I Club Baby Seals

I watched IFC/Fred Armisen's sendup of Portland, OR: "Portlandia." I liked it. I don't think it was as "spot on" as people give it credit for and some of the bits weren't that funny. And... I'm not sure that it has appeal outside of Portland Metro. However, it was funny and seemed pretty Portland accurate (although I've never heard any one make reference to Portland's "North side").

On Facebook, someone suggested "Greshamia," a similar show based on Gresham, the blue collar eastern suburb of Portland. I posted the followup comment.

Greshamia: Where single moms go to retire. Everyone works in a bar at some point, no matter what their educational tract or previous occupation may have been. People smoke while riding bicycles. Greshamia: Where video poker lounges will cash state unemployment checks. Where cover bands are king; why write your own songs when Thin Lizzy and Cheap Trick have already written the best songs ever? Gresham: the answer to the question asked most in high school spanish class: "where am I going to use this?"

The last one was a bit wordy. I'll work on that. Anyway: Greshamia could be even more obscure, really. Ah, an idea that will live only in my head. Where I primarily live. Off to read more Klosterman, drink more coffee, and take more nap.

goochout.

I have a face for radio and a voice for newsprint...

It's Saturday morning, 7:30am. I woke up early, I guess, since I don't really have to be up for another 46 hours.

I've made and consumed breakfast. Clearly last night was not an exciting one. Dinner with a friend and then typing up my chore list and doing my recreational reading while I sat in sweat-clothes and waited for the Tylenol PM kicked in. I challenged the cat to a game of Angry Birds, but she ignored me as she sat in her cat condo in front of a Scarface sized pile of cat nip.

Meownolo.

Thinking of watching the "Portlandia"premier on Hulu. A litle Portland-centric humor might be entertaining. The sun is coming out. Think I'm going back to couch.

goochout.

You say you want a resolution...

Other than using the ellipses device a lot less... [damn] I've come up with a few resolutions. I think my six month abstinence from booze and dating comes up at the end of this month. Six months without hangovers and awkward social interactions will come to an end, but not without lessons learned. I understand that  most of my social interactions are awkward, but dating ones seem to be most awkward for me. I can make ordering a coffee at Starbucks feel like a condensed tale of confusion, miscommunication, and perceived betrayal.

I've accomplished a lot of things just in January alone. I've balanced my company and personal banking accounts. I've lost some weight through the not drinking and I've been cooking at home a lot more (not going out as much). I've cut out cable television as I found paying $140/month to watch Family Guy and South Park reruns (the bulk of my television consumption) fucking absurd. I've even finished a book that I started reading just before the new year. Historically, I haven't been much of a book reader. I've even started using public transportation sometimes when i go downtown.

So, in list form, I'm going to post my resolutions here. Somehow, self publishing on my blog makes me feel like there will be some accountability.

• Read instead of television three nights a week.
• Out for drinking one night a week only.
• No beer after soccer (to stop negating any physical benefit gained prior to the seemingly obligatory binge beer drinking that seems to ensue).
• Public transportation if I don't have a designated driver/couch on which to crash.
• Lose weight to a specific goal (read: down to 'obese' from 'morbidly obese.')
• Build the business up. I think I've taken for granted the kickassness of having a self sustaining business. I need to be more proactive in pursuing new customers and pay more attention to the finances (balancing the books and actually reading the statements was a good start).
• Join a gym and run outside regularly (we'll see how this goes).
• Get married on 11/11/11. I'm a sucker for numerology. A bit of a stretch, but, you know.
• Compete in one amateur MMA match. Yeah, later in the year -- if I continue training.
• Be published in something. I want to write something and have it published in anything (something I haven't done in eight years or so).

As I said, I'm working on a lot of this already. But any asshole can come up with resolutions - this one certainly did. The real effort, as we all know, is keeping them. I find it difficult living without adult supervision... and I'm 36 years old. We'll see how this goes. Here's to a good year.

goochout.

one two, one two. is this thing on?

You know, I drink a lot of that Rockstar Recovery (I've not made a secret of my obsession with it). One would think that I'd have developed a tolerance for it. I think the opposite has occurred. I'm ultra senstive to whatever magical ingredients are mixed within. It makes my heart race (and in a few cases, hesitate/stop). I'm down to one can a day (from two) and that morning yellow canned goodness is not making me feel so swell.

