Alas, no matter how clean you make your yard, it is still comprised of 98 percent dirt.
Sticks and Slugs:
At some point this evening I bent down to pick up a stick, which turned out to be a slug, and as I jumped away like a frightened school girl, well after, I remembered that as a child we used to play on the sidewalk with snails and poke slugs with sticks. It is hard to say if tonight was revenge.
Small sadness:
By the time we got to the whiskey we were already full of deli meat and cider. This strikes me as falling on the lower scale of human tragedy.
Conversations:
S: I don't think s does well with crazy crazy schedules.
M: What baby does?
Afternoons:
About once every two days, when I just want to sit and relax for a bit, I'll pull s onto my chest and try to breathe slowly, to mimic the heartbeat in the womb. And every once in a while, one in ten times, she lies on my stomach for longer than a minute or two without starting to cry. Today, we sat on a beige blanket, with the limbs of a large oak shading our eyes, and I closed my eyes for fifteen minutes while she stared up at a pale bluish sky, and the birds flitting from place to place followed by her eyes. And I kept telling my heart to slow down even more that this moment of peace could not last forever.
Don't trim the Juniper:
As we are walking to the car I notice bits of glass in the street that I step past because I have bare feet. Later, when we are moving heavier things to smaller cars I notice a speck of glass in front of our own sidewalk and this time I bend down and pick it up and another just like it, and I walk across the yard and drop them in the juniper bush that we never trim. They are some other fool's problem now.
Spring Cleaning:
The baby's toys are migrating downstairs. The distance is somewhat shorter than the 22,000 traveled by terns, but no less impressive in all the spaces that are revealed between wing beats and bits of green wall.
We were arguing for the umpteenth, not a word either one of us would have used, about something related to the exact point at which it became no longer reasonable to throw away trash. Our limits seemed entirely unrelated to each other. You see, when I see a trash can that's nearly full, I see the possibility for unlimited space yet to be realized. I guess you could say I can see the true potential of a bag of trash in a way that is foreign to hers. She would call it laziness, but I would call it a degree of difference in potentialities. In the end the trash generally gets taken out somewhere in between its potential ceiling and the low sort of goal that she sets for it and reinforced on a biweekly basis. At that point in time it's really hard to blame the bag for much. It's clear to me that the behavior is coming from the mother. And on the way out the bag will often say to me, "Hello, good sir. I am capable of holding up to twenty pounds." The same brands all say the same things. And I gently let it know that for today, two pounds, a banana peel, a plastic wrapper for crackers, leftover rice that has gone bad, several wrappers from spent burritos, a piece of paper on which is the phone number of someone I never called is written will have to be enough. The trash usually understands. Np pun intended.
Uh, other writing thing
The fellow to my right has been engaged in onananism, and I’m not the sort to judge a man for what he does to himself. I leave those types of decisions to a higher power. But of late, the man has begun to place himself violently upon me while engaging in the act. One assumes that he is perforce, asleep during what I’d be remiss to call anything but a kind of rape. The landscape is barren and white. Women, oh women. The snow does not make up for the lack of them.
“March on,” yells the commandant, who has, as far as I can tell, has not a good bone in his body. Why, just yesterday we witnessed him shooting a poor fellow who stopped by the side of the road to cough. And what these Russians might call roads, are not the sort of things that you or I would call them. It’s more like a loosely driven path through snow. The soldier, a young man named Hans, was from a village not twenty miles from where I grew up in Paris. I’m not going to write to you about the set of his mouth when he was dead, or even the color of his lips. What’s the point of that? The soul has already departed the body, or never was. What remains is merely a shell, discarded by a hermit crab who yearns for larger things.
I was a baker of some repute in my village before the little man called us all off to help bring glory to France. I was renowned for my baguettes, my rose filled macaroons. I put into my baking the sort of manic energy that a young and foolish man puts into an affair. The women, I told Hans, before he was lying in the road, “you see,” they are like the ocean. Hans, his eyes filled with what can only be described as stupidity asked me to clarify my point. “My boy,” I said, “they come and they go. There is no use chasing the waves, they will always break.”
I was well-known in our small company for being a philosopher of the highest degree. A patent lie that, but one for which I stoked the fires as hard as if I was watching the dough rise in a brick oven. The men constantly came to me with their little problems, and I would listen to them in exchange for some small ration. Bits of flour, stolen from a farmhouse and snaked away before the captain could see, a small piece of chocolate ripped from the pantry of a crying Russian peasant.
