Mental Hygiene the best thing you've done for your brain all day

i was blindingly quick. with precise, almost surgical precision, i was able to, in only a half-dozen sorties to the various corners of the mall, locate and purchase christmas presents for three family members, four friends, and as many former girlfriends.

yes, i went christmas shopping. List in hand, and set on my eventual goal of emerging victorious from the entrance through which i made my first energetic strides with both my sanity and precision-shopping reputation intact, i set forth.

in all, it took me less than two hours of actual mallwalking – in part due to my above average walking speed, and also in good measure due to my List. set in stone – scribbled on a piece of note paper, anyway – i did not detract from my mission but once, in order to search ‘brookstone’ for something not already specified on the List. earlier in the week, i suffered a minor setback when i inadvertently threw out the List mark one and had to recreate it from memory. data was lost, but in all, the otherwise intact List mark two was sufficient for the task.

a few notes to anyone reading this who is putting off the trip to the mall.

first of all – don’t. if you’re waiting for the crowds to diminish, your best bet is christmas morning, which i don’t recommend. no matter how you swing it, you’ll have to wade through the aisles, waste-deep in screaming infants and harried parents with fifteen shopping bags cutting off the circulation to their left arms. suck it up – if you plan ahead and work things out in advance, you only have to make one trip.

if you’re a parent – don’t bring the children to the mall. screaming pokemon fanatics are the absolute last thing i, or any other borderline sane individual needs to deal with when laying out the last month’s salary to buy potpouri-scented breakables for the family and loved ones.

if, like me, you have difficulty tuning out background music, i would recommend aspirin before the trip, as a preventative measure to the massive headache i am now suffering. between the mall’s PA system announcing santa’s arrival every five minutes amongst muzak’d versions of mannheim steamroller’s umpteenth christmas album, each store’s own pumped-up stereo system competing with the gap’s ever-stylish a-capella rendition of ‘ave maria’, and the ubiquitous ‘dancing santa’ dolls in every shop window belting out a thirty-second loop of ‘jingle bell rock’ – it’s enough to send someone like myself into fits.

and so, as saturnalia descends upon us, and we hearken back to the bygone decadence and waste of imperial rome for the short span of a month, think on this:

what would we be doing right now if it weren’t for the three asian astrologers who stumbled into a cattle shed and gave gifts to a jewish newborn?

what am i celebrating this thanksgiving? let me see…

i am thankful for:

sweet potatoes and stuffing that comes from the gutted remains of a bird
70 mile per hour speed limits
comfortable shoes
the music of jethro tull and emerson, lake, and palmer
the paintings of norman rockwell and roy lichtenstein
apple computer
the intoxicating effect of fermented sugars on humans
the amount of fermentable sugars available in varieties of red grapes
france
indoor plumbing and the electric light bulb
the anonymous early humans that invented the plow and oral sex
wool socks and static electricity
elastic wastebands in men’s pants
private women’s colleges
the sun
tabasco sauce
public transportation
japanese animation and saturday morning cartoons
open source and free software
the strength of the american dollar
krispy kreme doughnuts

and many more.

what are you thankful for this year? please respond to this rant and let me know.

cold, sleep-deprived, and congested, i awoke to the alarm this morning, briefly confused by my surroundings.

yes, i was at home, in my own bed, with two warm lumps at my feet indicating my cats had survived the night and had not tunneled out to freedom. i was confused because, as far as i can remember, i fell asleep on a bed of pea-gravel next to a lake.

ah. that’s right. the brief consort with morpheus by the lakeshore lasted only a moment, and was disrupted by a sharp gasp. “another one!” one of my companions cried. everyone else, disappointed they had not seen it, asked where in the sky, and grumbled that she was making them up.

yes, we went out to see the leonids last night, the much hyped – if you went to the right website anyhow – “meteor storm”. supposedly this year’s installment of the annual pelting from space was to be ‘the big one’, a repeat of 1966 where many people believed the world was coming to an end, or that someone had declared war one someone else – bright lights and high-atmosphere fireballs tend to instill these fantasies on people.

but we were out of luck. the few dozen meteors we did see were too few and to far between to make any discernible “storm”, and were obscured by a very bright quarter moon and low clouds. what did make up for stiff necks and lateness of the hour was the brilliant setting of that same bright moon behind a stand of trees, only slightly obscured by a mist rising off the water.

