23 posts from April 2008

How? Because of this girl...
   

    I was out there with yesterdays post, asking for things to write about, and pleading with those that read my posts here on VOX to tell me what they think about. I received a number of good suggestions, and plan on getting to them all, but the conversation that I had with my friend of Google Chat, was just too fun to pass up.
    Especially since I had just had a similar conversation the night before (with someone else), we were a little too tired to have the conversation again in the morning. The conversation(s) that I am speaking about revolved around penis size.
    What Dodie asked me to write about was, "Does size really matter?", the mistake my dear old friend made is that she did not specify the size of what. Big mistake my friend, I adore you,I wish you well in your marriage up and coming, but don't ever leave me an open door to sneak through,you will end up embarrassed. Please forgive me.

    Let's start with penis size, that is a main concern among the sexually active of our world. How big is it? Is it big enough? Is it going to rub me in just the right spot?
    These are valid questions for a women to ask in modern society, every one is due there turn on the ferris wheel of spectacular orgasms... especially women so often denied such joys. There has been vast research into penis size, there are complicated charts hoping to summarize the needs of a woman and also make men feel so so sad inside.

    The problem is that men have also perpetuated this. Men compare themselves to other men, out of both insecurity and bragging rights. What you see in a locker room in junior high can either give you massive amounts of self confidence or scar you for life. Why can it do this? Because men wear their organs on the outside, didn't you go to health class? Damn public school system is dumbing down my readers.

    This is where things are unfair in the world, this is where things don't quite measure up, and I hope you excuse that horrible pun. Men are allowed to be judged by their reproductive organs ( don't try and pull any breast arguments on me here ) while women are not. Has anyone ever considered that maybe the girl that complains about some man's small penis isn't being quite honest or accurate, but maybe under her well chosen clothes and Victoria Secret whatever she has a huge vagina? I've encountered this in my life, some times people just don't fit. Maybe you were really busy in college or you are built for someone else's dick.
    Is size really important?
    Yes Dodie, yes it is.

    I arrived home a little while ago from running an errand for a friend, and have been staring at my computer ever since. I prefer to write six days a week, and today I am finding myself struggling. I explored some unfinished projects, I stumbled through about one hundred websites, and flipped through the news of the day. None of these paths have given me anything interesting. The next step I take when stuck is to start looking through correspondence with friends, perhaps in there someone said something that could inspire me. It has worked before, but today it did not.
    I moved on to looking through blog's and websites of both friends and strangers alike, and that is where I found todays offering.
    I am going to ask a question... and expect you to answer with questions. It is a scientist that I am copying.

    Usually I find that sort of exchange pretty annoying.
    Me: "What time is it?"
    You: "Why do you need to know?"
    Me: Because I need to know if it's time to hit you in the face with a frying pan, just answer the damn question!"

    anyway...
       I am at a point that I want to know what people who stop by and read this blog think about.
       I am asking for you to propose a topic or just ask a question of me. I propose no limitations. Anyone who has been reading here for more than a week knows that I quite often change theme from personal to silly to creative writing. What I am looking for, is for you dear reader to challenge. I stress again that there are no limitations, and assuming I get asked more than one question or presented more than one topic, I will start with my favorite and work out from there.
       Here are a variety of ways to get in touch with me.
       #1 comment on this post, I read them and almost always reply so  start there.
       #2 Email me. I check that about a million times a day.
       #3 Facebook. This is a link to my fan page, I only have eight and I am one of them. There are discussion boards and communication avenues abound so join up, stroke my ego and ask me a question.

       I look forward to the challenge of standing up straight in the face of your proposals and look forward to hearing from you

       So here it goes... What do you want to know? .

I would like to try to keep it brief today, as the post that I really want to do is going to require a lot of reading and I want to get back to that as soon as possible. I just want to address my post from Saturday, and to a point retract a few of the things that I said.
I accidentally discovered the name of the man who died, when a stranger later on that day decided to talk to me. Given that at that point he became a real person, I am sorry. My looking further into it I discovered he is another statistic of drinking and driving, but out of respect I am going to withhold his name.
The blood in the streets is tainted with poor decisions and alcohol, and I hope only the best toward his friends and his family.
Please make careful decision in your lives. I don't know if there is a maker to meet, but I would rather not myself or see anyone else try to find out.

Until tomorrow, enjoy your day.

From now on, I think I will be taking Sunday off from public writing.

I hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend.

