My 20-year high-school reunion is coming up in a few months. No matter how captivating it might be to hear my former classmates discuss their past two decades of disappointments, I have little intention of going. In my mind, there's a quota on how many times a person can hear the song "Lady in Red" without having an aneurysm, and I'm pretty sure I'm reaching my limit.
I know of the upcoming reunion because -- for reasons even I don't truly comprehend -- I registered at Classmates.com at some point in my life. From what I can tell, Classmates.com is a fabulous resource if you're looking for people you don't really want to find. I can never locate the interesting people with whom I went to school on Classmates.com. I can only presume that's because Internet access can be difficult from prison.
Now that the reunion is right around the corner, I'm getting Classmates.com e-mails far more frequently than I'd prefer. Most of them come from a guy named Dave Spears, who is apparently serving as the event's coordinator. I don't envy Dave Spears at all. It's a thankless job, really, and he's not earning a penny for doing it. Dave Spears is organizing this reunion and coordinating it from beginning to end, solely out of dedication and passion. That's how much love Dave Spears has for Mount Eden High School's Class of 1987. Dave Spears kicks ass.
There's only one problem. I spent four typical, non-descript years at Mount Eden, just like your average run-of-the-mill high-school student, yet I never went to school with Dave Spears.
At first, I figured I just didn't recognize the name. After all, it was 20 years ago; I'd have a tough time remembering what I had for dinner last night. It's certainly reasonable to think I may have simply forgotten about Dave Spears. Also, we were a pretty big class. It's entirely possible, although not all that likely, that I made it through four years of high school without ever encountering the guy or even hearing him mentioned. Either way, I had to get to the bottom of this.
Not surprisingly, Dave Spears has a profile on Classmates.com. I went straight to his page and found the following:
Although I did not finish my years at Mt Eden, I did finish, and then some. I will always be a Monarch at heart. Many people I speak with said they thought that I would end up either in jail or dead. Well, I am here.
I should take a moment to point out that Mount Eden's mascot was the Monarch. Not the butterfly, but a lion -- think "monarch of the jungle." While Dave Spears might have peasants who work on his land in exchange for the right to live there, I don't think that's what he means when he refers to himself as "a Monarch at heart."
That aside, we know that Dave Spears "did finish, and then some." I've played this comment around in my head a number of times, and I still can't figure out what it means. When I finished high school, they gave me an empty blue folder that they pretended had a diploma in it; they'd mail the real one later, I was told. Did Dave Spears get something more? Did his "then some" include cash and prizes? Were there unexpected benefits of finishing elsewhere? I need to know this.
I thought I might have discovered a clue about Dave Spears when he brought up the part about people thinking he'd wind up dead or in jail. Maybe Dave Spears changed his identity to hide from the authorities. I'm confident he wouldn't be the first person from the class of '87 to do that. Apparently, I wasn't the only Monarch who considered this possibility, since I also discovered this post from Dave Spears as well:
Hey all, I just spoke with some that had stated they thought this was a scam. I assure you it is not. We are seriously planning and moving forward with this Reunion.
I never really considered any of this to be a scam. At no point has Dave Spears asked me for my social security number or my bank account details. I'm not sure what angle people think Dave Spears is trying to play. I can think of far more effective scams than luring 200 38-year-olds to the Pleasanton Hilton in anticipation of a high-school reunion. Me, I'm just concerned that a person who attended Mount Eden for maybe two weeks is hell-bent on organizing a 20-year reunion. It creeps me out a little bit. On the other hand, some people really dig weddings, and others get a kick out of funerals. Maybe Dave Spears lives his life from reunion to reunion, and that's what keeps him ticking. It probably beats either being in jail or being dead.
Have a wonderful time at the reunion, Dave Spears, as those balding, fat men and the women who pity them try to walk like Egyptians across the crowded dance floor without putting someone's eye out. You've earned your moment in the sun.
