Here's what I did today

First I woke up and got dressed and did all the regular stuff you do when you wake up.

I went to a copy store to get some large papers scanned into jpegs. A friend of mine works there and we talked for awhile about his new baby. He took the papers and said they would be scanned in by Monday; I could come by whenever and pick them up.

I had noticed a new Mexican restaurant next door to the copy store and wanted to try it out, but there was a line out front. I could not tell if the line was to get into the restaurant or if it was people waiting for cars they valet parked, but upon realizing the restaurant had valet parking I decided against eating there.

I went to another Mexican restaurant I have frequented for years and ordered so much food. I read free newspapers and ate. I sent a message to Twitter about how restaurants in that particular neighborhood should not be allowed to have valet parking during the daytime. I considered writing about how the restaurant was a VHS rental place like a year ago, and who are they to be all fancy, but I decided the original, briefer message was funnier and anyway I was going over the character limit.

I went to the college radio station where I DJ and I DJed for an hour. Before and afterwards I went to the campus bar and drank some beer. The show went well and I played several songs I really enjoy. Afterwards, while at the bar, I got a text message from an old friend saying there was "free booze!" at our high school, and some other old friends are there, and I should come by. This weekend is my ten year high school reunion, and there are a bunch of homecoming-type events going on.

I decided that would be fun so I drove to my old high school. On my way I passed another high school, which was hosting some sort of livestock exhibition. There was a big metal structure out front with a bunch of goats in pens, and hay everywhere. I leaned out my window and made two loud goat noises at the goats. I am really good at making really loud goat noises, it's just kind of one of those things. It was really fun. Some of the goats looked up at me as I drove off.

I showed up at my high school and was stopped at the front entrance by an off-duty police officer hired to do security. He asked me if I was here for the play or the alumni event. I told him I was here for the alumni event. He told me to drive straight and I did. I had not been back to my high school more than once or twice since I graduated.

I saw a big outdoor tent set up and people dressed up for a cocktail party. There was valet parking. I asked if I could park my own car and they said it was okay. The event was much more formal than I had anticipated. It is a private school and this was the sort of thing where they try to get alumni to donate money. I think. I don't know. I don't know what it was but it was not what I am used to doing on Friday evenings and I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a rabbit on it and I didn't see anyone I knew.

I walked past everyone around the corner of a building to call my old friend and ask him if he was here or if he had tricked me or what. He didn't pick up so I called him again. Two off-duty police officers hired as security guards came around and asked me what I was doing there. I explained that I was an alumni and here for the alumni event, but realized as I was speaking that I did not know anything about the event I was supposed to be attending. They told me I did not look like I was supposed to be there. I told them I did not know it was going to be so dressy.

The whole time this was happening I was half-laughing because I was trying to figure out the best way to articulate the obvious metaphor to the off-duty police officers. Luckily the group of people I was there to see saw me and everything was kosher. I ended up telling the police officers that I went to the school for seven years and was used to this sort of thing, which wasn't the best thing I could have said but I hope they got the gist - not so much the fact that it was cops, just the general scenario. Anyway they were ultimately very friendly. I walked back to where the big tent was and avoided eye contact with everybody I didn't know. I continued to be dressed the way I was.

I said hi to some people who used to be teenagers with me. Some work at oil companies, one is a lawyer, I think one works at Microsoft. I told people what I do. I made light and pleasant conversation with a half a dozen people. I saw lots of people who did not graduate the same year as I did, talking to each other. There was an open bar and there was lots of food. I had a Bud Light and tried to stay out of the way. I felt very underdressed and out of my element, but in a fun, enjoyable way. Standing outside in the courtyard, looking at the buildings and the trees, I barely recognized the school at all.

I talked to best friend in sixth grade. He was the first friend I made at that school. We were both really into comic books and alternative rock. He's a teacher there now. We had not spoken in years; he says he does not really keep up with our classmates, but he thinks about the old days all the time. I don't know how you wouldn't. We caught up for awhile. It was good to see him.

I asked if he was going to go to our real reunion tomorrow, the ten year thing for our grade. He said he wasn't sure but didn't think so. He is married now with two kids, one pretty much a newborn, so that's what he does now. He was also put off by the fact that they rented out a restaurant patio and they are charging fifty dollars a person. I was put off by that too. He said we should've just bought some kegs and had the party at the school. I thought that sounded really fun. Maybe the cafeteria or something.

I told him that if the school ever needed an alumni guest speaker for chapel he should call me. He said something positive but noncommittal, which was a good way to respond. We laughed about the thing with the police. I told him I wished I'd thought to dress up a little more but was still glad things happened the way they did because now I have that story forever.

I said goodbye to my friend who works for our school and drove home.

An open letter to Charlie Sheen: Please just die

(Note: this was originally written for 29-95.com, my employers for the past couple of years, who were for whatever reasons horrified when I turned it in)

Dear Mr. Sheen,

Sometimes it is hard to make the obvious choices in life. It took you years to cash in on your asshole partyboy image and sleepwalk through a maddeningly popular sitcom that's enabled you to become richer (and higher) than Christ and the Beatles combined. It may have been hard for you to give up on the idea that you might someday make another Platoon (or even The Chase) and lower yourself to do a television program that, by all measurable standards, defines Middle American middle of the road. But look at yourself today, lounging in your indoor swimming pool filled with cocaine and breast implants, relaxing after another endlessly Facebook-quotable interview with The Today Show or CNBC or The Miami Student Times or whoever was next down on the totem pole. You've got to admit that selling out was the right thing to do.

