing a full upris­ing inside my head. All the char­ac­ters in the great nation that is my brain are talk­ing together behind my back about this … they’re hav­ing secret meet­ings in dark out of the way places while I sleep … I can see the scrawl­ing on the walls when I walk through town … “Upper brain works us too hard!” … they say … and “Who made con­scious mind king any­way?!” … “If he hurts us, we hurt him!” … and the like. All the sub­con­scious peas­ants and body mus­cle serfs are mut­ter­ing openly now, and even the Palace guard of my self-discipline won’t com­pletely look me in the eye.

Accord­ing to some friends, I’ve been starv­ing this nation also — because I don’t eat reg­u­larly … that’s not exactly true — I just don’t eat much in the AM, which was always my rou­tine grow­ing up — so I think my metab­o­lism likes that method — but it’s not mak­ing the rab­ble in my body and brain happy … they are ready to storm the cas­tle, I think.

Mean­while, iPhone coach tells me I have to do close grip pushups on a small med­i­cine ball about the size of a grape­fruit … and well — I can’t and won’t — the pop­u­lace refuses. So I do reg­u­lar pushups and lis­ten to the noises in my head protest­ing that I’m nuts and there’s not enough energy left.

But the most treach­er­ous part of my king­dom is lower back val­ley … the peo­ple of that region have always been rebel­lious and self-willed — and while I respect them for their strength — when they get sore — the entire nation of me goes into hid­ing … and well — they’re wear­ing their arm­bands again … and openly march­ing against the regime. I went to do some lat­eral planks and while the mili­tia that are my lats and abs were suc­cess­ful in main­tain­ing order — the back peo­ple were there — wear­ing their bal­a­clavas — right in the crowds — wait­ing to uprise and take down the entire thing — seiz­ing and scream­ing about sore­ness and an unfair reg­i­men of oppression.

So my choices at this point are to either be a tyrant, benev­o­lent despot, or flee the nation. I think flee­ing is too scary a notion — I’ve lived in exile before — all fat and lazy — and I didn’t like it … so I must lead with power. But should it be an iron fist, or a vel­vet hammer?

I believe I will take a break (after my 1 mile tonight) — and if the body politic is not sat­is­fied on Fri­day — I will declare a national hol­i­day and just not go to the gym on that day also. The com­put­ers can get bent — but I must main­tain my polit­i­cal con­trol over the peo­ple of my body and mind — if they turn on me — all is lost.

Per­haps I should let them eat cake…

On the exercise crazy train (Day 1)

So, some­how, through a mys­tery of sci­ence or per­haps direct Divine inter­ven­tion — I got up early in the morn­ing at 6am (it’s a mir­a­cle!) — I got on my bike and it didn’t have a flat from being unused (it’s a mir­a­cle!) — I rode my bike in the early dawn­ing hours to the gym (it’s impos­si­ble!) — and actu­ally worked out (it’s gotta be a lie — say it ain’t so, Joe … say it ain’t so!).

Yes, I actu­ally did.

My first favorite part of the pain was get­ting up.  That was awe­some.  I went to bed just a lit­tle after mid­night — set my alarm for 5:45, because I’m dam­aged in the head, and slept for a minute.  When the alarm went off — Kathy, who has got­ten up first for our entire mar­riage — was reluc­tantly halfway out of bed by the time I came out of my stu­por and mut­tered some­thing like, “Gnnnarn­r­rll — no, it’s mine, not yours, go back bed now do.”  (Pre­sum­ably, she did just that, it was dark, I was hav­ing brain pain, and frankly, was too busy remem­ber­ing how to get my feet into my fuzzy slip­pers to actu­ally notice any­thing as insignif­i­cant as the well-being of my spouse).

So — hav­ing finally got­ten semi-vertical, I thanked God for the day (which is a good prac­tice, btw — though I must admit, I was feel­ing like ask­ing Him to just keep it any­way) — and trudged to the bed­room door.

This would be the time that nor­mal peo­ple pour a cup of cof­fee — but, it being Lent and all, I’m caffeine-free … so, I had the unique and mys­ti­cal priv­i­lege of stand­ing in the morn­ing with no caf­feinated para­chute — just me, my gri­mace, and God.  I’ve been get­ting up ear­lier (on pur­pose) ever since I got back from Africa — and actu­ally enjoy­ing it — but this one, well … this was the real meal deal, ya know?  I wasn’t just get­ting up, I was get­ting up to exer­cise — like all those (shud­der) morn­ing peo­ple.  Nor­mally, I’ve been get­ting up early to read my Bible, send emails, bad­ger Face­book, and then wait for the office to start — but this time, it was 100% full con­tact morn­ing patrol.

Iron­i­cally, my friend Brett had men­tioned that he was com­ing by around 6am to pick up a hard drive (which I’d left by the door in a bag­gie, in case I didn’t want to do this).  In the email the night before, I’d told him I didn’t have a prob­lem with that (because I get up ear­lier now any­way), and casu­ally men­tioned that I was headed to the gym, so I’d likely see him.  This, of course, enabled me to acti­vate at least one wake-up sup­port sys­tem in place of the miss­ing caf­feine — yes, that’s right — the all pow­er­ful “casual pride” mechanism.

This is the mech­a­nism that gets you dressed and strolling around like nothing’s new when in fact you’re really try­ing to remem­ber why your feet are all the way down there.  This is the mech­a­nism that has you turn on a whole bunch of lights and already be in your exer­cise clothes by the time he gets here, so you can look cool.  This is the mech­a­nism that has you actu­ally change your exer­cise clothes because you real­ize that you look too sleepy in this out­fit.  Yes — the “oh, no… I’m already awake” mech­a­nism was in full swing by the time Brett arrived.

I gave him the hard drive and (since I’m awake already, after all) gave him a ride to the ferry.

When I got back home, I opened the garage door, put on my bike hel­met (that’s a very weird thing to put on prior to the dawn, btw), and headed out.  Here I go!  All excited and being a good boy!  Woohoo, I’ve got energy, the sky is slightly lighter, I’m headed uphill, but feel­ing good about it, turn­ing the cor­ner and … oh … my … GOD it’s cold.  I mean, it’s COOOOLD.  I lit­er­ally started this mantra:

“ungh… ungh… ungh… arg…”

while I rode my bike closer and closer to Puget Sound.  You know Puget Sound?  Where the ferry is?  That’s right — I opted to RIDE A BICYCLE in basi­cally poly­ester work­out pants right next to the OPEN SEA… before dawn… ungh… ungh… ungh… arg…

Well, as I turned the cor­ner and real­ized I had another eighth of a mile of this, I encour­aged myself by remem­ber­ing that at the end of this bike ride was a series of exer­cises … that’s moti­vat­ing, right?  I mean — (ungh… ungh… ungh… arg…) — when I get there, I’ll be happy — I’ll get into this … this is a good thing, right?

