Are you there, God? It's me, disgruntled consumer.

You know what doesn't mean anything anymore? Post-dated checks. According to my online banking online account statetment online, my landlord deposited my January rent check on December 28 despite the check being dated January 1. I called the customer service number to ask why my landlord is not bound by the rules. My custom service agent was named Barbara; she was from a land where people have accents that make them seem charming and non-threatening and not interested in art or live theater. According to Barbara, back in the day a teller would look at the check and say, "Sorry, Eichler Realty. This check is dated January 1, and since today is December 28, I can't give you the rent money which isn't rightfully yours until January," but now that people can use ATM's, there is no teller involved and no one seems to care and Barbara didn't seem interested in the question of who would be liable if a post-dated check bounces because it was deposited before its deposit-me date.

You know what doesn't mean anything and never meant anything in the first place? Those stickers UPS puts on your door to remind you that only unemployed people get their packages delivered successfully. I got one of those stickers on December 28 (truly a day that will live in infamy). I called UPS because it would be more convenient for them to deliver the package to my office instead of, you know, coming to my apartment two more times for futile delivery attempts. Despite the sticker indicating that this was a first delivery attempt, somebody told the UPS computer that it was final delivery attempt. If I hadn't called to re-direct the package, I never would have found out that UPS was going to hold on to the package for a week and then send it back without notifying me. So I have to drive into Newark to pick up my package ... yaaaaaaay.

I attended a not-particularly-enjoyable funeral mass yesterday, which gave me all the incentive I needed to buy a "write your own will" package today. As much as I dislike pretty much everyone I know, I don't want them to know that I dislike them. I think making them sit, stand, and kneel through a complicated and interminable funeral mass upon my passing would tip them off, and then they might decide to skip the "putting Dave's coffin in the ground" part, which would be sad because all those chairs have already been set up. (Whether my body is actually in the coffin would depend on how convincing I want my faked death to appear.)

It's Sodom and Gomorrah times ... again!

In addition to rocking my ass like it hadn't been rocked in ages, I must thank Redd Kross for solving what had been my personal musical mystery.

Y'see, years ago I heard a song on WFMU that featured a man and woman singing a folky tune about it being "Sodom and Gomorrah times again." It was impossible to track down. Impossible! I'd given up years ago because it seemed so hopeless.

(Could I have emailed every dj at FMU to ask them if anyone knew? That's like asking why whatserface in "Knocked Up" didn't get an abortion.)

After seeing Redd Kross play with Yo La Tengo, I did the usual "this band is amazing!" research: look for mp3's on usenet and on various torrent sites, and then when that fails see what's available on iTunes. What was available on iTunes? A Redd Kross podcast. And what was one of the songs played on the Redd Kross podcast? "Sodom and Gomorrah" by the New Creation.

"Sodom and Gomorrah"! Also known as "that Sodom and Gomorrah song" I was looking for before I stopped looking for it!

Oh, so pleasing. Thank you, Redd Kross. And God bless us everyone.

Fig. 1: The New Creation in their practice space, 1970

Song here.

Oh Tannenbaum, Oh Dreidel

This is the Christmas tree I made out of foamcore posterboard and tempera paint.

Fig. 1: Like something a 7-year-old would make in art class, only 100 times bigger!

And this (that, right there) is an mp3 of Jon Benjamin and Jon Glazer performing at Yo La Tengo's Hanukkahpalooza as Dave Franz and Dave Farina, the sons of Dennis Franz and Dennis Farina. High concept hi-larity.

Twix. TWIX!!!!

My snacking at work is getting out of hand. The last panel? That's me.

Fig. 1: Actually, that's technically not me; it's a Get Fuzzy comic from a few weeks ago. Please don't sue me.

What did you do today?

I just laid out a story that had this headline:

"BOOK REVIEW: A new Ukrainian edition of
Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary"

Book review. Of a medical dictionary. By this point, I should no longer be surprised by anything that happens here. And yet ... !

