Idiom Savant

Look Back In Ambivalence. Or Don't. Whatever.

Speaking of milestones -- one I didn't mention was in late May. 20 years ago, that was when I became a high school graduate.  I didn't go to my class's 10th reunion in 1996, although seeing "Grosse Pointe Blank" made me wish I had (until I remembered that I'm not John Cusack, and my reunion would not have turned into a fun movie full of action and witty dialogue and Minnie Driver). 

And now the 20th reunion is, of course, coming up, and I'm probably not going to that one, either.  Why not?  Well...

• I didn't enjoy high school, and have no desire to relive it.  I don't necessarily blame high school, or even the people in it, for my misery -- the fact is that I'm just kind of a miserable person, and that was true even then, although it took college and the years immediately afterward for me to blossom into the full anhedonic depressive you see before you today.  I'm not bitter about high school; I don't harbor grudges against asshole classmates, for the most part (and I'm sure that there are people for whom I was the asshole classmate).  I just don't have warm feelings about those years, outside of a few geek-flavored activities -- and even those were mostly palliative in retrospect; they just made high school seem less awful.  I doubt too many of the people reading this right now have warm feelings about those years, either, if I know you at all.  What is supposed to be good about high school, exactly?  It's basically a pit full of ids without any superegos.  High schoolers suddenly have the power to inflict great cruelty (physical, emotional, mental, whatever) on one another, but haven't yet gained the wisdom to use that power properly.  Okay, maybe I am a little bitter.
• I've got nothing to gloat about.  Part of the fun of a reunion -- at least, the fun I expected as I pictured it 20-odd years ago -- is to lord one's success around.  So, here I am, approaching middle age, unmarried, unreproduced, borderline alcoholic, borderline poverty-stricken, with a career made up of a string of jobs I've been mostly ambivalent about, a romantic life made up mostly of a series of half-hearted episodes foiled by my own emotional immaturity, living in a shitty one-bedroom apartment in a college town full of slackers and hipsters manqué.  (What's even worse is that I'm not even a hipster manqué -- I can only aspire to it.  I'm a hipster manqué manqué.)  And, sure, that's putting kind of a bad spin on my current situation.  But the point is that at a reunion, people are going to ask you over and over again, "What are you doing these days?"  And I don't know a way of telling my recent life story in any way that isn't tedious at best or pathetic at worst.  And I don't want to spend an entire evening telling it, while callow jealousy of my classmates' happiness and success slowly eats me up inside.
• There aren't too many people I'd actually want to see again.  This is one of those things that I guess I'm supposed to be pleasantly surprised about; just imagine all of the rekindled, half-forgotten friendships, not to mention all of the new connections with people you had nothing in common with 20 years ago but have grown somehow similar to in the intervening years!  Well, maybe.  But the truth is that if I went to my class reunion, I'd be forced to socialize with the kind of people who go to class reunions.  I have a suspicion that those are, for the most part, the kind of people I tried to avoid (and who successfully avoided me) in high school. (I realize that it's completely petty and unfair to generalize that way, and I certainly mean no offense to those who have attended, or plan to attend, their reunions and look back on/forward to them with untrammeled joy.)  I am a little curious about what happened to everybody, but I figure if anybody did anything truly noteworthy, I'd hear about it from either the Nobel committee or the police blotter. 
• It's way too expensive.  100 bucks for dinner?  Are you fucking kidding me?

NB: To any classmates who may be reading this -- I'm not talking about you.  Obviously.

Too Late To Ask For The Last Six Months Of Your Life Back

Today, the sixteenth day of August in the year of our Lord two thousand and six, is this Web log's half-birthday.  Six months ago, I typed up Idiom Savant's first post and set it free to roam around the barnyard on wobbly legs, still slimy with placenta from the womb.  And then I wrote Idiom Savant's first real post, about the magic of the U.S. Naval Observatory time services, and everything went rapidly downhill from there.  And look at us now!  Six months, 65 posts, 567 comments and an ever-growing list of imaginary Internet friends later, and there's still placenta all over the place.  Where did that placenta come from, anyway?  It was just supposed to be a metaphor!

Anyway.  Thanks for visiting, thanks for reading, and thanks for leaving such nice, funny and thoughtful comments.  And if you have nasty, mean comments, thanks for keeping them to yourself.  Here's to many more fractions of years to come!

Next Time You're In Covington, Be Sure To Visit The Beer Cave

Tell you what, if you want to make your life interesting, make sure that a GLOBAL TERROR ALERT happens while you're away from home, right before you have to fly back.  It was especially bad for me because I had just poured twelve bottles of ranch dressing into my carry-on bag right before I got to the airport.