“War,” I told Hans, warming myself in a lice filled blanket “is no more ridiculous than anything else in this world. Why would I study a thing like mathematics? Because two and two is four? What does this tell me about being alive, Hans? Not a damn thing! Now, when I stare down the musket, and put a bullet in another man’s stomach. What do I learn? My God, Hans, can you not feel it in the heat of battle? War reminds us how much we enjoy being alive. What a very precious thing it is. Without war, Hans, we’re just shells playing at being human.”
I didn’t believe a word of it then, but it certainly sounded nice to say. And the others in our unit were no doubt enlivened by the nobility of our pursuit, which was, empty and misguided.
In the evening we set up camp at the side of the road. The sky was a grey pinwheel of clouds. We’d just that afternoon begun drinking from the puddles that were low lying in the road, in the company of our horses. Who, despite their solid stink, I regarded fairly highly, though not highly enough to enjoy being mouth to mouth with them over a bit of drainage.
The commander, bless him, keeps insisting that we are going to win a great victory for France, this while his teeth chatter in the numbing cold. And by this point its become apparent to at least half of us that we’re marching to our own death.
Observation: Q comes too early in the alphabet. It rightfully belongs closer to its other lesser used brethren like X and Z.
Observed: Several nice tree boxes on the way to work.
Thought: If one spends the walk observing tree boxes, perhaps it's time to bust out the black socks and sandals while mowing the lawn.
Observation: People seem pretty excited about the rapture. Why? I think we should all be quaking in our boots over the Mayan calendar ending, but this one strikes me as a bit of a shot in the dark. Also, does the rapture happen on EST or Pacific time, or does it occur first in New Zealand and then work its way over. I can't say I've ever really been able to figure this one out.
Thought: If you had five months in which to muck about post rapture, what would you do? And, on a larger scale thought initiative, what would humanity in general do and what does your answer to both imply about your belief or lack thereof in your fellow man/woman.
Joke: What would you do if you knew the earth was coming to an end in one hour?
G: I'd eff anything that moved.
What would you be doing?
G2: I'd be standing completely still.
Observation: Listening to the disembodied moaning emanating from the monitor would be troubling in any other context. Why do we assume that it's s moving about in her sleep and not a ghost, pretending to be s, who has always been present but is only now being picked up by our monitor?
Possible answer: Sanity/a preponderance of historical evidence that shades do not exist.
Query: Is it more important to be liked or respected?
Theory: Most of what ails modern man is the same thing that has ailed man since his inception. Man.
Thought projection: Years ago I remember watching a Discovery Channel show that posited what the earth may look like over the next few thousand years. At some point during the show humans go kaput, and squids wind up crawling onshore and mimicking primates, one can only assume that the squids hurling pine cones was actually a tongue in cheek joke as we know that squids, like chimps, would hurl feces instead. What would their king-sized beds look like, and would they run into overpopulation problems more quickly because of increased size? Or, would you bet money on the giant squids or the little squids to run things?
I fear we've wandered too far afield.
T.S. Eliot on the rapture from The Hollow Men:
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Dylan Thomas on old age or what we're calling the Rapture:
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Epicurus on the Rapture, uh, sort of:
It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.
My favorite thing about working then hours isn't the working ten hours. I know. For a lot of people that would be enough. They'd just be pretty excited about getting to put in that much time at work. I've always wondered why most work weeks are only 40 hours, confession, I only work 35, when we could make it like fifty or sixty or something. I think I speak for everyone when I say that work was created by the good Lord to make us have meaning and 401K's. Anyhow, the fact that I get to work ten hours isn't the only reason I'm excited.
The main reason I'm excited, what kind of a segue was that? Can you reasonably even start a new paragraph at this point in time? is that when I arrived home our back door wouldn't shut. You can store what I know about fixing things in a teacup, so set to work.
Wait, I forgot about the other awesome part. If you live 4.5 miles away from work and you've just finished working ten hours, what would you do? Would you take a bus? With poor people. Ewwwww. Would you take the metro? No, I'm not rich. I can't afford the metro. No, you'd say to yourself, I'm going to walk my tired ass home. Of course, after a mile or so you'll start looking for places to sit down because you are old and walking without stretching for an extended period of time, both, hurts. And sure, Rock Creek Parkway doesn't have sidewalks, but at least you got to see a deer and a fox hurdling across the median and sprinting off into the distance. The whole experience was almost as majestic as the whir of the cars passing by a few feet to your left. Aw, nature. So glorious!
