Friday, January 23, 2004
BO NOSE
by Paul Ravi Nair
The late, great Sigmund Freud once said, "Remembering the past is like sucking your boogers through a straw." I paraphrase, but the famed psychoanalyst is correct. What unpleasantries lie in memories of yesteryear? Lots of nasty ones.
Lately, though, I find myself at the pungent age of 22-going-on-23 and I feel compelled to reexamine parts of my childhood that I've conveniently repressed or simply forgotten altogether. I notice that in the haste of my high school and collegiate years, I amassed a filthy pile of vaguely interesting memories, while pushing the more interesting and vivid ones back into the storage closet of my mind. With the aid of Anheuser-Busch's various tonics, I was recently able to put together a rudimentary list of some of the key events in my pre-pubescent life:
--Age 11: Getting hit in the head with a giant rock by some thug on my street. 12 stitches.
--Age 12: Passing out in the shower one morning before a dentist's appointment. The doctor said it had something to do with blood pooling in my vital organs, but my parents thought I just wanted to avoid the dentist.
--Age 11: Falling off the back of a parked RV on my street. 12 stitches. (I was rather accident prone as a kid.)
--Age 9: Knocking out one of my front teeth on the metal back of a dining room chair. (See? Told ya.)
--Age 10: My friend Chris' dad Steve calling me "a little dick." (Can't remember what for.)
--Age 9: Bo Jackson's career-ending hip injury against the Cincinnati Bengals in the NFL Playoffs.
Bo Jackson. How could I forget Bo Jackson? From age 8 to 13, I was probably THE biggest Bo Jackson fan on the planet. I had all the baseball cards (football cards are for fags) including the 1986 Fleer roookie card and the Special Edition Upper Deck card with Bo breaking a bat over his powder blue Kansas City Royals knee. I had a shelf of overpriced Nike T-Shirts with Bo's face on them and sentences like "Bo Knows Hemoglobin" written all over in flourescent green type. I was the uberfan. I even have a vivid recollection of an assignment in 4th grade where we were supposed to invent our own board game. I created a game called "Bo Jackson Goes To Mars." During the Board Game Fair, when we invited children from other classes to roam about our classroom and play our games, I stood on a plastic chair and shouted slogans like a carnival worker. "BO JACKSON'S OFFICIAL BOARD GAME!...BO JACKSON HIMSELF ENDORSES IT!...BO JACKSON SAYS, 'I SURE DO LOVE THIS GAME! IT'S THE BEST!" I don't think I'll ever forget Mrs. Adams' look of disgust.
So I was the epitome of a little Bo Jackson-crazed rugrat. And then some defensive lineman tackled the poor guy, shattered his hip, and there went my fandom. I moved on to other things (although I can't remember exactly what--girls?) and ceased to ever really obsess over anything ever again.
(That's not exactly true--friends and co-workers will insist I obsess over a bevy of things: my own death, people spiking sodas with PCP, maps, trains, cats; the list goes on and on. They're all full of shit.)
This lack of obsession--of really having a passion for something--really bothered me. Am I really that jaded a little pissant these days? Am I really only concerned with petty dilliances like rent, food, beer, more beer? I refused to believe that I was without my interests; that I lacked any sort of cause or entity to rally behind.
I like college basketball...Maryland's my team. Duke's okay. Hell, I wish all the best to Georgia Tech. Nah... Not enough there.
I stand by my statement that Mandy Moore is a heinous, dog-faced two-bit... Not worth the bother.
Shit. Nothing. This was really sad. Did my raison d'etre begin and die with Bo Jackson? The 1985 Heisman Trophy winner and former dual-sport professional athlete was my only jolt of life in this 23 year-long joke? Preposterous!
I decided to ask some people close to me about their passions. Perhaps I wasn't alone.
I found my roommate Jesse watching the Knicks game with a bottle of Jack Daniels.
"Jesse," I said. "I've been thinking a lot about my lack of passion for anything these days. My apathy, you know? I mean, I was thinking about how I used to be obsessed with Bo Jackson and--"
"BO JACKSON? THAT SCUMFUCK? BO JACKSON IS RETARDED."
