Weird guy in the library

My mom worked in the public library when I was a kid, so I got used to going there a lot. One of my favorite pastimes was to rummage through all sorts of books on the shelves, and take big stacks to a comfy chair and sit and read them. When I got bored I would just take another stack & keep browsing. Sometimes I wouldn't even bother to go back to the chair - I would just sit down in the stacks, pulling books off the shelves and then reading. Of course, I would act all crabby if another patron came into "my" row to get something off a shelf that I was blocking. Bastards.

This was fun for me. But here's the rub: I would really only do this once a week at most. If I were spending hours, seven days a week, aimlessly slogging through library books and encyclopedias, that would be strange. Like the weird pervs my mom would tell me about, the ones who loitered around the library trying to look up ladies' skirts & things. She once got to expel a guy for "masturbating." I didn't know what that was when she told my dad about it, thinking I was out of earshot. Of course, the next day I ran to the library and looked it up in "Our Bodies, Ourselves" and got quite the shock. But I digress.

I started thinking about my behavior on the Internet. Unlike Grant Miller, I am not an afficianado of Ukranian or goat porn, and only rarely even run across smut while surfing. I just engage in the same behavior as I used to in the library as a kid. I just randomly look up shit. And the more shit you look up, the more it leads to other shit. One minute I'm checking out the Star Jones scandal; the next I'm taking some sort of test to see if I have ADD. It goes on & on, and I do it for hours.

Daily.

I have become the weird guy in the libary who never leaves. I have decided this is not normal, and it needs to stop.

So Coaster Punchman has a new policy. No more random surfing for hours daily, ESPECIALLY if I'm supposed to be working. I am now on a strict 3-email-checks-per-day policy. And I will allow myself a quick check-in with my favorite blogger pals once a day. After all, someone needs to keep Echo company. But that's it. The rest of my random surfing will have to wait until I get home from work, and even then I'm putting a cap on it, lest my life become even more pathetic.

Laugh all you want Melinda June - with all the newfound time I will have, I am going to be AMAZING. I might even have time to invent something.

Just you wait.

My brother is visiting

Jimmy had Billy. Jackie had the gals in "Grey Gardens." I have Rich.

My older brother, who is my polar opposite, is visiting for three days while he is in New York trying out for the game show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire." He is currently home on my couch enjoying a fitful, apnea afflicted bout of sleep while I am in the office trying to earn a living.

I do want to be a loyal family member, but it is difficult for me to spend time with a relative whose every life choice involves feats of buffoonery that would make Bozo the Clown hang his head in shame and resolve to try harder. My brother possesses the same sense of decorum our Creator bestowed upon the Keystone Kops, not to mention the common sense God gave a cantaloupe.

I will spare you, my gentle readers, the unsavory details of the vulgar indignities my brother has inflicted on us lately. I suppose this entry is merely a call for your good wishes, which George and I can surely use until such time as Rich returns to his cave.

Sigh.

The Oddest Things I've Ever Seen Vol. 1

This video is just about the strangest thing I've ever seen. Maybe I need to watch more television to keep track of what kids are up to these days.

Nah.

I am a loser, with wine

It's always a bad day for me when I receive the Georgetown Law alumni magazine in the mail. The one I got today was especially distressing. Not only was I subjected to the usual litany of classmates who are busy saving the world or earning millions of dollars; I was also treated to the news that Georgetown Law has ten new distinguished professors this year - eight of them younger than me.

I am not saving the world. I am not earning millions of dollars, either. And I am certainly not planning on teaching law anytime soon. The only thing my fancy education seems to have produced is an increase in the quarterly number of phone calls I get from assorted relatives making thinly veiled pleas for money.

In general, my only successes of note consist of getting through my days without shouting at my sales counterparts in the publishing company I work for, making it to the gym for a moderate workout several times a week, and getting home with nothing more important to do other than uncork a nice bottle of pinot noir.

