-As a kid growing up in the suburbs, I was always perplexed when I took a standardized test and the address section on the form had a space for “apartment number.”  Back then, I didn’t know anyone who lived in an apartment and could never imagine doing so myself.  Now, I’m on my fifth apartment and can’t imagine anyone my age living in an actual house.  For me, though, my apartment is not just my home, but my office as well.  It has been almost three years since I first described “daycrawlers” in Ruminations #82.  Daycrawlers are the self-employed, the creatives, and the freelancers – those often misunderstood twentysomethings who work from home – and our numbers are growing.  We don’t own suits, we usually don’t have bosses, and we’re all wearing pajamas right now.

-One of the drawbacks of being a daycrawler is convincing people that I do in fact have a job.  When my buddies want to visit me in LA, they’ll say, “Karo, we’re thinking about coming Wednesday to Sunday.”  While I’m excited for them to crash, they don’t seem to realize that I’ll be working more than half the time they’re here.  It’s the equivalent of me coming to visit you and literally living in your cubicle for three days.

-One of the benefits of being a daycrawler is the ability to get laid on weekday afternoons.  I used to date this girl who was in law school.  Sometimes she’d come over after class in the middle of the day.  It was the simplest recipe for sex ever, since I’d already be laying around in my boxers.  Just add chick.

-Because I live alone, I often wonder what would happen if I was attacked or I choked on a pretzel or something.  I’m worried that no one would realize anything was wrong for weeks.  I tend not to leave my apartment for days on end and if I don’t respond to email, people just assume I’m really busy or on tour.  I’m like a kidnapper’s dream.

-I was talking to my friend Holly the other day and she asked me, “How’s work?”  I was touched.  No one has asked me that – or at least phrased it that way – in about five years.  I thanked her for caring and told her that work was busy but going well.  So please, people, reach out to your local daycrawler.  A little question goes a long way.

-When I get a voicemail later than 10am, the caller usually makes a joke about how they hope they didn’t wake me up.  First of all, I resent your implication that I do nothing all day – I’ll have you know that I get up quite early every morning.  You just happened to catch me napping.

-Since I left Wall Street to pursue comedy, I started getting all my dress shirts custom-made.  They’re all too short to be tucked in and the collars are too narrow to be buttoned or worn with a tie.  Essentially they look great at a bar but could not be worn in an office.  Just in case I get too drunk I don’t want to wander into the wrong place by accident.

-Being a daycrawler for so long has conditioned me in such a way that I could never again function in corporate America anyway.  If it gets too hot in my home office, I just take my shirt off.  I go to the bathroom without fear of seeing a co-worker’s shoes in an adjacent stall.  I watch ESPN from 2-3pm every day.  And despite all this, I’m ten times more productive than I ever was on Wall Street.  “How’s work?” you ask.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.

-As always, here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-I am either the worst or the best possible houseguest.  I either get too drunk and vomit in your bathroom, or hook up and never make it back to your place at all.

-In the past few months, O.J. Simpson’s girlfriend stood by him at his trial, the world’s fattest man got married, and Mini-Me made a sex tape.  I’m not sure if I should be proud to be single, since these people are giving relationships a bad name; or embarrassed to be single, because apparently it doesn’t take much to date these days.

-Last time I was in New York, I called my buddy Claudio to meet me out at a bar.  He walked the ten or so blocks from his apartment while listening to his iPod.  This baffled me, since he then had to carry the thing around with him for the rest of the night while we got hammered.  But he was unfazed.  I, on the other hand, like to have as few accoutrements on me as possible when I drink.  Sometimes I won’t even wear a watch or shoes with laces.  You never know what might happen.

-When Google announced its Mail Goggles application that prevents you from sending drunk emails by making you solve arithmetic problems first, my inbox was instantly flooded with hundreds of messages from readers eager to hear my take.  Quite frankly, this program won’t do much for me because I’m really good at math and don’t use Gmail anyway.  It has confirmed, however, that most of my fans believe me to be an alcoholic.

-On the side of the box of Frosted Flakes in my kitchen, it says “The official cereal of Tony the Tiger.”  That just seems redundant.

-I was working out recently and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the TV at the gym was displaying an electoral map where every state was blue except for Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Mississippi.  I thought, holy shit, Obama is really pulling away.  Then I realized it was just a SportsCenter poll about whether the Cowboys would make the playoffs.

-And, finally, the other day I went to get the mail – which is generally the one time I venture out of my apartment and down to the lobby each day.  When I turned around to go back to my place, I saw an attractive girl about fifty feet away walking in my direction.  Her breasts were huge.  I mean, they were like Civil War cannons.  As I walked toward her, I actually said to myself, “Don’t stare at her tits.  Don’t stare at her tits!”  But when she walked by, I still gawked involuntarily.  My autonomic nervous system completely took over; it was pure instinct.  At first I was embarrassed, but then it occurred to me that this woman could be a daycrawler too – after all, she was also wandering about on a workday.  I decided to chat her up, foolishly thinking I could convince her to go for an impromptu roll in the hay.  How did it go?  Well, let’s just say this is the kind of conversation I wish Google Goggles had been there to prevent.  Fuck me.

HOME

-We are in the midst of one of the most divisive elections in history.  Democrats hate Republicans.  Conservatives hate liberals.  Everyone hates the debate moderators.  But there is really one group that we can blame for all the negativity and vitriol that has enveloped this campaign: “undecided” voters.  Obama and McCain don’t care about those of us who have already made up our minds, and with good reason.  All their speeches and ads are now targeted to those people who claim, that after a year-and-a-half-long media blitz, they still don’t have enough information to make a decision.  I don’t call these people “undecided” – I call them fucking idiots.  Forget about hockey moms and Reagan democrats; what the candidates are really courting… is the moron vote.

-First of all, I don’t quite understand Sarah Palin’s strategy of constantly referring to herself as a “hockey mom.”  Isn’t she alienating all the parents whose kids are awkward, ungainly, and don’t play sports?  There’s got to be fewer hockey moms than there are Dungeons & Dragons moms.

-Many voters compare the candidates’ lives with their own to see if they can relate.  This isn’t the best yardstick of who will make a great president, but I’ll admit, I’ve done it.  For instance, it’s odd to consider that Obama and I are alike in that we’ve both written two books, but different in that he’s tried cocaine and I haven’t.

