I Get Excited by Poking Fun at Scientology

I'm what many people have deemed "stoic". I don't get excited very much. It usually looks to the casual observer like I'm not paying attention or that I don't care about anything. I look, to say the least, apathetic. At one point, a doctor suggested the possibility of my being bi-polar (i think he lost his license for it, it was so far off) to which I seem to recall my sister saying something to the effect "Craig?! He's the most even-keeled person I know..."

This is not to say that I don't enjoy things and get excited about things, I guess I just don't show it. The flip side of this is that I genuinely do enjoy things. It isn't superficial. I may not gush all over something someone gives me. To the point, where people have actually taken offense that I haven't. But I'll still have what you gave me 8 years from then. It's just a matter of what you value more. If you value seeing someone fall over with unabashed embellishment, you are going to have to look elsewhere, but if you want someone who will actually appreciate a gift more as time passes rather than the moment its received, then you might look in my direction.

Although, there are rare occasions in which I do get excited. It is usually those moments when my friends are actually shocked at how excited I got. Take as an example; in college, I was chilling with my friends Jess and Van. I happened to see in the newspaper that there was a Church of Scientology down the road and I became inordinately excited at the prospect of going to the church and taunting them; pretending like I might join, etc. To which they thought they'd seen a ghost and reacted as such. I had no idea why they were so shocked until they explained that they had never seen me that animated before. It goes to show that you can know yourself but you can't always know how others see you.

British Humour Test

John Oliver: "If the Palestinians and the Jews have one thing in common, Andy, it's that they both struggle to summon up much of a Christmas spirit around this time of year. Now you could say that that's because neither of them celebrate Christmas. But you don't need to believe in Santa to want to dress up like him."

Andy Zaltzman: "Stop quoting Aristotle at this early stage of the podcast."

I think I've found the ultimate test for whether you find British humour....well, humorous. It is an excerpt from my favorite podcast named The Bugle: Audio Newspaper for a Visual World; produced by The Times Online. If you listen to this section of its episode 58: "Did you get Peace in the Middle East for Xmas?" and proceed to think its stupid and nonsensical with a facial expression close to bewilderment...you do not have any appreciation for British humour.

On the other hand, if you hear Andy deliver that deadpan line of and proceed to either fall out of your chair laughing if you happen to be sitting, run into a pole laughing if you are jogging, drive off the road into a ditch laughing if you are driving or drop the spoon back into your ice cream laughing hysterically if you happen to be eating a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, then congratulations you have a keen appreciation of British Humour. Your prize is the ability to appreciate the brilliant comedic stylings of Monty Python. Now go watch the Life of Brian and remember to Always Look on the Bright Side of Life!

Killer Tofu!

I cooked in a wok for the first time in my life tonight. I took a shot at an old Chinese favorite called Mala Doufu, you might know it as marpo tofu. I didn't exactly have all the ingredients necessary. I used a little too much oyster sauce, far too much ground pork, and not enough tofu and no peanut oil at all. Considering I just took a stab at it with what was lying around, I'd say it came out pretty damn good though!

By the way, yes, that is part of the orgy couch in the background

An Orgy Couch

Our couch is awesome. It's weird to say that about a piece of furniture. But it freakin' rules. It's called a Poole couch. It comes in three huge pieces and an ottoman. It's Tan and Brown and each piece fits with each other. You can have one piece and an ottoman and two pieces for a regular length couch and a chaise. Or you can put the entire thing together and make a huge circular behemoth that our friend Lacey termed the "Orgy Couch" Yes that many people can fit in it comfortably. The sides and back are low and the real backs are made of pillows. This means you can run across the room and vault into the circle of cushions.

I find myself judging people on their couches now. I was flipping through the channels yesterday after watching Watson absolutely crush the mere human champions surrounding him on Jeopardy! and came across Two and a Half Men. Charlie Sheen plays a ridiculously successful jingle writer with a beach house in LA, but I found myself looking at his couch and scoffing thinking, "You'd think he'd be portrayed with a couch at least as awesome as ours."

Movie Time Capsule

A friend once asked me: "If all of the movies on the planet were going to be destroyed; past, present and future included, but you were given the chance to seal 10 movies into a time capsule and preserve them and no others from destruction and for your own viewing pleasure, which would they be?"

It is a lot tougher than it sounds and I almost want to take the question and transpose it to books, but I fear I might go insane by that proposition. Anywho, here's the list I came up with (in no particular order).

Shawshank Redemption
Robin Hood: Men in Tights
Silence of the Lambs
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Good Will Hunting
Big Fish
Hot Shots: Part Deux
Moulin Rouge
Se7en
Waking Life

Both The Truman Show & American History X were ridiculously close.

