matthearn.com

There three important things that you should probably know about me:

1. I am not very bright.
2. I am a perfectionist.
3. I am very lazy.

Numbers 2 and 3 are particularly important, because it explains things like why I live in filth both at work and at home. With a little effort, I could clean, and make things “good enough.” But I want things to be absolutely perfect, which would require a LOT of effort, like mopping and vacuuming and things. This is where #3 comes into play: things that require a lot of effort are NOT things that I’m going to actually be doing. So the little man with OCD that lives inside me is constantly in a state of panic attack, because the large fat man with cirrhosis that actually pushes the buttons is willing to live with a certain amount of panic.

Also related to #2 is the fact that I don’t like when I can’t figure something out. If I see a problem, I want to figure out the solution on my own, and here I am hampered strongly by numbers 1 and 3. Because of #1, I can’t really solve anything beyond the most rudimentary Su Doku puzzles, and because of #3, I don’t want to waste time trying at it when there’s TV that needs watching and beer that needs drinking. So now, Little OCD Man has been set all a-flutter by James Lileks (coincidentally an undersized individual with a propensity for cleaning). You can read the original here in his archives, which I have been slogging through in an effort to really get to know the Man and the Legend, but permit me to quote:

“So did you know the Titanic carried a shipment of condiments?” Peter said, leaning over my cubicle. No introduction, no hello – the set-up of the joke is the introduction, it is the hello.

“Why, no,” I said, adopting a mask of fascination. When I smell a joke coming I instantly adopt the role of the vaudeville straight man, all exaggerated curiosity.

“It had thousands of gallons of mayonnaise,” he said. “It was supposed to be delivered to Mexico.”

“Really.”

“But of course the ship hit the iceberg, and we all know what happened. But to this day in Mexico they remember that event every year, and they call it -“

That’s when I picked up my Harwood State Bank letter opener, which is sharpened to a bright point, and bolted from my chair; I assumed the knife-fighter’s crouch. “No,” I said. “I don’t want you to say it.”

He backed away.

I chased him down the aisle, waving my letter opener.

“I saw that punchline coming from across the Atlantic,” I shouted, and he laughed and turned the corner. I saw him run into someone else and immediately begin a spiel – no doubt telling that hapless victim the joke. I’d broken the unspoken rule, after all. No matter how bad it is, you let the teller drop the punchline. You can groan afterwards, you can berate them, but you let them tell it. For some reason this punchline made me pull a knife.

I hate puns.

I sat here for roughly 3 minutes thinking, “What the hell is the punch-line to this joke?” Unfortunately, #1 took hold, so I came up with nothing. At least, nothing good. The best I could invent with was “The Day La Mayonesa Died,” but that’s about as funny as a myocardial infarction. Someone out there must know the answer, and I beg you, email me or comment or something. Else I will go crazy.

Oh. Wait. If I had merely read down his post a little bit, I’d see where he reveals it. “Cinco de Mayo.” #1 and #3 lead me astray yet again.

Last night I dreamt my wife was in labor. (Normal, after-9-months labor, not labor now, which would be at 6 months and would be beyond worrisome.) Even in the dreams, it took what felt like days, and we never even got to any really painful, drippy parts. Unless you count when (in the dream) my wife fell down trying to put on pants, which I’m sure is rooted in the time, on my birthday, when she threw out her back trying to put on pants.

The really odd thing about this particular dream set was that it recurred many times throughout the night. Normally, if I wake up for some reason, when I go back to sleep, I’ll start dreaming about something else. Only occasionally will I have a repeat dream in the same night, and this dream kept coming back after every brief awakening. (The whole thing was very disorienting; I woke up at 12:52am and went to the bathroom convinced that it was 7:30 am and I had better start breakfast. I was on my way down to the kitchen when I caught view of my wife’s clock out of the corner of my eye. Anyone who has woken up at 5am and realized they still have 90 minutes of sleep to go has the sense, but not the extent, of my exultation.)

This dream even included one of those difficult-to-explain situations in which I was explaining to someone about the dream, as if I was awake, and the other dreams had been dreams-within-dreams. Do you follow? Yeah, me neither.