-John McCain and I both delivered speeches at my graduation from Penn in 2001.  I spoke at the business school ceremony in the morning, and he spoke at commencement for the entire university.  An excerpt from my speech: “After all the 9am classes that we had to sit through, did graduation really have to be this early?  All kidding aside though, I am confident that each and every one of you sitting before me today will become a great success by meeting any challenge that comes your way.”  An excerpt from McCain’s speech: “Will you specifically, with all the confidence and vitality that you claim today, assume the obligations of community, national, or world leaders?  I’ll be damned if I know.  I’m not clairvoyant, and I don’t know you personally.”  Way to inspire, Senator.

-During the vice-presidential debate, Joe Biden said he spends “a lot of time” at Home Depot.  Is that really something he should be touting?  Generally the guys loitering in Home Depot either hate their wives or are clinically insane and just like talking to people.

-Think about how old your dad is.  Now think about how many years you’d have to add for him to be 72.  Now think of your dad at 72.  Now think about your dad at 72 running for president.  Even if you love your dad as much as I do mine, your conclusion will invariably be the same: no fucking way.

-One last message to all the moronic, er, sorry, “undecided” voters out there: did you notice that the jokes I just made really have nothing substantial to do with who is better able to lead our country?  That’s because all of the important facts are already out there.  Us decided voters are bored.  This is what we’ve been reduced to while you’ve got the candidates pandering around in circles.  So put us all out of our misery and make up your minds already.  But come November 4th, if you’re still wavering, don’t stop the car at your local polling station.  Just keep on driving.  I hear Canada is lovely this time of year.

-As always, here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-Your perfume or cologne should not linger in the elevator any longer than you do.

-I propose a pact: celebrities are not allowed to give their babies stupid names if the National Weather Service is not allowed to give hurricanes even dumber ones.

-My buddy started a new job a few weeks ago and just found out that, due to a glitch, his 401k was never set up and deductions were not automatically taken from his paycheck and invested.  Given the current Wall Street shit storm, he figures he accidentally saved enough money to retire.

-I will never be hospitalized for “exhaustion.”

-I’m going to Vegas for Halloween next weekend.  While I’m stoked for the trip, I’m starting to think that getting hammered in Vegas while wearing a costume might be a bit overkill, and that maybe I’m overcompensating because it’s the last Halloween of my twenties.  Well, at least I don’t gamble, so the most I can lose is my dignity.

-To me, relationships are like cell phone service.  Everyone’s got that one person who, when you call their cell phone from your cell phone, the connection is always staticky.  Just like there’s that one person out there you’ve always wanted to connect with romantically, but it never quite works out.  However, if you commit to a cell phone service you only have to wait out the two-year contract.  But if you commit to your significant other, the cancellation fee is a messy divorce.

-I have a worse chance of getting copies of the pictures taken of me now, when I have to wait for my friends to download them off their digital cameras and email them to me, than I did back in the day when everyone just had disposables and calling “doubles” was sacred.

-And, finally, I’m a big fan of the shows “Terminator” and “Heroes.”  The only problem is that both series rely heavily on time travel.  As a loyal viewer, I am willing to suspend disbelief somewhat, but after a while I find myself wishing the characters would just go back in time to when their mortal enemy was a newborn and punch the defenseless baby in the face.  No muss, no fuss.  And that got me thinking about what the presidential candidates would do if they could go back in time.  Would they sever any past associations that could possibly be construed as controversial today?  Would they stop themselves from uttering gaffes on the campaign trail that their opponents could later use against them?  And if so, what would there be left to talk about?  The issues?  That would be pretty boring.  So I guess, in a way, the tangential fluff that has consumed so much of the media’s attention during this campaign actually serves a greater purpose: it keeps us paying attention.  I have no doubt that Americans will be engrossed in this election until November 4th.  But after that, it’s right back to Dungeons & Dragons and Home Depot.  Fuck me.

HOME

-Earlier this year I got a Facebook friend request from my former pledgemaster, who had just signed up for the site.  My first instinct was to shout, “Sir yes sir!” and accept him immediately.  I guess old habits die hard.  Later, I realized that his request was odd not because the last time we had a meaningful conversation I was standing in a bucket of puke, but rather because he’s over three years older than me.  In the scheme of the Internet, we grew up in two completely different eras.  Those of us in our teens and twenties can’t even remember a time when the web wasn’t completely ingrained in our daily lives.  We are Generation LOL.  My thirtysomething pledgemaster, on the other hand, is firmly in Generation X and, as I recall, also kind of a dick.

-I often overreact when a site tells me to do something, as opposed to asking nicely.  Recently I loaded a web page that said, “You need to upgrade your Flash Player.”  Who the fuck do you think you are?  I’ll do what I damn well please.

-Lately, there’s been a void in my life: not enough spam.  I’ve been dreaming of ways that I can receive spam not just in my email, but also posted directly to my online profiles and sent to the inboxes of my social networking accounts.  But thanks to you, Facebook, my prayers have been answered.

-Instead of smoking a cigarette after sex, I check my BlackBerry.  It doesn’t smell bad, it won’t cause cancer, but it has the same soothing effect.

-I don’t trust people with the number 2000 in their email address.  If they chose it after the millennium, it demonstrates a lack of creativity.  If they chose it before the millennium, well, they just weren’t really looking too far ahead.

-Sometimes chicks will put “In a Relationship” on their Facebook profile even though they’re single, just so creepy guys won’t hit on them.  However, when you don’t link to your boyfriend’s name, or have even one picture of him in any of your photo albums, we’re totally on to you.

-Occasionally I’ll be instant messaging or texting with someone and they’ll use an abbreviation that doesn’t make sense to me, but I don’t want to seem like an idiot so I continue typing like I know what’s going on.  Then later I’ll Google “ATM” and discover they meant “at the moment” and not a place where one gets cash.

-A less well-known place to look at pictures of chicks online is law firm web sites.  Most firms have high quality, searchable headshots of all their nubile female associates.  And usually next to the picture will be contact information and an option that says: “Download vCard.”  If only it were that easy.

-There are times, though, when Generation LOL gets taken advantage of.  Last month I received a mass email sanctioned by and sent from my alma mater’s Office of Alumni Relations.  It told Penn students and alumni to sign up for an online version of Risk where we would compete virtually against the other Ivy League institutions.  First of all, why is my own school sending me spam?  That’s what my three Facebook accounts are for.  Second of all, don’t tell me to join shit.  I’ll do what I damn well please.  And third of all, a game of online Risk?  Are you fucking kidding me?  Someone needs to put these dorks in a bucket of puke.

