I wasn’t going to be one of those people who chimed in on The Da Vinci Code because I think all too often those who do spout off about the latest craze, whatever it is, just paint themselves to look like mindless me-toos. With some people it’s as though they have no opinion until someone else tells them what to think. Sadly I too suffer from a weakness, specifically the occasional inability to suppress my need to explain why my opinion is obviously better than someone else’s. I know I should just keep my mouth shut and take comfort in knowing I’m superior, but sometimes I just can’t. You see there are two kinds of people in this world: those who think like me and those who should, and I like to sometimes help the latter join the army of rightness. Chalk it up to my philanthropic narcissism disorder. Anyway, back to The Da Vinci Code.

I just don’t understand the incessant wrangling that surrounds this book. My wife and I did this as a read aloud where I would read to her before we went to bed. Being no stranger to Paris and even having attended a mass at Saint-Sulpice Cathedral where the character Silas breaks open the floor to look for a mysterious clue, we loved learning the historical facts about the buildings and following the plot through Paris and other parts of Europe. Chapters are short. Dialogue is plenty. It’s a page turner for sure. We enjoyed the book.

The part to this whole scuttlebutt I’m having difficulty with are the people who make reference to and take offense with the book’s “claims.” Characters in the book believe that Christ had a wife and kids. So what? First of all, the author doesn’t assert the book is nonfiction, so where does this “claim” come from? Even if the author believes this alternative view of Christ, as I understand he does, a work of fiction cannot make claims. By definition it is make believe. Following the fiction making claims logic we’d have to assume that Stephen King claims balloon-wielding clowns are mass murderers, that L. Frank Baum claims lions are cowards and that Dr. Seuss claims one might actually enjoy feasting on green eggs and ham in a box with a fox. Come on, people.

If someone approached you in the street and said the sky was plaid, would you take offense and try and argue because you knew it to be otherwise? Of course not. You’d assume the tool you’d just met was a few bricks short of a load and move on. If he wants to believe the sky is plaid, let him be. You know the blueness of the sky as a divine truth, one that’s been reiterated to you over and over by family and community. You grew up not only believing the sky was blue but knowing it was. You didn’t just read it in a book; you see the blue sky everyday. You embrace yourself with the blueness of the sky and make it part of your daily life. Blue Sky isn’t just a theory for you. It’s a fact. You define yourself as a Blue Skyist. The sky is blue and the blue is good.

If on the other hand the same man approached you in the street and said something for which you had a reasonable degree of doubt, for instance that it was going to rain, you might offer up some opinion to the contrary. “I don’t know,” you might say,”the weatherman claimed it was supposed to be sunny all week.” Of course you don’t know whether it’s going to rain, but you doubt that it will. The key, or for Dan Brown fans, what’s in the cryptex is the doubt. That’s what makes the point arguable.

I would therefore propose that the reason people are getting so up in arms about this book is not because of anything in the books pages so much as it is those people’s own lack of faith in what they claim to be their belief system. When religion blends with doubt the result is often a watered down religiosity in which the practitioners, fearful of their own agnosticism, hide behind a mask of piety and point fingers at everyone but themselves. This alternative view of Christ is not new. It’s been around since the Middle Ages, and if it holds some veracity, then we can assume it dates back farther than that. The only reason it’s come to light now is because people who seemingly have never been taught to think for themselves cannot spearhead their own movement and instead have to ride in on the coattails of someone more famous. Apparently “Though shalt not steal” does not apply to limelight.

The movie Da Vinci Code is coming out soon and you can bet your bottom dollar that for every zealot who jumps up and screams in protest about the movie, they’re going to drum up ten movie goers who were it not for the upset wouldn’t have had any desire to go see the film in the first place. You know what I say? Good.

Though I wonder if like in the book there was a grand-scale conspiracy on the part of the Catholic Church are we now in the midst of some great put-on organized by none other than the neo-reborn nut-jobs? Do Liberty University andThe 700 Club get kickbacks from the movie’s proceeds.

What role does Tinky Winky play in all of this?

