There's something living in my water bottle.

I'm not sure when it decided to move in. I don't remember it signing a lease or anything. I actually don't even remember it being in there this morning when I filled it. It resembles something like a jellyfish, or as if the bottle is sitting on top of a tiny plastic bag. And for being completely absent as of 10am, it is impossibly huge. Either somebody's playing a prank on me or I've created some weird ecosystem inside my Camelbak. I will now attempt amateur phone photography.



The worst part of it all is that I've been drinking from this bottle all day. ALL DAY. As a result, I fully expect to be out of commission for the foreseeable future with anything from a minor headache to violent, raging nausea. On the other hand, let's hope this newly found anomaly is some sort of life-giving organism fated to provide its drinker everlasting life and love. Though, methinks the latter is less than likely given this thing looks more like the fin rot from a beta fish.

Regardless of my fate, thank you for being a friend.

A few things

What's a boy to do with 1859 messages in his inbox? While it's no comparison some 30000+ inboxes I've seen, it's still a decent sized quagmire of old useless information. ARCHIVE ALL!

I've recently just seen The Baxter and confirmed that Michelle Williams is the cutest thing on earth.

There's this duck outside who's been squawking for like half an hour. Finally his mate landed and he stopped. Now he looks all proud and protective. Sometimes shit like that blows my mind.

I realized yesterday that our first NXT show is next week. That pretty much scares the shit out of me.

I Know Carrots are Good for Me Because When One Came Out My Nose Accidentally it Didn't Sting

Jellybelly3 is broken.

There’s a story there, just in the name itself, but the short of it is this: Jellybelly is the name of my computer, third iteration. And isn’t that the way. It was a cliché right out of the gate for these computing machines to screw up royally. In what seems to be a C-story line for my life, these machines are constantly lagging behind. Words are typed and a noticeable ten seconds pass before they show up. If this were 1900 house, would my hand flit across the paper with the inky words piling in a few inches behind? Maybe if my pen didn’t work correctly. So it all comes back to technology. Pen = computer. Both can stop working correctly. Maybe in the future our thoughts will be linked wirelessly to some sort of device that records them in real-time like 24. Of course, there I threw a device into the mix, so likely at some point it will break and probably send your thoughts careening into moon space (because by then we’ll be living on the moon) or worse send them across moon-town to the very device whose owner you were thinking about. There you go, my hypothetical situation proves that technology is a dangerous mistress. Pen broken? Grab another one. Ink well empty? Go squeeze some more flowers. Computer broken? Spend your RENT MONEY and get another one. Streaming thought device broken? EXTREME MORTIFICATION. So not only is technology dangerous, but it’s embarrassing.

And apparently sickly. Out of nowhere my hard drive crinkles like gravel trying to expel some information to something else asking for it. I don’t even know why, but it’s my computer, so I must have requested this transfer? Such activity usually signals an ETD (electronically transmitted disease) of some kind. If it weren’t for losers sitting in these abstract rooms full of wires and grates and rotten pizza boxes and sweaty nerds called the Internet, then our digital pastime wouldn’t have to be so secure, and we wouldn’t have iterations of the same piece of software making it increasingly impossible for everyone including lonely old innocent Online Shopper Man to do anything. My CPU usage is consistently set at 10%, sometimes jumping to 40. My 1900 pens usage is of course unknown to me and only comes to a catharsis when it will write ghost words on my parchment. My thought streaming device’s usage would be wholly unknown to me because by then the software will be so secure that you won’t even be able to change the exciting default colors it shipped with. But when you start seeing someone else’s thoughts across town barrel through your own, you’ll know something’s wrong. At least it’s nice to know someone’s thinking about you.

Yet despite all these technological shortcomings throughout history and beyond, the speed at which we attempt to get the job done is ever increasing. Letters delivered by the pony express, email allowed through by all of the various filters and flaming brick walls in the Internet room, thoughts delivered via our jacked-in, logged on, hacked up, hooked on brain-o-chips. Communication will always progress I suppose, but how much faster could it get? We’d hear something before someone thinks of it themselves? Then where would we be? We’d die before we were born.

And for all the screw ups it makes, your smug little thinking screen has no problem pointing out your dumb human mistakes. For my money, there’s nothing less grating than a jagged colored line underlining your once great idea, forever branding it a mistake. Or at least until you have the initiative or attention to change the cause. Your beautiful thoughts and feelings have been instantaneously judged and characterized and wrought over and corrected. Instant grading. You could shut off the feature, but then how will you know if you’re laying your mistakes bare for all to see? Not only is technology embarrassing but it also warns you of IMPENDING embarrassment. Thanks, Jellybelly3, but no thanks!

Then there are the corrections that don’t even need idiot human input to make: the auto-corrections. It’s the equivalent of a piece of plastic and metal saying, “Oh, clearly you meant this instead. Continue. I’ll take care of it.” It’s the benign beginning stages of artificial intelligence.

Perhaps though if you had learned to type correctly in the ninth grade you could have avoided these squiggly lines and automatic letter swaps entirely. Five seconds eyes on the keyboard, two seconds on the screen. Only use your pointer finger and middle finger. Once in a while throw in a pinky. It’s as fast as anyone else mind you, just a little less streamlined. Like how I snap or drum my fingers backwards. Little quirks that make a person less than perfect that some piece of computing power wishes it could get its non-hands on and underline like crazy. What the hell is this jagged green line doing under my fingers while I’m dancing? Oh shit, I’m snapping wrong and now everyone knows it. EMBARRASSING! Thanks, Jellybelly27, but no thanks!

