UNREMITTING FAILURE

No, Unremitting Failure Does Not Do "Pay for Sex"

So we're tearing up your check for 13 dollars, you know who you are, and forgetting this ever happened. 

It's not that we're a prude.  Sure, our Midwestern values imbued in us the belief that sex should occur only between two married people for procreative purposes.  But we ourselves have engaged in sex with a spouse while employing contraception!  So we are definitely not "uptight."  Still, the idea of paying us to have sex with you (you know who you are) is deeply offense to our upbringing and morals.  Our mom used to tell us, "You do not have sex with the postman, you do not have sex with Missy down the street, the only person you have sex with is a duly sworn police officer if he orders you to."  Our mother was very obedient to authority, she would never dream of stepping on somebody else's lawn, or even her own.  Our father was a Protestant minister who liked to take little boys under his wing and molest them under there.  Of course we didn't know this then.  Then he was a pillar of the community, whose favorite saying was "Randy Dandy." 

So no, we will not accept your 13 dollar "donation" (as you so cunningly put it) to our coffers.  We know that we live in a big city with big city morals and that not everyone thinks cunnilingus is a county in Ireland.  But we will have none of it.  We will stand firm, our virtue intact.  That said, if you have a sister, we might be able to work something out. 

In a City Near the Border with Germany

We love choreography so long as there's no dance attached to it.  Let us explain...

There was once a man walking down a street in Poland.  It began to rain.  He cursed up a storm in Yiddish.  The rain was pelting.  He had no umbrella.  An open umbrella reminded him of his wife, naked.  So he never carried one.  He darted into the nearest place of business, a junk shop.  The man who ran the shop liked to dance up and down the aisles, amongst the priced trash.  He was a fat man.  To do differently, he would require a different head.  It was the same all over.  You did what you did, and to do differently you required a different head.  So many people had the same head, but not the man who ran the junk shop.  His head was different.  Down to its immense size, and bullet shape.  And it was so difficult to trade heads.  There was the black market, but...

The rain pelted the windows.  It was dark in the shop.  The owner danced.  The shop smelled of age and garlic and furniture polish.  The owner paid no attention to his customer.  The customer paid no attention to the owner.  He stared at the rows and rows of junk, and wished he had a different head.  There is no cure for longing.  The owner, for all the customer knew, was the only happy man within miles.  The customer picked up an old handkerchief monogrammed with the initials AH.  It was 1939. He stuffed it into his mouth and gagged on it... 

In the Midst of Beating Ourselves Up

Over failing to write blog entries we should remind ourselves that we're doing something we haven't done for years, namely write blog entries at night.  We hope it's the start of a trend, because at the office we seem capable only of napping while sitting up and checking (constantly) our online dating sites for updates, which never come.  Oh, women come and visit our profile, but they never write anything.  It's like we're Mr. Pibb or something.

Anyway, we like blogging at night, because we can smoke all the cigarettes we want and drink diet Dr. Pepper (which of course we could do at work too, but don't) and look out the window at the people passing by, most of whom appear to be joggers or bikers training for the next triathlon.  And we can let our gaze wander to our own artworks, like "Ratbird (1992)", which is so named because we were trying to paint a blackbird but it ended up with what looks more like fur than feathers.  We also failed completely in our attempt to paint a branch, and as a result it looks like he's walking up a very steep hill.  It would probably bring millions at auction and win us acclaim as an outsider artist, but we don't want fame or fortune and gave up art decades ago, at exactly the same time our then cat Sadie walked through our blue paint and then proceeded to leave a set of perfect blue cat paw prints leading across the floor, a work so brilliant it shamed us into quitting forever.

Of course in the midst of all the blogging and gazing we end up smoking too much, and have to lie down for a moment on the couch until that temporary feeling of cigarette overdose passes.  That's the problem with cigarettes, they bring inspiration and then nausea.  We felt like we deserved to smoke lots of cigarettes tonight because we spent 40 minutes on the treadmill this late afternoon, burning off the cancer.  The treadmill in our building is dangerous because you can jack it up to high rates and nothing happens, then suddenly it kicks into its true speed and nearly hurls you into the rear wall.  It's a duplicitous machine but it's all we have, like a wife who is all treachery but is the only female around who will put out.

