Witt and Wisdom

Definitions of High and Low

Life after 35 is a constant series of unjustified emotional highs and lows.  Not all that different from being 15, except that now I don't get a throbbing erection when unattainable girls nod at me politely.

The highs and lows have grown more pathetic during the years, an example of which is two weeks ago when I was driving down a nearby road and I discovered that the construction that has been ongoing for around a year finally opened up to a new road which leads directly to Target. 

You would've thought that Jesus Christ himself had come down from Valhalla and granted me three wishes (or whatever the fuck he does).  I nearly burst into tears and then almost wrecked my car trying to get my wife on the cell phone.

"Honey!  Honey, listen!  The road to Target is OPEN!  YES!  I KNOW!!  How AWESOME is this!!?  Godammn, this is the best day of my entire year.  This is better than the day we got married.  I know.  I KNOW!!  IT'S FANFUCKINGTASTIC!"

My wife has learned to humor me.  It's just easier than slogging through divorce papers.

This past weekend, while attempting to mow the lawn, I had what I've patented as a Witteurysm, which is when one blows a part of his brain out of his earhole due to the actions of an inanimate object.

Me: "Motherfuck that lawnmower!  Fuck it in the ass!"

Wife: "..."

Me: "I've hated that fucking thing since day fucking one.  I'm getting rid of it.  Fuck it."

Wife: "Um..."

Me:  "First the self-propel mechanism goes out and then it can't handle a little 'long grass' (using my high-pitched condescending voice, so the lawn mower could hear me from the garage)."

Wife:  "Ooohhhkaaaay..."

Me:  "And fuck if I'm going to sell it.  I'm taking that goddamned thing out to the middle of nowhere, throwing it into a ditch and putting a bullet in its head.

Wife: "Honey, tell me how you really feel.  Do you like the lawnmower or not?"

Me:  "I do not care for the lawnmower, no."

Wife:  "Well, okay then.

Anger

As much as I'm trying to mellow in my old age, I've found that I can't seem to control the deep-seated rage against most inanimate objects and a whole host of very animated ones.  Yes, I'm talking about you.  I hate you and that fucking thing you do with your hair.

For instance, yesterday when I was trying to get the YouTube video post working on this very website, I had a mild stroke.  I was screaming in IM with my friend Mark, asking him, essentially, why YouTube was trying to destroy my entire life.  As the whole right side of my body went limp and my lips started to slide off my face, I yelled and spat into the monitor, "Ny wont nu murk!  Gondabbit!!"  The dogs were alarmed. 

I've come to believe that my generation has not had and will never have a significant impact upon society, largely because we are the first and only generation to have seen how shitty and hard life can be while simultaneously being the first generation to be exposed to truly life altering technological advancements.  Here I'm thinking specifically of Flickr.

My point is, with this type of exposure, the shitty combined with the amazing, we all feel a very entitled sense that by now everything in the world should work right and work now and ideally already be done working before I even ask for it to work in the first place.  The world should anticipate my needs and satisfy me with a goddamned smile on its virtual face.  The world owes me.  I had to listen to music on vinyl.

This is my explanation for my anger issues.  I'm not usually angry that something is difficult, I'm angry that it is not obeying my every thought and instinct.  The future was explained to me as a place where I would be able to fly my own personal little spacecraft and wherein there was a distinct inference that I would receive hot, free robotic sex on demand (call your local cable provider).  I am owed.  Owed for the promise of technology.  The very technology that will likely be keeping me alive when the aneurysm finally does, inevitably, blow out my temple.

Roto Router

My router has exploded in a glorious display of smoke and purple lightning.  I cannot think of a better time for my internet access to go completely to shit.

In other news, I haven't eaten anything or had alcohol for over a month, I've lost close to 30 pounds and I'm about to embark on a weekend of filthy, filthy debauchery. 

Eli's coming, baby.  Hide your motherfucking heart.

Tree Fallin'

  Killer tree!! 
  Originally uploaded by wittphoto.

Four men and six-plus hours and the tree was gone.  It sucks to have to cut it down, but I'd rather cut it down than have it wake me up at 3:00 some morning by, ya know, LANDING ON ME.

