ian glazer's tuesdaynight

It’s Spring. The cherry blossoms have blossomed. With blossoms come bees, birds, and tourist. Ah yes, ladies and gentlemen, the tourons are coming, the tourons are coming. And what can we expect from this new crop of gullible gawking goobers? Traffic, for a start. Apparently, the basic nationally-known traffic rules are some how different in Washington. Simple rules, like - green means go and red means stop. I think that we ought to institute “National Use Your Freakin’ Turn Signal Day” some time around Memorial Day. What else can this year’s yokels provide? Much needed dollars for a our region? Naw, I doubt it. At best we’ll get some bumbling fool trying to trade in Confederate money for 5 for $10 t-shirts on the Mall. We’ll also get the comic mislabeling of historical places. Everyone knows that thing with the big dome is the White House and that large stone obelisk is the Washington Memorial and that thing where Thomas Jefferson is standing is Monticello. (No joke, I was on a flight recently with high school students on their class trip to DC. And yes, they provided the content for this paragraph. Apparently, civics class in California (where the students were coming from) is optional.)

Okay, this is terrifying. I mean come on… you are walking along minding your own business and the next thing you know a huge inflatable moose is following you down the street… a huge goofey smiled moose. I could happen to you. It happened to me on Saturday. It was a Cherry Blossom Festival Parade… what a day: gray and rainy… and not a cherry blossom in sight. So, as Ken pointed out, the Department of Defense needs a huge order of eye glasses, Coke-bottle variety. Our captains hit boats. Our pilots hit planes. Next we’ll hear that our tank drivers are driving through Taco Bells… literally. Careful now, watch carefully as the tax-cut issue occupies our minds while we slide ever so gently into a minor land war in Asia. (And we have all seen the Princess Bride and know not to get in to a land war in Asia.)

So what is foot and mouth disease? Besides the fact that because of it, the UK has to kill something like 2 million sheep. (Insert sheep-shagging joke here.) According to an official site in the UK… Foot and Mouth disease is a highly infectious viral disease of cattle, pigs, sheep and goats characterized by the development of blisters in the mouth causing considerable salivation and on the feet resulting in lameness. Death is not usual but animals cease gaining weight and production in dairy cattle falls. There, aren’t you glad I looked that up for you? My trip back to Edinburgh was awesome. The city has really become much more cosmopolitan, more European. This to some is a good thing and others a bad thing. A lot of this change was triggered by the newly form Scottish Parliament. I saw the Parliament’s Debating Hall. A typical Scottish debate runs something like the following: MP from John ‘o’ Groats: Yeeesssss! MP from Kinlochewe: Nooooo! MP from John ‘o’ Groats: Yeeesssss! MP from Kinlochewe: Nooooo! MP from John ‘o’ Groats: Yeeesssss! MP from Kinlochewe: Nooooo! MP from John ‘o’ Groats: Yeeesssss! MP from Kinlochewe: Nooooo! MP from John ‘o’ Groats: Yeeesssss! MP from Kinlochewe: Nooooo! MP from John ‘o’ Groats: Yeeesssss! MP from Kinlochewe: Nooooo! It is strange going back to a place that you lived in a long time ago and seeing some things have changed and others haven’t. One thing I still can’t get over the shock of is seeing Scottish women with fake tans. Yes sir, there is nothing stranger than a typically pasty-faced Scot with bright ORANGE skin. It just is unsettling. So in the rush to leave for vacation, and my previous trips, I realize that we all missed a very important anniversary. Sometime around the end of February was the Tuesday Night List 3 Year Anniversary. Now, I know that this is short notice, but I think we all can dig deep, show up around 9:30 or so and celebrate the simple fact that another Tuesday has arrived.