Actually, the Terror didn't make my life very interesting at all.  I did not happen to have any liquids packed in my carry-on bag, and the security line at the Northern Kentucky International Airport was very short.  Probably because in the terminal I flew out of, there was only one gate that was actually being used -- the rest were eerily abandoned.  Not a lot of activity happening at Terminal One at CVG.  Partially because of the security concerns, but mostly because I had nothing else to do after the seminar ended, I got to the airport at 1:15pm.  I was through security by 1:30.  My flight wasn't scheduled to leave until 5:10. 

And... that flight was late.  Which meant that I was going to miss my connection in Charlotte, and would have to take a much later flight.  But that turned out okay, because I got a food voucher and I got to eat a barbecue dinner in the Charlotte airport that really wasn't half as bad as you might expect it would be.

This conversation occurred, with a woman who rode with me on the airport shuttle on Friday:
Woman: (looking through her luggage) I just want to make sure I don't have any concubines.
Me: Contraband, you mean?
Woman: Ha! That's right -- contraband.
Me: Concubines in your luggage would be even worse, I'd think.

See? Even to complete strangers, I'm a sarcastic jackass.

So, yeah.  I'm back from the Greater Cincinnati Area.  The trip was fine, although I spent most of the time in anguish because I couldn't remember who sang the song playing on the radio in the shuttle from the airport to my hotel ("Smoke from a Distant Fire*").  I had no internet access, so I couldn't look it up until I got back.  Also, my floor of the hotel (where all the cheap "compact" rooms were) smelled like cat litter.  There was a rotating restaurant at the top of the hotel, which I got to eat lunch in one day, except the restaurant wasn't rotating at that time.  The lunch wasn't that great, either (your choice of Red Italian Glop or Gray Italian Glop).  The restaurant did afford a view of the mighty Ohio River, so I can at least say I saw that.

I did not get to see any of Cincinnati beyond a three-block radius around my hotel, which turned out to be kind of a grim-looking part of Covington, KY.  Maybe all of Covington is grim; all I saw was that little part.  A convenience store around the corner had a sign that said "Visit Our Beer Cave."  I am sad that I did not visit the beer cave.

At RDU at the beginning of my trip, I realized that a woman sitting across the terminal from me was somebody I recognized from MySpace.  I had absolutely no idea what to do with this knowledge, so I just sat there and read my book like the huge coward I am.

Anyway.  The most soul-crushingly boring travel pictures you will ever hope to see in your life are over here.  Enjoy them!

*The Sanford-Townsend Band.

Scatterbrained, Smothered And Covered

So, I guess the only news around these parts is that I'm going to Cincinnati in a couple of days for a two-day work-related seminar. The seminar is on a topic I know basically nothing about, so I'm trying to learn all I can about it before I go, as well as finish all the work I need to get done. So I'm freaking out a little more than I usually freak out on a daily basis.

Technically, I won't even be in Cincinnati; the seminar is actually in northern Kentucky, right across the mighty Ohio river. The hotel is one of those big cylindrical jobs with a spinning restaurant on top, just a couple of blocks away from the river bank -- but I think my budget room is on the second floor, so no view to speak of. Still, I might meander down thataway in my spare time.  I won't have a car (or very much money), so I won't be able to do much that isn't within walking distance.

The real reason I'm excited to visit the Queen of the West is that it will be my first chance to sample authentic Cincinnati chili. This has fascinated me ever since I read about it in Calvin Trillin's American Fried. It's not as hot as some other regional chili recipies, apparently, and by default, it comes without beans. The archetypical Cinicinnati chili is served as what the locals call a "3-way": on a bed of spaghetti, covered in shredded cheddar cheese.

Friends, there ain't nothing wrong with that.

You can also order a "4-way" (3-way with red beans OR diced onions) or a "5-way" (3-way with red beans AND diced onions).

I was happy to learn that there was a Skyline Chili within a few blocks of my hotel.

So. It's not like the chili, by itself, is enough to make me excited about the trip to the greater Cincinnati metro area. It's more that chili is really the only thing I know about the city, and thus is by default the thing I'm most anticipating. And since I'll be there for such a short time and won't be able to go very many places once I'm there, my options for exploring the Blue Chip City are limited.

This has been a pretty boring post, for which I apologize. Some people go to Denver, some people go to the Great Lakes, some people go to the beach -- I go to dull Midwestern cities and stay in cheap hotel rooms to attend seminars on mystifying regulatory issues.

Titles briefly considered and ultimately discarded for this post:

• "Traveling 500 Miles For A 3-Way"
• "Baby, If You Ever Wondered, Wondered Whatever Became Of Me"
• ...or anything else WKRP-related

I Am The Champions: Now With Photos

Just in case you're not planning on spending an evening at Suds 'n' Duds anytime soon, here is what EXTREME VICTORY looks like:

Also, all you people who are coming to this blog through a Google search for "Andie McDowell's Daughter" are starting to creep me out a little bit.  I don't know what you want, but leave Andie McDowell's daughter out of it.