Click on the photo to see the whole fiasco.

Homo Nership

I have come across some kind of apt analogy of what it means to be an adult.

Approximately 20 feet from the south side of my house looms a tree.  A large tree.  It towers over the room in which I sleep.  Branches and twigs spider out and curl down over the roofline like hands ready to clutch the chimney and tear it from the house as if it was some kind of arboreal cigarillo. 

Occasionally, when a wind whips in the night, a limb will fall - SLAM-rolling down the roof and onto the ground below.  It haunts me.

So the tree must go. 

I had someone come out and give me an estimate for removing the menace.

$2,000.

Two.

Thousand.

American.

Dollars.

To have someone take something away from me. I own that tree. That tree is mine. And now I have to pay someone to take it from me.

So when anyone is over at my house and asks me what I did this year, I'm going to point to an empty spot in the yard and I'll say, "Well, I paid $2,000 for that."

"For what?" they'll ask.

"Piece of mind.  And a stump."

That's all you can hope for in this life.  Piece of mind and a stump.

Sounds like a Cure song. 

I fucking hate The Cure.

The Exorcism of Smoke D. Tector

When the Great North American Smoke Detector nears the end of its life, it alerts the other forest creatures of its impending demise by letting out a piercing, intermittent chirp.  And so the circle of life found it's way into my home this morning.  At 3:15 am.

I was deliciously rolling from a dream about Rachel McAdams into a dream about Jennifer Aniston (mere seconds from potential Rachel on Rachel action) when a loud, insistent chirping jolted me awake.

“TWEEEEEP!”

Somewhere within the house, a detector was dying.  I shut my eyes tightly, in the hope of grabbing hold of my dreams again, in the hope of fending off the sad wail, but it's impossible.  I grab my glasses and trudge into the dark bedroom abyss.

“TWEEEEEP!”

I walk to the end of the hallway outside of the bedroom and jerk the alarm from the wall. Its umbilical cord is still trailing behind, attached to the motherly security system. I yank the cord with a mild grunt, detaching the dying animal. Satisfaction.

I throw the detector on the hall table and make my way back to bed. Before I get to the bedroom door…

“TWEEEEEP!”

I Got A Bag You Can Check, RIGHT HERE!!

The trip home a couple of weeks ago brought with it yet another joyous experience at the airport.  I flew from Atlanta to Moline, Illinois, because it was the cheapest option that was anywhere close to Iowa.  Now, you’d think that there wouldn’t be more than a few people a year that would want to travel to the greater Moline metroplex, but the plane was full of adorable little doe-eyed travelers.  My brother and I were standing in the gate area picking out who was going home to Iowa and who was just visiting – Iowa, Iowa, Atlanta, Iowa, Atlanta, Iowa, Iowa, Iowa.  It’s quite obvious really.  People in Atlanta don’t wear full beards and flannel shirts in the middle of summer.  Especially the women.

So we boarded the plane and wedged ourselves into the seats, listening to instructions on what to do in case of a water landing.  What?  Are we taking a little-known westerly route over the Pacific between Atlanta and Illinois?  Seems inconvenient, but I’m not a major airline, so what do I know?  I chose to stay quiet, lest they think me a terrorist.

Turns out that I didn’t need to immediately worry about traveling over a major body of water anyway.  The major body of water was coming to us.  We were 27th in line for takeoff and nobody was in a real big hurry.  To hear the tower tell it, there was some sort of flash-monsoon heading directly to the Atlanta airport.  Storm of the Century.  Hail the size of poodles.  In the distance, I saw a man building an Ark.

So we sat.  Our Captain was very helpful with the updates, telling us that nothing whatsoever had changed and we were waiting for the storm to hit. 

Ah.  Yes, let’s not get the fuck out of here before the poodles come.  Let’s wait and enjoy the show. 

We were all very careful to not move from our seats, because the plane could move AT ANY MOMENT!!  WAIT FOR IT!!  The excitement in the cabin was palpable.  Plane sitting should be a ride at Disney.