i took a moment to recall the first meteor shower i ever observed, when i was 8. my parents took me to a state park, whose reason for being was to preserve the burial and temple mounds of a neolithic indian tribe. lying on my back, staring into the night sky atop a mound of earth, my father explained to me that the metors weren’t actually coming at the earth, but rather that the earth was revolving around the sun, and running into them.

the shift in my perspective was vertigo-inducing, and i have never been able to pass up a good stargazing opportunity since – whether in a frost-covered field while camping where i was first able to see the bright smudge of the mulky way, or from the deck of a boat under a sky so clear one could easily make out satellites passing overhead.

so, despite the cold, the lack of spectacular fireballs, and a creeping feeling of dread, miles from anywhere, at the bottom of a boat ramp alongside a small lake in rural north carolina, a lyric from “learning to fly” came to mind.

i can’t keep my mind from the circling sky
tongue-tied and twisted,
i’m just an earth-bound misfit eye

i apologize once again for the infrequency with which i have been updating this site, but i must say this: losing a hard drive sucks. hard. always back your stuff up. always. especially your porn.

but seriously, there’s a reason for the ‘mean time between failures’ numbers on these things, and i have a compUSA tracking number to prove it.

the topic of today’s rant was to be the state department of motor vehicles, that singular entity that is the focus of so much hatred and revulsion that it is actually palpable when one is forced to wait in line to do something as simple as change one’s address.

i was prepared to do a long, hideously frustrated rant at the dmv, but in light of my recent experiences with them, i have changed my tune.

having recently moved, i thought it was about time to change the address on my car’s registration and my drivers’ license. anticipating not one, but two long queues filled with the unwashed denizens of who-knows-what backwater country, all eager to do something the grizzled old woman behind the one open window is unwilling to comply with, i took a day off work.

oddly, my saga begins, not at the license office, but at compUSA, where i was dropping off my brain-dead computer for a hard drive transplant – warranty warranty warranty!

on the way back, i was ticketed for speeding in a 35 mph zone that i, and every other driver around me, would have sworn was 45. but, since the officer was so kind as to take a few points off the ticket, such that it was not a mandatory court date, as well as instruct me how to avoid it showing up on my insurance, i didn’t want to press the point. he warned me that i had exceeded the grace period in which i was legally required to update my license and registration with current addresses, but, as i explained that the license office was my next stop, he let it slide. i thanked him for his expediency (the whole transaction was over in less than 5 minutes), and wished him happy hunting.

at home, i called the dmv about my registration, also asking about my license. could i go to the same office for tags as for my license. no. was there some conspiracy preventing all my dmv needs being fulfilled in one location? no, it has always been this way, apparently since the eighth day of creation when god created beurocracy. what would i need to bring to change the address on my license? my social security card and ten bucks. i asked why they needed a social security card since i already had my license, and they required that or a copy of my birth certificate to get one in the first place, and why not my passport (something i am more willing to carry around with me than the flimsy, unlaminated social security card) since the one would not be issued without the other, but she was not very responsive to that. only the original card would do, nothing else.

however, when i asked about the registration and tags on my car, she asked my license number and new address and, get this, was able to change the information over the phone. no lines, no waiting, no breathing the b.o. of every redneck within 100 miles. no service charge or processing fee. this was service.

so, happy to have cut my inconvenience in half, i headed out to the license office with the most vital piece of identifying documentation i own, and ten bucks, in hand.

imagine my surprise when i arrived at the office, and was presented with only three other people in line. on a friday. at lunch time. more distressing to my image of the dmv as the great tax-funded satan was the fact that, behind the desk were three uniformed police officers, all assisting customers!

and, despite all previous objections, all i needed to do in order to change my address was give the officer my current license and my social security number. he didn’t need to see the card, didn’t care that i had it. since i had already given my current address to the registration office, it came up immediately on the computer at the license office, and the entire transaction, including me digging the ten dollars out of my wallet, took less than a minute.

slack-jawed, i posed for the digital camera, and five minutes later, left with a brand new license, already printed, laminated, and certified.

and so, until my date in court on december 8, i am still basking in the newly discovered glow of my state’s streamlined and efficient dmv. after that, i may have some new choice words for them, but for now, i’m happy to live where i do.

i normally don’t do this, but i got this today, and i thought it was the funniest damned thing i’ve read in a long time. i was going to write about haloween being held on saturday due to the fact that sunday is reserved for uptight christian groups, and something about how haloween these days has about as much to do with the devil as christmas has to do with god.. or some crap. but i have been laughing too hard to write more than this introduction to the funniest chain letter ever.