I'm opening up (probably) my last can of this electrolyte/caffeine phenomenon this morning. I'm working from home for a big chunk of the day. The remainder of my Rockstar Recovery cache will remain in my downstairs fridge as booze mixer and in my bedroom fridge as, well, I don't know. A morning after consolation prize? Heh, I'll tape cab fare to the cans as a way to expedite their removal from my house.

So I sit here with a few different poeple's workstations at my remote disposal. It's so empowering until I have to call someone who I've insisted stay off their computer while I'm controlling it from my home office and have them "hit the enter key, please" or "could you hit the power button on your computer?"

I'm in complete and total control![asterisk].

Just got off of the phone possibly considering an international vacation. This would be a first for me, since the only foreign country I've been to is Miami. Sure, I've been to Canada and was probably the youngest white kid stopped at the Tijuana border with a variety of switchblades (hidden in plain site... genius). I have to get my ducks in a row if I want to make this happen.

Speaking of Ducks (zing)... What a freaking heartbreak. I mean, that game tying pass was such a kickass moment and to lose it after all that. Well, welcome to Oregon sports. Oregon: Holding on to 1978 since 1991.

I think I'm putting weight back on. How the fuck does one abstain from drinking and gain weight? Determination, that's how. Fat kid sticktoitiveness: Overcoming calorie deficient adversity to keep the weight on. When it comes to Weight Watchers points, I always get the high score.

My thermostat thinks I'm at work, so it's set for just above freezing. My genitalia looks like a blue robin's egg in a nest.

Have to hit the showers. Long day ahead. Gooch:Out

Damn I'm such a G, it's pathetic.

Citizens:

Whenever there's a police shooting I often get annoyed by the police entity's handling of the press. In  withholding information, anyone with an iota of critical thinking can go from being sympathetic to those who are sworn to protect us to being skeptical of what really happened during the discharge of a cop's firearm.

The tragic shooting of Ralph Painter, Rainier, Oregon's police chief involved a 21 year old man. Police told the press that the shooter appeared to be high on meth but will not state anything about where the shooter obtained the gun. Presumably, and from witness reports, the shooter grabbed the gun from the police chief before shooting him. When asked about this, police would not confirm the accuracy of this theory.

Why not?

Although it appears a clear case of an asshole shooting a good cop, I'd feel better if the information released wasn't so one sided. Citizens don't have press offices with which to spin their side of the story. They don't have the option to wait days before explaining discharging a firearm. Whats to keep the police from speculating that any citizen involved in anything was on drugs? Or worse, what's to keep them from telling the press that a citizen "may have been high on drugs." As I type this, I "may" be drunk and high on cocaine, weed, and some crazy shit that I invented in my basement. I'm not (primarily, because I don't have a basement). But in a police culture of shoot-then-ask-questions, there's also a culture of "talk shit about a citizen and then retract later."

Over New Years Eve, a shooting occurred a club. Police responded and one cop fired his gun. At whom? Why? No reason given. It just happened. From the Oregonian:

"He didn't shoot the victim, in the course of what he came upon and what he saw going on, he discharged his weapon," Sheffer said. "There was no one person attached to the incident."

Sheffer could not go into any additional detail about the officer's involvement in the incident and would not confirm later why the officer fired his gun or whom he was targeting citing the ongoing investigation.

"We can't clarify anymore (other than) this is an officer involved shooting but this is not an officer involved shooting in which someone was struck," she said.

 Four days after the incident, the officer had yet to be interviewed regarding the shooting. All the police will do is take the sentence "an officer shot his gun" and stretch it into a just-as-vague paragraph.

I don't envy the dangerous nature of police work and have a lot of respect for the job they do. I just think that the press handling of officer involved events undermine their efforts by bringing a level of skepticism among the literate public. In 2010 when an officer shot a deranged homeless guy holding a weapon, Portland's then police chief Rosie Sizer was so evasive in her description of the homeless guy's weapon that I had to google the "clues" she would slowly release to determine that the officer involved shot a deranged man holding an exacto/pen/hobby knife. Her reluctance to state what the deceased suspect was holding made me think that they didn't fully believe it was a justified kill.

Clearly I'm not in a mood to spellcheck or capitalize. Makes me not want to post it. Hey, wait... Maybe I didn't write this at all. In fact, all I'll say is that paragraphs were written. I can't clarify any more that this was a Gallucci involved writing and not one in which anything was said. I blame my netbook.