-As always, here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-The people tanning at my pool always look like they’re in such anguish.  Is that supposed to be relaxing?

-Dear Apple: So are these new iPods gonna be out for a while, or are you just gonna come out with something even better and cheaper in like three months and totally fuck me again?

-Why have there been no advances in shoelace technology?  I just bought $110 sneakers.  It feels like I’m floating on air – until I have to stop running every six minutes to tie the laces again.

-Although I mentioned this in Ruminations #105, I think it bears repeating.  The other day, I walked out of my front door to find free, giant Yellow Pages and White Pages stacked in front of every apartment in the hallway.  I took mine inside and weighed them: six pounds.  Generation LOL or not, if you know how to access either Yahoo or Google, that is six pounds of completely wasted paper you will never, ever use.  Sorry environmentalists, but I’m gonna keep sucking down bottled water until you take care of this shit first.

-I cannot fathom why anyone would buy Michael Phelps’ book when it comes out in December.  Let me sum up the entire book for you right now: “I discovered that I like to swim.  I realized that I was really good at it, too.  For the past twelve years, I did nothing but train and swim with single-minded determination.  Moral of the story: if you work really hard and never give up, you too can be the worst host of Saturday Night Live ever.”

-I find it awkward when I’m giving a customer service rep my phone number, but I don’t know whether they want me to go straight through all the digits, or wait for them to repeat the digits in each section back to me before proceeding, or let them give me the simple “uh huh” each time to signal that they’ve got it and I can move on.  It’s quite nerve-wracking.

-And, finally, in my first book, “Ruminations on College Life,” I wrote about how, when I was an undergrad, my mom mailed me an article from Time Magazine about excessive drinking on campus.  There was no money in the envelope, no letter, just the article.  Two weeks ago, in Ruminations #136, I mentioned trying to close a tab at a bar before realizing I never put my card down in the first place.  My mom responded with the following email: “Aar, I enjoyed this one.  One question – when you open a tab, it requires you to give your credit card over to the bartender?  That is not very safe.  People can make copies of your card and use your number to purchase items.”  I read the email and shook my head in disbelief.  After a decade, I had finally allayed my mom’s concerns about my binge drinking.  But replaced them with fears of identify theft.  Fuck me.

HOME

-I have spent the past month locked in an epic battle with Allstate over a $75 discrepancy in my car insurance bill.  I have written letters, created spreadsheets, and spent hours on the phone with them.  But for some reason I’m not bothered by the fact that, since the dispute began, I have racked up bar tabs totaling more than $75 on at least three occasions.  Thus, the money management strategy of most twentysomethings is paradoxical – we struggle to save money but don’t think twice about spending it frivolously.  To me, the recent demise of some of Wall Street’s most venerable institutions is not the real banking crisis.  Rather it’s our tendency to waste four dollars of gas driving to an ATM in order to avoid a two-dollar fee.

-Instead of merely sending me a check when I upgraded Blackberrys, T-Mobile sent me my $100 rebate in the form of a weird, disposable debit card.  Seriously?  Why not just send me a sack of 100 Sacagawea dollar coins, because there’s about an equal chance of those being accepted anywhere I shop.

-I’m sorry, but if you have a halfway decent job and receive a steady paycheck, you should not be using headphones you stole from an airline.

-I recently paid $3.95 to watch a movie on demand because I was too lazy to get the same movie off my shelf and put it in the DVD player.

-If my credit card gets stolen, I know I’m not liable for any unauthorized charges.  But do I still get the points?

-I ordered a new Crest SpinBrush from drugstore.com.  They sent me a purple one.  I figured I had two choices: use a purple toothbrush, or spend the time to pack the thing up and ship it back for an $8.99 refund.  I chose option C: throw it out, order a new one, and hope for the best.

-I was in a bar in West Hollywood last weekend, and toward the end of the night I asked the bartender to close out my tab.  She said she couldn’t find my card.  I asked her to look again and she still couldn’t find it.  First I began to freak out, then I wondered if I would still get the points from all the unauthorized charges the person who stole my card would obviously make, and finally I realized that my buddy had been buying me drinks and I never opened a tab to begin with.

-Nobody likes that guy who has the great deal.  My old roommate Brian and his wife now live in an apartment that has to be one of the best deals in New York.  It’s not even a rent control building; the landlord is just a moron.  Am I happy for Brian?  No.  I hate him with a passion reserved only for those with sunken living rooms and inexpensive rent.

-One of the best parts about working in entertainment is that if I go out to dinner with my agent or a producer, they always buy.  It’s like being on a date, except I’m the chick.  And one thing I hate about taking a girl out is when she doesn’t offer to pay – even though I would never let her.  It’s just a courtesy thing.  So if I’m out with my manager and the bill comes, I still do the fake reach-for-my-wallet move until he waves me off.  And I breathe a sigh of relief – since all I have on me is a phony-looking T-Mobile debit card.

-As always, here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-Why do people run out to buy the slimmest, sleekest cell phones and PDAs, and then put giant, clunky cases around them?

-More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.

-Definition of “adding insult to injury”: buying something off the registry for one of your married friends, only to be added to that store’s mailing list and receive unwanted catalogues for the rest of your life.

-I hope that all my fans in Houston are recovering from the hurricane.  I’ve been to Houston twice and had a blast both times.  I performed there last in April and will never forget it because the venue told me that the person picking me up at the airport would be driving a pick-up truck with no tailgate.  Unfortunately, I walked outside and every other car was a pick-up, and I have no clue what a tailgate is.

-Whenever I stay in a hotel where the shower nozzle has several different “massage” settings, I always scroll through the settings, find myself disappointed with all of them, and then settle on the mode that is closest to a normal, non-massaging stream of water.

-It has long been a dream of mine to win an Emmy, but that dream was somewhat diluted last night when the Emmy for “reality show host” was awarded for the first time.  Is this really a deserving category?  What’s next – reality show contestants themselves get an award?  They’re all acting anyway.

-Three random things I’m always surprised that more people don’t know: the white space within the FedEx logo forms an arrow; the word “spendthrift” actually means the opposite of thrifty; and “tie goes to the runner” is not a real rule.

