Quote: "The stand-up comedian and the girl in the monkey suit are who make out. I don't think I've ever said that before." - Laura, on the opportunities of speech that the Tila Tequila reality show provide.

I am back in my home town, roofing for my father, until I leave for San Francisco on June 2nd. (I've been busy, and today I managed to setup my computer. Goodness, I miss Xanga when I'm busy). Anyways, I'd head to SF sooner, but at the end of May my sister is moving with her husband and two children to Germany. They'll spend their last few state-side days in Oklahoma, and I want to see them before they head off.

I reach three startling conclusions each time I move. First, the box is the single greatest achievement of mankind (perhaps of the universe). Let's put it this way: you can do anything with, in, or on a box. It might be an inherent property of prepositional phrases, but it might be that the box is that fantastic. Boxes are so incredible, I suggest that the word box replace the word orgasm. Geeks would rejoice, because the term multi-boxing would take on new meanings. And moving-to-a-new-place related sentences will be more fun: "The liquor store said we can take all the boxes we needed," "My room has a lot of boxes in it," or "Wow, a box in a box."

Second, bookends are the greatest failure of mankind. We can put a man on the moon; we can put a man in a box on the moon; he can have a box in that box; but we can't produce a bookend that works without a giant dictionary being placed on it. The second you touch a bookshelf, every book falls in to disarray. The results of moving a shelved book are so disastrous that I'm almost led to believe that the damage in Myanmar (Burma) resulted from a bookend catastrophe rather than from a cyclone.

Third, I own too much. I'm hoping that I can take this opportunity to reduce the number of materials good I own. Ideally, I'd like to be able to fit all of my belongings (except for oil paintings) in to the back of a small sized car. In a perfect world, I'd own a Mac Book Pro, an iPod, three boxes of books, an X-Box 360, and a few boxes of clothing.

On to serious business, a few weeks ago I played Scattegories with a group of friends. Nothing creates life long feuds between couples and friends like a friendly game based on personal subjectivity mixed with an individuals creativity for semantics. Here are two suggestion of mine that got vetoed.

Letter: B
Item: Things on a Map
My Suggestion: Bottom - Every map has a bottom.

Letter: F
Item: Villian/Monster
My Suggestion: Fictictious - this is the weaker of the two, but none of my opponents even offered a word.

On a side note, a friend once played the greatest Scattegories word ever.
Letter: K
Item: Things that are black.
Suggestion: Kenan and Kel. - double points!

The Surprise: Laura and I are moving to San Francisco. She accepted an excellent job offer in SF; she leaves May 14th; and she starts work May 19th. And I'll head that direction at the start of June. If her hopes in SF didn't work out, we had planned on going to Boston - which I was very eager about, because I'd love nothing more than to live in the same city as my wonderful nephew George. None the less, I am excited about the move... ahh to once again inhabit a world where Craigslist is a staple of live, culture abounds, and public transportation exists.

Goodbye, Tornadoes! Hellllooo, Earthquakes!

The downside of moving to SF: it is the second most expensive city to live in the United States. In Stillwater, Oklahoma a person can rent a nice duple with a full kitchen, living room, 2 full bathrooms, and 3 bedrooms for around $650 a month. In San Francisco, a 400 to 500 square-foot studio apartment runs around $1,400 a month. Ridiculous. Most of the bathrooms at OSU are larger than our future apartment. On the other hand, if someone has 1.2 million dollars they need to spend, one block from Laura's new office is a 567 sq-ft studio apartment for sale. We're more than happy to occupy it if you buy it!

We have a lot of stuff to sell, throw away, and store, so we're becoming adept at things-we-own triage. I can't take my canvases with me, so tomorrow I'm going to do an oil painting on one of the larger ones. I'll post pictures of its progress as the work develops. And I've started a photography project: with my Mamiya m645 medium-format camera, I'm going to take one black and white portrait of each of our close friends before we leave. Nothing fancy, nothing posed. They just look straight at the camera and click goes the shutter.

I never provided a list of the movies I watched during Spring Break. Here is everything I watched since Spring Break: 3:10 to Yuma, American Gangster, The Assassination of Jesse James, Bee Movie, Delicatessen, Ghost in the shell, Gone Baby Gone, La Vie En rose, Last King of Scottland, Lawrence of Arabia, 12 Angry Men, Marie Antoinette, Me You and Everyone We Know, Michael Clayton, No Country for Old Men, Sword of the Beast,  Tarnation, The Secretary, Tokyo Godfathers, Yojimbo, You Kill Me, and Youth of the Best.


Is it an exclamation mark in Palantino Linotype 72pt or is it subtle porn? I may have discovered a new, disturbing industry. Either way, you're never going to look at punctuation the same way again.

This morning I watched a show on the Discovery channel that discussed whether or not ancient monuments of mankind had been built with alien technology. It is called the "ancient astronaut theory." The argument is that ancient man couldn't possibly have been intelligent enough to construct monuments, such as the great pyramids, without an almost divine intervention.

I'd like to point out a few things.

1. Simple fact: Ancient man kicked ass at stacking things, because they had nothing else to do. When given the choice of hunting dangerous wild animals or staying inside and stacking various cave objects, 9 out of 10 cavemen pick stacking. It was the only pastime for the entire planet and it had greater popularity than cricket and soccer combined.
2. Ancient monuments are lame. They are just stones stacked on top of stones. You don't need calculus to make a pyramid.
   
3. The people and scientists who debate these theories typically have no first-hand knowledge of living outdoors or construction. They don't look qualified to work at a McDonald's drive through. Their wardrobes seem to be exclusively from Good Will.
   
4. Aliens with the knowledge and technology to master interstellar space travel have better things to do than teach cavemen how to stack blocks of rock. They have bar mitzvahs to attend, meetings to complete large interstellar corporate mergers, and uprisings to quell with death rays.

Charlie: "Behold, Earthlings! We have brought you a great technology! With our guidance, you will now be able to stack objects on top of each other. We call this technology Steven."
Jim: "Remember when we traveled all the way to Alpha Centauri, and those ass holes already knew how to Steven?"
Charlie: "We wasted so much cubic-neurohyrdoxidium energy warp crystals getting there!"
Jim: "And then we arrived late to Elijah's bar mitzvah on Intergalactican-9!"

Side note: The semester is winding down. Work is busy, and I've a long list of assignments to finish for classes. The two-week hiatus was unavoidable for the most part.

Charlie and Jim are the two most popular intergallactic Jewish names.