Today's word of the day is "macchiato," which, near as I can tell, is Italian for "all over the outside of a cup." I know this for a fact because I just bought a "caramel macchiato" coffee beverage at the quasi-Starbucks conveniently located in the Motorola cafeteria, and there is caramel stickiness all over the outside of the friggin' cup. Ants are forming a single-file line outside my cube to get a crack at this cup when I'm done with it.
Send help. My hand is stuck to my mouse.
Man, it's been awhile since I've updated this thing. Look at all the cobwebs.
So anyway, I am alive and doing well, thanks for asking. Lots of fun new stuff to report, along with an obligatory empty promise about how I'll try to blog more often. Really, I will. Try, that is. Yoda once said, "There is no try, there is only do." But Yoda's a muppet -- or at least he was before computer animators showed up on the scene -- and as one gets older, one listens less frequently to muppets. It's just one of those things.
As I suggested above, there's plenty going on. I last updated this blog in November, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and long before Taylor Hicks was freaking out little kids by flopping around on the floor like a crazy person. For starters, Tiersa and I finally got married in December. We've been together more than nine years now, so (a) it was about damn time, I suppose, and (b) for the most part, nothing really has changed. For what it's worth, I can confidently report that nothing bad will happen to my marriage should gay people start getting hitched, so Bill Frist can stop worrying about me and instead can try figuring out a way to pull Terri Schiavo out of the dirt in time for the November elections. Put that medical degree to good work, Billy. It's not there just so you can kill cats.
What else is going on? So glad you asked!
GOODBYE, TREE, AND HELLO, MOTO! Tomorrow is my last day as a Stanford University employee. This is a really good thing, because this place drives me nuts. Starting Monday, I return to the belly of the tech beast as a senior content specialist at Motorola. I'll be working in developer marketing again, which is what I did at BEA for two enjoyable years and then a third not-so-enjoyable year before arriving at the university with all the pretty trees. My sabbatical from the world of technology lasted shortly over a year. My sabbatical from Stanford will probably last until the ice caps finally melt, although from what I'm hearing that very well might happen by August of this year anyway.
So why leave Stanford, you ask? True story. A couple of days ago, one of the upper managers in my department discovered a terrible problem with our intranet that simply had to be repaired at once. She was in a state of panic, as if she'd just discovered flames shooting out of her monitor. And, as is quite typical in my department, the tone wasn't "Oh crap, there's something wrong with the intranet." No, it was "Jackson screwed up the intranet," which is even more endearing considering it really isn't my intranet to screw up anyway.
I walk over to Psycho Panic Lady to see the terrible issue. She's hovering her cursor over an e-mail link. Her hands were shaking. "You really did this wrong," she says. For the sake of accuracy, I'd like to point out that whether it's right or wrong, and it most definitely was not wrong, I had nothing to do with that e-mail link being there in the first place. That really doesn't change the story; I just wanted it out there.
Whatever the case, I'm not seeing any problem. It's an e-mail link, and it appears to have the behavior one would expect from an e-mail link. "What's wrong with it?" I asked. "Is it pointing to the wrong e-mail address?"
"No," she gasps in a condescending how-can-any-human-be-such-an-idiot voice. "Look what it does."
She clicks on the link. At this point, I'm expecting porn to pop up. I'm practically hoping it's going to be something good, like a Strong Bad cartoon or Ratchicken IV, to make this waste of time seem more worth it. But no, all I see is a new message window in Eudora, which is exactly what I'm supposed to see. There's an awkward silence between us as I wait for her to tell me exactly what terror she'd expected to unleash upon the world by clicking on that link while she waits for me to admit I'm an idiot who clearly broke the whole intranet and, as a result, ruined life as we all know and understand it.
"I'm not seeing anything unexpected," I said, trying my best to remain polite and calm while silently calculating how much vacation time I'd be able to cash out if I were to quit at that very moment.
