stupid man’s friends receive trash for holidays

I’m cleaning my office today.

And trying to get rid of lots of junk.

If you receive an envelope from me next week, I’d think twice before opening it. It will, no doubt, be somehow connected to this dejunkification process.

I should also let you know this.

If something I want to get rid of has any value whatsoever, I plan to put it on Ebay.

So, if you get something from me, it will, therefore by definition, be of no value.

It will, of course, have deep, significant meaning, but it will otherwise be worthless.

operation whitney lover: one man’s moronic quest to have all of his coworkers and family members believe that he loves whitney houston, even though nothing could be further from the truth
I forget how this started. I’m sure that in the beginning I thought it was funny. Now, since the run-in with Lindsey J Hammond, I’m questioning everything though. My confidence is shot.

I haven’t done a damned thing with regard to this project for well over a week now. I should have gone out and bought a CD this weekend, before going off to see my family in Kentucky, but I couldn’t find the energy. I’m afraid that I might be missing a great opportunity. I know that relatives will want to go out and see my new Honda Civic Hybrid (it runs on gas and electric battery power and gets up to 50 miles to the gallon), and it would be perfect if I had a Whitney Houston CD playing when the car started. I’m a loser.

I never thought that I’d consider myself a loser for not rushing out to buy the soundtrack to “The Bodyguard.”

Who could have guessed that it would have come to this?

mccain on energy
A short interview with Senator John McCain ran in the New York Times magazine today. I found part of it interesting. Here’s the section I liked.

NYT: There’s a lot of concern that a war in Iraq will bring higher oil prices and cripple the economy. Why do you think that weaning ourselves off Middle Eastern oil and developing alternative energy sources has not become more of a pressing national security issue?

JM: It’s an issue of leadership. I think the American people need to be informed by our president that if we are really ever going to have the degree of independence that we should have, it requires a reduction of our dependence on imported oil. That means certain sacrifices must be made by the American people.

NYT: Is the president calling on Americans to sacrifice enough?

JM: If I had advice for the president, I would ask a lot more of the people who are ready to give. I would demand as my top priority legislation increasing national service programs. Also, recognize that climate change is real and start developing concrete policies to address it. The Glacier National Park with no more glaciers. Remarkable.

I know that very few of you care about this topic, but it’s my web page, and I think the President of the United States has to stand up to the energy companies, the buddies of Dick Cheney, and throw his full support behind alternative energy efforts. He needs to call for better fuel efficiency. He needs to champion mass transit. He needs to fund the hell out of research.

As I’ve mentioned here before, he has to establish a network of alternative energy researchers along the lines of what was done in the 1940’s to support our nuclear efforts. We need a renewable energy Manhattan Project. If I were Bush, I’d put politics aside and I’d ask Gore to take the reigns. While he probably couldn’t really lead the researchers themselves (like Francis Collins has done with the Human Genome Project), he might be able to wrangle the political forces to see it launched and funded. What’s more, I think that Gore would enjoy it more than the presidency. It might very well be what he was meant to be doing.

This should be as high a priority as war with Iraq. It is absolutely essential not only to our immediate security, but to the future of mankind.

Now, let’s get to the reason you’re really here – to debate the merits of songs about breast feeding!

naming an ugly baby
I have an idea for the title of my band’s next record. I’m thinking that we should call it “Unproductive Cough.” That, in many ways, describes our last session. We kept hacking and hacking and hacking, and not much came up. It’s like we could all feel something in our chest, but we couldn’t get it out.

Another alternative is “Ramschackle but Heartfelt.” That’s how budding music journalist Emerson Dameroon described our work when we met him for drinks in Athens, Georgia, after the session was done.

I’ve been listening to the rough mixes over the course of the past few days and I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on what should and what shouldn’t go on the record (the way our band works, we vote on which songs should be included each year, but we also each have veto power, should we feel compelled to use it). There’s just one song that I’m puzzling over. I like it a lot, but the content, I’m afraid, might be interpreted in a way other than it was intended. The song is called “Breast Milk” and we wrote it, as we do all of our songs, off-the-cuff as we were standing around the studio. (We don’t write anything before going into the studio.) One of us mentioned breast feeding, when talking about his wife and new daughter. It was innocent enough.

I began to think about my friend Dawn and a discussion we had had a few weeks earlier on the difficulty some people have when it comes to breast feeding. It was in that discussion that I learned there were people known as “latching coaches” or “lactation consultants.” They teach new mothers and babies how to hook up to one another correctly. Apparently, it’s not as easy as you would think… Anyway, we’ve now got this song about latching coaches and breast feeding and I’m afraid that it’ll sound like we’re just being stupid and goofy, when that wasn’t the case at all… So, that’s the one I’m struggling with. We’ll see what the band decides.

the big list
I’ve got a lot to do over the course of the next dozen or so days. Here’s a brief list.

Work on the non-Blog content sections of MarkMaynard.com - Sketch out the CrimewaveUSA.com website and begin the design - Work on writing and shooting the first test scenes for my as yet untitled television show (part talk show, part self-help, part sitcom… all done with puppets) - Get Paypal and Amazon accounts set up and start using them on MarkMaynard.com - Finish the “Our Vacation in Italy” web pages that we’ve been promising people forever - Sketch out the plot line for “Mutiny at Bedtime,” the children’s book I’ve been working out in my head - Further agonize about my top secret Ypsilanti clothing line - Get the new Monkey Power Trio record ready for pressing - Draw the cover art for the new Monkey Power Trio record and get it ready for the printer - Continue to send out the new issue of Crimewave - Start selling ads, collecting submissions and writing for issue #15 of Crimewave - Begin auctioning artwork and other stuff on Ebay – Find some way to pay for all of this stuff

Goodnight, my invisible friends of the internet.