MadMup.com

My parents are headed to Texas this weekend - Dallas, specifically. It seems my dad won an eBay auction for a pickup truck. Sound familiar?

Here's the even-stranger part: last weekend he was in Michigan retrieving a pickup truck that he also won on eBay.

My dad has extra vehicles like some people have mice.

Apparently, while they were here earlier this month, the hotel they stayed at had free high-speed Internet access. Before they left, my dad made final bids on two separate trucks hoping to win one of them. I've already given you the punchline - he found out when he got home 7 hours later that he had won both.

My brother said it best: "Turns out the free high-speed Internet wasn't exactly free." 5 comments

I had a bad dream yesterday morning. I woke up breathing hard and my heart was thumping. The dream itself sounds a little twisted, but not necessarily into "nightmare" territory - I was ordered by my superiors to, er, "wipe out" a bunch of people at a school, and later in the dream I found that one of my superiors was a sub-boss from a job I held six years ago.

Again, it's twisted, but not necessarily nightmare quality. There was such an overwhelming sense of dread and fear in the dream, though. It took me a while to get over it.

Here's the strange part: while I'm sure I've had bad dreams since then, the last bad dream I can remember having was when I was six years old. I just don't, as a rule, have bad dreams. In fact, I rarely dream (or remember them, anyway). Most of my dreams are like movies being shot, and I'm aware they're dreams while I'm having them. I've had dreams where Freddy Krueger (he of Nightmare on Elm Street fame) showed up and I was all like, "Hey, Freddy! Let me see your glove!" I can watch scary movies right before going to bed and not be affected by them.

There's all kinds of theories on dreams, what they are and where they come from. Normally I'd do some research to point you towards where I got these, but I'm too lazy, so you may research them if you like. I personally lean towards two theories: 1) dreams are a way for your mind to "take out the trash" and clean up what your subconscious has been dealing with and 2) dreams come from things that you've dealt with in the last day. I have no proof, as I mentioned, and no one can really know this stuff anyway - these are just my feelings (born of experience) on the subject.

I think that's why I don't generally tend to have bad dreams. I deal with fantasy all day long (in the sense of imagination, not in any sort of ... inappropriate sense), whether it be movies I watch, games I play, improv I do, or just little vignettes that I concoct in my head all the time. My subconscious has had a pretty thorough run around the corral by the time it gets to sleep, so it doesn't surprise me that I either don't have dreams or that the ones I have are pretty benign. I have a couple of recurring dreams that, when I have them, I'll change them up a bit. "Okay, last time when we tried to get past the 50 undead Crusader Knights by shooting them it didn't work, so this time let's try sneaking past them."

(For the curious, yes, that is an actual part of a recurring dream I have. I blame Indiana Jones.)

I think I can trace part of my dream back to Star Wars Episode III. There's a section in it where a person "cleans out" the Jedi Academy, which certainly corresponds to my dream. I'm not sure where the dread and fear come from, though. I'd like to think it comes from an inward sense that I wouldn't ever want to kill or hurt anyone, a sense of right and wrong, but who can say? It's more likely I have things unattended-to in my life that are intruding on my dreams - people I've wronged in the past, relationships that need mending in the present, a lack of focus - these are the more likely candidates.

We can't know, though. Dreams aren't a source of new information and they can't be documented. Most of them don't even make sense. How many times have you heard a variation on this: "Okay, I was riding a bird, but it wasn't a real bird, it was made of Lego, and you were there, but it wasn't really you, it was my principal from middle school..."?

There are places that will try to tell you what things might mean, but even Sigmund Freud, who had some sort of need to make anything and everything be all about s3x, said this: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

I'd like to think, though, that sometimes - sometimes - wiping out a school full of people isn't just wiping out a school full of people. 4 comments

You see where it says "The Muppet Show" in the upper-left corner of this page? I'm thinking about changing it to "MadMup.com." When I started blogging, I chose "The Muppet Show" because "Muppet" was my nickname in high school (and, of course, it is the origin of "MadMup") and the blog was going to be about me and my life, so it seemed fitting.