As a language and linguistics geek, someone who thinks in terms of misplaced modifiers and interdental fricatives, I am quick to pick up on things like new turns of phrase, double entendres and “improper” grammar. I put improper in quotes because I’m a member of the descriptive linguist camp. That means I think grammar should be defined as what people actually say and therefore it evolves over time as opposed to a descriptivist who says grammar is a list of hard fast rules and those who vary from them are wrong. Descriptivists point to things like the transition from our use of thee and thou toyou as an example of changing grammar. Prescriptivists pull their hair out when they hear someone say things like Youneed to put that up or Do you want to come along?, ending a sentence in a preposition being, in their view, a mortal sin. A Linguistics professor might shudder at my concise and simplistic definition of the two (unless he’s a devout descriptivist), but you get the idea. Before I go into a lengthier geekier diatribe, let me just say I don’t care when people end their sentences in prepositions, or if they writenite instead of night or if they pronounce ask as “ax”. There is however a change in our language that seems to be occurring that even I, the linguistic hippy, can’t stand and it’s being promulgated by the media, specifically television commercials.

I don’t hear the soft drink commercial anymore but there used to be an ad where the announcer said Diet Dr. Pepper tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper. I cringed every time I heard this commercial. Diet Dr. Pepper tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper . . . than what? A pastrami on rye? Ocean water? A bucket of shit? Or is the implied comparative more complex than that? Maybe they mean to say that Diet Dr. Pepper tastes more like regular Dr. Pepper than Diet Coke tastes like regular Coke. We, the consumers, are left in the dark on this and apparently invited to come up with our own ending to the comparison. Sure Diet Dr. Pepper may taste more like regular Dr. Pepper than a plate of mashed potatoes but does it taste more like regular Dr. Pepper than its Pepsi doppelganger, Mr. Pibb? I doubt it.

Wendy’s had a similar irksome catch phrase in their ad a few months back. Wendy’s: It’s better here. Remember that? It’s better here than where? Hell? It’s better here than Afghanistan? It’s better here than a sick drunk’s toilet? Where exactly is Wendy’s better than? Does anyone remember if they even compared their burgers to other fast food joints so as to offer up proof as to why they’re better and suggest to us who exactly it is they’re better than? I’m sure the advertising execs for Wendy’s want us to think it’s better at Wendy’s than at Burger King, but I can’t help but think the ad should say Wendy’s: It’s better here . . . than when we used to serve human fingers in the chili. Furthermore what is it ? What’s better here? The food is better here? The service? Mold growth in the kitchen? I could go on an on.

And I think I will. Just yesterday I saw an ad on television for Monster.com that proclaimed If you post your resume on Monster, you’re twice as likely to get hired. Dear blog reader, are you catching on? Can you see why this bugs me as well?. If you post your resume on Monster you’re twice as likely to get hired . . .as you would get struck by lightning? Win the lottery? Because those odds don’t encourage me to post my resume on Monster. Now on the other hand if the commercial promised me that if I posted my resume on Monster I’d be twice as likely to get hired as I would swallow after eating or be held down by the forces of gravity, well now, those are some good odds. Or again, maybe I’m misinterpreting the comparison. If you post your resume on Monster, you’re twice as likely to get hired than if you had just posted it on the wall in the men’s room. Maybe those who post their resumes on Monster are twice as likely to get hired as those who are listed on the local Sex Offenders Registry. Could someone please clarify?

I know this is one of those things that I should just let ride. The inboxes of these companies are probably chocked full of emails from geeks like me saying the same thing. The rest of the viewing public likely has more pressing issues than whether a fast food ad complies with widely accepted usage rules of the English language. If Dave and Wendy and the good people at Dr. Pepper and Monster don’t care that they’re sending incomplete comparisons over the airways and therefore beginning to but not totally making their point, what do I care? I’m only one man, a proper noun swimming in a sea of ambiguous antecedents. Why didn’t those geniuses at Schoolhouse Rock come up with a catchy ditty about this one?

