Near my work I pass a tanning salon called Seattle Sun Tan. If a farmer's tan is what happens when you are out in the field all day with your shirt on, what is a Seattle tan? I imagine they have two packages:

1) The Rainier - suit up in a North Face jacket, stand in a chilled room and face a wind machine for 2-hour sessions. A sunlamp will burn your face, but you won't feel it since the wind's going.

2) The Eastside - you sit at a laptop for 175 hours, editing code and sneaking a game of Solitaire. For $50 extra they'll use a blue airbrush to highlight your veins.

Letter!

This is a letter to my friend Meredith, who I would describe as, "the shit." Not in a negative way, but in like, a really awesome way. We write blog letters to each other, like pen pals, but without all that postage and penmanship. Her blog is linked to the right.

Dear Meredith,

I have started a new blog. The reasons for this are threefold:

1. I feel it was time for a "fresh start" in my blogging world.

2. ...

So I guess there is only one reason for the new blog. So help me, I love the word "threefold."

Yesterday my housemate asked: what is your blog about? I do not know. But I plan on keeping with the regular letter-writing to you, my blogging compatriot.

Now I supposed would be a good time to explain how I am drinking tea AND a smoothie at the same time. Basically I got to work and made some tea, then some co-workers went to the local overpriced smoothie shop and I bought some awesome smoothie. Result: two beverages! I am double fisting! On my left, the harmonious mix of Super Irish Breakfast Black Tea, or as I like to call it, black Irish tea. (I bought this tea specifically because it said "Super." I still don't know how that adjective came within ten feet of tea marketing, but, lo, here it is.) On my right, a strawberry banana smoothie with flax oil! You cannot taste the flax oil, which is the best, because flax oil tastes a lot like super gross.

That is pretty much everything going on right now. So now there are some things I need to say to you, and these things are threefold:

1. The ring is sparkly, which is awesome! Congratulations not only on getting engaged, but on using the word "Sampsonistic". I honestly don't know which is more exciting - it is very close.

2. Jelly Belly logo tattoos should be available at all tattoo parlors, as well as heavily discounted.

3. I am pretty uncomfortable with the phrase "semi-constant reader." I do not see any way in which I am not a constant reader. I check your blog pretty much daily, and while instead of leaving comments I just blog about your blog, I am always a very involved participant in your wit and general spectacular-ness.

4. (Okay, so once again the "threefold" descriptor is inappropriate) Yes, let me know how the job search is going! Keep me updated!

Well, I imagine things are crazy right now, but have no fear! They only get crazier!

-Matt

Yelling is the hardest part

I am a pretty passive, wishy-washy guy. Well, sort of...I mean, not all the time, but most of time, you know? Kinda.

So it should come to no shock to you that I live in Seattle! It is the mecca of passivity, an emerald beacon shining forth the message: "Maybe you should move here or maybe not! You can if you want to!" One only needs to observe the hesitant turn-taking at any given four-way stop or the barista's half-smile when you have said-the-name-of-that-drink-wrong-but-it's-okay-I-know-what-you-meant-no-really-it's-fine-it's just-that's-a-really-stupid-way-to-say-it, to know that you are among my people.

Yessir! So it is upsetting to me (and maybe others?) that in order to ride your bike on the city's many trails and bike lanes, you need to yell DIRECTLY AT OTHER PEOPLE WHEN PASSING THEM! It is not the hills, the rain, the wind or the traffic that I find frustrating and demoralizing when I jump on my Mt. Trek bicycle. It is shouting "On your left."

There is no greater challenge to the passively-inclined than direct and clear communication.

And this happens to me a lot now, cause I started biking to work. You know when gas hits $4.20 that gas prices are high. (Ha ha! That was just a joke. Gas prices here are way higher than $4.20) So instead with my money I bought a helmet and some dorky pants. But it has led to this "on your left" issue.

Basically, the problem is you don't always need to say it. Sometimes there's enough room and things are relatively quiet and the person you're passing isn't veering around too much, so you just pass 'em. But most of the time you have to announce your presence, lest someone get startled and hit a tree, car or Starbucks franchise, whichever is closest.

