Day of misfortune.

December 26th has never been a great day for me. For some reason I seem to have an incredible string of bad events that have happened in my life all on the 26th. When I was very little my "girlfriend" told me that she didn't like me anymore. It broke my little heart and I was distraught! What ever was I to do! Well I probably went and played with my Lego's, or He-Man action figures. Either way, I think that was the first instance of badness occurring on that day, and if I had known what it held in store for me I would always have slept in and never left my bed on that day. Further December 26th's have been pretty bad, here's a quick list of some of them.

1) My friend once committed suicide when I was living in Florida. He wasn't one of my best friends in the world, but he was still a friend. I can't imagine how badly his parents felt, it must have been terrible. What has always stuck with me about that day, was that I remember some kids on the bus the day before Christmas break teasing him about killing himself. I thought they were joking around, apparently he did not.

2) I once crashed my bicycle on the day after Christmas. It wasn't a horrible bike accident, and I've certainly had worse in my day. I just remember having a rotten cut on my leg that eventually got infected. Stupid bike, always hanging out back of the men's room smoking cigarettes.

3) My cat got run over. His name was Stormy and he was all black. He had a brother, Jake, who was all white. Jake ran away when we moved to Virginia Beach. Before I was ten, I lived in Rhode Island in a big blue farmhouse for a time. It was old and had a big yard and woods right next to it with lots of woodland critters to harass. The perfect place for a pair of kittens to get into all kinds of fun kitten adventures. The only problem with the house was that it was off of a very busy road, and we had a line of evergreen trees my father had planted to keep the noise down. The day after Christmas, Stormy and Jake went across the road to have some kind of kitten adventure on the farm that was located there. Well Jake came home about noon, and we didn't know where Stormy was, at about 5 my father went out to the road and found the poor cat.

4) When I was fifteen I got arrested on the 26th. I was out with a couple of friends and eventually ended up at one of my friend's house. He decided that he needed to go take a smoke and we went out to the overpass near his house. He began throwing small rocks down at cars in the middle of the night onto what is the beltway that runs around London. The cops got a cellphone call from one of the cars he had hit and I got to spend the night in jail. Jail was very cold and they took my shoes. But I did get a cell to myself, which was nice because they gave me a copy of a book of British law that I read. My mom had to pick me up from jail and sit with me while I made my statement to the officers. Merry Christmas mom! Your fifteen year old son got arrested when him and his friend were really drunk.

5) I got rear-ended while I was sitting still at a light. The guy who hit me was driving a Mercedes and he insisted that I had stopped suddenly. Truth was that I had been sitting there about 10 seconds, a fact to which the cop who saw the whole thing was willing to attest to. I didn't have much damage to my car (he had some) but I had to listen to this guy rant and rave at me while before the cop walked over.

6) The train engine of the train set my grandfather gave me died the day after I got it, never to run again. I know that one is kinda minor compared to all the rest. But it was a really nice train set.

Well this year I managed to complete a trifecta of miserable events on this special day. First up, was me re spraining and possibly breaking my ankle. My left ankle, and this time it hurts like the dickens (I have no idea where this expression comes from but I suspect it has something to do with reading the works of Charles Dickens...which I found somewhat enjoyable). Once again I rolled it doing something innocuous but it was very painful nevertheless. When I got home and my ankle was elevated and being iced, I was treated to two more surprises. One of my roomates walked in and told me he was moving out. Before January. With no warning. And he was taking the girl I love with him. I understand his reasons for moving out, but that doesn't make it any more easy on me or the other roomates. I'm especially broken up about Katy having to leave with him. Oh well, life will move on, and we'll just add it to the list of things that happens on this day.

I wonder if I have a day that is the reverse of this day. You know, some date of the year where wonderful things happen. I'm not aware of such a day, but hopefully it exists right? There should be some kind of cosmic balance, where I wake up and something good happens on that day. For me it seems pretty likely that the day is probably February 29th. That's right, my day of cosmic balance in which something good happens every year that day comes around would only happen once every four years. Stupid cosmic balance, stupid leap year, always smoking behind the men's room.