Commercials used to simply tout their products’ qualities and show us some smiling character happy to be enjoying whatever the ad was for. Sometimes they’d throw in an interrogative quip like Where’s the beef? or Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper too? Those were ads that made me want to buy a product instead of dedicating a couple of hours to explaining why the ads are an English language schoolmarm’s worst nightmare. Commercials were better then.

Then they are today, I mean.

You knew that’s what I meant.

Right?

Tonight my shoes are in the middle of the living room floor. My right and left sock are hanging willy nilly from the bedroom doorknob and bookshelf respectfully. My clothes never left the bathroom once I got out of the tub that incidentally is covered in grungy man film and my own body hair. Were I to invite you on a scavenger hunt in my home right now, I’d challenge to find a half-eaten sandwich, a three-day weekend’s worth of junk mail, empty CD cases and cans of diet soft drink that are only half empty. Or are they half full? In the VCR is a videocassette that dates back to my bachelor days (if you catch my drift) and at the top of my lungs I’m singing along to my downloaded 80s-era mp3′s by Falco, Taco, Devo and Barry Manilow. When those are done I plan to move on to 70s mellow gold. Yes, I’m devolving not just musically but also developmentally. My wife has taken the baby out of town to visit the grandparents. Tonight I’m batching it.

As I write I’m sitting in my throne. For some men the throne is a reclining La-Z-Boy-style chair with cup holders and convenient pockets for the TV Guide and remote control(s). Mine’s a bit more streamlined. I bought it a decade ago when it came from Rooms To Go with an identical couch, a coffee table and two end tables complete with generic lamps. The couch, tables and lamps have long since gone the way of garage sales or the trash, but this chair remains. My wife affectionately refers to it as “the plaid chair”, but I know it’ as the throne. Along with an old Bullwinkle t-shirt, this chair’s the only thing of mine in the home that predates my marriage. Well, OK, there’s that VHS collection I mentioned, but I generally keep that hidden away. Ahh, if this chair could talk! Well sure, most of what it would say would be about being covered in stale french fries and spilled box wine but it’d also talk about sexual escapades involving me and . . . that VHS collection I mentioned earlier.

Right now I want to shout, shout, let it all out. These are the things I can do without: emissions testing; overdue sperm bank bills; middle management; the lawn that still needs to be mowed; alarms set to go off at 7:28AM; and jobs that need to be reported to at 8:00AM at which point I’ll get into my car where I can lock all my doors. Wait, where was I? Here in my thrown I fell asleep and dreamed that I ran. I ran so far away. Tracy Lordes, hold me now. Warm my heart. Stay with me. We can dance if we want to. ‘Cause your friends don’t blog and if they don’t blog then they’re no friends of mine. It’s a safety dance.

How embarrassing!

You’ll have to forgive me.

You see, I suffer from My Own E-Hollywood Story Disorder. The visions always start with the same image. I’m wearing a Boone’s Farm-stained Bullwinkle t-shirt and I’m sitting in a tasteless plaid Rooms-to-Go-esque chair. Tina Turner walks in and she’s my private dancer. Sometimes the music playing is 80s glam but any old music will do nicely, thank you. She does what I want her to do which is take on me and take me on. For a brief moment part of me wonders if I can escape my responsibilities into a world of music video animation where it’s better to be safe than sorry. I start to shed tears, but they’re only tears for fears, and then I think Hey now. Hey now. Iko iko I, eh?

If a picture paints a thousand words, then why can’t I paint you? Screw Tracy Lordes. I’m ready for my wife to get home. I may be climbing on rainbows, but Lainey here goes. Dreams, they’re for those who sleep. Life is for us to keep. Elaine, if you’re wondering what this blog is leading to . . .

I wanna make it with you.

I really think that we could me it, Girl.

As I was riding around on lunch today I was taken aback by a radio news story that suggested people formerly thought to be reacting to road rage might actually suffer from something newly dubbed Intermittent Explosive Disorder. At first thought, you might suspect this new age infirmity is gastrointestinal in nature, but it’s actually much different from the silmilarly named Intermittent Shart Disorder. Allegedly people suffering from intermittent explosive disorder are prone to sudden outbursts of violence or anger. The degree of aggressiveness in these fits of rage is usually way out of proportion to whatever supposedly provoked them. Didn’t we used to just call these people assholes? Allow me to opine on this dreaded malady and the news story.