Then there are all kinds of OTHER issues. I passed a child on a tricycle the other day. Little girl on tricycle doesn't know the rules! My "on your left" just caused her to stare up at me, thus steer toward me. PLUS sometimes you have to pass on the right! That means the person hears you, instinctively goes to the right to let you pass, but then realizes what you said, then remember the difference between left and right, then realize you're already up in their space, and then go the other way.

It's just nasty. I could always get a bell, the passive-aggressive note of cycling. Nothing like riding down the trail, and hearing, what is that? A distant chime! Someone is coming, but from where? By the time you've figured it out, the passer has already sullied the back of your calf with tread marks. Bells are dangerous little tinklers, and they're not loud enough.

So, it is with great trepidation that I continue yelling "on your left" to strangers, despite it being against my nature, and, in some ways, against my city.

Power Diet Update: some obstacles

Three days spent on this abs diet. So far...no abs. But it is early. Also I've hit some obstacles:

Obstacle 1: Bought plenty of ingredients, including tracking down ground flaxseed, and celebrated by eating leftover pizza.

Okay, well, I already had leftover pizza, and I paid for it, so I had to eat it. I mean...it's not going to last until I have shredded abs, so I pretty much had to eat it before "starting" the diet.

Obstacle 2: Free thought association does not reflect reality

I was going to get some soup at the local cafe for dinner on Monday (today). But then my housemates and I started to talk about how wonderful pho is. (I don't know how to have my keyboard make the correct letter there, but there's supposed to be, you know, like a little tail on the "o" there.) Anyway, I thought soup = good, and pho = soup, so let's go get some pho! But unfortunately...btw..there's way lots of sodium in pho.

Obstacle 3: Food preparation skills...sub-par





I made some really awesome meatballs! But I didn't cut the onions very fine, so the whopping chunks of onion split up the meatballs, and the meatballs kind of unravled/broke down in the pot, so instead of tiny neat little meatballs (the likes of which you see at Ikea - pictured to the admirable left), it kind of created something like a meat conglomerate (sort of like Meatwad - pictured to the deplorable right). Except while Meatwad is funny and insightful, what I created was more like soup. Oh well. Soup = good!

Obstacle 4: No real desire to eat vegetables

There are sections of the crazy power diet when it says "eat raw vegetables! As much as you want!" This is so you can find out firsthand that, while on the diet, you are not really hungry, you are just hungry for good food. Sure, you can make vegetables taste good. But I cannot. Perhaps that will be my mission before the next update.

You know, the "theatre"

As a playwright, and as a human being, I find punctuation very important. So important I will blog about it. So now I want to talk to you a little bit about exclamation points and quotation marks.


I love the exclamation point, but me and ! broke up after college when I worked as a reporter at a small town paper. We would get a lot of press releases from people who used our friend the exclamation point very liberally. If your press release is about a festival that celebrates turtles, you should not have any exclamation points in it. I began to see the exclamation point not as reflections of joy, but as superficial monikers cheaply attached to banality.

It was not until I discovered Dinosaur Comics that I once again recognized the exclamation point as amazing. Thanks, creator of Dinosaur Comics! I put your link on my list of links!

So, as a point of instruction, DO NOT use exclamation points if there is a town council or community even involved. DO use them if there are pictures of dinosaurs. Also, in instances of clever town mottos.

Quotation marks seem pretty easy: they quote something said or written. That's it. I don't know how it got around that you can use them when writing some kind of "slang" or "jargon." That just makes you sound unhip. And you should instead try to be hip.

Then there's this usage on Craigslist, in a post from this awesome dress-up group:

"Do you enjoy period clothing of various era (1920's, 30's 40's, etc), or maybe you enjoy the Victorian sort of lifestyle of "Teas", fancy clothing, men in top-hat and tails, etc.? Did you always enjoy "theatre" in school and have been looking for a classy outlet for your creativity?"

Why capitalize and quotate "Teas"? And by simply putting quotations around "theatre," the whole sentence reads like it's from a pamphlet called "Warning Signs Your Son Is Gay". ("Does your son enjoy 'theatre'?")