I am in LA right now… by way of Texas. Jeez, I love this travel thing. The following is something I wrote on a plane back from Texas to DC. I am not going to be at Toledo tomorrow, but that’s no reason for you not to be. i March 1, 2001 4:33pm EST AA DFW - IAD I am sitting under a life raft. ? A life raft? I am at 33,000 feet in a 727. I am sitting under a life raft? So let me get this straight… The plane a gracefully landed on the mirror serene ocean. Calmly the stewardesses, instruct us to put on our life jackets. We sit, silently, like an obidient classroom. This lithe little ladies push the appropriate buttons (four of them) and the 42 person raft, a wadded ball of yellow plastic, drops happily from the cieling like an oversized smilie-face. We sit calmly, seatbelts still fastened. Oh my. A bit of water is seeping through the carpet below my feet. The stewardesses haul the single life raft to an exit row with open window over the wing. Calmly, exactly 42 passengers, filed out of the cheerfully floating plane, on to the wing. They hop into the now inflated life raft. Off for adventure. Meanwhile, the rest of the passengers sit silently, hands folded on their laps. And as the cold black water sneaks up over my head, I wonder if I am free to move about the cabin. OR The plane hits the water like a Gallager-esque sledgehammer into an overripe watermellon. First class is no where to be seen. Water is gushing in where the front of the plane used to be. Amidst the cacophonous screaming and wailing, I hear the guy next to me say, “Hey, we’re sitting under a life raft.” “Fuck this shit,” I yell jumping up in my seat and start mashing the buttons and pull-tabs to get the life raft out. It falls on me like the tons of bricks it is. This thing can float?! Feeling the water at my groin, I figure that following instructions at this point will only lead to an early grave. I pull the overly labled, “Do Not Pull Until Outside” tab. The yellow hulk of plastic explodes outward as the nitrogen canister starts pumping gas into the wrapped plastic mess. The expanding boat pins me and the guy next to me under itself just inches above the waterline. “Nice move, asshole,” says the guy next to me. I shrug my shoudlers and start wadding out from under the now sinking semiplane. Getting clear of the giant yellow plastic oppresor, I find that, in fact, the front of the plane is mostly not there. Somehow me and a couple of pissed off business travelers haul the still expanding yellow Big Bird-sized rubbery ducky out of the semiplane and into the open ocean. “Well,” I say cracking open one of the $4 beers that another person in the raft salvaged, “Even with this wind, we’ll probably be late. Fuckin’ United!”

I have a drawer of socks. (I’m sure that most of you have something similar as there are very few ways to store socks besides a drawer or possibly a basket.) I am puzzled, though, by this sock drawer and why I can’t seem to get all my socks in it and still close the drawer easily. Socks are a convenient way, when packing a suitcase, to take up the spaces that occur in between shoes or in the corners of the case. Socks provide an ideal way to maximize every useful bit of storage in a suitcase. But here’s the odd thing about socks and drawers, socks are not self-leveling. Unlike water, which if you put in a drawer, will find its own level. Socks simply do not level themselves out. So when you try and close your drawer of socks, it never closes easily. Some little bit of a sock you never wear is always sticking out in place or another. Can you imagine a drawer of self-leveling socks such that when you put a sock in it, the drawer reorganizes itself to accommodate the socks perfectly ensuring that the drawer will close? Wow!

The day is upon us. The day which is proof that global conspiracies exist. Yes, that’s right. It’s almost Valentines Day. I hate Valentines Day. I hate what it does to people. I hate how god-awfully stupid people act. It generally makes me want to wear a large foam hand (with middle finger extended) and walk around restaurants mocking people. But why, Ian? Why do you have such amazing bile for this innocuous holiday? A day to express love and joy and… SHUT THE FUCK UP! (Sorry, I know this is a family show, but I am having a hard time holding back) The day is the biggest conspiracy of all. FTD, Hallmark, Zales, and Ronnie Mervis have all teamed up to bring us this ridiculous day. Why exactly do we need to be reminded of the people around us and how much we care for them? Shouldn’t we be doing that every day? And why is this the only day of the year that the average guy tries to figure out a) what being romantic is and b) tries to implement on that plan? Folks, let’s face it, if you spend 364 days of the year being an uncaring, unromantic, belly-button-lint-picker, you are not going to get it right on Valentines Day… it just ain’t gonna happen. With that in mind, please, stay at home, don’t try to be cute by buying wilted roses from some guy on the street corner, don’t attempt to write a sonnet (especially if all you can think of is “There once was a man from Nantucket.”) At any rate, it took me 2 hours to get to work this morning… 2 hours to go 16 miles. I walk faster than that. In fact, I walk backwards faster than that. Ah, love is in the air.

