Getting the Spider-Shaft

I was reading this story about an allegedly deadly spider being found in the bananas at a Whole Foods in Oklahoma when the article took an unexpected turn:

Oddly, the Brazilian spider delivers more than a painful bite that sends most victims to the hospital. Researchers have found its venom also stimulates an hours-long erection in men.

Patients not only experience overall pain and an increase in blood pressure, they also get an uncomfortable erection.

In Brazil, emergency room staff can immediately spot the victims of a bite.

“The erection is a side effect that everybody who gets stung by this spider will experience along with the pain and discomfort,” said study team member Romulo Leite of the Medical College of Georgia, presumably speaking only about male bite victims.

“We’re hoping eventually this will end up in the development of real drugs for the treatment of erectile dysfunction.”

Floyd Gets a New Coat

Three weeks ago Thursday I suffered a disheartening tragedy, the scars of which remain to this day.

Life had turned a corner.  I was really hitting my stride applying for jobs, and was averaging 3-4 quality applications a day.  I had recently played basketball for the first time since I moved, and it felt good.  And, in an attempt to rediscover a long-dormant spiritualism (and to beg whatever higher powers may exist for help in my search for employment), I had begun attending church again at nearby St. Ignatius.  (More on this later – don’t jump to conclusions.) In fact, I’d attended twice in the last four days, and felt sure that I was heaping graces from the Almighty for my return to worship.

So things were going pretty well, considering that I was unemployed and quickly running out of the money needed to fuel my long-term goal of living and working in NYC.  I was a gleaming beacon of optimism and sure I was on the cusp of greater times.

That evening (a Thursday, remember) my roommates invited me to share some drinks with them and a friend that was visiting.  It was nearly 11 p.m., and I was starting to prepare myself for bed, but I hadn’t hung out with them in a while, and figured a drink or two would be fun.

Viking Day Craze Sweeps America

Viking Day!

I was speaking with Jack Serpentine the other night.  Here is a partial transcript of our conversation, including the crucial part where we think of our latest million dollar idea:

Um, Creepy Tune Thursday?

or “Floyd Hates His Readers And Ruins Their Dreams Forever”

*Click on the Title above to see the full videos – I can’t get the formatting right to get a full shot on the front page.

I stumbled across these videos in the last few days.  First, Crispin Glover creates, um, “art.”

Then, I stumbled across this supposedly authentic Viking song while searching for authentic Viking songs.  I’ll explain in the next post.  And a pre-emptive apology for the nightmares.

Crazy Lady Thursday

(Original post redacted)

Sometimes you have a good story, but in writing it just doesn’t come out right.  That was the case, at least in my opinion, of  my latest Crazy Lady Thursday story.  I just wasn’t feeling it.  It’s still pretty funny, though, so here’s the CliffNotes version:

I went to a sports bar to watch the KU-Baylor game and sat at the bar.  This was an afternoon game, starting at 12:30.  To my left sat a middle-aged woman who was pretty visibly drunk.  She kept smiling at me and staring with glassy eyes.  Occasionally she’d butt  into my game-watching with some non sequitur.  I felt bad, because she probably needed the company, judging by her fairly constant conversation with herself she was having, but I really wasn’t in the mood to comfort a drunk at lunch during a KU game.  She was drinking Dos Equis with the occasional German beer thrown in that she assured me was “quite potent,” and always had at least 2 full bottles in front of her.  She would yell at the bartender whenever she was ready for another round.  It was distracting.

At one point she told me a story about the origins of American football.  According to her, it was based off of European football, what we know as soccer here in the Colonies, but it didn’t take because Europeans didn’t like the “rough play.”  The first American football game was held on a college campus, and the U. S. president had to call the game and force rule changes after 10 participants died.

After the game I went to a coffee shop to work on some job stuff.  I sat near the front window.  Halfway through my coffee, an old, hunched over woman begins yelling in an incredibly raspy voice.  Most of her words were unintelligible, but seemed to contain various racial slurs.  At one point she called one of the baristas “slime” as she exited the building.  Once outside, she began frantically pacing and ranting.  She yelled at the window, at passersby, at the Mexican guy taking out the trash, and at one point at an advertisement on a bus stop.