Anyway, the basic plot, or as much of it as I remember: Sarah and I are on the way to the hospital, with half of my family following behind us. We get inside the building, which is a large atrium-type thing that they would have built in the 70s (think: “Logan’s Run” interiors (bonus: Jenny Agutter)), with plants and wood and stucco. It’s unclear where we need to be, but what appears to be an information desk is near the door, unmanned. My thinking is, in very non-masculine form, “Someone will return to man the desk from whatever menial task they are doing, and we can ask them where, exactly we need to go.” Sarah’s thinking is, in very non-feminine form, “I’m going to go wander off and see if I can find the birthin’ area or sumthin’.” And she walks off to the right. As she does so, a nice young lady appears at the desk, and I ask her where to go to have babies freed from their maternal gulags, and she points in the direction my wife is going, which of course results in Sarah giving me that look that says, “What, you didn’t believe me? You ass. I told you so.” It is worth noting that I have never, ever, not even once in my life, given Sarah this look, despite the fact that I am frequently right, particularly in the fields of computer and automobile operation.

It is eventually revealed to us that we have to go towards some kind of apartment building, in which apparently we will be renting a condo for a few days for the purpose of delivering a child. This small condo includes a delivery room, some kind of dressing area, and a kitchenette. At this point, I woke up and went to the bathroom.

The next part of the dream is not remembered as vividly, although it’s the part in which I’m explaining to someone about the previous dream. “It was weird, man, we were gonna give birth in a condo! Dreams, dude. Cuh-RAY-zee.” At this point, I woke up because, as I recall, a cat farted in my hair.

When I went back to sleep, Sarah and I were in the condo, getting dressed. Apparently her contractions had stopped, so we were getting ready to return home. I remember putting on a belt. My wife was attempting to put on some kind of very stretchy pants, but she nothing on which to sit while doing so, so when she tried to get the second leg in, she fell down on her butt. It occurred to me that a vastly pregnant woman should not be falling down, so I freaked out a bit and ran for the doctor, at which point I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.

I won’t ask you to tell me what all this means (it means my wife is pregnant and I’m a mess), but I would like to report that Jon Stewart’s wife had a baby this weekend, which I didn’t find out until I watched the Daily Show this morning. Are Jon Stewart and I connected through an invisible thread of comedy and pregnancy? I leave that for you to decide.

One of the things that my father taught me when I was a wee lad was: if you have an opportunity to play golf in the rain in February, that’s a an opportunity of which you need to take advantage. Even if you have the flu. (My father also taught me that motor oil ain’t for drinkin’, no matter how good it may smell. He is a prodigious fount of useful tidbits.)

To this end, Brian and I signed up for the 23rd Annual Groundhog Golf Tournament. This festive extravaganza is thrown on the first Saturday of February each year by the New Castle County Sports and Recreation Department, headed by a nice fellow who I believe is named Bob. (Reminder: I do almost no research. If you want to read something that’s factual and well-written, you should click here to read Brian’s professional account.) Every year they get about 40 guys that play at one of two courses: the Delcastle Golf Club, and the Ed “Porky” Oliver Golf Club, which features nudity and drunk truckers.

Just kidding. The drunk truckers prefer to play Delcastle.

Now, normally, a person who is just getting over the flu should always make sure to stay warm and dry, so that they don’t develop Bronchitis or something. I, of course, don’t do anything normally, so I ventured out to the course wearing long johns under a tshirt and a thin parka and jeans. No hat. No gloves. No scarf. My IQ has been rated as high as 163. None of these facts are incongruous, I think. My logic was, if it didn’t rain, the temperatures were going to be in the mid-50s, so I should be fine. If it DID rain, a hat and scarf and gloves would just become saturated with cold water and have to be discarded. This makes sense, I tell you.

Brian was better prepared, with a thick hooded coat and gloves, plus a hat. The rest of our foursome (John Emory and Stan Lyons, who are quoted extensively in Brian’s column) was dressed about as I was, except that they had brought large golf umbrellas, and all I had was a little flimsy black umbrella that I got at Duane Reed in New York for $9.99.

