Kid Tetris

This particular 'Rescue Hero' looks like a caveman. I'm talking about The Caveman that we're trained to recognize as a caveman - sloping forehead (or at least a protruding browline that makes it appear that way), confused/dopey exprssion and generally cartoonishly oversized features. Can't cavemen do better than rescue service jobs? It's a stereotype that we as a society need to burn into the ground and flush the ashes away into an anonymous garbage can in a mall food court. Cavemen can do other jobs! Cavemen are bankers, bee-keepers, Bollywood starlets and bungee cord salesmen! Cavemen are farmers, frisbee designers, food service employees and fishermen! Cavemen are electricians, educators, enologists and erotic dancers! Cavemen are judges, jam/jelly manufacturers, juice bar enthusiasts and Judeo-Christian ethicists! Cavemen are pet groomers, pop corn kiosk associates, peepshow performers and panda wrestlers (a growing sport in several Chinese provinces)! Cavemen are actuaries, argonauts, agricultural historians and aviators! Cavemen are DJs, dilletantes, distance runners and dentists! If this action figure were a banker or movie production studio executive with an overtly Hebraic appearance, it would be shunned like a child without a head wishing to play basketball. But this caveman exploitation is just as bad, if not worse! The only difference is that our ears are not readily tuned to this brand of prejudice and filth. Rise up and help your fellow cavemen, my brothers and sisters.

My credit card company tells me there's special super great deals for valued customer me! at Janie and Jack. Not knowing what it is, I go to their site and I have this horrible vision of how my mother dressed me when I was really small. Or at least how she dressed me for most of the pictures - sailor suits, polo shirts, you get the idea.

I've been doing this diary-ish/jokish thing for something like 18 or 19 months in different forms and with varying levels of anonymity (I think this one is about 4 or 5 months old). I went back and read some of the stuff I wrote elsewhere more than 6 months ago, which I rarely do because of how self conscious I am about the whole. I made myself laugh. I think I'm finally understanding what it's like to be a partially whole person.

An excerpt from what made me laugh:
To be perfectly honest with you - I don't watch all that much football. Don't have time for it. I've been sucked back into the world of backroom bareknuckles boxing. It's a hard life, but I'm going to be graduating from college soon and I need a career. And don't knock it until you've given it a try. It's an amazing feeling... getting pounded into a garage floor until you remember all of those awful experiences from a dozen years of public school, consequently stirring up all of that dormant rage. You pick up a stick of reinforcing bar and smash his leg until he starts crying like you did during junior high when everyone liked to call you 'that stupid cake eater' because you wore a cape everyday and hated sandwiches and only wanted to eat birthday cake for lunch because birthday cake is supposed to be about smiles and good times, but for you it turned into a lot of really bad things, like being forced to eat a bucket of sweet relish. After that, I guess I just associated birthday cake and sweet relish with throwing up and typical junior high torture. I've always preferred dill pickles, but since leaving public school, I've come like pie a lot more. Yeah, I'd say I'm a pretty complex guy.

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Anyway, that was then. Today after I left my parent's home (these visits are odd for everyone involved), picking up my cache of lemon-lime Gatorade, I saw a peripheral figure from my past in line behind me. I imagined a few versions of a conversation before I left the store, hoping I'd never see him again. Since I've started this life - Life 2.0 (or 5.0 or 6.0, depending on how you break things up), I've only really talked to/met with/had prolonged interactions with one person with whom I had a significant lapse in contact.

I think I'm going to go see Bend It Like Beckham and use this damn gift certificate because I don't think there's another movie that I want to see anytime soon (besides Gigantic and Melvin Goes to Dinner and the new Wes Anderson one and possibly Kill Bill, but I doubt those will never find their way into this stupid theater).

One of my friends (who was hired by a consulting firm that turned me down) is having a crisis of conscience/Who-am-I/What-am-I-doing? episode. He starts his job next week. I'll let you know how this turns out. Should be interesting.