Good Grief!

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This is Michael Nutter, and he is going to run for mayor of Philadelphia. There is one large problem with this candidate, a problem that so far has been overlooked by the mainstream media.

Never fear. Once again I am using my grassroots journalist blogger skills to keep the citizens of our fair metropolis informed. While you are watching football, I am slaving away, writing exposes about mayoral candidates. That’s the power of the Internet.

About Michael Nutter. Look at his picture, specifically his nose. It’s huge! We can’t have a mayor with a nose like that! I’m no fan of John Street, but at least when he had his photo in Time magazine for being the worst mayor in the country, he didn’t embarrass us with a gigantic schnoz.

However, Nutter’s nose is not of his own making. This handicap was cruelly thrust upon him by the capricious forces of nature, and he deserves our help and compassion. Please donate to the Nutter rhinoplasty fund. Give what you can, and together we’ll ensure that Michael Nutter gets the fair candidacy he deserves.

UPDATE: Type E rightly points out that any good fundraiser requires incentives. So here are the thank-you gifts associated with each rhinoplasty fund pledge level:

• $100 - any two Nutter Butter products
• $1000 - patch of leftover Nutter nose (1×1 square inch)
• $5,000 - one year supply of Fluffernutters

There’s some debate about whether putting trolleys back onto Route 15 (Philadelphia’s Girard Avenue) is a good thing, but whatever. The trolleys have returned, they look all cool and retro, and they replace those smoke-and-grime-belching busses.*

During many years of riding SEPTA (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority) busses from Fairmount to Center City, I never encountered characters like those on the Route 15 trolley. On Saturday afternoon, a woman sitting in the front seat interrogated the driver nonstop from Fishtown to Fairmount:

Well, I don’t know why they bothered with these trolleys. These things are slow. If you miss one, you can run to the next stop and still get on. A lot of kids will be late for school, and a lot of people will be late for work. So how fast does this thing go? A lady driver told me last week that they can go 60 miles per hour? Is that true? Well, that’s what she told me. You can only get it up to 35 mph? Why do you go so slow around the turn? Is this easier than driving a bus? It seems like you don’t have as much to do—it looks pretty easy. Doesn’t this thing just drive itself?

The return trip featured a man named Petey and his unnamed friend who didn’t get a chance to say much during Petey’s monologue:

Yeah, I call myself Petey, but don’t you call me that. I get pissed, that’s what. And when I’m pissed at you, you’ll know it. I don’t blow my stack or nothing, but I just won’t talk to you. And after a while, you’ll know I’m pissed.

One time, a guy came around calling me Petey. I had been givin’ him the silent treatment, and he showed up at my house one night yelling “Petey’s mad! Petey’s pissed!” all mocking-like. After a few minutes of that, I went out with a golf club and knocked out two of his teeth. Then I told him to fuck off and stop bleeding all over my goddam sidewalk. He ran away pretty quick, and I yelled after him, “Petey’s mad! Petey’s pissed!”

Of course, I’ve calmed down a lot. God told me I had to change, or I was gonna die, and no one can change you except you. And religion.

I got off the trolley before getting the details of Petey’s religious conversion, but I’m sure he entertained the rest of the passengers all the way to Port Richmond.

*It did appear that handicapped and elderly patrons were having a hard time boarding the trolleys. I hope this problem is only a growing pain—the last thing SEPTA needs is to become even less user friendly.

PS The trolley picture is from SEPTA’s website, but I’m unable to muster up the appropriate guilt for this blatant act of thievery.

‘Cause your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance
Well they’re no friends of mine

It is time to put these outdated prejudices behind us. We must strive to embrace all of humanity—even those people who do not dance. It is not our place to judge, and we cannot truly understand those who do not dance until we have not danced a mile in their shoes.

Shortly after he walked back to the restroom, I received an e-mail from boss-across-the-hall.

I just ate the last kosher, low-cal, low-carb vanilla Passover meringue. There’s really nothing else to write, so I’ll leave you with some eye candy.

Eye candy #1 is a picture of Pat Burrell’s butt. Clair*, don’t say anything—I took this shot before the choir started singing The Star-Spangled Banner, so there’s nothing unpatriotic going on.

Eye candy #2 is The Dessert, last week’s main culinary accomplishment.

The Dessert has many layers:

• A crust made of homemade chocolate chip cookie crumbs
• A coating of dark chocolate espresso fudge sauce
• One pint of Ben and Jerry’s vanilla ice cream
• One pint of Ben and Jerry’s chocolate therapy ice cream
• Another pint of Ben and Jerry’s vanilla ice cream
• More cookie crumbs
• More dark chocolate espresso fudge sauce.

Prolonged exposure to The Dessert will make your butt look big.

*Clair’s season tickets provide an excellent view of Pat Burrell.

Today’s art’s pick questions the role of the artist in our society.

The symbolism—namely the palette and the sword—is straightforward and represents the subject’s uncertainty and turmoil. This figure, an artist himself, faces a difficult decision: should he use his skill to create beauty, or should he wield his talent like a sword, using it to destroy the flimsy façade of a material society immersed in shallow pop culture?