Thank goodness those bespectacled and goateed hoodwinkers are still coming up with some diagnoses for the guiltless and victimized to adopt. Weren’t we experiencing a shortgage of disorders there for a while? I mean when Attention Deficit Disorder hit elementary school playgrounds it caught on like wildfire and spread faster than the latest clothing trends but others like Codependency Disorder and Manic Depressive Disorder seem to have lost their oomph and fizzled out somewhere in the early 90s. Or maybe we just eradicated them like polio. My guess is actually that the pill pushers at places like Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline have come up with a miracle treatment for the latest conditions and whatever this new pill is, it’s just more profitable to market than the cures for those outmoded conditions.

How convenient for the drug companies, defense attorneys and psycho-label-phyliacs that the media ties this new disorder to a modern mass phobia like road rage. I just got through reading The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things by Barry Glassner. In it he talks about various fears Americans have taken on in spite of the lack of statistical evidence showing the fear is merited. He dedicates an entire chapter to the theory of road rage. Apparently the most alarming threats are the ones we can do very little about. Short of staying off the roads or driving armored vehicles, there’s not much we could do to stop someone else from shooting us in our car if they wanted to. It doesn’t matter that highway shootings are extremely rare. Because the odd case gets such substantial media coverage these fears are quick to take off with the stamina usually reserved for urban legends.

This disorder mania has gotten so far out of hand. It’s as though we’re expected to act like cookie-cutter automatons and anyone who steps out of line has a disorder. I was joking earlier about the Intermittent Shart Disorder, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the next one to come down the pike. Also look out for Abnormal Sense of Humor Disorder, Poor Money Management Disorder and Failure to Obey Stop Sign Disorder. Some highschoolers will suffer from Fourth Period Erection Syndrome while others will struggle with Caught Without a Tampon Syndrome. Sure as shootin’, psychaitrists will associate these with a chemical imbalance so that, joy of joys, the pharmaceutical companies can come up with a pill to treat them. Just imagine the money to be made all around.

I’m sure all this may sound harsh to some but just chalk it up to my Irreverent Rambling Disorder. My family and friends have long hoped for a cure. Maybe they need to adopt a ribbon or bracelet in recognition of my state of mind. In the meantime, do you think I could get away with parking in the handicap spot?

Today as a change in lunch venues I ventured into the local La Madeleine café and bakery. Before going any further let me say that in college I was a French major which qualifies me for teaching French, salting the fries, working in a call center or critiquing the many aberrations found on the menus and signage of quasi-French restaurants. When enjoying an overpriced salad, chocolate torte and two double espressos at La Madeleine, it’s specifically the latter skill that seems to rear its ugly pretentious head.

For starters the flag shown on the sign outside this establishment that trumpets itself a “French” restaurant does not even closely resemble the French flag. The French flag consists of three vertical bands of equal width: blue; white; and red. The emblem displayed on the sign in the parking lot shows three horizontal bands of blue, white and red. As far as I can tell, this isn’t the actual flag of any country but instead looks like the flag for the Netherlands flying upside down. Is this some anti-Dutch sentiment being expressed by the higher-ups at La Madeleine? Whatever it is, it’s not the French flag. I’m just saying.

Another faux-pas I saw that grated on my nerves was a sign for a drink they serve called the “Crème frappé [sic].” Kudos to them for getting the accents correct but shame on them for forgetting the obligatory second E on frappée. Crème is a feminine noun and therefore adjectives following it should take the feminine form. You say un dessert frappé (a frozen dessert) but une crème frappeé (an overpriced frozen coffee-like treat.) Notice the additional E because crème is feminine.

Another grammatical gripe was the kids’ menu that was labeled “le children’s menu.” This is just stupid. At the bottom it also says “10 and under s’il vous plaît.” Again, this is just a linguistic melange that looks stilted at best.