Random Observations

Lately we've been going to restaurants and ordering salads, and just as the waitress is walking away we say, "Oh, and could you throw some braised squirrel heads on top of that?"  It's our idea of a joke, but we're taking a chance that the chef just doesn't happen to have some braised squirrel heads lying around.

We've been drinking coconut water and feeling guilty about it, because it's expensive and evidently Gwyneth Paltrow is championing it.  But we can't help ourselves.  It's delicious and refreshing and makes us feel like we're somebody else, the kind of person who enjoys coconut water.  When we're obviously not the sort of person who enjoys coconut water.  We're the kind of person who enjoys diet Dr. Pepper and his nefarious alter ego, Mr. Pibb.  We've been thinking about writing a Jeckyll-Hyde parody called "Dr. Pepper and Mr. Pibb," but beyond the title, we've got nothing.  All we know is that Dr. Pepper is a sophisticated drink (it's a physician for Christ's sake) while Mr. Pibb is a nasty twisted beverage that likes to trample little girls, late at night, in the street.  Needless to say we're a Dr. Pepper man.  Mr. Pibb is for hairy-shouldered men who wear wife beaters, and who think Ted Nugent should be President. 

 

Current Events

We just ate a tongue taco.  On the plus side, we did something adventurous.  On the negative side, there's a cow out there now who has to learn sign language.  And we're not the only ones with an adventurous palate.  This morning Mrs. UF (ex) was greeted by some Rudi poop on the bathroom rug.  It was a festive fluorescent orange.  This perplexed the ex-, until she realized her ear plugs were missing.  Evidently, foam rubber is pleasing to Rudi's palate.

On the life side of things, we're screwed.  We're addicted--and we're talking crack-style addicted--to these dating web sites we were foolish enough to sign up for.  We're on them all day, and all night, long.  It might be one thing if we ever got an actual date, but we don't.  Obviously there is something we wrote on our "profile page" that is so offense to women it effectively puts off every one who runs across it.  We stare at our profile page and try to figure out what it is (we refuse to accept it's our photograph), but we have no luck.  It could be the part where we say we refuse to take politics seriously.  That's a hanging offense in the town we find ourselves in.  Our perhaps it's the results of our "personality test," which chose to highlight (it's at the very top of the list) that we're "more messy."  More messy than who, we wonder.  It's not like we're a hoarder or regularly defecate on the kitchen table.  We keep a clean apartment.  We wish we could say the same for our mind.

We fall short in many areas, compared to our fellow prospective daters.  Evidently there isn't a single person in the Washington DC metropolitan area who hasn't competed in a triathlon, or is currently preparing to participate in one.  Us, we weren't even sure how to spell the world.  And evidently we're also the only person who hasn't either spent several years in Africa, backpacked across Laos and Cambodia, or biked across Bolivia.  We biked across a Bolivian once, but that was an accident.  It messed him up pretty bad though.  He said some things in Spanish to us that totally transcended the language barrier.  For instance, evidently we're cursed to be raped by a llama. And the llama's uncles and close drinking companions.  

The thing that really gets us is that it's the rare poster who isn't out to save the world.  We can't even save coupons, how are we going to save the world.  We have nothing to write to these people because we have nothing in common with these people, because we believe the world can't be saved.  You can do some successful tinkering here and there, but while you're helping to bring clean water to people in the Congo they're busy helping wipe out every rare species of wild animal that lives in the Congo.  The world is a clusterfuck, which we think is what our profile implies, and is why no one wants to go out with us.  We're a defeatist, a futilist, and a pessimist, and we don't care whether you think the glass is half full or half empty, we just know you don't want to drink what's in it.  Not if you don't want dysentery. 

