STEAL THIS IDEA, part VI

     I'm thinking about getting a couch for my apartment. I figure it will make my place look more inviting than does a lone chair. Of course what should be (in my opinion of course) a simple decision of "I like the way this looks" and be done with it has turned into a "You can't get this because it doesn't match your carpet/wall/other furniture" stand-off.

     There are a lot of couch designs out there...excuse me, sofa designs, but their available colors (if plural at all), tends to be meager. My thought is this and it's entirely possible that this has already been done, but how about a standard sofa? I'm sure you can picture one in your head. A stereotype of a sofa. The kind you might find drawn in a comic or cartoon. That style. You see it, don't you? It's not impressive in terms of, uh...architecture (?) but it's functional and damn it! looks like a cou...sofa. But a standardized design.
     And totally in addition to your store's other stock, but unlike the other sofas you have, it can be upholstered in any color or pattern of fabric. Made-to-order perhaps via the internet using your showroom just to show the design and feel. But standard for people like me who want a sofa but not the headache that comes with one.

     And understand, I'm not implying "cheap" when talking about this sofa. It can be of fine quality, but it needs to be a mass-produced, sturdy design. There can be a couple of models, but only a few, otherwise it would be defeating the purpose of this idea. Their primary commonality being that it can come in any color or pattern.

     Actually this standardization idea could apply to most types of furniture including beds, dinette tables, chairs, coffee tables, book shelves, dishes...even cars. I have a feeling this kind of furniture would not go over well with women, but they're not my target demo here. I'm speaking for bachelor men who are aware of color-matching (but don't necessarily understand it) and want to make that good first impression in terms of that but who can't be bothered to look at multiple models of desirable-looking pieces only to find out they don't work with your current decor. Go to the showroom, show a picture of your living-room, and the helpful salesman will give you appropriate colors and patterns to choose from and voilà! you've just bought a cou...sofa!

     I  don't know. I'm sure you get my point.

DISCLAIMER: To anyone reading this, you are welcome to not only use, but claim this idea as your own without giving credit to me. I sometimes have ideas, but I do not have the skills needed to express them. It is more important to me to see these ideas done than to receive recognition for them. That being said, giving me a mention anyway would make me giddy. If this idea has in fact already been done, then I strongly suggest you not actually steal it (at least not without major revisions) :-) 

GOLDEN YEARS...

Not the image I saw originally, but this will do

     One of my Facebook friends reposted an image macro reminding us that ten years ago was no longer the 1990's in an effort to depress us. While I cannot speak for the rest, I can say that it did depress me. That FUUUUUUUUck revelation of time having passed, never to return. It reminds me again how the entirety of my twenties had been wasted...time I will never get back. That endless frustration...
     But it also reminded me of how I arbitrarily look at things.

I'VE BEEN A BIT DISTRACTED...

     Perhaps that is a good thing. I have all these notes of things I've written down to write about, but their urgency has passed and even though they're not time-sensitive, I just don't feel like doing them anymore.

     The dating sites may finally be paying off. I just met a second girl tonight. It took me eleven months to meet the first one and about a month after her, to meet this one. With luck, this is indicative of a trend or that I've stumbled upon an ideally written profile (for me at least). I still have an extremely low response rate but I continue to persevere nonetheless. The first girl I started seeing was rather insistent that I continue to see other people. It's like she knew I was that type who would focus my energies on just one person at a time. I told her that I would and have been true to that.
     I think I've written over sixty messages since meeting her. I've more than redoubled my efforts. I've only gotten about five or six replies, most of which were basically "Thanks, but no thanks." Needless to say, I am happy to have been given another opportunity. I hope this trend continues before it must necessarily start focusing on actual relationships.

     I'm still on the masturbation abstinence "program". I'm starting to have difficulty keeping track of the days so that urgent part of my withdrawal may have finally passed. The temptations are still there of course. It's been very difficult.
     I feel like my hormone levels are returning to normal. I'm growing impatient too. Usually I can ignore the various pretty girls who come to my register at work to focus on my task at hand, but the urge to flirt with them is becoming powerful. Not so much that I can't still resist it, but that resistance may fall the longer this keeps up.

