Will Hines Dot Net

But I guess everyone in the city will soon have them? Or so it seems. They’re in the movie theaters, Times Square.

My super-brief wikipedia reading binge implies that there once was a big bed bug problem, but the use of DDT after World War II wiped them out. Then DDT was banned in 1972 (a reaction to the publication of Silent Spring in 1962, and the effect DDT was having on the environment including the thinning of egg shells). And so now they’re back.

Why did it take almost 30 years since banning DDT for them to come back? Could we just real quick use DDT for a year and get rid of them again and then lay off the DDT? Although now I guess bed bugs are resistant to DDT.

Point of this post: fear everything and expect the worst!

Separate and unrelated: everything I load gmail this morning on my Mac Firefox I get a page that says “Bad Request” and that’s it. Fix, please.

I am hoping the Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin run for president in 2012. They won’t win, as extremists cannot win the presidency. But they’ll do well enough to pull votes from more reasonable seeming Republicans. They’ll also end up looking way crazier than they do now — remarkable to those of us who consider them crazy already. But even just slightly intense people — Howard Dean, Jerry Brown — look intensely crazy once the scrutiny of a presidential campaign begins. “But Sarah Palin ran and did pretty well?” you politely point out. No — she did well in terms of making herself a celebrity. But she looked crazy and was on the side that lost big time.

I am bringing this all up because in Roger Ebert’s latest blog entry in which he blasts Beck and Palin and their ilk he mentions the possibility of them running.

In January 1997, I performed at an open mike set at Rebar, a now demolished bar which was at 16th street and 7th Avenue. I had been watching every Monday for a month or so and I was now going up. My jokes were numbered because I would try to make myself write 10. Ritch Duncan was a regular at those nights. So was soon-to-be Daily Show writer Chris Regan. Leo Allen and Andy Blitz were there now and then. Dan Cronin, who wrote for Conan’s Tonight Show. Anyway, I never talked to any of those people though Ritch and I became friends later. This was my set, which I read off of the paper word for word:

1-19-97

1. So I quit my job last week. I was an editor of financial reports in an accounting department – and I’m going to be a tester of computer programs at a software company. A few weeks ago I was talking to an employment office and said “Gee, I’m happy with the boring job title, but it’s just not geeky enough. You guys got anything for me”
2. Well, I haven’t fully quit my job yet. I meant to. But I’m sort of intimidated by my boss and I got so nervous talking to him that I couldn’t come out and say it. I always imagined that when I quit this job I would just storm into my boss’ office and very professionally give notice. But instead, I sound like I’m a sixteen year old asking for the car. I said “Excuse me, John, there’s something I need to speak with you about. (change tone) Uh, there’s this job? And, uh, it’s pretty cool. Can I take it? Is that all right?” He didn’t want me to go, but we worked out a compromise. I quit, but with 52 weeks notice. “Okay, I’ll stay. But next January, I’m OUT OF HERE, PAL!”
3. They won’t miss me anyway. It was a very conservative office, and I could not fit into the corporate culture. I even screwed up small talk. “How’s it going, Will?’ “Thank you.” Or I’d try to make cute small talk remarks, and screw them up. Once, I saw someone, whose wife was pregnant, walking out of the cafeteria with a huge lunch, and I said “Hey there, Scott, I thought it was your WIFE who was eating like a pig because she’s pregnant. I mean, you’re pregnant. I mean, hey there, isn’t your wife pregnant?”
4. I can’t even talk about sports, because I don’t really pay attention to sports. The only thing I like about sports are the odds in USA Today for the March Madness, the 64-team college basketball tournament. In 1993, USA Today gave the lowest-ranked team in the tournament one in one quintillion chances of winning the whole tournament. One in one quintillion. I mean, I suck at a lot of things, but I don’t think I would ever allow myself to get into a situation where the odds are that high against me. I just like thinking about the coach talking to that team before the game. “Well, I guess we’ve all seen the paper today, and we know that a lot of people think the odds are against us. But I just want you kids to know, that in my heart, you’ll always be six hundred and fifty billion to one, at least. See, I’ve worked it out. I love you guys!”
5. So I’d be a bad coach. But one career I wish I could get into is television, only because I have a great idea for a new show. It’s inspired by William Shatner’s show Rescue 911. Remember that show? My show would be called Information 411. And it would feature William Shatner describing people ‘s dire requests for directory assistance. There’s a lot of ways you can go : sometimes people wouldn’t know how to spell the last name of who they’re looking for, can’t remember the street, dyslexic telephone operators, you know, a lot of ways.
6. I’ve been going to a lot of weddings, lately, and it seems that everybody hires all these video cameras, which make me even more self-conscious than photographers would. But I was at one wedding recently between two attorneys who didn’t have any cameras, which I was glad for. Instead, they had the whole wedding done in Artist’s Renderings. They showed the afterwards the lobby, and the artist could only draw courtroom scenes, so they all looked like this:.
7. Weddings get me nervous because I have a lot of problems forming lasting relationships. I broke up with my last girlfriend because I need my girlfriend to love me for me, and she just wanted a boyfriend and it could have been anyone. She never actually said this, but I could pick it up from her letters. They said “Dear Will. Or current resident. I love you.”
8. So if the new job doesn’t work out, I don’t know what I’m going to do, because the only job I ever really wanted was to be a novelist. But I’m not right for it, because basically I get along with most people, and if you’ve noticed, most novels have such very dark emotions with extremely dramatic titles: “Degree of Guilt,” “Possession.” No one wanted to buy my novel, which is called “Can’t Complain.” I have a sequel prepared – “Everything’s All Right By Me.”