This was the image I scanned for the story:

Fig. 1: I cleaned it up before putting it in the design document, duh.

Personally, I think it would be unethical if we didn't run review of the second volume. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's not finding out how medical dictionary cliffhangers end.

Confusion alert: This dictionary covers A-H of the Cyrillic alphabet, not A-H of the Latin alphabet. H in Cyrillic is pronounced "en" (er, that's using Latin letters to spell the pronunciation) and comes between M and O, so that's like a lot more letters covered, especially since stuff like B ("veh") and 3 ("zeh") are in there. It's been ages since I've recited the Cyrillic alphabet, so don't ask me to count how many letters come between A and H.

When I was a child I learned that alphabet to the tune of "Now I Know My ABC's" which makes no sense at all since there are way more letters in Cyrillic, throwing off the meter entirely. That's why the end of the song was a little anti-climactic; you'd get to the end and then non-musically have to recite the five or so letters remaining to get to the end of the alphabet. I suppose that made me associate Cyrillic with non-musicality (that and all the church singing, which was beautiful but always sounded improvised) and that's why I never became a Ukrainian-language pop star.

Yup, that's the reason.

NYC is breeding a race of Supermen

Last week a guy fell 47 stories and lived.*

Today 7 tons of steel fell on a guy and he lived.

And my leg stopped being sore a day after I stopped going to Yo La Tengo's Hanukkah shows.

I think there's a pattern here.

Oh, speaking of Yo La Tengo's Hanukkah shows, here are Quicktime movies I made of John Oliver's stand-up set and Eugene Mirman's stand-up set from Wednesday and Thursday nights respectively. David Cross' set from Tuesday will be up later this weekend.


* Don't read this story because you'll hear about his brother who also fell 47 stories, but he fell on a fence and was cut in half. That tempers the awesomeness that one of the guys survived.

[no] pictures here [yet]!

According to an old episode of Law and Order (or CSI? I forget) if you hit somebody with a car and they die within year of the injuries sustained, then you get charged with murder. Or maybe manslaughter. Manslaughter seems more fair. Also, I'm not sure I spelled that correctly because it looks like "man's laughter" instead of "man-slaughter". Shows where my head's at, I guess.

In parallel to the possibly fake "death within a year equals murder" law, I believe any money you put into a car within a year of buying it should be conceptually added to the purchase price of that car. For instance, if this morning I spent $1000 on getting some weirdo obscure part of my car fixed and I bought that car two months ago, then it shouldn't be thought of as "dear god my car is falling apart and it's taking my life with it; it's like an automotive version of the Tom Hanks/Shelley Long movie The Money Pit, only with considerably less Alexander Gudonov;" rather, I like to think of it as "well I bought the car for $2000; another $1000 is sort of like I paid $3000 for the car."

Oh, and I already put $2000 into it for some other weirdo obscure parts last month, so that's $5000 total ... which still isn't so bad. (Yes it is.) And I have to put in another $1000 sometime next month, bringing the total to $6000(which isn't so bad)(yes it is), though the service manager says that will bring my car to "100%."

(Dear god my car is falling apart and it's taking my life with it; it's like an automotive version of the Tom Hanks/Shelley Long movie The Money Pit, only with considerably less Alexander Gudonov.)

I still made it to work by 2pm, just in time to show my face and get everybody thinking I took a half-day instead of an entire personal day. Honestly, I'm not sure anyone's keeping track.

As soon as my officemate left (around 3:30) I went to my car and brought back the foamcore posterboard and paint I bought earlier. On Wednesday the editor-in-chief told me it was my job to do the Christmas tree because I'm the design department. Last year they used a ladder for a tree. Clever and thrifty! Considering the amount of paper in our office, I thought it'd be convenient to use balled-up pieces of paper as ornaments of some kind. I don't know how I eventually got the idea of building a tree out of foamcore but somehow I did, which explains why I was making a mess late on a Friday.

