Rest in Peace to Martha’s Big Martha. Like Little Pat, she was a retired schoolteacher who raised five kids and passed some home skills onto her daughters. If Pat had lived, I wonder if she would have read Martha’s blog and cursed her.

Technorati Tags: aging, death, entertainment, family, Martha_Stewart

So today I had another secret rendezvous with the chick who’s worried about her husband. Many of the rational bones in my head say, “Hey, um, fuckhead, you listening? Stay away from other folks’ troubles.”

But, still and all, curiosity eats me. I mean someone walks up to you and implies possible criminality, maybe a little affair or some bigamy, spy versus spy, cars following, and hells ya, I’m thinking movie of the week. I don’t need know TV set if folks just keep walking up and telling me good stories. Nope, writers’ strike don’t bother me, I got reality.

I’ll keep my wits about, as best I can. As always, I’ll work on leading the poor woman to professionals. I do think I inherited a bit of Pat’s magnet for helping lost souls. Over the years of school teaching, she sure got some terrible stories from kids who had no one else to confide. Of course, she probably had a bigger heart than me. Like, I can’t even keep a houseplant and she had five kiddies and taught.

Here’s what I know — either what the woman has told me is true, or it has elements of truth. Or, she’s out of her mind and it’s all made up. Either way, seriously bad.

She’s pretty sure there’s spyware on their home computer, rendering searching for useful info a bit hard. That seems plausible, if sucky. Easy to imagine a household where there’s people suspicious of computer use and checking each others history files and all. Shitty, but common enough. My recommendation was to pick up a cheap wireless laptop on Craig’s List, keep it in her work drawer and do what she needed to do right before or after work or during lunch using the guest network they have for visitors. Relatively anonymous network and timing it so there’s no skin off her boss’ ass.

(I know where I sit, I could probably get away with surfing all day, but in her cube ‘hood, I wouldn’t be so sure. Life in a high-class cube farm, you just can’t tell. Plus, we are surrounded by glass, making it a transparent workplace. Best to not jinx that which pays the bills.)

A few thoughts occurred during today’s convo, which just make me sad. One thought was women can be their own worst enemies. Doesn’t seem like I get into as many conversations with dudes on the order of “I know it’s wrong, and I feel bad and scared all the time, but I love him.”

Janis sang it best, “Women is losers.”

The other thought is about my own sense of self-reflection. Back in the bad, old dark days, when I dated the bad, old, asshole man, computer suspicions played into our horrid, little script. In retrospect, you know the view to the past where I am brilliantly understanding, yeah, in retrospect, I should have fucking grokked that someone freaking out if you looked over his shoulder at the screen, let alone actually touched his keyboard, opened software or sat unsupervised at his desk chair, had what you would call “issues.”

Now, both our laptops lie around the apartment never supervised. M. will ask me to check info on his ‘puter or his iPhone, upgrade, fix, whatever and will provide me the passwords as needed. He doesn’t even flinch, and the only thing that keeps him from fiddling with my stuff is the elaborate layers of geekiness I’ve concocted and my Mac-ness.

It’s amazing how the lack of hassle can feel like a positive quality just on its own merit.

Related to that feeling, my workplace has a few qualities that feel like M.’s openness with his junk. (Read “junk” any way you like.) It’s a private building down a long private driveway, where the only people who head down the drive know why they are there. It’s a rich building in a rich neighborhood where the local Barney Fife who minds the neighborhood once tapped on the window of my car when I was waiting outside the buildin to verify I belonged. On top of that, it’s all about sight lines to the great outdoors and windows and skylights.

Even if you wanted to lift your co-workers’ wallets, which is hard to imagine in the enclave, folks’d notice.

Weird it was, then, when today’s secret meeting happened in a conference room overlooking our back patio and the back periphery of grass and trees and shrubs. She noticed a middle-aged khaki-clad gentleman walking on a trail that runs behind the building. A trail that is almost unused in a space no one could possibly find from the street.

According to the mystery woman, she had seen him before. He’s one of the people she and her kids have seen following them.

If it’s true, how fucked up is that? If it’s not true, whoa, what a delusion.

The only non-work people I have ever seen in that vicinity, ever, ever, ever, have been the ubiquitous, spandex-clad, brightly colored bikers, who swarm the area generally. They know the back path, because there’s a bike path under a highway nearby. First time ever for a chubby guy in khakis.

Could be nothing, but it’s a great seed in the story.

