Diary of a Low Budget Superhero

Do you ever hear about something that a person did that was so stupid, I mean so incredibly brainless, that your reaction is something like "Wha...why...ARE...PEOPLE...!?" It's like the act of stupidity was so powerful that just by hearing about it, a dam of dumb burst and sent a wave of stupid all the way from its origin to your brain where it took away your verbs. All your mouth can summon is "Why are people."

While I was just typing that, a recent news story popped into mind. This poor fucker. I wasn't actually THINKING of this guy as having done something stupid, and really, I feel horribly, terrible awful for him, but if I were this guy's friend, I would have to say, "Dude. Really? That's the solution that came to mind?"

This happened June 6th, a few weeks ago, in Connecticut. Guy was attempting to repair his furnace, stuck his left arm inside it, between the slats of the vents. He couldn't quite reach, so instead of saying "Damn, I can't reach," he forced his arm in further.

Don't read anymore if you have a delicate constitution.

Like I know anyone like that! You are all iron stomached, right?

Well, he got that arm stuck, but GOOD. He was actually trapped for an entire long, horrifying day, 18 hours. At which point he began to cut his arm off with his hand tools.

In the interviews he's very matter-of-fact about it. "I fashioned a tourniquet from a shirt," he calmly tells the cameras, and then describes the incredible ordeal of attempting a self-amputation. "The cut was going well, surprisingly well, for about half way through," he explains. But then the pain got to be too much (ya think?) and he passed out. Then the next day his work friend got worried about his unexplained absence. They found his dog barking, got into the house, found him, used the jaws of life to get him free and rushed him to the hospital. He's OK now, amazingly, save for the lack of a left arm anymore.

When I first saw the news story, it seemed for all the world like the guy had maybe seen one too many Saw movies. Well, even ONE is one-too-many Saw movies, but you know what I mean. He goes for amputation on the first day!? People have survived trapped for way longer than THAT without resorting to such a drastic act.

But now, a couple weeks later, the docs are saying that when his arm got stuck ("got" stuck, as though the arm acted on its own) it began to decay or decomp or whatever, and that by severing the arm the guy prevented toxins from entering the rest of his body and killing him.

I think they're just trying to make the guy feel better. It sounds like putting the best possible spin on a horrifying scene. In reality, he's like Hedwig. You know, of Angry Inch fame.

ONLY in my top five favorite movies ever conceived by pure genius.

Like young hopeful Hedwig, trapped on the wrong side of the Berlin wall and opting to undergo a sex change operation just to escape, by passing as the bride of an American soldier, only to have the operation botched and then, oh, the humanity, the wall came down anyway, just in time for Hedwig to be left destitute in blighted Junction City, Kansas.

If only he'd waited! The end of the ordeal was near, if only he'd known!

At least the furnace guy didn't get his johnson caught in the furnace. Hedwig lost everything but an angry inch down there. Furnace Arm Guy lost an arm. Every man would give up an arm to keep the goods. Also, Hedwig is fictional.

I wonder if Furnace Arm Guy was left-handed?

Here's the story:
http://article.wn.com/view/2010/06/11/Man_Trapped_in_Furnace_Amputated_Own_Arm_to_Live/

After telling that whole story, now I don't remember what I was actually thinking of when I started this entry about stupid things people do. Furnace Arm Guy made me forget.

Good luck with everything, Furnace Arm Guy. I couldn't have done what you did, and moreover, I'm still working out what the life lesson is here. "Never force your arm into a furnace" just seems like something that goes without saying.

Then again, so does "Never drill for ANYTHING without a fail-safe disaster recovery plan."

Ohhhh yes, NOW I remember what I was actually thinking of when I started this entry about stupid things people do, and I'm pissed and stunned and speechless all over again. The...you can't...it's so...ARGGH, WHY ARE PEOPLE!?