Less Filling

Every time my father and stepmother throw a party I come over beforehand to help them set up. They usually do pretty well but they always forget at least one critical element of a party. When I say they, I mean my father because it is almost always his lack of forethought that ends up forgetting the critical element. For a man who is so big on having so much oversight, he oftentimes forgets fundamental necessities. Like trying to bake a cake and forgetting the flour, that's my father in a nutshell. In the past things left undone before I got to the house and realized the error and then had to fix them myself:
1) No ice 15 minutes before the party starts.
2) Forgot to pick up hor'devours from the restaurant which was a 15 minute drive away (I did not get a ticket).
3) After having set up all the drinks and food, I asked my father where all the non-alcoholic mixers and such were...he hadn't bought any...
I'm not sure what they will do when I move away, fly me in?

The latest christmas party my father had at his house. I arrived and while they were going to set up the food and whatever else. I was tasked with the simple job of putting up the christmas tree...which you would think is a task that would have been completed before hand considering they had the tree for 3 days. But regardless I set about my task. The ornaments that my father have are quite nice, and I marvelled at each one of them as I placed them on the tree. I tried my best to decorate the tree well, but my aesthetic taste is oftentimes lacking.

While I was pulling out the ornaments and putting them on the tree, I noticed a very nice Lehigh University Ornament. I looked at it and wondered where the hell they got that ornament from. So I asked my stepmother when they got it and she replied, "You gave that too us for christmas a couple years ago." I had honestly forgot that I had given them this magnificent ornament, and I felt dumb. To my step mom it might have seemed that I was trying to backhandedly brag about my good taste but that was not the case. I must admit it is somewhat awkward to really admire something someone has and then have them tell you that you were the one that gave it to them. I wonder if you did something bad to someone and forgot about it how would you feel? "Hey man where did you get that crazy scar?" "You gave it to me you asshole." Or even better, "Whoa who put that dent in your dog/mom." "You did you asshole."

The all time record

I was going to write a long post today but instead I've been hamstrung by a telephone. I swear if I get just a couple more phone calls, then I will have spent more % of my day on the phone then ever before. I seriously have never received this many calls at work. At least 5 times today I have gotten a call while taking another call. I wonder what the most time someone has spent on the phone is in a day? Some telemarketer racking up 23.5 hours? Some newlywed couple separated for a day? Who knows, it's probably some poor IT person stuck to a phone working a double shift at the Adobe helpdesk.

Also, I'm getting worse. At everything. I've finally realized that I'm getting worse at my job. I didn't think that was possible but sure enough, I'm becoming bad at what I do. Which is a shame because of all the things I'm getting worse at the one thing that I could always hang my hat on was being good at my job. So in addition to getting worse at among other things: sports, flirting, social grace, cumulative knowledge, and movie trivia. I am also getting worse at my job. Soon I'll be a puddle of sludge, unable to have any redeeming qualities. I'll look like the brother from Weird Science (Bill Paxton) after he gets turned into a pile of mutant garbage. Side note, apparently Bill Paxton is the only man to be killed by a Predator, Alien, and Terminator. i kinda wish I had that on my resume...although my resume will shortly be pretty simple, "2008-Current, Human Sludge". Nice, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

Violated

So someone made me aware that for the past several weeks my myspace account has apparently been sending comments to other people advocating websites. Granted, I would shill for Viagra if they would pay me. But since I'm not getting paid and my name is being used to promote products I have nothing to do with I'm a little bit pissed. So I changed my password and hopefully it won't happen anymore. Luckily I have different passwords for virtually all of my accounts everywhere but I guess I need to rotate all 592 of them. I can't imagine how pissed I would be if my identity got stolen.

I'll update more this week, since my legion of fans (1) seems to want constant updates. I even promise to try and make some of it funny. Also The Boondocks sucks.

Angels

On monday someone called me and told me that I should watch the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. I didn't really want to but then after much badgering she made me agree to watch it and take notes. I'm quite thankful that she suggested such a thing. There's something strange about a single guy watching a lingerie fashion show by himself, something that is akin to a guy looking at porn alone. Not quite as bad but not exactly within the normal lines of what is deemed acceptable. Then again it was on network television so I guess socially accepted norms are somewhat out the window in this case. Regardless I didn't feel like being some scumbag ogling pretty girls with my hands down my pants (it's comfortable, don't ask) so I forced two of my roomates to watch it with me (the couple I live with, not the other two guys). Needless to say I kept being silly the whole time with my never ending running commentary that included catty comments about the models and the ridiculous wings they were wearing and criticizing various pieces of clothing. All in all it was pretty funny for me to pretend that perhaps some of these models weren't that attractive or acceptable by my standards. The truth is that although the typical model physique isn't my preference, there's no way in hell that if any of those 6 ft. + tall stunning women asked me to dance that I would turn them down.

