russia sucks.

i spent the early part of this evening watching two very disturbing programs on the topic of the soviet union/russia/whatever it is they are calling it these days. the first was on russian mail-order brides. quite strange, i can assure you.

the second was far more disturbing, and was called "the battle of chernobyl". you do the math. actually, that was the point, sort of: among other colossal fuck-ups of this epic disaster, the soviet government has no offical statistics on how many of its citizens were physically affected by the radiation. and i think we all know why that is: because it was a ton of people. like all the dudes that they made clean nuclear waste off the roof of the destroyed reactor, because even the robots they initially had doing it couldn't take the "heat"...one of the robots even threw itself of the friggin' roof! i can't even begin to describe some of the things i learned about chernobyl tonight. needless to say, i was horrified. the russians just really suck at life. not to be rude, but it's true. actually, we decided that the theme of this evening's discovery times channel programming is: "russia sucks". and how.

so after two hours of depressing revelations regarding the soviet union, i decided to watch lost in translation, which is such a beautiful movie. i am really worried about things lately, and by things i mean really everything... rational, irrational, all of it. i don't know what the hell i think is going to happen, it's as if i think i am going to turn my head and the whole world will be gone in an instant. that right now, this very second, the seeds of my demise are being planted, have already been planted and are growing, unstoppable, elements set in motion and all that crap.

so it was nice to watch a film where there are sort of those feelings of frightened helplessness, but done in a way that is completely unjarring and almost soothing. it was a good idea, for me to watch that.

i went to school yesterday to start the process, the process of getting my shit together. it seems more possible than ever, after actually setting foot inside the building, after actually speaking to a human being about it. i still feel as if i am almost certain to be rejected, but that's probably because i feel as if i am one hundred years old and have the skill set of flo from that show "alice". remember that show? how depressing. i think i have a college degree, i am pretty sure, and i think i may have also written some papers that i can use for my writing sample, and i think there is a slim chance i may be able to sneak in there. otherwise, it's "alice" forever. i'm gonna see if i can find one of those outfits.

just to return to an earlier topic, chernobyl(not to be confused with returning to chernobyl, which you should never, ever do) one other thing that i learned, that they sorta forgot to mention at the time, was that they almost blew all of europe to holy hell with a second explosion, which would have occurred had they not sent some(and by some i mean thousands) of their dopey, unsuspecting citizens, outfitted in hefty bags(de rigeur for cleaning up toxic nuclear spills) in to tunnel underneath the burning reactor. read that again. THEY ALMOST BLEW UP EUROPE. and we, being schmucks, were worried that they were going to blow us up with a missle? there was no one to take care of that, cause everyone after 1986 was busy forfeiting their lives to clean up this ridiculous mess. what the hell do we have spies for? could we have not discovered earlier that the way of doing things over there could, on a good day, be best described as "bobo"? astonishing.

here it is, your herbal answer.

i happen to be somewhat fixated on lip balm, or lip shit, in the vernacular... and i have made it somewhat of a mission to discover the best product in this category, and i would like now to talk about that product, because it is fucking awesome. this kinda sounds like the start of an infomercial i saw the other night for this thing that cooks meat and vegetables and all sorts of other stuff in like 8 minutes using a combination of convection heat, some other kind of heat and infared rays... they claimed it could fry chicken, and we didn't believe it, since there is no oil involved, and we tried to wait it out to see what they would do, but the hosts were too awful, and they kept cooking steak after steak(and throwing they vegetables right on there with it!) and i eventually had to shut it off.

i digress. lip shit. ok. listen up. here's the deal. you need to look for HERBAL ANSWER by blistex, in the light-green tube, every time you enter a duane reade, or cvs, or whatever the hell you have where you live, until you find a tube. because they don't sell it just anywhere. actually, it just took me three years to find it this last time, and it was extremely random: we were in duane reade on 96th street getting contact lense solution or something and i went by the lip shit section and there it was. but whatever. when you find it, you buy it. immediately. don't wait. BECAUSE IT IS THE BEST LIP SHIT EVER MADE. bar-none. game over. they may as well just quit making lip shit now, because there is and there will never be a better lip shit than this one. i'm serious. i mean, it's the herbal answer.

just try it, if you can find it. i think you'll thank me.

by the way, they need to start a nobel prize sort of thing for stuff this nature. little innovations that make daily life possible... the smartwater people, they'd get one. and the developer of nestle flips chocolate-covered pretzels.