-And, finally, last year I attended my ten-year high school reunion with a bunch of buddies.  One of my friends discovered that he works at the same firm as a classmate of ours whom none of us had seen since graduation.  My buddy has an Ivy League degree and an MBA.  Our classmate was never the sharpest tack in the bunch in high school, yet he’s now two levels above my friend and makes twice the salary.  The moral of this story is that sometimes education, intelligence, and hard work have no bearing on how much you earn.  It can be disheartening when the idiots around you seem to have the most money.  But fret not – these are usually the same people who wear JetBlue headphones, use purple toothbrushes, and make chicks split the check.  Then again, if I did those things maybe I could actually afford my car insurance bill.  Fuck me.

HOME

-I’ve always wanted to film a documentary where I go thirty days without drinking alcohol and see how much weight I lose, money I save, and how many girls I’m suddenly unable to speak to.  It would be called “Sober Size Me.”  I’m not sure it’d be Oscar-worthy, but it would certainly reflect the fact that, these days, the vast majority of twentysomethings’ socializing and courtship takes place in bars.  Each weekend we dutifully traipse from the shittiest dives to the trendiest velvet ropes in search of a spot where everybody knows your name – but forgets it by morning.

-I recently went to a bar where the cross street was actually Cross Street.  Trying to explain to my friends how to get there was like playing drunken “Who’s on First?”

-I have never been in a bar where the atmosphere actually improved after a band started playing.

-Some of my buddies used to play Erotic Photo Hunt, which is an electronic bar game that shows you two pictures of naked chicks and challenges you to find the differences.  Then one day the bar changed it from Erotic Photo Hunt to regular Photo Hunt.  Suddenly we were counting how many petals were on the daisy a little girl was holding and it just became weird.

-Do good architects consider it beneath them to design bars?  I can’t think of any other structures that are laid out so poorly.  Most seem to sport the “hourglass” shape in which the front of the bar connects to the back via a narrow channel barely big enough for a single red blood cell to pass.  Plus that’s the way to the bathroom.  Where there’s one toilet for two hundred wasted people.  And it’s broken.

-A chick once asked me to taste a drink made with cherry-flavored vodka.  Emasculating for sure, but I was more intrigued by how they can call something cherry-flavored vodka.  How many people have eaten an actual cherry in the past year?  Not I.  Let’s be realistic: when something is “cherry-flavored,” what they’re really saying is that it tastes like “red.”

-My doctor friend Christina promised that the next time we party, in the morning she’ll give me a “banana bag” – which is an IV in my arm full of fluids and multivitamins that they give alcoholics, and also that doctors administer to themselves to cure hangovers.  I don’t know what’s weirder – that I’m really looking forward to getting hungover, or that this is the first thing I’ve ever seen on Grey’s Anatomy that is actually true.

-It really bothers me that the dollar is so weak that Europeans are coming to the States and getting obnoxiously wasted for ridiculously cheap.  It’s supposed to be the other way around.  Last weekend I was in New York at this place that was full of foreigners and they were literally buying $3,000 bottles of champagne, shaking them up, then spraying the crowd with it.  And this was at BRUNCH.  Me and my buddies were the only Americans there and, as we got sprayed with another round, my first thought was: “I hate these European douchebags.”  My second thought was: “God, I am so jealous.”

-As always, here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-One of my boys is staunchly opposed to me emailing anything remotely offensive to his work account, and I respect that.  However, he just got rid of his personal cell phone because he got one through work, and now he doesn’t want me texting him anything dirty either.  I’m hamstrung.  He says, “Karo, just don’t curse.”  I say, “I’d rather not be friends.”

-I freely admit that it’s going overboard for every article of clothing I wear to the gym to made by Under Armour.  But at least that’s better than dressing completely inappropriately.  I’m sorry, but you’re not allowed to lift anywhere near me if you’re wearing jeans.  Or Birkenstocks.

-My friend wants me to set her up with one my buddies.  I told her that I won’t do it unless she joins Facebook.  What does she want me to do?  Type an email about her and attach some pictures?  What is this, the fucking Middle Ages?

-I recently re-signed my lease and it reminded me that when I moved to this apartment, it was from another apartment fifty feet across the street.  I can see my old building from my current bedroom.  Let me tell you, moving fifty feet is much harder than moving 500 miles.  You can’t hire a truck, you can’t get anyone to help you, and you end up making 200 small trips back and forth across the street.  I can say with confidence that the human limit for carrying shirts on hangers is twenty-two at a time.

-Mixed drinks are like masturbation: only you know exactly how you like it.

-In the past ten years or so, my dad has become an incredible chef.  On recent visits home I’ve eaten pork chops with marinated strawberries, tuna ravioli, steamed salmon with tomatoes and shallots, and shrimp with pasta in a sauteed butternut squash sauce.  The problem is, it’s always such a letdown when I get back to my apartment and I’m eating fucking microwaveable soup.  And it’s not even the good kind – it’s the kind where you drink right out of an opening in the top, except all the little pasta stars sink to the bottom and you get them in one big glop.  Evidently the package was created by the same people who design dive bars.

-And, finally, back in my Wall Street days I’d sometimes leave myself a voicemail on my office phone while shitcanned at the bar.  That way, I’d have a funny message to listen to the next morning when I came in hungover and miserable.  A few weeks ago, I was out boozing and was struck by the desire to engage in such shenanigans again, but since my office is now my apartment and my office phone is now my cell phone, it proved difficult to accomplish.  The next morning I awoke hungover without any drunken voicemails to brighten my day.  There was, however, a string of texts to read through: three from buddies asking for the cross street of the bar, two replies from me telling them that “cross street IS the cross street you assholes,” and one from my friend complaining that I’d just cursed in a text message to his work phone.  Fuck me.

HOME

-When I banged a really hot chick over Memorial Day weekend, I thought it would portend good things to come this summer.  The women would surely flow like wine.  But what followed instead was a series of missteps, poor timing, and just plain bad luck that has left me – with few exceptions – high and dry.  Regular dudes, like professional athletes, sometimes suffer inexplicable slumps.  Whether its tinkering with our technique or trying to grow facial hair, nothing seems to work.  Our only solace is the knowledge that one night, when we least expect it, we’ll hit a home run and get right back on track.  But that doesn’t make striking out any less painful.  This is the anatomy of a cold streak.

-One of my buddies is currently hooking up with four chicks simultaneously – none of whom know of the others’ existence.  This doesn’t appeal to me at all.  I just don’t have the patience or the follow-through to keep the game going.  Before I tackle dating four girls, I should probably try hooking up with the same girl four times and see how that goes.

