I need some music today, so I am standing in my pajamas holding a book of CDs in front of the stereo; how rustic and old school. My Mp3 player is meant only for running, walking or ignoring people I know on the tram.

I choose Tom Waits, slip it in, sit back down at the desk and type a few words. I am struggling with my 1,000 words today and am being fitful as a result. It’s 10 a.m., Sunday, I have written 6 words: Get to work you fat fucker.  

Stephen King listens to heavy metal when he writes, which surely helps explain the deeply disturbing nature of his writing. Nothing says ‘let’s have a demonic clown dismember a child’ like Motorhead.

Read the rest of this entry »

Every day when I check my blog stats, I am greeted with the world of phrases that people have searched which has sent them to my blog. This world is dark and disturbing. Not my blog, the phrases. Well, both I guess.

In any case, here are the nine most disturbing phrases entered by unsuspecting deviants, who then found themselves on my blog. This has made me think extensively of moving to Brazil or hiring a body-guard named Guido. Or Katja.

9. Morbid Deaths

I know there are 3.2 billion people on the internet at any given moment, so the chances of saying exactly who entered this into a search engine are seemingly impossible. But I will tell you this: It was a member of my family. We have a special ability to bring death and destruction into any situation you can mention. Go ahead, try.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Sunday morning and I am doing my morning routine. Relaxing, listening to jazz – Horace Silver’s Song for my Father, and my kitchen is one huge cardiovascular health nightmare. There are strips of bacon sizzling, home fries in the oven, bread being turned to toast and a pot of strong coffee brewing on the rocket launcher. My flat surely smells like that combination of deliciousness and congestive heart failure which I miss so much.

If my cat were in an apron and beanie shouting diner lingo at the end of a rip line full of order slips, this would be the perfect diner. And maybe a gravelly-voiced waitress with a facial deformity.

Today, however, I am more hell-bent on creating a breakfast as diner authentic as possible. In the world of Eidam, I have found the closest relative to processed American cheese, the only cheese with which to make a true omelet ala greasy spoon. I’ve enlisted the help of Rachel Ray – the chubby man’s Scarlett Johansson – to make home fries and have taken her heart safe advice by adding three cubes of butter to my egg mix.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s rare that a day goes by in which you don’t see a celebrity doing something that makes you realize how much you hate them. Whether it’s Richard Gere having lunch with the Dalai Lama or seeing which gorgeous model Louis C.K. is speckling with his comedic love juices.

And why? The Dalai Lama meets Gere because he made 2.3 good films? Or maybe because he screwed Cindy Crawford…oh, I see now. If Louis C.K wasn’t famous, he’d be having as much model sex as the guy who works at your Dunkin’ Donuts.

But there are times, and these are voluminous, when you are thrilled not to be a celebrity.

If you ever get glum watching Danny DeVito get tall women or anybody from *NSYNC be allowed to live, here is a list of reasons it’s great not to be a celebrity.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am having beers with a friend; it’s been a while since we have met and we are having a one-on-one drink to catch up. A few minutes ago, in a somewhat abrupt manner, she opened her IPad and began doing something. This something did not end quickly, and since then I have done the ‘I’ll check my messages’ move, the ‘Oh, I forgot to jot down that appointment’ glance into my date book and now I’m just staring at the table waiting for her to finish so we can get back to our conversation.

Finally, I ask what she is doing. She answers, “Just taking my turn on Scrabble.” She isn’t sitting on a tram or in a large group of people. Why would you make a present friend secondary to an online Scrabble game?

I look around the restaurant to see a number of bored faces staring into plates while their clueless friends are chatting on the phone or scrolling through messages. Or maybe it’s something really important like Facebook, Twitter or Scrabble.

But on the bright side, my friend hit Quidditch on a double word score, so it was all worth it.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you have ever sat in an interview for anything—university admittance, job, exam—and enjoy some cognitive function above that of a paramecium, then you have some idea of the basic do’s and don’ts of an interview. Sit up straight, make eye contact, give a good, solid hand shake, don’t curse, don’t be late and don’t vomit. Simple, right?