new topic. my cell phone has been off for about a week: no money to pay the bill, alas. it's just that time of year where i am struggling desperately to stay at the point where i am only swallowing water, not suffocating on it, if water is the metaphor for financial ruin. you know what i mean.

anyhow, here are the stages i go through when my phone gets turned off.

day 1- anger, pain, sadness, a geniune feeling of loss and panic at how i am supposed to communicate now that my communication device is no longer at my disposal...scared and alone.

day 2-still a bit of the same, a need to stay near someone who's phone i can readily access if need be.

day 3-denial. i keep the non-working phone on me, at work, wherever, like normal, as if it is suddenly going to vibrate with an incoming message, indicating that i am once again able to text message.

day 4-5- still keeping the phone on me, but not all the time, sometimes leaving it in my bag while at work...it's a bit heavy in my pocket, and there are friggin' clocks everywhere if i need to know the time.

day 6- phone stays in bag all day.

day 7- not even sure where phone is right now; will leave it home, worthless piece of junk.


see, just seven days and i am back to basics. ready to live off the land and send telegrams if i have any pressing business. these cell phones...they are overrated.

not so fast...

i suppose it was foolish of me to expect that nothing further could possibly afflict me, but well...that's what i honestly thought. mathematically, i thought it was virtually impossible that i could wind up getting more sick. twice.

you can guess the end of this story. add one more stomach virus and another eye infection('cause i have two eyes, and we wouldn't want to leave one out) to the tally i posted on friday. and that brings us to today, where i have once again disinfected the entire apartment, washed my hands every seventeen seconds and am cautiously hoping that i am on my way back to full health. jees.

aside from all the illness, there have been a few things going on.

first of all, let me be one of the last('cause i am missing it by a few days here) to congratulate peyton manning on finally sealing the deal. who gives a fuck about the superbowl? he's in it now, finally, and he defeated tom brady's superhuman ass to get there. and besides, it would take a meteor falling on his head for anything but ultimate total victory to occcur at the superbowl anyhow. rex grossman is xfl level next to peyton. possibly even worse than xfl, i just couldn't think of anything.

tomorrow i will be attending my first nba game ever, which is super exciting especially because i am going to see the knicks play my phoenix suns... i get to watch steve nash and co. do their thing in person! couldn't be more excited. and my eye is actually clearing up, so i might be able to see them see them. awesome.

the only downside is that the suns will undoubtably beat the everliving crap out of the knicks, which as you may or may not know, is charles williams iii's squad of choice. it ain't easy being a knicks fan. no sir. it's really nice being a suns fan, however.

also on the horizon are our tickets to see m. ward on friday night at town hall... i missed my last opportunity to see him so i am especially glad for this one. and i have never been to town hall, so that should be interesting as well.

kels and trey's nugget is growing! the latest sonagram shows a whole bunch of the nug's 2000 parts, in pretty good detail... lets just say it's not such a nugget anymore... i wish we could post sonagrams on the blog. kel, get on that.

finally, i am in the process of finding artwork for our apartment walls... i have been using the invaluable art resource that is tiny showcase and so far i really like the work of this lady. we are discussing the possibilites. anybody have any other artist peeps to recommend? i would greatly appreciate it. otherwise we may be forced to stick with the candlewax/wooden skewer/ashtray combination piece that charles is going to jizz all over and call modern art, a la terrence koh.

dear germs, i don't think it's working out

ok. so between charles and i, we have had three stomach viruses, two eye infections and two head colds since christmas. it's really sweet of these germs to want to keep giving even after the holiday season, but quite frankly I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE. and i think i speak for us both when i say that; charles isn't awake to weigh in, as he is asleep on the couch under four blankets and has eaten nothing but two saltines over the last three days.

seriously though. we spent thursday in the mount siani emergency room with my poor baby hooked up to an iv trying to get something into his system for the first time in 12 hours; all the while, my left eye was growing to the size of a golfball and emitting a green-brown goo. delicious! i kept waiting for the er people to realize that i was creating a biohazard and kick me out, but luckily we escaped before anyone caught on.

last night, our two sorry asses holed up in the apartment, which we had turned into a low-budget intensive care unit: there were thermometers and eye drops and tissues and herbal tea, the entire place contaminated by the rash of maladies which have recently befallen us...

i am glad to report that we are both somewhat on the mend today; my eye now just looks like i poured some sort of cleaning agent in there, red as hell but relatively the right size. and less goop. charles' fever broke sometime before this morning and, as i mentioned, he has increased his vitamin water diet to include a couple of saltines. i managed to get him to take some tylenol earlier...things could be looking up, although i am hesitant to celebrate the return of our health. it's been a rough month.

