sleep, making out, iphone thoughts, email, bets, music
[Since I have off Thursday and Friday, and since I've been working like a crazy monkey to make sure that I can have off on Thursday and Friday, you're getting all this week's posts shortened and condensed into one. So there.]
I’m going through one of my lovely little stretches of insomnia. This is sarcasm. These stretches suck.
This insomnia not only makes the week nearly unbearable, but my weekend was a total wash. On Friday night, I got bombed and slept three hours. I was so beat that I wound up "napping" for five hours during the day on Saturday, from 4:30pm until 9:30pm. I was too tired to go out on Saturday night and stayed up until 6am watching "Deer Hunter" (pretty good, but not as great as I’d hoped). I woke up at 10am on Sunday and was a zombie all day. I didn’t nap, hoping to sleep well on Sunday night, and I was rewarded with a grand total of three hours sleep on Sunday night. Awesome. Just totally awesome.
(I realize that for many of you that that previous paragraph was excruciating to read. Take that feeling, multiply by 100, punch yourself in the face, and imagine you just caught your girlfriend getting fucked by your manager at work and Tank Johnson, and you’ll get close to how it felt to live it.)
Part of my recurring once every-few-weeks-insomnia is intense dreams which are either extremely horrific or very sexually explicit. I don’t often remember these dreams until the next day or a few days later, but a few highlights from dreams of the past few nights include:
- Riding bicycles through my South Philly neighborhood with a male relative. We’re riding along, having fun, when he falls off the bike. I stop, go over attend to him, and he dies in my arms. Whoops.
- Having sex with a former co-worker in a random hotel (I think the hotel was somewhere in Asia). Not only was the sex very, very real and fairly nasty, but we had sex only after she told me that she a) has herpes and b) hasn’t had sex in 12 years (by the way, this co-worker was/is my age). Whoops.
- Sitting by the bed of a buddy who is dying of cancer (in the dream, not in real life), reading him comic books. He can’t speak or move, so I just sit there reading the comic books. For a long time. A really, really long time. Not whoops, but yikes.
So by way of this explanation, I suppose I’m apologizing to all my friends, co-workers and anyone else in my life who I’ve been a dick to over the past few days or weeks or however long it’s been. These spells always pass, but my god, do they give me fits when they hit. The unfortunate thing is that they’re totally unrelated to anything that’s going on in my life right now – the biggest stress I have at the moment is that the Eagles are fucking terrible. Otherwise, everything’s going great and I’m enjoying the arrival of fall in NYC. So I don’t really know what to do other than carry on and hope it passes sooner rather than later.
In the meantime, maybe I should try to write something funny, or at least interesting.
(God, I’m tired.)
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I used to make out with my female friends a lot in college and shortly thereafter. I’m not sure why, except that we’d often be drunk together and in case you haven’t heard, making out is awesome. So we’d be bombed and make out. No funny stuff. Just making out. Fun.
(Seriously, who doesn’t like to have a few beers and make out?)
But this practice has stopped in recent years. I don’t think it was a conscious decision, but right around when I turned 25, I apparently came to the conclusion that making out with my female friends was not a good idea. Or maybe my female friends were no longer willing to make out with me. Whatever. Semantics.
(God, I’m a terrible kisser. Kissing me is only slightly better than getting hit in the face with a wet sponge thrown by the dishwasher boy at Denny’s.)
(The eight girls I’ve made out with reading this right now are thinking, "Yeah, sounds about right.")
But over the past few months, many of my friends have started hooking up with each other. Like, really hooking up with each. Not just making out, but, like, wowee. And this applies to ALL of my friends – different groups of friends turning incestuous, almost as if they’re trying to establish little cults. Meanwhile, there’s me – the guy who gets the call the next day, listens to the story, and says, "What the fuck?" You are probably expecting me to be jealous that I’m not getting action, and if you are, you know me very well. However, I’m not jealous. I’m too confused to be jealous. I really don’t know what to make of it. It’s like a bad episode of
Anyway, I can’t get into specifics for obvious reasons, but I will say this to my friends: I want you all to stop. It’s freaking me out. I wouldn’t normally have a problem with it, but I’m not very good at making new friends, so I’m stuck with you all. So please, let’s knock it off and go back to normal. We’ll never mention it again. Now let’s just get drunk and try to unsuccessfully seduce strangers. I like it much, much better this way.
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Last week I asked you all whether I should get an iPhone and the results are in. The winner by a landslide: Wait for the next one. I’d say that 75% of you said wait for the next generation, 20% said get one right now, and 5% said don’t get one at all.
The biggest complaint about the current iPhone is that the phone sucks. Yes, you all admitted it’s sexy and yes, you all admitted you feel cooler owning one, but homeses, I need a phone. And if the majority of you are unhappy with the phone function, that’s a problem. Some of you also mentioned that the internet, though sweet, can be slow and that the 8GB of space is really not that much. Hopefully, all of these will be improved upon in the next generation iPhone.
But it was Kat in NYC who was the first to point out what I perceive to be the iPhone’s fatal flaw: it only allows you text one person at a time. Como se dice, dagger? The treo allows for text templates, meaning groups of phone numbers that I can text en masse. For example, I have 8 or so people on my Boston text template, which I will employ to let those people know I’m coming to/am out and about in their city. Same goes for my LA peeps. This year, regrettably, I have created a Philly friends/Eagles fans text template, so that during football games I can send text messages like, "I can’t believe this is happening" and "I want to rip my penis off right now" and "Seriously, I’ve gotten most of it off, but it’s still hanging on – it’s much tougher than I thought."