Technorati Tags: California, family, stories, relationships, technology, Women

I’ve been meaning to write about Time fucking magazine for a little while now. A few weeks back, this was their cover story:

I read the cover story. Eager, I was, dying to see how I stack up among the averages, among the trends, among the pop psych bullshit answers of our current age. One birth order dealio that maybe, just maybe, I could groove on — The youngest are the funniest and some of them become comedians. Damn skippy, I am one funny baby of the family. The less funny elders can eat my dust.

But, you knew there would be a but, they make a couple of completely ludicrous “scientific” statements. Supposedly, as you trek down the birth order you lose an IQ point or two on the slide. Um, what? I don’t understand. Must be big words or something.

Actually, the quote is,

In June, for example, a group of Norwegian researchers released a study showing that firstborns are generally smarter than any siblings who come along later…”

So, really, it’s just the fucking Norwegians. I’m not caribou or salt cod, and I got the American sense of rugged self-sufficiency. Maybe if my sibs were from Norway, they could catch up to me.

Come to think of it, I’d say I know a few bright babies of their families. M. is his fam’s Number 1 son. I give him some space. He can’t help the weakness of the firstborn.

In less national news, although arguably Time’s cover ain’t really what you would call “news,” after seeing the flick Gone Baby Gone, I mentioned this T-shirt company. Particularly, their parishes of Dot number. Sweetheart and reader, M., fired up the credit cards and bought a couple. I guess we have our matching outfits to wear under the Christmas tree with a cup of nog, whilst Pat’s generation remembers Saint Matthew’s and traces what other ‘hoods they habituated by silhouette of steeples.

Right after those shirts arrived in a package, one of his Boston-based coworkers with a name like McCarthy, if you can imagine a name such as that in the Boston area, sent us a couple of 2007 World Series Champions shirts. Looks like we could rock matching t-shirts for a sufficient number of days to get my bro’s projectile vomiting at our cuteness.

I think in prep for the upcoming holidays, M. played Scorcese’s The Departed on the old cable on-demand channel this evening. Still like that movie. I remember waxing wiseass somewhere on the world wide webs about the best line in that one. The line that explains so much to those who meet me and mine, and many of my friends (and which no one at my fucking job gets at all). Matt Damon’s character says

If we’re not gonna make it, it’s gotta be you that gets out, cause I’m not capable. I’m fucking Irish, I’ll deal with something being wrong for the rest of my life.

There’s also the thing about Freud saying the Irish couldn’t be helped with psychoanalysis. Although, he never fucking said it. Sounds cool though.

(Where did I mention these lines roughly a year ago? In the comments of the wonderful Dot Dwyer’s site.)

No other news from me, but I did update the stupid quiz thingie on the left. And, I’m still obsessed with a bit of research on my roots. Made me think about the timing of Pat’s leaving the planet and my meeting M. Given he’s from a Taoist, Buddhist, Confucianist, ancestor-worshipping folk, who might believe that ancestors and their characteristics can reappear in subsequent generations, I still maintain there’s a bit of her reincarnated in him. Which makes me kind of a lesbitarian Oedipal psycho.

(As a P.S. we bought our X-Mas travel plane tickets. If anyone wants to hang in Boston (or the ‘burbs) around Santa time, shoot me an email. We’re planning to rent a car, and M. is leaving on the Wednesday after Jesus’ birthday. I’m hanging around til Friday. Ho fucking ho.)

Technorati Tags: Boston, comedy, family, genealogy, Gone_Baby_Gone, family, relationships, vote

I came across a note in some PR-esque shit about Google’s Book Search.

Someone who may or may not have a common ancestor with me, found this picture page:

books

I think I might be ordering Plymouth Labor and Leisure from Amazon.com. I’ve spent the night trying to figure out my dad’s family and what his mother’s name was and if there is any record of her. My mother claimed she was born in Ireland and died in Ireland, so maybe I could become an Irish citizen. My pro-American boy wouldn’t like it, but the times of Bush’s war and all are making me think about joining another crowd.

Then again, we saw Lions for Lambs last night. Sure it was a bit preachy, but it was all and all pretty effective I thought. Today’s college youth, overlaid with yesterday’s protestor, current old man, overlaid with today’s volunteer army youth, overlaid with Westpoint turned Senator, overlaid with the press. Pretty much, we’re all complicit in the fucked up state of our war and our shit foreign policy.

Bob Redford also blessedly kept his sermon short. By the time I was fully wrapping my head around the flick, it was over.