I played about as well as I had expected I would, since I hadn’t been able to get to the driving range that week. Damnable flu! My putting was pretty bad early on, but improved as time went on. I did a pretty decent job of getting a couple long putts close, and a pretty abominable job of missing several 2-footers. Most of my shots did the usual, and inexplicable, “I’m not gonna slice, I’m just gonna come off the club 20 degrees to the right of where you aimed, for no discernible reason.” This is something that I must fix, as it’s only appeared in the last few years and therefore is probably something repairable.

A few highlights: I bombed a 5-iron from the fairway, straight and true, landed it on the green. Don’t remember which hole, of course. And, of course, on a “closest-to-the-pin” competition on the unused 8th hole (the tournament only involved 12 holes), I hit my best shot of the day, an 8-iron right on-line with the pin. Didn’t win the prize, but still a good shot.

In the end, on 12 holes, we shot a 61. This is about what Brian would have shot by himself, I think, so my contribution to the “best ball” format is minimal. We also four-putted a hole and nearly wet ourselves with grief.

I hate golf. Better get out to the range next time it’s warm.

On the minus side: I didn’t do any strong updates this week.

On the plus side: I’m not dead.

Tuesday night, I started feeling a little scratchy, and it got worse and worse such that by Tuesday night I knew I had a full-blown cold. Man, would THAT have been awesome, had it been true.

Wednesday morning, I realized it was something more. I was achy, stuffed-up, dry (it is beyond me how someone can be so dry that his freaking TONGUE is chapped and still have a nose filled with moist mucus), and feverish. Bad times. I called out from work and slept until about 11am, at which time I wandered downstairs to ensure HW (who was home from work so she could finish a paper for a class) that I was still mostly alive. Then I went back to bed and watched TV for a while, and then I had soup, and was starting to feel better, so I went downstairs to attempt to rejoin the land of the living.

I was okay for about 5 hours, but around 6pm I started to feel rather cold. This was odd, as the heat was on, and I had a blanket, along with a sweatshirt and pajama pants. By 8pm I had moved beyond “feverish” into “feverful” and dragged myself up to bed so I could shiver the night away under the blankets. Sarah came home around 9pm, felt my head, and actually said “Ow” as if I had burned her.

At some point, the fever broke. I know this because when the fever came BACK, a few hours later, I had kicked all the covers off the bed. I nearly had a panic attack trying to find them, in the dark, while shaking like a V8 with a bent crank.

Thursday morning I was somewhat better, although 12 hours of sleep while shivering isn’t as restful as one would think. I laid around yesterday, too tired to move, but not sleepy enough to sleep (stay up for 3 days straight and then drink 2 pots of coffee, and you’ll know what I mean). Around 10pm I went to bed, and got up this morning about 7, feeling non-feverish but achy.

To sum up: I hate the flu.

On the plus side, I do have some truly interesting dreams to relate:

Wednesday night’s weird dream: I don’t remember a whole lot, to be honest. I’m pretty sure the dream involved a bunch of muscles that had gotten out of alignment, and I was inside them trying to push them back into their proper forms. In real life, of course, I was kicking the blankets all over the bed, nay, all over the freakin’ room. Seriously, I punked those blankets’ ass something FIERCE. Anyway, when I awoke at 6am in semi-delirium, I sat up in bed for 5 or 6 minutes trying to discern if the muscles were all okay. I actually started feeling things around me to feel if they were “in alignment.” Fever dreams are freakish.

Thursday night’s weird dream: I was at my parents’ house, and I decided it might be fun to cook them a tenderloin (tenderloins were the topic of a recent episode of Good Eats). Rather than using the oven or grill, I decided to use an open fire. And rather than using their fireplace, which would be too small for the job, I decided it would be best to simply stoke an open fire on the carpet in their family room.

So I’m poking and prodding at this thing, and eventually I take the semi-raw meat off to do something with it, I have no idea what, and work some more on the fire to get it going really hot. Then, as I recall, I took a nap. When I awoke (in the dream, not for real):

• The fire was going like crazy. In fact, it was starting to char the table next to it. (Literally right next to it. You’d think I’d have moved it away, but then, you’d think I wouldn’t start a fire in the house. So there.) It was also leaving a big soot mark on the ceiling, and was getting rather near to burning down the house. I think we threw water on it.
• Some kind of freaky creatures that looked like large grey Q-tips were coming in from the back door and going straight at the fire. Thousands, nay, millions of them. Disturbing, to say the least.