Wait.... maybe my life is ok after all. This wine fucking kicks ass.

Sorry world, you're going to have to call someone else.

Stuff on Abigail

Abigail is now famous. Here is her pic that we posted to Stuff On My Cat:

Our fugitive kitty is famous!

I sent in a picture of Abigail, our fugitive kitty, to Stuff On My Cat, and the editor posted it! It's in today's postings, all the way at the bottom.

If you read this after today, 6/19/2006, you can probably find her in the links "Food On My Cat." Abigail is featured sitting underneath a large red pepper & two tomatoes.

Ready to puke yet, Min?

The real reasons I've broken up with people

My friend Lu has a new friend Wonderturtle who has a cool blog. Among other things, her blog contains an open letter to her female friends announcing her official retirement from being a bridesmaid. Beautiful.

In another recent entry she does a whole compare/contrast thing with reasons she's given people for breaking up vs. the real reasons that she never gave. This subject merits some further analysis over here at Coaster Punchman's World. Since I have proven myself incapable of having an original thought of my own, I am foverver subject to borrowing the brilliant ideas of others. At least I'm citing her as a reference.

So without further ado, here are some highlights of the real reasons I've broken up with people (the stated reason usually being something like "I just don't think we're a match" etc.)

Those of you who still think I'm a nice guy will probably change your minds after reading this. I guess this is the big unveiling. Even I didn't know what an asshole I am.

Break-ups with girls:

1. I like you, but I find your brother to be kind of hot.

2. You’re a total damsel in distress. Unfortunately, I have a very strong “flight” instinct. I will run and leave you behind if we’re ever attacked on the street. Then your hot brother will kick my ass.

3. I’m not grossed out by you at all, but I don’t really get the boob thing.

Break-ups with guys:

1. And if you mention that god-damned Landmark Education course to me once more I swear I will kill you with my bare hands.

2. You took your fork that had egg yolk on it and dipped it into Alex's fancy little jar of strawberry preserves. That is so not ok that you did that.

3. You squatted down naked on your haunches to pick up the morning paper, and farted.

4. You got into the shower with me when I was getting ready to go to work.

5. Your feet are fucking ugly.

6. You talked stupid to your cats the first morning we woke up in bed together.

7. I love you to death and would marry you in a second if I didn't want to puke at the thought of having sex with you.

8. You told me you're a registered sex offender. You had sex with a 12 year old when you were 21. I know you're sorry and from what I've seen you don't seem like a dangerous child molester. But I cannot get past it. Sorry.

9. You're just kind of gross. I thought you were cute when I first met you, but I must have been on crack. Get the fuck out of my house.

10. On our first date you wore gold chains with your shirt unbuttoned half-way down your chest.

11. I actually kind of like you, but I'm dumping your ass just to even the score a little. And it is taking you 10 years to finish school. I suspect you may be a loser.

12. You told me you like just about any kind of music except for country-western or heavy metal. Shut the fuck up.

Straight girls for hot guy on guy action!

One of my favorite couples is a pair of lawyers I used to work with named Brad & Carrie. They have been dating for four years and living together for about two. Brad has mentioned that they should start thinking about moving it to the next level, but Carrie says she doesn't want any part of the legal institution of marriage in the US until the time that her gay friends can enjoy the same privilege. "Why should Brad & I be able to get married while you & George can't?" she told me.

While I applaud Carrie's efforts to encourage socio-political reform in this regard, I feel that she could help me more by working to end the gender stereotypes regarding the perceived hotness of guy on guy action.

"Come on, Carrie. How many lecherous comments has Brad ever made asking you to kiss one of your girlfriends full on the mouth? How many times has he coyly suggested some sort of menage a trois? Why aren't you demanding equal time from him with one of his buddies?"

She said I had a point, although she doesn't necessarily have this exact problem with Brad, seeing as how he worked in a gay strip club before law school and generally doesn't require much coaxing to do anything lecherous. Which is why we're such good friends.