"How can you not see this?" she asks, incredulously. She points to the e-mail window. "We cannot have this on the intranet!"
I'm totally lost. "We can't have a link that lets users send an e-mail?" Nobody told me about that new law. Goddamn Republicans in Congress. What are they going to screw up next?
"No," she says, clearly growing frustrated with my overwhelming stupidity. She closes the window. "Watch," she says, as if she's talking to a toddler or a hamster. "I click on the link, and watch." Again, a new message window opens up in Eudora. By now, I'm finding this situation so amusing in a I-really-don't-give-a-shit-about-this sort of way that I'm doing a terrible job at hiding a smile. The upper manager, however, is not even the least bit entertained. This is a major crisis.
"Look at where the window says 'from' and tell me what you see," she says, clearly making an effort to lead the witness.
"I see your name," I say. "You clicked on the link, and your e-mail program opened up. It thinks you're getting ready to send that person an e-mail message."
"That's the problem," she says.
Again, silence. My blank stare must have raised her body temperature at least five degrees. I shook my head ever so slightly, which was my final act of stupidity. I had now pushed her over the edge.
"Don't you see?" she says, loudly. "Anybody using the intranet can send a message from me just by clicking on that link! We can't have that!"
I shit you not.
I politely explained to her that if I were to click on the very same link from my computer, the message would appear to come from me. She did not seem convinced. I offered to give her a demonstration. She declined, and then basically turned into Gilda Radner's old Emily Litella character. "Never mind then," she said. I'm still not convinced she believed me.
And that was that. Not even a thank you after she raped five minutes of my life using only her excessive naivete as a weapon. Grumble.
The main reason I'm leaving is not Stanford, though. It's Motorola. They made a nice offer, and it's a great opportunity to join what is essentially a startup group working inside a Fortune 100 company. So it's really about that. Well, and the turkey.
Yeah, the turkey. When you arrive at the Motorola office in Sunnyvale, the first thing that strikes you is how unnatural the whole place looks. It's nothing but asphalt and concrete, hiding near the Lockheed building not far from Moffett Field. Really, it's not much more than a big cement building rising out of a paved parking lot. Pretty ugly.
When I arrived there for my second round of interviews, though, there was something in the parking lot that definitely looked out of place -- a huge wild turkey. Just roaming around, looking for whatever turkeys look for in parking lots. I have no idea how it got there. Maybe it took the light rail. Maybe it's all symbolic of my going back to developer marketing. A great big turkey, wandering the concrete jungle, looking for a place to roost.
Not to sell the turkey short, but I'd bet it has just as much knowledge about what happens when a user clicks on an e-mail link as members of the management team here in my soon-to-be-former department.
A SCANDINAVIAN FAREWELL. The folks at Stanford, who pretty much avoid me at all costs because they see me as some weird Web guy and they're all very special writers who are responsible for Stanford having all the money it does and therefore can't be seen with some creepy ape working in such a low-brow profession, threw me a little farewell party yesterday. Well, that's actually a lie. They threw a party, sure, but it was only for me in that they needed an excuse to throw a party. Hey, whatever works.
They decided to go with a Scandinavian theme, because those zany Scandinavians dig celebrating the summer solstice and yesterday, sure enough, was the summer solstice. Three different people asked me if I was Scandinavian. I said no, someone just wanted a Scandinavian party, and please don't make this any more awkward than it already is.
The director of the department, who is probably the biggest Stanford-centric reason I'm leaving in the first place, had been out of the office for the past two weeks or so and wasn't here when I gave my notice. She walked up to me. This was to be our first conversation since I announced my intention to leave.
"Well, this was unexpected," she said.
"Yeah, I know," I said. "It's a great opportunity."
"It sounds like a great opportunity," she said. I wonder if she heard that from me approximately a third of a second ago.
"I think it is," I replied. "I'm excited to get back to that line of work."