Hello, my name is Basmati Kasaar. I am suffering from rare and deadly diseases, poor scores on final exams, extreme virginity, fear of being kidnapped and executed by anal electrocution, and guilt for not forwarding out 50 billion fucking chain letters sent to me by people who actually believe that if you send them on, then that poor 6 year old girl in Arkansas with a breast on her forehead will be able to raise enough money to have it removed before her redneck parents sell her off to the traveling freak show.

Do you honestly believe that Bill Gates is going to give $1000 to you and everyone you send “his” email to? How stupid are you? Ooooh, lookyhere! If I scroll down this page and make a wish, I’ll get laid by every Playboy model in the magazine! What a bunch of bullshit. So basically, this message is a big FUCK YOU to all the people out there who have nothing better to do than to send me stupid chain mail forwards.

Maybe the evil chain letter leprechauns will come into my apartment and sodomize me in my sleep for not continuing the chain which was started by Jesus in 5 AD and was brought to this country by midget pilgrims on the Mayflower and if it makes it to the year 2000, it’ll be in the Guinness Book of World Records for longest continuous streak of blatant stupidity. Fuck them. If you’re going to forward something, at least send me something mildly amusing. I’ve seen all the “send this to 50 of your closest friends, and this poor, wretched excuse for a human being will somehow receive a nickel from some omniscient being” forwards about 90 times. I don’t fucking care. Show a little intelligence and think about what you’re actually contributing to by sending out forwards. Chances are it’s your own unpopularity.

THE FOUR BASIC TYPES OF CHAIN LETTERS:

Chain Letter Type 1: (scroll down)

Make a wish!!!

No, really, go on and make one!!!

Oh please, they’ll never go out with you!!!

Wish something else!!!

Not that, you pervert!!

Is your finger getting tired yet?

STOP!!!!

Wasn’t that fun?: ) Hope you made a great wish: ) Now, to make you feel guilty, here’s what I’ll do. First of all, if you don’t send this to 5096 people in the next 5 seconds, you will be raped by a mad goat and thrown off a high building into a pile of manure. It’s true! Because, THIS letter isn’t like all of those fake ones, THIS one is TRUE!! Really !!! Here’s how it goes:

Send this to 1 person: One person will be pissed off at you for sending them a stupid chain letter. Send this to 2-5 people: 2-5 people will be pissed off at you for sending them a stupid chain letter. Send this to 5-10 people: 5-10 people will be pissed ff at you for sending them a stupid chain letter, and may form a plot on your life. Send this to 10-20 people: 10-20 people will be pissed off at you for sending them a stupid chain letter and will napalm your house.

Thanks!!!! Good Luck!!!

——————————————————-
Chain Letter Type 2:
Hello and thank you for reading this. There is a starving little boy in Baklaliviatatlaglooshen who has no arms, no legs, no parents and no goats. This little boy’s life could be saved, because for every time you pass this on, a dollar will be donated to the Little Starving Legless Armless Goatless Boy from Baklaliviatatlaglooshen Fund. Oh, and remember, we have absolutely no way of counting the emails sent and this is all a complete load of bullshit. So go on, reach out. Send this to 5 people in the next 47 seconds. Oh, and a reminder – if you accidentally send this to 4 or 6 people, you will die instantly.

Thanks again!!

——————————————————

Chain Letter Type 3:

Hi there!!! This chain letter has been in existence since 1897. This is absolutely incredible because there was no email then and probably not many sad ricks with nothing better to do. So this is how it works:

Pass this on to 15,067 people in the next 7 minutes or something horrible will happen to you like:

Bizarre Horror Story #1 Miranda Pinsley was walking home from school on Saturday. She had recently received this letter and ignored it. She then tripped in a crack in the sidewalk, fell into the sewer, was gushed down a drainpipe in a flood of poop, and went flying out over a waterfall. Not only did she smell nasty, she died. This Could Happen To You!!

