UNREMITTING FAILURE

Two Shopping Days Left Until National Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash Day

Our ideal National Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash Day gift would be a trip to the swamp where the plane went down.  We would really enjoy that.  We could snoop around for overlooked debris, and in our mind's eye imagine that descent of the plane on that fateful night.  The crash occurred on our 21st birthday, exactly.  We were at Maxi's Bar in Shippensburg PA at the time, throwing up on somebody's hubcap.  Later that night our oldest brother David showed up to take us to visit our friend Dan at Bard College in Annandale NY, as celebrated in a song by Steely Dan.  The trip was a drunken one, booze-soaked and ill remembered, as was the weekend that followed.  We were too fucked up to spend too much time considering the fate of Lynyrd Skynyrd, although the extended hangover that followed felt like we'd been in a plane crash.  We went to Bard several times, and each time we managed to get (and stay) drunker than Dylan Thomas.  Anyway, hit the stores tonight for a Lynyrd Skynyrd-related gift, before you forget.  Your child, wife, husband, lover, or grandparent isn't likely to forgive you for forgetting them on this most special of days.  Don't disappoint them, or they just might put the Skynyrd curse on you. 

Tomorrow They Announce Who Gets Laid Off

We're on tenterhooks here at the UF Building, wondering whether we'll be one of the suckers who gets the pink slip.  If we do we intend to leave the building, get roaring drunk, and then come back, to announce our lay off at the top of our voice.  What are they going to do, fire us? 

We were laid off once a long time ago, but it didn't strike us as any great loss.  We were working the loading dock at a sneaker factory with a guy who had one eye sewed shut, and who stopped at the bar every morning before work.  He was our role model and hero.  Our absenteeism rate was right up there with Shane MacGowan's, so we can't say we were too surprised to hear they'd let us go. 

Deep in our hearts we've always envied the unemployed, but we say that as somebody who is foolish enough to imagine unemployment as a sort of lark, or extended vacation.  The reality is we'd be spending all our time scuffling for a new job at a time when jobs are thin on the ground.  We haven't updated our resume in 21 years, so there'd be work to be done on that front too.  Not that updating it would be likely help us anyway.  What would it say? "Spent 21 years as bureaucratic deadwood."

Anyway, today we're still amongst the ranks of the employed, and we're miserable.  Tomorrow we may be amongst the ranks of the unemployed, and we'll still be miserable.  The moral of the story is that misery is our natural element, so we shouldn't sweat it so much.  At least we'd get to sleep in for a few days.  That's something, isn't it?  Unfortunately we would still have to wake up, to an existence that clearly wasn't created for the likes of us.  Yesterday we bought the Rum Diary, and so far, it sucks.   

Ramble On

Work prevents us from blogging today.  What we need is some type of McArthur Failure grant that would enable us to blog full time without the interruptions (and consequent irritation) of gainful employment.  We want to be gainfully unemployed, and put into a position where we can look down from the heights of failure at the successful toiling below. 

Briefly, our weekend.  We slept, ate, and finished the Washington Post Sunday crossword puzzle, thanks to our suspicion that "irenic" is actually a word.  It is, and means peaceful.  We once dated a girl named Irene and she was most definitely not irenic.  It was war all the time.  As is natural for such relationships, the sex was good.  But, as is also natural in such relationships, it reached a point where the adventurous sex could no longer disguise the fact that the time not spent making love was a remake of the Thirty-Year War.

We also saw The Ides of March.  We don't want to spoil the ending for you, so suffice it to say that Ryan Gosling gets hit by a truck.  Boy, we didn't see that coming. 

We ate Vietnamese food at a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown, and it was delicious.  We had the sweet and sour punji sticks.  You can eat them, or take them home and embed them in the bottom of a pit, which you then cover with foliage.  They're a great way to satisfy your appetite and disembowel your enemies. 

Finally, we would like to say that we're good and sick of bagels.  We had cinnamon raisin bagels on both Saturday and Sunday mornings, and after finishing our bagel Sunday we drummed our fist on the table and resolved not to eat them, or any other type of bagel for that matter, anymore.  We've had our fill, and we don't care what our Jewish friends make of this.  Your bagels and us are through.  Come up with a new invention, or forget about our breakfast trade. 

Six Shopping Days Left Until National Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash Day

We're torn between buying Mrs. UF a skirt or a small jagged piece of the fuselage of the crashed plane we saw on offer on eBay.  We'll probably buy her the piece of fuselage.  It's a perfect coffeetable conversation piece.  It even has a little piece of Ronnie Van Zant stuck on it. 

The Smoky Jazz Burst into Flames

Written on the back of an envelope we found in an old box: "Write one thing--the perfect sentence that sums everything up--and then shut up for eternity."  Obviously we didn't take our own advice.  Probably because we're never going to write one perfect sentence, and so prefer to snow  you under with reams of verbiage of dubious quality.

It's Friday, so we should be looking forward to a weekend filled with kicks and excitement, a la Jack Kerouac.  Instead, we're just looking forward to sleeping in.  Aging is a terrible thing, especially when you've given up booze and drugs and so no longer burn with that hard, gemlike flame that Walter Pater liked to prattle on about.  The best we have to look forward to is dinner and a movie.  Heck, desultory (as in going through the motions) sex isn't even in the offing, as our living arrangement with Mrs. UF doesn't include a get-it-on clause.  

It's unfair, life.  We want to file a complaint.  Or find a girlfriend, someday, so as to regain the semblance of a normal existence.  Then again, we've never had a normal existence.  Our life has always given the appearance of normalcy, but nothing could be further from the truth.  We're a bubbling, babbling volcano of futility, and our every dull day is an adventure in unadventurous living.   

We're Groggy

Because we just took a two-hour nap at our desk.  It isn't easy, desk napping.  You have to remain in a perfectly upright position so that from the back you look like a productive employee.  Ten to one we're fooling nobody. 

Now we're awake and bored and trapped at the boring ass  job the Good Lord saw fit to give us.  Thank you, Jesus. 

Speaking of Jesus, last night we dreamed he came down off the cross smiling and we said "Doesn't that hurt?" and he responded, "Nah. They're Lee Press-On Nails." 

That Last Post We Wrote

May well be the most mawkish post ever.  We'd delete it, but we prefer to leave it as a monument of the levels we'll stoop to in the service of crass sentimentality. 

Climbing to the Bottom of the Mountain

It's an upside down life, the elephant's in tears, oh why is the elephant crying?  We would give anything to stop the elephant crying. Look at the tears come! Why isn't he happy? Doesn't he know the circus is in town?

True Tragedy Near the Baltic Coast

The wind in the corn is so loud.  So loud the guy who went into the corn to take a leak never heard the combine coming. 

Here's a New Felice Brothers Song (or Two) That Makes Us Happy

We saw them a couple of Wednesdays back at the Black Cat, and they burned the place down. We can't say enough about these guys, partly because they remind us of the Band, and partly because the sounds (and comeraderie) they achieve on stage have to be heard (and seen) to be believed.  Anyway, the song is "Fire at the Pageant," and is about a guy who comes back from the dead and makes the whole town uncomfortable. As for the second tune, it's called "Back in the Dancehalls Again." 

"Fire at the Pageant"

"Line of K and and a diet Sprite"