Keep Your Enemies Close

We just found out we live within 3 or so blocks of Ian MacKaye.  Our oldest, our ancestral, enemy! We knew there was something wrong with this neighborhood.  We didn't let the hordes of superfriendly Salvadorans, who sell baggies filled with sliced mango out of coolers on the street along with stalks of sugarcane you could use for self-defense, fool us.  We have yet to see the King of Straightedge, but if we don't we're going to shout, "Have a cold beer already, you joyless puritan!" and then hide behind a Salvadoran.  Although it's hard to hide behind a Salvadoran, they're so short.  We're not exactly tall, but we're a giant by Salvadoran standards.  

Actually, we like Mt. Pleasant, and are slowly making the Salvadoran/Mexican food that abounds here our staple diet.  Tonight we plan to try--we've been trying for days now--to order a cow tongue taco at the little taco shop in our building.  We've been loath to do it, because we're afraid that the tongue, before we can eat it, will talk to us.  Lord knows what it will say.  Probably, "Don't eat me."  Or maybe it will just moo.  There's a great Mexican/Salvadoran joint about two blocks away called Haydees.  Like Hades.  Walking in, you can't help but be reminded of the vampire bar in "From Dusk Til Dawn."  They have a great Mexican jukebox, and a shrine on the wall to Selena, and the outside is adorned all year round with Christmas lights.  It's a festive place, if a bit dim inside.  Still, they make great pork and cheese papusas, and a great papusa is hard to find.

All the old Hispanic men in their cowboy hats hang outside of the 7-11 for reasons that we don't understand. Perhaps the 7-11 reminds them of Mexico.  Further along there's a place that advertises Mexican/Salvadoran/Italian cuisine.  We won't go in there.  The Italian angle is just too freaky.  We do spend a lot of time in the Dollar Star, which is like the Dollar Store only better.  In the shop window there are displayed flamenco guitars, Salvadoran flags, balloons, a hookah, various toys that you won't find at Toys-R-Us, and you get the idea.  You never know what you might run across in this place.  We found an actual ashtray, which evidently aren't sold anywhere else anymore.  It's black plastic and only cost a buck ninety-nine.  We also bought nails, to drive into the tires of Ian MacKaye's car, the minute we figure out which one is his.  We're just kidding.  

Fact is we love our new neighborhood.  Walter "Big Train" Johnson, the dominating right-handed pitcher for the old Washington Senators (he played for 20 years, from 1907 to 1927), lived right across the street. He still holds the major league record for shutouts (110) and is second in wins at 417.  He led the league in strikeouts for eight (count 'em, eight) consecutive seasons.  That's cool.  Also, most of the music coming out of passing cars is incomprehensible to us.  Makes us feel like we're living in a foreign country.  Which we are.  Spanish is the language spoken around here, and if we weren't such a lazy bastard, we'd learn it.

Sad News

The village of Fucking, Austria, has decided to change its name.  This follows years of disappeared road signs, and lots of people passing through and snickering.  No word on whether the nearby villages of Shagging, Porking, Boinking, Diddling, and Randy for Hot Love Action will follow suit. 

*Thanks to Littlestown UF correspondent Ben Ricci for this story.

Rudi's Secret Hiding Place

Here is why Rudi and yours truly are exactly alike.  He likes to hide beneath the sofa, only to cautiously stick his head out when something pisses him off to bark nonstop until Mrs UF (ex) chases him back under. We do the same thing with the bed.  We hide under there, and when something on the tv news pisses us off, we emerge (or rather our head emerges) and we bark and bark and bark.   Evidently there's a dog in MUFEX's building who makes a tremendous jingling sound as he walks down the corridor and said jingling dog never fails to make Rudi apoplectic.  Makes MUFEX apoplectic too.  Personally, we don't think it's the dog's fault that he jingles.  Dogs don't jingle naturally.  Obviously his honors have bedecked him in jinglers, maybe they're hippies or something.  By the way, we just have to say that we love MUFEX's new red polka dot sofa.  It's whimsical, like she's Mary Tyler Moore or something.  And it's big, so you can actually spread your entire length along it.  Our sofa is short and squat, which is not its fault; it was born that way. Still, we look at it at night and silently think to ourselves, "Why can't  you be longer?"  Our sofa also sits really close to the floor, since the legs got misplaced in the move. 