As an interviewer in any capacity, one is apt to go a little insane. Asking the same questions and hearing the same exact answers over and over again makes an interviewer want to finish the sentence, “…you want to learn about a new culture,” and then leap out of the closest window to the sweet release of death. Still, as we call that name and the candidate comes in, we hold a candle of faith that the person sitting across from us understands the basic rules and will make our job as painless as possible.

We assume that most people harbor these tidbits of knowledge, often concealing them under an exterior of a nose-picking abject stupidity so epic that every day these people don’t poke out their eyes while using a fork should be a celebrated national holiday.

And, as always, we are wrong.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am bustling down to my flat as though a swarm of bees is chasing me. Everything that is propelling me to my house is embarrassing. My testicles have frozen to my leg, I’m hungry, and I have to urinate like Austin Powers. And if I don’t see an episode of Monk, and I mean now, I am going to lose my monkey ass.

I get inside and the sadness begins. I set up the laptop while doing the time-honored in-place chicken dance meant to dam urination (pee dance) and sing the Monk theme song to myself. Once the show is loading I breathe a little easier, once I pee it’s like Shangri-La. And in that post-urinary bliss is when it all comes to me.

I’m addicted to Monk.

I am showing all the signs: I sing the theme song, I talk about it too much and then try to conceal the fact that I am talking about Monk too much. I dream about Monk, I daydream about Monk.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am looking up something on the internet. I can’t remember what, but you can guarantee it was going to tell me about someone who’d just died or show me a picture of someone who had just taken off her clothes and straddled a washing machine. In any event, while scanning a search engine result, I come across “The 10 Supposedly Quirky Behaviors of People Who Live Alone” from Psychcentral.com.

My bloggysense goes: “Jackpot!”

Being a single dwelling Hobbit man who sings to his cat and cooks spaghetti sauce in the nude, I figure this was the weekly fodder I need on which to base a fun blog post. But, as I have said to friends, girlfriends and students for many different reasons on countless occasions:

I’m sorry, I was wrong.

This groundbreaking and brave article really shatters the glass walls that hide us single-living lunatics from the rest of normal society. It was published in the New York Times and is titled “The Freedoms and Perils of Living Alone.” Oh, and a warning to readers, below are some suggestive and explicitly dull activities enacted by apparently ‘quirky’ people who live by themselves. Do not continue to read if you are operating a motor vehicle, a razor or a fork.

But it’s time the other half knows how we live.

Read the rest of this entry »

About 2,000 years ago a young shepherd settled in a mountain village in Japan, married, had three kids and lived quietly until he died at the age of 106. His name was Daitenku Taro Jura, but you probably know him as Jesus Christ.

Jesus in Japan, you ask? Yes, Jesus in Japan. And believe it or not, it gets better. According to the residents of Shingo, Japan, Jesus’ adventures begin with his escape from crucifixion, continue with mistaken identity and involve intrigue and a grueling journey.

The unfortunate gent on the cross was Jesus’ younger—never heard of before—brother Isukiri, whose ear Jesus took for his global trip to Japan (along with a lock of Virgin Mary’s hair). This trip was epic, bringing him across the bitter wildernesses of the Steppe, Russia, Alaska and eventually to Shingo, a tiny mountain hamlet in Northern Japan. The trip lasted four years and totaled out at about 6,000 miles.

Sounds bad, but I suppose the alternative would have been worse. And apparently, Jesus had the aural keepsake to prove it.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Use these five structures to make three different complaints about your program. You have four minutes.” The task is good, clear, timed and goal oriented. I can’t go wrong. Adding a little excitable jest to it, I grab my watch and assume the ‘I am timing you’ position. “Ready? And then I let them loose with an exaggerated, “Go!”

For some reason, I expect them to sprint towards the goal like curious cheetahs across the academic Serengeti to attack the linguistic gazelles grazing on the fruits of the information they demand. But instead, it’s as though I’ve overturned a box of kittens, and then asked them to march in a parade. (n.b. No metaphors were harmed in the writing of this post)

There are eight university students in the room, so one assumes they’d have the mental ability to concentrate on a task for more than, say, 8 milliseconds.

But, no.

Read the rest of this entry »