APRIL IS ZOMBIE MONTH.

Greetings! I'm coming to you live from PartyHouse, deep in the heart of glamourous Mesa, Arizona. I just had a revelation, so I commandeered what I think is Audrey's computer to make note of it; if you read this, Audrey...yes, I did borrow your computer to write this. Guilty as charged. And yes...I am intoxicated, still. Throw the book at me.

Everyone has fallen asleep already, except for me. It's currently about 4:30 in the morning, and I'm awake watching horrible A.M. programming when suddenly I find a movie called Zombie Rave on Sci-Fi.

And it's zombies. Eating brains. At a rave. And it's the most glorious thing I've ever seen.

So it's prompted me to challenge myself: for the entire month of April, I'm going to watch every zombie movie I can get my hands on. Every old black-and-white low budget film, every Italian knock-off, every modern remake, every cult classic...if it involves large groups of zombies, I'm probably going to watch it. I'll write about what is good, what is bad, and share the best scenes with you through the magic of youtube. Also, I'll try to document the ways in which watching dozens of zombie movies has affects my psyche and sleep schedule. It's going to be an interesting month.

So here's what I ask of you, dear reader: which movies shall I seek out? Do you have personal favorites? Or do zombies just give you the heebie-jeebies? What are your thoughts?

I've got a lot of free time. I'm going to see so much brain-eating in the next month. This could be a poor idea...or it could be the best idea I've ever had, ever, in my whole life...even from this current moment until the day I die, I might never, ever, have a thought as good as this.

Yeah, it could be that.

Zombiez.

MY ARSENAL OF TIMEWASTERS

SOME DAYS at work move as slow as sloths. Days like these, there aren't any leases to go over, there aren't any modules to complete, and customers are few and far between. Days like these, the clock is my enemy, stuttering and pausing and sometimes freezing completely.

What am I to do? Conversation with coworkers is a dicey proposition: the last time I initiated small talk with Scott, my mind became caught in a beartrap of ignorance and I almost called Mike Huckabee a "banjo-strumming douchebag" in front of an office full of gawking eavesdroppers. Since then, I've decided to "tone it down".

On days like these, it's up to me to provide myself with entertainment; to unfreeze the clock and make the tempus motherfuckin' fugit. In order to do this, I delve into my arsenal of timewasters. Here are a few examples:

-After watching my boss, Rob, clean the same counter with wet-naps eight times in a single day, I finally realized that he has OCD. I asked him about it, and he confirmed my suspicion by admitting that he was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder a few years ago. This has provided me with perhaps my favorite timewaster. Once every couple days, I move something inside of his immaculately organized office. Something small. For example, the other day I took his pad of multicolored post-it notes and peeled off the top layer (which was green) and repositioned it beneath the bottom layer (which was yellow). Afterwards, I sat back and anxiously waited to see how long it would take him to notice the minuscule change I'd made. After twenty minutes he noticed something was amiss; he got really anxious, and when he finally noticed his post-its were out of order, he exploded and blamed my co-worker Scott for my mischief. Mission Accomplished.

-Sometimes I like to think of all the possible nicknames I could give Scott if we were actually friends: Scotty Too Hottie, Scottie Biscotti, Beam-Me-Up Scotty, Scotty-Boom-Botty, Karate Scotty, etc. Based on the quality of these nicknames, perhaps it's better that we aren't friends.

If anyone from work ever finds this blog, I will be seriously fucked.

DREAMS I'VE HAD, PART 4

The dream begins and I'm walking in a place that most definitely isn't Arizona, a place where valleys and hills come together like the interlaced hands of lovers and waist-tall grasses undulate like swaying kelp at the bottom of a great sea. The air is sweet enough to drink and colors that pulse and hum like electric brushstokes make me squint involuntarily.

I smell the water long before the river shows its face. Its width, perhaps a stones throw, and it passes me by in swirling tornado eddies with a polished surface that moves like melting glass. It gently laps the shore, kissing each of the polished stones and chilling my bare feet. The skin of the water expands and contracts; the rise and fall of a sleeping man's chest

A boat appears. It coyly parts curtains of vines, curtains of blooming flowers, drifting downriver.

