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St. Patrick's Day: FAIL

"You sir!  Have you accepted St. Patrick
as your personal savior?"

There used to be a website called Dysfunctional Family Circus, which was absolutely freakin' hysterical, where visitors would submit alternative captions to cartoons from "The Family Circus."  I remember reading through them at a temp job I was working in the 1990's when "the internets" was still a novel thing.  I laughed so hard and so loudly that I later found out I had been blacklisted by the temporary agency.

(Image copyright Bil Keane and/or King Features Syndicate.  Used without permission.)

Mr. Creepy

"Don't forget to smile!"

As I have previously mentioned, I sometimes come off creepy in spite of my best intentions.  With my low self-esteem, the SNL Digital Short below is often how I view myself in my mind's eye, creepin' through my day.

I may not exactly be a clone of the fellas in the video, but my unintentional creepiness has been behind more than a few of my missteps and misadventures.  Come to think of it, maybe I'm more of a clone than I thought...

Norwegian for "Middle of Nowhere"

My friend Marty and I had no master plan for our tour of Europe after spending the summer in London.  Others may plan grand cultural journeys, but we pretty much just followed our whims and whimsy.  On a lark, we decided to take the Norwegian train to its northernmost point of Bodø, just to be able to say we had been inside of the Arctic Circle.

We were near a system of tidal eddies and whirlpools made famous by Edgar Allan Poe's "A Descent into the Maelström."  (Marty knew all of this.  I had never heard of the thing.)

We had to take a bus there, and navigating a bus transit system is confusing enough without factoring in a foreign country and a foreign language.  Most Norwegians speak English better than most Americans, but we ended up failing in the communication department.  When we got on the bus we had determined would take us where we wanted to go, we were trying to tell the bus driver that we were paying the "student discount."  Apparently, "student discount" sounds very much like Norwegian for "Please drop us off at a gas station in the middle to nowhere" because that's where we ended up.

When we finally communicated that we were trying to get to the maelstrom, the driver mumbled in disgust; however, with classic Norwegian hospitality and graciousness, he took us on his route until he passed another bus that would take us back to town.  That driver then saw us to the bus we should have been on in the first place.

And by the way, the maelstrom is much less dramatic (at least most of the time) in real life...Plus, on top of all that, I think the one near Bodø we went to is actually different one than the one the inspired the Poe short story.

How Not to Climb a Scottish Rock

One weekend during Marty's and my summer in London, we took a coach up to Edinburgh in Scotland.  Britain is smaller that most states, but it still took us almost all day Saturday to get there, and it was pretty much dark by the time we arrived.  As usual we had no plan, such as where we might possibly stay the night.  We did go into a local pub, but frankly the locals were far from friendly.  We seemed get a lot of dark looks until I thought we were re-enacting a scene from An American Werewolf in London, so we didn't stay long.  Although we weren't out in the moors about to be savaged by a beast, we were in the middle of a capital city with absolutely no idea of what the hell to do with ourselves.

Finally after dithering around for awhile, Marty points to a large hill on the outskirts of the city and says, "We could spend the night up there."  (I don't know what it was with Marty and climbing foreign peaks that summer.)  Being bereft of good judgment, I said, "Sure."  I don't know what we climbed.  We never actually learned its name, although it might have been Arthur's Seat.  What I do know is the face we ascended was steep!  And it was by far from easy going.  We scrambled and scaled the narrow footholds and ledges, and a good deal of the time we had to go up backwards to keep our footing.  Halfway up I cried out at the magnificent view of Edinburgh below us, bright lights abruptly cutting off into the utter dark of the surrounding countryside.  Marty thought I was having some kind of LSD flashback and was about to plummet to my death.

Anyway, after struggling for hours, we finally made it to the top.  And what did we discover when we got up there?  The set of stairs set into another side of the hill that everyone with sense could use to climb up to the peak with ease.

Mind Your Endings

"Im Himmel gibt kein Bier und so trinken wir es hier."

Between my sophomore and junior year of college, I spent a fabulous, unforgettable summer in Europe with my best friend Marty.  As wonderful as it all was, the summer had its fair share of misadventures.  We spent most of our time living and working in London as part of a work exchange program, and then took a whirlwind tour through other countries at the end of the summer.  The three weeks touring the continent (while again, fabulous) were a testament to poor planning.  We lost our guide book before we even left Great Britain, and I was perpetually broke and changed countries more often than my socks.