I don’t know what made me a wee bit sadder, the war itself and the message, or the fact that we went with M.’s engineer friend (whose consciousness has been mildly raised since being wed, if I might spout meaningless pop cultural/psychological gibberish) and well, his brain hasn’t been that raised. Kind of missed the point entirely the post-show conversation bore out.

Sigh.

Technorati Tags: Boston, family, genealogy, mothers, Ireland, puppy, vote, war

In a theoretical way, I want to write. I want to be creative. I want to make or do stuff.

But, in an actual way, fuck it.

I don’t know what my deal is, but I don’t feel too energetic about anything even mildly entertaining or creative. Sitting, that’s the creation I’m most into right now. Sitting. And copying computer files from one computer to another and from one drive to another. And back.

But, mostly sitting.

I’m dull.

Technorati Tags: entertainment, technology, writing

Sorry about the comments being all busted.

I think they are working now. Have at it.

I missed not hearing from you and thanks for the email. Whatever Newbury is, I hope you like it.

Clearly, I am a worthless piece of shit or incredibly dumb and lazy. I had a few half-way decent ideas boiling in my head tonight. Stuff I could right, you know, you dig, can you imagine me actually trying to write, right.

But, no, I avoided that until now, and now I have shame.

I could have written about my first local election. The booklet the county mailed had maybe 4 pages of instructions on how to vote with the newfangled voting technology, and it had one page on the actual voteable stuff. (By the way, the election site for my newly adopted county has the awe-inspiring URL of http://www.shapethefuture.org/. Not the least bit corny, no, not at all.) I only wish I could embed this video here. Remember when a black Sharpie and coloring were the only skills and equipment you would need?

For all the technology, we voted on exactly two things. Who we wanted on the Fire Protection District board and whether the spending limit on how much the fire district folks could get. I’d be lying if I claimed anything but that I don’t fucking know what a fire district is. I’m pretty sure it has to do with the bright red trucks with the sirens.

One lonesome idea I’ve been meaning to talk about is my hankering to head to an open mike. I performed in August at the Edinburgh Fest, and I’m thinking it’s time to head back to performing. At least up until it makes me want to cry again.

I also could have cobbled together a couple of thoughts on “new media,” old media, performance, art and the writers’ strike. Fucking hell, I’m so plugged in these days, I actually took a seat at a table meeting with Youtube.com folks about their new channels. I’m that fucking hip.

If I could get it up, I might even take some potshots at these assclowns, who are kind of self-annointed comedy experts. I became aware of them through one of the unfunnier, more sycophantic people I met in the Boston scene, who did some writing on the early site. I caught half the core staff doing the standup thing at a fest in a show we both did. Hmm, the least said, the better.

With time and inclination, maybe I’ll write about what a lot of comics, including those linked above, don’t seem to get when they throw out the new face and the new media and the new world order.

So, yeah, some half-assed shit ideas. I could have written. I might even have reviewed the movie American Gangster. Short take — Good, but Ridley could use an editor and a soupcon less self-indulgence.

Instead, I killed brain cells and time passed. I got caught up in a horrible phenom of the “new media,” reaction videos on Youtube.com from 2 girls 1 cup. The reaction are enough, don’t, I repeat, don’t ever try to find the original. I got through 10 seconds of, I think, 80 seconds total and bailed with the horror of humanity.

But, the reaction videos are an interesting flow. People are fucked up. And, they are quite multi-faceted in their ceaseless variations on amusing themselves.

Technorati Tags: entertainment, fire, shapethefuture.org, Intellectualism, movie, new_media, video, 2girls1cup, writing, comedy, Silicon valley, technology, vote, local_elections, Youtube, Youtube

Someone I don’t know very well asked me for a quiet personal conversation. It was so she could, ostensibly, pick my gadget-grasping brain about some unusual technical needs. She explained, she thinks her husband has been leading a double life for the last 10 years. She was clearly at her wit’s end, hovering in our tete a tete on the edge of tears.

Lots of questions are racing through my brain. Because I am not actually a nice person, the first one is how and why is it I seem to be a magnet for soulful, intimate conversations with folks asking my advice? On the plus side, it means I get to hear all sorts of interesting things.

The second question is wow, do people really have double lives? Scary.

The clear tech question that came out from a rather scattered, upset, non-linear story was about a phone line. Apparently there’s a mysterious extra cable for DSL or an alternative phone line that some dudes doing some other work in their house explained to her.

I am happy to live in the belief that neither M. nor I have another life parallel to this one. Unless sleep counts.

Technorati Tags: California, technology, relationships, work