Bizarre Horror Story #2 Dexter Bip, a 13 year old boy, got a chain letter in his mail and ignored it. Later that day, he was hit by a car and so was his boyfriend (hey, some people swing that way). They both died and went to hell and were cursed to eat adorable kittens every day for eternity. This Could Happen To You Too!!!

Remember, you could end up just like Pinsley and Bip. Just send this letter to all of your loser friends, and everything will be okay.

——————————————————

Chain Letter Type 4:

As if you care, here is a poem that I wrote. Sent it to every one of your friends.

Friends: A friend is someone who is always at your side, A friend is someone who likes you even though you stink of shit, And your breath smells like you’ve been eating catfood, A friend is someone who likes you even though you’re as ugly as a hat full of assholes, A friend is someone who cleans up for you after you’ve soiled yourself, A friend is someone who stays with you all night while you cry about your sad, sad life, A friend is someone who pretends they like you when they really think you should be raped by mad goats, then thrown to vicious dogs, A friend is someone who scrubs your toilet, vacuums and then gets the cheque and leaves and doesn’t speak much English…no, sorry that’s the cleaning lady, A friend is not someone who sends you chain letters because he wants his wish of being rich to come true.

Now pass this on! If you don’t, you’ll never have sex ever again.

——————————————————

The point being? If you get some chain letter that’s threatening to leave you shagless or luckless for the rest of your life delete it. If it’s funny, send it on. Don’t piss people off by making them feel guilty about a leper in Botswana with no teeth, who’s been tied to a dead elephant for 27 years, whose only saviour is the 5 cents per letter he’ll receive if you forward this mail, otherwise you’ll end up like Miranda.

Right?

Now email this to everyone you know otherwise you’ll find all your knickers missing tomorrow morning.

note: Mental Hygiene is looking for contributors. If you have interesting, controversial, or even inflammatory rants in you that are screaming to get out, share them with the Internet community. Send your information and a writing sample to info@mentalhygiene.com.

i’ve never been much of a rebel. in high school, i got good grades, never wrecked the car i drove, didn’t drink, do drugs, skip school, or sneak out at night. the closest i came to any of this typical teenage behavior was in befriending or dating people that did.

all my friends spent their weekends high, drunk, sneaking off to raves and concerts, or getting laid.

i realize now that i was a very boring teenager. my parents probably suspected that i smoked, or got high, or any number of things when i was out late at night and came back smelling of second-hand teen angst. likely they wanted me to do these things, just so they could provide the proper parenting support for their wayward son. sadly, the only moderately illegal or immoral thing i did when i was out late with friends (my parents never had to enforce a curfew, so long as i was able to drag myself to school every morning) was drive too fast. that and have sex with my girlfriend, but that mostly happened later.

i have only had brushes with the law three times in my life. the first was very early, and probably the root of my paranoia and lawfulness to this day. while making prank phonecalls from a skating rink, an older friend and i pissed off an operator, who had the police called out to the skating rink. we left just as they were arriving. a close call for a child of 7.

the second came on a trip to florida, when myself and another friend went for a walk around our hotel – it was too hot in the room to sleep. an unmarked police car flagged us down and questioned us for about half an hour. it being about 2:30AM and in a less-than-savory part of town, the reason was not terribly surprising – apparently just down the street was a ‘crackhouse’ and there were undercover narcotics officers all over.

my third brush with johnny law was in a state park after midnight. on occasion, myself and a group of friends would hang out on the playground at a local state park. one night we came into the parking lot a little later than usual, and as we were turning around to leave, a park ranger pulled me over and ran my license. sure, there was little she could have done other than give me a warning. we never did stop or park the car – all we did was turn around in the parking lot. regardless, my girlfriend, in the passenger seat, was in tears by the time we left.

my point is this: at the prime moment in my life when i was supposed to figure out who i was, rebel against the system, act out, and generally alienate everyone more than 5 years older than myself, i was, at best, boring.

so, now that i’m older, i have to, on occasion, pull off little rebellions, little fun pastimes that might or might not be agreeable to most people, thet nobody really needs know about, just to keep myself from falling asleep and waking up at 50, wondering what the hell happened to my youth.