I left the room before making a counter-argument, which I will make here:
1) Bo Jackson is not a scumfuck.
2) Even if Bo Jackson is a scumfuck, who isn't? Who can honestly say they haven't dipped their penises in a nice scum-filled pond and gyrated around a bit? Not I, good sir. Not I.
I called my dad, who for the record is a 57-year-old Indian man with a disdain for rap music and a love of NPR.
"Dad, I'm having a mid... I'm having a start-life-crisis. I don't think I care about anything like I used to care about Bo Jackson."
After explaining to my dad emphatically that Bo Jackson was not some guy I went to high school with and reasserting over and over my heterosexuality (against his reminders that "New York is an open place... Be free to be yourself,") I gave up.
Trying to fall asleep that night, I thought to myself about how large New York City is. I saw Troy Aikman on the subway one night. What if I ever ran into Bo Jackson? What would I say to him? I thought up several questions I'd love to pick his brain with:
--Bo, do you ever want to take the guy that tackled you and broke your hip and just...break his hip? And then feed it to him, on the big jumbotron in front of all the Raiders fans? Oh yeah, the Raiders moved to Oakland.
--Bo, you ever sit on the bus going home from work and feel like the skin on your skull is constricting and your hair is going to fall out and you wanna go to the hospital but what can they do at a hospital? Do they have some sort of skull-loosening machine I don't know about?
--Bo, what would happen if you chewed on a big stick of dynamite? Like chomped on it, like a cigar? Would it explode? Probably not your department.
The questions seemed pointless, the thoughts too muddled. I felt the skull constriction coming on. I drifted off to sleep, bound for another day of mediocrity, another day of living with nothing to rant and rave about, another day without a Bo Jackson.
by Paul Ravi Nair
The late, great Sigmund Freud once said, "Remembering the past is like sucking your boogers through a straw." I paraphrase, but the famed psychoanalyst is correct. What unpleasantries lie in memories of yesteryear? Lots of nasty ones.
Lately, though, I find myself at the pungent age of 22-going-on-23 and I feel compelled to reexamine parts of my childhood that I've conveniently repressed or simply forgotten altogether. I notice that in the haste of my high school and collegiate years, I amassed a filthy pile of vaguely interesting memories, while pushing the more interesting and vivid ones back into the storage closet of my mind. With the aid of Anheuser-Busch's various tonics, I was recently able to put together a rudimentary list of some of the key events in my pre-pubescent life:
--Age 11: Getting hit in the head with a giant rock by some thug on my street. 12 stitches.
--Age 12: Passing out in the shower one morning before a dentist's appointment. The doctor said it had something to do with blood pooling in my vital organs, but my parents thought I just wanted to avoid the dentist.
--Age 11: Falling off the back of a parked RV on my street. 12 stitches. (I was rather accident prone as a kid.)
--Age 9: Knocking out one of my front teeth on the metal back of a dining room chair. (See? Told ya.)
--Age 10: My friend Chris' dad Steve calling me "a little dick." (Can't remember what for.)
--Age 9: Bo Jackson's career-ending hip injury against the Cincinnati Bengals in the NFL Playoffs.
Bo Jackson. How could I forget Bo Jackson? From age 8 to 13, I was probably THE biggest Bo Jackson fan on the planet. I had all the baseball cards (football cards are for fags) including the 1986 Fleer roookie card and the Special Edition Upper Deck card with Bo breaking a bat over his powder blue Kansas City Royals knee. I had a shelf of overpriced Nike T-Shirts with Bo's face on them and sentences like "Bo Knows Hemoglobin" written all over in flourescent green type. I was the uberfan. I even have a vivid recollection of an assignment in 4th grade where we were supposed to invent our own board game. I created a game called "Bo Jackson Goes To Mars." During the Board Game Fair, when we invited children from other classes to roam about our classroom and play our games, I stood on a plastic chair and shouted slogans like a carnival worker. "BO JACKSON'S OFFICIAL BOARD GAME!...BO JACKSON HIMSELF ENDORSES IT!...BO JACKSON SAYS, 'I SURE DO LOVE THIS GAME! IT'S THE BEST!" I don't think I'll ever forget Mrs. Adams' look of disgust.
