The Chronic Curmudgeon

What’s a blog?
Technically, it’s short for “web logs” (get it?) and refers to any online journal or collection of thoughts, news, opinions or other useless rambling. A true blog exists only when there is interaction -- interaction between the audience and the material (in the form of links to other opinions, news, or collections of thoughts), or especially interaction between not only the author and his/her readers, but between the readers and one another.

That’s what the blog gurus want us to say. Personally, I think we take ourselves a bit too seriously. Let’s face it: a blog is where people with pretensions of semi-importance go to inflict this pretension on the world. We carve out our little corner of cyberspace, we sprinkle it with our believed brilliance, and we expect and hope that people will come.

Why “The Chronic Curmudgeon?”
Read me for a week, and you’ll know. I’ve been on this planet for almost 37 years now, and you can count on your fingers and toes how many days that something hasn’t pissed me off.

Why’d you disappear for more than two months?
Contrary to popular belief, it wasn’t because Interpol finally caught up to me; I still have those weenies fooled. I just had some spring cleaning to do with my life. And I wanted to try and write a novel.

Why are you back?
Remember those pretensions of semi-importance I mentioned a couple of questions back? (Good - you are paying attention!) I am a true child of my generation, in that I’m all about instant gratification; I crave the immediate feedback and self-importance that a moderately well-read blog delivers.

Where’s home?
I was born in New Jersey, moved to Hawaii when I was 1, moved to Minnesota when I was 5 and stayed there for the next 21 years. Since then, I have lived or spent great amounts of time in Orlando, the Washington DC area, Boston, the New York City area, and the Palm Beach County area. So I don’t really have “home,” per se. Of all of these, I guess I feel most comfortable in either DC or south Florida, although Boston has a special place in my heart.

You’ve been in New York all this time, and you’re still not comfortable there?
No. I hate New York.

Why? It’s the city that never sleeps! If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere! What’s not to like?
Because it’s all that and it knows it. New York is that homecoming queen from high school who thought she was too good to even say hi to you in the halls, much less ever date you. This area is the most self-centered, pretentious, trend-whorish, appearance-focused, status-conscious place I have ever lived in -- and I spent time in DC!

It's ridiculously overpriced, too -- you pay for the "privilege" of living here, but unlike similarly expensive California, you don't get Mediterranean weather that justifies your investment. You're just paying extra because New York thinks itself worthy of that cost of living. I hate that. And I hate it because it has to be the only place in the world where you can be surrounded by a metro area of 20 million other people… and yet be totally and completely alone.

Ginger or Mary Ann?
That’s easy. Mary Ann. I’ll take a girl who knows how to milk a cow any day; they’re much more… interesting later on.

Vanilla or chocolate?
Vanilla.

What are you reading right now?
I just finished A Salty Piece of Land by Jimmy Buffett. It was great for the first 300 pages and then slid quickly into George Lucas, everyone and everything is related territory in the last 60.

You said you are also writing a book. What’s it about?
It’s about a guy who grew up in the Midwest, moved to the Northeast as a young man and never went back… and then suddenly has to go back after 15 years and finds himself having to deal with the gap between red country and blue country -- between who he was, and who he is.

Sounds autobiographical.
Nope. I’m not ever going back, so it’s not about me. But they say you’re supposed to write what you know, right?

So why can’t I read any of it?
Because I’ve allowed myself to be distracted this spring, and after getting a lot of work done on it right after I quit my blog, I haven’t touched it in more than a month.

What?! Why not?
Because she’s fun, makes me laugh, and is darn cute. And we're very good at neglecting my novel together. Next.

So you slacked on the main reason you took off in the first place?
You would, too.

All right, fine. So did you slack off on your other goals too?
No. As a matter of fact, I'm proud to report that I've lost 16 pounds so far. I still look pregnant when viewed from the side, but now I only look six months pregnant instead of nine! 16 down, 44 to go.

What's been the hardest food to give up?
Hmm... that'd be a toss-up between street vendor hot dogs with all the fixings, ice cream, or anything that has any taste whatsoever. Let's face it: 98% of healthy food tastes lousy if it tastes anything at all.

So does this mean you've kicked your Mountain Dew habit as well?
I don't like to talk about it, but I was a Mountain Dew crack whore. It got to a point where I was cringing on street corners, offering to blog for any stranger who came by, so long as I got my hit. It's a vicious cycle, because the more Dew you do, the higher your caffiene tolerance goes... which means you need more Dew to get the effect... which means your tolerance goes even higher... which means you need more Dew. Eventually, I realized that Mountain Dew was controlling my life. I went cold turkey -- and you've never seen pain until you've watched someone quitting Mountain Dew go through caffiene withdrawl migraines.