Once I passed the por­tion of my morn­ing that involved rid­ing vir­tu­ally naked past the chill night air of the open sea, I rolled into town, with the high hope that I would some­how feel less cold because there were build­ings there to wrap around my semi-flash frozen body … well, it seems that build­ings don’t exude as much warmth and com­fort as a blan­ket in the morn­ing (oh, I remem­ber you, my friend, my warm blan­ket in bed — I miss you) and so I spent the rest of my ride just numb.  But then I reached my des­ti­na­tion — hur­ray!  Oh God.  It’s a gym.

I walked in, semi-stupid from the chill, the dark, the lack of sleep — but the guy behind the counter was mov­ing around a lot, fac­ing me, smil­ing and talk­ing — my brain stem kicked in and real­ized, much in the way a semi-frozen drown vic­tim real­izes that’s actu­ally a heli­copter, that this man was going to help me — that he had ideas, and plans that involved me, and that I should rely upon him for my well-being… I believe it involved a towel and a locker key.

Wan­der­ing away, I headed to the locker room, opened the locker, and put my jacket and bike hel­met (what an odd thing to be hold­ing this early in the morn­ing) into the locker.  I’d have put MORE into the locker, but well, I was only wear­ing a t-shirt, hoodie, and my poly­ester work­out pants, so I just duti­fully put the towel in the locker (that’s why he gave it to me, right?  So I could carry it to the locked con­tainer and put it in there?) … and turned to the only thing that made sense in my life at that time: my iPhone.

Orig­i­nally, I’d planned to put on my head­phones (included in my pocket), but the real­ity is that the early morn­ing stu­por high makes the music that pipes in from the ceil­ing (I think I heard some Earth Wind and Fire?) almost palat­able… but even though I had no need for the music — I’ve got an app … it’s called “iFit­ness” and it has actual work­outs in it (with 230 dif­fer­ent exer­cises lined up, with video, logs, the whole thing).

Now, nor­mally when I come to a gym, I tend to approach it much in the same way that I approach men­tal exer­tion — start at the hard­est and push.  But, well, my mus­cles aren’t as smart as my brain — so when I usu­ally take that approach — it results in some­thing like: “It’s tomor­row, I hurt my every­thing, I quit.”

So this time, I chose the manly work­out rou­tine named “Beginner’s Work­out.”  For the record, and for my own testosterone-laden pride, I actu­ally have worked out before reg­u­larly — so no, I’m not a COMPLETE flabb-a-hammer … but I fig­ured, if I was gonna make this work, I was gonna take it nice and easy.  The fact that they have a pic­ture of a lit­tle kid pick­ing up a dumb­bell on this work­out made me real­ize I had noth­ing to dread.

One of my favorite moments was when my iPhone told me I needed to do some tri­ceps exten­sions, and showed me the tri­ceps exten­sion machine exer­cise.  Now you need to under­stand that I’m in a gym… I’m flex­ing my full fake — I’m act­ing like I know what I’m doing — and I’m com­mit­ted to keep my “I know what I’m doing” face on even if it bleeds.  Don’t want the peo­ple know­ing I’m just a geek who doesn’t exer­cise — it’s all casual — I’m sup­posed to be here, right?  But for the life of me, I couldn’t find the tri­ceps exten­sion machine.

Dread.  That’s the ulti­mate fear, isn’t it?  To end up lean­ing your gan­gly flabb-a-hammer arm on a machine and non­cha­lantly ask “hey, man, where’s the ‘ceps exten­sion machine’?” and get the answer “you’re lean­ing on it, geek.”  Well … that’s the fear, but that didn’t happen.

I got to go up to the desk and ask where the tri­ceps exten­sion machine was… and I was informed they don’t have one … sweet.  Now I can acti­vate my non­cha­lance to after­burner lev­els.  First, my eyes must say some­thing like “How could they NOT?!! Who ever heard of a gym that doesn’t have a tri­ceps exten­sion machine?  Don’t they all?  I’m aghast … mad­ness I tell you, mad­ness.” … and then my mouth says, “Oh — hnh.” … and they scram­ble to tell me other exer­cises I can do, like the tri­ceps rope pull­down (which is what I did).  But suf­fice to say — the bub­ble was burst — they are merely human like me — they aren’t secretly sneer­ing at me for try­ing this out — and well … they actu­ally seem kinda nice.  Good moment dur­ing my workout.

Mean­while, dur­ing all of this early morn­ing work­out stuff — it’s quiet.  I mean like you can hear peo­ple breath­ing quiet.  It’s kinda cool.  There are only a few peo­ple in each area, and they’re all basi­cally ignor­ing each other — and the cheesy music is play­ing in the back­ground (is that Ste­vie Won­der?), and it’s kinda nice.  So I’m there, hav­ing a pretty good time, actu­ally — when all of the sud­den, some woman starts talk­ing and talk­ing and talk­ing and mak­ing noise and being loud.  I mean, she’s just jab­ber­ing away … and I real­ize it’s a trainer talk­ing to a client.

I also real­ize that it just became 7am.  That’s when the “humans” arrive … the peo­ple who want to talk, and com­pare, and share their expe­ri­ences with each other … the “morn­ing peo­ple” are invad­ing… thank­fully I’m just about done… so I wrapped up, did a lit­tle stretch­ing (that’s where the older peo­ple hang out, the stretch­ing room), headed to the lock­ers and thought about get­ting in the steam room, but that was too com­pli­cated (should I have swim trunks, if I don’t will peo­ple call the police, etc.)… so I opened my locker, got my thin hoodie, my slightly less weird bike hel­met, and my unused towel, walked up to the front and duti­fully returned the towel to the con­fused guy behind the counter (“hey man, thanks for let­tin’ me hold that, Peace out.”).

One more frigid ride (in the midst of ferry traf­fic … mmmm… I loves me some car exhaust) … and I’m home.  Kathy’s drop­ping off Nate, and I’m way way way up on that “I’ve done all this before 9am” high (an Army of One).  I real­ized I hadn’t done my push-ups (another app on the iPhone, fright­en­ingly named “100 Push-ups”), so I did those and then was just about wasted.  Got into the shower, headed off to cof­fee with my Pas­tor (I didn’t have any, he did), and onward.  My body cur­rently agrees with me that this is a good idea — I believe I will do it again tomor­row.  Mad­ness.  I feel like I’m in a body-snatcher movie or some­thing… and I want to get there early enough to work out in the quiet with all the other skulk­ers… it’s haaaappening…

Why Yoga is not a valid sport (or religion)

I have noticed more peo­ple mak­ing Yoga and I thought it would be good for me to make sure that peo­ple know, espe­cially for Christ­mas, that it’s not a reli­gion.  Then I real­ized that even more impor­tant than that is the peo­ple who think that it’s a real sport.  So in the name of every­thing Holy — I’m clar­i­fy­ing that it’s not a sport, and peo­ple who wor­ship Yoga should learn some­thing from this too.