The simplistic, good-versus-evil color scheme used to craft this image belies its underlying ambiguity. Not only is the role of the artist uncertain, but so is the role of the viewer. As we gaze at the painting, the smiling figure gazes back, perhaps assessing us as potential subject material and silently alluding to an impending role reversal. The mood of confusion and uncertainty is further underscored by the imprecise medium and painting technique.

Overall, this work of art, on display at Philadelphia’s Yard’s Brewery, is a valiant exploration of the artist’s psyche. Recommended.

I’ve been in the Information Technology (IT) biz for almost ten years. During that time we got some exciting stuff like the Internet, Y2K hysteria, dot coms, and dot bombs. I’ve adjusted from the comforting world of programming in COBOL/IMS/CICS on a central mainframe to the mysterious world of n-gazillion-tier applications and Microsoft certifications that expire every other month.

IT has been a fun ride, but it’s time to consider new career options. Last year, at the advice of What Color is Your Parachute, I was planning to start a cult, but the current real estate bubble has made it difficult to acquire land for the regional compound. So in the meantime, I’m thinking about becoming a shepherd. The work day would go something like this:

• 08:00: arrive at sheep pen
• 08:00 – 08:30: take sheep to a meadow, preferably one filled with wildflowers and located on the side of a beautiful Alpine mountain
• 08:30 – 12:00: sit under a tree and read; dog* will chase any misbehaving sheep
• 12:00 – 13:00: eat a delicious lunch of cheese and beer
• 13:00 – 14:30: write weblog posts on tablet PC
• 14:30 – 15:00: exercise by jogging around meadow and saying “hi” to sheep
• 15:00 – 16:30: read and write in journal
• 16:30 – 17:00: take sheep back to pen

Do any shepherds read this weblog? If so, please feel free to post helpful career-changing tips and job leads.

*Investing in a good dog is the key to a successful shepherding career.

Visiting the Salvador Dali retrospective at Philadelphia’s Museum of Art made me realize that I don’t know much about this strange Spaniard.* I’m more of a Picasso woman, I guess, though thankfully my eyes and breasts are located in the normal places.

We all know about the melting clocks and the lobster phones, but did you know that Dali dabbled in Cubism, created a rotating hologram of Alice Cooper’s brain, and was obsessed with a Millet painting in which he perceived a woman about to morph into a praying mantis and devour her husband?**

Among other things.

Anyway, Venus de Milo. One of the sculptures in the exhibit was a Venus chest of drawers (complete with furry knobs). On Saturday night Clair, Special K, and I had a highbrow conversation about this piece, discussing items to put in the boob drawers. Clair decided that he would put his car keys in Venus’s chest, while Special K opted for the remote control.

Dali, father of WTF, is my new role model. From now on, Good Grief! will embrace Dali’s Paranoiac Critical method and attempt to “systematize confusion and to thus help discredit completely the world of reality.” Dali might have been a raving lunatic, but that last sentence is a damn good mission statement.

*Scott was there too, but he is more worldly than I and already knew a lot about Dali.

** That’s a rhetorical question, Sassy J.

Thanks to Clair, who probably just wanted to relax after a long day of work last Thursday but instead endured an expletive-laden phone call about DVD players and why the fuck would they put two red holes in the back when there is only one goddamn red plug and what kind of moron wrote that worthless piece of shit user manual anyway.

Sorry about the swearing, but that is how I talk during times of extreme frustration. All is now well in digital video land, and I’ve already watched Ghost World, one of my favorite movies, and Citizen Kane, a library loan.

About being a Luddite—I wasn’t always this way. I joined my first dot com in 1992 and was sending drunk e-mails while some of you were still in nursery school.

The early nineties were dark years at James Madison University. Students had to write papers using Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS and dot matrix printers. To send electronic messages to friends on campus, you had to find student computing services in the basement of Miller Hall and request something called a VAX account*. There were rumors that you could send these electronic messages to people at other schools, but no one really knew how to do it.

During that time, I unknowingly used the Internet by joining a King Arthur listserv, experimenting with IRC, and stumbling across Gopher, a hierarchical repository of every document imaginable. I exploded a friend’s VAX account by using Gopher to send him the Old Testament, screenplays for the Star Wars trilogy, the Kama Sutra**, and the complete works of Shakespeare.

But none of this would have been possible without Instigator B, a fellow saxophone player in JMU’s marching band. In the fall of 1992, Instigator B told the saxophone section (around thirty people) to sign up for VAX accounts. He made a list of our user IDs and turned them into sax.com, a command we could use to send messages to the entire group. It was an amazing technological feat.

Sax.com took off, and soon we were using it to arrange party carpools, finalize the shopping list for band trips, and propagate the latest chain-letter hoaxes about stolen livers and Neiman Marcus chocolate chip cookies. We didn’t have stock options, but we were bleeding edge dot commers.

* “I have to check VAX” was a common phrase around campus.
** Until Gopher, I had never heard of the Kama Sutra; it isn’t something openly discussed in Lititz, PA.

UPDATE: Do you remember your first e-mail address?