and so, i curse. a lot. i tone things down when i’m writing, but when things get heavy in my life, i spout expletives straight from a quentin tarantino film. my favorite form is the long string of profane insults – addressing every aspect of a person or inanimate object from ancestry to hygiene. i don’t tone these down for most people, so i am often met with raised eyebrows, especially at work.

i wear comfortable, often inappropriate, shoes and clothes. if i’m going to be uncomfortable, most importantly my feet, i might as well stay home in bed, because i’m not going to get anything done. birkenstocks and thick wool socks. enough said.

when nobody’s coming the other way, i run red lights.

i change the way i look almost monthly. no photograph of me is ever current for more than a few weeks, as i will already have changed my hair style, shaved my beard, etc. by the time it is deveoped.

i blow kisses to attractive women in traffic. this is especially fun on long trips when i pass the same car several times as traffic thickens and thins – in this instance, i try to do something different each time i catch the driver’s eye. i am sometimes in a foul mood when driving (so much so that it’s a good thing i don’t own a handgun, for the sake of my fellow drivers) and it just makes my day when i blow a kiss to a complete stranger waiting in a turn lane, and she looks over and smiles. on occasion, i’ll elicit other, less savory responses, but at least i know they saw me.

maybe it’s just my sadistic nature coming out, but i really enjoy catching bugs – moths and beetles, etc – and trapping them in spider webs. the big, brown garden spider that lives just outside my door has gotten fat off my generosity.

by far my biggest coup is junk mail. since my address is listed with internic/netsol, i get all kinds of crap – ‘pre approved’ credit card offers, catalogs, investment schemes, sweepstakes, magazine subscriptions – you name it, and i’ve gotten it. all addressed to option8. anyhow, one of the first things i like to do is, when going to a website that ‘requires’ i fill out my name and address for ‘more information’ or whatnot – knowing full well my name will end up on someone’s mailing list no matter what i do – i use my cat’s name. when mail comes addressed to ‘kudzu’ i know where it came from. i like to use the email address of my state representative when i know it’s not going to be important that i receive future mailings.

second, and most enjoyable, is when such offers come with a postage-paid envelope. ‘no postage necessary if mailed within the united states’. lovely. sure, i could cover the address with another one and send someone a letter on mastercard’s tab, but i prefer the alternative. i tear up the offer they sent me into tiny confetti-sized chunks, put them into the postage-paid envelope, and send them back where they came from. i think that if more people did this, and clogged the receiving end with so much confetti they were unable to function, the mass mail houses would get the hint and back off. i only wish this could be done with email spam as easily.

certainly this list has shed some light onto what most people will still consider my utterly boring lifestyle, but consider what it would be like without these little daily affirmations? my greatest desire is that more people will be able to take one or two of my examples and spice up their lives (okay, so maybe it’s taragon instead of tabasco, but what do you expect from someone who’s biggest thrill is writing out rants for his website?)

the next time you see someone blow you a kiss or stick out their tongue at you in traffic, think of me.

note: Mental Hygiene is looking for contributors. If you have interesting, controversial, or even inflammatory rants in you that are screaming to get out, share them with the Internet community. Send your information and a writing sample to info@mentalhygiene.com.

first of all, let me apologize for how long it has been since the last update. my home computer decided to eat its main hard drive, and, though i was able to get it back up and running, i was in a very bad way for a few days.

in the latest issue of Playboy Magazine (i read it for the articles, really) minnesota governor Jesse Ventura railed on about organized religion, in addition to such topics as lawn darts, prostitution and gun control.

in the sound byte heard round the world, he called organized religion a “sham”, saying it was “for weak minded people”.

Governor ‘the body’ made it clear that he was more annoyed with establishments like the catholic church and the church of jesus christ (and don’t call them mormons) of latter day saints. making an enemy of one or the other isn’t enough to put one at the bottom of a nearby body of water with comfortable size 12 concrete blocks, but calling both a “sham” is more of a deathwish than going up to a meeting of scientologists and shouting “thank god L.Ron’s dead, or there might be more of you weak minded freaks!”

now, how does this bear on ventura’s political career? not at all, really, since he said worse and more inflammatory things during his election, and still managed to beat out career politicians for the job as minnesota governor. add to that the fact that he’s been, among other things, a biker gang member, a bouncer, an actor, and, oh yes, a professional wrestler and i doubt this little bit of noise will add much to the general static surrounding him and his future bid for president.