But it's not a boat at all. It is, instead, something undiscovered and unnamed, a flexing architectural chimera of dozens of colliding nautical styles and stylistic flourishes, seemingly designed to sail on a madman's ocean.

It has no sail. It has no mast. Instead, a trio of paddlewheels gently slap the water and shovel the boat forward. Each of the paddlewheels is a different size, and each moves in a different direction, simultaneously. The boat is constructed of coffeecolored wood marbled with swirls of dark grain, and as I watch, the patterns of grain disband and reconfigure themselves into new, unrecognizable constellations.

The boat is massive. From the shore I'm able to recognize a crosshatching of a halfdozen different decks, stretching and diverging into raised platforms supported by wooden buttresses, flanked by various pediments and metopes depicting scenes from my childhood which have been inlaid into panels of wood by skilled artisans. Barreled rooves sit atop rows of wooden columns. Pointed spires and twisting antennas loom above; hair standing up on a giant's neck.

The boat drifts closer. Directly in front of me now. It stops, seeming to blatantly disregard the preexisting current of the water it sits upon. Something that is less of a gangplank and more of a drawbridge descends like a tongue, grinding against the polished riverstones at my feet.

I step aboard. Ready to ride the river until it empties into the sea.

The dream ends.

"CHORTLE AT JOKER'S BONER"

There isn't a single part of this that isn't funny.

"SCIENTIFIC THEORIES REGARDING THE BALDWIN BROTHERS"

IN THIS BRAVE new year of 2008, we Americans live in a cultural landscape dominated by Baldwins: eldest brother Alec currently stars in the Emmy Award-winning sitcom 30 Rock, William co-stars in a show I've never seen called Dirty Sexy Money, Stephen lends his financial prowess to Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice, and Daniel battles his inner demons at the expense of VH1 in Celebrity Rehab.

How is this possible? What could cause Hollywood to bow before four humble brothers from Massapequa, New York? Is their combined acting ability really that good?

No, it is not.

The purpose of this piece is to assemble different thoughts and theories regarding the meteoric rise of the Clan Baldwin; to accredit their success to something other than their "acting", be it magic, mass hypnosis, addictive nerve-gas, or something yet unaccounted for. I've assembled three different articles by several leading scientific minds, and I shall present a brief abstract of each in order to allow the reader to make up his/her mind on this "Baldwin Factor". Let us begin.

Theory #1: "'Stephen', 'Daniel', and 'William' are all actually fictional characters portrayed by Alec Baldwin."(Midle, Booth, and Thomas, 1998) This article describes how, through the use of method acting and complicated prosthetic makeup, Alec Baldwin has created the characters of three fictional "brothers": Stephen, Daniel, and William. Originally created for a Lee Strasberg workshop, these "brothers" went on to achieve such depth and dazzling minutia of character that "they" achieved sentience and began auditioning for roles on NYPD Blue.

Note: This theory explains not only Alec Baldwin's schizophrenia, but also why none of the Baldwin Brothers have never appeared together onscreen.

Theory #2: "The Baldwin Brothers are Pokémon" (Watson and Crick, 1952) This groundbreaking and controversial article claims that the Baldwin Brothers represent different evolutionary levels of the same unnamed species of Pokémon. The article goes on to speculate the different "special ability" of each: the "wild cocaine frenzy" (Daniel), the "ability to go years without being noticed by anyone" (William), "squinting" (Stephen), "Child Abuse, Level 3" (Alec).

Note: Similar to "Meowth", the Baldwin-Pokémon all have the ability to engage in vocal conversation instead of repeating their own name over and over and over.

Theory #3: "Stephen, Daniel, and William are all untalented douchebags who capitalize on the talent and success of Alec Baldwin" (Lewis & Burke, 2006) After brother Alec graduated from the Lee Strasberg Institute and began a successful film and stage career, his three brothers quit their low-paying jobs at Lady Footlocker in order to follow in his footsteps and to capitalize on the Baldwin family name.

