lazy

so i've been back in computer hell again. only three days after i got my computer back from the shop, it broke down again with exactly the same problem that i brought it in for. funny how they can never repeat the problem when it's in the shop, but when i open it up right in front of them, it crashes faster than pan am flight whatever. so i told them they were idiots because they couldn't fix the problem, even though i told them what they had to do in the first place. if it weren't for my lack of resources, i suppose i'd fix the damn thing myself. but alas, i am still without my trusty, although much hated, mac.

in the meantime, i've decided that people are getting pretty damn lazy. it's nothing that we didn't know before, but there are just more overt signs of it now. like why in the hell would anyone need to put a motor on a scooter? isn't half the fun of riding a scooter the part where you propel it yourself. how long till they put rocket engines on rollerblades?

you know what the funniest part of this epidemic is though? i don't know how many of you have used the new york thruway system, but the bathrooms in the reststops there are just unbelievable. i pull up to the urinal, do my deed, and as i walk away, a laser sensor flushes for me. then i go over to the sink, move my hands underneath the faucet and the water turns on for me, probably at some federally approved temperature that was deemed 'comfortable' by a multibillion dollar study. then, if i haven't already wiped my hands on my pants, i can go over to the paper towel dispenser, hold out my hands, and a motor will crank out exactly how much paper towel i need. for real! i'm really just waiting for the next innovation, which i assume will be a little robot that undoes my zipper and holds 'it' for me while i go. then i won't have to expend any energy at all. but then again, it is a "rest"stop.

dammit all! so the reason why i haven't written in the past week or so is simply because my computer blew up. i told this to the guy at the help center, and i knew right from the get-go that he thought i was an idiot about computers. so i had to go into my schpiel about insufficient ram, corrupt sectors, and invalid node responses. he still didn't believe me that i actually had a problem. five hours later, i went back to see him, and he admitted that it had to be sent out for repairs, because he couldn't fix it. ha! i knew i was right, i just wish i could have been right about something else. so now i have a loaner computer and have lost a whole bunch of data on my computer due to reformatting. isn't technology awesome?

so i was in the shower the other day....don't all good stories start like that. it almost gives it a whole pornographic feel right off the bat. but for real, i was in the shower the other day, actually i was getting out of the shower when i made an observation. is it just me, or does everyone else in the world dry themselves off in the same exact pattern every single time they get out of the shower. i never noticed it before, and i couldn't even tell you what order i go in, but when i'm doing it, i know exactly which limb or appendage is going to be dried off next without even having to think about it. every single time! does everyone else do this too? try it out, but don't think too much about it, or else you'll just screw it up by being too conscious about it.

speaking of bathroom observations, i had another one the other day, and this one if for all the guys out there. have you ever walked into someone's bathroom to take a pee and found that they have mirrors right behind the toliet? you can pretty much go without noticing it until after you start to do your deed. then you look up and see yourself in the mirror and are just like...."whoa! hey buddy is that you? gosh, i don't get to see you from this point of view too often. i almost didn't recognize ya!" who puts mirrors above a toilet anyway, and what could their function possibly be except for looking at one's own penis while taking a piss? you got me on this one.

from the "more random observations" file

so i live right near the corner of main st. in the university heights district of buffalo. it's not the ghetto necessarily, but you do get a lot of strange characters walking around the streets. there's this one old man that i see walking down the street all the time. he's rather unkepmt, but he's always wearing a suit...even in the middle of summer. sure, it might be a little weird that he's always wearing the same suit, even on hot days, but i'm sure that it's probably due to the fact that he can't afford too many new clothes. you know what else i say? "good for him." just because he's poor doesn't mean that he can't dress himself up a little bit if it gives him a little bit more dignity. the one thing that i don't quite understand about him is his walker. he always has bags of groceries tied to the bars. sure, it sounds like a good idea for someone who is old and has problems walking, but he doesn't even use the walker to help him. he just kind of carries it a little above waist height, with all of his bags draping off of it.

along main st. is this little coffeehouse where the alternative types hang out. we have one where the more affluent people hang out, but i don't go there as much. i do try to make it a point to play every week at the open mic night at the first place. sometimes i miss a week or two due to work, but there are these two schizophrenic guys who never miss a week. the first one only has a mild case, and he plays some pretty good beats on this nice african drum he has. the other one has quite a bad case, and he just kinda goes up there and bangs on his banjo or squeezing away on his accordian. aw man, it's absolutely horrible to have to sit and listen to, but i say good for him for getting up there week after week. i just keep wondering what he's hearing when he's up there playing. does he think that he's actually making music up there, or is he aware of the noise that's really coming out? just a thought, but like i said, it's still cool that he gets up there and does his own thing. i can't say the same most of the completely sane people i know.

don't lose faith in the kindness of strangers

just a little addition that i forgot to make to my last story.

so when we got back to the bottom of the mountain (which i climbed in sandals by the way), we got back into the car to drive away. well we see what we think is a parking ticket on the windshield. turns out that it was a note left there by a stranger. it read:

"you had a flat tire on the right passenger side, so we pumped it up for you. you'll probably want to stop and get it checked out though.