You know what else? There’s not a single French wine in the place. Oh yes, they will proudly serve you a glass of the Beringer White Zinfandel, but sadly your craving for gallic nectar will not be satiated here. The closest they come is a bottle of Clos du Bois, which if you pay any attention to their ads on the radio, the wine in the bottle is no more French than the fake Frenchie accented actor who does the commercials.

What La Madeleine does offer that is slightly reminiscent of a Parisian cafe is people watching. In the hour I was there, I saw some real characters come into this place, several of whom were employees of the Spa Sydell next door. They were easily identifiable because of the skin-tight black lycra they wear. Sadly they apparently are made to wear this even if their body type doesn’t lend itself to black lycra. This was especially the case with the gaysian woman who, judging by the size of her biceps, must have been a masseuse. Her thighs obviously don’t receive the same daily workout as her arms do.

I sat at the table directly across from the register so I constantly had people’s oversized asses staring me in the face while I ate. One woman was wearing something I guess could best be described as sweatknickers. They were made of sweatpant material and only went down mid chubby calf. Her pantyline was also evident because of the flesh spilling out of her underwear. People, they make clothes for that.

One sinewy man was wearing shorts that revealed several lacerations on his ankles and calves. He had a hardback book but I couldn’t make out the title. By the looks of him it was probably How to Escape from a High Security Prison. I’m serious. His legs looked like he tried to scale a razorwire fence. All for an Orangina. Go figure.

La Madeleine offers up some yummy treats, and if you don’t mind paying the inflated prices on the food, it’s not really too bad as far as chains go. It’s buffet-style so you don’t have to tip. Breads are good there too. But as far as French goes, this place really ain’t got it.

I take that back — there is one thing that reminded me of France while I was there.

Their bathrooms smell much like those in the Paris metro.

Words on any particular topic about which I’d be prepared to write a suitable entry elude me today. I can think of nothing particularly interesting to write on, but since I have been spending the past hour or so enjoying others write about how they spend their eight hours of cubedom, I will share a bit of the tedium that is my work day. Since I work in a call center, let’s start with a breakdown of what goes on and maybe a little lesson in call center etiquette. No, I don’t mean rules for the customer service person to abide by. I mean some suggestions for ye who is eventually asked to oprima numero dos por continuar in español.

Our company does not have an automated system so most people who call me are delighted that they did not have to push button their way through three rounds of Mary Had A Little Lamb before getting through to a live operator. Often the caller on the other end of my phone begins the conversation with Are you a real person? This question begs for a smart-ass remark, but usually I decline. Many people have been forwarded my company’s number by their insurance company with instructions to call so sometimes I get XYZ insurance company told me to call you but I don’t exactly know why. Again, I so want to tell them they were sent here so I could share with them my prize-winning chocolate chip cookie recipe but I do not. I am always amazed at the people who after calling say Who are you people anyway? A troupe of dancing midgets, Ma’am. How may we help you?

At some point in the conversation after I allow the caller to share their tale of woe, little of which usually ever has any bearing on how I can help them, I have to take down their personal information (name, address, etc.) I find that if I’ve let them rant enough, they’re then usually happy to let me take over the conversation and get what I need from them. Occasionally though they will want to continue telling me crap I really don’t care to hear. Such a discussion might go something like this:

Me: What’s your last name?

Caller: Johnson. So I was in my insurance company today and they told me I had to call.

Me: Right, and your first name?

Caller: Joe. You wouldn’t believe what I’m paying for car insurance.

Me: I can imagine. And your address Mr. Johnson?

Most people truly just want to be heard, even when much of what they say isn’t worth hearing.

When it comes time for me to take down someone’s address the caller will sometimes just say 123 Main Street and stop right there. Some will go on to give a city but no state. Californians are the worst about this, as though residing in the Golden State means your city stands on its own like Cher or Madonna. I like to throw Californians off so that when they say 123 Main Street, San Bernardino I always respond with Wisconsin?

Speaking of states, let me say a few words on some that warrant a talking to.