Anyway, I told Carrie she should start making an issue of this. Joey & Chandler were willing to give up their apartment to watch Monica and Rachel kiss for one minute on "Friends." I think Monica & Rachel should have been demanding that Joey & Chandler wrestle nude in a tub of lime-green jello. Not that I necessarily want to watch Joey & Chandler specifically, but fair is fair!

Carrie agreed with me completely on this, but conditioned her agreement on the fact that the gay porn producers need to start creating more women-friendly work, including more romantic dialogue, softer lighting, less hard-core action & more soft-core hotness. She practically waxed poetic as she described in great detail the "problems" with one of the harder-core gay films she had seen recently - a description that the elderly ladies standing next to us outside the bar didn't seem to enjoy as much as Brad and I did. But that's New York.

So Carrie is all for it, and I'm encouraging her to spread the news far & wide amongst her girlfriends. Start demanding some hot guy-on-guy action between your straight boyfriends! Withhold sex from them until they agree to two-minute liplocks with each other! Request nude wrestling photos from their college years!

We here at CPW wholly support the continued struggle for gender equity!

Day off

I'm aggravating a blog war

Apparently, my musings about whether the editors of the Official Site of Grant Miller and the Unofficial Site of Grant Miller are the same person have created some consternation.

Echo, esteemed editor of the Unofficial and self-avowed stalker of Mr. Miller, is going all Glenn Close on us for daring to suggest that he is not for real. Luckily for me, most of his anger over this is directed at Miller himself rather than at me. He seems to think that Miller was behind all of this.

Well Mr. Echo, to set the record straight, I am officially confirming for you that the idea of you and Miller being one and same is my own, and did not in any way emanate from the Official site. And this statement remains in effect in perpetuity, unless Miller's check bounces again.


Yours in cyberstalking,
CP

Nordmenn i Brooklyn!

George loves being half-Norwegian by non-legal marriage. We recently hosted a dinner in the back yard for our friends Olav & Turid along with their kids Joakim & Eirin, who were visiting from my grandpa's home town in Norway. Turid is the niece of our friend Oddrun.

Turid & Olav, with our friend Nikolaus in the foreground.

Eirin, with Joakim hiding. He generally refuses to have his picture taken. I told him that if he refused to cooperate, I would find a way to get photos of him and then post them all over the Internet. Keep reading.

Unable to avoid me while climbing our cherry tree. This will teach him to hide from me.

We celebrated Joakim's 13th birthday with a cake from Leske's Scandinavian Bakery. Of course, he refused to have his photo taken with the cake. I love how EVERYTHING embarasses 13 year olds.



The following weekend, Bay Ridge celebrated Syttende Mai, the Norwegian Independence Day. Since Bay Ridge used to be very Norwegian, like 50 years ago, there is still a parade here every May 17th. It is the most lackluster affair you could ever imagine. But the various Sons of Norway lodges and church groups who have been marching in the parade for over 50 years just won't let it die. It's awesome.

Extra police forces are not generally required to control the mobs at Syttende Mai.

Miss Norway 2006 greets her adoring public




My alma mater always sends a small contingent. I usually fail to acknowledge them for fear they will recognize me and try to get me to march with them.

A sophisticated heritage.

Fugitive Kitty

My colleague Sara needed a place to hide her illegal cat Abigail while she gets ready to move. Abigail will be staying with us for the rest of the summer, probably.

It is good to have a cat again after missing Betty so much. Of course, Abigail is not Betty. She is much more shy and doesn't like to cuddle. Not yet, anyway.

But she is very cute.

I have started a new blog so that Sara can get regular updates & pics of Abigail.

Jane and other Edward lusters, you should check in with Abigail regularly.

By the way, this is not the same Sara who hates Angelina Jolie.

Sarah is mad at Angelina Jolie

My friend Sarah is a strange bird. Having attended both high school and college with her, and then having lived with her (roommate-lived, not index finger through the other thumb & index finger lived) for a few years after college, I know not to question her when she gets one of her strange ideas.