After watching the show I had several thoughts which I will attempt to relate here through my words...in typical blog fashion...(quick Marty disguise your poor writing with a cute picture of a cat!)

(Ahh yes, the kitten mellow, an excellent distraction! Surely that will dissuede anyone from thinking you are weird for writing a blog about women's underwear!)

What does it say about your lingerie and fashion in general when the wings you have the models wear are actually cooler and more interesting then the outfits? I mean some of those wings were really spectacular and must have taken forever to imagine or put together. I kept wondering what they were really trying to sell to the viewer. I mean it seems to me that there probably isn't THAT much of a call for exotic or outlandish wings to wear with your lingerie. "Gosh honey, it's really nice that you put on all this incredibly enticing underwear for me, but you know that I can't be fully aroused without you also wearing ever more extravagant sets of wings to match." I'm not saying that this conversation doesn't happen, but I think most men would a) be happy enough that they were getting some and b) be especially pleased that their partner felt the need to dress up in something particularly tantalizing without the addition of wings. Which is not to say that lingerie is just for men's enjoyment, far from it, but I don't typically wear super expensive nice underwear so it is hard for me to extol the virtues of wearing some of these things from a women's perspective. But I'm sure there is something to be said for wearing lingerie in a non-bedroom setting, I just have no experience with it...as far as I'm going to reveal. On the other hand you certainly don't see women walking around town wearing wings that you saw on the Victoria's Secret Fashion show along with their business suits and stockings. Although to be fair that would give people a better idea of the undergarments a woman might be wearing. But what if she was wearing a really old pair of wings, or even worse, wings that were from last season's catalogue? That opens up a world of questions I'm just not prepared to comment on.

I thought that the Spice Girls are actually much better looking now as a whole then they were 10 years ago. I mean there are exceptions but the group as a whole looks pretty good and in my opinion it doesn't hurt that some of them have put on some weight. It seems to me though that if you are going to sing at a holiday fashion show you ought to somehow make your costumes fashionable, or holidayy (holidayie, holidayesque, holidayeeeee). Instead they optioned to wear some form of pseudo-military costume that left me wondering why they were wearing it. Even their backup dancers were dressed in military uniforms and yet I had trouble making the connection. Also I expected them to sing "In the Navy" or something military related (sing is a relative word because it seemed to me that they were pretty obviously lip-synching) maybe something holiday related, instead they chose an arbitrary song from their past about what they needed in a guy. The whole "including the Spice Girls" gimmick seemed a bit confusing to me, I mean was that supposed to draw in extra viewers? Where does the "Victoria's Secret fashion show model watcher" segment juxtapose with the "Spice Girls fans"? I'm not sure how one drives the other, unless listening to the Spice Girls croon makes you want to go out and buy lingerie.

The lingerie itself was nice I guess, if somewhat uninspired. Some of it I would go so far as to call uninspired, ordinary, run-of-the-mill, mediocre, and average (thank you thesaurus). I mean it's somewhat crass of me to call any lingerie unimaginative but this is supposed to be really prime stuff, and some of it was, but quite a bit was less than what I would think is up to standards, there were one or two pieces that I thought was straight out of a bland Fredrick's of Hollywood store. Great way to save costs to be sure, but somewhat difficult to pass off in a fashion show to the discerning eye (and trust me I have an extremely discerning eye when it comes to women's underwear!!!!!). Some things were spectacular and made me wish that I got to see someone in an intimate way wear that for me (plus the wings obviously because I just can't be impressed by an attractive woman wearing only special underwear) but I was less impressed by those pieces as I was shocked by the stupid looking pieces. Also I should point out how much it makes me cringe to see the cost of a piece of string with a small patch of cloth attached to it, but hey, some times you just have to live as frivolously as possible.