Just typing.

1) I remember during my sophomore year of college my history professor commented on my paper that I was “a good wordsmith.” I was a chemical engineering major at that time and had never been complimented on my writing in college. Lots of compliments, daily, on my computer programming skills, analytical ability, mathematical acumen. But this guy, the co-author of the young adult novel “My Brother Sam Is Dead” made an offhanded comment about my writing and I switched my major the next day to English zero acclaim.

2) I got a haircut but chickened out of cutting the top as short. This was in the barber pit at Astor Place. The Russian woman who did it finished and said “Is good?” and I just nodded. Tabitha was there and could tell I didn’t like it. “Tell her to cut it more, you don’t like it!” she whispered. But I did not. I tipped her 20% and ran out. I don’t like confrontations, especially with female Russian barbers.

2) I am going to buy a folding bike. This much I know. Will I ever use it? I plead the fifth.

3) I want to do a two-person Harold somewhere. Someone book me on their improv show, please.

4) Reading a Douglas Adams book for the first time since 9th grade. Excited!

5) Dan Chamberlin mash-ups: http://chamberlain.tumblr.com/post/1025876996/hey-download-chambalands-clever-girl-mixtape-by. You like them.

One reason I don’t is the explosion of Twitter and Tumblr. So many of my friends blog now and they’re all pretty good at it AND they tend to write in very short focused bursts as those mediums dictate. Makes the rambliness and self-centeredness of THIS blog really obvious! Of course it was always obvious but that never stopped me before. But I guess the novelty of having a blog made it feel okay. Probably people with access to movie cameras in the 30s or something felt justified in filming whatever because just putting it on film made it special. That’s what it was like to have a blog say fives years ago.

I’m not STOPPING or anything. But addressing why my posts are so much more slow to arrive.

Random things:
-An improv show I directed has its last show tonight at 11pm at the UCB. It’s called Vantage Point. Consider!
-I need a great album to get and listen to, for fun.
-I just finished The Life And Times of Scrooge McDuck as recommended by Kevin Hines. It was very great.
-When finished typing this post I will do a single but complete push-up.
-Ted Williams was spokesman for a Boston-centered drink called Moxie. What a great name! Like calling a soda Chutzpah.
-What if I started devouring the hearts and brains of comedians I admired to steal their talent? Would that be cheating or just messy?
-My cats do love me to death but they are the strangest and most skittish creatures I know.

This Guy Keeps Saying He Was The Drummer In Letters to Cleo. I really do love Letters to Cleo.

