UNREMITTING FAILURE

Politicians Like to "Spin" the Truth

Until it becomes dizzy and is willing to say anyting. 

The Tide Comes In, The Tide Goes Out

All according to some lunar legerdemain that we confess to not understanding.  But we're not here to write about the tides.  We're here to write about Newt Gingrich, and how the moon might be affecting his behavior.  After all, he wants to build a colony on the moon, assumably to raise goats and produce moon cheese. 

Newt, a Republican candidate for President, is well known for his grandiose ideas.  Could the moon be responsible for his suggestion that America establish the first rhinoceros kickball league?  Could it account for his proposal to tax poor black children at the 35% gumball level?  We simply don't know.  What we do know is that he never makes campaign appearances on full moons, and that staffers familiar with the candidate call dealing with him on such evenings a "hairy proposition."

We make no secret of our dislike of Mr. Gingrich, who once tore apart our dog and ate him on just such a full moon night.  The next day he attributed his behavior to an honest disagreement with the dog over a flat tax rate.  "Arguments sometimes become heated," explained Newt, "and Rover crossed the line with his statement that I sent a bill for viagra to my first wife while she was in the hospital for cancer." 

There is no checking the veracity of many of Newt's statements, for he is as slippery as a salamander.  However, Newt's calling himself a Washinton outsider is like calling Elton John a ladies man with a full head of natural hair.  Newt spent years in Congress, then when he resigned with an 18 percent approval rating he crawled up the butt of the first lobbying firm to come sniffing around. 

All politicians lie, of course.  It's as natural to them as wearing American flag lapel pins.  But Newt's 98 percent mendacity rate is almost 3 percent higher than that of your normal politician, and his lies tend to be bigger.   It was Newt who claimed he won the Vietnam War with "his own two deadly hands."  Straightfaced he said this.  It must be the moon that's responsible.  That or Newt is just a big fat liar, whose idea of family values is personally producing as many families as possible. 

The Flying Pinto

Not content with the El Camino, the half car/half truck, in the early seventies Henry Smolinski set out to build a vehicle that was half airplane/half Ford Pinto.  Unfortunately he was killed while testing it with pilot Harold Blake.  We here at Unremitting Failure hereby induct Smolinski into our Hall of Futility, with full honors.  A Ford Pinto? You couldn't survive in one on the ground.  What made him think the air would be any safer is beyond us.   

Sorry We Haven't Been Posting

We've been tragically preoccupied by our attempt to go out on a date.  It's not as simple as it sounds.  There's the complicated matter of getting the woman's phone number, followed by the not simple matter of actually reaching the woman via the telephone, followed by the complicated mathematics involved in finding a night suitable for both people, followed by us, last night, getting stood up.

This was at an Asian tea house (Teaism, isn't that cute?) in Dupont Circle.  We ordered a pot of tea called Golden Monkey while we waited, and sure enough it had a delicious simian aftertaste that we unfortunately couldn't savor because we were too annoyed at getting stood up.  We sat around drinking our tea for well over an hour, thinking maybe we got the time wrong, but no go.  Occasionally we would go outside and smoke a cigarette, while striking lonely guy poses that we thought appropriate for someone in our unhappy position.

Which is part of the dating life, we guess, but for us it was the bitter end to several days of agitated waiting for the date to happen, which we spent thinking about nothing but the date, and imagining how we were going to explain to the woman in question that we are still cohabitating with our ex-wife. During this time we were far too caught up in this imaginary uncomfortable discussion to do anything else, much less post on this blog.  What a waste.  When we got home we thought to check our e-mail and sure enough she had written to say she wouldn't be able to make it, but by this time we were far too overwrought to take much solace in the fact.  A wise man once said that if an answer isn't simple it isn't spiritual, and actually arranging to meet with this woman seems far from a simple proposition.  So perhaps that tells us everything we need to know.  Or perhaps not.  Perhaps we should perservere and try our damndest to hook up with her, because she's funny and cute and we like her.  Who knows.  All we know is that we've wasted several days wandering aimlessly in our own head, having imaginary conversations with ourselves dressed in drag.  And waiting around to make another date seems like more torture than we can handle.  Still, we'll probably do it, if only because it gives our anxiety a focus, for which we are always grateful.   