Note: This theory explains why Alec must have all of his suits custom-tailored: in order to make coattails big enough for his three brothers to simultaneously ride on.

MY LUNCH, ILLUSTRATED VIA CAUSE AND EFFECT

I USUALLY stay up until two or three in the morning. Because of this, I usually oversleep by about thirty minutes, which leaves me with very little of this while I'm getting ready in the morning:

I usually have time to take a quick shower and even grab some breakfast, but I rarely have time to prepair and make one of these for the upcoming day at work:

Which means that come time for my lunch break, it's up to me to find a convenient and relatively inexpensive restaurant within the area, but because of my severely limited restaurant options and my hatred for KFC, I usually end up going here:

I usually just get a turkey sandwich on wheat because it's the only menu item that isn't unhealthy/disgusting. I've eaten this perhaps four different times within the last week in a half. If things continue at this rate, soon I will look like this:

But if I ended up looking like that, I'd probably hang myself with a knotted-up pair of my own oversized dockers...all because I stay up late at night and sleep late in the mornings.

"Eat fresh...until you waist away to nothing, or hang yourself with a pair of jeans."

ELSEWORLDS

DO YOU know what dissociative fugue is?

It's a psychological condition that is (according to the Diagnostic Statistic Manual IV) characterized by "sudden, unexpected travel away from home or one's customary place of work, confusion about personal identity, or the assumption of a new identity, and significant distress or impairment".

Last Thursday I left Phoenix after work and traveled to Tempe. The original plan was to simply spend the evening with Steve, but the plan changed (as all plans tend to do), and Steve and I ended up going to a Thirsty Thursday hosted by my friend Stacey. The party was attended by nearly all of my old friends from college, but I am not in college anymore, and the evening made me very aware of this.

It was odd. I hadn't seen most of these people since I've graduated, and it was astonishing to see how much had changed in the small social circle that I previously inhabited. With my new facial hair I felt like Rip Van Winkle, waking up from an ageless sleep only to be immediately pulled into a game of beer pong.

It was like side-stepping into some alternate world that previously existed side-by-side to ours, separated by a thin, invisible semi-permeable membrane; a world where things were almost normal, but off just enough to be noticed. People that I used to be very close with had suddenly become distant. Two of my old friends seemed to be dating/sleeping with one another, despite their obvious incompatibility. Previously Straight Edge kids were abruptly drinking bathtubs full of cheap beer, blondes had become brunettes, close friends had become bitter enemies...dogs and cats, living together; mass hysteria.

I escaped the room frequently to smoke Camel Lights on the patio. I felt like a "Draw Four" card from Uno who'd been shuffled into a deck of normal Bicycle playing cards.

I don't expect for people to remain static throughout their lives; that would be boring and slightly depressing. However, I was amazed by how irregular and unpredictable my relationships with certain friends have become post-graduation. The world moves on, I suppose.

It left me for a newfound respect for the handful of people with whom I've remained constant, regular friends. Steve is a good example of this; no matter what's going on in either of our lives, regardless of the new jobs and the new roommates, the new revisions and the new tangents we embark upon, we're pretty much going to be the same two friends. Steve Nielsen is the Desmond to my Penny, minus the confusing time-travel side story and romantic tension.

THE UNSTABLE LEGS OF A NEWBORN GIRAFFE

AFTER TODAY, a day of walking around on unstable and uncertain legs like a newborn giraffe, sour in my disposition by being elitist towards some and egalitarian towards others, and wishing, wanting, believing that this isn't it, I came home and found this:



And it helped.

Sometimes art, be it music or film or poetry or fiction, coincides perfectly with the syncopated drum-beats that seem to run my life. This was one of those times. Sometimes a broken leg can enable instead of incapacitate, disabilities can be unseen forms of strength in themselves, and sometimes a crutch isn't a crutch at all, but something else entirely. I'm still listening to the same song (both literally and figuratively); only now, it seems open to interpretation.