1. Chil­dren do not do yoga because it is not fun

Admit­tedly, the absence of fun does qual­ify yoga for the def­i­n­i­tion of reli­gion, or reli­gious acts — but as we all know, all sports are based on some child­ish game taken to an extreme.  The Eng­lish game of Smash-bat, for exam­ple, is clearly a children’s game — but when peo­ple from Great Britain, like that Beck­ham guy, who’s mar­ried to Sporty Spice, who prob­a­bly has Yoga daily do it — it is not a game any­more — it is a sport.

Any game can become a sport — but a sport must have, at its roots, chil­dren hav­ing fun, so that angry men can play it for money later and hate each other on tele­vi­sion.  Yoga is not fun, and while it does talk about cats and dogs and other ani­mals in strange posi­tions a lot, it is not fun enough for kids.  Thus, it is not a sport… and since nobody would ever watch angry men on tele­vi­sion com­pet­ing for yoga points, it is not a sport again.

B. Yoga does not involve bells, chant­ing, or candles

All good reli­gions, and I’m exclud­ing the stu­pid ones, have at least one of the big three — bells, chant­ing, or can­dles.  Granted, yoga can hap­pen while peo­ple are chant­ing, but most peo­ple who dance yoga aren’t into chant­ing while they make it… same goes for can­dles.  I also fig­ure that since peo­ple are stick­ing their feet in their ears for doing yoga, they can’t spare a hand to ring a bell, so there are no bells in Yoga.  Since Yoga doesn’t have chant­ing, bells, or can­dles — it can’t be a real religion.

Third. I can’t per­form Yoga

Since yoga is all bendy and upside down, I can’t do it, I am likely too tall for yoga.  I can do reli­gion, I can do games that kids like — which also means that I can do sports — and since I can do those, but I can’t do yoga moves, I can surely tell that yoga isn’t a valid sport or religion.

Con­clu­sion

My sense is that even though yoga is a mar­tial art, and that’s cool — they don’t hit any­body, so that’s stu­pid — and a lit­tle gay.  But the bend­ing stuff can be cool, except that it hurts a lot, which makes it stu­pid again.  But mostly, with yoga being just some non-hitting mar­tial art, and not a reli­gion or sport — I won’t think about it on Sun­days, either dur­ing church (like sports), or after church (like reli­gion).  Merry Christ­mas (to all you non-stupid reli­gion­ers, and even you yoga users, too).

Thanksgiving 2009

WARNING: This blog post, like a good Thanks­giv­ing din­ner, is long — over-filling and, while enter­tain­ing — could leave you ready to pass out.  Pace yourself.

———–

Well, this year, Kathy’s brother moved to Blaine, in the North­ern part of the state, just by the bor­der — so being the pos­ses­sors of a new home, they played the trump card and every­one went there (for the record, it’s a lovely home).

Well, Blaine is far away, and on the other side of the water.  That’s a bit of a non-starter for ferry traf­fic, so we planned ahead.  I took the car into the office on Wednes­day, and traded off park­ing cards with Chris so I could leave the car there overnight.  Kathy, in prepa­ra­tion for this, packed our car with clothes, since our plan was to head from Blaine down to her folks on Whid­bey Island for the week­end.  So on a quiet after­noon on Wednes­day, I dropped of the car full of clothes and caught the 4:40 home.  Piece of cake.

Hap­pily, a by-product of not host­ing Thanks­giv­ing is that you don’t have to cook any­thing — so Kathy cheer­ily tossed of a quick mac­a­roni and cheese (a dish that can’t be beat), but was oth­er­wise unburdened.

Since we raise chick­ens, we must always deal with the rooster.  Nor­mally, we have some neigh­bor kids come over, feed the chick­ens, and close the door to the chicken house at night so the neigh­bors won’t go nuts from the noise; unfor­tu­nately, this year we weren’t able to find any chicken sit­ters, so we needed to take our rooster, named Eagle, along with us.

So, late Wednes­day night, we’re pretty much kicked back, ready to go.  I tend to have insom­nia, so I stayed up a lit­tle late (around 3AM).  Wasn’t ter­ri­ble, just sat around read­ing.  No wor­ries.  I left a note for Kathy that I’d gone to bed late, and all was well.

Thanks­giv­ing day morn­ing — hnh… it’s kinda quiet.  That’s odd.  I’ll sleep a bit more, no big deal, Kathy’s up — all is well.  My clock prob­a­bly says some­thing, but I don’t want to raise my head to see…

Kathy comes in, “Honey, it’s 9:40, you should get up — we need to make the 10:25 ferry.”

Umm… what?  That’s like 45 min­utes from now … arg.  Ok — brain to eyes, open please.

So, I get out of bed (a process that takes about 5 min­utes on its own) and head into the fam­ily room to chat with Kathy.

“Honey, I’m not see­ing us mak­ing the 10:25 — we usu­ally need an hour to get up and ready, no?“
“Oh,”, she said, “I thought that was enough time.  Oh well — we can take the 11:30… can’t we try for the 10:25?”

Star­ing bleakly into my cup of tea, I cal­cu­late whether I can mad-dash the shower, cloth­ing, break­fast tea, and make it a quarter-mile to the ferry in about 30 min­utes.  Expec­tant eyes are watch­ing me.  Drat.

“Umm… ok — well — let me try to get going here — I’ll … sure … let’s give it a try.”

So I head to the shower and we go into “mad dash” morn­ing mode.

You see, we already have a method­ol­ogy in our lives.  Liv­ing so close to a ferry has its perks.  One of those is that you can play the Indi­ana Jones game of get­ting onto the boat under the wire.  In the last three years, we’ve boiled it down to a sci­ence.  Usu­ally, it’s just about get­ting me to the ferry on time, so it involves me show­er­ing and get­ting dressed (no shoes) while Kathy packs my bag and brings the car around front.  I then race to grab shoes and socks, pop my feet into slip­pers and leap into the car untucked and unshod, at which point Kathy peels out down the dri­ve­way.  I always get the seat­belt on before we hit the actual road, and then go about throw­ing on my socks and shoes while she heads the quarter-mile to the ferry.  By the time we reach there, I’m wear­ing shoes, bag in hand, kiss and a wave — and I’m off down the gang­plank at high-speed to make the boat.

Usu­ally, we trig­ger that process either by me yelling, “Honey, I’m run­ning!” — which is code for “uh oh, short on ferry time” … or, after so many years, we just know.

So here, this Thanks­giv­ing morn­ing, we just knew.  I called out to Kathy while I was get­ting ready.

“Honey, with only 15 min­utes left, you should take the kids now — I’ll race out after you — we might make it.  If we don’t, we’ll just wait for the next one.”

So Kathy raced around the house, grabbed kids, threw jack­ets on them, tucked the mac­a­roni and cheese (a dish that can’t be beat) under her arm, stuffed the rooster into a cat car­rier and headed off to the boat.  Mean­while, my brain is ask­ing me — “Hey, weren’t we asleep about 10 min­utes ago?  Why am I in the shower?”

Quick shower, cloth­ing and shoes (we’re lit­er­ally run­ning this time, mind you — no car) … and I’m out the door.

As I head up the road, some friends wave from their car — full of chip­per and joy.

Grunt and smile is about all I can offer in return.