So I was the epitome of a little Bo Jackson-crazed rugrat. And then some defensive lineman tackled the poor guy, shattered his hip, and there went my fandom. I moved on to other things (although I can't remember exactly what--girls?) and ceased to ever really obsess over anything ever again.
(That's not exactly true--friends and co-workers will insist I obsess over a bevy of things: my own death, people spiking sodas with PCP, maps, trains, cats; the list goes on and on. They're all full of shit.)
This lack of obsession--of really having a passion for something--really bothered me. Am I really that jaded a little pissant these days? Am I really only concerned with petty dilliances like rent, food, beer, more beer? I refused to believe that I was without my interests; that I lacked any sort of cause or entity to rally behind.
I like college basketball...Maryland's my team. Duke's okay. Hell, I wish all the best to Georgia Tech. Nah... Not enough there.
I stand by my statement that Mandy Moore is a heinous, dog-faced two-bit... Not worth the bother.
Shit. Nothing. This was really sad. Did my raison d'etre begin and die with Bo Jackson? The 1985 Heisman Trophy winner and former dual-sport professional athlete was my only jolt of life in this 23 year-long joke? Preposterous!
I decided to ask some people close to me about their passions. Perhaps I wasn't alone.
I found my roommate Jesse watching the Knicks game with a bottle of Jack Daniels.
"Jesse," I said. "I've been thinking a lot about my lack of passion for anything these days. My apathy, you know? I mean, I was thinking about how I used to be obsessed with Bo Jackson and--"
"BO JACKSON? THAT SCUMFUCK? BO JACKSON IS RETARDED."
I left the room before making a counter-argument, which I will make here:
1) Bo Jackson is not a scumfuck.
2) Even if Bo Jackson is a scumfuck, who isn't? Who can honestly say they haven't dipped their penises in a nice scum-filled pond and gyrated around a bit? Not I, good sir. Not I.
I called my dad, who for the record is a 57-year-old Indian man with a disdain for rap music and a love of NPR.
"Dad, I'm having a mid... I'm having a start-life-crisis. I don't think I care about anything like I used to care about Bo Jackson."
After explaining to my dad emphatically that Bo Jackson was not some guy I went to high school with and reasserting over and over my heterosexuality (against his reminders that "New York is an open place... Be free to be yourself,") I gave up.
Trying to fall asleep that night, I thought to myself about how large New York City is. I saw Troy Aikman on the subway one night. What if I ever ran into Bo Jackson? What would I say to him? I thought up several questions I'd love to pick his brain with:
--Bo, do you ever want to take the guy that tackled you and broke your hip and just...break his hip? And then feed it to him, on the big jumbotron in front of all the Raiders fans? Oh yeah, the Raiders moved to Oakland.
--Bo, you ever sit on the bus going home from work and feel like the skin on your skull is constricting and your hair is going to fall out and you wanna go to the hospital but what can they do at a hospital? Do they have some sort of skull-loosening machine I don't know about?
--Bo, what would happen if you chewed on a big stick of dynamite? Like chomped on it, like a cigar? Would it explode? Probably not your department.
The questions seemed pointless, the thoughts too muddled. I felt the skull constriction coming on. I drifted off to sleep, bound for another day of mediocrity, another day of living with nothing to rant and rave about, another day without a Bo Jackson.
Thursday, January 15, 2004
GROSSLY INACCURATE EXPLANATION OF THE WEEK
It's time for another installment of America's favorite blog-based game! GIEOTW is where we take one random person and let them explain a news photo from the pages of the nation's top newspapers. Current events be damned! This week's contestant is Mitchell G. Hargrove, 36, of Rego Park, NY. Mr. Hargrove is a self-described "tampon blaster" who enjoys walks in the park, disparaging the Asian race, and microwaving ketchup packets for "the love; man-love." Take it away, Mr. Hargrove.