It's a song by RJD2, by the way. I haven't listened to RJD2 since my iPod docked with the Great USB Port in the Sky; hearing a new RJD2 track after so long was like running into that jovial friend from middle school whom I've lost track of (but still remember fondly from Conversational Spanish), who then proceeds to greet me fondly by giving me a tight hug and makes me wonder why I don't have more friends like him.

I'd been planning on writing something tonight about The Baldwin Brothers. I'm glad I chose to write this instead.

God bless us, each and every one.

QUOTES 2 LIVE BY: "WORK"

"Work is the curse of the drinking class."
-Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900

"There is, of course, a certain amount of drudgery in newspaper work, just as there is in teaching classes, tunnelling into a bank, or being President of the United States. I suppose that even the most pleasurable of imaginable occupations, that of batting baseballs through the windows of the RCA Building, would pall a little as the days ran on."
-Thomas Thurber, 1894-1961

"Your work parallels your life, but in the sense of a glass full of water where people look at it and say, 'Oh! The water's the same shape as the glass!"
-Francis Ford Coppolla , 1939-

"Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence" -Laurence J. Peter, 1910-90

"Arbeit macht frei - Work Sets You Free"
-Slogan above entrance to Auschwitz, 1940-1945

ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE...

...SCOTT, one of my co-workers at my new job.

Scott is at least two hundred pounds overweight. All of the chairs in the office squeak in protest beneath his massive girth, and he must turn sideways to fit through a few of the more narrow doors in our workplace. It constantly looks like he's smuggling an inner-tube beneath one of his many stretched-out polo shirts. His weight isn't a big deal, and it certainly doesn't impair his job performance; however, despite his significant weight, he still considers it perfectly acceptable to give dieting advice to me. When I told him I don't eat breakfast, he loudly exclaimed "you gotta eat breakfast or you'll gain weight! If you don't eat breakfast, then your body will start to store excess fat!" Gee thanks, Scott...next, I'll be taking flying lessons from the pilot of The Hindenburg.

Scott is very Christian and very Republican; this explains why his first child is due in October, but does not explain how he and his ex-girlfriend concieved a child. God totally hates abortions, but doesn't he hate pre-marital sex, too? Oh wait...I forgot that Christian morality is multiple choice!

Here's the exact conversation that made me lose faith in ultimately becoming friends with Scott:

Scott: Hey, did you ever hear of any of Dan Cook's comedy skits? (Editor's Note: That isn't a typo: Scott really refers to him constantly as "Dan Cook", and I don't have the heart, nor do I have the respect for Dane Cook, to correct him).
Me: Um, yeah. Oh wow, time for me to go to lunch. (I then walked into an adjoining room, closing the door behind me, a full four hours before my scheduled lunch. I am a bastard.)

Last week, Scott went off on a poorly-informed ignorant political tirade in which he claimed a) our troops should stay in Iraq, b) the American media is run by liberals and Jews, and c) Obama is less qualified than Mike Huckabee. For most of his rant, I was able to remain professional, biting my tongue and thinking about Scott's dismal future, but when he compared Obama (a political candidate whom I actually like) to Mike Motherfucking Huckabee, he'd simply gone too far. Here's how I destroyed Scott's Obama-bashing rhetoric:

Scott: ...and I mean, Obama's wife even said, "this is the first time I've been proud of America", and I mean, I can't vote for that.
Me: What context was that in, Scott?
Scott: What?
Me: The quote you just said...what context was it in? What was she refering to? I mean, didn't you just accuse the liberal Jew-run media of taking quotes from Huckabee without context? It seems like you're doing that right now.
Scott: Um, I ah...
Me: I bet you don't even know her first name.
Scott: (total silence)
Me: That's what I thought.

Basically, Scott really reminds me of some odd amalgamation of Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle from Harry Potter: slow-moving, dimwitted, and just awful.

GARY BUSEY: GENIUS OR MADMAN?

"Like I was told when I got out of the hospital two months early after my death from brain surgery, that I was born with the energy of ten men who have normal jobs."