A few more mad paces and I make it to the ferry ter­mi­nal, where Kathy and the kids are stand­ing wait­ing for me.  We head onto the boat and “phew!” — sit down (pant pant pant).

A few min­utes later, or less, the ferry takes off… a process that does not please Eagle (the rooster).

I guess there’s not much nat­ural occur­rence of the floor start­ing to vibrate dra­mat­i­cally and then move in the world of a chicken.  He started cluck­ing quite tersely — much to the amuse­ment of the peo­ple around us.

“Is that a chicken?  I thought it was your ring­tone — ha!” … and so on.  Yep, we’re the Meads and we’re trav­el­ing on Thanks­giv­ing — of course we have a chicken in a cat car­rier — doesn’t everyone?

I threw my coat over Eagle, which calmed him down and the rest of the trip was rel­a­tively unevent­ful.  Get­ting to the other side, we headed for a taxi — run­ning the gaunt­let of un-insured motorists who want to drive us for less (“my friend, my friend…”) — get­ting to a yel­low cab and telling him to take us to the Westin Building.

“Is that a chicken?“
“Yes, yes it is.“
“Ha.  Ok.”

I noticed him sur­rep­ti­tiously putting away what seemed to be a holy book — so I asked him what it was.  He care­fully admit­ted it was the Qu’ran.  I told him we’re Chris­tians and we had a highly sig­nif­i­cant mean­ing­less talk as we drove down 4th Avenue right through the mid­dle of a car acci­dent (every­one seemed to be ok, but the cars were trashed — I shouted out the win­dow and they all said they’d called 911 already) — we dis­cussed being reli­gious peo­ple in gen­eral … well, actu­ally, I dis­cussed it.  My Mus­lim friend wasn’t really the talk­a­tive sort.

Finally, we rolled up on the Westin Build­ing — the fam­ily (with rooster and mac­a­roni and cheese (a dish that can’t be beat)) piled out of the car, and I leaned in to give him a tip.  I had it on my heart, so I said, “Inshal­lah, God Bless you.”  He finally smiled a big smile and said thank you.  I told him I hope for Peace some­time for every­body and waved goodbye.

So, from there, we got in the car, threw the rooster in the back, and headed on our way.  The kids read books, played games on my iPhone and their DSs, while I read my Kin­dle.  We’re a dig­i­tal family.

At exit 274, we saw a sign that said “Cana­dian Bor­der — 3/4 miles”.  Well — since the kids have been to so many places on earth (includ­ing Africa, Europe, and South Amer­ica), they’ve often com­mented that they’d like to just get to Canada and add that to their list.

Since din­ner started at 4pm, we opted to just head on up there — get through, turn around and get to din­ner — we had about half an hour or so — no prob­lem.  Fun!

We rolled up to the very not-happy woman in the booth and handed over our driver’s licenses — she asked what we were doing.  We explained that we were just headed in for a minute and then turn­ing around.  That didn’t seem to be a plea­sur­able thought for her.

You see — the last time I went through the bor­der was a long time ago — and the thought police hadn’t taken over the bor­der yet.  You could just drive up — show you’re an Amer­i­can — and get through.  Nowa­days, the same geniuses that bring you the Amer­i­can air­port sys­tem have taken over this bor­der.  So Ms. Happy pointed us to “park­ing slot 5″ where “some­one would help us further.”

Oh crap.  This was a huge mistake.

We rolled into “park­ing slot 5″, prepar­ing to explain that we only wanted to get to Canada for a sec–

“Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, please?“
We handed over our driver’s licenses.
“Do you have pass­ports?“
“Umm — no?  You see — we only wanted to –“
“How old are the chil­dren?“
“8 and 12.“
“Do they have iden­ti­fi­ca­tion?“
“No, mein f… I mean — no.” (no, I didn’t really say that)
“Please step out of the car and go into that build­ing to Counter B, they’ll ‘help’ you there.“
“Umm — it’s Thanks­giv­ing — we only wanted to go into Canada so our kids could say they’d been there.  How long will this take?“
“It’ll take as long as it takes.”

And that, my friend is:

a) why you work on a bor­der on hol­i­days
b) why it’s time for the joke to be over in Wash­ing­ton DC
c) why I was now sum­mar­ily ticked off

Some­where around this time, I real­ized we had live­stock in the car… that’s not good, is it?

We walked into the nice shiny build­ing.  I acti­vated ever per­sonal manip­u­la­tion tool in my arse­nal… start­ing with the “dis­tance com­plain­ing.”  This would be the one where you walk in — grous­ing and grum­bling (and using tac­tic #2, being large) — and make it clear that you’re dis­pleased about some­thing.

Then we approached “Counter B” — and I pulled out card #3 — prox­im­ity charm.  What?  Was I that guy grous­ing 20 feet away?  No — of course not, I’m this guy in front of you who’s nice and sheep­ish — would you like me to go 20 feet away again?  Of course not — let’s work together.  There were two peo­ple behind the counter — a young man and a pretty young woman.  I only men­tion that she was pretty because — well — I think the guy was workin’ it.

“Hi!”, said I, “We’re stu­pid!  We wanted to go to Canada  but we don’t have pass­ports!“
“Oh”, said the young man, “… why are you headed to Canada?“
“We’re doing it so our kids can check a box is all…“
“Oh — I thought you said they didn’t have Pass­ports?“
“What?  Oh — no — they don’t have any iden­ti­fi­ca­tion at all … it was just a fig­ure of speech.  Clearly this wasn’t a good idea at all.  We were doing it for fun.  We just wanted to be in Canada.  Also — you should know — we have a rooster in the car.”

Insert “buddy, I’m a fam­ily man, I’ve got my leg stuck in this thing — can you help a brother out” smile here.

The young man grinned and looked at some­thing on the screen.  The young woman started reach­ing around behind him to another part of the counter.

“Well,”, said he, “tech­ni­cally, you’re in Canada.”  The girl pro­duced two lit­tle keep­sake Cana­dian Flags and handed them to the kids.
“Really?  Seri­ously?  We’re here?  You hear that kids — we made it.  We’re in Canada, basi­cally.  Congratulations!”

They both looked up and smiled at me with the “Yep, you’re stu­pid, but we can tell you’re nei­ther a ter­ror­ist, nor an idiot” smiles.

“You should go and sit over there for a minute, we’ll call you back.”

We went and sat down in the chairs  and had a chance to admire Canada.  It looks pretty mil­i­taris­tic, actu­ally — very bureau­cratic — not quite what I’d expected to see since my last visit… but at least there was Cana­dian television.

Watch­ing the TV, we learned that Cana­di­ans have a prob­lem with a thing called “skin tags” … which are those nasty lit­tle strings of flesh that dan­gle from you like spaghetti moles.  It seems that it’s legal to sell Dr. Scholl’s Skin Tag Remover in Canada — it also seems that being com­pletely grossed out is also legal in Canada.

The nice cou­ple waved us over.

