Friday Morning Hodgepodge

The first thing you should know is that you're reading this IN THE FUTURE!!! You know, at least in relation to when it was written. See, it's still Thursday as I type this... not sure the time, exactly, but I've had a few beers so I know it's late. Then again, "had a few beers," when it comes to ol' C-dog, isn't exactly an accurate measurement of time. That could just as easily mean that it's 11am on a Wednesday or right after the presents are opened on Christmas or the vernal equinox or a hundred other moments when I'm mostly drunk and entirely embarrassing to those that know me. Yeah, I'm pretty awesome. Anyway, so yeah, I'm writing this Friday Morning Hodgepodge ahead of time, as tomorrow, my morning will be spent up to my thickly attractive neck in bureaucracy at the New York City DMV. That's right... it's driver's license renewal time!!! How exciting! How rare the opportunity to stand in a long line with smelly people who hate being where they are almost as much as I hate them! It's torturous, particularly when you consider that I don't even drive, or at least not regularly. I'm basically getting my license renewed so I can drive without fear when I go back to Texas. Which is rarely.

Ugh, whatever. I'm trying not to think about what an ordeal tomorrow is going to be.

Seriously, help me get my mind off it. Tell me tales of what THE FUTURE is like! Robot prostitutes? Cars that soar like eagles made of metal, but with windshields so you don't get bugs in your teeth? Does everyone eat that freeze-dried ice cream like you got at the science museum as a kid because it's "space food?" Mainly I'm just interested in the robot prostitutes, so start there and if you have time for the other stuff, well that's just gravy. Delicious, freeze-dried gravy.

UPDATE: As I was gathering up my stuff to head off to the DMV, I realized that... doye... I don't have my birth certificate! It's in Texas! And that's basically the only thing they'll accept as proof of DOB because, you know, obviously my still-valid Texas DL is a forged document cooked up in a wayward shack out by the dump. I mean, it's printed on an old Whataburger wrapper and the picture is one of George Clooney that I cut out of a US Weekly. It's filled with lies and some ketchup stains. Anyway, the DMV are a bunch of jerks. Although, truthfully, I'm glad I figured this out before I went down there and stood in line and ran through the gauntlet and faced my darkest fears in a ring of combat and served my 100 years of solitude and all the other stuff that's involved with a day at the DMV. It's an ordeal, I tells ya!!!

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I have once again missed out on The Dark Knight IMAX tickets. Sold out all weekend. Lame-o. At this rate, I'll be lucky to catch this movie by Obama's second year in office. Or McCain's, I guess. But, c'mon. We all know that black is the new white, old, and thumbs-up about the war. Or something, I don't know, I don't really follow politics. Up until last month, I thought "Obama" was a kind of bookshelf offered at the new Brooklyn IKEA.

Ah, narrowly focused topical humor...

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Book suggestion: "The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye" by Jonathan Letham.

I like to think that I'm an okay writer. I'm not exactly blowing the doors off the publishing world or anything, but I've got this blog and people seem to like it, particularly when I'm talking about doing shots or assaulting elderly Asian men. And then I read a book like this one... written by a guy who's thinking so far outside the box, the box is just a theoretical concept like black holes or God's love... and I just feel fucking small. The stories collected in this work are all sort of science fiction-y, but they're grounded in a distinct, very human reality. And they are fucking amazing. Shit you've never THOUGHT of before. Crack-smoking aliens and prisons made of petrified, talking convicts and a traffic jam that IS the future... all of it good, all of it gripping, fascinating stuff to read. Check it out, won't you please?

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So, I found out today that I have inherited my dead grandfather's Newsweek subscription. Until 2011. Which means I'll be getting three and a half years of free infotainment every week in my mailbox, courtesy of a man whom I can't even thank. Because, as I mentioned, he's dead. So weird... reading the news he was supposed to get, being the recipient of all these hard-hitting facts and investigative reports and bar graphs about oil prices... all of which being things that he would have loved to read and digest and think deeply about. He was crazy smart, that man. Relentlessly informed. And then there's me, the beneficiary of his magazine-based largess. Like I said, I don't really follow politics... or the news in general, unless the current National League standings count as news. Going to have to try a little harder to be a little better about that. In his honor, or something less trite. Least I could do. Because otherwise, it would just go to waste.