"Great," she said. "Well, OK. I'm hungry for a salad, and they don't have any of that here, so I'm going to go get a salad. Good luck." And with that, she walked off. I haven't seen her since.
It would take her approximately 25 seconds to walk from her office to my cube, so I doubt she's going to expend that degree of effort just to talk to me again before tomorrow afternoon. Barring something both completely unexpected and socially uncomfortable, her last words to me will be "I'm going to go get a salad. Good luck."
It really will be hard to survive without her love and support in my daily life.
Then again, at least she said something. At least half of the people at this small gathering didn't even bother to speak to me. I guess they fear my Web cooties. Or maybe Scandinavian people are just naturally unfriendly, and they were simply keeping with the theme.
At least Stanford people outside this department have been really nice. A couple of them have even said to me, "I can't even begin to imagine how you tolerated working with those people as long as you did."
It's easy. I just look forward to that next salad. That keeps me going.
THERE'S TAR ON MY HEEL. So there's this new job, and then there's this other thing.
A few months ago, while undoubtedly distracted by thoughts about my next salad, it crossed my mind that I was not being challenged at all here at Stanford. Well, that's not true. I was faced with the challenge of dealing with irritating blowhards playing university politics every single weekday. But that wasn't really doing it for me.
Not sure what I wanted my next step to be, I decided to start looking into business schools. It's probably just a lark, I thought. It would pass. There will be salad soon.
But the coursework started sounding more and more interesting. I spent a couple of weeks preparing for the GMAT, and I wound up doing pretty well on it. Then I sent off a couple of applications. A couple of schools invited me to visit, including my top choice. What the heck, right? Tiersa and I could use a couple of days away from our regular lives anyway. We got there, I sat in on a case study, I talked it up with the director of admissions, and I thought, "Yeah, this would be fun." But I wasn't expecting anything to come from it.
Then they told me two weeks later that I was accepted to their program. I totally didn't see that coming.
So once September rolls around, I'll be attending classes in one of the executive MBA programs at the University of North Carolina. And yes, I am aware that North Carolina is a pretty long commute from Silicon Valley. Fortunately, classes only meet in person one weekend per month. It's sort of like the Army Reserve of business schools, only I get to spend those weekends either in Washington, D.C., or Chapel Hill, N.C., instead of in some Quonset hut near some swamp 500 miles from civilization. Also, the program has an international theme, so I'll also get to study in the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Mexico, and Brazil. The Netherlands is almost like Scandinavia, so I now have experience in that part of the world thanks to my Stanford going-away festival.
And yeah, Motorola knows. They're really cool with it, in fact. I like it there. I don't even think of salads when I'm visiting.
I'll try to blog more. Really.
(Cross-posted on The Daily Kos.)
I don't mean to take what might even be interpreted as a minor potshot at Hunter, who I sincerely believe is one of the most talented diarists appearing on Daily Kos. But after reading his amusing front-page diary about the unintentionally amusing Bill O'Reilly and his newly minted hate list, a thought crossed my mind:
Why are we wasting any time on this asshole?
I know that we're all supposed to be upset over his comments regarding how Osama and Co. should blow up San Francisco's Coit Tower. As a proud resident of the Bay Area, I'd rather not see terrorists blow up anything around here. If they do need some local targets, however, I could point them to a couple of places in my birthplace of Hayward that could use a kick-start in their redevelopment efforts. But I digress.
Now the Falafel King is putting together a hate list -- a list, ironically, on which most reasonable people would want to find their names. If Bill O'Reilly has you on his "friends for life" list, let's face it. You're doing something wrong.
Anyway, back to my main point. Why doesn't our community view Bill O'Reilly for what he is -- a sad little gremlin who says stupid and outrageous things in order to generate enough buzz to keep his name out there in the mainstream. Contrary to what many of us seem to think, Bill O'Reilly's greasy hands touch very few people. According to mediabistro.com, O'Reilly's cable television show reaches less than 3 million viewers. Fox -- the real Fox, not its cable faux news stepchild -- just announced it was shelving "Arrested Development" because of poor ratings. "Arrested Development" is watched by 4 million viewers, more than a million more than The Falafel Factor, and Fox couldn't shut down "Arrested Development" quickly enough.
