I hate Berkeley so much

As if I needed yet another reason to absolutely detest these hysterical goofballs, there's this. Jesus, we get it, you're stuck in the 60s, flower power, tune in, turn on, drop out. Gotcha. Ken Kesey. Uh, Timothy Leary. Woodstock. The name-your-city Seven. Whatever. God damn, it's so over.

Yea! It's Over

God damn, I am so happy that AmericasMart ist kaput. I was sick for at least the last two days, but I never felt 100%. I have bad luck in Atlanta, been there twice, been sick there twice.

At any rate I'm in Dallas now, and will be boarding the plane to LAX in a half hour or so. That is so awesome. Get me home, where temperatures are in the 60s instead of the 40s.

Fucking Lame

Are you in the Greeting Card, Pet, Gift, whatever business? If you are, chances are that your unfortunate ass is with me in Atlanta at AmericasMart right now. Now, my experience with gift/stationery shows is that you're always chance the end of the rainbow. There's always some better show that you didn't go to. Some show where drunken shop owners rolled barrels of money down the aisles tossing it hither and yon to whomever happened to be around. The kind of show where Baptist Ministry gift shops bought dog collars because, what the hell, Jesus loves the critters too. 

For me though, every single show has been crappy to okay. That's it. Never better than okay. Now, I admit that I don't have the kind of product that people who attend these shows generally like. Still, this is one of the few and only effective ways to open new accounts. So you go, right? You have to, right? No more.

I'm done. Mark my fucking words, the next time I'm in Atlanta it's going to be on a tour of Coke. 

First of all it's the cold/flu season, so everyone is hacking up a lung. Secondly, this is weather that a socal boy ain't used to. It's not even that it's all that cold, cold I can handle, it's so damn dry. And the problem is that all the buildings really make it drier. Example: My booth in AmericasMart is in the direct line of an air conditioning unit that never stops blowing. So not only am I freezing, but my insides are turning into beef jerky. Your nose gets f'd up, your lungs start hacking. Enough already. I need a humidifier. A giant one. 

Also, I'm not a businessman. I have a business, so technically I guess I am a businessman, but I certainly am not one in spirit. And it's not that I hate wearing suits. Hell, I think suits look cool (though not the suits most of these businessmen wear). No, what makes me not a businessman is that I simply suck at business. I'm not built for it. Businessmen take a dollar and turn it into three. I take a dollar, turn it into an origami dragon, and sell it for fifty cents. 

Now, I don't hate all businessmen, just some of them. But I respect most of them. We need businessmen. One thing that most artistes and aesthetes don't quite understand is that it's these people who make any kind of large scale art or mass communication possible. 

But I digress. This isn't about how awesome businessmen are, this is about how I suck. which I do. 

Those Double Amputees get All the Breaks

Huh.

Behold! The Lukewarmiest Coffee Ever!

Jesus. Here is the cup of the most lukewarm coffee I've ever had. To be fair to our lord and saviour, Starbucks, peace be upon him, this was not purchased at the store who must not be named. Rather, it was bought in the Sheraton Downtown Atlanta at the food buying place. Whatever it's called. Anyway, said coffee was purchased when I returned from dinner so that I might retire to my room for a delightful night of writers' strike tv. 

My first sip was like a fairy tale. The doors to the elevator door had just closed and I was finally alone with my black mistress. I actually prepared myself for the pain of the initial sip, so confident was I in the promise of a piping hot cup of coffee. To be fair to myself the cup did have that corrugated band around it, indicating "Hot! Protect yourself!" so i think it was reasonable to expect the coffee to not only be hot, but be piping hot. Piping hot, twas not.

I've been let down by things before, people mostly, but this coffee really let me down. Why is lukewarm coffee so offensive? I like hot coffee; I like iced coffee; so why does luke warm coffee so displease me? It displeases you too, I bet. Even if you don't drink coffee I bet you instinctually know that lukewarm coffee is crap. And let's call it something else. Let's call it "room temperature" instead of 'lukewarm.' It's still crappy. 

Ah well, I drank it anyway. I tried to pretend it was some sort of chocolate, which twas not.

I'm a racist!

It's true! I judge people by their race sometimes in certain situations. 

Example: I get on a flight from LAX to DFW to make a connection to Atlanta and the guy sitting next to me turns out to be right behind me as I'm putting my stuff down. He's not just any guy though, he looks Persian, or at least Middle Eastern. Surely this is the man whose sleeper cell has been activated. Surely I'm going to be the guy he kills to frighten the other passengers into compliance. Not so fast buddy, I'm on to your game. I'm going to have to get pretty drunk for you to get the drop on me. I'm going to be the fly in your ointment. I'm your John McCain bitch. Yippee Kai Yay motherfucker. (what's the generally accepted spelling of 'Yippee Kai Yay?')