on a side note, the last link went to wwf.com which lists a link to ‘investor relations’. how times have changed.

anyhoo, back to organized religion, which is the topic of this rant, and not jesse ventura. i like to keep my politics separate from my religion, which i like to keep a tight lid on, organized or no.

but when someone in public office goes on about how religious establishments are only for weak minded people who can’t think for themselves, who need a crutch in order to get along.. for some reason, people take offense to that.

not me. i happen to agree with the governing ‘body’.

personally, i don’t have a religious leaning. if anything, i’m a non-practicing buddhist – since buddhism emphasizes improving the person, and not on any ‘personal relationship with god’ crap. don’t lie, cheat, or kill anybody, and you’re golden in the eyes of buddhists.

what doesn’t turn me on about buddhism is the perception that one has to be a monk living in a monastery in order to be a buddhist, or at the very least, to become enlightened. sure, it helps, but hey, anybody can live a good life and meditate. even if they have an aversion to shaved heads and orange robes.

and it’s the same with any religion, especially the latest upsurge in so-called ‘christians’. who are these people, anyway? have they no spine? can they not at least identify with a sect, a creed, a denomination? it seems to me that these people have not educated themselves about the history enough to take sides. isn’t that what christianity is all about? hating everybody that’s a jew, a catholic, a baptist, a mormon, a libertarian, isn’t like you?

and denominations is what jesse’s talking about. despite all the hooey about a ‘personal relationship with god’ and ‘accepting jesus as your personal savior’ what has become fashionable is to be with the ‘in’ crowd of ‘christians’ because to be in the out crowd of people who think for themselves is like wearing white shoes after labor day. no matter how ‘personal’ your relationship with god, you’re still having a relationship with somebody else’s god – you’re told who he is, what he thinks of what you’re doing, and what kind of god he is. organized religions and structured settings don’t allow the average worshiper to make up his own mind about just who this god person is. whether you believe in a god that’s forgiving and loving or the kind of deity that likes to smite whole cities at once, the only thing you really get out of a church or structured setting is a support group.

i consider the new ‘kinder, gentler’ catholic church a bunch of like-minded people gathering together to try and figure out what the popular way to worship today is. is it song and dance? is it self-flagellation? whatever it is, the ritual must be performed – it’s like shared obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). if the ritual is not performed, we can not go on. even if you’re just living your life, getting along with others, being morally ‘good’ in the way only christians are supposed to be – if you don’t go to church every sunday, you’re a sinner.

even if you outperform mother theresa in acts of goodness and die a horrible death having devoted your life to others, if you don’t believe in the ritual, if you don’t go to church every sunday, if you don’t belong to the same sect-within-a-sect, or god forbid, you’re an atheist, you’re still not good enough for some people.

hearing such exclusionists as the mormons and jehovah’s witnesses talk, it makes the branch davidians sound almost.. likable. at least david koresh could get laid on a regular basis.

“if you look different, sound different, or express yourself in a way that we deem inappropriate, you’re going to suffer not just in the eternal hellfires of damnation, but we’re going to make it hard on you in this world, too.”

this evening, i decided that i wanted to make smoothies, seeing as the health kick i’m currently on just could not continue without a fruit-and-ice concoction to loosen my bowels and leave strawberry seeds in my teeth. and, considering my current method of chopping fruit into small bits consists of hacking at them with steak knives and whacking them with the flat of a cleaver, vis a vis Martin Yan, i needed the osterizing power of 16 speeds and 450 watts. so i picked up a blender whilst i was at wal*mart, the redneck mecca.

but the real reason i was at wallyworld in the first place was that, in order to legally enjoy a fishing trip with my brother, consisting of sitting in a small, rocking boat, drowning worms and killing brain cells, i needed a state fishing license. strange as it sounds, at 8pm on a saturday night, the place to go for a fishing license, not to mention all the other sundries one could ever need, would be wal*mart.

and i was not the only one at wal*mart tonight. about half the mouth-breathers in the county showed up to wander around, with all the young ‘uns in tow, in total disbelief of a store so large as to have posted maps, and so anachronistic as to sell shotguns and bullets, but not beer. i swear it was like a scene out of ‘night of the living dead’ – aside from the screaming children and celine dion music on the p.a. system.

