floorpie

There’s a lot of talk about the difference between men and women. Men are from Mars and women are from Hoboken or something. One is the fairer sex and the better half, and the other is a walking ape, etc. etc. I don’t really know what all the fuss is about, as it’s really quite simple: women are gorgeous, and men are disgusting. There! Was that really so hard?

For those that need more proof, I offer you this:

Men are the delivery guys.

I don’t mean mail carriers or pizza delivery dudes (My friends still remember that one fateful night when the hot pizza delivery girl appeared at my door. It is now my theory that they send her out on first deliveries only, thereby hooking the household to perpetual repeat business in hopes of seeing her again (as we have).

I got side-tracked.

I mean serious delivery guys. The ones transporting heavy machinery, pallets full of anything, or appliances. They are all, to a man, err men.

I thought of this on my drive home from work today. I was early because I had to meet one such delivery person between the hours of 11 and 3. He (or she) was to deliver my new washer/dryer combo replacing the one I lost in the fire. As expected, it was a dude.

And I, for one, think that’s perfectly OK. Do I think women couldn’t do the job? Hell no… but they’re too smart to. And good for them. We, the disgusting men of the world, deserve to be beasts of burden. And the ladeez? Well the ladeez deserve something much better (were you thinking “strippers” when you read that like I was? Awesome).

I remember a time when watching the news was something less than a visual and auditory treat for the eyes and ears and was more akin to slow torture over hot embers. No, really, it was that dramatic.

You’re a kid of 10 and all you really want to do is watch GI Joe; but instead your parents have the exceedingly boring news on. Dan Rather drones on and on like the teacher in Peanuts and you are forced to learn about the important stories around the world. Such a shame.

Now, though, things are different. Now you turn on the news and you get The NEWS! Now you learn that Cameron and Justin have indeed broken up! You guys, they’ve broken up!

In fact, they Timberlake/Diaz camps released this statement:

We have, in fact, ended our romantic relationship and have done so mutually and as friends with continued love and respect for each other.

Well, at least it sounds like they parted amicably… I’m so relieved!

What? No, I don’t care if Greek militants waged a rocket attack on a US embassy, or if John McCain defends Bush’s Iraq strategy… for god’s sake people, Cameron and Justin broke up!

I just saw three consecutive commercials for varying products featuring young, chipper characters talking happily on their cell phones in public spaces. I am not sure what it is, but I am fairly certain that there is something wrong with that.

Happy New Year?

Well, I haven’t posted in something just short of forever. Why is that? Part of it is the continued lurking of the aforementioned stalkers, who are still doing their best to scour my site for further information about other people. Here’s a word of advice for you:

Forget it. You won’t find any more pictures to get your rocks off with, or any more descriptions about what I did or didn’t do with that person to then use against them, or, at the very least, creep them out with the knowledge. All of the posts that did have anything to do with anything have been deleted, or so drastically altered so as to be meaningless to anyone except me and only me. Congratulations, you’ve killed a little bit of joy in at least a few people’s lives (that would be me, and the maybe three other people that read this).

Oh, and for your further stalking edification: not everything you read is true. Much of it is exaggerated, or even *gasp* a downright lie to titillate (ironically) YOU.

Or not. A lot of it is entirely true and, in fact, under-emphasized for decencies sake.

Or a little of both.

The point is: you don’t know. Probably best to keep your mouth shut then, my momma always said (or would have if she was prone to pithy sayings… see what I did there? I lied.)

OK, none of the above was true. The real reason I haven’t posted in so long is because I went away for the holidays (MerryChristmasHappyNewYear) and came back with a new xBox 360… which takes up, roughly 98% of my time. The chance to embarrass (or be embarrassed by) foul-mouthed anonymous 10 year olds? Sign me up!

You know how your parents are in a state of arrested development when it comes to thinking of you? Despite your being an adult, maybe even a grown-up, your mom still sees you as 12, and your Dad maybe a little older seeing as you used to borrow his car.

At Christmas time it gets really bad good, and, like most parents, mine still address some presents as From: Santa.

Unlike most parents, in addition to the ones that they address from Santa that are under the tree in the days leading up to Christmas, a whole bunch of other presents show up on Christmas morning… as if he came during the night, just like always. I’m not sure when they do this, as I still wake up pretty early from the excitement of it all, and I stay up pretty late the night before (you know, writing blog posts and whatnot at 2AM).

Nobody says anything and we just go on with the excitement that Santa came! Santa came! And, I must admit, I like that little bit of extra holiday magic.

Merry Christmas…

I’ll tell you one thing about the East Coast… or, perhaps more correctly, one thing about somewhere other than LA: people here are polite. The guy at Blockbuster, even though he is blinged-out and looks like a thug, wants to know if he can help me, sir, and that I should have a happy holidays. The guy at IHOP isn’t “really” an actor, and he takes orders and delivers food with pride, he knows his stuff, and he does a fantastic job.

I want to give them both hugs and 100% tips.

You don’t often get that in LA. Service people (and apologies if that’s not the politically correct name… on the other hand fuck PC), do their jobs because they have to. They obviously want to be somewhere else, they rarely care, and they almost never leave me feeling like I want to tip them (but of course I do anyway. 20% goes to karma).

But it’s still 10 minutes from the beach…

Here’s a question, and it’s just a question: what is the fascination with tagging bathroom stalls? I’m assuming that this is more or less relegated to the men’s room as all of the women’s restrooms I’ve been in didn’t have, “If you want to fuck, leave your number.” dug angrily into the stall wall with keys, or emblazoned on the toilet paper dispenser with indelible marker.