By Popular Demand

Here's the sweet X-Mas card Martijn sent to Mrs. UF (ex) and yours truly.  Short of the card from our mom (which was stuffed with cash) it was the nicest card we received this year.  As you can see, it shows off Martijn's obsessive-compulsive side, which is also on display on his very fascinating blog.  Thanks, Martijn. You're the best.

We Didn't Do Anything Remotely Martin Luther King Jr. Related

On Martin Luther King Day, and we're roundly ashamed of ourselves.  We could have done something to honor the memory of that great man.  Instead we laid on the sofa and paged through Mrs. UF's "Victoria's Secret" catalogue, while sipping at a coffee.  That was in the morning.  In the afternoon we vowed to do something MLK related, but instead returned to the sofa and the "Victoria's Secret" catalogue, to see if there were any pages we'd missed.  There weren't.  Come evening we steadfastly resolved to see if there was anything about the life of MLK on television, but before we could pick up the remote control our attention was captured by the aforementioned "Victoria's Secret" catalogue, to which we returned yet again, this time to brush up on the buttocks we mightn't have paid sufficient attention to the first two times around. 

We don't know why we're such a bad American, we ignore MLK Day and we're opposed to the death penalty and we don't even fly an American flag from our balcony.  Of course there are lots of Americans who are far worse than us who don't think MLK even deserves a holiday, what a bunch of racist losers.  We know he deserves a holiday, a two-day holiday even, one for us to spend looking at the "Victoria's Secret" catalogue, and another one for us to actually get off our ass and do something that pays honor to the greatest American of all time.  Or to spend yet another day looking at the "Victoria's Secret" catalogue, that's what a piss-poor American we are. 

escalator of love

Everybody it seems has done it on an elevator, but we made love once on an escalator at the FAO Schwartz toy store in NYC.  Talk about your slow rides. 

It was wrong, we know.  Kids shouldn't have to witness that sort of thing.  Us with our pants around our ankles, shouting, "THIS is the toy we want for Christmas!"

Then again, Love makes you do crazy things.  Was it love? Our penis certainly thought so.  But then again, our penis is a very confused animal.  You would be too if you spent most of your time in utter darkness, emerging only to find yourself staring at blank white porcelain. Our penis is uneducated and inarticulate, but still manages to hold down two jobs.  So it's not doing too badly for itself.  And when push comes to shove, we still think it could beat Rick Perry in a Presidential debate. 

Speaking of sex, we're going to come right out and admit it--we've never done it in a car.  It seems downright Un-American of us.  Having sex in an automobile is a sacred rite of passage in the USA, which is perhaps the reason we've never felt really grown up.  We're unfinished, like a cartoon character who wears no pants.  Why don't they wear pants? Because they've never had sex in a car, that's why. 

We did have sex in an elevator once, but we found it nerve-wracking.  We've never had sex on an airplane.  We don't have time to join the Mile-High Club, we have responsibilities.   We're too busy staring at the wing, to make sure it doesn't fall off.  We're the plane's designated wing-watcher, whether the crew knows it or not.   We can only hope there's somebody like us watching the other wing.  We can't watch both wings at once, we're only human.  And a particularly lowdown breed of human at that, if you listen to the former manager of FAO Schwartz. 

Eagle on the Railing

Yesterday an eagle landed on our balcony railing, which seems like a portent of some kind, but of what?  That we shall be asked to join the Eagles, by Don Henley himself?  Or that we shall fly like an eagle, as Steve Miller said?  Not literally of course, but metaphorically, although we would of course prefer literally, we would love to plummet to the earth to seize our enemy in our fierce talons, if we had real enemies which we don't.  Instead we have imaginary enemies, or perhaps it would be better to say pretend enemies, like Oprah Winfrey for instance.  Or perhaps it would be even more accurate yet to say that while we have real enemies they're not personal enemies, but impersonal ones like cops politicians and the like. 

And we didn't even know there were eagles in the city, perhaps this one was lost or (more likely) sent as a winged emissary to our apartment to let us know we have an eagle-like mission of extraordinary boldness to perform in our life, although what that mission would be we have no idea.  We're more pigeon than eagle, we like to walk around on the sidewalk and voyeuristically check out what's going on.  No soaring for us.  But perhaps that's about to change.  Perhaps we shall be required to perform an all-out eagle-like act of heroism, unlike the other night in the alley where we saw two rats fall out of a garbage can and fled like a little girl, dragging poor Maddie on her leash behind us. 