All I'm saying is, you can't use quotation marks or exclamation points willy-nilly. You CAN use quotation fingers in conversation pretty much all the time. That is hilarious.

Favorite barista...gone!

I've been in Seattle a year now. I've had some awesome Pacific Northwest experiences: hiking near Mt. Rainier, working in a coffee-roasting plant, turning down a job with a startup because the pay sucked...all pretty standard. But now I have felt the most bittersweet of Emerald City experiences. My favorite barista is gone!

She was a great coffee-maker, who always put quality above smoking dope in the break room. She was funny and laughed at my jokes (perhaps only for a tip? No...she was way classy). But most of all, she assisted with the construction on this:


This is, as if you can't tell, a space warrior/transformer Mr. Potato Head, complete with espresso fuel directly connected to the back of his formidable space mask. Any astronaut can tell you that if you are going to go into a space battle, you'll want some caffeine so you stay alert. I have never seen Mr. Potato Head transform, but one assumes that because of the truck facade on his chest plate (lower abdomen plate?) he would become a space truck.

So goodbye favorite barista! I never learned your name, but your coffee skills and lack of bitchiness will be remembered. And space warrior Mr. Potato Head will remain a steward of your cash register.

I am on a Power diet!

Dieting is not something I do. Until now!

It occurred to me during my latest Taco Bell run that I don't pay attention to what I eat. I know it is bad - no nutritional diet involves as much chips and salsa as I consume. I also recently took an online quiz (these are all-knowing quizzes) on my health, and the quiz said I needed like 6 servings of vegetables a day!! I currently get about one, and that is from the lettuce on my Subway sandwich. So I turned to the Internet for help.

I Googled "mens health" because I was concerned that plain old health would possibly give me namby-pamby solutions to my lack of vitamins, and/or lead me to a hospital site. I am not sick, Internet, I just need some fitness tips (or as I call them, "fips". No? Well, you can have your jargon and I can have mine). The first thing that popped up was the Men's Health site, which is a pretty extreme manliness site about getting rock hard abs, grilling up awesome meats, and having some good sex. But they had a nutrition tab, so I followed that until I got to:

The Abs Diet!!

I would link to the abs diet but it is too extreme! It is the kind of diet that uses words and phrases such as "power foods", "ultimate power smoothie", and "almonds are like Jack Nicholson in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest: They're the king of the nuts." One of the diet's recipes is called the "Mas Macho Meatballs". Even the lingo in the recipes suggests the testosterone involved in this diet: shredded cheese, oatmeal nuked in water, ice cubes crushed.

The more I read, the more I simultaneously understood that a) this was the silliest diet ever and b) I was absolutely going to do it.

So I went to the grocery store last night and picked up a good amount of "power foods." This required more time in the produce section than I generally like to spend, and finding "low-fat" ingredients was tough. Also I could not track down "ground flaxseed", so I am going to substitute "Ramen Noodel Flavor Packs" for anytime recipes call for...no? Okay, have it your way, hypothetical blog reader. I'll track those down later.

Today is the first day of a diet! I am filled with hope and 100% protein whey! Hopefully intermittently on this blog I will update you on how the man diet is working, and how ripped my abs get. My guess is...pretty ripped!

No time machine

All blogs need names, and the namesake of this blog is a video some friends and I did in high school. If you were in high school and you had a friend or family member with a video camera, you had to make videos. Today people make videos for fun, profit and/or artistic reasons. But back then we made videos because there was absolutely nothing else to do. This was a simpler time, pre-Xbox, and our recreational activities were limited: sports were too grueling, drugs were too expensive and girls wanted nothing to do with us (as should be evident from the following film). So this is what happened, shot in my home in Indiana:



The video's creator Brenan has since done much better stuff, including this awesome thing. (In the latter, look for Will, the ancient French bug hunter, as Fist Murder.) And the desert faun from the future, Geoff, is going to the Peace Corps.

I have since moved to Seattle to have artsy experiences and try to live life on my own. I am without my time machine and warriors from past and future no longer jump out to save me. There is just the present, so, you know, here we go.