Well, not a day goes by that I don't get people finding this site by searching for "muppet" and some other strange word or phrase. Here's a list of some of the things that people have searched for and found my site:

• muppet show
• the muppet show
• muppet show wallpaper
• cool guy muppet show
• muppet cartoon joke
• muppet show twins old
• the muppet song
• muppet characters
• all the characters of the muppet show
• muppet food
• muppet show return 2005
• the muppet lounge
• muppet pictures
• muppet show dvd
• muppet html codes
• horse in the muppet show
• the first muppet album
• drum clothes muppet
• together again lyrics muppets
• the muppet show perfomers

(Yes, I realize that by listing those things it becomes more likely that people who search for those phrases in the future will again find my site.)

As you might have noticed, I don't actually talk about the Muppets much around here. I feel bad for people who click on my site hoping to get information about "muppet food," whatever that might be. Since "The Muppet Show" is on every page of this blog, it's likely that "muppet" combined with any number of odd other words will link to my site.

Hence my thought about changing the name of the site. I mean, the "logo" is already phrased that way anyway. Any thoughts on the subject? I'm sure it's not a big deal to anyone but me. Sound off in the comments section and let me know what you think.

The next thing is, I got a couple of hits from people looking for "albino laugh machine." I'm not sure if that's an audience I'm wanting to pursue.

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I just got back from a midnight (actually a 12:17) showing of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (my 97th movie of the year, in case you were wondering). When I woke up yesterday morning, I had no plans to go to a midnight showing. I figured I was getting a little too old for that sort of thing, and I was tired already. I knew a midnight movie would be a bad idea, and I figured there weren't any more seats available anyway.

But then Matt emailed me an article that said they still had tickets and that he'd maybe be interested. By the end of the work day, there were four of us planning to go, so I stopped by and bought the tickets.

Then I went home and took a nap.

Between waking up and leaving for the theater, I played some more of Lego Star Wars, a game I'm working on for review. It put me in the mood even more, and I'll be sad when this one's done.

The movie was pretty darn good. Yes, the "romantic" scenes are still awful - the dialogue sounded like every bad 80's teen movie you've ever seen - but the movie as a whole worked surprisingly well, considering we all knew how it had to turn out.

I'd encourage you to gather a few friends and go to a midnight opening of a Star Wars movie, but you pretty much missed your chance if you didn't go tonight. This was it, the last one. Now all we'll have are the endless revisions that George Lucas will put out until his fingers are so curled from editing that he can't punch the buttons anymore. Here's hoping that's soon.

And now, to bed. Some of us have to work in about four hours. 0 comments

Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age just might be the most depressing website I've ever seen. Who can live up to this kind of thing?

At age 33:

-English feminist Mary Wollstonecraft wrote "Vindication of the Rights of Women"
-Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic alone.
-Vaudeville performer Walter Nilsson rode across the United States on an 8 1/2 foot unicycle.
-Successful merchant Cyrus West Field retired at age 33 to devote himself to laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable.
-John Knowles published A Separate Peace, which was immediately successful.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote his essay, "Nature," encouraging readers to see the miraculous in the common.

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Congratulations to Ryan and Jami on the birth of Zachary at 17:17 on the 17th!

That's just too darn cool. 0 comments

I just got back from doing an improv show to find that I had left a candle burning the whole time I was gone - a little over five hours.

I have never done anything like that before (that I can remember), and it scares me. 3 comments

I wish that I could post in an ironic fashion about my cats. It is, after all, stereotypical to blog about one's cats, detailing their every plant destroyed and mouse carcass delivered. When I get right down to it, though, I just like to occasionally talk about my cats and can find no ironical way to go about it.

If you're not familiar with Dala and Nutmeg, you might be able to find a picture or two of them around here somewhere. There might also be previous entries.

I love my cats. There's just no way to get around it. They can be frustrating to the point where I want to throw them through a wall, but I still love them. When I watch them interact with their environment I feel as if I'm gaining some sort of insight into the world at large. That's a load of hooey, of course - the only insight I'm gaining is what it's like to be a cat cooped up in an apartment that rarely sees the sun because I keep the blinds closed most of the time. Near as I can tell, what it's like is that you're constantly surprised by things you've seen a hundred times.