So I’ll wait a little longer before the iPhone changes my life. Thanks to all of you who wrote in with advice.
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Major, major props to Site Guy Brendan for completely resolving all my previous email issues. Basically he arranged it so that all email from the jason_at_jasonmulgrew.com address is forwarded to my personal gmail account, which I can then respond from. The gmail catches all the spam in its filter (of which there is a lot), is much more user-friendly than the jm.com email, and since it’s my personal email, I’m checking it all the time. I know a couple of you techies will write in to say, "Well, duh – that’s not hard to figure out," but I’ve been having email problems for a long time, problems that I only told Site Guy Brendan about last week. In two minutes, everything was fixed. So he is a genius in my book.
(One note: In the future when you email me, please try to remember to include your location. If you write something that I use on the website, I’ll link to your blog or anything else you want to pimp. Thank you for your cooperation.)
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Six Bets
Before I begin, I’d again like to thank the Phillies for giving the fans something to believe in this season. That was nice. Unexpected and nice. As for the Rockies-Diamondbacks series, I don’t give a shit. I’ll take the angle I usually take when a Philly team is eliminated from championship contention and say that no fan base deserves a championship more than Philly’s. I don’t know any D-backs fans and I’ve never met a Rockies fan – and I’ve been to Denver six times. So best of luck, Arizona and Denver "fans."
(And go F yourselves.)
(God, I’m bitter.)
It’s a little early to be picking games for Sunday on a Wednesday, but here goes:
CHIEFS (+3) over Bengals
My weekly contrarian pick. Peeps are loading up on the Bengals in this game, more than any NFL team for the week, so F it – I’m going with the Chiefs. It works out, I look like a genius. It doesn’t, well, shut up.
Texans (-6.5) over JAGUARS
Because it’s just like the Jags to blow a game like this.
Raiders (+10) over CHARGERS
My weekly no idea pick. This game is evenly divided as far as who bettors are picking. But I’m going with the Raiders, since every talking head is screaming about how SD is back after thumping Denver at home. I still think the Chargers will probably win, but maybe not as handily as they did in Denver.
CARDINALS (-4) over Panthers
I like this Cards team – and not just because I have Edge in my main fantasy league. I’m still loyal to them for making me look like a god for saying they’d cover against Pittsburgh (they won outright) and prior to last week, they were 4-0 against the spread this season (last week they were favored by 3.5 and won by 3).
COWBOYS (+5.5) over Patriots
Yesterday, this line was +3. One day later, it’s +5.5. That means there was an all out bonanza on the Pats, shifting the line 2.5 points in a day (!). So as much as I hate to do this, I’ll take the ‘Boys and hope the lose by 4.
FALCONS (+3.5) over Giants
Because it’s just like the Giants to blow a game like this.
Predictions on Predictions: I’m looking at a 3-3 week.
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Six Songs
"My World Is…" Blu & Exile
Awesome rap song that I put on my workout mix immediately. The first time I heard this song, I punched a car and it exploded. No lie.
"November Blue" Avett Brothers
Gorgeous country/bluegrass song that makes me more than a bit sad that I’ll never be in love with a girl from the South/Appalachia. Actually, make that "be in love" or "make love." Either one. All the same to me, really.
"Oh Lord I’m Browned Off" The Faces
I know I just recommended a Faces song last time, but I got their box set, Five Guys Walk Into a Bar…, last week and it’s rocking my world. It’s worth it for the live tracks alone – including their version of Hendrix’s "Angel" - but there are also several in-studio live recordings that are really something, including a quickie cover of John Lennon’s "Jealous Guy" which opens with over a minute of good-natured bickering between band members. I don’t know if these guys are more than the greatest cover band in rock history, but I don’t care.
The only way I can explain it is that every song on this box set is at least a little awesome. This instrumental gets the nod because it’s rocking even without Rod and it’s got a cool title; I was hoping "browned off" meant "fucked up", but I’ve seen it used alternatively for angry, bored, or depressed. UK readers, help me out here.
At any rate, my old roommate Brian has been on a personal crusade for the past five years to make Rod Stewart a Knight of the British Realm. After listening to this box set, I think I’m ready to join him in this pursuit, and I think that with your help, we can make him Sir Rod in no time.
"A Kissed Out Red Floatboat" Cocteau Twins
I mean, this is just gibberish – complete and total gibberish. Still, it makes me feel safe. More specifically, it makes me feel like smoking a joint in the tub. Actually, that’s not very practical – it makes me feel like smoking a bowl in the tub.
"Silver Lining" Rilo Kiley
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I think this is my favorite song on the new Rilo Kiley album. The whole thing is a little too dancey for me – when I first hear "Dejalo", I said "Huh?" aloud – but I’m warming to it. My friend Brian thought I’d like "Dreamworld" since he thinks it sounds like Fleetwood Mac (a little bit) and my buddy Jeremy thought I’d like "Smoke Detector" since there’s clapping involved (I dig it), but this one, in my personal opinion, hits the spot.
…
You know, I just realized that this first five songs all have the name of a color somewhere in them, so I’m scrapping the song I was going to recommend sixth and going with another "color" song:
"Perfect Blue Buildings" Counting Crows
I was trying to think of a non-"blue" song, but this one gets the nod because it’s my favorite Counting Crows song (though I admit that’s like saying my right cheek is my favorite part of my face to be hit with a dart). And so it goes.
[Have a good rest of the week/weekend.]