“Ok.  You’re going to have to leave Canada.”, they said, smil­ing and hand­ing us back our licenses.
“Alright!“
“When you get in your car, head out to the U-turn on the left and you’ll come to a gate — from there you’ll be headed back to the states.“
“Thank you!  Happy Thanks­giv­ing!  God Bless!”

So we headed back to the car, got to the u-turn, and the young cou­ple was stand­ing there by the gate.  We drove up, they waved at us, we headed on and even­tu­ally through the gate.

I got to think­ing about that — and I think, though I can’t be sure — that they con­sulted and decided to just “throw us back” — ergo their “per­son­al­ized escort” to the return gate.  I doubt you see them com­ing from behind the desk often — so there was some soul still exist­ing at the border.

Mind you — we’ve raced to the ferry on foot, con­sulted with Mus­lims about Peace, acci­den­tally attempted to smug­gle live­stock and undoc­u­mented chil­dren across the Cana­dian bor­der — and we’re not even at Thanks­giv­ing yet.  This is what it means to be a Mead (some­where in there, we also pur­chased a bunch of teas and lattes, along with a “Grandmother’s Turkey Sand­wich” in order to have more than $15 worth of pur­chases so we could get the free CD from Star­bucks (see pre­vi­ous post regard­ing my feel­ing about the songs on that CD)).

Finally — we made it to the din­ner.  It was nice.

At one point, we trans­ferred Eagle from his cat car­rier into a larger box — he seemed to be grate­ful for that — the box went into the back of Kathy’s dad’s car.

Later, we all headed off to Kathy’s folks’ house, stoned out of our minds on turkey and gravy.  Kathy’s sis­ter and mom were in one car and headed off to Belling­ham in order to get cof­fee — we on the other hand, motored through and attempted to get more cof­fee from Star­bucks via a sign by the high­way.  We rolled up on the store and it was closed.  I amused the kids by going through the dri­vethru any­way and beg­ging the dead micro­phone to give me cof­fee.  I then rolled up to the win­dow and repeated my order.  The kids thought that was funny and laughed when I pleaded with the silent building.

Finally, we got to the house.  When Kathy’s Dad got home, we put the rooster (with box) in the garage and said good­night to him.  Then we were greeted by Kathy’s par­ents’ dog, Lucy.  She’s a giant puppy labradoo­dle that needs lov­ing and likes to put her teeth on peo­ple.  I spent a lot of time that week­end teach­ing her some obe­di­ence.  I think the fam­ily was close to giv­ing up on her — she’s a lit­tle high-strung … but I took a lit­tle time and taught her how to fetch (hav­ing been taught myself by one of the greats, Taz — the won­der dog).

So we played fetch a lot — the ladies made candy (we weren’t allowed to have any)…

That’s when the white fer­ret showed up…

Lucy had been shout­ing and yelling and we all thought it was her “reg­u­lar nature.”  But Den­nis (Kathy’s dad) went out there and saw a fer­ret — so he asked me to come help catch it.  We grabbed some gloves, I opened the door to the garage, and in ran the fer­ret — right to my feet, beg­ging to be picked up.  It was pretty cute, for a ferret.

Kathy’s mom was hav­ing none of it — so, as every­one does on tra­di­tional Thanks­giv­ings — we put the fer­ret in the cat car­rier that had pre­vi­ously been hold­ing the inter­na­tion­ally fugi­tive rooster and stowed them both in the garage.  Ahhh — just like Grandma used to do.

The next day, Kathy took the rooster out to the farm so he could have a “day with the ladies” (another Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day tra­di­tion, after all), and I headed into the local neigh­bor­hood with the kids on shifts to see if we could find who owned the fer­ret (whom we’d named “Critter”).

We stopped at many doors — ask­ing “are you miss­ing a pet?”  Most peo­ple responded no, though a few were col­or­ful.  One lady told me that she wasn’t miss­ing a pet, but that there was a frog loose some­where in her house (belonged to her kid).  Another lady asked her younger daugh­ter whether she knew who had fer­rets in the neigh­bor­hood — the kid said there were two houses — so we headed that way.

The first house, which had a very nice brass sign next to the door that said “Go Away” — was actu­ally pop­u­lated by a “funky/hip” young fam­ily who did have fer­rets, but (hang on — let me check … nope) weren’t miss­ing any.  The (father?) offered to take the fer­ret if we couldn’t find a home, which was helpful.

We headed off to the last house on the last street of the neigh­bor­hood (I was very grate­ful to have kids with me, so I wasn’t some creepy dude walk­ing up to doors and ask­ing “are you miss­ing a fer­ret?”) … and a lit­tle girl answered.

“Are you miss­ing a fer­ret?“
“Yes!”, she said as her father appeared at the door.
“Oh great — what color is it?“
“Umm… black — with a lit­tle bit of white?“
“Oh.  Not white?“
“Nope.“
“Oh.  Ok — this isn’t your ferret.”

So, pre­sum­ably, the neigh­bor­hood is crawl­ing with rov­ing gangs of fer­rets — prob­a­bly look­ing for ille­gal alien chick­ens to roust and sell on the black market.

We did even­tu­ally find the ferret’s home — it was across the street.  There was a man vis­it­ing his “ex-girlfriend” and, as he put it “some­one” opened the door to smoke — and the fer­ret got out.  It’s name was Wiley.  I think he was happy to retrieve it.  Per­haps hop­ing to “de-ex” the girl­friend by return­ing her lost fer­ret? (another Thanks­giv­ing tradition).

Well — after an unevent­ful day of read­ing about ultra-runners on my Kin­dle (they run 100 mile trails for fun, it would seem), we all finally piled back into the car and made it home with­out much fur­ther incident.

Another Thanks­giv­ing full of dishes that can’t be beat and Hol­i­day traditions.

Can’t wait until Christmas.

Slow walkers, bad drivers

So, as I find myself sit­ting parked at a green light behind a North­west dri­ver, I thought I’d take the free time I have to blog about the experience.

While I do admit I am prej­u­diced towards that spe­cial clan of peo­ple who get into cars for the sake of trav­el­ing to a des­ti­na­tion faster, I must say that I might also have a few gen­eral obser­va­tions to share for all you peo­ple in this area who move your lips while you drive or walk.  I will call them Malcolm’s Rules for Mov­ing, in the hopes that you will take them seri­ously and learn them.  They apply to either dri­ving or walk­ing — but some­times may apply to both:

Rule #1: you will not miss a hole big enough to fit your car
If you are park­ing, please avoid dri­ving slower than a grandma push­ing a cart­load of cat­food.  I know that you are likely attempt­ing to ensure that you will be able to see the mys­te­ri­ously hid­den park­ing space, for fear that per­haps rac­ing by at 4 miles an hour instead of 2 might have that 10 foot x 6 foot hole whiz by too fast.  You will not miss it.

[I have two the­o­ries for why this occurs; the first is because the peo­ple who do this are descended from hunters, who need to sneak up on their prey before blow­ing a hole through it, and thus have inher­ited some genetic pre­dis­po­si­tion to “stalk­ing” that park­ing space.  The other the­ory is that per­haps they feel that the only way to be sure there actu­ally is a car in the space is to read the license plate — and since most of them license plates don’t spell out no real words — they get con­fused. –Ed.]