Anyhow,
step 1: Complain at your wife for asking you to do anything after your ten hour day. It doesn't matter how bad anyone in the world has it, you probably have it worse, you've just worked a long ass day. Let no one forget this. Remind her as she makes baby food. Remind her as she washes the dishes. Regale her with stories of your day. Do not under any circumstances make an attempt to fix the door. It might fix itself.
Step 2: Get up and try to fix the door. Always use brute force. You can't underthink this problem. Just start pushing and shoving in random sequences to try and make the thing shut. Do not consider the problem. That is for sissies. Real men fix problems by slamming their shoulder into them. Later, when you're done failing, remind your wife that you worked ten hours.
Step 3: Walk around to the other side of the door. Kick it if necessary. Examine all portions of the door looking for other parts of it that could use a good kick.
Step 4: On her advice, actually consider looking at what's going wrong. Remind her that you worked ten hours. Ask her why she broke the door. Disregard her saying that she just opened the door. Say that it looks an awful lot like breaking the door to you. Remind her that you have the knees of a much older man.
Step 5: Shove the door again to see if it will work. Suggest that you pull the door off its hinges and rehang it. When she suggests that it isn't a good idea. Remind her that a heliocentric universe once seemed like a bad idea. When she sighs, suggest that if you hadn't worked ten hours you'd do it yourself.
Step 6: When it becomes clear that no one is rehanging the door go online. Google has the answers to everything. Read about using a piece of wood to sort of pry the thing up. Also read about applying petroleum jelly. Avoid jokes. Go get a hammer. This feels like good work. Take hammer, grab a small peg that will barely do the job and start hammering. During this process keep examining the lock to see if it has moved at all. At some point your wife will note that you're hitting the thing the wrong way. Switch to her way. Remind her that people who have worked ten hours aren't always sharp. Hammer away.
Step 7: Suggest that your wife apply some petroleum jelly again. Show disdain for her suggesting that it won't work. Note that it is going to make this amazing. Examine the door at random. Note that nothing is changing. Break a peg. Take your wife's advice and get a paint stirrer instead. Obviously made of sturdy stuff. This is going to fix things. Break the paint stirrer while accomplishing virtually nothing.
Step 8: Mention that you'll probably just have to live with the open door. Start by saying that if someone is trying your door every night you're probably going to be robbed anyway. Listen to your wife who suggests that you shove the door, this is your heart's desire anyhow, while she pulls up or something. Fail. Try again. This works. Credit the jelly. Insist that it's your idea making, and this after ten hours of work, that really solved the problem. Suggest that you buy a new door and storm door. Say things like, "I ain't stopping you." When she says, "I've done a lot of house things, can you take care of it?" Mention that you are too tired, and that you've just worked ten hours.
"What if we created a scenario in which, and here is the part I think you're really going to gravitate to."
Steven Millhauser from Dangerous Laughter
"As I train myself to cast off words, as I learn to erase word-thoughts, I begin to feel a new world rising up around me, The old world of houses, rooms, trees and streets shimmers, wavers and tears away, revealing another universe as startling as fire. We are shut off from the fullness of things. Words hide the world. They blur together elements that exist apart, or they break elements into pieces bind up the world, contract it into hard little pellets of perception. But the unbound world, the world behind the world – how fluid it is, how lovely and dangerous. At rare moments of clarity, I succeed in breaking through. Then I see. I see a place where nothing is known, because nothing is shaped in advance by words. There, nothing is hidden from me. There, every object presents itself entirely, with all its being. It's as if, looking at a house, you were able to see all four sides and both roof slopes. But then, there's no “house,” no “object,” no form that stops at a boundary, only a stream of manifold, precise, and nameless sensations, shifting into one another, pullulating, a fullness, a flow. Stripped of words, untamed, the universe pours in on me from every direction. I become what I see. I am earth, I am air. I am all. My eyes are suns. My hair streams among the galaxies."