This sums up a lot of my angst. http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18607-2001Feb2.html

So one week in to the new Presidency and what do we have? * The Californian power problem isn’t something the national can help out with. * Dissolving the separation between Church and State is. * DC’s license plates apparently are too political for the W who removed them from the Presidential limo… claiming he did not want to make a politcal statement. Correct me if I’m wrong, but as a President all you do is make political statements. Now I have never really believed that there is a separation between Chruch and State. It’s something that is paid lip-service, but that is about it. Remember (thanks to our new Pres) women don’t have the right to choose what to do with their bodies, but the Federal government has the right to endorse religious views. (Conversational Turn Signal) So the Superbowl ads weren’t that good. Monkeys are funny and thus the ETrade ad was funny. Otherwise, no a heck of a lot stood out. Except… did anyone notice the Verizon ad? It showed off the capabilities of SMS… for what purpose? A couple getting together. AH HA! I called it. SMS is only going to be used for sex. I called it.

I’ve been sitting on this email for a while, incubating it a bit. It’s not quite cooked, but I think it will do. I issue a challenge. I will give any $100 per device if they can get the following devices to a) show the exact same time (down to the nanosecond) and b) run perfectly in sync for a day. The devices are as follows:

• 2 analog wristwatches, both quartz movement
• 1 cellphone (AT)
• 1 analog clock in the dashboard of my card
• 1 digital clock in my car stereo
• The clocks on my oven, microwave, and Replaytv

Let’s see… 8 devices, $800. Not a bad deal. But it’s completely impossible. And why is it impossible? Because none of those devices actually measure time. They measure a shadow of time, a beating of quartz crystal or the tick of some far off timeserver. But, Ian, I have a watch; it measures time. Wrong. You have a device that clicks out arbitrary segments, which you call time. There is no time in your wristwatch; you can’t refill it. You simply replace the battery, and a battery contains potential electric energy, and not time. Think of this. Time is so arbitrary that we can simply “Spring forward, Fall back.” I can make it be whatever time I want just by monkeying with my watch. At most, time is an agreed upon convention of life. Time has become completely useless to me. Well, completely might be a bit strong. Time is convenient for paying bills, catching movies, and missing airplanes. I am tired of people (myself very much included) worrying about time and their lives. “I didn’t do this by age X.” “I wish I had done Y when I was younger.” A new decree: there is no point in one’s life when it is too “late” to start something new. Caveat: It is probably to late to start nude modeling for porno mags after the age of 60… in some cases, even earlier. One must live their life immediately. There is no arbitrary divisions of life; it is all now. I’m back in town for, I believe, a month (we all agree on what a month is? Right? 30, no 31, no 28, days!)

When I tell you that my meeting was on the corner of Tank Destroyer Blvd and Hell on Wheels Road, I’m not kidding. I love the Army. I really do. No other organization can spew sentences out with out using actual words, but instead, use acronyms. “The DOIMS ATS v7 could use RPM ASAP.” That ain’t English. And now… I’m in LA. I won’t bore you with my usual anti-LA droning. I do have to share an experience of one of my coworkers. He was in a bar in downtown LA and couldn’t figure out why a part of the bar was roped off. A little while later, an older gent, surrounded by imporbably attractive women, entered the bar and was escorted to the roped off section. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Hugh Heffner, and his peeps. Apparently, he really does travel with Playmates, and they are attractive, even without the airbrushing.