It’s only a matter of time though when technology becomes an unrecognizable part of ourselves. I'm only now considering getting back to the ol’ fashioned land line for your house lifestyle, if anything just to be able to step away from having what amounts to a tracking device on your person at all times. Can technology progress so much that things begin to backtrack, like some sort of crumbling economy? Or is it the lone beast of an exception in nature that will just keep swelling and dominating? These are questions that seemingly only Hollywood can butcher.

As for me, I’m consistently five years behind electronic trends as it is. So by that estimate, I should have an iPod around 2011, and in two years possibly upgrade to Jellybelly4. That is of course if number 3 doesn’t kill me first.

Meet Patran Fretti

A simple fact exists: There ain't room enough in this town for more than one awkward goggly-eyed black-framed glasses wearing dork of an actor. My proof is in this pudding: Every audition I show up to P. French is already there, and neither of us end up getting the part. Once we were dressed exactly the same. Granted it was St. Patrick's Day, but it's not my fault my green shirt is one of my top three shirts. Today it was the new Ricky Gervais movie. Not three minutes after I sit to wait in a relatviely empty hallway (save a strange man named Joel armed with a barrage of questions) Mr. French waltzes out and has seemingly wrapped the thing up. Today we weren't dressed alike per se, but what with my previous note regarding the glasses and the eyes and the proximity of our audition times, we may as well have been. I walked out of there confident in my performance of the one line, but I couldn't rid myself of the nagging sensation that it's signifgance was tainted simply by the fact that "I" had just auditioned for the same role. This cannot be.

My solution is this: I declare an all out war on Patrick French. Pick your sides now. Because when this boulder gets rolling, it'll take down anyone not already attached. It's been a long time coming too. Ever since Two Rooms when we'd compete for the most pathetic joke ever, we'd give eachother dagger-eyes and verbal slaps. And even now during Roshomon rehearsals with the knee touching and the head shaking and the middle fingers. Ever since we were BORN and felt the shudder of the other. I'll concentrate on taking acting classes, getting updated headshots and honing my craft later. Right now, I need to obliterate my lone competition!

My Job Is Pulling My Hair Out...Literally

The fourty-five minute drive to Lexington is totally worth it. Especially when twenty minutes after I arrive, I'm handed a phone headset to wear to cut down on speaker usage disturbing those working within three feet of me. I've officially entered the world of the phone operator.

It took a good half an hour to setup myself. And even after that it didn't work. I got one of the Voice engineers to come over and tell me I needed to push the "Headset" button. Brilliant.

After that, the day proved trying. The thing is comfortable enough, but only after swapping out the hang-on-your-ear hard-as-nails configuration. From then on, I experience several things you'd expect to see in an hysterical montage of workplace buffoonery: the headset ripping my glasses off, a mess of confusing wires, hitting the wrong buttons and swearing at customers, cutting back to me entangled in the previous chaotic mess of wires, hitting things, hitting people, writhing on the floor screaming amidst a wire cocoon. Then I saw it: the headset hanging on its out of place holster, and a single hair alighted atop it, follicle and all.

Twenty-seven isn't that old is it? Time to go!

Buffa-low

I hesitated at the fifth chicken finger. It was huge. And orange. But it's what I've come to expect from Windy City's signature menu item. I also expected it to be so delicious, which was the very reason why I was so conflicted at that moment. How fat do I want to be today? Just a little fat? Or extraordinarily fat? It wasn't a matter of space. Number five would fit with room to spare into the TakeAlong tupperware I had picked out especial. And it wasn't a matter of stomach girth. If the past week and a half had taught me anything, it's that R.P. McMurphy can suck down pounds of food in one sitting if provoked by people or special events or a varying degree of depression. It all came down to whether or not I wanted to experience a regrettable afternoon.

I decided to go the road less fat, and placed the fifth glowing finger back in it's glistening orange tub. And the tub went back into the refrigerator, wedged in between several other engorging items left over from a birthday week feeding frenzy. The lid snapped tight, the container placed in the lunch bag, and it was done. As if attempting to hide all indiscretion to my diet, I quickly piled on fare like an apple, a banana, CARROT STICKS, a Kellogg's breakfast bar.

"Did he notice? ...I don't think so. Let's just zip this up slowly."

I knew it wouldn't be long however until I was face to face again with the fowl offenders: dipped, battered, buttered, lathered, coated, breaded, fried, SERVED. The mouth watered at the thought, like Homer Simpson deprived of...well, anything. It's silly to think of, but the man tells an honest tale.

Lunch came and went with a mixed amount of fanfare. Almost always someone points out the use of the toaster oven. From my experience, most office lunches tend to be fridge-direct or, at their most complex, microwaved into another state entirely. But buffalo tenders cause a ruckus, or however much of a ruckus can be kicked up in a business setting. Beyond the use of the mostly still kitchen appliance, the pungency of the buffalo permeates the entire office space. And like gophers coworkers would emerge and inquire. I made myself scarce to avoid such situations. The items in question were taken back to my cube-space and inhaled outright quicker than the reheating. My innards put up little fuss, and thankfully so.

Who can tell though what would have transpired with an additional meaty portion thrown down the hatch? My top three guesses were pain, guilt and retribution. With the day's foody drama behind me, what lay before me now was the greasy tub which I knew occupied a substantial portion of refrigerator real estate at home. My silent hope was that they would magically disappear. Because the next time we met, and we would meet again, I may not have that same hesitation.