When I have call to shut them out of my room (or any room) for even a few minutes, when I allow them to reenter, they spend several minutes walking around looking at everything with their eyes wide open, as if everything was new and different.

"What's this? A bed?!? It looks so comfortable! Where did it come from?!? Why does it smell like me when I've never seen it before in my life?!?"

They also adopt that way of walking that says "I'm someplace I've never been before." It's slow, deliberate, and inquisitive. If you've never seen an inquisitive walk and doubt its existence, I assure you, Dala could ask you more questions just by approaching you than you might think.

Dala also does this thing that's hard to explain but it's one of my favorite cat things ever. When she's in "what's all this, then?" mode, she'll approach something, look at it with a slightly-tilted head, and then reach out a paw and kind of feel it. It's like a mixture between a "poke" and a "pat," almost as if she's checking to make sure the thing she's seeing is real and not just a figment of her tortured feline imagination. I wish I could catch it on film because it's so much funnier than I'm describing it. I've had cats since I was seven years old and I've never had one that did this.

Their diet continues, though, by the look of them, Nutmeg is eating the majority of the food. Dala's skin is hanging off her and Nutmeg looks rounder than ever. Nutmeg is also the one who wakes me ever morning at 5:30 or earlier, demanding to be fed. Feeding time is 6, and she darn well knows it, but she seems to think that rattling the blinds, jumping on the computer desk, purring loudly, and walking on me are going to get her fed earlier. It isn't, but I'll give her points for persistence. When I do feed them, Nutmeg takes the pole position, leaving Dala to reach in and extract single kernels of food with her paw, pulling them out so she can eat one at a time. This I don't understand. This is the same cat who instigates fights with Nutmeg and can clean her clock every time. She's bigger and tougher (and sweeter, strangely), but she lets Nutmeg charge right in. Maybe the sweetness takes over, I don't know. She could have motherly feelings for Nutmeg, I guess. She's a few years older and has known Nutmeg since Nutmeg was four weeks old.

Nutmeg continues to be an enigma. I have a few friends who, when they come over, enjoy riling her up. I'll admit there's something funny about her tiny impotent rage, but it's probably mean to do. The simple act of picking her up will cause her to struggle, growl, and then hiss. An outreached hand is an invitation for batting and biting, with intent to harm. But, when no one else is around, she's the cat you'll find curled up next to me or on my lap, purring so loud you can tell it is taking physical effort for her to do it. Though I talk about giving the "devil cat" away to anyone who'll take her, I secretly know I could never part with her.

I love my cats. I'm a 33-year-old male and can't imagine life without them. 6 comments

The older you get, the less important it is to confine birthday-related activities to the specific day of your birthday. This also works with holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving, I've found. This year my birthday got spread out over several days, and I thought I'd give you a report. Even if it doesn't interest you, it'll be a good reminder for me when I look back at it.

It actually started in April this year, with the Sega shirt sent to me by Angie. Unexpected and way cool!

On the actual day of my birthday, I started out with what has come to be my birthday breakfast: a lemon-filled glazed Krispy Kreme donut. I don't eat them very often, so a birthday seems a perfect time to indulge.

Lunch was spent with my two friends named Beth. (Say "both Beths" out loud - it's fun to do!) Beth 1 couldn't make it to the birthday dinner later on, so she treated me to lunch. It was very nice, though I had hoped the best waitress in the world would be at the restaurant - it must have been her day off. Oh, well. (I'm not so sure I've mentioned TBWitW before, but I mean to. She's worth a whole entry on her own.)

Throughout the day I received emails, phone calls, blog comments, and text messages from friends. No one at my job said anything to me, as I'm too new for people to know about my birthday here, I guess. It's possible they just don't like me, but I'll assume the former since I'm still in a good mood from my birthday.