Two movies started about an hour ago, at midnight. I was supposed to be working on an essay, but as I glumly sat, freshly showered and staring down a blinking cursor that was all but mocking inspiration, I couldn't stand the deafening silence. Treading empty pages makes for a lonely night, dudes. So I reached over and mashed some buttons on the remote. And here I am, an hour later.

No surprise Lost Boys is on right now. Corey Haim died four days ago. Wow, what to say about Corey Haim dying at thirty-eight. No really, what to say? I don't have a poignant eulogy or even anything remotely erudite. As a tweenybopper I didn't pin up his picture, I didn't run out to see all his movies, "Mrs. Corey Haim" never appeared scribbled on my schoolbooks. He seemed so innocuous with those clear wide eyes, round little mouth and puffy hair. He never seemed to have any grain to him. Sneakers. Jeans. If not for being paired with Corey Feldman, who I always thought fiery and compelling and just a little insane, I doubt I'd have taken much notice of Corey Haim at all. In the eighties I was more into Brit rockers in eyeliner, boys in heels and paisley, leatherbound freaks with long hair and earrings. Corey Haim was more like the fresh-faced boys in my homeroom. There were Corey Haims everywhere riding their ten-speeds and running around the soccer field. In Lost Boys, what teen aged girl was looking at Corey Haim when wild-eyed Kiefer Sutherland in that long black coat was facing off with Jason Patric who was doing that smoldering stare thing and murmuring, "Look at my square jawline and sexy leather jacket." Corey Haim, well, he was just this guy, you know?

But still, something like a veil of nostalgia falls whenever anyone around my own age dies, an extra layer of sorrow when the cause is avoidable and self-inflicted, something stupid like drugs. And where was I that I didn't even know Corey Haim was among Hollywood's notorious drug users? I didn't know that! Robert Downy Jr., Andy Dick, Charlie Sheen, Danny Bonaduce -- these are the wild boys who come to mind whenever talk turns to LA's snorting & boozing elite. But Corey Haim? He seemed so pure. It's like hearing that Kirk Cameron or Ralph Macchio succumbed. I bet at least a couple of people, when told about his death, said, "Are you sure it's not Corey Feldman?" Feldman was always so vocal about his problems, his party life was as cringe-inducingly obvious as his Michael Jackson fandom. But now I'm hearing that reality show the Coreys did was wracked with drug issues, and that means people knew he needed help, and that makes it just such a waste of a young life. That's mostly what I feel, that it's a terrible waste of a young life.

Remember when we lost River Phoenix? I was 23. So was he, and boy did I adore River Phoenix. He was like a shimmering young Adonis, seemed so self-assured and destined for greatness to the degree that it didn't seem possible that he should be walking around on the planet with the rest of us mere mortals. Twenty-three years, that's all he got. Oh, River.

No surprise The Cutting Edge is on right now. It's an ice skating movie, and after the winter Olympics one out of every two people is a durn fool for ice skating. Is it you? No? FINE, it's me! God I love this movie!

When it came out the tag line was "The ultimate love/skate relationship." I am able to agree that it's stupid, but must also insist that it's TEN KINDS OF AWESOME. DB Sweeney plays a hotshot up-and-coming college hockey player who gets his head slammed between the ice and some large Germans, so then he has a blind spot in his eye, which effectively kills his pro hockey career. Moira Kelley, who I LOVE, plays an impossibly snotty champion figure skater whose talent is as giant as her ego. If I were as corny as the script writers I'd pen some line about her personality and ice, but let's leave that alone for the sake of, um, not sucking. Let's just say she's such a bitch that she has run through all the available skating partners, so her coach recruits DB Sweeney. He hates figure skating, they hate each other, but they manage to skate their way to the 1992 Olympics. I tell you, it's awesome. There are sequels, though. Ignore.

So that's what I'm doing instead of writing, flipping between the vampires and the figure skaters. Pretty simple avoidance measures. Skating and vampires. Somehow it works, in a weird way.

"Maggots, Michael. You're eating maggots. How do they taste?"

"Spindler say before he skate with her, he wear garlic from neck and sleep with cross. Who is left?"