-The theory that it’s easy to get laid at weddings only holds true if there are actually any available girls there.  As I get older, each wedding I attend seems to have a smaller population of eligible bachelorettes.  And you know the pickings are slim when even the singles table has fucking couples at it!

-If the situation is dire, sometimes I’ll drop a line to a one-night stand from a year or two ago.  If they don’t respond after one week or two pings, I know they’re engaged.  The worst is when they finally message me back and write something like, “Yeah, I was just tired of going to the same shitty bars and getting drunk every night like an idiot.  So what are you up to?”  And I sheepishly put my BlackBerry down and order another pitcher.

-One of my fraternity brothers wanted to set me up with this chick he used to sleep with.  Normally I wouldn’t mind, but he’s particularly dirty, so I passed.

-You know a buddy is on a pretty bad cold streak when he says to you, “Hey, you know that girl I hooked up with on that business trip last year?  Yeah, I’m thinking about flying her in.”  It’s never a good sign when you’ve given up on the millions of women in your own city and resorted to importing ass.

-In cities like New York, Chicago, or Miami, where last call is late, scoring is less about attraction and more about attrition.  Once it gets past 3am, the girls who are left have essentially identified themselves as available to take home.  I don’t have that luxury in Los Angeles.  I’m still not used to the bars being packed when last call arrives at 1:30am.  I start to pat myself on the back for shutting down the bar once again, before realizing all the chicks are leaving with guys who were paying attention.

-The truest and most frustrating observation ever made about hooking up is that it’s all about confidence.  Every guy has contemplated how much damage he could do if he could just go back ten years knowing what he knows now.  But we’re stuck with what we’ve got.  Unfortunately, the most debilitating aspect of a cold streak is its tendency to attack and diminish confidence, which in turn makes it difficult to snap the dry spell.  It’s a vicious cycle that can only be broken by raising a pitcher, lowering your standards, and swinging for the fences.

-As always, here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-The bathroom of every twentysomething guy I’ve ever been in has had a liquid soap dispenser with only half a milliliter left in it.

-The phrase “I’ll call you later” can either mean “I’ll get back to you in a few hours” or “I’ll talk to you in a few months.”

-The pain and suffering caused by an airline losing your luggage upon returning from vacation does not increase in proportion to how long you were away.  It doesn’t matter if I travel for two days or two weeks, I always take my three “best” boxers and thrift store t-shirts.  They can never be replaced.

-Have you noticed that Obama, McCain, and that T. Boone Pickens dude are all using the same exact stock footage of wind turbines in their ads?  And therein lies the problem with America’s energy policy: there’s apparently only one wind farm in the whole fucking country.

-Dear Future Wife: the most important job you will ever have is to kill spiders for me.

-Saw a hot chick at the gym.  Later in the day, I did laundry.  (OK, my cleaning woman did the laundry.)  The next day, I went back to the gym, and happened to be wearing the same exact shirt – though now clean – as I did the day before.  Luckily, the hot chick wasn’t there.

-A few weeks ago, I called my buddy Jesse and wished him Happy Birthday a day late.  I joked that I didn’t feel bad because he hadn’t called me on my birthday at all.  He replied, “Yeah, I never remember to call anyone on their birthday.”  And that was that.  Later, I thought to myself, how liberating must it be to just not give a shit?

-My favorite sport at the Olympics was women’s beach volleyball because I could look directly at their asses and then say, “What?  I just wanted to see what play they were calling!”

-And, finally, the longest cold streak I’ve ever had began on the night I became sexually active.  That’s because I lost my virginity and then didn’t have sex again for almost a year.  This is of course the opposite of what usually happens – once you lose your v-card all bets are off.  But not for me.  For ten long months I was stuck at one.  Not one girl – one time.  It was essentially the equivalent of being called up to the majors, hitting a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth, and then being sent down to the minors again the next day.  What I remember most about that period is that as much pressure as there is to have sex for the first time, there’s even more pressure to keep having it.  And since then I’ve realized that the more sex you have, the more it just falls into your lap (so to speak).  So in a way, hot streaks and cold streaks are similar: once you build momentum in either direction, it’s hard to stop.  Sometimes you end up like my buddy who’s banging four chicks at once and, alas, sometimes you end up like yours truly, begging, “Fuck me.”

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-Last week marked my third anniversary of moving from New York to Los Angeles, but it wasn’t until the week prior that I was officially indoctrinated.  I was sitting at my desk when I felt my BlackBerry vibrating.  But when I picked it up, I saw that it was off.  Then I felt rumbling below me, which isn’t unusual since my apartment is above the garage.  Finally, when my entire apartment began to shake, I realized – holy shit! – it’s a mother-fucking earthquake!  I demonstrated my preparedness for such a situation by running directly to the window – exactly the opposite of what you’re supposed to do.  Within seconds, it was over.  But the experience caused me to look back upon my cross-country move and realize that I’ve been in a state of shock ever since arriving in LA.  Now it’s time to revamp my outlook on California – and renew my earthquake insurance.

-Dudes generally don’t make new friends after about the age of twenty-five, so although I was lucky to have met a good group of guys out here, I never quite knew where I stood.  Further complicating matters is the fact that dudes bond by ripping into each other.  As I sat around boozing with them the other night, Zach made fun of me, Justin laughed, and Neil high-fived Zach, all at my expense.  That’s when I knew that I truly hated these fucking guys – and that we’re better friends than I thought.

-Earlier this year, after six weeks of suffering with a nasty cough, I finally dragged myself to my doctor in West Hollywood, who proceeded to prescribe me acupuncture.  After trying to explain to her that normal people from the East Coast don’t believe in that hippie shit, I relented and made an appointment.  While he was sticking me with needles, the acupuncturist noted that my liver was slightly swollen and suggested that it might be caused by “emotional pollution.”  “Nah,” I said, “It’s probably the binge drinking.”

-I don’t think many people realize that the two places in Los Angeles where most twentysomethings live – Santa Monica and West Hollywood – are pretty far away from each other.  Like, too far to take a cab.  So when I wanted to go to my friend Dana’s party in Santa Monica recently, but didn’t want to drive, I did what any enterprising New Yorker would do: I took the bus (for $1.25!).  When I got to the party, where there were about 100 LA natives, I proudly told them how I got there.  You should have seen their faces.  Not one single person had ever taken a bus anywhere in their entire lives.  I fielded their barrage of questions and then, thankfully, my swollen liver and I got a ride home.