O'Reilly's radio ratings don't fare much better. In Denver, he's been replaced by third-tier conservative blabbermouth Glenn Beck -- Glenn Beck, for crying out loud -- after getting his ass handed to him by Ed Schultz, among others. Al Franken beats him in New York and in several other markets. O'Reilly is on 400 stations, sure, but not many people pay attention to him. In most markets, his ratings are well behind those of three or four other talk hosts. From station to station, he is frequently the least-listened-to English-language talk host airing in his slot. Sean Hannity also generates poor ratings results, but O'Reilly would give his left nut to have Hannity's numbers -- that's how low O'Reilly's Arbitron numbers actually are.
Sure, we can continue to make a stink each time O'Reilly shares with the world his latest imbecilic piece of vitriol. We can threaten to boycott his advertisers. We can send him e-mails letting him know that we think he and the falafel he rode in on can take a long walk off a short pier and hug an octopus, we can all get our names on his little hate list, and all that. But why bother? Bill O'Reilly is just another neo-conservative fanatic screaming from the mountaintops. He is white noise. He would honestly have to work hard -- real hard -- to be less relevant than he already is.
Bill O'Reilly makes extreme comments in order to get people talking about him. (Heck, even this diary gives the guy more cyberink than he's worth.) He knows his comments are extreme and stupid -- he's made a career out of being a nutjob who can get himself noticed. Even so, an overwhelming majority of Americans don't even know who the guy is, let alone that he has both a radio show and a television program.
Bill O'Reilly is a spectacular sexually harassing falafel-eating failure. He's radio's Dennis Rodman, only without the dress. He is the William Hung of the conservative media cabal. He should be treated as such.
Bill King died today after complications from hip surgery.
When I was a kid, Bill King made me want to become a sports announcer. I'd never heard anyone so eloquently master the ability to describe so many sports with such skill. At one point in the early '80s, he was the play-by-play voice of the Oakland A's, the Oakland/L.A. Raiders, and the Golden State Warriors, all at the same time. It was an incredible feat, and he was stellar at each gig.
In 1990, sometime after I determined I'd stand a better chance of making a living as a writer instead of as a talker, I interviewed Bill King for a feature article that appeared in the Bay Area Radio Digest. It was only my second professional feature interview, and I simply idolized the guy. It went off without a hitch, albeit through no doing of my own; he happily responded to each of my lame questions and contently discussed some of the amazing personalities he'd encountered through the years -- Lon Simmons, Hank Greenwald, Al Davis, John Madden. A couple of days later, when I interviewed Greenwald for the same feature, I was far less nervous thanks to the way King handled our discussion. Greenwald shared with me during that interview that King was his best friend in broadcasting.
From 1981 to about 1995 (I'm doing this all on memory here, so forgive me if my exact dates are off), King and Simmons teamed with whomever else the A's would bring in to be the third banana in the booth (including a then-unknown Wayne Hagin, who as radio voice of the St. Louis Cardinals got to describe last night's home run by Albert Pujols to the greater Midwest). I've heard past generations talk about how wonderful Simmons and Russ Hodges were on Giants broadcasts from years ago. For my generation, the King-Simmons pairing was as good as it got. To me, at least, that was the sound of baseball. Simmons was recently inducted into the broadcasting wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and King -- who as voice of the A's for 25 years was at the microphone for some of the greatest moments in franchise history -- belongs there with him.
A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that longtime A's public-address announcer Roy Steele was absent from a handful of A's games due to illness. I remember thinking to myself that A's baseball would have a hard time still being A's baseball without those two voices as part of the packages. One of those voices was silenced today.
