The Great New Year Crossword Challenge: A Quest For Perfection

The New York Times Crossword, according to legions of cruciverbalists, is the creme de la creme of American puzzles. Since watching the documentary "Wordplay" in the spring of 2006, I've been haunting the nether regions of the weekday Arts Section, scribbling away at the various acrostics. Looking back, the beginning was shameful- the puzzle increases in difficulty as the week progresses, and those first Mondays and Tuesdays were mildly difficult, Wednesdays were a challenge, and Thursdays and Fridays were impossible.

ALL THIS HAS CHANGED.

My skill has improved gradually, and I'm at a point where a missed box Monday through Wednesday is an anomaly, Thursday success rate is at or near 80%, and Friday hovers around 50%. From where the sun now stands, a perfect week is distinctly possible. I may have already achieved this phenomenon, or perhaps not; I haven't kept track.

But starting next week, the GREAT NEW YEAR CROSSWORD CHALLENGE is on:

**Complete all five puzzles in one business week, Monday through Friday, to perfection, with no missed letters and without reference to secondary materials**

I'll update each afternoon, except for Tuesday, which is January 1st and doesn't require me to work. I'll update Tuesday's puzzle on Wednesday morning.

The stakes: If I fail, I have to clean the doorstep of every man in town for two moon cycles. If I succeed, I choose my first wife from the eligible women of the village.


Also, "Wordplay" is a fun documentary to see if you haven't already. It's like watching the spelling bee, except the contestants are older nerds, with the pain of life well-etched on their faces. The filmmakers follow some of the best puzzlers around in the weeks and months leading up to the climax, when all in question converge on a Connecticut hotel for the annual crossword championship. The finish is dramatic. There are also cameos from famous crossword puzzlers like Bill Clinton and Jon Stewart.

See you on Monday.

Life Lessons for Women

Today I taught a life lesson to a woman on g-mail chat. We can call her Emily.


me: let me tell you something emily
a life lesson
if you were nice
like me
you'd have over 100 dollars in gift certificates
to various dunkin donuts and barnes & noble type places
all from bosses at work, mind you

emstrachan: yeah im getting nothin for xmas

me: instead, you're at home with nothing to your name but a frown and some vague ideas

emstrachan: grinch
way to rub it in

me: people love me
that's the point i'm trying to make

emstrachan: i get it ok!

me: i ask around here about you
nobody knows you
i show them pictures of you
they don't really say much at all
they just give me a look that says "i don't know what to say to this"

emstrachan is offline.

Crass Historical Motherfucker: In the Building!

Yay-yo yay-yo, diggity dayity
cancel all my calls to the rain-drop deity
I know he ain't recognize my spontaneity
like the Pope ain't speaking straight to the laity


Word and power, brothers in things past, I am the Crass (gasp!) Historical (what?) Motherfucker (drop that song, make it long, turn it hostile with a gong!).


Today, brothers, I got some improper shit on the mind. I'm like Vlad the Impaler on a rainy morning when he feeling itchy, dig? Your mind be doing more revolutions than all of Central America since back in the day! My ideas is iller than the Incas after Francisco P. gave them diseases!


First off, yo, before we gets to bullets, I want to address a point. I heard some rattety-tattety-scim-scam-scattety coward-boom-battety Kats on the message boards talking shit 'bout how the CHM ain't truly crass. Say what? Get out my nest with them critiques, blood! If a fruitcake expect me to be getting crass in the modern way, he done ignored the Historical in my name. And I sure as gutters ain't doing no old-school crasstastic material, cuz them fools was dirty beyond what's cool. I got to live in this day and age, heard, so I don't make time with no old school savagery. I'm serious, y'all- medieval brains basically invented forty-six ways to violate a dude in what folks in the know call "the prison way." They only had a mind for one sort of crass behavior, but brother did they expound. You couldn't barely haggle with a crippled dude hawking gourds without the man making promises about your rectum and the town's bluntest object (oftentimes the gourd itself). I'm just saying.

So I crass lively in the middle ground, best I know how. On to the bullets:


*The Crass Historical Motherfucker be wondrin' why any respecting twee-bird would cotton to routine showerin' of a morning. Does the ign'rent fool misunderstand some basic facts about time and washing hoh^ body?

