Trains at a Station

Speaking of which, I took this with my cell phone. The bright light you see at the end of the tunnel is a waiting train. The train in the foreground switched tracks just past the station, but still, for a bit, it looked like one train headed directly for another. Wish I had a better camera though.

I speak Russian. You speak Russian?

I was waiting for the train today, and there was this dude walking around in this weird way, somewhat agitated yet strangely trance-like. All he said over and over and over was:

I speak Russian. you speak Russian?

Except that
a. He had this thick Russian (surprise) accent, and
b. he didn't really stop to give any one a chance to answer.
He'd keep moving from person to person, look at them right in the face (as they tried hard to avoid eye contact) and would fire off his question. Apparently either no one knew Russian (I don't, which is a pity) or they were too weirded out by this dude, so all I heard until the train came was:

ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?ayspikRAAshnYUspiRAAshn?

Crazy.

Women's aisles are Men's Kryptonite (well, they weaken yogi)

Just the other day I was told (gently of course. By a friend that cared) that the pores on my nose looked like craters. Fortunately, they make this nose strip thing for exactly this, and so I decided to go buy myself a nose strip from the local Target. Now, I must clarify that Yogi is by and large a very clean person and all that, but beauty products don't appear very high on his shopping list. And when they did make an occasional appearance, there was the obliging lady-friend who would take care of it. God bless these women. I mean, I'm sure they did it partly out of self-interest - no one wants to be seen with the Indian guy with meteorite craters on his nose. But still, that meant that beyond knowing that these nose strips were somewhere in the ladies aisle, I didn't know much else. And being single and all that, it meant that I had to wade into uncharted territory.

See, this is where men and women are different: women would have no problems going into the men's area. In fact, some of them insist on choosing our underwear (I think the pink ones with winnie the pooh are SO awesome honey; I think you'll look great in them); these women have no problems digging through piles of men's wear until they see something that they approve of us wearing.

We're a little different. First of all, I really don't care if you buy read or black underwear. Or pink or fuchsia or teal or indigo. Buy whatever makes you happy. Just don't drag me along. I start sweating when I'm surrounded by bras of various sizes and shapes; I feel like a giant perv, and the inquisitive/critical glances that I get from matronly woman who are trying on their giant beige undies make me feel all the more so.

This is also true for the cosmetic section. I will gladly admit, I am not one of those metrosexual types. I have never had a pedicure and never will. I stick to one set of body washes and one shampoo/conditioner combo thing. I know there are specific washes and lotions for various body parts, but really, I don't want to bust 17.99 just so the undersides of eyes look the exact same tone as my ears and smell of musky daffodils. Perhaps this makes me less attractive, but so be it. What that means is that I feel discombobulated in that area of the (already discombobulating) superstore.

So when I needed to cure the craters, I swallowed my unease and headed over to those aisles. Sure enough, by the time I reached, my stomach was already in knots. I flew by the aisle so quickly the first time that my eyeballs barely registered anything more than a pastely blur.

"Well, perhaps they just thought I was walking past on the way to another more appropriate aisle", I thought, and so I took a deep breath, swept back my wet hair, and gave it another go. This time I took the "I'm just perusing the aisle for something that my lady friend may need" approach. I walked slower this time, but then midway I made eye contact with a middle-aged overweight woman who was comparing hair removal creams. She had headmistress written all over her. I think I gave her an uneasy smile and she glared at me. I hightailed it out of there is two seconds flat.

But I wasn't going to give up, so I went up to the second floor, looked at some sports goods (to make sure the lady moved on, and also to surround myself with happy images of baseballs and cheap golf clubs), and then sauntered back down. This time I decided to give it the harried "man, I know what I'm looking for, but I only have three minutes, so I better focus and be quick" fly-by. This was more of a deliberate walk down the aisle, eyes focused on the various products, with more than the occasional shrug (as if to say I don't know whether this nose strip is for my skin-type) and the head shake (this Target is crazy - why don't they have my specific nose strip brand?).

No luck. Worse, the damn woman was still there, now looking at elbow cream or something.

So I went and finally looked for help. Turned out that there were three dudes emptying out shelves in the very next aisle. Great, I thought. Dudes who are comfortable with this shit. They can help me! And so I walked up to them and opened my dry mouth to ask them where this thing is, except I realized I didn't know what it was called (I know now, but I had forgotten then). I stuttered about for a bit - I think I came up with nose-hole medicine amongst other things - but then after some wild gesticulation they figured out what I needed. Except THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHERE THE HELL TO FIND IT EITHER OR WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE.