Rule #2: As we merge, you do not “win” by cut­ting in front of me… we all lose
Here’s a drill — take your left foot and put it out in front of you.  Now, care­fully, take your right foot and swing it out beyond your left foot.  Got it?  Good.  Now … one more time, swing your left foot past your right foot — care­ful, don’t get lost in that.  Here on Earth, we call that walk­ing.  It’s also called alter­na­tion.  That’s not a spe­cial place for peo­ple who change their dogs, it’s a word that means, first this side, then that side, then this side again! If you can WALK, you can alter­nate merge.  That would be the one where I go, then you go, then I go, then you go.  You see, if my left foot tries to “win” by pass­ing my right foot, I fall down.  That’s called a traf­fic jam.

Rule #3: I am nei­ther a mur­derer, nor a sui­ci­dal psy­chopath, carry on
When you and I approach an inter­sec­tion, I will actu­ally apply the rules of the road con­sis­tently, pri­mar­ily because I too, want to live.  Yes, I know that you have had at least fif­teen other near-death expe­ri­ences of peo­ple sud­denly rac­ing their cars into your side door while chant­ing to music by AC/DC — but I am not any of those peo­ple — I sim­ply would like you to get through the inter­sec­tion swiftly.  Please do not slow down to a crawl because I am near you, please do not sud­denly drive as if I am ready to kill us all.  Just go through the inter­sec­tion smartly (that means fast, but safe).  I promise not to mur­der you with my car.

Rule #4: Blinky light means “here I come“
If your glove box holds any­thing besides empty smoke car­tons and expired reg­is­tra­tion slips — it will likely have a man­ual in there.  This book is the strange device that they dis­trib­ute with new cars that explains how to use them in a rudi­men­tary way.  Please turn to page 38, which is enti­tled The Dash­board and Steer­ing Wheel.  You’ll notice in this sec­tion that there is a draw­ing of a steer­ing wheel — after your mouth has stopped mov­ing, you’ll also notice that the draw­ing is iden­ti­cal to your steer­ing wheel.  See that thing marked “#12″?  What’s it called?  That’s right — it’s called the turn indi­ca­tor.  It is not a turn requester.

When you use that device, it indi­cates that you are prepar­ing to turn in front of me, or merge into my lane.  I will see it, because when you use it, blinky lights go off out­side your car (no, you can’t see it in action while you are dri­ving — they are made by the same peo­ple who turn the light off in the fridge).  When you use this turn indi­ca­tor I will not mur­der you, please come into my lane smartly (that still means fast, but safe).  Do not use the next mile to do so — smartly would indi­cate doing so within a count of 10 or less.

Now, when I use the turn indi­ca­tor, I am telling you that I am com­ing into your lane — I am not request­ing your per­mis­sion to come in, nor am I related to your boss, ex-wife, neigh­bor, the gov­ern­ment, or the lit­tle aliens that live behind your toaster, so you do not need to pun­ish me — I sim­ply am telling you that it’s hap­pen­ing, and it’s hap­pen­ing now; please do not attempt to prove your con­trol and prowess by “dis­al­low­ing” me access to the road that I, like you, have pur­chased through the state.  I promise that when I have com­pleted my lane change, I will not secretly cackle at my supe­ri­or­ity over you because I am ahead of you.

Rule #5: When walk­ing, there are peo­ple behind you, and some­times even to your sides
I am aware that alter­na­tion requires con­cen­tra­tion, and as such, while you walk you aren’t able to spend much of what’s left of your brain stem keep­ing aware of your sur­round­ings — but, I need you to rec­og­nize that it’s very pos­si­ble, espe­cially in crowded places, that there are other peo­ple around.

This means that when you seek to do some­thing like stop, turn, or whip around com­pletely — it would be good to turn your head, just slightly to see if there is some­one walk­ing behind you, or next to you.  This is espe­cially impor­tant at cross-walks, which are usu­ally ded­i­cated to walk­ing, not stop­ping.  How­ever, if you are in a cross-walk and need to stop, pre­sume that the peo­ple behind you exist, and move to the side.

Here’s are a few point­ers to help with this dif­fi­cult con­cept.  First, if you hear foot­steps, or cough­ing, or breath­ing — there is a per­son behind you who is likely going to need to leap out of the way if you stop sud­denly with­out warn­ing (please note, while your car has lights, you do not).  Sec­ond, if you turn your head slightly, and the sky goes dark behind you, it’s because I am walk­ing behind you and am block­ing out the sun as I tower over you — that’s a good indi­ca­tor that you should likely either not stop, or step aside when you do, because if we col­lide, I will likely not notice it hap­pened.  Third, if you do need to stop — it might be a good idea to put a few steps into the process, instead of halt­ing like a pole-axed deer in the head­lights of an oncom­ing train.  If you slow just a bit, the per­son behind you will take that cue and walk around you.  Together, we can make a difference.

Rule #6: stroll in the woods, not on the street
I am aware that you have many things on your mind (left, right, left…), and I’m also aware that uni­corns are beau­ti­ful and rain­bows have six col­ors in them … but those sorts of thoughts are for week­ends, hol­i­days, that camp­ing trip, and maybe your own back yard … not the mid­dle of a side­walk dur­ing lunch hour.

Yes, it’s true that he has the dreami­est eyes you’ve ever seen, or that pup­pies are espe­cially cute when they’re together — but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for you to slow down your stroll, and mean­der diag­o­nally across the side­walk while peo­ple with pur­pose attempt to get some­place.  If you need to have a lit­tle “me” time, do so in a park or away from the cen­ter of town.

Rule #7: Cor­re­lary: shiny things don’t gen­er­ate pre­dictabil­ity
Here’s the con­cept, which is really a cor­re­lary to Rules 5 and 6 (that means it’s related to them).  Let’s say that you’re walk­ing along with some sort of pur­pose on a crowded street, thus indi­cat­ing there are peo­ple around.  Let’s say that those peo­ple are walk­ing with pur­pose, thus indi­cat­ing that it’s a sit­u­a­tion sim­i­lar to a down­town block dur­ing lunch hour.  In such a sit­u­a­tion — it’s is almost imper­a­tive that if you see some­thing shiny, you announce your inten­tion to turn towards it by slow­ing down.

Please, if you are walk­ing either with pur­pose or not, and you see a sale across the street all of the sud­den, please don’t sim­ply swerve your body out across my path, I may col­lide with you, and you will likely get hurt.  Just because the excit­ing thing has pierced your con­scious­ness does not mean it will leap out and warn me that you are doing a Crazy Ivan in front of me.  Please, do not make me run you over with my body… it’s ugly.

Rule #8: when in front, respond now
This is a dif­fi­cult con­cept, and I’ve even con­sid­ered mak­ing an ani­mated bill­board to teach it — but con­sider this.  If you have 5 legos, in a row, and your job is to move them a foot away, you will do so much faster if you move them all together.  If, instead, you move the first one, and then the next one, and then the next one — it will take twice as long or longer.