For example, she once got mad at her boyfriend because she thought it was time he propose marriage and he just wasn't getting around to it. So she purchased an "Outward Bound" trip for him and sent him off to the mountains for a week to think about his life. Then, when she went to pick him up at the airport, he got off the plane and immediately broke up with her.

She was pissed.

She called Outward Bound the next day, demanding to know what sick things they said to her boyfriend to make him behave like that. And then my favorite part - the OB counselor suggested that maybe she could benefit from the program herself. She replied with something to the effect of "take your m-f'ing program and shove it up your ass!!!!"

Priceless.

Anyway, Sarah is an independent business travel consultant, and she's been working for a while on a special program for travel to Namibia for one of her clients. When she found out Brangelina was moving there to give birth to her child, Sarah hit the roof.

"That bitch Angelina Jolie is ruining my life. Namibia was MY fucking idea, and now she's moving there and everyone's going to think I'm doing this program because of her. Fuck her. I hate that bitch."

Sarah is awesome.

This is not my friend Sarah with Angelina. But Sarah looks slightly like Ann Curry.

Confidential to Ann: get back behind that news desk, honey. You can hob nob all you want, but you're never moving to the couch.

Ann Coulter is a whore

I am sick of this bitch.

CP

Coulter calls 9/11 widows "witches"

By Claudia Parsons

Conservative author Ann Coulter sparked a storm on Wednesday after describing a group of September 11 widows who backed the Democratic Party as millionaire "witches" reveling in their status as celebrities.

"I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much," Coulter writes in her book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," published on Tuesday, referring to four women who headed a campaign that resulted in the creation of the September 11 Commission that investigated the hijacked plane attacks.

Coulter wrote that the women were millionaires as a result of compensation settlements and were "reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis."

A spokeswoman for publisher Crown Forum said it had set a first print run of 1 million copies of "Godless" and there were 1.5 million copies of Coulter's previous four books in print.

The four women, Kristen Breitweiser, Patty Casazza, Mindy Kleinberg and Lorie Van Auken, declined to discuss the book in detail but issued a statement saying they had been slandered.

"There was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive. There was no happiness in telling our children that their fathers were never coming home again," said the statement signed by the four, along with a fifth woman, Monica Gabrielle.

The four women, who live in or around East Brunswick, New Jersey, became friends after September 11 and formed a group that agitated for the investigation. "Our only motivation ever was to make our nation safer," they said.

Coulter, whose books include the bestseller "How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)," argues in the new book the women she dubs "the Witches of East Brunswick" wanted to blame President George W. Bush for not preventing the attacks.

She criticized them for making a campaign advertisement for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry in 2004, and added: "By the way, how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy."

PERSONAL ATTACKS

Asked by Reuters why she made such personal comments, Coulter said by e-mail, "I am tired of victims being used as billboards for untenable liberal political beliefs."

"A lot of Americans have been seething over the inanities of these professional victims for some time," she added.

Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg (news, bio, voting record) of New Jersey said Coulter's "shameless attack" on the widows sparked disgust. "Her bookselling antics and accompanying vulgarity deserve our deepest contempt," he said in a statement.

The New York Post, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News. Corp., slammed the comments in an article on Wednesday headlined: "Righty writer Coulter hurls nasty gibes at 9/11 gals."

Coulter, a regular television commentator who is hugely popular among some conservatives, was challenged on NBC's "Today" show on Tuesday over what host Matt Lauer called "dramatic" remarks, prompting her to say, "You are getting testy with me."

Coulter is known for a combative column after September 11 saying, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." In one book, she wrote, "Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do."

Her latest comments were quoted on radio stations in New York on Wednesday and the book was the subject of debate on Web sites such as www.salon.com. The Daily News newspaper's front-page headline was "Coulter the Cruel."