-I’ve now lived on the West Coast long enough that whenever I’m back in the Eastern Time Zone, I feel like I’m in the future.

-Avocado is the default topping on every meal served in Los Angeles County.  I actually think it’s a law: no smoking in bars, no talking on your cell phone while driving, and avocados on fucking everything.

-After three years in California, I’m finally ready to embrace the lifestyle.  The only problem is, just when I think I’m fitting in, I’m promptly made to feel like an outsider again.  For instance, in New York, the term to “mack” means to hit on a chick, but in LA, macking means actually hooking up.  My boys in LA were under the impression that I was getting laid all the time until they realized I was misusing the term – and promptly ripped me a new one for it.

-As always, here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-I have never understood why every radio station has an early morning talk show.  During the course of an entire day, the one time that I least want to hear idiots yammering is the morning.

-I’ve gotten bolder and bolder in my attempts to buy everything online so I don’t have to speak to humans in stores.  So far this year I’ve purchased a fire extinguisher, a welcome mat, and an air mattress.  I also upgraded my BlackBerry, paid a traffic ticket, and renewed my passport – ironically three things related to venturing outside the house, which I clearly prefer not to do.

-I also buy my groceries online and have them delivered each week.  My ex-girlfriend thought that was the strangest thing and always asked me why I didn’t go to the market.  “Go to the market?” I’d ask, “What am I, the fucking big toe?”

-The kitchen in my apartment has side-by-side sinks.  How did I ever live without this?  I don’t even really use the second sink, but it’s comforting just to know it’s there.

-How disappointing is it when you’re Facebook-stalking someone and you finally find a picture that they’re tagged in, but when you roll over the photo it turns out they’re not the cute one?

-So my Facebook account has reached the 5,000 friend limit and I can’t add anyone else.  This is just another example of technology not being able to keep up with me.  You may recall from way back in Ruminations #24 that after my cell phone address book ran out of memory, every time I wanted to make room for a new number I had to pick the contact I liked the least and delete them – like cell phone Survivor.  Fast forward seven years and I have the same problem.  Only now I have no idea how I’m gonna choose who to keep in my Facebook.  Oh, who are we kidding?  You know exactly how I’m gonna choose.

-I hate picking up a take-out food order or buying something at a liquor store and being given a receipt with a line for a tip.  I know it’s not a tipping situation but just the presence of that line makes me question my own judgment.  And being forced to calculate out the total – which is of course merely the sub-total plus zero – is just uncomfortable for everyone.

-And, finally, one of the more subtle differences I’ve noticed between New York and LA is the way people word the mass farewell emails they send out on their last day of work.  In New York, the farewell email is boilerplate and utilitarian: “I worked here for this many years, it was great, and now I’m taking a different job.”  In LA, the emails are a little more egocentric and rationalizing: “Although I’ve worked here for this many years, and it was great, it’s time for me as a person to move on and grow.”  I think my personal experience has mirrored that sentiment.  I left New York strictly for career purposes, but only recently learned how to truly live in LA.  It’s simple really: pretend like acupuncture really does anything, never let a meal go by without a healthy slice of avocado, and next time there’s an earthquake stay away from the windows and pray that discount fire extinguisher you bought online actually works.  Fuck me.

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-A few months ago I received a voicemail asking me to call the local courthouse and confirm my appointment for a marriage license. I was quite confused, considering the fact I never made an appointment – and don’t have a girlfriend, let alone a fiancee. Being the Good Samaritan that I am, though, I called up and explained the mistake. Consequently, somewhere out there is a couple that I assisted, albeit indirectly, in getting married without complication. There are days when I regret my decision to help out. You see, it’s been two years since I first theorized about the divide between those twentysomethings who are already married or about to tie the knot (“the Haves”), and those of us who are single and still think of each wedding invitation we receive as essentially a bill for $500 with really nice calligraphy (“the Have-Knots”). Now that wedding season has returned once again, it’s time for the Have-Knots to strike back.

-After the ceremony and approximately six minutes into the cocktail hour of any wedding, I always have the same thought: “There aren’t enough bartenders.” Seriously, if you can hire someone whose sole function it is to make sure the bride’s train doesn’t touch the ground as she walks down the aisle, you can have someone get me a fucking Goose on the rocks without having to wait more than a millisecond.

-I get insulted when I buy something from the online registry, but the address where the gift is headed is blocked out for “privacy concerns.” Listen, if I’m giving you expensive crystal, I want to know exactly what apartment it will never be used in.

-Last summer, my friend sent out wedding invitations that actually had a typo. They had to resend corrections that had the right date. I wasn’t able to attend but I saved the invite just in case it’s worth something one day – like a baseball error card.

-I wish members of the wedding party would tell the real story of how the bride and groom met when they speak at the rehearsal dinner. Yes, yes, we all know they met at a bar that they both weren’t supposed to be at but fate intervened and has kept them together ever since. Yeah, that and the fact she went down on him that night.

-I like the little program you get when you arrive for the wedding ceremony. I immediately look for the list of bridesmaids. For single guys, this is our first look at the menu for the evening. Sometimes, it lists the bride’s relationship with each bridesmaid. And while the back story is appreciated, all I’d really like to know is if she has a boyfriend and what my odds are of sealing the deal in the next, say, five hours.

-Since I moved to Los Angeles almost three years ago, I’ve played one of the most underappreciated roles at every wedding I’ve attended since: the out-of-town guest. The simple truth is that flying in for a wedding is a huge pain in the ass. It’s inconvenient, expensive, and forces you to make sacrifices (for example, having to choose the wedding over the bachelor party). But I soldier on anyway. Why? Because I enjoy celebrating with my friends. I want to be in attendance on one of the most important days of their lives. And I like making toasts (sometimes unsolicited). All I really ask of the Haves is that they recognize the contribution that Have-Knots make to their wedding. Seat us next to the hottest single chick. Thank us for spending three hours on kayak looking for a decent flight. Use our crystal serving thingamajob. But most of all, hire another fucking bartender.

-As always, here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-I’m sick of hearing bridesmaids endlessly bitch and moan about their dresses. Just think of it like Halloween – you’re gonna dress up in something ridiculous, everyone will take pictures, and even if you look halfway decent the only chance you’d wear that outfit again is at a party where no one saw you the first time.

