Monday, May 6, 2013

Thirteen Hours Worth of My Surroundings

Okay, I've been sitting here stumped for about 45 minutes.  Nothing has pissed me off yet today, so I don't have a rant to type up.  I'm not in an incredibly geeky mood, so I don't feel like writing about my dreams, or superpowers, or having superpowers in my dreams.  Or whatever.  So, the solution I've come up with is taken out of the John-Lennon-at-his-laziest-(circa-Sgt.-Pepper's) playbook.  I'm just going to look around the room and write about what I see.  I didn't want to arbitrarily just look in a direction and write, so I've settled on the system of looking in directions based on the numbers of a clock.  To clarify, one of those old-timey clocks with things that are called "hands" even though they look more like swords.  Starting with twelve on the sword-clock, here's what I see...

12 O'Clock

My laptop.  For nearly an hour now it's been staring at me with a blank blog window mocking me.  Also, I started putting together a Nirvana playlist.  So it hasn't been totally unproductive.

1 O'Clock

There's an ALF doll sitting on an old yellow chair.  The kind of chair your grandpa would fall asleep in after drinking too many cans of Miller High Life (The Champagne of Beers).  Oddly enough, ALF is in the exact pose that grandpa would have been in.  His body is slouched, his head is back, and his mouth is agape.  I've been hearing rumors that an ALF movie is in the works because Hollywood is just about out of 80s properties to reboot, I guess.  Seeing ALF in his drunken slumber over there makes me wonder if they're going to go the route of making the character 'grittier' and 'more mature' (which usually means less mature).  I haven't seen or heard anything official about the movie, but the rumors are persistent.  Let's hope if they make the film that they don't make it too terrible.  They should stay true to the original show which was... well, I guess the original show was pretty terrible.

2 O'Clock

My front door.  It's wooden, and I recently noticed that where the sun is able to hit it through the screen door window the finish has been completely baked off.  Since I spend a lot of time out in the sun in the summer, I'm more glad than ever that my skin is usually coated in a thin layer of oil thanks to genes from the Italian side of my family.  Hopefully this means I'll just look like regular wood when I'm old instead of sun-baked wood.

3 O'Clock

First Batman-related item I've spotted in the room.  It's a small poster from the 60s movie with Lee Meriwether as Catwoman.  Nothing against Ms. Meriwether, but I'll always prefer Julie Newmar.  I first noticed how tall she was in the episode of The Monkees in which she guest-starred.  Now I've got a six-foot-tall fiancee.  Not that I've based any of my life decisions on things I've seen on Batman or The Monkees...

4 O'Clock

The thin slice of wall between the edge of the window and the radiator.  I suppose that's not very exciting, but it's a lovely shade of teal (I guess it's teal...?) that my six-foot-tall fiancee mixed up herself with paint she found in the basement.  Also, she textured the walls before she painted, so it's fun to touch.  Drop in and try it some time!

5 O'Clock

My record shelf.  A while back I wrote about record collecting, which was borderline hoarding for me at one point.  The shelf is pretty large, with nine cubes of storage space, each one the perfect height to fit records.  I've successfully narrowed my collection down to just six cubes (where it once had been the full nine).  Now I've got room to store books, including several Batman graphic novels and a book about the history of the caped crusader, which is prominently displayed.  On top of the shelf sit pictures of each of my kids, including Link, the unborn one.  Every time we get a sonogram the little butthead covers his face with his hands!

6 O'Clock

A framed record of... The Fonz!  Interestingly, I just noticed that there's no title on the front of the LP.  The words "Happy" and "Days" are not anywhere to be seen.  Nor does the cover indicate anywhere that it's a collection of 50s jukebox favorites.  Such is the power of Arthur Fonzarelli.  You don't need to put any sort of label on an album like this.  People are just going to buy it because Fonzie is on the front.  Heeeeyyyyyy!  He has a button on his jacket adorned with the ever-popular catchphrase "Sit On It."  That's still popular, right?  Right?  Kids still say that, I'm sure.

7 O'Clock

The door to the kitchen.  It's also the door I go through to get to the downstairs bathroom.  The door is leading me to question myself.  "Why am I holding in this poop until after I finish the blog?"  There's not really a good reason that I can think of, but that's what I'm doing.

8 O'Clock

Did you know you can buy cans of spray-on chalkboard?  You can.  And if you're like my six-foot-tall fiancee, you would have purchased several cans and made a giant chalkboard to put on the wall.  I wish there was something funny or interesting on there, oh how I wish, but it appears to have been cleaned recently.  Yep... It's just a big black rectangle right now.

9 O'Clock

Still the chalkboard.  It's huge.

10 O'Clock

Another section of the textured, teal wall.  This section, however, is close enough for me to reach out and touch.  Ahh... This is quite the experience, guys.  So textured.  So teal.  My wife (yeah, we got married while I was writing the blog) is good at interior decorating stuff.  And car stuff, which is great, because I'm not good at car stuff.

11 O'Clock

Another shelf!  This one is the DVD shelf.  The top two shelves are crammed with "The Three B's", which is shorthand for Bond, Batman, and Breaking Bad.  The most eye-catching DVDs are probably the box-sets of Batman: The Animated Series.  So that's the part of the shelf that I'll write about.  Each of the four sets has a different villain on the side.  In order of the sets there's Penguin, Joker, Bane, and Mr. Freeze.  If you're a bat-nerd (like me!) you've probably: A. Already begun thinking about who would win in a super-villain smack-down battle royale, and B. Caught the reference to The Dark Knight in the parenthesis back there.  The answer to A., of course, is Bane.  Penguin and Joker are no good in a fight, and Bane would have researched Mr. Freeze's suit in order to shut it down right quick and then kick his frosty ass.

12 O'Clock

Ginger (the aforementioned six-foot-tall fiancee) is standing behind me, eating a can of Pringles, and claiming that she will be at 12 O'Clock.  This is a bogus claim, because she's not.  The laptop is still there.  Now the box I type the blog entries in is no longer a blank white rectangle.  Now it's full of text that kept you entertained (or at least distracted you from your job, slacker) for a few minutes.  Boom!  Blog done.

Yeah, girlfriend on lap now... blog... definitely done.

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