Birthday dinner was at Puccini's Smiling Teeth, a local Italian eatery. In attendance (alphabetically by first name): Beth 2, Jenn, Kat, Matt, Skip, Steve, & Tammy. These are all people that I've met either through improv, or through people I've known through improv. The theme: Batman, complete with table covering, balloon tied to my chair, napkins, and foam rubber batarang party favors. While they were setting up for it, the waiter came up and asked, "So how old is the birthday boy?" When they answered, "33" he apparently got a funny look in his eye. The list of presents that follows would only further that look in his eye, I think:

• A framed Batman Begins movie poster, the really cool one where he's standing in silhouette. (I'll try to get pictures of some of these things later.)
• A cheese shaker that was used on the actual set of Seinfeld. (This actually hasn't arrived yet, but I received the printout of the screen showing the winning auction.)
• Flowers. Actual flowers!
• A tricked-out Hot Wheels dairy delivery truck
• A knick-knack of two carved kitties sitting on a little couch
• A picture done using wires and tacks on black velvet of a Model T. This one is the most difficult to describe and needs to be seen.
• A Yoda Pez dispenser

Looking at that list you can make one of a couple of assumptions: either people don't know what to get me so they err on the side of giving something they might think is funny or they know me exactly and got me things they knew I would love. (I'll give you a hint: it's the second thing.)

Saturday was spent with my family. My mom, dad, brother, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew all had come down the night before, but got in pretty late, so I didn't see them until Saturday. We went to Historic Prophetstown ("Historic Prophetstown is a 300-acre site incorporated in Prophetstown State Park. It is dedicated to the preservation of agricultural, environmental, and Native American heritage. A 1920s farmstead, a restored prairie, and a developing Native American village help to interpret the stories. Learn Native American stories and lore... walk or enjoy a horse drawn ride through the prairie... visit the 1920s farmhouse... participate in the special programs and events... all at Historic Prophetstown!"), Wolf Park (this was the coolest thing - all sorts of wolves, and we got to hear them howl!), and the Tippecanoe Battlefield, with a stop at McDonald's for lunch.

Dinner was hosted at Kat's, with Matt in attendance. This was meant to introduce my two families to each other, and it went very well. Afterwards, my sister-in-law said, "Your friends are very funny." I replied, "Well, we are in an improv group together..."

A few games of Scrabble later (I won two of them) and I said goodbye to the family for the night and went to Wal-Mart with Matt and Beth 2. We might have been after some last-minute Mother's Day things, but you'll never get me to confess to it. We did, however, follow it up with some Jell-O Oreo pudding. Mmmm.

List of gifts received on Saturday:

• Money. (A gift that never goes out of style.)
• A T-shirt with the caption "It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye" wherein two characters are playing keepaway with a third character's eye.
• Superman lounge pants
• A suckao kit - basically a way to prepare super-rich hot chocolate. It's Ecuadorian and was sent to me by an Australian friend. I feel so international!
• Lego Star Wars PC game. Technically this wasn't a gift, it's for review, but it came during my birthday weekend and looks like fun, so I'm counting it.
• A card from my grandma. She's finally stopped sending money, and I'm glad. Any time she did, I always felt guilty.
• A limited edition print of the last Batman drawing Bob Kane (creator of Batman, don't ya know) did before he died. Wow with the awesome.

Mother's Day lunch was at Texas Roadhouse with the family before they headed back to Wisconsin. The end of the day was spent with friends with the weekly viewing of Desperate Housewives (yay, Susan & Mike!).

On Monday, I received a birthday card from the staff at one of my old schools. Tonight I'm going out to eat with a friend from one of my old schools. That'll just about wrap up a solid several days of birthdaying.

I'm surrounded by good people. Thank you, everyone who had a part in my birthday. You all have a place in my heart.

I close with the lyrics to Older, by They Might Be Giants:

You're older than you've ever been.
And now you're even older.
And now you're even older.
And now you're even older.
You're older than you've ever been.
And now you're even older.
And now you're older still.

TIME! Is marching on.
And time.. is still marching on.

This day will soon be at an end
And now it's even sooner.
And now it's even sooner.
And now it's even sooner.
This day will soon be at an end
And now it's even sooner.
And now it's even sooner.
And now it's sooner still.

You're older than you've ever been.
And now you're even older.
And now you're even older.
And now you're even older.
You're older than you've ever been.
And now you're even older.
And now you're older still.