-I was rushing to get ready for a wedding in December when I realized the dry cleaner had given me back someone else’s tux pants and they were five sizes too big for me. Since I was at my parents’ house on Long Island, I didn’t have any back-ups and had to cobble together a makeshift outfit from half a tux and half an outdated, ill-fitting suit from college. Only later did I discover the dry cleaner had accidentally switched mine and my dad’s tux pants and my pants were hanging in his closet in the next room. Which would have been funny had I not just spent the night looking like some kind of black-tie hobo.

-Since serving as the Best Man at my buddy Brian’s wedding in 2006, my responsibilities have continued. Last year, he and his wife had to go to separate weddings on the same day. I happened to be going to the one that his wife was going to, so I essentially served as her “date” for the evening – sitting next to her and holding her camera and generally looking out for her. She promptly got hammered, spilled a drink into her purse, and had to throw rocks at Brian’s window when she locked herself out at the end of the night. Mission accomplished.

-A few of my buddies got noticeably skinnier just before their weddings. Now this is common practice for brides, but I never expected it from my guy friends. Mainly because the last time I can recall them attempting to improve their physical appearance in any way was doing twenty push-ups in the hotel room before hitting the pool in Acapulco on Spring Break.

-Last week my friend who is on his second marriage was telling me about how fucking crazy his ex-wife is. But as he was going off, I couldn’t help but wonder how he didn’t figure this out ahead of time. I’m sorry, but if you date, live with, propose to, and marry a chick but still don’t realize she’s totally psychotic, well, you have no one to blame but yourself. And your idiot friends who knew all along but didn’t tell you.

-And, finally, my college buddy Harlan is someone I’ve always looked up to in terms of being a sloppy, unrepentant party animal. When he got engaged two weeks ago, my first thought was that the Have-Knots had lost yet another member to the other side. But then I realized that getting married has at least one huge advantage that being single can never match: unlimited license to get as stupid as you want while always having someone there who’s required to stick up for you. If Harlan gets sloppy at a wedding, his fiancee can always step in and say, “He’s with me. We’re getting married soon.” And people look the other way, knowing Harlan has at least attained some minimum level of maturity. If I cause a scene, I’m looked down upon: “It’s just some single guy who knows the groom. Don’t worry; he’ll be on a plane back to California in the morning.” And off I’ll go – back to LAX hungover, half a tux in my carry-on, and $500 poorer. Fuck me.

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-Recently I was telling a friend a story when she stopped me and asked how old the people I was referring to were. Instinctively, I said, “Kids. You know, our age.” It didn’t strike me as strange until later that I had just called a bunch of guys in their late twenties “kids.” And with my twenty-ninth birthday approaching this week, it has begun to occur to me that, as much as I don’t want grow up, it’s happening whether I like it or not. But although standing one year shy of thirty scares the shit out of me, the upside of being twenty-nine is that I’ve now been around long enough to pass down some valuable life lessons. So kids, listen up: here are some rules I wish I knew when I was your age.

-If you go out of your way to organize something fun for your buddies – a party, a dinner, a vacation – you will end up getting fucked. Someone won’t pay, or will break something, or will otherwise embarrass you. This is the collateral damage that comes with trying to make plans for borderline alcoholics. Figure it into your costs ahead of time.

-Unless something catastrophic has happened, don’t tell your mom any bad news. If you get into a minor fender bender or have a cold, your mom doesn’t need to know. After all the shit you’ve put her through, she deserves not to worry.

-As much as you hate your job, your boss hates his twice as much. Except he’s fifty, has kids and a mortgage, and can’t do shit about it.

-If your birthday is in the summer, prepare for a lifetime of disappointment. No cupcakes in elementary school. No parties in your honor in college. And after graduation, even the best-laid birthday plans are constantly disrupted by a never-ending string of engagement parties and weddings. All I want for my birthday this year is to have been born in March.

-Never order eggs from Subway. In 2006 I ate breakfast at Subway, and I’m telling you I haven’t been quite right since.

-If you’re about to go out but can’t remember if you put cologne on, don’t give yourself a precautionary spritz. Too much cologne is worse than none.

-Unless you work in entertainment or some ancillary industry thereof, there’s no reason to live in Los Angeles. If you like great weather and oceans and beaches and shit, move to San Diego or Miami.

-If you’re emailing a bunch of friends and find yourself writing at the bottom “PS: don’t forward this on,” just delete the email and walk away. You probably shouldn’t be sending it in the first place.

-In the end, I’ve found that turning twenty-nine has been a lot easier to deal with than when I turned twenty, or even twenty-five, both of which kinda got me depressed. Perhaps it’s because I have an even more daunting birthday – thirty – on the horizon. Or maybe it’s because this year I had bi-coastal birthday celebrations for the first time. In LA, I threw a party on a Wednesday night (this is the only city where you can pull that off because all the actors / models / comedians / writers don’t have to go to work in the morning). Then this past weekend I held my annual pub crawl in New York. Both were a blast – from what I can remember. Who am I to be having bi-coastal birthday parties, you ask? I’ll tell you who – someone who hasn’t had a cupcake with his name on it in twenty-nine fucking years.

-As always, here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-I hate when people lose their pet and then write the “Missing” poster in the first person. It’s always a blurry, photocopied picture of the animal with the caption: “If you find me, please call my owners!” It’s almost like the family is trying to shift the blame to the dog when it’s really their fault for leaving the fucking gate open.

-I have a spam filter that emails me a report once a day listing all the shit that’s been blocked. But one day, I stopped receiving the reports and couldn’t figure out why. After weeks of searching, I finally discovered where they were going: my junk mail folder.

-You know you’re getting older when you start wearing a seat belt in a taxi.

-My buddy Adam lets his fiancee access his email account and send replies pretending to be him because he’s too lazy to write back himself. The best part is that she even tries to replicate his horrible grammar and spelling – though she hasn’t quite perfected his unique syntax yet. So if I get an email from “Adam” that’s properly capitalized or contains words with more than two syllables, I’m pretty sure it’s an imposter.

-My friend Jen told me she was looking for a bicycle she could use to ride around Manhattan. So the next time I was at my parents’ house on Long Island, I went into the shed, dug out the beloved Mongoose I rode every day when I was thirteen, and gave it to her. She thanked me profusely, and I wished her luck. I doubt she’ll need it, though. If I remember junior high correctly, nothing earns you street cred like rocking a bright red ten-speed.