Which is why I'm imploring you to continue embracing the path you have been so vigorously pounding as of late. Please die, Charlie Sheen. Please, please die.

Die spectacularly, violently, in a way that people only dream about. Die publicly, loudly, profanely, nakedly. Don't die like a mere superstar, or even just a plain hero. Ke$ha is a "superstar." A dog who saves a cat's life is a "hero." Die like a visionary artist, or a freedom fighter. Die like a demigod. Die in a way that people will finally understand the Charlie Sheen that only you so far seem to understand; the Charlie Sheen who shoots poetry and magic from his fingertips; the Charlie Sheen whose very essence is pure narcotic toxin too potent for mortals to shoot, snort or freebase; the Charlie Sheen who is whatever the hell else crazy manic bullshit you've been sputtering. Die where there are plenty of people around to photograph and film it.

Construct a helicopter shaped like your flaccid, hungover penis and crash it into your mansion. Self-finance your own Major League 3 (or technically 4, but... no, you're right, it so completely does not even matter) and ride a motorcycle into an explosives-laden bus in the climactic final scene - you'd have to get it right in one take but you can do it because duh, you're Charlie Sheen! Round up every single one of your friends from the past fifteen years (hookers) and reenact that naked rollerskating death scene from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (if you haven't seen it, it's exactly what it sounds like). Pay the half man from Two and a Half Men to chase you through a shopping mall and stab you in the neck. Nobody's going to stop him! People love you, Charlie!

Do whatever you like - I'm sure you've got plenty of better ideas - so long as it ends with you dying until you're dead. And please, try not to kill anybody else while you're at it. Maybe a couple paparazzo. But remember - this is your time to shine, Charlie.

Because it's all about to go downhill. You know that, right? You must know you're peaking... You must be able to feel it in your nigh-invulnerable bones. You can pass as many drug tests as you like - black-market nun urine remains cheap and plentiful - and you can imaginatively threaten as many television executives as there are stars in your head, but eventually the ever-fickle public is going to turn its attention to the next psychotic egotist. Even if you win your lawsuit against CBS, even if you subsequently turn it into an all-pornography network, even if you are allowed to behead Two and a Half Men creator Chuck Lorre and wear his head around your neck like a Flava Flav medallion, people are going to stop focusing their energy on you. The time to act is now, and the smartest thing you can do is clearly to take your own life.

Wrestle a great white shark in a tank filled with liquid pharmaceutical cocaine - and then, after you win (you winner, you!), drink the shark's blood (and whatever may be leftover in the tank) and chastise the attending spectators for their bloodlust and lack of faith in your superhumanity. Then shoot yourself in the face. It will probably take more than one bullet (you = Charlie Sheen) but it needs to be done. Humanity needs to be taught a lesson - nothing can defeat Charlie Sheen, and Charlie Sheen can defeat anything. Why even bother playing out the rest of this Two and a Half Men debacle, or for that matter the rest of your dumb life? Why bother talking to these dullard news reporters, wasting braggadocio that seasoned battle rappers would sell their rims for on the likes of Good Morning America and the guy who used to work for Inside Edition? Why spend so much of your (admittedly inexhaustible) energy convincing the world what, if we haven't figured out yet, we're probably never going to get - that Charlie Sheen is a superhuman creature of power and light, whose bountiful talent and infinite love we have taken for granted like spoiled, ungrateful heathen brats.

The worst case scenario is that mankind learns the error of its ways and vows to take a lesson from you, while you ascend to the Right Hand of God where you shall sit at his side, judging the quick and the dead while a choir of angels provide you with all the sandwiches, massages and handjobs CBS so cruelly withheld. Meanwhile back on Earth, after a prolonged period of mourning, wailing and gnashing of teeth, humanity will unite in their grief, taking the appropriate lessons from your death and your glorious, spectacular life. The Alpha will become Alpha-er, and the rest will get out of their way. Society will realize how wrong it's been to let feebleminded dorks peddle sham concepts like "addiction," "bi-polar illness" and "it is not cool to hit women" for so long. Hookers will at long last flourish in a free-market economy. Dudes will wear sunglasses indoors.

The best case scenario is one that I'm sure you've been suspecting for awhile now - namely, that you are an Immortal and cannot be killed. Save for your increasingly melty candle face, I cannot offer much in the way of an argument against the idea that you will live forever no matter how many times you try to shoot yourself in the face. If ever there were a time to test this theory, it is now. Please, Mr. Sheen. Please. I know you've got another television interview lined up soon. Stab yourself in the eye in front of Katie Couric until you die or defeat death entirely. It must be done. I would help you if I could.

You have so much to offer. Think of all the good in this world, all the joy and all the happiness. Think of all the sorrow and the sadness, all the people who aren't sure where they're going in life or how they're going to make it to tomorrow. Think of all the kindly talk show hosts and pundits who have been there for you these past couple weeks, graciously enabling you to loudly and publicly wallow in your brilliant disease. Think of all your fans, the beautiful nation of blog commenters and Entertainment Tonight rubberneckers hanging on your every word, breathlessly rooting for your glorious victory over CBS and, by extension, your even more glorious self-immolation. Think of the children, Charlie Sheen. Hurry up and die, people are starting to get bored.