How To Sell Online College, or “Just Like Your Local College Girl, But Without The Commuting”

The Burden of Commitment

First off, let me apologize for all these impromptu hiatuses (hiati? Hold on, now I need to look this up . . .) Interesting: Apparently the plural form of “hiatus” is either “hiatuses” or “hiatus” – just like the singular word. I guess it’s like one of those trick words teachers used when you were first learning about plural words in grade school, when they would write a bunch of words on the board and ask the class if they were singular or plural and it would start out easy like “dog” and “trains” and then get a little harder like “cacti,” but you were holding out to answer the hardest of the hard because you were a nerd, so when the teacher wrote “flock of seagulls” on the board and everyone thought it was plural you were like, “no, they’re a band – a singular band” and everyone (including the teacher) laughed at how queer you were.

Putting all that aside (into a remote nook of my subconscious where I can pretend it doesn’t bother me until I hear “I Ran” and burst into tears and have to tell people that it’s just because the song is so powerful), I have to explain why hiatuses are inevitable. Sometimes a person just needs to relax, and I don’t know about you, but I find nothing more relaxing that giving up on the world: looking around and seeing nothing but inevitable death and purposelessness. Then you come home and watch a “Top Chef” marathon and decide that the most important thing you can do right now is make a hamburger and season it perfectly. It’s invigorating in a way, because responsibility is a man-made convention, just like destiny and the recommended dose of toilet paper sheets. (Four? Why don’t I just wipe my ass with the broadside of my hand.) And getting back to basics (survival, beer, TV, etc.) can really put some perspective on things.

Which is why I didn’t blog last week.

Which is kind of a shame, because it was an interesting week. Brooke had an old friend in town, so the two of them decided to shack up at a hotel and do girly things (INSERT GIRL ON GIRL ACTION JOKE) leaving me and Puppy at the apartment to fend for ourselves.

Now if there is one thing that working from home has taught me, it’s that I could make a full-time job out of taking care of myself. You don’t realize how much structure a job adds to your life. You like to think that you’re all grown up now and you choose to wake up in the morning and choose what you wear and choose not to drink screwdrivers with breakfast, but in fact it’s the delicate hand of your career guiding your every action. So when you have to make up those imaginary boundaries yourself to keep your life on track (e.g. showering) it can sometimes feel like an added responsibility more than a really simple thing that even dimwits understand. And we all know how I feel about responsibility.

When we first started this working from home experiment (right around the time I cooked a hamburger at 11:00 a.m.) Brooke took on the role of de facto “boss.” She coerced me to wake up, shower, shut off SportsCenter, and get to work. In return, I silently resented her – like a real boss – and the natural order was restored.

So when it came time for her to leave, she was apprehensive. Although I convinced her that I could fend for myself in a fully autonomous situation, while I was saying “Yes, I’ll remember to give Puppy his medication,” in the back of my mind I was really thinking “Could I barbecue inside if I turn on the fan?”

Needless to say, the reasons I didn’t blog were many (TiVo) and profound (the beach), and while I’ll stop short of apologizing, I will say this: Brooke is back in the roost and I’m easing myself back into blogging. Not so much like you might ease into a warm bath, but more like you ease into the ocean on a hot day. You know, when you first put your feet in the surprisingly cold water and think, “OK, that’s enough.” But then everyone will call you a pussy if you don’t go all the way in, so you keep on walking, and it’s alright as long as the water is only on your legs, and as you walk you involuntarily jump up a little every time a wave comes in, but then finally you can’t avoid it anymore and the water touches your genitals and it’s not so much like you’re in pain or discomfort, it’s more like “WHY?” Which is to say there will be hiccups, times when my blog touches my genitals and I think “WHY?”, but for now this is enough:

While Brooke was away, I, of course, passed a lot of gas, mostly in the morning when I first woke up. This is the thing I miss the most about living alone.

The first morning I awoke alone, I half-consciously slid back into bachelor mode and ripped a resounding fart. It was loud. So loud, that it woke up Puppy, and a second later his front two paws were up on the edge of the bed as he looked at me wide-eyed like, “WAS THAT THUNDER?” It became our routine, a morning wake-up call of sorts, and by the end of the fifth day when the fart boomed out, Puppy moved with no urgency whatsoever and slowly and deliberately jumped up on the bed and looked at me sullenly like, “We’re still doing that?”

Yesterday was Brooke’s first day back under our roof, and it was exciting for all of us – right up until we this morning. We arose in silence, Puppy and I, and as I walked to the bathroom to coax out my gas in the quietest way possible, I locked eyes with Puppy. In that awkwardly long gaze, we shared a silent lamentation for the transient nature of freedom and the constraints of responsibility.