Mr. Hargrove: I've got Knicks in my toes! Okay, you wanna know the super? YOU wanna know the superintendent? I'll tell you what we've got here... We got ourselves here a case of best friends! You see, the men, there, they're hanging by their fingernails. The rappers. They got 'em hanging by the goddamned fingernails. Yates said that, I believe, but I take occasion to quote the great blown whale himself. Good people, good people... So these fools, these ABSOLUTE PICKAXE FOOLS, they think they can move in on a, a, wonderful illuminatory streetlamp, pure Norman Rockwell, pure Borax. Half Uzbeki, Uzbek, I'm not sure what the, uh, the uh, the map deliniation is, oh hell, I'm not the Jeopardy board, I don't... [walks off] I'll be damned if I fall for this one... [runs back] I'll SING! I'll squeal! I'll be a stoolie for once in my life... I know I seem like a, what's the term, "jaded cieling fan," but I gotta do my duty to the men, the same... Hey, look, it's the same as braille for these guys, you know? That's the real way they're going down out there. There's no, I mean, I know what it looks like on the TV and all, like they're all just disinfecting their wives, like a big old Hoover stink and all that, but that's... No, that ain't it. GET OVER IT. No, this is a classic case of phone damage. See, a lot of people, they don't exactly, aren't exactly familiar with that term, they're not in the great fraternity. But if you read between the lines, in this case, between the tiny um, photographic morsels. Because I like candy, okay? I don't bum cigarettes from you. I didn't bum cigarettes from you. I didn't! So you splice the two, and then, see you've got the same thing on the West Coast. But there, oh, you know, it's like cigarettes and caviar. It's different. It's more over there it's Dawn. The dish soap, you know? You ever drink that stuff? HA. Just fucking with you there. I'm not like, a movie star or anything. [runs off]
Well done, Mr. Hargrove.
In actuality, the photo is of protesters picketing President Bush's laying of a wreath at the Atlanta grave of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But Mr. Hargrove got pretty damned close. Photo courtesy Reuters.
It's time for another installment of America's favorite blog-based game! GIEOTW is where we take one random person and let them explain a news photo from the pages of the nation's top newspapers. Current events be damned! This week's contestant is Mitchell G. Hargrove, 36, of Rego Park, NY. Mr. Hargrove is a self-described "tampon blaster" who enjoys walks in the park, disparaging the Asian race, and microwaving ketchup packets for "the love; man-love." Take it away, Mr. Hargrove.
Mr. Hargrove: I've got Knicks in my toes! Okay, you wanna know the super? YOU wanna know the superintendent? I'll tell you what we've got here... We got ourselves here a case of best friends! You see, the men, there, they're hanging by their fingernails. The rappers. They got 'em hanging by the goddamned fingernails. Yates said that, I believe, but I take occasion to quote the great blown whale himself. Good people, good people... So these fools, these ABSOLUTE PICKAXE FOOLS, they think they can move in on a, a, wonderful illuminatory streetlamp, pure Norman Rockwell, pure Borax. Half Uzbeki, Uzbek, I'm not sure what the, uh, the uh, the map deliniation is, oh hell, I'm not the Jeopardy board, I don't... [walks off] I'll be damned if I fall for this one... [runs back] I'll SING! I'll squeal! I'll be a stoolie for once in my life... I know I seem like a, what's the term, "jaded cieling fan," but I gotta do my duty to the men, the same... Hey, look, it's the same as braille for these guys, you know? That's the real way they're going down out there. There's no, I mean, I know what it looks like on the TV and all, like they're all just disinfecting their wives, like a big old Hoover stink and all that, but that's... No, that ain't it. GET OVER IT. No, this is a classic case of phone damage. See, a lot of people, they don't exactly, aren't exactly familiar with that term, they're not in the great fraternity. But if you read between the lines, in this case, between the tiny um, photographic morsels. Because I like candy, okay? I don't bum cigarettes from you. I didn't bum cigarettes from you. I didn't! So you splice the two, and then, see you've got the same thing on the West Coast. But there, oh, you know, it's like cigarettes and caviar. It's different. It's more over there it's Dawn. The dish soap, you know? You ever drink that stuff? HA. Just fucking with you there. I'm not like, a movie star or anything. [runs off]
Well done, Mr. Hargrove.
In actuality, the photo is of protesters picketing President Bush's laying of a wreath at the Atlanta grave of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But Mr. Hargrove got pretty damned close. Photo courtesy Reuters.