     While I find it very distasteful, I've been trying alcohol when out on dates with the first PoF girl. I think I can fake it long enough now. The most I've had was enough for it to effect me. I wasn't tipsy or anything but I could feel something different. Knowing this now and coupled with my abstinence, I'm ever more tempted to just go to a bar now though I don't like those environments. They're either too depressing or too loud. Like the urge to flirt, it's becoming harder to resist because damn it, if I can't jerk off, I wanna get laid! :-)
     This is so annoying, but I think it's actually working. I still need a "proof of concept" though...

MAKING ANOTHER SHAKY "X" ON MY CALENDAR...

     Say what you want about me, but one thing you can't say is that I lack willpower. I have passed eleven days (out of ninety) of my, let's face it, desperate attempt at restoring my penile sensitivity without drugs by abstaining from masturbation. The fact that I am still very much aware of what day I am on in this little project of mine should be a fairly clear indicator of just how difficult this is to do. I have never gone this long without masturbation since discovering it was a thing back when I was almost twelve.

     The temptations are many. I still find myself visiting porn sites to see what's new on them and watching the previews...but never once have I broken down. Strangely, I can just watch. It's an oddly perverse thing to do. I guess you could say I subscribe to the philosophy that one cannot claim to be free of temptation when not actually faced with temptation. I suppose if I were an alcoholic, I would actually be spending time in bars drinking only soda despite the fact that that must almost certainly violate every recommendation.

     I guess I want this despite how annoying it is to continue. I feel the song of temptation ever-present in my mind. The lyrics are changing but the melody is the same. Now it's telling me that I should "reward myself" for having stuck to this regimen for "so long". Ugh, this is so annoying...

A LAUNDRY ROOM STORY

     A crane fly distracted me from my usual laundry room reading this morning. Somehow four of its legs had become stuck on some heavy (for the bug anyway) lint making it difficult for the creature to fly. I took pity on the insect's exhausting struggle to extricate itself from what would almost certainly be a death sentence but figuring there was nothing I could do, I continued with my reading. In between paragraphs, the bug would fly with apparent difficulty back into view coming to rest on either the floor or the table edge or even hang from the central bar of a neighbor's bicycle making futile attempts to free its legs. Of all the ways insects can die, this way seemed particularly unfair. The problem was, how to help it without accidentally severing its legs?

No matter how nice you may think I am for desiring to help this insect, remember that I did take the time to get my camera from my apartment to document its suffering first

     I decided against ending the crane fly's misery on the off-chance fortune might smile upon the insect, freeing it from this trap and I have to admit, I wanted the bug to win in this particular struggle. But this outcome had not become reality as my laundry neared completion. I didn't want to leave having tried nothing and looking at my bookmark, I saw a possible solution to the fly's dilemma.

     The insect landed near me again and using the bookmark's edge as a kind of knife, I managed to (after a few attempts...I can't exactly blame the bug for trying to get away from me now can I?) cut away the heaviest parts of the fibers and not sever its legs while doing so. Hooray! A happy ending for the crane fly. Now all I had to do was encourage it to the door and it would be free to live or die in its proper environment. The insect, newly unburdened in flight and with apparent ease, flew near the ceiling of the room and I swear to you, the first place it landed...this happened.

Seriously?

     The venting pipe the crane fly had settled upon after its first taste of freedom, of all the places it could have landed, was the only place in the laundry room covered in the same sticky lint which had gotten it into trouble in the first place. One unburdened flight...that's all it got. I folded my laundry, turned out the light, closed the door, and never looked back.

     Fuck that crane fly!

THE BLUE LINE IS MY LAUGH AT YOUR EXPENSE

     Words only hurt if you let them. I wish more people would understand that. But as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, so here goes:

Oonme'n ÿan ÿkÿ ahdÿehn yrnedyl cohlynay teu dayce de vÿoreu ne t'ÿke ni morvÿ.

     I just insulted you heavily in another language. Do you feel insulted? Why not? You should be. It was pretty ( and hilariously) heinous. But yet you're not insulted and why is that? It's because you cannot ascribe meaning and even more importantly, value, to that statement.

     Words can only be slurs if the speaker intends them to be, otherwise despite your accusations, they are not slurs. A good example is "Jew" because the word is both, depending on how it's used, descriptive and a pejorative. Whether it be the former or the latter is as much dependent upon the listener's as well as the speaker's intent.