The controversy appeared to be doing no harm to sales of Coulter's latest book, which was listed as the second-best seller of the day at online retailer Amazon.com on Wednesday afternoon.

Rent

I don't know why my friend Gregory was so crabby about the movie "Rent." He said it was terrible and that it didn't translate well to film.

I, never having seen the Broadway version, thought the movie was great. I really like a lot of the songs, and I thought the film soundtrack sounded better than the original Broadway cast album. Of course, most of the singers are the same anyway. Except that I much preferred Rosario Dawson's film portrayal of Mimi over the Broadway actress.

So here's me thumbing my nose at you Gregory, although I'll still allow you to accompany me for long nights of Broadway belting at Marie's.

I guess I'm not much of a queen, seeing as it took me this long to learn the songs from a major Broadway hit.

You're living in America at the end of the millennium
You're living in America where it's like the Twilight Zone
And when you're living in America at the end of the millennium
You're what you own

Random Blog of Whenever I Feel Like Posting It: newsflow

I know that Grant Miller reigned as CP's RBOWIFLPI for less than a week, but you can now find him in my Perm-a-Link section at the right. Be sure to check in with him regularly.

Meanwhile, meet my latest cyberstalking subject: a law student in Trinidad named Jason.

I don't know what possesses me to cyberstalk some of these people. Jason's blog isn't designed to be particularly witty, entertaining or even informative. It appears to be merely a journal for his own life recordkeeping. Maybe that's why I find it fascinating enough to keep checking back. It's like reading someone's diary. Although, I must admit his blog is more entertaining than Ms. Boring Blogger's, and I keep reading that one, too.

Occasionally Jason posts entries making reference to some unnamed person having been a total bitch to him, but doesn't say who it is and doesn't explain what happened. Why do I need to read this? But for some reason, I do. I'm one sick fuck.

Having seen Jason through the end of his undergrad years in Barbados, and now through law school in Trinidad (I think he is graduating now) I am anxious to see where he'll end up. He has mentioned the possibility of moving to Canada or somewhere else. He currently lives with his parents, and seeing as how he hates his father, I suppose he'll want to move fairly soon.

I've been learning about Trinidad in his blog. Due to their extreme multiculturalism, they have about one celebration of some kind per week, and Jason usually describes what he gets to eat at each festival. As soon as you start talking food, you have me hooked. I loved learning about their Carnival tradition of "J'ouvert" where they paint their bodies with mud, frolic about and eat lots of tasty treats. Perhaps I should move to Trinidad.

He includes a picture of himself in many of his posts, sometimes in his boxer shorts so that he can show his progress (or more often his disappointment at the lack thereof) from his rarely sustained exercise programs.

Oh, and Jason likes going to clubs and drinking. I remember liking to do that sort of thing once upon a time. Funny thing is, I am rarely willing to pay for cocktails out anymore. It's so damn expensive. I don't know how these twentysomethings afford it. But anyway, Jason's favorite drink is vodka cranberry.

I also find it endearing how he always wishes himself a Merry Christmas or a Happy Birthday.

This is ridiculous. I need to get a fucking life. If Jason links back to this he'll probably take down his blog and notify the authorities.

Enjoy.

It's not easy being green

Gentle Readers,
Behold, a new very green template. Let's hope that this one will stick for a while. I still don't know what the problem was with the very-white format, the one Mindy June described as "Timmy's First Website." (She doesn't remember that Jesus teaches us not to scorn the afflicted.)

Very truly yours,
CP

I apologize for the temporary disturbance

Gentle Readers,
The new template I recently put up on CPW went to hell. It turns out that a certain website hosts said templates, and if their traffic reaches a certain level, everything crashes.

I like to think that the tremendous surge of traffic to this template website was caused by the thousands of CPW subscribers. You, my gentle readers, have crashed the site!

I will repair this with a new template as soon as I have time, which may not be for a day or two. But meanwhile, all the CPW posts and links you have come to count on are still here.

CP