"You're a vampire Michael! You wait 'till mom finds out, buddy!"

"Pairs means TWO. You have no partner. You are skating nowhere!"

"Death by stereo!"

"There's only two things I do really well, sweetheart, and skating's the other one!"

"How much do you think we should charge them for this?"

"Toe pick!"

Avoidance, avoidance. What is it that I'm trying so hard not to think about?

Hey, guess what? It's time for a re-telling of the asparagus fart story. It's been eight years since I've told it and seventeen years since it happened. This is for Adam.

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(continued from Part 1)

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I see you over there in the menu bar, Weight Watcher's tab, don't get all lonely because I haven't touched you since summer. I got stuff for you too, I just haven't felt like writing. And you know those Facebook statuses? They've been taking the place of Low Budget Superhero. Almost a decade of writing, and it's coming undone because I can now post my thoughts in 220 character micro-blogs throughout the day and night, getting immediate and satisfying comments from every other obsessive Live Feed button-pusher. You know who you are! I have no legitimate claims to outrage, having been the cheerleader whose rallying whoops enticed at least five people to join. If you're tweeting because of me, I'm sorry.

I do need to write up the essay about that October trip. I just need like a, I don't know, a decompression? Like a couple of weeks off with no TV and no Facebook. So that I can write about Facebook and how it's blurring the normally linear timeline of our weird little lives. Come on, your old boyfriend commenting along with your best friend from fifth grade and your new boyfriend's mom is just...well, you'd never find all those people in the same room. Worlds colliding, rainbows connecting.

You'll notice there's no longer any commenting available HERE. This I changed so that I could control a spammer problem I was having, but I think I'll keep it comment'less for awhile. The people I would want to hear from, you know how to reach me if it's so important. And there's always the Facebook comment, because you know I'll be posting this to my profile...what a brave new world we live in, hm?

So much going on, so much. Let's see, well, the earthquake in Haiti is the worst thing I've seen in my lifetime. Here at home, the nation's economy is in the toilet. Last night was the State of the Union address, and while I'm still an Obama Mama, I just feel like it was too much salesy talk, finger pointing, platitudes and "in a perfect world" promises. OH, and too much applause by the Dems for what really amounted to a pep rally! Anyone else annoyed by that? When did that start, the constant applause during the SOTU? I don't recall that from when I was a kid. I don't know what any of the answers are, I just know things need to change. That's what drove the commonwealth, which was rocked by the Scott Brown win last week. Because nobody knows what to think past "what the f....?"

Joe's still not working. While I must say I like that he's picked up this new hobby of cooking, I would also like to, oh, maybe buy a house? Or at least a condo? My credit is only in the high six hundreds and my savings is like two or three paychecks' away from not-existing. Realistically, we need both incomes and his superior credit if we're ever going to move out of this tiny apartment. It's hard to believe October was a whole entire calendar year since he was laid off. I'd just made an appointment with a Realtor to look at some condo's, and by the time the appointment day came around, he was out of work. Thanks, Universe, yer hilarious. That was a good one.

Joe has become quite the cook, though. Last Thanksgiving, I mean 2008, he watched me taking down a raw butternut squash and turning it into a delightful soup and, when he turned out to love the soup, acted like I'd just leaped a tall building in a single bound. By THIS Thanksgiving, he had experimented with a number of different variations on butternut squash soup (with apple, with leeks) and made a big pot to take over to his sister's house. Leeks? A mere few months ago he had to call me from the grocery store with list in hand.

"Which ones are leeks?"

"They're with the swiss chard and kale." That didn't help at all. I suspect he thought "swiss chard" and "kale" were some kind of fish.

"They look like scallions, but bigger and fatter...scallions look like leeks' mini-me."

Now he's expertly washing leeks ("That's not easy, baby!" "I know, I found a video online!"), crisping them and using them to top his culinary creations. It just proves that old adage about the clouds and the silver lining. "Oh, 2009? Yes, Joe didn't have a job for one single day of it, but on the plus side, he learned to make a perfect pie crust...from SCRATCH." We may have limped along on one income, but holy moly...fresh pie!

