Exhibit 10.14

Two really odd google searches took people to this blog within eight hours of each other yesterday:

"Tim Allen Gets Raped in Prison"

and

"Fat Pictures Ohio Random Walmart"

Wow.

For the record, I come in first and fourth, respectively, in the search results. That is until I actually post this. At that point I'll lock up the market for Tim Allen rape fetishists and those looking for pictures of fat people at a (non-particular) Wal-Mart in Ohio.

I feel pretty good about that.

Exhibit 6.5

This is a story I am ready to tell.

Heather and I went to her mother's place in California before Christmas. We went to Disneyland. We went to the LACMA and MOMA and In-N-Out Burger. This is not the story.

Before we left we turned off the heat in the apartment with the vague plan of driving out the mice that we hadn't been otherwise able to displace. Like undergraduates returning home between at the semester break, the mice always show up in this apartment around the beginning of December, each year a little wiser and stranger than the previous year's mice. This year, they'd proven surprisingly resilient and we thought a cold apartment might drive them away.

We also let our landlord know that we were going to be gone in case he wanted to do any apartment repairs while the dogs were away. We did this, drove to the airport, and I forgot about the mice and the apartment and the landlord sometime around when I was spinning on the teacups with my face covered in churro sugar. I may have also forgotten about the very idea of a Nebraska.

So we returned 10 days later to a freezing apartment, quickly left for an après ski-themed holiday party, and didn't think anything was unusual until Heather received an email from our landlord that said something to the effect of:

Hey, I don't mind some ritual sacrifice, but I don't think it's safe to leave a pile of matches on the stove. I threw them away.

This confused us. When we wrote back asking for clarification, he stated very matter-of-factly that when he was in our apartment he found a bed of spent matchsticks on top of our stove and, resting ominously in the middle, a mouse head.

This confused us. This frightened us. We hadn't left any matchsticks or mouse heads around, but, sure enough, sitting in the center of our stove were the remnants of some matchsticks. I felt sick, sure that someone had broken into our house. Then Heather called me at work to say that a pound of coffee was also missing, only increasing our hysteria.

Naturally, we assumed coffee-loving satanists had broken into our house.

I immediately started looking at apartments on craigslist. Heather was afraid to be home alone. At home, I checked the television (which the leisurely coffee loving satanist oddly hadn't stolen), and it was on the Food Network when I was pretty sure an episode of The Simpsons had been the last thing we'd watched. Good god, I thought, these coffee-loving gourmet satanists sat on our couch watching Rachel Ray. If they could have, they probably would have taken Rachel Ray's smiling head and left it on our coffee table. As I turned from rechecking the chain lock on our front door, I could almost see her little chipmunk face waiting for me there to remind me that it was possible to make a yummy meal quickly (and that satanists had sat where I watch The Simpsons).

So we called a locksmith before any other animal or celebrity heads appeared in our apartment. He told us that junkies had probably squatted in our apartment while we were gone. This sounded reasonable. He said it happens all the time. This sounded reasonable.

As we prepared to spend one last night in the apartment before we gave it over to the junkie, mouse-sacrificing satanists, our landlord emailed again and said that--on second thought--he thought it was probably just a nest the mice were making since it was above the pilot light and would have been the warmest spot in an otherwise cold house. What about the coffee? I asked Heather. Maybe I was wrong, Heather said. Yeah, maybe.

Me: So you don't think junkies were squatting in the apartment?
Landlord: Who thinks that?
Me: The locksmith told us it happens all the time.
Landlord: Does it?
Me:
Landlord: I'm sorry I thought you guys were people who would make a shrine to a dead mouse in your kitchen.

That conversation happened. Except for the apology at the end. On the plus side, at least we know if we--or any of our junkie satanists gourmet coffee aficionado friends--had done it, he'd be cool with it as long as it wasn't a fire hazard. That's good to know.

Exhibit 6.2

If I don't post for a few days, you should come look for me around the 13th floor of the building where I work. I'm either dead or I've become involved some kind of Murakami-esque world of danger and intrigue. I'm hoping for the latter.

The one good thing about walking the stairs every morning is that on the 5th floor of our building a life insurance company has decided to pump their waiting room music into the stairwell. As no one ever--ever--uses the stairs this is a puzzling decision. It's usually set to a local pop station, but every so often it's godless contemporary country or (godful?) classic rock. Sometimes I hit the floor when there's a commercial on and I have to spend the remaining 10 floors pondering whether or not I really am happy with my last oil change or if I should start going to Jiffy Lube.

This morning I heard the faintest sounds of Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride" as I hit the 4th floor and was able to ride the rock momentum. Suddenly revitalized, I ran all the way to the 6th floor until the song, like the band itself, faded away and I realized, like the band itself, I might not survive the year.

Needless to say, the rest of the white, rock-less floors were profoundly disappointing after that.

Exhibit 4.14

Countdown to GRE Literature Subject Test.

Days left until test: 3
Special Halloween Edition
Halloween Movies as GRE Literature Questions:

After they discover their Aunt Sophie has been imprisoned by their evil Aunt Agatha and that only a set of twins can break the spell, Mary Kate and Ashley set out to free their good aunt with the help of a magic wand.

This accurately describes:
A) "The World Is Too Much with Us"
B) The Wife of Bath's Tale
C) Double, Double, Toil and Trouble
D) Their Eyes Were Watching God
E) The Aeneid

The following are characters: Man Attendant, Dr. Sam Loomis, Power Worker, Sheriff Ben Meeker, Security Guard, Jamie Lloyd.

These are characters from:
A) Halloween II
B) Halloween III: Season of the Witch
C) Halloween IV: The Return of Michael Myers
D) Halloween H2O
E) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Patrick said to his sister, "We need a virgin who speaks German to read the incantation that will get rid of all of these monsters." His sister replied, "I'm failing German." Patrick tells her to read the incantation anyway. When nothing happens, he asks if she's a virgin. "Well," she says, "there's Steve, but he doesn't count."

Also, "Wolfman's got nards."

This excerpt is from:
A) The Way of the World
B) one of The Leatherstocking Tales
C) "In Memoriam A.H.H."
D) The Monster Squad
E) Vanity Fair

Exhibit 4.12

Countdown to GRE Literature Subject Test.

Days left until test: 5
Things I knew about Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 0
Things I know about Elizabeth Barrett Browning: 1 million
Number of authors who if I had been asked when they were alive I would have been off by more than 100 years: 5 (um, sorry, Thomas Gray and others)
William Blake: Dead
Time wasting blog posts: 1
The most shocking date of death: E.M. Forster 1970 (can you imagine him listening to Janis Joplin or watching the moon landing? It just seems wrong. But, if we know anything, it's that wikipedia is never wrong).

Exhibit 2.13

I'm not sure if you've spent enough time studying that Susan Sarandon drawing yet. If you stare at it long enough you'll see your future.

Exhibit 2.11

Watched Batman Begins during a night of Labor Day weekend relaxing. The first third of the movie is Liam Neeson saying things like "You can't fear the fear of fearing those who are afraid of their fear because they fear your fear more than you fear their fear. Fear." At first I thought maybe Bruce Wayne had demons until I realized he was just in love with Liam Neeson.

Fear.