^Let me interrupt myself. HOH is a word adopted by folks of politically correct ideas to mean 'his or her.' You ain't suppose to denote particular gender when talkin' in the universal, and typing out 'his or her' can get bulkier than the Holy Roman Empire in the days of its penchant for overextending. Maybe you think hoh is a bullshit pronoun, but I ask y'all to consider the Amish. Those backward barn-dwelling haters use the pronoun 'hine' on holidays and special occasions. That's some ancient English. If they gonna hold on to old usage like it was a thing, I can't hardly fault no feminist with bad teeth, loud concepts, and armpits like a dude for hatching her own style. I'm on board, Pat (insert your favorite androgynous girl name if you're of a mind).

Back to the thing-which-is-next-to-Godliness. I've known some humans in my day, and not many was nocturnal. We go about our day getting dirty in a thousand ways. This is a fact even Doubting Thomas wouldn't dispute. So what sense does it make to sleep in that filth? Shower by night, fool! Then rest your night hours stationary, like 99.9% of mankind will, and a morning shower is 8 kinds of redundant- as long as you keep a clean bed! I got some ideas 'bout that, too, but I wouldn't want to bore a brother. Point is this: standing under the nozzle in concert with a rising sun is equal parts foolish with sending your Mongol sailboats to Japan in the season of Kamikaze wind. It's bad timing, yo!


*There's a tune out in recent times called "2080" by the band Yeasayer. A dullard who half-reads the CHM, mouthing every word and taking breaks to lick peanut butter from his fingernail, still understands I ain't a homeboy much interested in the future. Such a song title, you'd think, would send me on coughing fits to a dusty museum. But this shit is timeless, yo! It spits more arsenic than Napoleon on Saint Helena, and I mean that in the best way. And much as a dude digs on things historic, I do value an era with buttons that rewind a tune without fuss. Sometimes you want to hear a song 84 times in a row, and let no man tell me that's wrong. Plus, it do beat listening to some frizz-haired prophet-without-a-home preach Leviticus on the gray underground, with his jaundice eyes and above average hysteria potential.


*Riffing on subways, I want to let y'all know of a poster that spouts some serious spurious information. Come as it do from a clothing store called Daffy's, it ain't likely to fool a discriminating man no-how, but still and all I got obligations for even the least of our kind. To a basic point, Daffy's promises "High fashion. Low prices." Maybe that idea holds some charm for you. But I have it on good authority, from a girl who knows more than how to put on a pair of pants, that any dude wearing Daffy's threads might as well be burning a cross among the one group of Crusaders that knew how to fight, far as his chances of impressing go. Don't wear Daffy's!


*The Crass Historical Motherfucker wishes to give props to the AFL-CIO for no special reason other than a feeling of 'preciation. The fellow who works for his scratch is ever vulnerable, past what's proper. Don't forget, my peoples, we're spinning on a planet where men of power kept slaves until modern minds got some higher ideas. If somebody don't protect the steadiest shoulders, the bluest collars, in no time flat they'll be toiling extra hours for the right not to be jailed with men of low mind. Good looking out, AFL-CIO!


*Lastly, an epiphany. The CHM realized of late why a soul with liberal ideas got to wear morals on its sleeve, and why a conservative seems overall reserved on the matter. It hit me, yo: a conservative ain't got to have morals, because hos (he or she) has the smarmy confidence of a thing been proven time and again: money concerns gonna trump all in the end. A liberal is like a Hiroshima school kid shooting rubber bands at the Enola Gay.

Yo, I didn't say it was a happy thing. Some days don't end happy, brothers. Some words bring rain. Some history ain't bear repeating, but that don't mean it won't come 'round no-how.








Nah, fucks to that. Let's end high: the CHM met a female. She was straight wearing a tricorn and handing out pamphlets for a re-enactment of Bastille Day. Instant chemistry. I'll keep a steady reader updated. Big promises and love,

-THE CRASS HISTORICAL MOTHERFUCKER.

An Item to Discuss

No man or woman of the city may call me a follower of pop culture. It would be a ridiculous assertion. I do not while away the hours lauding the latest celebrity triumph or excoriating their mishaps. I keep a respectful distance, recognizing the power while quietly maintaining my polite disinterest.

Yet a man can't keep from reading posters on the subway. It is natural for the eye to wander, as history teaches. Lately, I've been inundated with the idea of Tyra Banks as a talk show host. A former model, Banks is apparently making the leap to television. This is as much as I know. The posters, featuring the star in various smiling poses, suggest an atmosphere of intriguing, impish fun. Words like "Conversationalist" (playing off the idea of a conservationist, which we may safely assume Miss Banks is not) are emblazoned across their center. Another poster says "Gabology," conveying the concept of Banks as an instructor, albeit in a nontraditional field.