It came out not as well as I'd hoped, but it should be better than everyone else had expected because they weren't expecting anything.

That's another thing I need to take pictures of. Egad. I'd also take a picture of my apartment as a challenge to my stalkers, but I'm a little embarrassed that last night was the first time since I've been living here that my dirty dishes have become so numerous that I've had to start pre-soaking them in the bathtub.

Living alone, the question isn't whether I'll put dishes in the bathtub, but how soon. It took two years in Saskatoon. It's taken two-and-a-half months in South Orange. I'm really getting efficient at slovenliness. Did I say I was embarrassed by the dishes in the bathtub? I think I meant proud.

Dreidel party tonight! Alright!

The best part about Hanukkahpalooza night 7?

It wasn' t realizing I'd forgotten my ticket at home and spending an extra hour driving home and then back to Hoboken, thus missing half of the New Pornographers' opening set. That was the second best part.

No, the best part of the night was Yo La Tengo's first song, "Dreidel Party," which was a re-working of Black Flag's "TV Party."

Don't talk about anything else, we don't wanna know!
We're dedicated to our favorite throws!
Nit!
Halb!
Gants!
Shtein!

There was also an NRBQ cover which was not tiresome. That was a nice change.

Black Monday

I completely forgot that Conrad Black is supposed to be sentenced today. Kudos to the judge for initially scheduling his sentencing for a Friday (November 30) and then for postponing it to a Monday (today), because the newspapers [in Canada] will be able to run "Black Monday" in place of "Black Friday" on their covers. Would "Black Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday" really work as well?

Maybe!

Oh, speaking of not working well, my boss asked my co-worker if I was sick. The reason she asked at all, and the reason she didn't ask me, was because I was asleep with my head on my desk. I got only 5 hours of sleep last night because I didn't get home from the Yo La Tengo show until 1:45 am. Holy crap was last night's show ever good. The opening band was Redd Kross and they were amazing. They were amazing to the point of me getting angry at my friends for not introducing me to them.

Or is it introducing them to me? I forget the order in which you're supposed to introduce people and bands.

And now I can't remember the order in which you're supposed to introduce anyone. Is it old people > attractive young women > people you're dating > other women > family members > everyone else?

Redd Kross also joined Yo La Tengo onstage for YLT's encore. They did a great cover of "Who Loves the Sun," a really-happy-to-be-alive-with-7-people-jumping-for-joy-on-Maxwell's-stage- doing-a-Velvet-Underground-song kind of cover. At the end of the night, I went to the stage and picked up the lyric sheet for that song; it was printed off a computer, but at the bottom in Sharpie was written:

Chorus

Sun, sun, sun

Chorus

Good to know!

Ira's mom joined Yo La Tengo onstage for the very last song, singing "My Little Corner of the World." It was exceptionally sweet.

And I am exceptionally tired, but I am invigorated at the thought of Conrad Black being sentenced soon!

I don't think I've shaved since then, not that I ever really "shave"

Mike asked me why I don't scan my face at work. Here's why:

Fig. 1: Please don't use my scanned fingerprints to frame me for a crime I didn't commit,
causing me to drift from town to town helping people in trouble before the detective who's
made it his personal mission to track me down causes me to leave as the sad Hulk theme plays.

In addition to distorting my face, it takes a really long time for the scanner to do its work. Compare that to the speed with which I can photocopy my face: yesterday it took twenty seconds to go to the photocopier, copy my face, then get back to my desk ... all without rushing! Rushing would raise suspicion, though I sometimes think my co-workers know everything and act (act) like they don't care.

Further, the scanner is at my desk, in full view of everyone, whereas the photocopier is at the end of the hall and just out of view for our administrator if he sits in the right spot.

Action, adventure, suspense, office work!

Alphabet series: G

Fig. 1: "grease gun"