Are we up to the challenge?  We shall see.  We have always thought that we had a little eagle in us, but that it was buried beneath many many layers of personal cowardice.  When it comes to fight or flight we have always chosen the latter, although flight might not actually be the right word.  Better to say we have always unsuccessfully attempted to fly from the danger, the way a chicken might, in eight to ten foot flapping fiascoes.  To think that now we shall be required to meet the danger, and swoop down upon it like an eagle upon its adversary, to do battle, is quite the daunting prospect, which is why we prefer to think that the eagle was there for Mrs. UF (ex).  Let her do the eagle fighting.  We'll stand by and watch like a pigeon, on our gaudy orange feet, while hoping that somebody will toss us a crust of bread, that's more our idea of action. 

Three-Day Weekend

Mrs. UF (ex) and yours truly both have a theory that it's 10 times harder to return to work from a three-day weekend than it is from a two-day weekend.  Why this should be so, we haven't a clue.  It should be otherwise, obviously.  But something about that third day off convinces your body and mind that you'll never have to go back to work, and that the long nightmare of cubicle bondage is finally over.  If only it were so.  Instead you have to return to work just like always, and not even the prospect of a shortened work week is enough to overcome the despair that comes of having had a taste of freedom from employment only to have to return to work after all.  To earn an honest living is dishonest, dishonest to your soul and to your sense of having been born a free man only to find yourself forced to slave away at a desk or wherever for five days out of seven.  And that's if you're lucky.  Some people have to work six days a week or even seven, how dreadful, to think they survived the horrors of childhood only to step on the landmine of gainful employment.  Perhaps it's different if you have a job you like, we hear some people do.  Professional masturbaters, for example. We might have pulled it off if we'd managed to work full time in journalism, but we blew that one and good. 

This weekend wasn't much, we took the dogs to see friends Saturday night and that was fun, our friends have a house at the edge of the city and our dogs can run from room to room chasing their dogs and vice versa, it's a real barkfest.  Then Sunday we just hung out and watched Final Destination 5 which was great, supergreat even, because not only does it have a bridge disaster, it has a plane crash too!  We'll watch any movie with a plane crash in it, plane crash movies are our favorite genre.   Hollywood (obviously) needs to make more of them, instead of all these animated films for children that never have a good gory plane crash in them, like where a section of the fuselage gives way and the people in rows 14 through 20 get sucked out still strapped into their seats, you'll never see that in The Lion King.  We were going to go see Mark Wahlberg in Contraband but it got rotten reviews, so we decided to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy except the plot is supposed to be superconvulted, so we decided to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie except we got home too late from the gym.  So we settled for Final Destination 5 on television, after walking the dogs and eating chicken soup from the Mexican restaurant down the street. 

Then yesterday we did nothing, except go running, and we were like the wind.  Like the wind.  We left Mrs. UF in the dust.  And we made chili which was pretty good if we don't mind saying so ourselves, and then we watched Ghost World which was great.  Afterwards we were too tired to even do yoga, tired and panicky about having to return to work, that great scourge, someday we're going to retire and move to Berlin and take lots of trips to Poland, we've always wanted to see Poland, someday we're going to go to Poland and say "We're in Poland at last!" and won't that be fine, if the bastards don't kill us off before it's time to retire and we never get the chance to see Poland at last, that fine fine fine fine fine fine fine fine country. 

Footloose

Here's Unremitting Failure cutting loose, in a frenetic Watusi that caused Mrs. UF to flee the room.  Some people just can't handle "REAL" dancing.  We were listening to the Dandy Warhols' "Boys Better" when the spirit struck us.  It was Saturday night, we might've probably had a little way too much caffeine, and boy did we cut the rug.  Back in the day we could clear a dancefloor with our spirited improvisatory moves, and we just wanted to prove we still have it.  We still do.  People see us make our moves, and they don't walk, they run, away.  We're a one-person dance party, a disco Vietnam.  If you see us coming, make room, or we'll party all over you.