Other considerations were

Kill Bill if vols. 1 & 2 were to be considered as 1 movie.
Blade Runner
American Psycho
Twelve Monkeys
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Batman
The Dark Knight
Star Wars (but only if the original trilogy were considered 1 movie)
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
Monty Python's Life of Brian
History of the World Part 1

I'll get back to you if I ever decide to one of these for books. It'll be ready by 2020.

Wandering

Sometimes I wonder why I wander. I think it is a quest for identity. I'm not very sure who I am, but what is more poignant is that I'm not really sure who I want to be. I always have a tough time making decisions, but its not because I don't want to progress, it's because I never want to close a door. This might come from the fact that when I do close a door, I tend to slam it, tie explosives to it, douse it in kerosene, light it, blow it to pieces, and then proceed to dance around the ashes in a ritual manner reminiscent of stereotypical voodoo practitioners.

I always fight between settling down somewhere and putting some kind of roots down and then uprooting everything and starting over again at least 1000 miles away. I wouldn't be who I am today if I hadn't done that so many times in my life. But that's just the point. Who am I? I don't generally attach meaning to anything. I have general ideas. I like to write. I like to read. I like puzzles and games. I like intellectualism. I like conversation. I like people. But I don't identify with any of these things. I wouldn't kill for any of them. I wouldn't die for any of them.

I wouldn't even kill or die for my name. I don't especially identify with Craig Fennelly either. I like it, it's probably the most grounding thing I have, but I am a child of detachment and meditation, I would be the same person if I were named differently. There is a being that is me, and I'm trying to find out what that is. The only issue is, I don't really want to find it, because if I ever did, I have a hunch I would become extremely bored with this world, which couldn't be further from my penchant for life.

Poltergeistrionics

Walking the ground with a ghost at my hip,
A shade that matches me stride for stride.
Invisible but felt by everyone unseen,
They used to be real, flesh and bone coincide.

A shadow of a glimmer once gleamed in a flash
Of glinting glammer drafting in my wake,
Yet always stretching out in front of my senses,
A spectating specter surrounds ev'ry route I take.

A ghoul that haunts every waking moment
'fore the spirit takes over my dream world at night.
An empty husk of a man dragging soles across pavement,
A golem of melancholy pulling a soul across plight.

This phantom that cannot be purged from my world
Dances 'round with delight when mere misery strikes.
A fantastic phantasm with its seductive hand curled
'Round my neck, used to please but now reveals its cold spikes.

Hey Y'all, I need a Drawl!

It's time for me to work on my Southern Drawl.
I'm definitely not gonna break into a Bawl,
Just hafta make a concerted effort to say "Y'all"
If not for any other reason but to fit in at the Mall.

E'en if I can't speak like y'all, I'm gonna have a Ball
Living somewhere the sun ain't held in a Pall
For half the year where Winter starts in the Fall,
And snow ne'er melts, just piles up into a Wall.

I would never ever even feign to have the Gall
To say I ain't gonna miss anyone back there at All.
If I did, I'd probably eventually get into a Brawl.
So if Y'all miss me as much as I miss Y'all,
Run, don't Crawl if you wanna give me a Call.

Traveling Again

I missed traveling. For some reason, outlandish crap always happens to you, but it never gets to you. In other times when you are living in one place, you get irked and irritating by the most trivial things. While traveling, odd things that actually should annoy just don't seem to.

For example, I was on the road last week, driving through Mississippi after leaving Alabama at 4 AM. I needed some coffee so I punched that into my gps: It told me there was a starbucks 2 miles off the highway in Jackson or the next coffee shop was 85 miles down the highway west. Needless to say, I chose to get off the highway at Jackson. 2 miles down the road, what do I find? The Jackson, Mississippi airport! The starbucks my gps found was inside the International Airport of Mississippi. So I decide to go anyway, I park in the lot (paying $2.00 for parking less than an hour) and get out to start walking.

I forget to put my fleece on because it was almost 60 in Birmingham the previous day. Apparently, temperature fluctuates daily in the south. I froze my ass off on the way to the terminal. I neglected to turn around and get a sweater from my car figuring that the terminal is a quick walk from the parking lot. It turns out to be a 5-10 minute walk. I finally reach the Starbucks in the terminal and choose to get 2 coffees seeing as how Mississippi apparently doesn't drink coffee.

The Starbucks turned out to not have any cup sleeves to protect my hands from the scalding hot coffee contained therein. I picked up napkins to help prevent the heat from penetrating my palms, but the heat burned through that in 5 seconds flat. So I walk back to my car with the odd combination of burning hands and freezing body.

The best part of this entire story is that i wasn't even annoyed, I was laughing like a jackass the entire way back to my car and a good 5 miles further down the road. That is, laughing in between rapping to The Sugarhill Gang. I took the long drive as an opportunity to learn the words to Rapper's Delight! It's like a can of beer that's sweeter than honey.