Labels: Scrabble, Seinfeld

1 comments

Courtesy of PBF Comics, which aren't necessarily always something I'd recommend. 9 comments

Remember Truck Dude?

He still has the "Tobacco Awareness" on his truck. He actually moved it to a slightly better spot.

No stinkin' way. 3 comments

I really want you to like me. I don't like finding out that you don't like me, for whatever reason. I realize that it's usually something I've done to cause you not to like me, but I still don't like it. I want every one of you to like me.

I realize that's foolish. The more people you know or who know you, the more likely it is you'll have more people who dislike you. Celebrities have fan clubs, but you're just as likely to find a large group of people who despise them. You'd have to have thick skin to be a celeb, I think. I don't think I'd be any good at it. I'd read that reviewer who disliked me or something I did, and I'd totally call them up and take them to lunch and try to fix it.

I used to do things to get people to like me - change myself in some way, hide parts of me that I thought they might not like. It usually worked... for a while. It's kind of like those pictures in menus of desserts. They look delicious and creamy and wonderful, but the reality never quite meets up with the picture. I don't mean to imply that I'm delicious, creamy, or wonderful, I'm just saying that the picture and the reality don't seem to mesh. I could get testiomonials, if you need them...

It's happened a few times to me, though, that someone has met me - the actual, not-put-on me - and stuck around, even chosen to hang around more. You know that image you have of yourself that you get reflected from the people who picked on you in grade school? Mine doesn't jive with people choosing to spend time with me. That's not what I want to focus on, though.

Here's what I take from that: it's more important to be me than to change myself for others. If you like me like I want you to, I want you to do it because you like the actual me. Granted, here online you don't get all of me - I specifically leave a lot of myself offline. You can piece a lot of me together from what you read here, but not the whole me. That's actually the problem with onlineness, some feel. You never know who that other person really is. They could be a spleen stealer, an albino turkey farmer, or - gasp - a 32-year-old computer technician. You just never know, so it's best to be careful.

All this isn't to say that you don't change when you get to know people. Certainly not. There's a theory floating around my current circle of friends that you take something with you from someone who has been significant in your life, whether it be the way you fold your towels or the fact that you eat chicken fingers at particular restaurants now. But it's more than that. The thing I've had changed most drastically (and often) is my viewpoint.

I'll just give you one for-instance, though I could list a bunch.

I do things I like, nothing more, nothing less. I've already decided on what I like in most areas, even if I don't have much (or any) experience in the area. It's never been easy to get me to do things I didn't want to do. "Set in my ways" and "stuck in a rut" are phrases that have been applied to me more than once. Lately I've found myself trying things and doing things I never imagined I would. Like, I ate cactus a few months ago. It wasn't good and I won't do it again, but I tried it. That might not sound big, but for me, it is.

The problem is, you can't ever get across to that person who helped change you just how much they've affected you. The outward sign might be eating cactus or leaving your house for a few hours, but that doesn't really speak to the bigger, deeper change inwardly - that changing of the thought process that goes from "be safe, be familiar" to "try something new." If you've always been a "try something new" person, you can't understand the "be safe, be familiar" mindset. You just can't. It's huge.

Many times it's not even that person who helped instigate the mindset change who reaps the "benefit" of you changing. They might see you change or try something new "for" (or with) someone else and think that it was that person who made the change in you. It's almost impossible to show them how important they were in the process, how the process probably wouldn't have even happened without them.

I've long had this idea to do a character I'd call "The Annotated Comedian." After each joke, he'd hold up a card with bibliographic notes crediting who said the joke originally. The character isn't totally made-up: I have a Jerry Seinfeld or Steve Martin quote for just about any occasion, and I tend to credit them. When I try to crack jokes, I'm not all that funny. I know because I've been told by many and varied people. That conglomeration of other people isn't really me, and it shows. I've been told that when I'm not trying to make people laugh I'm funnier.

I should learn lessons from doing improv: change with the situation, go with my instinct, respond to the other people. The new things I try might not always work, but I should try them anyway. People are going to like me or not, but I want them to do it based on who I actually am.

Labels: Seinfeld

2 comments