Holy Toledo, Bill. We'll miss you.
Yesterday, the House of Dear Leader leaked that a special commission will recommend taking the hatchet to the mortgage interest deduction in the tax code. While Congress will likely never come within 50 miles of this recommendation, the mere thought of it leaves a number of Californians with that cold, "soon we'll be living on the street" feeling. The talk is that the commission will recommend trimming the interest deduction from its current levels ($1 million) to levels that are hilariously comical in California (somewhere around $310,000, which is considerably less than the Bay Area's $619,000 median price paid for a home).
Anyway, the reason I bring any of this up is because I have learned on good authority that KGO-TV in San Francisco reported on this story during last night's newscast. And when they mentioned how difficult it is to stretch one's dollar in the Bay Area housing market, and how Bush's little plan would probably ruin an awful lot of Californians financially, they showed footage of the exterior of our home -- the one Tiersa and I just bought a couple of months ago.
Is KGO-TV trying to tell us something?
Hot off the presses, this just came across the AP wire:
(10-13) 08:28 PDT Los Angeles (AP) -- Tommy Lee was burned Wednesday when a pyrotechnics stunt went wrong at a Motley Crue concert in Casper, Wyo.
Lee was taken to a hospital for treatment, but wasn't badly hurt, said Sgt. Doug Beran of the Casper Police Department. Beran declined to discuss details of Lee's injuries, citing privacy considerations.
The 43-year-old drummer, who was injured toward the end of the band's set, played one more song before the concert was cut short, Beran said.
Tom Morton, a reporter for the Casper Star-Tribune, said Lee appeared to be injured when sparks began flying as he swung above the stage suspended from a wire, back and forth among several drum sets.
Another witness, Del Kinswoman, described the pyrotechnics as Roman candles.
Roman candles? What, they couldn't afford those things that spin around really fast and look like flowers?
Tommy Lee should be thankful. On their last tour, the only pyrotechnics Poison could afford were sparklers and snakes.
According to today's Chronicle, Harold Bachman has passed away. You probably don't know who Harold Bachman was, but you know his designs. Or, more specifically, you know about the big fiberglass dog heads he once designed.
It turns out that Mr. Bachman is the man who designed the Doggie Diner heads. Bay Area natives know all about these things. Once upon a time, there were quite a few Doggie Diners in the area, and each had one of these big, spinning fiberglass dog heads sitting atop them. (I believe our local Doggie Diner was on the corner of Hesperian Boulevard and Lewelling Road in San Lorenzo. I don't recall ever eating at a Doggie Diner, but that might be because my parents and grandparents had the good sense not to feed stuff served under a giant rotating dog head to children.
As the Doggie Diners around the area were put to sleep, these huge dachsund heads with their chef hats and bow ties became collectors items. As it would turn out, Mr. Bachman himself got his paws on one of these things in the '70s. Now, not everybody has the space to properly store a 12-foot-high dog head -- not even Mr. Bachman. But enterprising minds know how to solve problems, and Mr. Bachman was no different.
From the obituary:
Another of the dogs was salvaged in the 1970s by Mr. Bachman himself, and he installed it in the bedroom of his young son, Will.
"It scared me sometimes," Will Bachman recalled. "I'd wake up in the middle of the night and see that thing staring at me from the corner of my bedroom. It could be frightening."
To this day, Will Bachman -- who probably only owns cats, thanks to his dear old dad -- presumably can't be in the presence of a dachsund without breaking into a cold sweat.
Just a quick note to let the world know our neighbors have not vomited on the front lawn in nearly two weeks. Progress. Sweet progress.
Also of note: It seems as if everybody in the development owns a golden retriever. The people across from us have a delightful five-month-old golden retriever who, near as we can tell based on our encounters with her, would much rather live with us than with her current owners; our next-door neighbors, The Vomits, have an eight-month-old golden retriever who quite likely gets to drink stale beer spilled on the floor; and at least two other neighbors have full-grown golden retrievers. It's an epidemic.