Actually, it's overstating to say we're "limping along." We're fine. We can live perfectly fine on one income. For one thing, they just keep extending the unemployment bennies, though we won't discuss how much of that goes straight into paying for health care. For another, we don't have any of life's luxur...I mean money pits. No house, so no lawn to care for or snow to remove, there's no repair bills for big appliances because we own no big appliances. No property taxes, heat is part of our rent. No car, so no insurance or gas or repairs. No pets, so no food or vet bills. No kids. When I think about it all, you know what? I don't know how people are doing it. Even just adding a car right now would change our whole financial picture. And I have decent income!

How are people doing it?!

Are they living on credit? We only got credit cards because, last year, our mortgage adviser dude said we both lack revolving debt, which hurts our credit for home loans. Meaning: you guys actually SAVE UP for what you want to buy? Oh, that won't do, you need to fling credit cards all around so we can see that you...have...credit?

I am sorry, I still just do NOT get the whole credit dance. It's retarded, and yes I know that's un-PC language, and since I'm already offending your delicate nature, it's motherfucking retarded. If you're frugal, non-extravagant, careful to live within your means with habits such as saving up for the big ticket purchases and only buying them when you have the money, it's the same thing as being a deadbeat loser. Really? REALLY? Credit score what? It is my belief that CREDIT SCORE should only be the jumping-off place, not the be-all and end-all factor that spells out a person's entire financial story. There's so much more to define a person's financial responsibility than just that score. I care about being careful with money, that's all. Score THIS, hosers. Makes me want to live somewhere where I can give you a chicken and a goat in trade for a hut.

People are angry. I'm angry. There's going to be a lot more flag-waving in 2010. What's your flag going to say on it?

One of my co-workers...FORMER co-workers...made his own stimulus package. Sticky Fingers decided to sneak out with about twenty grand worth of electronic parts. Can you even imagine? It's a pretty good story too, but I'll save that for another day.

Al ist klar, der kommisar.

The latest barrel of hot viscous suck-juice to get dumped on the Internet is this thing called automatic comment generator, or blog comment widget. I'd like to track down the person who thought this kind of marketing would contribute to society and ask them a question or two, the first being simply: "What the fuck?"

But let me tell you why.

Some of you guys remember this, my online diary, from way back when it was called Jungle Sweet Jungle, so named for the inspiration provided by Geoffrey Holtz' book, Welcome to the Jungle: The Why Behind "Generation X" and the slant of my own writings, which was, is, and I guess will always be me searching for a foothold in history. Home, sweet Home. I don't crochet doilies, so I made a diary. Okay, blog, if you must. My first-ever post was about my erstwhile ebay addiction, where I spent my 1990s-boom era fat salary...a moment of silence for the dot-coms...on dust-collecting trifles like Brady Bunch lunchboxes. That last sentence ought to be in the dictionary under "Gen X."

So yeah, I'm in my ninth year here. Changed the name five years ago, changed the tools I use to do it, changed the style around a bunch. But I'm old school. I still only link to other diarists (okay, bloggers) that I actually read and enjoy. I still don't sell ad space (like, who would buy it). And I still view Low Budget Superhero as basically an adult version of the forts I used to make out of my Wonder Woman blankie and a couple of dining room chairs. You can come in if you want to, but you have to wear this Burger King crown and sing "Sesame Street" with me.

APPARENTLY, now that there's like eleventy-jillion blogs, and blog is a word now, and many of them have grown into quite the respectable (or at least oft-quoted) online news magazines, and everybody and your dog has one, and some have been made into books and movies, there's a great focus on making money from it. And part of that money-making hunger is getting more clicks. Clicks, clicks, clicks, it's all about the clicks, at the expense of basic Netiquette. Me, I hold no truck with this predatory practice of "generating more traffic" to one's blog by installing a fake comment widget.