Who would win a slap fight between Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie?
Don't you have a life?

Have you seen Spamalot?
Not yet. Tickets are so hard to get right now, you have to sleep with everyone Tara Reid's ever scrogged just to get on the wait list. And I don't have 14,597 condoms handy.

But you want to see it. Does that mean you're one of those Python geeks who can recite every skit by heart?
I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!

No, I'm not one of those. Why do you ask?

Who plays you in the Chronic Curmudgeon movie?
By looks, probably Robert Wuhl. By attitude, probably Val Kilmer.

Who does the soundtrack?
Solomon Burke. With occasional songs by Stevie Ray Vaughn, George Strait, System Of A Down, and the Ramones.

Why are you such a left winger?
Because I love freedom, and I don’t like the idea of a fundamentalist religious sect controlling the government and imposing its will on all citizens. They tried that in Afghanistan once. Because I believe in the American Dream as it exists in legend -- that everyone here should have a chance to achieve as much as their abilities allow. Because I believe that it is a mark of a moral society that the most fortunate of its members should take responsibility for the well-being of the least fortunate. Because I grew up among hard-working, good people who don’t deserve to be marginalized by Republican economic policies that benefit the rich (and most often the white).

Because despite conservatives’ ad nauseum protestations that they are the party of small town, Middle-America values, they fail at the most fundamental small town value of them all: community. Conservatives don’t value their neighbors; they spend all their time telling you which Americans (liberals, gays, environmentalists, feminists, the poor, minorities, unions, etc. etc. and take your pick) you’re supposed to fear or blame for your problems. Republicanism is all about “I got mine,” and enacting policies to make sure no one else gets theirs. Because at the end of the day, Republicanism is about the haves protecting the haves against the have-less and have-nots. And at the end of the day, I just don’t trust rich people.

But you’re a suit in corporate America. You’re not just surrounded by the haves, you are one of the haves!
That’s not a question.

Fine. Doesn’t your innate mistrust of rich people cause you trouble, since you live and work among them?
Not outwardly. I’ve got plenty of self-crisis over my place in the machine, and I sometimes just shake my head at the cognitive dissonance I see around me… but on a personal level I’m able to just put it aside. Besides, deep down in places I don't like to talk about at parties, I'm still trying to be one of them.

Isn’t that contradictory at best and hypocritical at worst?
Shut up.

So how come you’re so much into animals and their rights, while you’re so generally opposed to humans?
Because animals don’t know any better. Human beings have chosen to keep Jerry Springer on the air for 15 years, to vote for George W. Bush, and to invent religions with which to justify oppression and murder.

What was the best night of your life?
May 15, 2001. But if I told you why, she’d track me down and kill me. So I’ll go with my second choice: October 27, 2004 -- the night the Boston Red Sox won the World Series. I was there in Boston. It was amazing.

But you grew up in Minnesota. How’d you end up a Sox fan?
Not only did I go to grad school in Boston, but my school was literally across the Masspike from Fenway Park. During night classes we could hear the PA announcer and the crowd roaring outside the windows; a two minute walk over the footbridge and you were at Fenway. By the time I’d been at school for a week, I was on my third game and was hooked.

So you’re not one of these poseur-come-latelies who started wearing their Sox caps in October of last year?
I am a proud citizen of Red Sox Nation since September 1997.

Who’s your favorite celebrity?
Tim Robbins, just because he pisses conservatives off so much. Other than that, I like Morgan Freeman, Jon Stewart, Ted from Queer Eye For The Straight Guy, and Tina Fey.

Which celebrity would you like to see rolled in barbed wire and then dipped in habanera pepper sauce?
Ann Coulter. Humankind has yet to devise a sufficient torture for this shrill, evil harpie.

Who’s your favorite porn star?
I wouldn’t know any porn actresses to see them.

Liar. Who’s your favorite porn star?
Um, it’d be a tie between Chloe, Juli Ashton and Tiffany Rose.

So if someone pulled a Paris Hilton on you and leaked your cell phone directory to the Internet, what's the most embarassing thing on there?
Bob Saget's home porn movie.

Name five subjects you will never blog about.
The specifics of my job
That dreamy Aaron Carter
The World Curling Championships
The inner workings of how software code or wireless routers work
Jock itch