Hawaii: Without fail a Hawaiian — let’s call him James Cook — will call me and after spelling his monosyllabic four-letter name go on to say something like My address is 123 Melekalikimakaoahumaui Street , that’s S-T-R-E-E-T, Street. People, I’m doing well to get Schenectady and Ypsilanti spelled correctly. Give me a break. Sometimes I think Hawaiians get off on knowing I don’t know how to spell their heathen street names.

Michigan: Speaking of Ypsilanti, what is it with all you people in the Wolverine State? When you call you sound like the world is coming to an end and your dog just got hit by a car. These people just always sound so sad. When I answer the phone and ask how may I help you a Michigander’s whiny response is often Well, I don’t know if you can help me. So why did you call, you freaking sad sap? Because it sure wasn’t to share a little sunshine.

North and South Dakotas: Whereas Michiganders sound like they can’t bring themselves to go on living, people in the Dakotas sound like they’ve just discovered amphetamines for the first time. They’re always happy and jovial. What’s more, you know that movie Fargo? They really do talk like that.

New York: On behalf of the entire population of the United States outside of the Empire State, I would like to make a sincere apology. New Yorkers, for years we all have mistaken you for being rude. We were wrong. It’s just that we can’t distinguish your accent from that of those who reside in New Jersey.

New Jersey: See above.

Kentucky: Is your state just one big mobile home park? Being a fellow Southerner I hate to say this but you people sound like your public school system stops at the third grade. It’s not the accent. It’s poor diction and grammar and . . . let me just stop right there.

Speaking of accents, let me say something on the topic. When you ask a Southerner where they’re from and they tell you what state they were born in, you following up with Wow, you don’t have a Southern accent is rude. This is on par with telling a minority Wow, you’re very articulate. Having a Southern accent is not something to be ashamed of and therefore not having one is not something to be proud of. You mean it to be a compliment, but it is not one. It is a backhanded insult.

Other annoyances are those who instead compliment me on my Southern accent and then when I respond with You have a nice accent as well say Ummm, but I don’t have an accent. Think about it people. This isn’t rocket science. Everyone has an accent. Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter have accents. Ted Koppell and Dan Rather have accents. Midwesterners, I know it hurts you to admit it, but you too have an accent.

Moving on.

Many people will then ask where they’re calling. When I call a business I do this too. Therefore this is acceptable behavior.

At first I was reluctant to ask people for their Social Security number. In college I peddled credit cards over the phone and asking for someone’s Social Secutiy number was often a deal breaker. Now that my calls are strictly inbound, you’d be surprised at how many people give out their Socil Security number as freely as they would their astrological sign. To be honest even if they refuse I can usually get it once they tell me their name and address if I search hard enough. It just makes my job easier if I don’t have to jump through as many hoops. The less work I have to do with a caller on the phone, the more easily I can help him and thus the more likely he is to get what he wants in a timely fashion. People don’t always understand this though and instead see phoning a call center as an opportunity to stick it to the man.

Irate callers, let me take this opportunity to put it to you straight. You’re pissed. You know you’re pissed, and I know you’re pissed. I can appreciate that. But to be honest, neither I nor my employer had anything to do with you being pissed. If you’re on my phone, you’re most likely pissed because of something your insurance company did. I know they told you to call this number, but this company only does what your insurance company pays us to do including “being the heavy.” When you pay your premium each month, you are paying your insurance company to continue pissing you off. It’s as simple as that.

That being said, I love my irate callers. I will truly try and help them if I can regardless of the tone or the language they use. Do keep in mind however that although yours truly doesn’t do it, many will take pleasure in putting the irate potty mouth on speaker phone so that other coworkers can join in the fun.

Although I can deal with a potty mouth, what I don’t love are the women (it’s always women) who start the conversation with I’m calling for my son. Fine. I’ll ask for the son’s name, his address, his driver’s license number, his phone number, his Social Security number, the name of his insurance company and finally his date of birth. Get this. Whenever someone calls on behalf of her son, the son’s birthdate seldom if ever falls after 1975. Lady, whatever problem your calling about that your 30-something son has, it doesn’t compare to the problem he has because you, his mommy, still coddle him like he can’t go to the bathroom by himself. Usually these are the guys with multiple collision claims and 4 DUI’s. I wish I were kidding.