This show also reminded me how long it's been since I was able to see someone wearing these kinds of outfits for my benefit. Jesus Christ it's been awhile and that's as sobering an indictment of my personal life as any. Not that it would be something I ever expect out of someone who was with me, it's just been awhile. And as I was reminded when I was told about the show, maybe it's time to relent and go buy myself some "love". I think they hang out on "L" street.

Para doom

Saturday morning I woke up at about 5am and was laying in bed considering reading till it was time to go to the gym and play racquetball. A little before 5:30 the side of the house started rumbling. Slowly at first but in very short time it was shaking the entire side of the house and I thought my window was going to break, mind you I live in the basement so the idea of something shaking the basement walls is pretty ridiculous. I could also hear the sound of somebody's bed hitting the wall with fairly rhythmic timing. I naturally assumed someone upstairs was having fun with their pants off and that it was just a little more exuberant fun then normal. It was also a little bit early for any of my roomates to be awake but I figured that maybe they woke up early and were feeling a bit randy so other then them shaking the side of the house so hard they they nearly cause damage I didn't think much of it. So after about a minute it stopped and I picked up my book and began reading and when it was time I went to the gym and "played" racquetball, although I was terrible so more appropriate verbiage would be "sucked at".

When I got home my roomates were just stirring so I went to go make fun of whomever it was that moved the house at 5:30 in the AM. One roomate had his girlfriend over but he said he had nothing to do with the commotion, so I poked my head in my other roomate's room to find him balled up in a corner of his bed with the lights on. I asked him what was going on and he said that he had night terrors and it had scared him so much that he had shaken the entire house in his nightmare. I asked him what his nightmare was about and he told me that it was about giant centipedes. Giant centipedes...that might be the scariest thing I've ever heard. I happen to have met plenty of non-gargantuan centipedes and they creep me out. For one they look terrifying, and second they are fast, lightening fast. One time I turned on the light in my room only to watch a centipede go from the middle of my back wall to the window across the room in like a second. With my firsthand dealings and acquaintances with these bugs I can tell you that hunting them is dangerous and creepy, so I have no problem with my roomate being scared by enlarged versions of these monsters.

Just the thought of a centipede crawling on my raises the hairs on my neck. The thought of being chased by it's larger cousin is simply terrifying. It's just one more thing to keep me up at night (oh like I totally need help with that). My roomate said that in addition to being chased by the centipedes he also had to ride on cowboy style...ick. No chance you would ever get me to do anything but shoot a giant centipede with a rocket launcher. It's possibly the most terrifying dream I've ever heard of or imagined. Far more terrifying then the dream that you woke up late for a test well after you graduated college. Nothing with giant multiple legs and segments is trying to chase you in that dream, all you have to face there is failure which can be faced in non-dreams every day. The worst part is that what if my roomate turns out to be able to see into the future. Then in the not to distant future we're going to have to be able to deal with these nightmares. That's why starting today I've decided to stock up on industrial quantities of insecticides and also lubricant. The insecticide is for the giant bugs, the lubricant is for personal use...just kidding...about one of the two...guess which one?

Giant fear inducing bugs aside, I felt bad for my roomate so I took him to lunch at an all you can eat Indian buffet and patted his hand while we talked about rainbows and fluffy bunnys. Giant man eating fluffy bunnies that have teamed up with the centipedes to eat us all.



Below is a link from The Onion. I love The Onion and this article is especially hilarious because I've had thoughts similar to this.
http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/this_is_the_point_in_the_blow

Laziness taken to an extreme level

I'm wearing a suit today, which isn't so weird because I wear suits pretty often. But normally when I wear a suit it is because of something special going on at work, a meeting or something. Today however I'm wearing a suit because I was too lazy to pick out a pair of dress pants and shirt and match them with a tie. I was getting dressed and my mind wondered what the heck I was going to wear and I decided to wear a suit because it requires absolutely no independent thought other then picking out a tie (I'm wearing a solid black tie today). "Huh, I wonder which pants I should wear today...aww fuck it I'm just going to throw on this suit, I'm to lazy to play a matching game." You have to be pretty lazy to actually end up getting more dressed up then you would normally to avoid work. It's like if you were too slothful to go out and get something to eat so you ended up cooking an elaborate 3 course meal. It is difficult to come up with other similes for this but I think you get the point.