Seven, Eight and Nine years ago when I lived in Baltimore, on a rare day off of work I went out to buy cigarettes and some beer to drink. I only had to walk four blocks to the Korean mini-mart, down and around the corner. I would pass my dog’s veterinarian and many doorways and shops on the way. I would pass people in every class of life. This particular day I passed a homeless man, sleeping in one of these many alcove doorways, at least that is what my brain led me to think. After gathering my twelve pack and camel lights I hit the sidewalk again in the opposite direction from before.

            There was new activity on the street during the minutes I was inside. That same homeless man, whom I had assumed sleeping in that doorway, was now being gathered into a large black sack with a zipper up the side. The paramedics treated it like a chore, generally ignoring the life that had passed while a policeman jotted some notes on a clip board and something made him laugh.

            I have never once told this story of how I walked past a dead man in the afternoon on the street, mainly for the reason this story holds no dignity for any of us, those who died, he who writes it and those who read. Today however and all week as a matter of fact I have been walking through and over a makeshift memorial in the middle of the street. Every day at least once and sometimes twice I grab my backpack, plug some music in my ears and head to the coffee shop “Ike’s”. I walk toward Speedway Blvd. head west for a block, push the magic button that makes cars stop cross and head another half of a block east.

            It would seem my footsteps have been crossing the location of where another person has died. The flowers appeared and photographs and notes, they may have been there for days and lost in my thoughts I wouldn’t know.

            His death is inconsequential to me, and has no bearing on my life, other than I feel a little bit selfish for not caring. A more sensitive person would I suppose, but I definitely don’t. This person whose name I couldn’t have known, has died and has since been autopsied, buried or burned. He might have been an abusive drunk or on his way to sainthood, but his death means nothing now, he is merely worm food.

            I’m not worried about dignity anymore. I feel that has fallen upon me with age. I don’t worry that I don’t have shame in admitting it, and I fart in public places. Death and life come and go, soon the nameless man who died on my path to caffeine will be forgotten by you and me the same. In fact now that I think more about what I am trying to say I don’t feel guilt for selfishness at all. I feel nothing. I am just a guy with a story to tell.

            If I die on the side of the road, please don’t waste the flowers and make the cop filling out the report laugh by telling a joke.

    I heard once upon a time, the single greatest line in reference to the unintelligent. I attribute the quote to my Grandmother because it sounds cute and clever to say, "my grams used to say...", but I can't be sure that she said it, but in my mind she always will.
    "I can't stand stupid people, I am all the stupid that I can handle."

    I love it. The only problem is that stupid is now everywhere. High School dropout rates have not declined, there are less and less people pursuing higher degrees in the sciences than ever before in this country. Stupid move. I am in partial contradiction to myself in being upset about such things. I am a person who believes that going to school is not truly necessary as long as you have a sense of curiosity and a library card ( or the internet as the case may be ). The justification for my thinking on the subject is simple and obvious. I believe you can learn anything, anywhere, just as long as you are willing to learn.
    I don't always write pretty, I have that shortcoming.
    I have made some very poor decisions in my life.
    I am not some great intellectual.
   
    ...but I never stop thinking, so I never stop learning...
    ...everyone in some way shape or form has put their hand on a hot stove...
   
    The problem for me is the dumbing of an entire culture, or rather the dramatic moves we make to ensure that we never have a culture at all.
    I make a lot of jokes about a lot of things, but this truly is something that upsets me. I have no perfect answer to solve the problem. Better schools and education opportunities could make an improvement, but it all boils down to peoples mentalities. Learning is something we do naturally, but when we distract ourselves with copious amounts of television and celebrity gossip we remove that chance of something of value seeping into our minds.
   
    I also think it is important to entertain. So stop thinking about what I have said now... if you haven't already, and enjoy.

    

                                                                                                                                                                     If you have ever been out to eat with me, you will know that there is a certain thing I immediately search for on a menu. I immediately hunt down the French Onion Soup. I have a personal affinity for it and think it is the perfect mark for the ability of any kitchen. I love this soup so much that I have before explored it's history. I know what you are thinking, food doesn't have history... but it does. The meals and foods that you are familiar with didn't appear over night. They evolved into perfect culinary delights.Yes, it always comes back to evolution with me.
    Onion soups have been a staple going back to Roman Times. Perceived originally as the food of the poor people and also at one time believed to cause headaches.This is not the soup you see listed on the specials board or with the appetizers however, the soup you know began it's life in France during the 17th century.
    The soup itself is comprised of caramelized onions, beef broth, a croustade (or crouton as it's known today) and traditionally broiled covered with Gruyere cheese.
    The story of it's origin is laughable I think, as I have a hard time believing it personally. The legend is that King Louis the XV while hunting returned to his lodge unsuccessful and famished and discovered that there was nothing to eat. All that he could pull together was onion, butter and champagne, and it was at that moment that the soup was born. Certain portions of it make sense, as while caramelizing the onion the pan needs to be deglazed today this is traditionally done with Cognac or Sherry, not Champagne. Butter and onion are in my mind the absolutely necessary portion of this concoction because in French Onion one is useless without the other. You can get away with making the soup without deglazing, if you absolutely have to. Other than that I just don't see a hungry king of a country in the 17th century whipping up dinner on a whim. I do however love that somewhere over the past several hundered years a simple soup developed a history.
    Onion soups have been a staple of the diets of many cultures not just the French. Colonial history in the United States features onion soup constantly.
    This is one of the many parts of food and cooking that I truly enjoy, the basic truth is that nothing is as simple as it seems.
   
