The dojo of the master putter of the foot in the mouth

There is an art to making an arse of oneself. I have practiced the ephemeral wushu of the social nitwit, studied the polished crudeness of the transcendent imbecile, and perfected a flawless mimicry of the natural idiot. I constantly challenge myself by dusting the most tranquil social landscapes with my lovingly crafted organic awkwardness. Just a spoonful of sugar may help the medicine go down, but it totally ruins caviar.

I paint my world with an angel's lock brush dipped in smooth golden weirdness.

I make my awkwardness myself in my distillery from the rarest, purest, and sweetest of character flaws. The craft is delicate and arduous, requiring patience and an apetite for one's own foot.

First, I gently warm twenty gallons of misunderstanding in a cherrywood cask. I then crush four pounds of self-esteem and drop that into the cask and stir gently and regularly over a fortnight with a four-hundred year old oak ladle inscribed with the words 'Cave quid dicis, quando, et cui. Quod non cotidie.'

Then, delicately, I add juice of stutter root, a fine distilled licqeur of ignoring better judgement, and granulated introversion.

By this time, the preparation has become thick but clumpy. I scoop out any precipitating self-awareness and inhibition with a gold sieve and feed it to my cat, Minerva.

Then, I bottle the sweet nectar and sprinkle liberally in the center of groups of three to four people seconds before redirecting my foot's Qi through my mouth with the grace and purpose of a master capoeirista. O berimbau na roda de Capoeira!

'What's that you say? Really? You know who else I heard is going? Elizabeth!'

'But I'm Elizabeth.'

'Oh. Then I don't believe we've met. I'm an arse.'

And you may address me as maestro chef sensei Haatem-san.

Cooking with old butter...

...'is not a good idea' is the rest of that sentence.

Top ten most difficult antibiotics to market

I used to write top ten lists for NYMC's student paper, The Goose (come to our campus, we have the goose droppings to back up that name...do you?). Anyway, I was looking back at some of them and a few made me laugh. Again, being a dork helps.

Top ten most difficult antibiotics to market

10. Ceftriagain
9. Cephalohopeitworx
8. Sulfeggedaboutit
7. Ciprollodice
6. Impotenem
5. Stripteasomysin
4. Anything advertised by John Madden saying “BOOM!”
3. Ouijacillin
2. Aunt Jemima’s Spicycillin
1. Penichillin’ G

The journey (don't forget your $400 purse)

I was about to give up on finding my way out of Wolf Blitzer's beard and finally breaking out of the Situation Room when I was captivated by this during a commercial break:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG79nd8ej94

It was beautiful, and it got better and better, but also worse and worse as I tried to imagine which purveyor of useless crap--which cancerous bastion of consumerism--would take responsibility for this seemingly profound piece. And the answer had me surprised, laughing, and wincing all at the same time. That hurts.

Achilles' ball

As the result of misfortune befalling a friend (s/p ruptured achilles tendon--while playing racquetball--with months of recovery ahead of him) I was able to borrow some of his racquetball gear. I'd never played racquetball or squash before and have never liked tennis (except on the Wii, where there are no balls to chase and a whole stadium full of PEZ dispensers).

Wikipedia says that racquetball was invented as a fun and easy-to-learn sport.

So I got together with another friend with two intact achilles tendons to see if we couldn't learn. She was just as much of a beginner as I was, and we both sucked so badly that the gym owner came into the court to ask if we needed any 'help.' He said that he was the 'resident racquetball pro here' and that he could 'help with the rules.' We told him that we were fine and that we were just warming up. By this point we each had a few welts which I assumed was normal and proof that we knew what we were doing.

He left us alone but not before some parting advice: 'Okay, but you guys might want to try playing against the back wall.' Whatever, douchenozzle.

Anyway, we played a few more times and were clearly getting better. I was hitting the ball with the stringy bit of the racquet towards somewhere in front of me, while she was getting competitive and kept telling me to 'suck it!' even though obviously I couldn't. We were getting really cocky despite the fact that we weren't even playing by the rules. Yes we could've looked them up but who has time to read the internet? That's right. Good for you.

Point is, we were awesome.

So yesterday, I played with another friend who's been playing since she was 18. I thought that it was time; I thought that I could regulate, maintain, and retaliate. I was using words like 'killshot' and 'ouch that's going to leave a mark' and I was getting a great workout.

For her though, I think I was more entertainment than opponent because I totally suck at racquetball.

Zen diagnosis

So I've been watching episodes of Namaste Yoga on FitTV and trying to play along when my body will allow me to place parts of it where they don't really need to be. It's true, though, that you can only achieve a deep union of spirits when you can surrender your mind and scratch your left ear with your right big toe from behind. It's fun too. Once you loosen up the joints with some strategic dislocations, the ligaments can start to work with you, not against you. That is zen.

As I was reflecting, and because I'm a dork, names of diseases started to force their way into my meditative center to ripple my heart chakra. It was annoying but kind of funny (if you're also a dork). Here's an even nine of them.

• Metaphysical acidosis
• Transcendental thrombocytopenic purposefulness
• Adult Inspirational Distress Syndrome
• Nirvana gonorrhea
• Reflectory anemia
• Spiritual Liberation monocytogenes
• Osteomyelenlightenment
• Haikuphilus influenzen
• Lymphadenopath-to-wisdom

Sorry. That was stupid. Anyway, namaste.