 

One of our stops was the resort town of Interlaken, Switzerland, which is in the German-speaking portion of the country.

 

 

I had been taking German in college; however, I had also been putting in my basic "C minus" effort, so I wasn't exactly what you'd call fluent.  Anyway, I stopped in a local bar while Marty was making his valiant (if ill-advised and unsuccessful) attempt to climb Jungfrau mountain.  I tried to order a small light beer by saying, "Eine kleine hell Bier, bitte."  The matronly typisch Deutsche Frau fixed me with her steely gaze and said, "Ein kleines hell Bier, bitte!"  I wanted to say, "Yeah, yeah, just gimme a fucking beer!"  But I just smiled sheepishly and shrank off into a corner of the bar.

Strategy: FAIL

I had a great holiday with my family at my sister's house in Battle Creek, Michigan.  My nephew, the oldest grandchild, came down from Canada where he lives.  He and I have bonded over video games over the past few years.  We both enjoy role-playing games, and this year I gave him a copy of my all-time favorite game Dragon Age: Origins.  (My current picture for this blog is my DA:O avatar, in fact.)

My nephew also really enjoys strategy games, but I can't bond with him over those.  I've never been good at those kind of games because I don't plan ahead.  Risk, chess, even checkers.  I never won them as a kid growing up because I didn't have the capacity to see more than one move ahead.  And I still don't.  My life has been a testament to a lack of forethought.  Just call me Epimetheus.

Take That, Mr. Newhart!

Not too long ago I had another celebrity misadventure right here in Memphis.  I was picking my parents up from the Memphis "International" Airport.  I had gotten a late start and then was running even further behind because construction at the airport had made the parking utterly incomprehensible.

 

When I finally arrived at baggage claim, my parents told me that they were just about to call a taxi.  I was vehemently explaining my tardiness while wildly gesticulating my hands, as I tend to do when I get excited.  Suddenly I realized that Bob Newhart was walking behind me, and I had almost smacked him in the face with one of my gestures.  I felt as if I should call out an apology as he was walking away, but I got the impression he preferred I just let it go: no harm, no foul.

 

Merry Christmas!!!

Thanks to my friend Marty for forwarding this picture!  It was created by a talented artist named Adam Sidwell, and truer words were never said as to why I'm alone today.

 

I didn't post last week because I was working my ass off at work to make up for a complete fuck up at my job.  I honestly thought I was going to be fired last Monday and have to crawl back to my draconian former employer.  So bad decisions still abound in my life.  I'm still amazed at how understanding my boss was and thank all that is holy that I now work for such a level-headed firm!

Psychic Celebrity Stalker

The ugly truth is that I often come across as creepy.  I don't mean to be creepy.  I don't try to be creepy.  But I have creeped out more than my fair share of people in my time.  Even my good friends sometimes find me creepy.  The morning after spending the night over at my friends' place, I quietly made my way to the master bedroom to see if my friend was ready to go.  We were planning to drive into work together since we worked in the same building downtown.  I was being quiet because I didn't want to wake up his wife or his son who slept in his parents' room.  But when my friend walked out and was startled by my presence, he accused me of "lurking" in the hallway.

 

Another episdode of "creepy" happened while I was living in Hollywood.  I was looking around my local video store when I saw a guy wearing a baseball cap.  I was sure that I'd seen him before, and so I just kept staring at him 'cuz I knew if I only stared at him hard enough, then it would come to me.  (Actually, at the time, I didn't realize I was staring, being too caught up in my thoughts at trying to remember who he was.)  Anyway, I finally placed his face.  It turns out it was Eddie Kaye Thomas, the actor who plays "Finch" in the American Pie series of films, whom I didn't know personally and only recognized from his movies.

 

After staring at this poor man for heaven knows how long (creepy), we ended up leaving the store at about the same time, and I think I gave him a weak, nervous smile as is my way.  (Again, creepy...)  I got into my car and got ready to leave when I heard him tear out of the parking lot like a bat out of hell.  I realized later that he must have been thinking, "I've got to get the fuck out of here before this nut job adds me to the 'collection' in his basement!"  At the time I didn't think much of anything about it and went along my merry way.  On my way home, I stopped by my local mini-mart, and guess who happened to be walking out of the store as I was heading in?  I figured he was thinking that I had planted some kind of tracking device on him, and I'll bet he activated all of his security when he got home that night.