While those of us who work in call centers often have little control over the cause of your shitty situation, we do often have the ability to make your situation shittier. I can truly and proudly say you won’t get this from me, but some call center peeps look at their ringing phone as an opportunity to compensate for their own lack of social standing, lack of education or lack of pay by exerting their unwanted influence on someone else’s life. I predict the same people who can’t get decent help via a call center are the same people who get served spat-on fries at the drive-thru.

Sometimes the squeaky wheel gets the grease; Other times it gets put on hold . . .

Or given the ol’ run-around . . .

Or . . . CLICK .

Eight months ago I wrote about those creepy Burger King commercials with the guy in the gargantuan plastic head running around taunting people. I haven’t seen one of those commercials in a long time which is good because the way the Burger King himself is portrayed is just downright disturbing and sure to evoke nightmares in young children and senior citizens. You can read what I wrote by clicking here

Since posting that image of the creepy plastic head my blog has received numerous hits because of people who were searching for that very picture. The other day 27% of my hits were from people who clicked on that image after finding it in Google. As delighted as I am that strangers the world over are finding the true path to enlightenment via cocktailswithkevin.com I sometimes feel like I’m nothing more than a thankless middleman who’s shilling the Burger King plastic-headed creepy guy, a royal replica I find most disturbing. And who wouldn’t?

So I got an idea.

What if instead of the current image

People saw this image:

I got out the cyber crayons and let the creative juices flow. With a little help from Publisher and MSPaint I could turn the king of the Whopper into the smiling Lord of the Underworld in a matter of minutes. I then uploaded the file to my domain provider with the same filename as the previous image.

This sophomoric prank didn’t quite get me the results I was expecting and I’m sure the reason has something to do with the inner mysteries of Googlism that a techno-stupe like me wouldn’t understand. Before if you googled “burger king head” (quit thinking naughty thoughts — this is serious) and ran an image search my blog was one of the first couple to show up. It showed the undoctored image as it previously appeared on my blog.

Now when you run the same search, although I’ve changed the image on my blog to the new and improved maniacal masterpiece, it doesn’t show up on the Google search results page. Instead it shows the old boring image, the same one you can steal off my site or a plethora of other people’s websites. Also if you then click on the image you either get the old picture and the page in my blog upon which it’s found or you simply see the pictureless directive See full-size image with the webpage appearing underneath that.

If you then click on either the old picture or the pictureless directive, depending on which one comes up in your search, you’ll be directed to the demonic picture. Why though does it not show in the original Google search?

Part of me wonders if this has something to do with Google’s caching (by the way is that pronounced like “cashing”, “coshing” or “kuh-ching?” These things I ponder.) Anyway, is there somebody out there who knows whether my creepy creation will eventually end up on the pages of Google? Will people the world over finally see, thanks to my devilish artistry, that this image of the Burger King is really a reincarnation of Lucifer himself? For all we know the real Burger King is still hiding inside that evil mask begging us to help him out.

I need an old priest and a young priest.

You know what this site lacks? A regular feature. All the best bloggers are doing it. You know what I mean, right? I’m talking about those bloggers that have this regular thing they do each week? I enjoy checking out theendisnow.com where once a week the author features the marquis of a nearby church.Blonde Vigilante puts up one of her own fiction pieces and every Wednesday on The Search for a Good Story Mr. Orange writes about his family.

The marquis idea is a good one, but it’s taken. I frankly don’t have enough fiction pieces to make that a regular feature, and writings about my family at this early stage in parenthood would consist of little more than eating, cooing and pooing. But I’ll think of something. I’m warning you though that when it comes to this sort of thing, I’m not good at long-term committments, so I’m not promising much. How about five simple installments? Of what, you ask? Hell, I don’t know. Stuff, I guess.

Stuff.

Hmmm.

OK then. Without further ado, I bring you the first edition of Welcome to My Stuff™.