-I recently went to a new dentist to get a cleaning and was totally freaked out when they used a two-person operation. The hygienist cleaned my teeth while an assistant wielded the suction tube (which I still call “Mr. Thirsty”). Usually it’s just the hygienist in the room; I’ve never been double-teamed like that before. On one hand, it was more efficient. On the other hand, the requisite small talk was made all the more excruciating by having to mumble unintelligible answers to inane questions posed by two annoying people instead of one.

-And, finally, my frat buddy Shermdog and I have an interesting way of keeping in touch. As a surgeon in New York, he gets out of work ridiculously late and then calls me in LA since I’m the only one he knows who’s awake. This has worked out pretty well for a while, but all I can say is, he better keep in touch, since he owes me big time. At my birthday pub crawl two years ago, he hooked up with a chick, they started dating, and now they live together. And how am I repaid for such benevolence? He’s missed the two crawls since then in order to attend girlfriend-related excursions. If and when they get married, I’ll have only myself to blame for not following rule number one: organize something fun for your buddies and you’re the one that pays the price. Fuck me.

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-My sister and I have often debated which is most irritating: talking to our parents when they’re both on the line together, talking to our parents one right after the other, or telling a story to one parent, only to have them relay it incorrectly to the other.  The answer is a toss-up, but I’ve realized – as we stand halfway between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day – that it is possible to have a strong relationship with your parents and simultaneously be infuriated by them.  Some twentysomethings can hardly bear their parents.  Others treat their moms and dads like sisters or brothers (which is weird).  When it comes to the delicate parent/child relationship, though, I’m kind of in the middle – appreciating their unconditional support, while wishing they were just a little less annoying about it.

-I essentially serve as the buffer between my parents and the Internet.  If my mom has a question about the latest episode of “Lost,” she calls me, I look it up on Lostpedia, and then give her the scoop.  When my dad wants a book, he calls me, I order it on Amazon, and have it sent to him.  It’s all very efficient – for them.

-Back in Ruminations #108, I bemoaned the fact that my parents don’t know how to text message.  I got a surprising number of responses from readers who said this was a blessing, not a curse.  Apparently, once parents learn how to text message, they don’t stop.  And the last thing I need is my dad texting in his book orders.  Plus it took me about three years to get my mom to configure her Bluetooth headset properly – I’m afraid if she hits any button but “Call” all my hard work will go to shit.

-I think my mom is starting to come to the realization that I will not be giving her grandchildren anytime soon.  I’m very honest – I tell her I don’t plan on getting married until at least my mid-thirties, let alone having kids.  And you can just see that look on her face – that look that says, “I raised you and put up with all your bullshit and you can’t do this one lousy fucking thing for me?”  As if summarizing every episode of “Lost” for her isn’t enough.

-A few weeks ago, my dad and I went to what will most likely be our last game at the old Yankee Stadium before it gets torn down.  We witnessed many memorable moments at that ballpark: Tommy John making three errors on one play in 1988, snow on Opening Day in 1996, Jeter diving headfirst into the stands in 2004 against the Sox.  I think baseball is such a point of bonding between fathers and sons because it combines tradition, beer, and not having to look directly at one another.  Otherwise it just feels weird.

-Even though we’re supposed to be turning into our parents, lately I feel like my mom has been turning into me.  Suddenly she has trouble sleeping (something I’ve suffered with for years), and has no patience for idle banter (a personal hallmark of mine).  But the final straw came a few months ago, when I was home visiting and dropped my mom off for work so I could have the car for the day.  Strangely enough, I found myself waiting an extra minute until she got all the way inside – before she waved enthusiastically while holding her lunch as I drove off.

-Sometimes I feel like my family is a sitcom: loud, balding father, doting mother, mischievous older brother, overachieving younger sister.  Then I remember that’s The Simpsons (minus Maggie).  Still, I’m fortunate that my parents have provided more laughs than agitation over the years (barely).  Now that we live on opposite ends of the country, it’s good to know that they’ve always got my back – and that they won’t be visiting any time soon.

-As always, here are some random things I’ve been ruminating about lately…

-I have mixed feelings about my friends who have employed the feature on their cell phone that forces the caller to listen to music instead of ringing.  I can’t decide whether to punch them in the face or merely never call them again.

-Does the bottom of a Listerine bottle have backwash?

-I haven’t been able to shake this horrible cold that has been plaguing me for weeks.  There is one benefit, however, of going so long without an appetite: I’ve actually dropped to the heretofore impossibly light weight that I entered for myself on my driver’s license.

-Since I’ve been sick, I’ve been ordering a lot of hot tea, which I usually never drink.  What the fuck is up with tea?  Did you know that you can’t just get regular tea anymore?  They hurl an obscene number of variations at you, none of which sound appetizing.  Do I want chai or chamomile?  Um, how about neither.

-Drinking a lot of tea makes me pee a lot.  Pee is very simple; it’s the opposite of tea.  There are only three colors of pee: regular, clear (after heavy drinking), or Day-Glo (if you’re taking some sort of medication).  There are also only two odors: regular and, occasionally, asparagus.  Now those are choices I can live with.

-People who wear sunglasses indoors have been made fun of since time immemorial.  But I actually don’t have a problem with that – if you’re gonna be a douchebag, at least go all the way.  It actually bothers me more when people wear sunglasses outdoors but it’s obviously too hazy or cloudy to necessitate it.  Either take off those aviators or go inside with them on – but don’t half-ass it.

-One of my guilty pleasures is receiving free, personalized return address labels from charities I have no intention of donating to.

-And, finally, I leave you with my favorite mom story of all time.  At the beginning of the year, my mom was at the mall and decided to buy a new wall calendar.  Like a typical mom, she chose one with a different pretty flower each month.  She happily hung the calendar in her office and went about her business.  Several uneventful months went by.  Then, about six weeks ago, a co-worker was standing in my mom’s office and said to her, “That’s quite an interesting calendar you have there.”  My mom thanked him, flattered that someone else liked the pretty flower calendar she had picked out.  And that’s when her co-worker informed her that these weren’t just any pretty flowers.  For the past four months, my mom had unintentionally been displaying a calendar full of marijuana plants.  My mom had absolutely no idea and no one else noticed (or admitted they noticed) until that moment.  She had a laugh and then called to tell me the story.  She also told me she had decided to leave the calendar on the wall.  After all, they were still pretty flowers.  That story alone is worth a few more summaries of “Lost” – and maybe even a couple of grandchildren.  Fuck me!

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