which brings me to this: dear germs, do you think you might move along and infect someone else now? you took up residence with us for the past four weeks or so, and you've really hung strong, but i know a lot of motherfuckers out there who haven't had so much as a sniffle lately...surely that must pose something of a challenge. we would just really appreciate it if we could get a span of days where one or the other of us could get in a full week of work and not have to get carted off in an ambulance. pretty please? thanks.

also, we are missing our long awaited, much anticipated evening at the daily show thanks to our most recent ailments...we waited four months for this! now it's back on the waiting list. thanks a lot, virus.

well, i am off to disinfect the hell out of everything we own...oh, and don't think i haven't considered that this is all the result of tom brady smiting me. just for that i'm gonna go ahead and throw caution to the wind...colts over pats on sunday...go peyton.

tom brady will come for you...with his razor.

what did i tell you? don't ever question tom brady. he will make you pay for that shit.

so, my saturday picks were right on, which also means my team is still in it, if you can call going up against the patriots next weekend still in it. i messed my sunday picks all up, but then i guess that's what happens when you pick based on uniform attractiveness, and/or against tom brady. both kind of dumb ideas.

oh, football. i am going to miss it, but it gets replaced(in my heart and on television) with college basketball, so i am sure i will be allright. as it was, saturday we flipped back and forth between a really exciting virginia tech-unc upset and a tepid colts-eagles game. go hokies! in a few weeks y'all will have my full attention.

in other news, there is a new apartment building going up directly behind ours, which we thought was a charming thing to watch until they began working through the night...the scary part is that they only just started the second floor, which i would assume means there will be plenty of all-nighters to come. i am going to go shop for some earplugs.

all football all the time

thankfully, being crazy broke coincides with the most exciting two days in football. so we are gonna wrap some stuff in bacon, drink up the remenants of the new years eve stash, and get ready for a long football weekend. before i pick my teams i just want to point out, the nfl spends the last four weeks of its season reliving past glory like no other pro sports organziation. all you have to do is turn on any one of the espns, at any given moment, and you are almost sure to come across one of their nfl films odes to the greatness of football. and those nfl films people have a way of making it all seem like you are watching something miraculous, as joe montana negotiates his team down the field, or john elway pulls a victory out in the last moments of the last playoff... it's like any minute they'll do a run-up, nfl films style, of the birth of jesus. and the nfl films guy, in that nfl films voice, will go "it looked like they were out of chances...until they found the stable. and then, everything changed. what happened next would go on to become the most famous birth in history. but first john elway would have to mount a drive the likes of which had never been seen before. It would come to be known as, "the drive".

that's one of the four billion things i love about football. the fact that they name things "the drive" or "the kick" or "the catch".

anyhow. i'll be watching alot of football highlight shows. in fact, as long as nfl films is involved, i'm there.

here are my picks(now that there are only four teams left, i'm not too lazy to decide who i like):

Colts/Ravens: Colts. Go Peyton! "They're not saying boo, they're saying moooo-vers"

Raiders/Eagles: I don't know where this comes from, but I loathe the eagles. And you can't hate the saints this season, so there. decision made. also, for some reason i haven't had the opportunity to see many actual saints games, so i look forward to checking out reggie bush, who ab still contends should be the rookie of the year(holla at your vince young. hook 'em horns)

Bears/Seahawks: you know, there are few things i could care less about more than the outcome of this game. the bears, for all their hype, i find to be a snore. multiply that times a thousand and you have how i feel about the seahawks. in fact, to sound like a total girl, the only appealing thing about the seahawks is the color combination on their uniforms. whatever. I am gonna go with the seahawks. and i take them cause their uniforms are cool. fuck off.

Chargers/Pats: ah yes, the piece d' resistance...the chargers/patriots. this one is nearly impossible for me to call, since my football knowledge is still pretty limited, and both these teams seem about even to me...i thought the patriots were a bit shaky until i watched them run mercilessly over chad and the jets last weekend. and granted, it was chad and the jets, but holy christ. after halftime they might as well have jumped in a tank and started moving down the field in it, cause there was no stopping them. i would still like to see the chargers do it, so i am picking san diego. go chargers.

whoot whoot. well, if i make it through the weekend without some sort of bacon-induced cardiac event, i'll report back when all is said and done. also, i wanna just go ahead and apologize to the chargers for potentially incurring tom brady's wrath...i think we all remember what happened the last time i bet against tom. he broke brett favre over his knee like a pretzel stick.