I really do appologize for this; my fourth web log post.

I saw a frozen chicken in the freezer section of a grocery store once. The label on this chicken stated in bold yellow letters directly below the brand name that “giblets may be missing”. That’s fun; it’s like a game. “Yea! You got the giblets! You...win?”

Are people buying this and not caring about it’s contents? I figure before you buy some poultry with or sans giblets, you either have or do not have plans for said giblets. Are people grabbing it in the store and standing there for a second, saying a little prayer for giblets in their head before they commit to their purchase and place it in their cart?

And why doesn’t the company who process the chickens know what’s in them? “Well, we have this very interesting piece of equipment right here. This is our Randomized Chicken Gutting Machine. It will, at random intervals, reach down to our conveyor belt and yank the innards out of any poultry that happens to be passing by. We used to just have the chickens rolling down this conveyor belt at high speeds and our blindfolded workers would gut any chickens that they could grab. But no more! Now we have this glorious marvel of the machine age. I’nt technology grand."

They should also sell bags of giblets that say, “May be surrounded by a complete chicken”. Then you could buy one of each and try to reunite a chicken carcass with it’s guts. You could match the serial numbers or something.

That is all.

(The Relatively Short) Post The Third In Which I Feel I Commit Creative and Intellectual Seppuku Only to unleash a Flock of Butterflies

During my breaks at work the other day I decided to just bite the bullet and write something even though I had no inspiration. I couldn’t help but think about how difficult writing is and decided to write about that. I decided it wouldn't do me any good sitting in my notebook so I post it here now for all to see... Be gentle with it...


I can’t even get started. I’m sitting here, nervously twitching, trying to come up with a way to start this bit about how difficult and scary writing can be. The irony, I’m sure, would not be lost on anyone. I’m having a lot of trouble with this very sentence I find myself currently writing. My forearm is tense and sore as if I’ve been working out all morning. My fingers are gripping the pen so hard that my fingertips are growing numb and I can feel calluses begin to form. Worst of all there is a voice in my head telling me...no actually...screaming at me that this literary and creative labor is all in vain and that people will only care about it enough to harshly judge me and I have to strain and stretch my internal ears to try to hear the meek voice in the back of my brain telling my hand what to write. That last sentence took nearly 15 minutes to get down on paper.

It’s no longer plausible to think of this as something I want to do. I don’t want to be a writer anymore. I need to be a writer.

Just getting a clear thought or idea down on paper can sometimes feel like a Herculean feat. you have to fight off your inner demons with one hand while trying to mine parts the best of yourself and hope scraps of it will translate onto the page. I have to imagine that most writers have this self-doubt. Most probably feel better equipped for battling demons than I. Right now it feels like I’m trying to fend off legions of the unholy with a plastic spork. Perhaps with more experience comes more efficient and deadly weapons. Maybe we are all stuck with just the same weapon and I can only ever hope to become Sporkmaster (there can be only one). Perhaps some people don’t have that angry doubtful voice at all. It seems as if I have far to many questions. (At this point in my writing I have about 5 lines full of half started sentences and partial thoughts, all of which I scored through with my big black pen).
...and there’s that doubt again...

Does it ever get easier to spill your guts and expose yourself to an audience? It seems like it would be absolutely terrifying every time. Is the trick to become immune to judgment or accepting of it? Maybe a bit of both; I don’t know. It’s probably like everything else in life. You just have to do it. You have to grit your teeth and swallow your fear and put yourself out there.

I feel like I need to say more but I have no idea what to write. I had other plans for this entry but I couldn’t start so I wrote about how I couldn’t start. What a strange kind of therapy this has been.

Can I call myself a writer yet?

The Antipenultimate Stream of Conscienceness Edition of This Web-Log

May I point out that salt only affects open wounds. As horrible as 9-11 was, It's been almost 9 years. How long are we gonna root our finger around in this "wound" before we leave it be and allow it to scab over and BUILD SOMETHING THERE!

And isn't there a Mosque IN The Pentagon? Weren't there probably places for Islamic people to pray IN the hospitals that 9-11 victims were taken to? How sensitive are we suppose to be?

The other day I heard someone compare it to putting a Neo-Nazi sign outside a Holocaust Memorial. I didn’t see who it was because I wasn’t looking at the TV because I DETEST the news, but what the (expletive deleted) is THAT supposed to mean? He is saying that that Nazis are to the Holocaust what terrorists are to 9-11, and while that IS true he also in that statement implies that ALL Muslims are terrorists. You know in the same way ALL Germans are Nazis... and ALL Catholic Priests are pedophiles and All Irish people are drunks and All black people are criminals and ALL mexicans are lazy. I’m wondering if the people hosting the show he was on laughed him out of the studio. Probably not because it was probably on some cable news network that panders to a certain kind of people (you know, like ALL cable news networks do because they are just a business selling a product to a demographic).