And with that he followed me into the bathroom.

Mission Accomplished!

I’ve made this blog suck for the week. It was hard work, but I did it.

I’d like to thank my Delta Airlines pilot, who I’m pretty sure got us lost ON THE RUNWAY at JFK. I’d also like to thank the cashier at Publix (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) who nearly killed me with incompetence when I had to check out twice (because the first time it “didn’t do nothing.”) I’d also like to thank my West Coast tax guy – just in case I’m worried about being bored and under-stressed in the coming years, that audit you’re setting me up for will do just the trick in the lazy days of ’09. And finally, I’d like to thank Jorge at Brickell Honda. Some people may think that knowing how to do your job is an asset, but if that was the case then we wouldn’t have gotten to spend such an extraordinary amount of time together in the past two weeks. Brooke thinks you have a crush on me. I think you’re missing a chromosome. (And you love coming to our apartment for the free water.)

Great work everyone. Now let’s just hope the guy with the anvil standing on the roof outside my front door doesn’t go and mess it all up.

Ne-PHEW!

So I’m back in New York this weekend for my newly birthed nephew’s christening. For those of you who haven’t yet accepted Jesus as your personal savior and all-around great guy, a christening is when you baptize the baby by pouring holy water over their head in an effort to “wash away” original sin. It’s kind of like a full-term Afterlife Insurance policy. So when they knock over a convenience store 20 years from now, all they have to do is confess their sins and all will be forgiven (whereas if they were still shackled to hell by original sin, God would be like, “Well, it says here you weren’t christened, sooo, not sure there’s much I can do for you. Would you like a mint?”)

Besides all that, this was the first time that I was meeting my nephew. I think it went well even though I was a little nervous coming in. I mean, we don’t have that much in common right now. I’m worrying about making rent and filing my taxes and he’s worrying about things like his skull hardening over and figuring out what his hands are for. I figured I would stick with topics we’re both sympathetic to, like change and transition, i.e. I just moved to Miami, so I’m dealing with a new apartment, new friends, etc., and he just moved out of his uterus, so he’s adapting to his own sort of change like not breathing amniotic fluid and meeting other humans.

Overall, I’d call it a decent first impression. I can’t really tell if he likes me, seeing as how he bawled when I held him the first time, but in all fairness to him he was wearing a diaper full of crap. I’d cry too. I’m also a little concerned about his sense of humor. He cries when he’s hungry, cries when he’s pees, cries when he’s tired . . . you know, it’s like Lighten up! He doesn’t even laugh when he farts! I laugh when I fart. I think it’s hilarious. The only time I’ve seen him smile is when Brooke set the dining room table. I didn’t get the joke. (Maybe he’s British?)

Anyway, sorry for the bland week here. But to make it up to you, here’s a series of pictures of Puppy enjoying his time here on Long Island.

Enjoying a healthy breakfast! Mmmm!

Catching some rays.

Coming inside for a refreshing beverage.

Sharing a cold one with his best buddy.

Preparing for an envigorating walk!

Afternoon playtime.

Ready for a nap after a hard day of fun.

Miami Mondays: Homeless People!

If New York has the smartest homeless people in the country, then Miami has the friendliest. It makes sense: After all, bums in Miami have had the good fortune of being homeless in a tropical paradise. Just the other day when Brooke and I were at the beach, a homeless guy came walking down the shoreline, trudged onto the sand, plopped his house-bag down and just laid there in the sun. EXACTLY LIKE ME AND BROOKE. I mean, that’s what people come to Miami to do – lay on the beach. And when Brooke and I had to go home to do some work? The homeless guy got to stay! Because he had nothing else to do.

The only problem with this laid-back homeless mentality is that it’s not the best attitude for begging for money. In New York, homeless people will sing, tell you a story, make pretend to be crippled, put a cat in a baby stroller – anything to garner a sympathetic buck. They’re always thinking of entrepreneurial ways to get by, like collecting cans for recycling or robbing other bums while they sleep.

In Miami? Not so much. I was walking down the street the other day and passed a homeless guy in a wheelchair. As I approached, he made eye contact with me and said hello. I prepared my stock “I’m sorry, I don’t have any change” line, except that was all he did – just said hello. Didn’t ask for change, or say he was a WWII veteran or that he lost all his money to diabetes. Just hello. Now I’m not sure if he just forgot to beg, or if he was just a very poorly dressed economically stable elderly man, but either way it was both refreshing and a bit disconcerting – mostly for the New York homeless people. It seems like they’re working so hard to get by, and here in Miami it’s like a homeless vacation resort. And sure, all the New York homeless could just walk down here (what else have they got to do?), but then it would turn into a homeless convention, and everyone knows that once the bums get organized, they’ll take over the world.