The rain makes no patterns against the window. It just falls in the streets turning them a bit darker, pooling beneath trees, and generally just becomes annoying in the way that it can on a day that you wish you were outside, sitting on a raft in dappled sunlight while your children, my god, you have children, are catching beams of sunlight in nets intended for dragonflies. It was that sort of rain.
"The idea is about an accounting system. I know, you're already tuning out. Don't tune out."
I had a tendency to do a lot of things in those days that were not classed as normal by my peers, visiting the graveyard to read a novel, running from oncoming waves as if I were a child, throwing rocks at the windows of girls that I didn't even like all because I enjoyed symmetry and was perhaps too taken with Romeo and Juliet. But then again, says I, what is normal?
"The idea is this. Quite simple. You could write the thing yourself."
I found after a week or so of doing them that Tuesdays, usually mind you, were almost exponentially better than Mondays. The same did not hold true for Wednesday mornings but could almost, though not quite, be applied to Wednesday evenings. Thursdays were an entirely different story that required all sorts of spreadsheets and F5 type situations to really put the whole week into its proper context.
"The idea is this: you create an infinite system of checks for the accounting system. Every back up has a back up of its own. The world could be comprised entirely of middle manager types or perhaps some sort of sub-species that just keep checking things, no, one thing, eternally. I think you can see the potential legs this thing might have in the mind and fingertips of an artist like yourself."
Thursdays were somewhat more dependent, and fluctuated wildly due primarily to age and general energy levels, though they were also often contingent upon things like the weather or the look of the Friday calendar right before you left.
"Well hold it, how is that a story? It's just a bunch of people, or sub-species or whatever, and they're just doing one thing over and over. What's the hook? Is the thing supposed to be interesting?"
"No. You're missing the point. The point is not that they're doing the thing over and over again, it's that none of them have the balls to ask why they're doing it. They just keep doing it because their fathers, and here I'm imagining again the sub-species though it might be possible to draw some sort of correlation to the general practice of human enslavement in this thing the metaphorical possibilities are really off the charts here, had been doing it, the work, before them."
"So what you're saying is not that I'm to pay close attention to the thing that they're doing, but rather the process by which they are doing it? Higher order thinking and the like."
"That's the idea, I suppose."
"I've heard better. Lots of times to be honest. You know a guy like me gets people scribbling things on napkins all the time. Why just last week a waiter-
The spreadsheet shows the largest and almost always exponential, discounting certain teenage years and 21-25, rise when it comes to Fridays. The graph does not include respondents who work on Saturdays. A flaw which I hope to eliminate in the next iteration. You can never be sure about those folks, and perhaps it'd be interesting to make a separate study that tries to take into account those folks that have this ambivalent relationship with Friday and just to see how it correlates. Like, even now, I still think that summer should mean some sort of vacation. When does that go away? Does it ever?
6:40 A.M. Receive a series of instructions from S about various events that will take place during the day. Ignore. Attempt to shove pillow over face in order to avoid more talking. This may or may not have happened.
7:20 A.M. It's time to wake little s up. She is grinning at herself in the mirror we've put in her crib. I encourage her vanity by smiling at how cute she is. Vanity is a good thing, I think I remember learning in my confirmation classes.
8:40 A.M. s goes down for a nap. S calls me and regales me with facts about electricians and other things that I try not to listen to because I am trying to sleep.
8:42 A.M. The milk man, yeah that's right we have one, knocks on the door to tell me he doesn't have enough room for all the milk we've requested. Even though I'm really annoyed about the fact that I won't be getting a nap I'm pretty excited about our continuing goal of stocking up on milk in preparation for it becoming the new gold standard.
S: You know, if you're just sitting around during the day you can mash up a banana and feed it to her.
M: Listen to me. If I ever decide to break up whatever good rhythm s and I have going on to mash up a banana and feed it to her, you can mash up my face.
S: What do you mean? Eventually she'll need to eat more.
M: Then maybe she should learn to talk and tell us when she's hungry.
(Pause)
M: Parent of the year.
11:00 A.M. I strap s in the car and take her to the doctor. The whole visit is pending an disagreement s and I had about whether her crying was due to normal teething symptoms, (mine), or some sort of catastrophic and mind altering ear infection, (hers).
M: I think she's going to be okay.
S: I know you don't want to hear this but that's typical of dad's. They just think it's going to be all right.
M: I'll bet you twenty bucks that it's not an ear infection.