Then the Captain came on again and said that the storm was moving more slowly than expected, so he was just gonna go ahead and power down for a while.  We were free to move about the cabin until further notice.

Sweet joyful liberty!!  Finally, I can run free in the aisle!!  Go horseback riding!!  Swim in the Olympic sized pool!!  Use a hydrangea scented douche!!

Or I can sit and stew.  And seethe.  And berate God. 

After two hours on the tarmac, I hear the engines power up.  The Captain comes on over the intercom with his cheeriest voice and proclaims that we are ret’ta’go.  I look out the window.  No poodles.  No rain.  I’ve seen porno movies that were wetter than our runway. 

I made a mental note to kill an innocent hooker later.

One More Thing I Can Do Without

So, I’ve had food poisoning several times before and in case you are looking to take it up as some sort of “Extreme Sport”, I’d have to advise against it.  If my colon were a symphony of the body, the main performance over the last two days would’ve been a glorious concerto in 250 movements.  The “Thai Seafood Surprise In Ebola Sauce” has morphed into some sort of evil entity, eager to be released again into the world.  I have never before experienced food that seems to have a genuine grudge against my lower intestinal tract.  I am curious to know how the colon/Thai food rift began, but I am only hearing my colon’s end of the story.  Believe me, he is screaming non-stop about it.

My point is that I’m back at work and, frankly, I do not need any external influences to make me “queasy”.  However, when I went to the fountain to get a drink of clear, delicious, safe, life-giving water, I was forced to contemplate something that has bothered me for a while.  Perhaps some of you zany engineering types can assist me in understanding this one:  Why, when I am getting a drink of water from the fountain outside of a restroom, does the water pressure fall when someone in the restroom flushes?  Why, in the name of all that is holy, are those two sets of pipes in any way related?  I want to at least have the illusion that there is a single pipe for my water that’s linked from a pure, natural, Colorado spring directly to the water fountain, only to be slowed by some sort of quadruple-filter distillation process.  I don’t need to be happily sucking in water, only to hear the whhooooosssssh sound on the other side of the door as the water dips below the reach of my eager lips. 

Someone place a call to the Brita people about this; it is completely unacceptable.

To Sleep; Perchance to Dream

Weekend long.  Weekend fun.  Am tired.

I began the pre-celebration of my 32nd year on Thursday night by seeing the 10:15 p.m. showing of Matrix Reloaded.  I wore my special soil-resistant, chub-allowing khakis.  Without going into detail, I will say that I was impressed on a number of levels.  My immediate first reaction was that it isn’t as good as the first movie, but now I am rethinking that, because I’ve seen the first one about 20 billion times, so I am far more invested in it.  I think that the more I see Reloaded, the more pleased I will become.  I am ready for the DVD now, please.

The result of seeing the 10:15 show is that I didn’t get to bed until around 1:30.  This is not good.  My body needs a good ten hours of sleep to be fully functional.  I usually get about seven.  Seven hours allow me to be partially functional, while also giving me that angry, vindictive edge that makes me so very huggable.  Thursday night, I got six hours of sleep.  For the record, six hours of sleep puts me in a bad place.  With six hours, I tend to not only hold contempt for humanity in general (as with seven hours of sleep), but I begin to hold intensely fierce grudges against inanimate objects, such as my hair.  Or the phone. Or my zipper.  Or the lawnmower.  It isn’t healthy, to be sure, but if you had my tired eyes, you would be able to see that they are all conspiring against me.  It is perfectly rational to slap at my own head in an effort to punish my hair for being unruly.  It is not outside the norm to yell at the phone, “Oh, I HEAR you ringing!! I’m COMING, you MOTHERFUCKER!!”  There is no shame in standing in your bathroom, both hands locked on the zipper nubbin, screaming, “What is your problem, you sonovabitch?! Zip already!! You’ve got two jobs in life! Up.  Down. Don’t make me come down there!!”  It is psychologically acceptable to mutter under your breath to a lawnmower, “I’ll push you right down into that ditch and leave you for dead, I swear to God, you boisterous piece of shit.  Do not test me.”

So I was in a bit of a mood on Friday.