    I leave this batch of useless knowledge with two more things you don't need to know.

    1. Julia Child's final meal before passing away in her sleep was French Onion soup.

    2. The best French Onion I have ever had, and doubt will ever be surpassed can be found at The Owl Bar located within The Belvedere in Baltimore, Maryland.

Well it is the day after Earth Day, and I am sure a lot of education was shared, a lot of one day good intentions were had, and I am confident that a number of sapling trees were planted. Earth day is over though and we have 364 more days to go until the next so lets get going on fucking it up again so we can feel accomplished and self righteous next year.

    Here is a list of suggestions for re-ruining the planet

    1. Find that old can of aerosol hairspray and spray it liberally.
    2. Light your compost heap on fire.
    3. Instead of pruning your hedges for landscape, perform a slash and burn on your entire lawn.
    4. Write a letter to McDonald's asking for the styrofoam containers back.
    5. Buy a bottle of water, drink half, throw it away, and go buy another one.
    6. Insert a virus on freerice.com to help along that problem of global hunger.
    7. Light a bag full of dog poop on fire and leave it on Al Gore's stoop.
    8. Obtain a list of endangered species and a gun.
    9. While filling up your gas tank, spray a little fuel on the ground just for fun.
    10. Call Woody Harrelson and tell him the world is out of Hemp Pants.

I think that it is import that we reassert ourselves as dominant over our planet. I think that this is a good way to start. We can't let the Earth think that it can have more than one day. Mom gets breakfast in bed once a year, but the rest of the time when she speaks we roll our eyes. I believe that Earth Day should be handled exactly the same way. I have acknowledged your existence but know it is time for you to get the fuck out of my way.

Do you think that with a hair dryer I can accelerate glacial melting?

Or should we take the short route and just destroy the entire universe?

Have a wonderful, happy, earth destroying day!

I received a message (via Facebook) from a friend Debbie which read, “I was pleasantly surprised to login to Facebook and see on my home page "LJ Daniels is now a fan of Lucas J Daniels" (or something like that). We should all be fans of ourselves. :)”, and it got me to thinking.

            My reason for creating a “professional page” on Facebook, was honest from the start as long as you read yesterdays blog… but you have no way of constructing the correlation, so I will explain it to you.

            Ethan one of my two generous benefactors, is quite the scientist, vastly intelligent on the universe and it’s structure ( which mostly goes over my head ). Ethan is beginning production of a film about such things and has produced a trailer. I am helping him network and “pimp himself” as I often do on many social websites. For that purpose I created a mock “professional page”, to show Ethan how it could work and benefit him. I am also a bit of an ego maniac so instead of just editing a page, I went ahead and published it to Facebook. I also went to the length that I became a fan of myself.

            This is where Debbie and her message came in.

            I responded to her “of course I am a fan of myself. I am helping a friend set up a batch of networking through his website, relevant to the movie he is making and made the page to show him how cool it can be. It's funny I think, but I must ask, why are you not a fan of me?”

            … and of course this is where I got to thinking…

 

            At first I was thinking how amusing it was to get that kind of message from a girl I “dated” in the 9^th grade… and then…

            …and then I thought to myself, “Why the fuck not?”

 

            I might as well just own it. I am doing research for a book. I am finishing a number of other things I will be attempting to have published.  I might as well do more than look at Google Analytics to figure out who I am writing to. It is important to know who actually reads this.

 

            So I’m going to fucking own it.

 

            Visit my Facebook page, this is where I am going to be keeping people who are authentically interested in my writing and being kept up to date.

 

            Visit this link to join up and become a “fan of me” Lucas J. Daniels

 

 

            On a slightly unrelated topic I felt very aged thinking this whole thing through before I wrote it down. I was outside, barefoot drinking a beer and leaning on the fire poker as if it were a cane. I lifted each foot individually for as long as they could stand to be warmed by the fire. I thought about things, poked at the fire… and looked at the sky.

I felt quite old while I thought about this thing.