     Things change. Sometimes people forget that. A word may once have been "bad" but not everyone speaking it today is necessarily aware of its origin: they don't see it that way and how does making them aware of that origin help your cause? You want the hate to stop, right? Because sometimes I swear the politically correct groups out there want the hate to continue because without it, their organizations lack a reason to be. You would think the purpose of such PACs would be to become obsolete, but they don't disband...they endure.

     I hear Gypsies still get insulted over the use of the verb "gyp". Why? Do you honestly think users of the word today are aware of its etymology and are purposefully using the verb hurtfully? Same with words like "tranny". You'll be hard-pressed to find English speakers who like using polysyllabic words with great frequency (not an intelligence joke...really!). They interrupt the flow of speech. Though I cannot speak for all, I would say the majority of people using the word "tranny" today are simply doing so because they would rather not have to utter the complex structure of the word "transsexual". A hurtful past is not necessarily indicative of a hurtful present. Nicknaming is a strong habit I remind anyone who says Liz, Mike, Sam, Alex, Ted, Chris, Bill, Jen, Nick, etc. Hell, it could even be argued that "tranny" is more a personification than an insult. A "tranny" sounds like a person whereas "transsexual" sounds more like a state of being or diagnosis.

     I don't begrudge you your anger necessarily, but if you are going to be angry, may I suggest you come up with an alternate word we can use which is equally, if not more, catchy than the original rather than simply opposing the word currently favored? And remember that the United States is supposed to be a melting pot of cultures and opinions. Therefore, your goal should be to merge your ideas with the group identity, not to separate your group from that identity otherwise you will be opposed at every turn.

THE ANSWER IS THE WAR OF 1812

     It's been a long time since this country has been invaded by a military force bent on conquering it and it was that thought which had me wondering. Let's say it happened again, the United States comes under invasion from a powerful and serious enemy, how many people do you think would take advantage of the situation to settle some old scores and blame it on the invaders? I have to believe it's somewhere between "more than a few" and "less than a lot". Sure, sure...the survival of our great nation is at stake but then again, that's what the military and militias are for, right? Meanwhile you know some asshole has been holding a grudge against his neighbor for like twenty years because he built a fence tall enough to block his view of the valley or maybe that neighbor who stole your husband away from you? That bully who picked on you mercilessly at school every day? That jogger who didn't pick up her dog's leavings? That guy who cut you off on your way to the supermarket? You can't tell me NO ONE would take advantage of this...

THOUGHTS I NORMALLY KEEP IN MY HEAD, part XV

     The father of one of my childhood friends died last week and since his wake was within walking distance, I attended. He and I have rarely spoken in the past sixteen or so years and it was strange seeing all those faces again. I hate the increasing numbers of ever-present reminders that our time on this world is limited. I have no grandparents left and my father is already gone, the generation ahead of mine is getting picked off one-by-one and bringing to the forefront my own mortality.

     Seeing my childhood friend's father lying in state did however, remind me of some important memories. I appreciated that like my own father, he never kicked my brother and me out. We were always invited. I don't recall ever eating over there (aside from snacks) whereas many of my brother and I's friends would eat by Dad's (the idea being, if it's dinnertime and you're over, everyone eats), but for many weekends, it was an endless sea of videogames, cartoons, and the occasional adventure outdoors. His father unwittingly provided us with my first Playboy magazine (not the first one I had ever seen, but the first one I had seen since pubescence...the first one that mattered). It was the October 1991 issue.

Playmate of the Month: Cheryl Bachman

     I ordered the back issue of that one years ago precisely because of that memory. I also saw my first porno at that house too. And like the Playboy magazine, I had seen one beforehand, but I wasn't ready for it at the time. Although I don't know its title (if I did, I would totally get a copy of it somewhere, somehow), it was the first one I had seen that mattered.

     That's what his father ultimately meant to me. And to be clear, he did not show us these things. He was at work (as was my friend's mother). No, my friend knew of the "secret stash" and happily showed us its contents. And while it may be sad to think of someone for being remembered thusly, I remind you, in the pre-internet age, a boy's first playboy and porno were important milestones in his adolescence. They were rarely encountered and you had to take what you could get. I got lucky the first centerfold I ever saw was as pretty as Ms. Bachman. It could've gone anywhere honestly. The post-internet generation will never appreciate those things. I guess that makes me officially old.

MY LIFE IS NOW A SEINFELD EPISODE...

     My life at times really feels like an endless chorus of, "Well, we have some good news and some bad news."