Different dress shirt makers have different qualities from other dress shirt makers. The shirt I'm wearing today is made by a company who makes the sleeves on each shirt longer then normal and also makes the shirt longer at the bottom. Normally this wouldn't be a problem...The suit I'm wearing is strangely tailored in several different aspects. One of the oddities is that the sleeves are shorter than any other dress jacket I wear. This combined with the shirt I'm wearing makes it look like I'm wearing a jacket that is drastically too small, and the shirt I'm wearing has sleeves that are far too long. I actually knew in advance that both articles of clothing had these oddities, and was a cognisant enough to fix this in advance or plan ahead? No, I was too preoccupied with being lazy to put 2 and 2 together, so now I look silly to those who are paying attention.

Great story right?

Zippers

I realized while walking through the snow on the way to work that I was wearing maybe the most zippers I've ever worn at one time. I had on 11 zippers, 13 if you could my backpack. 6 on my jacket, 4 on my fleece, 1 on my jeans. It occurs to me that maybe I should have outfits with more zippers then 11. I mean I could easily have another 2-3 on my fleece and jacket, and maybe get some jeans with zippers for pockets, and maybe I could get some boxers with a zipper? Maybe some zipper based gloves. I have no idea why this occured to me, I'm curious now about how many zippers people have worn max in everyday outfits...Maybe i'll dedicate my life to finding out about people who wore an outfit to work with 20+ zippers.

Edit- My fortune cookie at lunch gave me this cryptic message, "Your luck has been completely changed tobay." No idea what that means, and it's not a mispelling on my part. I've got to find out what "tobay" is, or when...I don't think it has anything to do with zippers, or does it?

Necessity is the mother of invention

I was walking through the mall today on my way to get a milkshake (obvious right, because cold weather + snow = milkshake time. Not to mention that I just found out that thursdays are "Thirsty Thursdays" when all shakes are 1/2 off) when I saw something that I've seen a number of times before. A man with a walker who had cut up tennis balls on the back two legs.

I'm not critical of the practice, it must certainly provide some sort of benefit or else nobody would ever do it. But I actually think that I see more walkers with tennis balls on them then not. Which raises the question why doesn't the company or companies that manufacture walkers change their design to encorporate something like cutting out two tennis balls provides the user. I mean it would only make sense right? If I owned a business and saw people making fundamental changes to the things I sell I would change the product to fit their needs.

It makes you wonder if something far more dire is going on. Is there a bloodpact between old people and tennis ball manufacturer's that makes former tennis players have to find inventive ways to use their tennis balls once they are unable to continue the sport? Are the walker barons (owners of walker making businesses) bound by principle that they will not yield because of a design once thought perfect? Is there a law on the books that forces all walker users to place tennis balls on the back legs of their walkers of be in defiance of the law? Does that mean that there are wandering packs of people using illegal walkers? Groups of elderly people roving the earth trying to capture all of my lost or unused tennis balls? Because if so I'm scared, and you should be too.

I kill you

Note to people living with me. Please empty your beer/champagne containers before you put them in the recycling bin. That way when I take it out at o'dark thirty this morning my right leg doesn't smell like stale alcohol all day. Sure I know what your thinking, that recycling bin is so jacked up it won't matter if I leave liquid in it because it will just leak out on the floor! Well this time it didn't, and now I get to smell like a wino all day.

Some other things that have come to my attention:
1) I'm losing my hair, and it's time to get real about my receding hair line. For example I need a haircut on every part of my head except the top...
2) I badly need a haircut. Especially because I'm beginning to look like I have one of those sweet receding hairline mullets.
3) I am so lazy right now it's not even funny. Too lazy to shave, fold my laundry, play video games, eat properly all the time, get my hair cut, go on dates (ever), etc. I don't remember a time in my life when I felt less motivated, it even carries over into things like my blog, I've got like 4 or 5 half written blog posts. My energy has just been sucked dead the last couple of weeks and the cause could be lack of sleep, but you'd figure that might have manifested itself before now as a problem.
4) The dog doesn't like me :(
5) I need to water my plant this evening but when I get home I will forget or be too lazy.
6) OH GOD I'M LOSING MY BEAUTIFUL HAIR!
7) I hate Christmas music already this year and I've still got aways to go.
8) I've had a headache for like 6 days straight and it's annoying.