He must have sensed my catlike reflexes, my taught muscles, my steely resolve, because at some point, indiscernible to the lay person not versed in Harrison Ford thrillers or 80s action/rescue movies, he silently signaled to his camouflaged confederates in a masterly manner that alludes alliteration and their plan was put on hold. Foiled again Osama.

He did, however, cough, hack, sniff, sneeze, wheeze, and expectorate in a most disgusting and disturbing manner. Oh, and by the end of the flight I'm pretty sure he was Indian. And a frat boy.

"Why you should get to know me..."

Okay, check out this guy. I don't care about his picture, it's the reasons he wrote about why we should get to know him. 

Is it me, or is he describing an annoying asshole you'd for sure not want to meet, let alone date. I'm going to run this through my personal translator and see how I'm reading him: Why you should get to know me: "I'm a loud-mouthed, know-it-all, control freak, narcissist."  Yeah, that seems accurate. This translator works great. Oh, hang on, it says there's a second possible reading: Why you should get to know me: "I've spent my life fulfilling the cliched stereotype of over-achieving and devoutly studious asian man and now I'm a rage-filled introvert." Ouch, either way I'd hate to read his Doom-inspired poetry or catch a glimpse of soul laid bare. Good luck robot, I hope you find the sort of pacifying love you need. 

"Former" Beauty Queen just doesn't cover it

Wow, Why'd the guy ever break up with her?

Morons, sick of em.

Jesus to hell, I am so sick of god damned morons. Seriously. When you're doing construction on your home you deal with morons on a more than regular basis. I don't know how contractors do it. I don't know how construction managers do it. I don't know how anyone in construction who isn't a moron is able to fucking operate on a daily basis without taking of .45 caliber nap. 

The morons I'm referring to today have nothing to do with our contractor, who is a nice guy and most definitely not a moron. The people I'm referring to are the couple of potted plants our security company sent over to hook our garage up to our alarm system. I shit you not, at one point they found wires and they couldn't figure out to what they were attached so they, no kidding, disconnected them. Hey, why not? Isn't that what dumbasses are supposed to do? Disconnect wires when they don't know what they're attached to? Not surprisingly the keypad in our bedroom no longer works. Don't get excited, you can't break in. Our alarm works, we just can't turn it off from the bedroom. 

Now, this might seem like a minor inconvenience, but this is the shit we deal with every day, numerous times a day. And it's been like this for months and months and we've had it. Woe be the poor dumb bastard that next tries my patience. 

Oh, and I get to fly to atlanta next week. I'm going to go apeshit on that trip i'm sure.

***Update****

So I'm fucking asleep and suddenly the alarm just starts beeping. Hey, why not? Isn't that what's supposed to fucking happen when you have a couple of cow pies doodling around on your alarm system for forty-seven hours one day? Isn't that what's supposed to happen when you have a couple of helium balloons with dumb ass smiley faces crayola'd on banging on your alarm system with bleached jawbones they pulled from the dirt? Isn't that what's supposed to happen when the company you pay to protect you sends over two mostly dead monkeys they found at the bottom of a wicker basket under a much larger, dead monkey. But hey, at least they took a long lunch. Fucking idiots, I fucking hate them. 

Liz, why didn't you call from the Rose Bowl?

Ugh, what an outfit

Sweet mercy. Look at this poor kid. What an outfit. 

And then look who he's standing in the photo with. How'd you like to have this in your photo album?

2007

Some things in 2007 went right, some things did not. Here's a short list.

The pros:

1. Elliot is happy and healthy and as babies go, easy breezy. 
2. Julia made it, miraculously, to 35.5 weeks (this is related to #1)
3. After a stutter-step, Charlie started, and loves, preschool.
4. Charlie is potty-trained. Yes, #3 is better than #4.
5. Nük-u-lur sold well for RPG and got licensed in Australia..
6. The garage/office passed final inspection just a week ago.
7. The spa/hot tub is reinstalled after construction and is liquid love.
   
8. Health insurance (see numbers 1 and 2 and 5 of 'cons')

The Cons:

1. Julia's 49 day hospital stay.
2. Elliot's surgery at age 8 weeks.
3. Julia's gestational diabetes.
4. Charlie's terrible twos.
5. My fall onto my spine.
6. The garage rebuild enters yet another year without being completed. (Demo in 2006. Construction throughout all of 2007. More construction in 2008. RU FKM? Ridiculous. Moral, don't build in Santa Monica.)
7. Awful, awful sleep.