And because I'm the dad taking his daughter out for the first time officially alone I entirely forget her diaper bag, and start worrying about whether the nurse will want to weight s or not. And if it takes place in public like the first time we brought her in, like in this hallway right in front of the nurses station, and if she'll have a poopy diaper. All the while I'm trying to rehearse what I'll say to the nurse/wondering what other parents think of me just wandering into a pediatric care group minus a diaper bag, like a jackass. And then wondering if she's pooped herself. What do I do if that's the case? (For some reason I never smelled to check, probably hoping for dumb luck) And wondering how long it was since I'd changed her, and wondering if they had extra diapers around and wipes, or if I'd just have to put the poopy diaper think back on her with all these nurses, mothers of four most, watching and judging me, not to mention the other new moms standing around with babies or God forbid, the occasional other dads, I saw one, with a diaper bag held over one shoulder and with not one but two kids but handling the whole thing like an old pro. The bastard.
11:37 A.M. She has a poopless diaper. I love my daughter.
Aside
8:13 P.M.
S: How did her appointment go?
M: Just fine.
S: (somehow intuitively knowing without any reason for actually knowing) Did your remember the diaper bag?
M: Nope. Just plain forgot it.
Aside: I won the twenty bucks. Apparently s crying and running a slight fever is pretty much standard for a baby teething. I told you so. The good bedrock of every marriage.
2:20-3:30-A friend stops by to babysit. Yay! Thank you! I head out to Whole Foods because even though I've got a low paying job at an academic library I still fancy myself as one day becoming a yuppie and learning how to tie my sweater over the back of my collared shirt and playing tennis at a country club. I spend the first few minutes trying to buy organic vegetables and learning in the process that every vegetable at Whole Foods is labeled as conventional or organic, and I'm amazed and ashamed that I've never noticed this before. Although I'm trying to do the local thing farmer's market, creamery etc. , which is even more bad ass and like a considerate version of a yuppie but still aspiring. Then I buy a lot of meat because we eat that now. And yes, Michael Pollan, I hunted down the cow that I bought and got all my chickens from Joel Salatin. They were wonderful. Stupid world always making me feel guilty for everything.
Aside: Sometimes I worry that facebook isn't changing enough, and I'll send out like five e-mails to the higher ups so that they understand that I count on facebook to periodically change for no discernible reason. This is a core value in my life.
4:00 Why are you bored? Look at all these toys? You've got like seven different varieties of teething rings. When I was a boy all you had was the edge of your crib. That's why kids from back then learned to stand up faster. And look at this giraffe. Look at it. The thing like disinfects itself after every use and is French. Do you think we had French giraffes when I was a kid. No. We had a hand me down horse that had been gnawed on by other kids for fifteen years or so. And you have the audacity to be bored? Here's a stick. Yeah, that's right, now it's a sword. Welcome to childhood. You want to go in a jumperoo? What? You're not happy there either? Can't you see that I'm trying to make you happy? Ingrate.
S: Is he (John Krasinski) still dating that Rashida Jones chick?
M: I don't know. I lost track of his life after he did that DFW movie? He did a DFW movie called Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.
S: I know. We watched it together.
M: Oh, sorry. I just figure if it was something artsy and cultural that I was probably the one doing it while you read a baby book in the background or (noticing that she's not paying attention to the monologue but is gazing at our bottom sheet) just worrying about our sheets.
S: (Throws sheet on top of the computer). (Pause). Somebody has to worry about our sheet.
5:50 P.M. After fussing, shi- who says fussing? Why do I now say fussing? That's not my thing. She was whining for an hour or so, and I have her sitting behind me while I prepare a variety of things to grill, and I'm talking to her the whole time and suddenly she decides that me shucking a piece of corn is extremely funny and starts laughing. And it occurs to me that what she's probably laughing at is the great demeaning that's taking place, one of the greatest minds of the age destined to spend the day shucking corn. Then I realized that maybe she was just tired and feeling a bit loopy. At that point, we both got a little sad, but we didn't need to say anything. It was one of those things where you just know that the other person is feeling the same way as you and you can just shuck the corn in silence without having to talk about the lack of predicted rain, or the flowers blown down in the yard. Yeah, I got you man, her toothless smile seemed to say.