Free Tie

On windy days like today wearing a tie can be hazardous, and most people wear a tie clip or something else to make sure their tie stays in place. Well not me, I prefer to free tie (the tie equivalent of free ballin') and let my tie do what it pleases. It flutters in the wind over my shoulder without restraint and in open defiance to the establishment and the man. It's like if I had long hair in the business world except in this case I let my tie be the long hair as it sways in the strong winds. You pigs will never make me keep my tie in an orderly fashion, I will never submit to your conventional tie wearing styles. I'm going to keep wearing my tie how I want, and let it do what it wants. I'm such a rebel it is scary, I know just by reading this you are afraid of my independent and anti-authority tie wearing conventions. Well I ain't never gonna stop baby, not for you, not for anyone, my tie is going to live free as long as I draw breath in this mortal world.

Uhh...thanks?

Saturday night I went to the grocery store to get dinner and some other sundries (for information on my life read between the lines here, I was getting dinner, by myself, on a Saturday night). I picked up some precooked chicken and some other things and went to checkout. As the cashier rung up the chicken she looked at me and asked, "Have you ever had this before?" I naturally assumed that she was about to endorse how good this chicken was about to be because I've never had someone who I was buying something from tell me something negative about my food purchase.
"No, why?" I responded.
"Because it is the worst chicken I've ever had."
"Oh...thanks I guess."
"Oh I mean, well maybe you will think it's good, who knows maybe I just got a bad batch."
"Uhh yeah, if it sucks I'll put it in a salad or something."
Then she checked me out and I walked out with my terrible chicken.

She didn't give me the opportunity to go get something else. She just told me that I had made a terrible selection, how bad it was, and let me waddle out the door on my merry way. Well fuck me very much for your opinion on my food selection even though it may prove correct. I think there's a reason nobody has ever told me something discouraging about a food product I was about to consume from their store, it's because my expectations would be automatically lowered before I even took a bite.

Compliments? No thank you...

Couple things instead of a long post which I will do when I get home.

1) My yogurt exploded all over my work clothes on the way to work. How awesome is that? I mean not only did I miss out on my breakfast but I also forgot to put it in a bag so it was free to explode in my backpack on the bikeride in! Oh man I was so pumped when I saw that my work clothes were covered with my breakfast! "Fuck yes! I get to wear yogurt soaked clothes all day this is fucking fantastic! The only way my day could start off better is if I ran head first into a filing cabinet!" So I did that and now I have a bump and yogurt stained clothes, and I look pretty terrible which is no change from how I normally look except for the bump on my head.

2) Someone in another department sent me an e-mail this morning asking me to do something so that they could finish a task. I got the e-mail and did my part of what they needed in 2 minutes, and sent them an e-mail that told them it was done and asked to please let me know if they needed anything else. They sent me back an e-mail that said, "YOU ROCK". I looked at it for a second and then started drafting an e-mail to explain to them that I did not in fact rock and that perhaps they had a slightly jaded opinion since I'd helped them out so fast and maybe they needed to contact me more often to see my lack of rockinness (rockin' ness? rockiness? ROCKINNESS? rockability? rockitude...). The e-mail was about a paragraph long when I decided to just let it go and accept the compliment at face value without questioning the criteria by which my status had been established. Because frankly I rock about as much as a dead childhood pet at the moment (oh my god, he goes to work, goes to the gym, then goes home and reads or whatever...he's a rock star!). I think I should just be willing to accept compliments more readily, and also I should get some face paint and some drugs...and maybe learn to play an instrument...maybe a neon green wig.

Oink Oink

Most people freeze up when they have to talk to police, something about the uniform or some ingrained sense of respecting authority. Whatever it is most people act noticeably different when faced with the prospect of talking to a police officer. I minored in talking to police officers in college, police affairs if you will (that would be such a cool subject). I've learned the ins and outs of getting what you want out of cops, cracking jokes and also being an asshole/making fun of them and getting away with it. It doesn't always work but honestly these guys are just working and it's ok to razz them if they are being unreasonable dicks because just wearing a uniform doesn't give you the right to be a jackass. I do appreciate the safety and service they provide just like I appreciate all members of the military, post office, garbage collectors, etc... but there's a difference between protecting and serving, and using your authority for no other reason than to entertain yourself. When such situations occur (and they do) it's time for me to let them know how inconsiderate they are being.