It's also worth noting that the previous owners are apparently unaware that mail can be forwarded. This is both annoying and amusing in that I really don't like receiving other peoples' mail, but I now know the girl who lived here before us likes slutty lingerie, Pottery Barn, and firearms based on her taste in catalogs. This knowledge may come in handy someday, although I seriously doubt it.
As is the case with most townhomes, ours would be improved dramatically if aliens were to abduct our next-door neighbors and take them somewhere far from this planet, where they could live out their lives as an exhibit in some zoo-type structure. "Rednecks of Earth," maybe they could call it.
This is not to say that things are bad at the new digs. Quite the contrary, the first couple of weeks have been wonderful as long as you pretend not to notice all the boxes that are currently making up much of the decor. The commute is a dream, the place is ideally located for us, and most of the people living in the development seem nice. Even the next-door neighbors seem nice in a phony sort of way. They're just a little loud, a little weird, and, well, they're just losers.
Last night, I was getting ready to go into the front area to lock the gate. We wouldn't normally put a lock on the front gate because the area seems safe, but we recently purchased an expensive outdoor grill. Because you never know when some thug with aspirations of giving up the hard life and becoming the next Bobby Flay is going to be wandering our neighborhood late at night, we've decided it's in our best interests to make our new toy as inaccessible to intruders as possible. Frankly, if they can figure out a way to get a 200-pound grill over a five-foot fence without crushing themselves or an accomplice to death in the process, they probably deserve the thing more than we do.
Before opening the door, I peeked out the window and noticed our neighbors were just getting home. They were dressed up, or at least they thought they were. She was wearing a rather frilly red dress, and he was sporting a dark suit that had a true "rental for the junior prom" look to it. It was late and I wasn't in much of a mood to make small talk with the village idiots, so I figured I'd wait them out. They'd go inside, I'd duck out and lock the gate, and we'd be done with it.
However, about five feet from their gate, he stopped and faced the street. He appeared to be staring at the nondescript white truck parked at the curb. I began staring at it as well, and concluded it was no more interesting than it had been before. He continued to stare, standing stationary like a cat preparing to pounce on an unsuspecting pigeon.
Then, without little warning other than his fixed gaze on the dull white pickup truck, our neighbor began to projectile vomit a la Monty Python's Mr. Creosote in "The Meaning of Life." I won't go into great detail, but I was rather amazed at the force. Had he angled his head just right, I think he could have actually reached the opposing curb across the street.
I think the truck was spared, but I really didn't have the heart (or the stomach) to analyze the situation in great detail. I can only assume the lawn separating the sidewalk from the curb will never be the same. I also really hope nobody was expecting the driver of that truck to give them a ride anytime soon, because they have little idea what's lurking in the grass waiting to welcome them.
I am someone who actually goes out of my way to not vomit. Not to sound too much like a character from "Seinfeld," but I have not thrown up since 1988. I was a freshman at San Francisco State at the time. I was coming down with a flu, and in my infinite wisdom this did not stop me from eating a pepperoni sandwich. I'm not saying these events are all linked, but I've never eaten a pepperoni sandwich since then, and shortly thereafer I dropped out of San Francisco State to pursue my education elsewhere.
My point is, as much as I hate vomiting overall, I'm really against vomiting on a patch of grass directly in front of my house. Prom Boy had plenty of time to walk up four stairs, fiddle with his keys, and head straight for the small bathroom located maybe six steps on the other side of the front door. That's what I would have done. For me, vomiting is one of those private matters whenever possible. I guess we're all a little different.
For those wondering, I seriously doubt the neighbor's effort to fertilize the lawn had anything to do with an actual illness. I'm sure he said something along the lines of, "Man, did I get shit-faced last night," when he arrived at work this morning. You can just tell. Drinking is really the only thing a salesperson can do to convince himself he doesn't have a small penis.