I am entirely compelled by the structure of my contract with MSN to present these scenarios each week. Anyhow, disappointingly, I might add, but won't, this week's collection is 25 ways to get quick energy boosts. Really, twenty five MSN? A bit much. I think the general populous would probably settle for three and then they can get back to tweeting and facebooking and looking at tagged pictures of people they forgot they were friends with on facebook. Come on!
25 Ways to get a quick energy boost
1) Call your mom. Tell her to tape record her voice telling you to get up in the morning from when you were fourteen. Play this tape when the afternoon doldrums start to hit. You'll no doubt find that your mother's voice still has the effect of helping to perk you up, and also make you want to never hear her speak again.
2) Gin. It tastes like pine trees. Everyone talks about recharging the batteries in nature. Guess what? You can't visit the nice pine forest while you're at work. But you can visit the local liquor store and bring a little piece of the mountains with you to work. As for drinking at work, they do it in Europe, and we used to do it in this country. It's fine. We're weird about booze. Weird enough to prevent you from having that energy boost you need.
3) Fax things. Who the hell faxes anymore? Crazy libraries at my job. Just getting up to get to the machine and being vaguely confused....does this need a cover page? Do I put them face up or face down? will really help get you through the afternoon.
4) Drink a five hour energy. Why? I don't know, maybe because it's aptly named?
That energy drink has legs, which makes me trust him more.
5) Ride a rollercoaster. Note: You should probably get a job at one of the Disneys to make this really work.
6) Bring a horse into the office. Every thirty minutes take out your riding whip, mount it, and ride it around the office while yelling "and down the stretch they come." A pony would also work.
Ponies are real pretty.
7) Bring shampoo and soap to work. Take a shower every afternoon in your cube by pouring a few glasses of nice cool water over your head and lathering the soap in. I think you'll find that you'll have a hard time staying awake after a nice refreshing cup shower.
8) Coffee or some other drug. That's right coffee drinkers, drug. I'm judging you right now.
This horse doesn't like drugs either now does he? Does he? Ah, he'll probably win the race.
9) Ever day play a different character from The Office. Always go into character at 2:00 and refuse to leave character until at least three people have guessed who you're imitating. Never tell anyone the rules of the game.
10) Nerf basketball hoop. Dam that's a good idea.
11) Strike up conversations with people you don't know. Ask them about themselves and feign interest. Then, right before you leave, hand them a crumpled up piece of paper and ask them to hold onto it for you until you get back. Come back three minutes later from your office to reclaim the paper.
12) Watch an episode, or at least the theme song of Gummi Bears and Ducktales. Insist on talking with your co-workers about the hidden messages that can be heard if it's done backwards.
dddddanger lurks behind you. Rewrite history? What about the space time cont....
13) Ride a dog to work and repeat the scenario above with the pony/horse. Make sure to invite a shadier group of people to this event. Also, include a mechanical rabbit to complete the whole scenario.
This picture renewed my faith in humanity/ the power of this crazy series of tubes.
14) Ask your co-workers what their favorite color is then behave like that color for the rest of day. Incorporate interpretive dance, poorly.
15) Create lists of things for people to do and walk around distributing them to people in the office regardless of job/pay grade. Wish them happy holidays regardless of season.
16) Drink pure cane sugar.
17) Try running up the stairs faster than your co-worker can take the elevator.
18) Relatedly, set up an Olympic event for each day of the week. Hurdle chairs and time each other. Complain that the Kenyans win everything. Feel shame.
He made that couch his, well, he did. He said it not me.
19) Fight Club. Also with a couch.
Humanity one
Couch zero.
20) Eat a Luna Bar. Insist that it's okay for dudes.
21) Train an army of cats to come in and serenade you with bits of an opera. Sit them down afterward and talk about the ways in which they failed. Mean it.
The Internet is for pictures of cats.
22) So many things MSN!!!!!
23) Learn bits of a new language. Speak it between the hours of 2-3 irregardless, because it's more fun than regardless, of who is around.
24) Do a set of push ups on the ground. Ask various co-workers to sit on your back while you do them and other people to time you. Make wild claims about doing 100, but as soon as the first person sits on you collapse to the floor screaming something about workers comp.
25) Try gentle stretching or asking someone out on a date who you know will say no. Fly a kite. Cook a rib-eye steak to perfection on a hibachi grill that you've replaced your computer with.
My favorite thing about this photo is how natural it looks. Just three dudes enjoying the game.