Shortly after that, I awoke (for real) and immediately thought, “Shoot, I’d better call Dad and apologize for the fire and the Q-tip worms.” This is why you don’t wake me up and ask me anything important. I am likely to reply “We can’t go to church, are you crazy? The goats are still out there! Did you find my gun?”

Although I might say that anytime, really. Damned goats.

Whoof. Busy times for Da Hearn (say it like in the old SNL Bears Fans sketch: DAAAAAA Hearn da hearn da hearn da hearn da hearn… it works best if you’re comically obese) (like me), to say the least. I’m thinking that I may want to cut back on the daily updates, go to more of a 2 or 3 days-a-week posting. The reasons for this are manifold:

1. I’m busier than a one-armed paper hanger with a nasty infection in his crotch.
2. It seems to me that 2 or 3 semi-well-written (I do understand my limits, after all) and moderately funny posts are an upgrade over 5 hastily slapped together 2-paragraph blurts of idiocy.

Which days of the week I plan to have containing updates is going to be largely random, but for now let’s assume that Monday, Wednesday, and Friday will be the standard update days. Which makes sense, since this week’s first update is on a Tuesday. Go figure!

The weekend summary:

Friday night: jam session with the work crew, featuring Much Blues, and Some Rock, and Several Beers. It’s worth noting that we actually sound pretty good, unless I sing, because in that case I’m having to play bass and sing at the same time, and the usual result is just devastatingly sad. Luckily, we have a guitarist who can sing as well, and he seems to have no problems playing at the same time, so we give him as much as we can.

Saturday morning: intended to get up and test out my new MIDI-to-USB doodackey (to connect my “synthesizer” to my compy; more on this later in the week), maybe do a little composing and recording, then pack for our trip to New York. What exactly happened: I slept until 11am.

Saturday afternoon: late start on the road, but still made it to the city by 4ish. My parents’ opera ended around 5, so we wandered down to meet them at the TKTS booth and see if we could snag tickets to something feisty. I picked up a small bottle of rum on the way, in case it got cold. (It did not. Perhaps because I drank all the rum.) The line was long, but mercifully fast (it stretched an entire city block, but only took about 35 minutes to get through). We got tickets to see “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” which were unfortunately “Obstructed View,” which I took to mean there’d be some kind of pillar in my way. The four seats were all together, though, so I wasn’t too bitter, and they were half-price, so I was exceedingly glad.

Then we went to have dinner, and found a little hole-in-the-wall sandwich-type pub, the name of which escapes me, but that’s of little import because it’s closed. Seriously. We kept trying to order things, and the waiter would tell us, “I’m sorry, we’re out of that,” and finally he revealed that Saturday night would be their last. ‘Twas a pity, says I, because the food was good. And cheap, particularly if like me you just ordered a diet coke and kept sneaking rum into it.

Finally, we stumbled next door to the theatre, where we discovered that our seats were, indeed, obstructed view, in that they were in the freaking 2nd and 3rd row of the theatre, all the way on the left. The obstruction was the left-side proscenium, so we couldn’t see anything going on in the back on the left, but I don’t recall anything happening over there. On the other hand, we were so close that I could count the stitch marks in the dancers’ knee surgery scars. (You’d think they’d wear some kind of stockings to cover that stuff up. I experienced full body shivers several times.) The show itself was riotously funny, and I highly recommend it to anyone. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Jonathan Pryce getting dry-humped. By a dude. Good times.

After that we went back to the hotel and chillaxed for a while, did some Su Doku, and slept on a fold-out bed. I dreamt about puppies and threshing machines. (Two separate dreams, thank God.)

Sunday morning, we got up and went to St. Thomas Church for Morning Prayer and Eucharist. Very high church, totally good times. The sermon didn’t do much for me, but then, sermons rarely do.

After that we met up with my high school buddy Josh for some grub at Rue 57, featuring steak and eggs, and also sushi. Raw fish? For brunch? Yes, I am just that freakin’ crazy. Take it in, baby.

My parents departed after that, as they needed to hit up Zabar’s for coffee and chocolate croissants, so we aimlessly wandered the city with Josh, hitting up the International Center of Photography. They had a massive exhibit on Che Guevara, which made my butt clench a wee bit (I tend to be put off by hippie sentimentality), but which actually turned out to be an exhibit on the way the infamous picture of him has been used for all kinds of capitalistic things. Kooky.