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
WELCOME, FRESHMEN
by TID Staff
This week we were honored by NYCBloggers.com with a spot on their nifty website. Do check them out. As NedStat has indicated, because of this, we have a few new viewers, with (I hope) more on the way.
Because of this, we're gonna be updating a lot from now on. I have a laptop full of shit that should be up here already, but we've been lazy, and 2/3 of our staff is out of town.
So, if you're new, you may be asking who "we" are. Well, "we" are three folks in a cramped apartment on the Upper East Side of New York City. We run three, count 'em, three blogs/websites:
This one: A Hodge-Podge of Shit with Roots in Journalism and/or Fiction
120 Miles: Short Stories Separated by 120 Miles (see link to right)
The Concept: A Big Old Granddaddy of a Website, Much Like This but with More Visual Content (see link to right)
Enough chatter. Thanks to NYCBloggers, thanks to you, please visit the links, email us, etc. etc.
-PRN
by TID Staff
This week we were honored by NYCBloggers.com with a spot on their nifty website. Do check them out. As NedStat has indicated, because of this, we have a few new viewers, with (I hope) more on the way.
Because of this, we're gonna be updating a lot from now on. I have a laptop full of shit that should be up here already, but we've been lazy, and 2/3 of our staff is out of town.
So, if you're new, you may be asking who "we" are. Well, "we" are three folks in a cramped apartment on the Upper East Side of New York City. We run three, count 'em, three blogs/websites:
This one: A Hodge-Podge of Shit with Roots in Journalism and/or Fiction
120 Miles: Short Stories Separated by 120 Miles (see link to right)
The Concept: A Big Old Granddaddy of a Website, Much Like This but with More Visual Content (see link to right)
Enough chatter. Thanks to NYCBloggers, thanks to you, please visit the links, email us, etc. etc.
-PRN
CHIMP CHASE 92,000
by Myrna Smogroller
“I’ve been waiting for six hours, Mr. Portico,” said Rhonda. Mr. Portico just rubbed his chin, oven mitts still on, warm from the Christmas roast.
“I really couldn’t give a fuck, my dear,” he replied, his Welsh accent mixing slightly with the REO Speedwagon blasting from the kitchen stereo.
Rhonda threw a bottle at the plate glass window, shattering the pane, letting in a chill breeze from the garden.
“Kick me in the beef! That’s what you told her you were going to do, Mr. Portico? That’s how you’d treat your wife of six years?”
Mr. Portico rolled his eyes and took off one oven mitt, only to adjust his rose colored tie and clasp a snifter of Brandy tightly.
“Sure is fucking cold out, my dear,” he replied with a sniff.
Rhonda appeared to tear up a bit as she turned quickly towards the refrigerator. Scanning the various magnets adorning its large beige door, she paused, placing her finger on a magnetic advertisement for Old Papa Warino’s, a pizza place down the large boulevard that they used to frequent when they first were married. The restaurant, like their hearts, had been shuttered for years, awaiting a new occupant.
Mr. Portico replaced his snifter on the tile countertop and kneeled to peer through the oven window. Inside, the roast continued to cook, basting in its own juices.
“Looking fucking brown as ever, my dear,” he bellowed, almost musically. Rhonda remained facing the refrigerator door, causing Mr. Portico to move closer to her tense frame.
“I said, ‘looking fucking brown as ever, my dear.’”
Rhonda felt the chill from the broken window and wondered if her heavy breath was foggily visible to him.
“Don’t feel much like fucking conversing, my dear?”
Rhonda placed another finger on the magnet, as if mock-shooting it, as a child would. She moved her thumb from erect to horizontal, mimicking the hammer of the make-believe pistol.
“Playing fucking games in your mind again, dear?” Mr. Portico asked, the snifter again at his lips, magnifying his already bulbous chin in a dark brown tint. “You know as I do that games make no fucking progress with us."
“I don’t want progress with us,” Rhonda blurted out. The words seemed to come from another room. Mr. Portico showed no signs of surprise and replied calmly, replacing the oven mitt on his manicured hand.
“That fucking so, dear? That fucking so?” He adjusted his tie once more, a sour expression forming around the corners of his mouth.