I get the drawings. Men, when you boil it down, are really nothing more than 10 year olds in ill-fitting skin suits; so the idea of drawing a *giggle* PENIS entering a *snicker snicker* VAGINA is high comedy for us.

I get the poems, too, as that’s just artistic expression and a way for an artist to get his work out into the world:

Here I sit all broken hearted,
I shit,
I pissed,
I came,
I farted,
Ahh…

RalphWaldoEmmersonsayswhat?

It’s the names I don’t get. The tags. Why, oh WHY, would you want your name in the stall of a men’s room?

“Dude, you know the LAX Delta Terminal? The bathroom near gate A30, third stall from the right… I am THERE mother-f’er!”

…

What the hell is this?

I mean seriously, what the hell is this?

McDonald’s claims that it’s something called a Filet-O-Fish® and is described as:

Golden crispy fish filet, American cheese, special tartar sauce on a toasted bun.

Really? I guess it is technically fish as, according to the ingredients, the “fillet” is made of Pollock or Hoki… both of which are apparently humanely *cough* compressed en masse into frozen fish blocks which are later cut into fish-sticks, fish-patties, and (apparently) Golden crispy fish fillets.

As for other ingredients, it doesn’t expressly say “ground styrofoam”, but I think it’s implied.

I think that it’s also important to note, for those training to be Sumo wrestlers, that each Filet-O-Fish® contains 400 calories, 18g of fat, and 640mg of salt. Of course, my preferred Big Mac® has a mere 560 calories, 30g of fat, and 1010mg of salt… but at least then I feel like I earned it.

In all of my 32 years I have been happy, even proud, to say that I have never had a Filet-O-Fish®. “It’s not even fish!” I’d say, “Why would I even want that?” And happily away I would go, chewing a Big Mac® with smug satisfaction. I hadn’t even considered breaking this self-imposed Filet-O-Fish® embargo until today… when I was forced to.

I was running errands. I went to the MOCA store for some Christmas gifts, and then back across town to Eden (Home Depot) for some stuff I need for a couple of projects I’m working on. On the way home, hunger crippling me, I caved and went through the McDonald’s drive-thru and ordered my usual (#1 with a Coke). I drove home, nibbling on fries as I went, parked, brought everything inside, turned on the TV to watch a Scrubs re-run, and reached for my Big Mac® Filet-O-Fish®.

…

“Those fuckers!” I said out-loud.

Not only did I not want a Filet-O-Fish®, or order one, but I’m pretty sure the Big Mac® I paid for cost a lot more (and would have tasted so much better). If I was going to be weak enough to eat McDonald’s in the first place, was I really going to have to eat something I didn’t even want? Apparently so.

And so, my 32 year long streak is over. I have eaten exactly one Filet-O-Fish in my life… and it was awful, really, really awful.

Ah. So this might help explain why my truck got rear-ended (that should yield some interesting search results) 4 times in almost as many months.

According to a study by InsuranceHotline.com, a Web site that quotes drivers on insurance rates, astrological signs are a significant factor in predicting car accidents.

The study, which looked at 100,000 North American drivers’ records from the past six years, puts Libras (born September 23-October 22) followed by Aquarians (January 20-February 18) as the worst offenders for tickets and accidents.

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Stalkers are disturbing. Especially ones that choose to use this forum as a way to harass or disturb people other than me. Which, by the way, is why I typically use codenames for people I refer to on this site; because, as public as a universally-accessible website is, there is a certain amount of anonymity inherent in it as well, which is important for the other people in my life. At times, though, even that is not good enough due to the aforementioned stalker types. These are the ones that troll through your site looking for clues, putting things together, and then, inexplicably, using this information with the purpose of harming others, even if unintentionally.

It’s a strange pastime.

When I started this site almost 6 years ago, at the very beginning of Blogger’s (then Pyra’s) existence, I had a decision to make. Be open about who I am and publish it as such, or write under a pseudonym and never give clues to my reality. I chose the former while many of my contemporaries chose the latter. In my unscientific estimation, in fact, I would say that new blogs were split roughly half-and-half: anonymous and public.

Of course, at the time, blogs were still a very underground thing, and, only a small handful of the population would even recognize the word. It was a tight community of writers, artists, early-adopters, or otherwise category of nerds people that were all stretching their legs at the same time, trying to figure out how to walk. After 9.11 that world exploded and we all broke into a run.

What is my point?

I’m not wide-open on this site, but I’m nearly so. Due to my readership, and the people I know who frequent this place, I don’t write too terribly much that is really personal; but there is enough here to know a little something about me. You can find my name (David Kleeman), you can figure out where I live (LA), what I do (product designer), what I’ve read, where I’ve been, and on and on… and I don’t mind. If that really interests you knock yourself out. You can also, if you put in the detective work and happen to know me by no more than a couple degrees of separation, figure out who some of the other people in my life are. Friends, family, acquaintances… they’ve all been referenced at one time or another on this site, and if you really put in the due diligence, you may even be able to figure out exactly who they are. And this is what bothers me, especially when this information is used against them.

Of course, the argument could be made that it is my own fault… that the codenames and infrequent pictures are not enough if I want to protect other people. This is true. I depended on a certain level of respect and decency from the reading public, and that is my mistake.

So do me a favor, won’t you all? If you do know me, or the people I know, leave them out of it. It’s disturbing enough to have my friends ask me about things that I never talked about to them, but described on this site… and I’ve been doing this for years. For the uninitiated, it can only be even more disturbing, near frightening… and the bottom line is, even if this is a public site, it’s none of your business (don’t worry, I still love you).