Finally an employee went outside to tell her to leave, threatening to call the cops.  She didn’t appreciate this and continued with her ranting, screeching something about the United Nations in what I suspect was some sort of xenophobic insult.  The employee headed back into the shop and made a phone call.  The crazy lady didn’t appreciate this, stormed back inside and confronted the employee, yelling the word “trouble” over and over.  Finally she turned around and went back outside, pulled a newspaper out of the trash, wiped up some spilled coffee on a table and wandered away.

Tune in next Thursday for more Crazy Lady stories.

What I’ve Done, What I’m Doing

So, given my lengthy hiatuses between posts, I suppose I should give some sort of life update.  So here you go.

I still don’t have a job.  I spent most of February frantically applying to every job with the words “assistant,” “editor” and “writer” in them, to no avail.  To date, I’ve heard back from exactly two applications – one was a hedge fund that requested more information, as I’d made the second round, before informing me that I “did not possess the skills we are looking for at this time,” of course assuring me that they’d keep my resume on file should a position I’m qualified for open up, and the other turned out to be a fairly clever scam that I did not fall for.  (More on that in a later post.)

I’ve largely discontinued this strategy, both out of rank frustration and at the advice of a psychic I recently visited. (Details also saved for a later post.)

The “Brevi-ty” of Young Love

Brevi no more.

The Dream is Dead.

***UPDATE 8:44PM*** The AP has confirmed that Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin have broken up:

The engagement is off for the teenage daughter of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and the father of her baby. Levi Johnston told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he and Bristol Palin mutually decided “a while ago” to end their relationship. The 19-year-old Johnston declined to elaborate.
Eighteen-year-old Bristol Palin says in a statement to the AP that she is “devastated.”

The two are the parents of a boy named Tripp, who was born Dec. 27.

Frieda, You Jai Ho

A match made in Loka.

Earlier Dan and I had an online conversation about SlumDog Millionaire, hilariously recorded over on his site.  During this convo, Dan made the ridiculous comment that “those are both 2 leads that clearly are not in REAL LOVE” and “that chick would dump Indian Big Ears after a month.“

Well, fuck you, Dan.  Turns out Big Ears can seduce the gratuitously beautiful (with the gratuitously terrible name) Frieda Pinto…IN REAL LIFE!!!  He broke up her engagement in a situation that sounds hilariously similar to the plot of Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Man, now I really want to be a SlumDog.

The Rich Got Richer

Way richer.  Bloomberg’s got the goods:

The average tax rate paid by the richest 400 Americans fell by a third to 17.2 percent through the first six years of the Bush administration and their average income doubled to $263.3 million, new IRS data show.

The 17.2 percent tax rate in 2006 was the lowest since the IRS began tracking the 400 largest taxpayers in 1992, although the richest 400 Americans paid more tax on an inflation-adjusted basis than any year since 2000.

The drop from 2001’s tax rate of 22.9 percent was due largely to ex-President George W. Bush’s push to cut tax rates on most capital gains to 15 percent in 2003.

Capital gains made up 63 percent of the richest 400 Americans’ adjusted gross income in 2006, or a combined $66.1 billion, according to the data. In all, the 400 wealthiest Americans reported a combined $105.3 billion of adjusted gross income in 2006, the most recent year for which the IRS has data…

The richest 400 Americans collectively paid $18.1 billion in taxes in 2006, the highest in the 15-year period and 1.77 percent of all income taxes paid in the United States; on an inflation- adjusted basis, the dollar amount was the highest since 2000.

Counterpoint: SoCal ain’t that great

My friend Natalie writes for a website called “This Ordinary Day.” On this website people write about random things, usually how every day events make them feel.  (I assume this is why another one of the site’s writers told me last weekend that they’re having trouble finding male contributors.)  Natalie’s latest commentary describes in vivid detail her love of driving with the windows down in Southern California.  It was such a moving piece that I felt compelled to describe the wonders and emotions evoked by my average commute in the New York City subway:

Sometimes I think about God, and how he’s always watching us with his loving and occasionally enraged Gaze.  This omniscient presence is why I’m glad that I have an escape from his All-Seeing Eye: the subway.  Because if there’s a place in this world where His presence is definitely not felt, it’s in those dark, depraved tunnels beneath our modern Gomorra.