List

We've got a real date for this weekend! With a redhead no less, which we have always warned people never to date redheads because they're erratic and are, of all the hair colors in the world, the first to pick up a sharpened knife during a minor domestic dispute.  We have personal evidence of this.

Anyway, there are things we need to prepare our castle, should she wish to return to it, for her presence.  We need new sheets, because the old ones date back to the Reagan era.  We know this because they've got Ronald Reagan's face all over them.  In addition, we need a second pillow.  One pillow is fine for one person, but one pillow for two people is bound, seeing as how we're dating a redhead, to end up with our staring down the wrong end of a very sharp knife.  We also need condoms.  These need no explanation.  They are, however, an incredible piece of wishful thinking on our part. 

What's more, we need mood-setting candles.  Scented, preferably, to cover up the smell of cigarette smoke.  We also need Listerine, to hide the smell of nicotine on our breath.  We also need to buy something to put in our refrigerator.  We don't want her to open it up and see that we actually own a fridge with nothing in it but two Hershey bars and the wrapped up remains of a chicken taco. 

Any suggestions on your part as to what we need to buy would be appreciated.  A plushie outfit? Some erotic toys?  A sex pizza? (We just threw that in to see if you were paying attention.)  A copy of The Guns of Navarone, in case she has a Guns of Navarone fetish?  A new bathroom rug? How important are bathroom rugs to women, anyway? Ours has a kind of bleach blemish in the middle of it, and we don't want her to look at the bleach blemish and say, "That did it, the whole remarkable sex thing is off." 

Oh my God! We almost forgot the Rush kimono!  Nothing turns on a woman like saying "I'm going to freshen up" and then returning naked beneath a Rush kimono.  Or perhaps wearing a leopard print banana thong beneath a Rush kimono.  It works every time.  But where are we going to find a Rush kimono on such short notice, you're wondering?  All we can say is it's a good thing we've got Neal Peart on speed dial...

You May Be Wondering

Where we've been lately.  The truth is not pretty.  We've fallen into a serious addiction to online dating sites, which promise you the perfect match but turn out to be cruel, frustrating, cold-hearted places that only succeed in accentuating your lonely status as a single person.  We've been wallowing in the failure that comes with sending out hundreds of e-mails and receiving no replies, except from women in Minnesota who sound suspiciously like prostitutes.  But perhaps we're wronging the woman of Minnesota.  Still, even if they're good hearted souls who really will "love us long time," how do they expect us to get to Minnesota?  Magic pneumatic tube? 

But we've had it.  We're going to try to break our psychological addiction to online dating and get back to blogging, where our real friends are.  We apologize for abandoning this site to the elements. There are weeds growing everywhere, mice have infested the box of cereal we leave here for snacks, and what appears to be a wolverine has been busy converting Unremitting Failure into an online wolverine dating site.  We had to give him $20 to get rid of him.

We think one of our major problems is we wrote our profile just like we write this blog.  We didn't attempt to hide our pessimism or our belief in the futility of all human (and hence trivial) pursuits.  We suspect that women read our site, snidely said, "There's a real ball of fun," and moved on.  We should have lied through our teeth, talked about how wonderful it is to be alive and how we were fully satisfied with our rich and fulfilling life and lacked only a soul mate to share it with.  We should have said we loved camping and our exciting job and how we looked forward to scaling Mt. Kilimanjaro this summer, and that we speak three languages, one of them the language of love.  But no, we told the truth.  They say the truth will set you free.  Perhaps it will.  But it will never get you a date. 

One last thing: We did get a date.  With a woman from Alexandria.  That's 9 miles away but not accessible by public transportation.  So we wrote her a letter admitting that we didn't have a car and more or less implying that we didn't have a driver's license and informing her that we smoked and were a recovering alcoholic.  We never heard from her again.  And we realize that it was the imp of the perverse who wrote that e-mail, as a means of self-sabotaging the whole affair.  So maybe we don't even really want to go on a date after all.  Maybe--and boy, would this be like us--the whole thing has been an elaborate means of distracting ourselves from the fact that we're broken-hearted that our marriage has sunk and we're on our own and we're getting old and we're lonely, oh what a (sing it Andrew Gold) lonely boy.