Enough description. Here is the plain fact: Tyra Banks has a weak face. She looks like someone who had to watch an aggressive uncle beat a pet dog to death at age seven. Since then, her smile is a defense. She shrinks at meeting new people. Confidence in herself is shattered. She fights a constant battle to forget the harsh world impinging on her purple thoughts.

The hype for her new talk show seems sad and desperate, like a spastic vegan hawking his wares at a gun show in Abilene, Texas. The more we see of Miss Banks, the more eager her promotion, the more we are prepared for her failure. She plainly lacks the composition to hold together a dinner party, much less a television show. Jay Leno, smirking like a fat pasha, will be using her name as a punch line in mere months.

I have a new idea for a poster. It shows America in a post-apocalyptic moment. Tyra Banks and an unidentified man are the last two people on Earth. She is wrapped in black fabric. An earthquake has split the ground before them. The man, with a near-hysterical expression, is hanging from the ledge, having been caught in the new crevice. It is obvious he has protected her in the days since the old world ended, keeping her from catastrophe. Now, having fallen to ill fortune, he merely needs her hand. But Banks, traumatized, can only rock back and forth in the fetal position, gripping her dark cloak. She seems him out of the corner of her eye, but is paralyzed to the point of inaction.

Beneath, the caption reads:

Tyra Banks Will Let This Man Die.


We know you are weak, Tyra Banks.

Expressions!

Shit evolves when I discuss business with Kyle. Today:

"That show is so good, you'll start humping the air."


We have: AN EXPRESSION.

Other examples a person might use:

"Man, that new line of Nissan Altimas make me straight up hump the air."

"This top 40 song is so hot, you'll get orgasms from oxygen."

"That actual orgasm was so poor, I felt like I was humping the air in Denver."




(The air is thinner in Denver. It's not a good place to hump the air.)



In other news, if an office puts exotic trees all around, they're basically telling you they want to make the place a jungle. That means that all the laws of the jungle apply. Be aggressive if you can, and be careful if you can't. Personally, I just released a boa. I don't know what to expect, but havoc is a safe bet.

Oh the Misanthropic Topical Arrangement...

Kelly, get in the OWNED line. Here's me owning her while she tries to apply for a class at an improv theater:



Me: I just applied for an experimental improv class
Her: applied??
Her: how do you apply?
Me: yeah you have to write in and apply
Me: they review everyone
Her: sounds cool
Me: hopefully it works out
Her: what the hell...it doesn't say how to apply...
Her: do you write a letter or what?
Me: you have to do a 200-word paragraph
Her: i don't get how they're supposed to review anything about you
Me: about what your goals are in improv
Me: and like your comedy idols and stuff
Her: oh
Me: i think they just go on the essay
Her: where does it say that?
Me: in the about section on the webslant
Her: fuck man...all i see is to see the instructions below and there are none
Me: did you click the webslant?
Her: what's a webslant?
Me: the part with the star on top
Me: the about section
Her: this is the page i'm looking at: (link)
Her: which part are you talking about?
Me: wait how many times did you refresh
Me: just now
Her: uhh i don't know. i didn't refresh
Me: ok so you're fine
Me: just visit the webslant and click the star
Her: what is a webslant shane
me: by the about section?
me: do you want me to just write your essay?
Her: fucking nevermind




Punchline: There is no such thing as a webslant.


Someone get that girl a weep-dish pizza.

Wicked Gil

Kyle wrote a song. I named it "Mary Girl"


The Flower doesn't think
Does it even know?
The little mary ran up the stairs
Thinking lightly
Like an explosive miracle
Does the past even know?

Mary Girl

Sorry to say
The stub could stick with me
Revolving in tiny little motions
Some Say
'Pansy, you like it that way!"
I'll tell you

I never liked it that way

I'm not too proud to say that I'm okay

Kyle gives me a taste of my own medicine on g-chat.


Kyle: i've got to get rid of a couple Beirut tickets for Wednesday I need to rid of. interested?

Me: The country or the band?

Kyle: THE GAME

Me: HEY-OH

Kyle: you just got p3wed








Someone get me a tear mug.

I got a permit with the city, you should see it sometime

I owned the piss out of Brian Glidewell today on g-chat.


Brian: i've got to get rid of a couple Beirut tickets for Wednesday i need to get rid of. interested?

Me: the country or the band?

Brian: band

Brian: $56 for the pair

me: then nah, not interested

Brian: k










Someone get that son of a bitch a crying pan.