So I’ll have a Microsoft Excel file. I’ll need to save it as a “comma separated value” file. That means instead of saving it as a regular Excel file with all of its built-in functions and formatting and multiple sheets and stuff — I just save a simple file of the values in the cells themselves separated by commas. It’s useful for web applications to have the data in a simple format.

So I open the file in Excel. I click “save as” and save it as a “CSV” file. No problem. Two things: when I “close” Excel always prompts me “you changed this file — do you want to save it?” But I did not change it, and I have just saved it as a new format. The original Excel file and file data is unchanged. ALSO — it saves my simple little CSV file using old-school Macintosh carriage returns (Mac, Windows and Unix systems used to all have different ways of marking the end of a line) as if this were still 1998. Those Mac carriage returns screw me up when I put the file up on a Unix-based web server.

But that’s because Microsoft always kinda dumb with interface stuff. They haven’t totally thought stuff through, and the pay too much attention to some things while remaining completely oblivious and stuck in the past with other things. Their programs are too big, too bloaty, too “EVERYTHING”, too old. Doesn’t anyone make anything SIMPLE anymore? At least something that FEELS simple.

This post brought to you by Socially Unappealing Trains of Thought, Inc.

Listening to Exile in Guyville. What is it about this CD that blew everyone, including me, away when it came out so hard that we all still love it. And yet everyone younger who discovers it seems so underwhelmed? I guess it needs all the weirdness of 1993 wrapped around it to make perfect sense. Related by separate: Kim Deal and Pixies singing Gigantic live in 1988.

My shyer cat now likes to crawl on me and sleep when I’m on my couch typing on my laptop. It’s been a six year long battle of constantly-being-nice to get to this point.

I am going to film a small part for the new Electric Company on Wednesday. Cool, right?

Tomorrow night I meet with a co-op board to try and get approval to give someone my life savings in exchange for an apartment. I am excited! The process has been hilariously long.

My improv group The Stepfathers won an improv competition two Fridays ago which means we will get 10 grand to make a movie. I propose this script.

As part of the “feud” between Chris Gethard and I on The Chris Gethard show, he took my girlfriend out on a perfect date to prove he’d be a better boyfriend. Though Tabitha did not break up with me, I must admit i AM planning a good date for her so I’m not shown up, even in a bit sense.

Harvey Pekar dead! An actual loss for Cleveland Ohio.

This deli across the street from my house does NOT UNDERSTAND BREAKFAST. They only serve it from 7AM until 10AM! WHY? Are they trying to TEACH ME A LESSON? If I go in at 11:30 and I ask for a bagel and they say “we don’t have any bagels; no more today” and I TRY TO KEEP MY COMPOSURE and REMAIN CALM and instead ask for an egg and cheese sandwich on freaking BREAD if that’s all they’ll do and the woman behinds the counter MAKES A FACE and says “No, it’s too late. A dollar extra.” TO COOK AN EGG? ARE YOU A NEW YORK DELI OR ARE YOU A SHAM? I don’t get that all the construction workers who come in at 7am and get coffee and eggs — they are okay, but ME, an ARTIST a real honest to goodness BOHEMIAN is not allowed to have A BAGEL!?!? I’d rather have my eyelids removed from my face with an exacto knife than have such a terrible deli (not true)! This is the worst day of my entire life and of all my previous and future lives!

I want to watch Airplane!

I need a haircut.

I like reading Peanuts comics.

That the drug companies and Republican have convinced the American people that it’s the people’s “right” to have health prices subject to market forces is one of the best cons of the modern age! Your health to the highest bidder = rugged individualism? What a scam! I just read some Facebook status messages from friends of friends making fun of Obama for letting everyone order whatever health care they want and passing on the bill to everyone else? Is that even close to what’s happening? THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD RESTRICT THE PRICE OF BASIC HEALTH CARE — IT’S NOT COMMUNISM YOU FUCKING IDIOTS! STOP WATCHING TELEVISION IT HAS MADE YOU STUPID!

I am going to go running a hilariously short distance and break out into the world’s biggest sweat.