Q&A

We are not going to answer any questions. No, I'm kidding. They'll be oblique answers, and some of them will be in French.
– Joss Whedon at Comic-Con

I love this man.

Reconstruction

"Look past the mess," the listing for our future home said. The place was absolutely trashed when we saw it the first time. There were fast food wrappers strewn all over the house, beer bottles in every closet, graffiti stenciled the garage, cigarette butts sprinkled throughout the lawn. Exploring past the obvious, we found all sorts of other gems: a broken bong in one of the smaller bedrooms, a picture of a teenager using said bong in the kitchen, tidy-whities (neither tidy nor white) strung up over the shower rod, and a latex glove in one of the toilets. I'm purposely skipping over one other item, because it deserves special mention in a future entry.

We spent days just cleaning. Our house.

Since then we've moved into renovation land, and I suddenly understand why there are five Home Depots and four Lowes within ten miles of our house. I get it. The figurative lightbulb (once I bought it) is on. All hail the home improvement store.

I spent last weekend ripping up the hideous tile in our entryway, extending our laminate flooring to the front door (that's new by the way -- no chance in hell that any of the old carpet was staying). As a bonus, removing the tile also allowed me to fix some of the problem spots with the hardwood (it was the very first section of the floor I worked on). The process took two days, and I had to pull up half the hallway to pull it off. In retrospect we were idiotic not to have taken out the tile in the first place. It looks fantastic now, if I don't say so myself.

I used to hate doing home projects. Anything wrong with a house was an annoyance. Now it's a challenge.

The Salute

Every so often I go on a cleansing binge, which usually consists of tossing out old junk. It's a habit one gets into after living under tables. Yep, I lived under a table for a while back in my early 20s. Long story.

Organize and purge. That's the creed as of late. The music collection, thanks to TuneUp, is now nice and tidy. Delicious Library has allowed be to digitally catalog all of our books and DVDs. The laptop has gotten a lot of long overdue maintenance. Order, post-move, is starting to be restored.

I also went around and tried to clean up my online presence. From email opt-outs to account cancelations I've been doing all that I can to nix all the clutter. For the most part, it's been a simple process. Enter MySpace.

I swore up and down that I'd never join MySpace, but quickly caved to peer pressure. I joined up years ago, back when it was trendy thing to do. For the most part I've never been much for social networking sites -- I try, but I'm never very active on them.

MySpace lasted a couple of weeks. Then it just sat, and friends started to give my crap about how I never logged in.

Now everybody's jumped ship over to Facebook and Twitter. I've yet to join Twitter, but I'm actually doing OK with Facebook. MySpace is just a lost cause, so I figured I'd cancel it. Easy enough, right? Yeah, no.

While trying to cancel, I learned about the stupidest validation process ever: the "Salute." Ever heard of this crap? The normal cancelation process is, in theory, pretty straightforward. You click the cancel button, verify that yes, you do want to cancel (Yes, I'm really sure -- they try to talk you out if it repeatably) then they shoot you a confirmation email that you have to respond to. MySpace won't send me emails for some reason, so I can't complete the process. Switch email addresses, you say? Again, you have to confirm this with your old address.

This leaves me with option number three, the MySpace Salute.

The requirements for this "important matter of privacy and security":

1. Take a picture of yourself holding a piece of paper with MySpace information on it.
2. The "salute" must be hand-written.
3. They have to see your hands holding the handwritten piece of paper.
4. You must send it through the internal contact system (which is incredibly hard to find).

I've never had to jump through such elaborate hoops to do anything online. My online banking is easier than this. Yeah, I know MySpace is geared toward high school kids, but seriously? Is there really a need for all this? Just close the damn thing and be done with it.

After finishing the draconian process I had a thought about a second salute, but I don't think they'd find it as entertaining as I do.

Continuity? Check!

I'm a very analytical guy, generally speaking. That said, it bugs the hell out me having a two year gap here. Since I've decided to resurrect the blog I have an overwhelming need to play catchup.

Now, I know I'm not going to be able to completely fill the void. But I can't bring myself to just start talking about current things without mentioning the old. Particularly because the this place is missing some of the best moments of my life.

Backstories will be had. I've got some great stories I want to relive. But I know me, it's gonna take some time. And odds are I'll be leaping around, 'cause that's how my brain works. First, though, there must be some continuity.

What you must know:

• Allison and I got married last September.
• We just bought our first home.
• I just turned thirty.

I don't know where I'm going to start, but at least there's some context now.

The Blue Fairy

I've been sitting here for a while, trying to figure out what to say as part of the relaunching of the blog. It's been two years. Two long, great years, filled with lots of miscellaneous crazy. I can't get the ending of the movie Artificial Intelligence out of my mind right now.

I recall sitting in the theater, ages ago, watching Haley Joel Osment sitting at the bottom of the ocean and the screen fading to black. It was a beautiful lament, a satisfying ending. My bladder aching, I rose to make a quick exit to the restroom. The strangest thing happened: the screen came to life again. What followed was a completely unnecessary and pointless epilogue.

Some things are best left unsaid. I hope it isn't true here. I have more to say.