Now, as I fin­ish my blog because my turn is com­ing up at the green, no yel­low, now red light — let me be per­fectly clear.  The car in front must shoot off the line as soon as the light goes green — in advanced cities (like NY, LA, SF, and Chicago), the sec­ond car will move almost simul­ta­ne­ously, giv­ing a moments hes­i­ta­tion to cre­ate a safe gap between itself and the other car.  By that time, cars 3 and 4 are in motion and car five is wak­ing up to get through.  In this way, up to 10 cars can pass through lights that allow 3 in these parts.

Well, my light is get­ting ready to change (I can tell that because the lights in the other direc­tion are turn­ing yel­low), so I’m sub­mit­ting my post and I’m on my way.  Let’s make this a great big group project!  Share your own rules!  Green means go!

Angie got a phone today

So, after decid­ing rightly not to go to Wild Waves water park with a sick fam­ily — Angie and I had a half daddy/daughter day and got her a phone.

We got the Motorola Rival in “purplish.”

We thought about other phones, but she wanted one that “did some­thing” … a phrase she’d been using for some time that I finally fig­ured out today.  She meant she wanted a phone that flipped or slid or clicked or some­thing — she doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily care so much about the added appli­ca­tions (she cares about some of them, yes) — she first and fore­most wanted it to well … DO something.

My vote was for this one because I believe she will be a tex­ter.  We got it down to two phones.  I flipped a coin and when it was decided, I asked her imme­di­ately — “are you happy or sad that it went that way?”  She was happy, so we knew we had the right phone.  If she’d been dis­ap­pointed, we’d have got­ten the other one

Of course — once we had it reg­is­tered, she made her first phone call to her best friend, Gabby.  They talked for 31 min­utes (and I took the oppor­tu­nity to show her how to read how many min­utes she was using up, gotta start ‘em early).

We walked around for a while, got an Orange Julius and headed home.  When we got home, I texted her that I’d had a good time.

Later in the evening — I reminded her that I’m a Wiz­ard by trade and if she wanted any ring­tones (shoutout to Hillary), I could put them on her phone for her.  After about 50 entire nanosec­onds of delay, she said, “The Mario Theme” … which we hap­pen to have in iTunes because she wanted it on her iPod a while back.

So — after a lit­tle fuss­ing with iTunes, and then Audac­ity, a sound edit­ing pack­age — I basi­cally got the first 15 sec­onds of Mario onto her phone as a ring­tone… then I called her to con­firm the sound.

The smile on her face when it worked was prob­a­bly the best part of the day for me.

Wait — shhhhh… listen to this part…

So what is the eti­quette for shar­ing music with friends?  Maybe what I really mean is, what is the eti­quette for grownups?  I under­stand that kids run around shar­ing ear grease while they tether them­selves in pairs to iPods with the same set of head­phones — but aside from that ABC sort of body goo swap­ping — how do you share a song, one-on-one, with­out feel­ing like you’re sud­denly trapped in a room with some­one you used to like while a song you will never like plays on forever?

For exam­ple, ear­lier today, I sat down with some friends, and the topic of a song came up.  I hap­pened to be able to pull it up on my iPhone (after buy­ing it, los­ing it, then wan­der­ing around for five min­utes try­ing to find it — thank you Apple) … anyway …

So I pulled up the song, which had been sug­gested by one friend for the other, and we started lis­ten­ing together on the phone’s speaker, which was sat­is­fac­tory for hear­ing lyrics.  Of course, we did what most nor­mal peo­ple do when you’re lis­ten­ing to a sin­gle song together as a form of con­ver­sa­tion — we sat awk­wardly, arms crossed, kind of try­ing not to look into each other’s eyes.  I found that look­ing off in the dis­tance through the win­dow was help­ful, as well as pre­tend­ing I was just the iPhone oper­a­tor — that made it seem like I had some­thing to do — and I didn’t actu­ally have much of a stake in this par­tic­u­lar song because I was nei­ther the sug­gestor, nor the recip­i­ent.  I was just the Apple-ready DJ.

Per­haps it was the fact that there were three of us — or maybe the fact that we weren’t really talk­ing about the song — but that sit­u­a­tion wasn’t bad at all — we basi­cally enjoyed ourselves.

But I assure you — the one-on-one song share is a com­pletely dif­fer­ent creature.

I think the first thing that makes it so dif­fi­cult for nor­mal peo­ple to share a song is that it’s so very, very inti­mate.  Music rep­re­sents your soul, it indi­cates what you secretly eat, and who you really voted for when nobody was look­ing — it’s your audi­tory under­wear … and while you may think it’s beau­ti­ful lin­gerie — I might think it’s a stanky pair of old tighty whities — or even worse — I may just not want to see your lin­gerie at all, you know?

When that semi-drunk buddy comes up and tells you that he wants you to lis­ten to this incred­i­ble bit of music, it’s a lit­tle bit like ask­ing you to head down to the gym just so you two can take a shower together.  Under some rare cir­cum­stances, you could pos­si­bly numb your­self to such a shared shower nudity (per­haps if you had just played a few rounds of squash together, or signed up for the mil­i­tary) — but not when the invi­ta­tion is specif­i­cally for that pur­pose.  Offer­ing to share a song with me when we’re alone is like ask­ing me to take my clothes off — or at least watch you take yours off –  while pre­tend­ing that it’s ok … like undo­ing your pants in the liv­ing room in order to tuck in your shirt.  Shar­ing music one-on-one is not ok.

Now, not all shared music cir­cum­stances are too much.  Of course we rule out clubs, con­certs, and dances, because those are really just mas­sive rut­ting fests of musi­cal orgy any­way, aren’t they?  Or, let’s say I walk in on you, and you’re lis­ten­ing to some inter­est­ing song — that’s ok too… as long as we can pre­tend you’re not naked — we can just ignore it and dis­cuss other things while your inti­macy just plays on (and on and on) in the back­ground … but God help you if you sud­denly reach out and turn up the vol­ume and turn with a smile and ask me what I think of this song.

I’ll be forced to admit that you’re in the musi­cal buff, and maybe I think you’re kinda ugly naked… or are you expect­ing me to strip down too and enjoy the song with you — when did I ask for that?  I was just going to ask you a ques­tion … is this col­lege?  Are you doing bong hits?  Why do I have to be sub­jected to this?  Go away with your naked music!

How­ever, this is not to imply that you can’t sug­gest music to me.  I’ll be the first to admit that lis­ten­ing to sug­gested music in the inti­macy of my own soli­tude is fine.  Go ahead and send me a song on Face­book, or email me the name of an album, and I’m totally OK with that.  Granted, I may dis­cover that I think you’re men­tally dam­aged and that you lis­ten to music that sounds like rac­coons being ground up inside a truck engine … but at least I can be invis­i­ble while that’s hap­pen­ing — I don’t have to let it all hang out with you in the room.

Even if I like the song, forc­ing me to lis­ten to it alone with you will never be ok.

