Add the following to the reeking pile of things in life that bug the shit out of me

Add the following to the reeking pile of things in life that bug the shit out of me:

1. When there's bands on late-night talk shows, there's a real marked tendency for the audience to get so frothed up that they feel as though they have to clap along. This is a very greivous offense in my book. For one thing, it's gay as hell. For another, almost invariably, the clapping is on the wrong beat. Now, I ain't no music major loser, but that kind of thing can really screw you up while you're playing.

2. People that sit right next to you in empty restaurants. This seems to happen to me fairly often, perhaps as some sort of punishment for what I call my "Proximity Disease." The gist of it is that I get real anxious and irritable when I have to be too near other people in public spaces. I just don't like being part of other peoples' functioning. I don't like hearing them eat or sneeze or what they're talking about at the next table. For this very reason I much prefer very loud restaurants to quiet ones. So anyway, I was eating at this taco place last week. It was about 11am, and I was the only person in there, i.e. all the tables in the place were empty. About ten minutes into my tranquil lunch, some joker comes and sits at the table immediately adjoining the one I'm sitting at! All I could do was look up from the newspaper and wonder what in the hell would possess him to do that? I would later theorize that he was brainwashed from elementary school to fill up the cafeteria in an orderly fashion, as we were at Prescott Elementary in Missoula, MT.

3. When historians use the present tense to describe historical events. I've been watching this video series on New York City that I got at the library. There's this one historian that says stuff like, "By this time, Roosevelt is eager to funnel funds into the city." Why does he do that? Is that some sort of narrative device that's supposed to put the viewer more in the moment or what? Whatever the reason may be, it sucks.

Also from that NYC series, I figured out how you become an instantly quotable authority on historical matters. It's easy! First, you start using your middle name at all times, a'la David Foster Wallace (not a historian, I know, but the only example that springs immediately to mind). All but one of the oft-quoted commentarians on this series used their middle names. Second, pepper your commentary with words like "indicia" and "propinquity," and pithy phrases like "ethnic algebra." The third step is to simply grow a beard.

Here's a press photo of Don Caballero I came across the other day. Don Caballero has quickly become one of my all-time favorite rock combos.

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