Career Move?

The Spanish tapes have progressed from the lessons on how to tell people that I can't understand or speak Spanish to ones telling people that I have no pesos or dollars and that I want some.

Perfect training for my next career as a Mexican beggar.*

*I bet it would be a shorter commute.

Shoulda Known

I'd eaten at a Sonny's Bar-B-Q restaurant before. But if I had any doubts that this was not a place to get health food when I went in there for lunch yesterday I could tell for sure by the fact that the waitresses all looked like they were working there only until their careers as sumo wrestlers took off.

Don't even let me get started on what my fellow patrons looked like.

Habla?

The job I started recently entails a nearly hour-long commute right now. Looking for a way to pass the time more productively, I borrowed a "Speak Spanish Instantly!" set of cassettes from the library. Now instead of flipping between NPR and sports talk radio while crawling along in traffic I can be inching my way toward becoming bilingual.

"No books, no written exercises, no drills!" It says on the cover. And I can say without qualification that it works. After only two hours of intent listening and repeating to the recorded conversations, I can now tell people in fluent Spanish that I do not speak Spanish.

Grey's Anatomy

This is a good show. Grey's is one of only two shows on television (Family Guy being the other) that I make any effort to watch. But its supposed brilliance is getting so overhyped that people who don't get it wonder if they're missing something.

If you're one of them, here's what you're missing:

You're missing a TV show.

It happens to be a show I like but if I were to miss an episode, it wouldn't leave a gaping hole in my heart.

Unless, of course, I missed it because I took a gunshot to the chest.

Kitten Wars

This is Annie (a.k.a. "The Little Pretty Kitty"). I could fill a blog with pictures of her even though she rarely chooses to play to my camera. What a cutie!

What prompted me to post this picture was a site I ran across
(thanks to Gwen) called Kitten War. I know what you're thinking. That's what I thought too: Cockfighting for cats.

Fear not, gentle (and gentile) readers, Kitten War is perfectly harmless to kitties. However cat lovers -- and those, like me, who are merely good friends with one -- could fall fall prey to the overdose of kitty cuteness as the feline warriors battle it out to see which one can claim the crown (or the helmet?) of Cutest Kitten!

This Is Love

I heard this story on NPR recently. It's about a guy in Brooklyn who proposed to a woman on their first date. In 1978. And how they've been married since then. You can listen to it online if you want to hear an inspiring love story.

I can't fathom ever doing that. I'm far too cautious. I'm usually too cautious to ask for the first date itself! What struck me was that to decide to get married that suddenly and make it work, they both had to make up their minds beforehand that they were going to enjoy a happy marriage. Their attitude predetermined the outcome. It was not just a leap of faith. It was a conscious decision in advance. And it became a sulf-fulfilling prophecy.

It was also sweet simply to hear two people so obviously in love with each other. I'd like to believe in the possibility.

I want to feel like that someday. And have the feeling reciprocated. I
want to fall in true love. Just one time. Just for a little while, if that's
all I get. I can only imagine how wonderful that must feel. When you love someone else more than life itself. When you learn you're going to die and you're clear that you do not want it to end your partner's life too: "When I go, live again, love again. Your happiness is mine."

Good times.

iTunes for Eyeteeth

It used to be that you mailed in box tops to get prizes. Now you type in codes you read off the boxes and download them. A recent toothpaste purchase left me with three free music downloads from Sony.

Songs I chose:

1. Angel - Sarah McLachlan
2. Ready, Steady, Go - Paul Oakenfold
3. State Farm - Yaz

Angel might be the most beautiful song I've ever heard. May you find some comfort here, indeed. And here's a bit of trivia: Sarah McLachlan and I share the same birthday. We're Aquarius. What that has to do with anything, I don't know, but there you go.

You might not know its name but you've heard this song. It's featured in the Saab ad campaign about how Saab was born from jets. It also played in the movie Collateral as Tom Cruise shot up a bunch of people in a busy nightclub.

Yaz was a two person group in the early 1980s featuring Alison Moyet's androgynous vocals and the synthesizer work of Vince Clarke. A friend of mine gave me a cassette with this song on it and I thought this song had the coolest sound. Total 80s funky new wave.

Also Fitting

I pull into an Eyeglass World store last night and have trouble finding a parking place. Seems no one can correctly park in the spaces.

At least we know they really do need the glasses.

How Fitting

Apparently you can have your cake and screw it too.

Check out this story in the Salt Lake Tribune about a player for the NBA's Utah Jazz whose wife is either:

A. Unusually understanding

B. Plotting something

or, considering that it's Utah,

C. Just trying to fit in.

Andrei Kirilenko is a tall skinny white guy who plays professional basketball for a living. Even they are highly sought after by groupies, whose dogged pursuit, it seems, is too overwhelming for even the most virtuous husband to resist. And if Kirilenko's craving for unfaithful carnal knowledge creates a temptation so strong he wishes to give in, his wife Masha Lopatova has only one thought:

Let him.

Says she: hubby can bang one other woman per year with no penalty. She's not even asking for reciprocity. It's not cheating if she knows about it, see.

I guess Lopatova saw the story of Walter Steed, a Utah judge removed from the bench for having three wives (with whom he fathered 32 children, which is a lot even by NBA standards) and must have figured that this way she would only be sharing her husband with one other woman.

What's good for the judge is good for the gander, I guess.

The Office

This is the space in which I should probably tell you about my new job. It's outside of TV (my first since college), inside a cubicle and if anything exciting enough to keep your attention longer than 16 seconds ever happens there I'll tell you more about it.