There was also an exhibit entitled “The Body at Risk, which had all kinds of pictures of people with amputations and diseases and deformities. It was like rotten.com (Warning: horribly NSFW), except that it was art! I was in hog heaven.

J-Lew and Sarah were a little disappointed in the lack of pictures of puppies and flowers, so I figured I’d throw them a wee bone:

After some light shopping, we retrieved our car and headed out of town. Unfortunately, the Lincoln Tunnel was getting worked on, so traffic heading out was backed up for blocks. I said, quote, “this is teh sux0r” and headed down the West Side Highway to get out via the Holland Tunnel. This, as Jet Li might put it, was a mistake. I didn’t realize that the Holland Tunnel only has 2 lanes of outbound traffic, into which 6 lanes from 3 different directions merge. It took us 45 minutes to get out of New York, 40 of which were spent going the last 3 blocks before the Tunnel.

After that, though, the drive was a breeze, although I’m continually amazed at people’s ability to sit in the left hand lane and not notice that I’m flipping them off. Breathtaking.

It being Thursday, I give you: the random crappy URLS of stuff that you can probably find on Fark if Fark wasn’t TOTALLY out of the loop! (Ha HA! Just kidding. One Fark link to me and I’d get more bandwidth in an hour than I have in 4 years. And that’s a fact, jiffypop.)

• The Top 30 Facts about Jack Bauer, very similar to the highly rated Facts about Chuck Norris site. My favorite: “Jack Bauer once won a game of Connect 4 in 3 moves.” So true.
• There is nothing, I repeat, NOTHING more awesome than hilarious pranks on homosexual PETA members. This poor guy screamed like a 3 year old with a drinking problem.

  I don’t know what that means.

• I can’t decide what’s more depressing. The fact that this guy posted this on ebay, or the fact that the winner only had to pay $22.22.
• No, this isn’t me. But I could see how you’d think that, what with my personal largeness and my unrivaled DDR skeelz.

  That guy carries all his weight in his massive gut. I carry most of mine in my shoulders, thighs, and ass. It’s actually kind of depressing that I never played organized football, because my body is a linebacker’s dream. Also I like to hit people. That guy likes to hit his DDR machine when he falls off.

That’s about it for now, but I may post some more stuff later on today. Thanks to Craig for the last link, it made me pee a little.

I don’t have a lot today due to extreme business, but I wanted to share one quick thing: I have come up with yet another reason why Napoleon Dynamite may be the best movie ever made. (As if we needed one.)

The success of the movie, and the consequent frequent quoting thereof by yours truly (and many of my friends), has cut down significantly on the amount of swearing I do. For example, when Sarah says to me, “Hey, are you hungry?” I no longer say “F-bomb yes, I’m hungry. Let’s make some goddamned nachos. S-bomb.” I much more likely to say, “Heck yes. Let’s make some ham.”

When people cut me off in traffic, I had in the past usually screamed something like “F you, you F-ing F!” which is a quote I learned from a T-shirt in New York City. Now, I usually just mutter “Freaking IDIOT” or “You have the worst reflexes of all time.”

All of this is definitely a good thing, what with a baby coming, and all.

What the heck, man? What sort of crackhead tardo winter is this? It was like 55 degrees out this past weekend! Listen, I’m willing to accept that around here, we rarely get snow on Christmas (although for the past few years in a row, we’ve gotten snow BEFORE Christmas, which has been weirding me out). But if it can’t snow on Christmas, it oughta snow on my birthday. Or at least be what I colloquially refer to as “balls cold,” meaning very very cold. And last weekend was like late April up in this piece. It made me sad in my bowels.

This morning when I awoke, at least there was some frost on the ground. I think this is maybe the 2nd frost of the new year. That is flat out redickerous, and simply lame beyond all previous lame-ity.