The stuff you see pictured above hangs in the corner of our sunroom. We love our sunroom. And our stuff. Originally we were going to paint the room a boring beige color and wallpaper one wall in a tea-stained floral print to give the space that Parisian budget hotel look, but I eventually picked this sunflower yellow from the Martha Stewart collection instead. We love Martha. And her stuff.

The bright color of the walls gives off a warm feeling and for the European touch we were looking for, we decided to deck the room with, among other things, remnants of our various pre-parental travels. I guess you could call this corner the Prague corner because smack dab in the middle of the picture is a marionette hanging from the ceiling that we got during our trip to Prague. We call him Barbu which is French for “guy with a beard.”

You may wonder why if this guy came from the Czech Republic would we give him a French name. Well, for starters my knowledge of the Czech language is limited to a few simple courtesy phrases, “guy with a beard” not being one of them, and furthermore even if I did know how to say “guy with a beard” in Czech, it would most likely be 19 syllables and consist mostly of oddly accented characters not found on my keyboard.

Anyway when we were in Prague two years ago they hadn’t yet switched totally over to the euro so doing the currency conversion between dollars and crowns seemed to involve first calculating the derivative for the natural log and then multiplying it by the square root of the current Julian date. I never did get the hang of it, and as a result I discovered shortly after buying Barbu that for what I spent on him I could have just as easily purchased another off-season round-trip ticket to Europe. Oh well, you live and learn.

To Barbu’s left is a small metal replica of a Czech street sign that says PRAHA. Praha is Czech for Prague. Are you keeping up in case there’s a vocab quiz later? The sepia-toned photo underneath is a postcard depicting one of Prague’s tram cars in the 1950s. Other pictures shown are the inside of a hot air balloon we rode in one Mystery Date early on in our dating days, some framed postcards bought in San Francisco, and two gifted posters.

My sister gave us the poster for Orangina and Elaine’s sister gave us the one for the 1950s Book Fair. The latter was bought with the assumption that we would hang it in the baby’s room, but we liked it too much to hang it where we would only see it during late-night feedings and messy diaper changes.

In the upper-left corner of the photo is an alligator sitting atop a wooden bowl filled with wine corks. The alligator is really only my stuff in the marital sense of what’s your stuff is my stuff. It belonged to Elaine before we were married but he’s cool enough that I now would want to consider him my stuff, as opposed to the extensive shoe collection she brought into the marriage which I would consider simply still her stuff. You can’t really tell this in the picture but he’s actually a stuffed animal. Not one I’d let my kid curl up with at night but one she might, once toddler years strike, point to and demand I get down for her to look at, carry around, and then leave for the dog to claim as his own when she’s dropped it in the backyard. Meryl, the alligator is a look-but-don’t-touch kind of toy.

As for the cork bowl, it was moved up on top of the hutch from its original location on our coffee table in the living room. Whenever we returned home from work, we would notice that some of the corks would have mysteriously disappeared. We knew the cat was the main culprit because sometimes we’d come home to find him meowing frustratedly at the oven and trying to reach underneath it to retrieve something. When Elaine or I would get the yardstick and poke around under the stove, seven or eight corks would come rolling out. Sometimes the dog would get in on the action and snatch one up to chew into tiny slobbery indigestible pieces. I should point out that not all the corks are from wine we drank ourselves.

Some are from champagnes.

The behemoth radio with the antenna that extends further than I can reach was a gift from my father-in-law. He has one of his own and claims he can get radio stations from all over the Western hemisphere. Admittedly at Sangean.com (the people who manufacture the radio) they say you can use it to pick up Morse code, military broadcasts and encrypted messages. One day I messed with it for hours trying to get something recognizable to come in on the shortwave band, but it was to no avail. We use it to listen to Garrison Keillor on NPR.

Well, there you have it, the first edition of Welcome to My Stuff™. I hope you’ve found it entertaining if not enlightening. I told you I wasn’t going to promise much. If you ever come over for cocktails you can see it in person. Just don’t touch my stuff.

Ok, you can touch the shortwave if you think you can get it pick up something other than Lake Wobegon.