Iron Fist

It’s finally that time of year, ladies and gents. It’s time for this damn itchy beard to come off.

I’ve been doing this seasonal beard thing for the last couple of years, where I start growing it in for the winter months, on the premise that it keeps my face that extra 1.3% warmer, but mostly because it saves me a few minutes trying to shave in the mornings, and it’s a lot harder to get out of bed in December and January than it is in the warmer, sunnier months.

When the days get a little longer and warmer, though, it’s time for the damn thing to come off. This usually earns mixed reactions from people, from the utterly clueless “Is there something different about you today?” to people that are glad to see my old look come back to others that, for some reason, kinda liked the beard. For that last group, I can only assume they haven’t had to deal with having a bunch of goddamn itchy hair growing out of their face. Me, I’m glad to be rid of it for the summer.

I should point out that if you’re evenly mildly saddened by this news, take heart, because Karl has heroically taken up the slack by growing his beard in. Karl, I salute you.

In other news, I’m now entering month number six of not getting a hair cut.  This is the longest my hair has ever been in my adult life and I am not quite sure what to do with all of it.  Also, tomorrow I’ll begin week number two of kicking the coffee habit (save for my Sunday morning cappuccinos), which is something I do every few months since I refuse to be addicted to anything.  So far, I am happy to report that nobody has been injured during this round of caffeine withdrawal.  I’ll keep you posted.

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The thing about crazy people is that they seem to have no idea how goddamn crazy they are. I suppose that’s part of what makes them crazy, right? The more-or-less sane people in this world have that built-in mechanism so that when we start to do something crazy, this little safety gets tripped and a little voice says, “Hey, don’t you think this is a little, you know. CRAZY?” or maybe you get a feeling in your gut that what you’re saying and doing is really just ridiculous. I would argue that it’s this early-warning system going off that lets you know that you’re not crazy. The nutty-and-delusional, however, are lacking this internal check and so go right along with their crazy behavior.

I would further argue that for the non-crazy, if they should somehow start down a course of action towards something crazy and somehow missed their safety check, they will at least be open to someone else pointing out the craziness of what they’re about to do.

But if you’re really crazy? Good luck reasoning with someone like that. For example, I remember during the last presidential election, when the Lyndon LaRouche campaign people were swarming all over campus trying to hand out campaign literature and garner support for their candidate who, if memory serves, wasn’t even on the Oregon ballot. It was less than a week before the election when one of them jumped out in front of me while I was on my way to class. “Hey man, got a minute?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Listen up man, you’ve got to get on board with LaRouche, now, because we’ve only got four days left to get rid of all the Nazis.”

“The Nazis? As in, like, the real Nazis?”

“The Nazis, man. All of them.”

I looked into his eyes and saw his utter conviction that we were, in fact, infested with Nazis in this country, actual Nazis, no doubt slinking around the suburbs right now in their shiny boots and crisp uniforms, probably going through my ‘fridge and eating the last of my ice cream or stealing socks out of my laundry, and only by getting on board with the LaRouche campaign could we defeat them. There would be no reasoning with this guy, and there was certainly no “little inside voice” telling him, “Hey, you don’t happen to think all this talk about the Nazis is a little crazy, do you?”

So rather than argue with him, I just agreed with him. “All right, man. The Nazis. We gotta get rid of them. But right now I need to get to class. You still going to be here in an hour?”

“Yeah. You’ll be back?”

“Hell yeah!” I said, pumping my fist in the air to convince him of the full extent of my red-blooded American patriotism. “You hold down the fort till I get back!” Then I walked away to class, already working out the alternate routes between my classes and my apartment that I’d have to take for the next week.

Is there a larger point to all this? Absolutely. I just can’t get into it right now, as it’s all just a little too, oh, disturbing and ridiculous and completely fucking crazy, if you will.  Maybe I’ll get into it all later.

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Ten AM is usually about the time that I get tired of sitting at my desk and head downstairs to talk to the girls at the coffee stand. And get some coffee. Sometimes.

On one particular morning I was shooting the breeze with one of the girls and she said, “Hey. Have you seen ‘House of Cosbys’?”

“I–what?”

“‘House of Cosbys.’ My boyfriend got it for me through iTunes. It’s about this guy who builds a cloning machine in his basement and clones Cosby because he wants to have his own personal Cosby. Then he makes a few more, and they have their own specialities…”

“Kind of like Multiplicity?”

“Yeah…but with Cosbys instead of Keatons.”

I shrugged. “I’ve never seen it. But I’ll have to check it out.” And I went home and dug it up on Google video.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=8280066730307092994" width="400" height="326" wmode="transparent" /]

There are supposed to be five episodes total, but like so many genius ideas the series started out strong and fizzled into…well, ‘not-so-funniness.’ This one is the best, I think.

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