Let me set the scene for my tale of political intrigue. I was in a break-room at a Ralphs grocery store I have never been to before (part of my job involves going to different Ralphs stores in Southern California and listen to my iPod or something like that). The man on the TV was talking about the "Ground Zero Mosque" and a Ralphs employee at the back of the room said something to the effect of, "kind of ironic that the terrorists blow the buildings up and then they let them build their temple right by where they did that". In retrospect, I should have just corrected her miss-use of the word "irony" but instead I said, "But, not all Muslims are terrorists." To which she replied in an angry and befuddled way AND I QUOTE,"Guh! Pft! Yes they are!" I remained quiet thereafter, but she didn't. She went on to talk about how Obama is O.K. with it because he is a Muslim and a non-citizen to which another Ralphs employee said AND I QUOTE ONCE MORE, "Well, yeah. I know all that. But what about my completely asinine comment" or something to that effect. I then exited the break-room as the woman began the fire and brimstone portion of her speech.

I kept thinking throughout the day about how crazy that lady was and then on the way home I thought of something. I realized that she thought I was just as crazy as I believed her to be. Maybe even more so.

We can't both be crazy because we can't both be right. There is always the possibility that we are both wrong and the truth lies, as it so often does, on some middle ground, but not in this case I don't think. But what do I know? What does ANYBODY know? We are all just somebody's demographic after all and they tell us what they think we should know so we will buy their books and door hangers and such.

People need to remember that whatever you believe in, there is someone who believes the polar opposite just as firmly as you do and before you can have a real discussion about something important with them you HAVE to take their point of view as seriously as they do or the conversation will deteriorate into personal attacks. If you debate someone by upholding your viewpoint and simply poo-pooing your opponents, all you have accomplished is making one side look like a jerk and the other look like they are being picked on. In the end you have done nothing to convince anyone of anything. You have only preached to the choir, which I believe is a metaphor for redundant behavior.

WOW, this entry was disjointed! I guess this is how my brain works. Sorry.

Premier untitled post

I was having a conversation with a friend the other day about the movie INCEPTION. He started off by saying he thought it was this years HANGOVER because he thought it was overrated. This comment reminded me that I hate critics and also that I hate the word OVERRATED, or at least when it is used as a criticism on a movie or any other form of media for that matter. My problem is that it is more of a criticism of the people who like the film and not a criticism of the film itself. Saying a movie is overrated is actually saying that the people who like the movie like it to much. Doesn’t make any sense to me.

Anywhatsit... on a COMPLETELY UNRELATED NOTE...

Does anyone remember what was going on in the news before the oil disaster? In a few months are we going to be saying, “ Does anyone remember what was going on in the news before the gay marriage ban overturned again thing?” I know people have there strong opinions on this matter but there really are more important and DIRE things in need of our attention. I was in New Orleans when I was a very young boy and not old enough to appreciate it. I am very much hoping to go back again without need of a bio-hazard mask and fly fishing waders.

My problem isn’t with pro or anti gay marriage people or with the Gulf being overshadowed by it, my problem is with hypocrisy. If you are really worried about the “sanctity of marriage” first you should outlaw divorce, you know, that thing that the majority of marriages end in! That thing that daily spits on the supposed sanctity of marriage! And what about Las Vegas? In Las Vegas getting married is tantamount to ordering a Whopper and Fries from the comfort of your automobile! THEN you can worry about stopping certain people from entering in to that statistically almost certainly doomed legal contract called marriage. I don’t see how gay people getting married affects me at all. I don’t see how much of anything affects my marriage except for the choices my wife and I make within that marriage.

To paraphrase Adam Carolla, think 20 or 30 years into the future and see if there is gay marriage or not. You know that there will be, so stop wasting your time now. We could have skipped over the black civil rights movement in the earlier part of the century if everyone did that about black equality. It’s like trying to beat back the tide with a Whiffle Bat; it doesn’t do much of anything and your gonna look pretty silly out there all by your lonesome getting your Dockers wet.

I guess all I’m trying to say is, people, stop screaming about same sex unions destroying the sanctity of marriage because it isn’t a legitimate claim. Let the homosexuals get married, and then when, or if, the gay divorce rate climbs higher than the straight divorce rate in this country, start complaining. There are more important things to spend your energy on right now.


But what I’m REALLY trying to say is, go see INCEPTION...I thought it was very good.