And the whole reason that I’m writing this is because, as I type, there is a homeless woman sitting next to me at a table outside Starbucks. I was just sitting here, sipping my iced coffee and typing away, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a woman approaching. “Are you using this chair?” she asked, and without really looking up I replied, “No, it’s all yours.” But instead of taking it away to another table, she just sat down next to me. Not even across from me. Next to me. The thing is, she wasn’t obviously homeless. She was deceptively homeless. And the reality of the situation didn’t hit me until she offered me a potato chip with some onion dip out of a jar, and I looked up to say no thanks and got a good look at her: dirty hair, cropped men’s pants, two crazy eyes with one slightly crazier than the other. Then it hit me: the smell.

Homeless people have a distinct odor. I imagine it is the same smell that actors make pretend to be smelling when they walk into a grizzly crime scene on TV. And here it was, sitting next to me in the warm sun, offering me a potato chip.

So I finished typing this just to not be rude, and now I am going to leave, my nose quivering with stink. But let it be noted: Although she offended most every one of my five senses, she never asked for anything from me. That’s homeless . . . Miami-style.

Happy Boob Day Eve, New York!

There was already a text message on my phone when I woke up this morning. It was from my friend John in New York:

“It’s not Boob Day yet. But with 72 degrees today and 77 degrees tomorrow, it’s definitely Boob Day Eve.”

I closed my phone and smiled one of those half-hearted smiles, like moms do in movies when their kid decides to move to the big city in order to chase their dream of becoming a fashion designer despite the odds stacked against them. Because when I opened the shade in my bedroom and let the abundant sunlight pour in, I realized something sad.

This will be the first time in my life that I will miss Boob Day.

Boob Day, of course, is the day in New York when the sun warms the Earth to a temperature so great that women may finally cast aside their jackets and sweaters and start wearing the clothes that show off their breasts.

All winter long they have been bundled up, keeping their fun bags in the toy chest. But suddenly, it starts to warm up. Usually there are a few false alarm Boob Days where it’s mild and sunny and all the hoochies jump the gun and hit the streets in tube tops. Don’t be fooled. Though these days are fun for their novelty, they aren’t the big event. No, the genuine Boob Day is always marked by a string of warm, sunny days, culminating in one unusually hot day. And on that hot day, it’s like the heavens open . . . and the heavens have great tits.

Boob Day is probably the most underappreciated holiday in the world. Take all the Salvation Army donations during Christmas, all the confetti on New Year’s Eve, and all the fireworks from the Fourth of July and you still couldn’t match the amount of good will inspired by the mind-blowing wave of low-cut tank tops, “business casual” halters, and one-size-too-small sundresses that floods the streets.

I know what you’re thinking: WTF, Dan? EVERY DAY in Miami is Boob Day! And you know what? You’re right. You can’t pick up a quarter on the street without getting hit in the face with a boob. (I’m serious. This happened to me on Tuesday.) But this constant stream of tata tartar is exactly what Boob Day isn’t about. It’s not your run-of-the-mill, day at the beach, “oh, whoops, I missed a spot while oiling up my bikini line, I’m gonna get a real bad burn there LOOK AT MY TECHNOLOGICALLY ENHANCED CLEAVAGE.” If I was a sociologist or a philanthropist or whoever it is that studies these sorts of cultural paradigms, maybe I would suggest that it has something to do with mating and pollen counts. But I’m not. Boob Day is organic. It’s inside of all of us. Boob Day is a spasm of mammographic glee, a representation of all that is good in woman’s shirts. And I will miss it.

And just in case the open wound didn’t have enough salt of the earth in it, this year promises to be a real blockbuster: Because the intensity of Boob Day is in direct proportion to the duration and suckiness of the winter season, from what people have told me about how this winter just dragged on and on and on, I imagine this Boob Day is going to be something special.

So everyone, celebrate in my absence. It’s your duty. Gawk, ogle, drool even. Whistle, woof, stare so hard that you walk right into a open man hole. Hell, take pictures. With a telephoto lens maybe. Email them to me. Whatever you feel is necessary. Just remember that it’s not degrading, it’s a celebration. And I wish you all the breast.

My First Attempt To Turn Puppy Into A Beach Dog

UNSUCCESSFUL.