In hopes that Ol’ Man Winter (distantly related by marriage to Ol’ Man River) might make an appearance, I’m going to list some of my favorite winters of the past:

• January, 1978: I am born during a large blizzard. I don’t know a lot of details, but it must have been AWESOME.
• 1994: Freezing rain shuts down New Castle County’s schools for an entire week (as I recall). I spend the entire week at Josh Lewis’s house, because his neighborhood actually has hills, and we made use of various Radios Flyer and toboggans and the like. Usually we would get so soaked with wet snow that I would end up wearing a pair of Josh’s pants and some of his socks. You definitely wanted to know that.
• 1996: In a similar situation, sleet and snow shuts down most of Delaware’s schools for a week straight. I spend the week with the future HW in Stefanie Bennett’s basement, uh, watching movies. Yeah. That’s the ticket. We were WATCHING MOVIES.
• February, 2003: Massive blizzard dumps about 2 feet of snow on northern Delaware and the surrounding environments. The Governor proclaims (is that the right word? Probably not) a state of emergency, and shuts the schools for a week. My wife and inlaws and I are stuck in Dallas for two days, trying to find a flight home. We spend the bulk of those two days in a hotel bar. Finally we manage to make our way back, and my truck gets stuck in the snow in my driveway. I skip work for a couple days so I can shovel roughly 3 tons of snow off my driveway, and then a couple more days so I can learn to walk again.

Clearly, I dig me some snow. So when, in the middle of January, it freakin’ RAINS, I get bitter and angry.

I wonder what the weather’s supposed to be like this weekend…oh, dang.

A wild and wooly weekend, it was. With wetness and warmth and, uh, white people, and, uh, whimsy. Ha HA! W.

The completion of my 28th year was rife with enjoyment, starting with a hockey game on Friday. Brian managed to hook me up with a couple tickets to see the Philadelphia Phantoms play the Hershey Bears, so I picked up my father (aka Grumps) and we drove up to the Spectrum, where we took advantage of reserve parking and headed inside to drink beer.

The game was superb; the Phantoms started out down 3-1, but recovered to tie the game at 4 in the third period and send it to overtime. The overtime period was uneventful, but then the Phantoms won in the shootout. It was freakin’ sweet. As an added bonus, because of the overtime, the Sixers game going on across the parking lot in the Wachovia Center ended before the hockey game did, so when we finally got out of there the traffic wasn’t bad at all. We got out in about 3 minutes.

The only downside was that the game was very well attended, so it was hard to upgrade one’s seats. My dad and I started out in pretty good seats, but we had a railing in our view and a couple of jerk Bears fans sitting behind us, so we moved over. We were there about 90 seconds before people arrived and took their seats back. So we moved, and then the same thing happened again. Finally we said screw it and went to get some more beer.

Saturday I slept in, and helped HW clean the house for the party that evening. HW overworked herself and threw out her back, but the party ended up being a hit anyway. I got Dance Dance Revolution for my birthday, so we played that while drinking. It was very, very hard. At about midnight, I decided it would be a good idea to watch “Ocean’s 12,” and managed to stay awake for the whole thing, but was far too inebriated to understand it.

Sunday morning we skipped church, and God punished us by having our upstairs toilet start leaking water all over the bathroom. Totally rad. I took it apart and discovered some of the seals were pretty worn, but we had been planning to go to Home Depot anyway to get some paint and other stuff. I grabbed the necessary bolts and seals. Then we went to my parents for Turkey Lurkey Murkey and cheesecake and presents, and then home. I repaired the toilet, watched 24, and passed out.

Today I’m going back to work. I’m so thrilled.

Things that make me happy:

• Trying to find a video game version of Cricket that’s playable on an American PS2, failing, discussing the expensive possibility of convering my PS2 so I can play foreign games, and then realizing, hell, I’ll just get the PC version and save a lot of trouble.
• Discovering a Torrent that has a downloadable CD image of the game, thereby saving $59.99. (Not that I would ever do this, of course, as it’s immoral and unjustifiable and wrong. Still.)
• Thinking to myself, “Damn, I’m hungry. I wish I’d brought lunch today,” and then realizing a few minutes later, “Hey! Wait! I brought fried chicken! It’s in the refrigerator!” This, in fact, made me so happy I did a little dance, and might have peed a little bit.
• My birthday.
• Aged scotch.
• Diet Sunkist soda.
• The English.
• New Strong Bad Emails.

That’s about it. And, uh, that’s about it.