There was silence for a minute. In the distance, blocks away, a siren wailed, elongated. The gaping hole in the window somehow made it sound more dire in its shrill alarm. I watched as Mr. Portico set the snifter down on the tile countertop and moved towards her.
“YA’LL SUCK DOG POOP,” I yelled, before turning and running through their garden to the driveway gate. I never turned back to look, so I’ve never been sure if they even heard me.
by Myrna Smogroller
“I’ve been waiting for six hours, Mr. Portico,” said Rhonda. Mr. Portico just rubbed his chin, oven mitts still on, warm from the Christmas roast.
“I really couldn’t give a fuck, my dear,” he replied, his Welsh accent mixing slightly with the REO Speedwagon blasting from the kitchen stereo.
Rhonda threw a bottle at the plate glass window, shattering the pane, letting in a chill breeze from the garden.
“Kick me in the beef! That’s what you told her you were going to do, Mr. Portico? That’s how you’d treat your wife of six years?”
Mr. Portico rolled his eyes and took off one oven mitt, only to adjust his rose colored tie and clasp a snifter of Brandy tightly.
“Sure is fucking cold out, my dear,” he replied with a sniff.
Rhonda appeared to tear up a bit as she turned quickly towards the refrigerator. Scanning the various magnets adorning its large beige door, she paused, placing her finger on a magnetic advertisement for Old Papa Warino’s, a pizza place down the large boulevard that they used to frequent when they first were married. The restaurant, like their hearts, had been shuttered for years, awaiting a new occupant.
Mr. Portico replaced his snifter on the tile countertop and kneeled to peer through the oven window. Inside, the roast continued to cook, basting in its own juices.
“Looking fucking brown as ever, my dear,” he bellowed, almost musically. Rhonda remained facing the refrigerator door, causing Mr. Portico to move closer to her tense frame.
“I said, ‘looking fucking brown as ever, my dear.’”
Rhonda felt the chill from the broken window and wondered if her heavy breath was foggily visible to him.
“Don’t feel much like fucking conversing, my dear?”
Rhonda placed another finger on the magnet, as if mock-shooting it, as a child would. She moved her thumb from erect to horizontal, mimicking the hammer of the make-believe pistol.
“Playing fucking games in your mind again, dear?” Mr. Portico asked, the snifter again at his lips, magnifying his already bulbous chin in a dark brown tint. “You know as I do that games make no fucking progress with us."
“I don’t want progress with us,” Rhonda blurted out. The words seemed to come from another room. Mr. Portico showed no signs of surprise and replied calmly, replacing the oven mitt on his manicured hand.
“That fucking so, dear? That fucking so?” He adjusted his tie once more, a sour expression forming around the corners of his mouth.
There was silence for a minute. In the distance, blocks away, a siren wailed, elongated. The gaping hole in the window somehow made it sound more dire in its shrill alarm. I watched as Mr. Portico set the snifter down on the tile countertop and moved towards her.
“YA’LL SUCK DOG POOP,” I yelled, before turning and running through their garden to the driveway gate. I never turned back to look, so I’ve never been sure if they even heard me.
Sunday, January 04, 2004
THIS IS DEPRESSION BLOG ALERT LEVEL RAISED
Due to elevated amounts of "chatter" among various This Is Depression sources throughout the United States, there is reason to believe that This Is Depression may initiate new postings in the coming days.
Because of this, the This Is Depression Blog Alert level has been raised from Burnt Sienna (Moderate) to Electric Blue (Slightly More Possible).
Residents are advised to eat chicken, and lots of it.
UN Ambassador Raul Vanderburgh-Clement is reported to have commented, "Scarlett Johannsen is hot."
Due to elevated amounts of "chatter" among various This Is Depression sources throughout the United States, there is reason to believe that This Is Depression may initiate new postings in the coming days.
Because of this, the This Is Depression Blog Alert level has been raised from Burnt Sienna (Moderate) to Electric Blue (Slightly More Possible).
Residents are advised to eat chicken, and lots of it.
UN Ambassador Raul Vanderburgh-Clement is reported to have commented, "Scarlett Johannsen is hot."