Oh, you didn't know about the fake comment widget? Then your blog must have a WAY better defense against spambots than I do here at Low Budget Superhero. I've been battling these things with increasing fervor for years. I've tried everything on my utility belt except the shark repellent. Sometimes my arsenal of blockers wins, sometimes the hackers that write these spam codes win. I shake my fist at you, evil geniuses! I shall smite you with my strong words!

The idea is, these money-hungry dingleberries want more clicks, so they employ one of the comment spambot tools, and configure it for certain key words. Then it'll automatically go all around the web and leave comments in other blogs. With a link back to theirs. I don't know how they get past some of the things they get past! But they do. They'll leave you a comment right now, see if they don't. By leaving a fake comment with their link, they think this is going to get you to click on their link, because you think you got a comment. If it looks real enough, you'll leave it sitting there in your comments section and maybe some of your readers will click, too, and then...somebody...somehow makes money off that. I don't know quite how, I'm not good at that kind of thing. I still haven't worked out precisely what went on there at the end of Trading Places with the crop report and the whole "turn those machines back on." I've only been pretending to understand it for 26 years.

I get these automatic comments every damn day. My site here is set up so I get email saying there's a comment on one of my posts, and I have to log in to approve it first. Now, sometimes it's really you guys, which I adore and encourage, even if you don't agree with me -- but most of the time it's some horrendous auto-generated nonsense message that I just delete. I tell you, I must delete ten of these a week. They're insidious. I get auto comments with tracks back to websites as far reaching as shoe stores, phone companies, printing houses and dating sites. The worst offenders are online gambling sites and, of course, that mack daddy of the Internet, porn. What do they say? Occasionally the comments are somewhat normal, though just a little bit off...like, it could almost make sense when viewed in a certain way. For example, on my post called Oblique Strategies for Life, "Janice" posted this:

Well, yeah, true. But does it really pertain to the topic? Kinda not. I do know a Janice, too, so that one took me a few minutes to inspect. I may have even mentioned her in an entry, which may even have been the trigger for the auto-commentor. I knew it wasn't my Janice because the trackback url didn't make sense. Some handbag clearance website. That one pissed me off because they got me --I clicked it. I clicked it just to make sure it wasn't my Janice merely being loopy in her comment choice. She can be loopy now and then. She recently broke her ankle just walking. That takes a certain loopitude. But no, it wasn't her, it was some damn bot.

Other auto-commenter aren't so clever. Sometimes it's a bunch of random character gobbledy-gook that fools no one. Some are English words, but strung together into nonsense, like this one that repeated for about a week straight on a single post of mine. It read simply:

Then there was "Mort from Tonga," whose engine thought an appropriate reply to "I Don't Have The Guts For Health Care Reform" was this ramble:

Hey Mort, how about I "learn YOU into a rack with assets and companies." And what's with the sad emoticon? Christ, he's rude, crazy AND a downer. This is just terrible, terrible stuff.

I Googled for the widget applications so I could see how these marketing geniuses justify such spamming. Here's what one of them says:

You see that? This is only the beginning.

We have their word.

I want to hear one good reason why national health insurance cost can't be on a sliding scale based on individual income and expenses. Just one good reason. I, for one, would welcome that at this point. Because from everything I'm reading, hearing and watching, I'm starting to worry that health care "reform" is simply going to be new legislation stating that every person must buy health insurance, and that nobody is addressing the COST of it nor the list of benefits included.

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I didn't so much clear yesterday's Hurdle of Blah. It's more like I kinda shuffled up to it, stared at it awhile, drank a second cup of coffee, nudged it aside with my butt as I plodded past. Hey, I got to work and did my stuff, didn't I? Leaping over hurdles is for next week.

This is the kind of mood when I just do not get people. Every day there are new feats of Stupid that trumped yesterday's, and there will be still more Stupid tomorrow, and yet the world manages to spin around the sun and we do it all again the day after that.