Let’s say I even like you and want to make you know it by lis­ten­ing with you.  What am I sup­posed to do at that point?  Do we sud­denly break out into har­monic inter­lude, danc­ing like Fred and Gin­ger over the fur­ni­ture while foun­tains appear from stage left and men with tophats come rolling in singing the refrain?  No.  We still just stand there, arms crossed, but now we’re both smil­ing at the same time.  The awk­ward pain is still there, it might even be mag­ni­fied because we actu­ally do care about each other — but what we’re really doing is just wait­ing for the song to be over so we can both escape from this agony because nei­ther of us is in a musi­cal and nei­ther of us even really knows how to dance.

I think, in life, there are things that are intended to be left in the back­ground — never given focus — and when they receive focus, it’s always a mis­take.  Like a hand­shake, for exam­ple.  Imag­ine if you walk into my office, and I sud­denly leap up and say, “Hey!  Check out this hand­shake!”, and pro­ceed to grab at you.  What are you sup­posed to do besides either flee, or endure and give a pos­i­tive response?  Can you say, “Well, Mal­colm, that’s not really the kind of hand­shake I like — I pre­fer a softer grip”?  I think not.  If that hand­shake lasted about 4 min­utes, you’d know how I feel about your offer to play a song for me.

But back to me and my friends — we were enjoy­ing the song together, actu­ally not feel­ing awk­ward much (though there was a lot of hot and heavy arm fold­ing going on, I must admit — though I never noticed it because I was busy star­ing out the win­dow, avoid­ing eye con­tact).  We were lis­ten­ing to the song, which was actu­ally intended to be slightly humor­ous (or angry — hard to tell with those Lilith Fair Grrrl­lls)… and we got to that moment.

This is usu­ally the cli­mac­tic point of the entire shared audi­tory nudity expe­ri­ence.  The Moment.

Unless you’re some freaked out long-hair music lover who wants to force their din­ner guests to lis­ten to the entire sec­ond act of Der Ring des Nibelun­gen in prepa­ra­tion for after-dinner dis­course (and if you are, stay away from me, for­ever), you’re likely just hav­ing me lis­ten for a spe­cific part of the song, be it a funny lyric, a cool gui­tar riff (more on that later), or some deep epiphany (please don’t do that, ever).

So there was my lit­tle group of friends, and we’d reached the Moment, which was the refrain, and actu­ally quite funny — and that enabled us to not be overly exposed because we were laugh­ing at the song, instead of enjoy­ing it (and as we all know, when in doubt in an awk­ward sit­u­a­tion — find some­thing to deride and laugh at — thus hid­ing your own per­sonal angst).   But then, none of us had the nerve to stop the song.

I felt like maybe I should, since I was the defacto DJ — but I wasn’t famil­iar with the song, so maybe there was more.  I don’t know what my friends were think­ing (the sug­gestor and the recip­i­ent) — but they both seemed will­ing to lis­ten more — so I let it go on (and on and on and on) … and it even­tu­ally did what I feared … it reached the refrain again.

It’s really dif­fi­cult if the Moment is a refrain — because then you’re going to hear it again — and maybe a third time … so the entire expe­ri­ence becomes some­what like hav­ing a joke told to you by some­one who needs to wear a pro­tec­tive hel­met — the song tells you the joke, then a few min­utes later, it tells it to you again, and then usu­ally fin­ishes with a big final telling of it at the end of the song … kind of like the men­tally chal­lenged brother in There’s Some­thing About Mary (“franks and beans … franks and beans…”).

In this par­tic­u­lar case, we were fine (and non-naked) because we had other things to dis­cuss … we did what good peo­ple do — we talked over it… laughed at the song, and put the music where it belonged — in the back­ground.  No unnec­es­sary inti­macy here, thank you very much — we could just talk.

Which brings me to the great­est faux-pas that the musi­cally naked impose upon us nor­mal folks.  The intre­pid demand that we “shhhh” and lis­ten.  This, to me, is the ulti­mate form of musi­cal violation.

Now we’re at it, aren’t we?  It’s as if, now that you’ve got me here, and you’ve got­ten us stripped down to our embar­rass­ing under­clothes — you put your hands on me.  This is no longer an awk­ward shower, this is dan­ger­ous.  Now you’re forc­ing me to enter into the dance with you.  Who are you?  When did I tell you that I some­how wanted to sit here and …

…watch you enjoy the music.  That’s the worst of all.  Now you’ve musi­cally fon­dled me by say­ing “shhhh” — I feel dirty — the men­tally chal­lenged hel­met head in the back­ground keeps ram­ming into my naked back say­ing the same joke refrain over and over (“franks and beans, franks and beans…”) — and I finally make the mis­take and look at your face — and I get to see your sub­lime expres­sion as you go to your “spe­cial place”  with the music because … shhhh… this is it — right here… (“franks and beans — franks and beans…”)…

At that point, there’s noth­ing left to do but lay back and think of England.

I won’t get out with­out hear­ing the entire song — and all I can hope is that The Moment isn’t going to arrive in the form of the most ter­ri­fy­ing musi­cal impo­si­tion known to man … the dreaded gui­tar solo.

This is the ulti­mate vio­la­tion of self in the act of forced music appre­ci­a­tion… the gui­tar solo.

I have a friend who posts ref­er­ences to gui­tar solos on his Face­book — usu­ally they are YouTube videos.  This is a com­pletely accept­able  — because I can enjoy it alone — and per­haps even just turn it off if I don’t care anymore.

But that’s not what I’m talk­ing about.  I’m talk­ing about the sweaty shower friend, who has now cor­nered me with a shh­hhh, has decided I can’t leave until I’ve received the entire thing … and is ready to jam out to the dreaded gui­tar solo … now he’s not only touch­ing me in this musi­cal odyssey into the nether­world … he’s going to … reach down… and…

…play air guitar.

Air gui­tar — the essence of the most bru­tal forced song expe­ri­ence there is … the one in which you just have to won­der whether this per­son is on drugs, men­tally dam­aged (“franks and beans, franks and beans”) — or just so poorly raised that he (and yes, it’s usu­ally a he) doesn’t real­ize how dirty you feel … how much you just want it to be over … how much you never want to see him, hear from him, or ever dis­cuss music with him again.  Ever.

Well — my advice to you at this point, if you ever find your­self trapped like this — is to ooh and ahhh in all the right places … or he’ll just want to “dis­cuss” it all after­wards to see if it it was good for you too… let him believe that you’re enjoy­ing his self-flagellations, gyra­tions and jig­gling … just appre­ci­ate it out loud as best you can … say things like, “that’s amaz­ing” and “how can any­body be this good?” over and over until he stops.

When it’s over — run as fast as you can — get out of there … plead tone-deafness … tell him you already have a musi­cal friend … explain that you need to get to your music lovers anony­mous meet­ing … any­thing … just don’t let him offer to play the entire album.

If this has ever hap­pened to you — I’m sorry … so sorry that I want to send you a song sug­ges­tion … because … shhhh — it’ll make you feel bet­ter… shhhh…