-a friendly passerby"

it just shows to go ya that there are still some people out there that are looking out for other people. i'd like to think that i'm one of those people, but you never really know until you get tested right?

everyone's getting fat but me, well maybe me too

it's amazing that when you don't have an internet connection or cable at home, you can completely forget that there is an outside world, let alone that you even have a blog to update.

sorry to all.

but back to business, americans are getting pretty damn fat. how do i know this? i heard it on the radio. for real though, on npr the other day, they had a report on how new home scales are going up to 400 pounds instead of 300 because people are getting too damn fat! c'mon people, step on a treadmill or something.

as a nice segue, i can now tell you about my great weekend of great food, great drink, and great friends. remember my mantra...never skimp on any of them.

so friday i took a drive up to u-tica, ny to see my buddy miller. i'm sure i can go on forever about all the stuff we did, but i'm going to try to be as concise as possible. first thing we did was to go to a fancy dinner with his friend emily. now, i have been hearing about how cool this girl is for years, and i now i finally got to meet her. she was just as cool as i could have possibly imagined her.

after dinner and a few drinks, emily suggested that we should just up and climb a mountain the next day. so that's just what we did. we hopped in a car and drove up to the adirondacks to climb blue mountain. following emily's lead, we climbed it at a breakneck pace, and the view at the top was spectacular. we could see forever in all directions.

when we got to the bottom, we decided that we were pretty damn hungry, so we went and bought a whole lot of groceries on our way to an impromtu stay at miller's camp on the lake. we cooked ourselves a fine dinner and then took the canoes on the lake. after our little workout there, we started a fire, roasted some s'mores, and broke into the liquor cabinet. we tried to get a couple people to come up and party with us, but alas, no one wanted to make the drive. it was great with just the three of us though. we spent the night talking and watching "hook" on video.

i spent the next day burning some incerdible music with miller. fourteen albums in all. i got a lot of listening to do in the next couple of days.

this weekend reminded me of a few things though. well actually one big thing. the kind of people for me are the mad ones. mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be save, desirous of everything at the same time. i'll credit jack kerouac with that one, but it just so happens to apply to me too. those kind of people are so hard to find. i was just glad i got to spend some time with some people who were in on the secret too.

in an effort to spread de good wurd going around the blog community, i will be working to add more links to other blogs that i believe are particularly noteworthy. please take the time to check out these other links, cuz they just might have something good to say.

cheers,
jim

quote of the day:

from one of my 10 year old patients

"i have a weiner!"
(the entire office staff erupts laughing)
"no, no, not that kind of weiner. a weiner dog!"

bff

so i was helping a friend of mine move out of her apartment this weekend, when she remarked to me how the amount of people who failed to keep in touch with her when she left school surprised her. she said how sad it was that friends whom she had been very close to, have not spoken to her in over six months. friends who, she thought, would keep in touch with her for a long time. i told her that i don't think it's necessarily sad, it's just a thing that happens.

think of it this way....

count how many friends you have who you can consider really good friends. i mean the kind of friend who you know you will have for the rest of your life. i bet just about everyone can count those kind of friends on one hand. the rest of the friends you make in your lifetime (thousands i'm sure), are only in your life for a given amount of time. it's not that they mean to drop out of your life, but in truth, most of the friends you make are only meant to fulfill a certain niche in your life at a given time. if it were really possible to stay extremely close to that many people, you'd never have enough time nurture all of your other relationships.

and so it goes that you just keep your very best friends around for a lifetime. maybe those other friends aren't as important in the grand scheme of a person's life, but at any given time, it's those people who are helping you get through the daily trials, and hopefully making you a better person for it.

call me a hopeless romantic, but....

i was on my way to bed the other night, walking all the way through my dark house to my bedroom, when i was reminded of a little metaphor that i had been thinking of. back in my old house, i used to live in a little room in the basement. to get to it, i had to go down some winding stairs, go through another room, and through a cubby hole, until i finally found myself in my bedroom. i used to stay up late, talking on instant messenger or playing on the internet. when it came time to go to bed, i would have to walk all the way to my room in the dark because of the placement of the light switches in the house.

so here’s where the metaphor comes in. whenever i’d walk the path to my room trying to see my way to my bed, i’d always bump into things, stub my toes, or find myself lost in the middle of another room somewhere. but, if i just closed my eyes and let my intuition guide me, i had no problem finding my way down there. my mind knew exactly how many steps i had to go down, how many paces i had to take, and exactly when to turn. only when i tried to out-think my instincts though and tried to use my sense of sight to give the objects around me some tangibility, did i run into problems.

i think the same thing applies to a lot of those people out there who are in relationships. whatever the cause is, we try to overanalyze everything, and try to give our mind power over our hearts. we don’t need to be able to place a name or a motive on everything; sometimes things just happen because that’s the way things happen. if we just close our eyes and let our hearts feel their own way through i don’t think we bump into so many proverbial walls.