So it was myself and three equally embarrassed Target employees carefully strolling down the same aisle, carefully, in formation (lest we get separated from each other). This time we looked up and down with military precision. We weren't exactly sure what we were looking for but I vaguely remembered it was a small pastel green cardboard box, and we all agreed that it would have the words nose strip on it.

By this time, I was becoming a regular at that aisle. I was the regular perv who had no business there. I mean all the women had seen me before, and they all sighed and shook their heads before turning their attention back to their eye-lash elongators or nose-hair tweezers. Except this time I had come with reinforcements and so I felt better about the whole deal. I was Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator. My three new friends however, not unlike the guys that get capped by the predator in the movie, were way worse off than me. In three seconds, their shirts were plastered to their back because of their perspiration. Their breathing was heavy and labored, and they didn't look above the bottom three shelves for fear of making eye contact with the ladies in the aisle.

I think one of them finally bumped into hair-removal lady and muttered an embarrassed apology. I think that finally did it. The woman turned to us and asked me: "CAN I HELP YOU, YOUNG MAN?" All four of us cowered. My brothers crept behind me and pointed in my direction wordlessly. This was exactly like 4th grade when all of us were in the cricket match where a window got broken, but it was me that actually did the breaking, a fact that was quickly pointed out when we got hauled to the Principal's office. I gulped.

"Uh, nose strip things. We were looking for them"

"Was that what you were looking for?"

"Yes, ma'am"

She turned around, took a pastel green cardboard box from her shopping cart and thrust it into my hand. "This is what you need. It was the last one they had."

I nearly hugged her in a teary embrace of relief and gratitude. An angel had descended that day and had touched me. I turned around and saw my comrades crying on each other's shoulders. The band of 4 brothers patted each other on the back and shook hands; we all had a story for our grandchildren, we said. We had survived.

And I ran out and kissed the oil-stained floor of the parking garage and wept.

Browning 12-gauge vs. yogi shoulder

Winner: Browning 12-guage. Barely. I know, I know, it's a sissy bruise, barely one at all. But if you've got good form, all you should've seen in the pic would be yogi's rippling and unblemished deltoids.

See, this is the problem when you go shooting with friends - everyone's talking, there are pretty women around, you want to impress them with your form, and then, just for the one round, you lose your focus just a bit and loosen up. And of course, since it's a 12-gauge, that means that when you fire, there's a skull-rattling recoil and your shoulder and cheekbone let you know for the next three hours that they were somewhat displeased by the turn of events.

But still, just because it's a matter of pride, I have to include a little factoid that you don't really need to know, but do now that I have told you - I still beat out the kids from Utah to win our little competition. Take that, Hansens.

Why blog, yogi?

... just got a disapproving comment (that will stay unpublished) asking me about how I can write the way I do, being the person I am. (These people know yogi in real life, and yogi in real life is more normal). If you know me, perhaps you have thought this too. To them, and to you, I say this:

Perhaps my blog is a projection of the parts of me that DOES look at my world as one squalid messed up place. Maybe that is who yogi is - me at my funniest, narcissistic, misogynistic, drunken, outrageous best. Or worst. Perhaps as yogi I look at myself and choose to be whatever part of me I want to be at that point in time, knowing that writing about that me at that time is pure, beautiful and unadulterated joy. No more, no less. No agenda, no planning, no forethought, no afterthought. Just happiness.

That's all there is to it.

Post meeting crash

I had a big, BIG meeting just yesterday. The kind that you spend sleepless nights ahead of, so you don't end up looking like a complete jack-ass in front of some very smart people.

So what do you do after you blow them away?

You crash. That's what you do. It's amazing how the brain just stops working. Your body does too; your sleep schedule and appetite are all out of whack, but it's the cobwebs in the brain that are really awesome. I mean, I don't really understand it. You are functioning just fine, it wasn't like I was walking into stuff or blathering like a fool (this I usually do, but that's beside the point. I don't usually feel like my head is full of cobwebs). But my brain was just dead. I tried doing some thinking, but it would shut off after a little bit.

I really wonder what it could be. "Fatigue" doesn't cut it. No, what is it that makes the brain like it's had enough and needs time to recuperate after a bit of stress? It's not like lactic acid buildup in muscles, can't be oxygen deprivation... hm. Wonder what.