so i finally found the aisle with blenders, mixers, and toaster-ovens, after winding my way through at least half a dozen aisles filled with nothing but women’s underwear – and not the frilly, attractive kind one might find oneself staring at, enjoying the private knowledge of sneaking a look at the secret underthings. no, it seemed this collection was formulated specifically to effectively disable the sex drive of anyone in the vacinity, let alone the wearer. then i was inexplicably lost in sporting goods for a while, which was fortuitous, as i did need to stop off and get a fishing license.

after finally stumbling onto kitchenwares, i was stunned at the array of blenders available at the local wal*mart. just how many speeds does one need? 10? 12? 16? and what of engine wattage? i finally picked out an osterizer 12 speed blender with a 48 ounce container and 450 watts of ice-crunching, fruit-juicing power power power. this thing is tough – it has more wattage than my stereo. the lights dim when i’m using it. i tried it out on various speeds with a single ice cube before going full-speed ahead with a smoothie. the ice cube danced, spun, and eventually was rendered into its component molecules by the frappe cycle.

there were blenders there, though, with all glass containers – which i was too afraid i would break and never be able to find quite the right replacement part – or which had only two speeds, but still cost twice as much as the others with 8 times as many. to be honest, i can’t hardly tell, other than the amount of noise emanating from the shaking silverware drawer and the visible vibration of all the items on my counter, the difference between speeds. i only really use the low speed to get things going, and the highest speed to do all the work, so i could probably do with one of the two-speed models.

but there’s nothing quite like having all the options, bells and whistles and all that rot.

so, with my new fishing license tucked into my wallet, and my new osterizer under one arm, i headed to the supermarket to get some fruit to test this bugger out.

how exactly does one pick out a pineapple, anyway?

while rummaging through some old magazines, i came upon the December, 1984 issue of BYTE magazine. staring back at me from the back cover was William H. Gates III, sitting in front of a Tandy computer, running the first issue of MS-Windows. the picture being one of the silliest i had ever seen of the richest man in the world, combined with his personal endorsement of a Tandy product, made me laugh out loud.

“Designing a revolutionary concept in software demanded a computer with extraordinary performance. The Tandy 2000 delivered.”
— Bill Gates
Chairman of the Board,
Microsoft

Bill Gates has been at the leading edge of personal computing from the very beginning. His company is a leading producer of microcomputer software.

“Our newest software product, MS-Windows, is an integrated windowing environment. It will let personal computer users combine individual programs into a powerful, integrated system.

“When we set out to design MS-Windows in color, we knew that the Tandy 2000 computer would let us turn an extraordinary product into a work of art. The graphics are sharp and crisp, and gave us a degree of creativity like nothing before.

“Our engineers were quite impressed with the processing speed of the Tandy 2000’s 80186 microprocessor, too. And while the finished product will utilize the 2000’s Digi-Mouse, the well-laid out keyboard has helped us speed through the design stage.

“We’re proud of our work. So when we want to show someone how great MS-Windows really is, we give them a demonstration. On the Tandy 2000.”

Isn’t it time you enjoyed peak performance from a personal computer? Go ahead, watch how much faster today’s most sophisticated programs run on the high-technology Tandy 2000.

…

of note:

the screenshot has windows running in 16 colors(?), showing ‘reversi’ (othello), a file browser, a calculator, and a representation of a 5x5x5 color cube on the screen.

the copyright at the bottom shows ‘MS’ as a trademark of microsoft, this was before they trademarked ‘windows’. ‘windows’ was considered a generic term.

windows is a ‘windowing environment’ not an operating system.

I somehow fail to express my short-lived gratitude at being slapped in the face. The rosy, blotchy bloom quickly rises, squelching my regards -an utterance- an apology.

You lent me impulsive emotion, intimate sensation, something best not blasphemed by self-infliction. In rendering my Likeness now, a smile perches on the edge of outrage; my Image is unperturbed, but far from the calm serenity it conveys.

Time heals my wound, but not the memory of impulsive contact, flesh pulverized by flesh in an exhilharating sensation. Never to be captured or relived, the memory serves me well as I venture, reluctantly, into the walking sleep and am delivered once again into novocaine reality.