My greatest fear

Hi, clean guy here. My great­est fear is that when I vis­it the bath­room for the sole pur­pose of wash­ing my hands — like if I’m about to eat or some­thing — that some­one may think that the short amount of time I spent in the bath­room means that I did­n’t wash my hands.

I know — who cares what peo­ple think? And I would usu­al­ly agree. But not on this. This is important.

I’ve tried wip­ing my hands on my shirt as I leave the bath­room, pan­tomim­ing a sort of oh man, my hands are just still so wet because I just washed them! act. But then I wor­ry that peo­ple may think that I think that wip­ing my hands on my shirt is an accept­able sub­sti­tute for actu­al wash­ing. Not cool.

I know — who cares what peo­ple think? And I would usu­al­ly agree. But not on this. This is important.

So what do I do? Always walk out still hold­ing a paper tow­el? Leave the bath­room loud­ly going “oh man, my hands are just still so wet because I just washed them!” Should I always com­ment on what lux­u­ri­ous hand soap they’ve got in this McDon­ald’s bath­room? “You’ve real­ly got­ta try that stuff… I mean, obvi­ous­ly I did.”

I know — who cares what peo­ple think? And I would usu­al­ly agree. But not on this. This is important.

Or just wash my hands in slow-motion? I… I think I could do that.

Icky Thump

I once told this girl in a bar that I was sav­ing the White Stripes’ final album, 2007’s Icky Thump, to lis­ten to at some point in the future just so I could have the plea­sure of lis­ten­ing to a new White Stripes album when there were no new ones. This was a bunch of years ago, it was true, and she said she was impressed with my self-control.

Late last year I found myself in the dri­ver’s seat in Texas late at night with a long way to go. By then I had bought the album and kept a copy stored up in the cloud, always avail­able but nev­er played and just kind of hang­ing out. I had avoid­ed even mere­ly read­ing reviews for almost a decade, but these unfa­mil­iar roads kin­da seemed like the right time, and this night the right place to pull Icky Thump down from the sky and out through the rental car speakers.

You know, I’ve got this playlist for songs that are not nec­es­sar­i­ly great, but when I first heard them made me go “whoa—what world did this thing come from?” (The playlist is actu­al­ly, lit­er­al­ly, titled “What world…?”) Ramm­stein, Goril­laz, Eminem, Black Flag, Mind­less Self Indul­gence, and a few oth­ers, have a track apiece on the playlist. None of the songs have that effect on me any­more, but every track was once mind-melting stuff.

Would adding an entire album be vio­lat­ing the spir­it of the playlist?

Can’t take much more of this

I was in the back­seat of a car maybe a month ago when the new X‑Files (2016) came up. None of us had heard whether the series was com­ing back for a per­ma­nent run or what. Some­one looked it up on their phone and found it would only be six episodes.

Oh, thank good­ness,” I sighed.

My response baf­fled the front-seat occu­pants, one of whom asked what I had against the The X‑Files. I explained bad­ly, as I often do on the spot, how age has shown me that more isn’t always bet­ter, and my already loaded media diet means I just don’t have time or ener­gy for that much new stuff.1 Few­er episodes equals better.

A lot of times I’d rather appeal­ing stuff just not exist than have to exert the willpow­er need­ed to not to care about it. Everett today is thank­ful Sein­feld quit ear­ly. Everett today was pissed when 99% Invis­i­ble went week­ly. Everett sighed and stared out the win­dow at the news of Blade Run­ner 2. Everett is way too good at find­ing stuff he cares about, and real­ly bad at ignor­ing stuff that sounds like it might be cool.

Tom Chan­dler has this prob­lem with pod­casts. I, um, also have this prob­lem with podcasts.

(P.S. If you’re David Lynch, make all the new Twin Peaks you want. I’ll accommodate.)


  1. I want­ed to add, but did­n’t, that I always thought Milen­ni­um was bet­ter than The X‑Files, because that would just con­fuse them and might make them think I real­ly did secret­ly hate The X‑Files but would­n’t own up to it. I’m get­ting bet­ter about stay­ing focused while talk­ing, keep­ing the extra­ne­ous details I’m just dying to share to myself.[]