Some are Big Stupids, like Michael Vick, that Arizona pastor who is publicly encouraging his flock to assassinate our country's leader, everything Sarah Palin says, and whatever unholy thing that makes Paris Hilton famous.

Most are Little Stupids.

On most days, I just gawk at the Little Stupids, even when they add up and make me question mankind's survival. I just say "If traffic is so bad at five o'clock, why do you still leave at five? It's the same thing every day!" I say "Dude, of COURSE you're tired, you went to bed three hours before you're due at work!" I say "Hey lady, I'm no expert, but wouldn't it be better if you wait for the walk signal before darting out into traffic, then that cab wouldn't have almost hit you?" I leave friendly notes in the restroom that say "Don't pee on the seat, thanks." I handle the Stupid and maintain a level of Happy.

But on days like this, the Blah days, I can't even bear to look at the Big Stupids face-on, and the Little Stupids make me want to go home and hide under my covers. It's like the more Stupid there is, the more it eats away at my normally sunny disposition and leaves me wondering just why the hell am I so happy all time?

I might have a new way to gauge the Stupid level.

Every single shopping cart at Stop N Shop bears a clear notice stating that the wheels will automatically stop turning once the cart gets a certain distance from the store's electronic sensors. Do you get it? The cart won't GO. You can't take the cart with you when you leave the store. Yet every single day there's a sad little cluster of dead carts, in the exact same place on Everett Street, shining under the afternoon sun like a chrome monument to that day's fresh batch of Stupid. Some days as I walk past on my way to get some lunch, there are six, seven, eight carts.

I muse "What was the first guy thinking." OK, he's easy. Let's assume he didn't or couldn't read the sign. We live in a very mixed neighborhood, you will hear any number of languages walking around. It's one of the things we like about living here, it makes for awesome bodega's and funky little eateries and an overall cool "neighborhoody" vibe, where you can still get a cup of coffee that doesn't come from Starbucks, a bunch of flowers that doesn't come from a Kabloom, and an ice cream that doesn't come from a Baskin Robbins. Plantains and golumki and knishes and karaoke and falafel, we got it all. Not all signs are in English.

But then what was the second guy thinking? He doesn't need to understand the sign saying "cart will stop." He can clearly see the stopped cart. But then, maybe that guy didn't get the connection between that cart, quite immobile, stranded on the corner near the bridge where that homeless guy sleeps and huffs his Reddi-Whip cans, and his own cart, which is about to lock its wheels and grind to a halt.

But how about that third guy. And the fourth and fifth. Because by then, it's like a friggin' cart pile-up. Look, if I'm walking along a wintry sidewalk and I see five people flailing on the ground ahead of me, I'm gonna say "Hm, must be icy up there." I won't need a sign warning me "Icy Sidewalk!" No language is needed, no college degree, not even a high-school equivalency. Just your eyes. You could land on that corner from another planet and "get it." Cart stops here.

Yet every day. Every single day, new batch of dead carts.

Just like the pollen count I check each morning on the weather scan channel to see how the air quality is that day, I'm gonna start doing a cart count to see how the Stupid quality is that day. One or two carts, I can expect to get a lot done and no one will piss me off. Three to six carts, it'll be a busy day and I will require some good music or a good hard workout to clear out the Stupid. Over six, and everybody just better watch out. You want to talk to me, bring chocolate.

If only I could go home and hide under the covers on those goddamn 9-cart days.

This video that I posted earlier tonight on Facebook is worth reposting here, even though at this point I don't think anyone reads Low Budget Superhero who isn't also a Facebook friend. Unless I've blocked you and you don't yet realize it, which probably means you suck, so go away.

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Heather posted a Bostonist.com blog about the utter horror that are flip flops. My friends know enough not to wear flip flops around me, I cannot abide them.

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Jen and munk were Facebooking some frustrations tonight. The topic? Outsourcing North American call centers to the other side of the planet. Mostly to India. Now, my Spidey Sense told me that some people were, if not offended, then surprised that Jen and munk would be so blunt about this, but I totally get what they're saying. I hate it too.

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