Saturday night I got pulled over at about 7:30 after taking a right turn at the intersection of two major roads. The cop threw his lights on and turned on his mega powerful search light and aimed it at my side view mirror so that I couldn't see. he then trundled up to my window with a stick up his ass and informed me that I had not come to a complete and total stop before taking that right turn. My first thought was, wow this guy must be really bored, because there wasn't that much traffic and I don't think I did anything that was that bad. I'm sure I didn't come to a 3 second complete stop, but I am sure I stopped and looked before turning. Either way I knew I was getting a ticket for something that I wouldn't normally and although I deserved it by the letter of the law, my impression was that this guy was being overly obnoxious for something else that had happened. So I gave him my license and registration and he went back to his car to write up my ticket, but he kept his light aimed at my mirror and it was really hard for me to see anything.

After about a minute of moving my head around to try and not be blinded I got out of the car and walked to his window and knocked on it.
"Would you mind turning off that light, it's blinding me."
"I have this light for my protection sir, I needed to make sure nothing suspicious was going on. You might have had weapons-(cut off by me)"
"Well I don't and since you already saw that I would appreciate it if you could turn it off because it's blinding me."
"Yes sir, sorry about that."
"No problem, also if you'd like I probably have a crossword puzzle or sudoku book in the back of my car if you are bored and want to do some paperwork." (You should have seen his face after I said this, he was pissed. But I was pissed too.)
"No thank you, now please return to your vehicle, I will be with you in a minute."

A couple of thing here, first what I did was highly questionable, and if he'd decided to he could have arrested me for leaving my vehicle. I figured he wouldn't because I'd been polite when he first came to the car. Second, he was entirely within his procedural rights to keep that light on, but he didn't have any reason to given that he already had his headlights on and he had seen that I posed no real threat. Third, I'm sure I probably, by the letter of the law, deserved a ticket for the way I took that turn. It's a stupid thing to give someone a ticket for and while I was willing to accept his attitude (which sucked) I was not willing to accept him blinding me while writing a normal traffic ticket. Look we all get bored at work, but when I get bored I don't go around giving out expensive tickets for borderline offenses. "Uhh Wendy you didn't replace all the staples in my stapler when you used it, that's going to be $85 dollars or a trip to court." If he tagged me for being in a residential zone, which is possible because I was on the borderline of one, then I'm going to court, and I'm going to sass his ass in court. Why? It's not because I really care about getting a ticket or worry that I won't be able to pay. It's because I enjoy the hell out of being sassy to cops when they are being jerks. So yes, I'm a petty small minded douschebag sometimes but everyone already knew that.

The funny thing is that I almost got a ticket later in the evening for almost the same thing (taking a right turn in front of an oncoming cop without stoping completely). But I hesitated and waited for the car to pass before turning and it turned out he was a cop and probably would have given me a ticket. So thanks to the first officer for making me mind myself when taking a right turn. You saved me getting a second ticket...

Someone kill the radio in my head.

So many things I want to write about, so much sloth, so we'll get to them eventually. Sunday night I was pleasantly surprised by how well the Eagles played. I'm sure my roomates wouldn't agree since I was forced to yell and such while they were trying to sleep but whatever. After the game I was left in an emotionally drained mood and I was tired as hell, you would think that would lead to sleep right? Well you would be very wrong...shame on you. The next 6ish hours were spent sitting in my bed thinking, thinking specifically about one event in my life. This event has been going around in my head for the last 6 months in my head and you would think by this time that since I've thought about it from every angle, I wouldn't need to think about it any more. You would think that the emotion and the rehashing of every detail would be long past, and that I would be done scrutinizing myself. Well I'm not done doing those things, as apparently my mind seemed to think that once again, for what seems like the 1000th night in a row, it was all I could think about. That and the obnoxious songs running through my head...but more on that later. I finally fell asleep at about 5am, 15 minutes before my alarm went off, which I didn't wake up to. And I slept right through till 630, which by then I was late for work. I fucking hate being late to work, but what I hate even more is what awaited me when I woke up, which was another terrible group of songs running through my head.

We all get songs stuck in our head, it happens from time to time. Whether it be some long gone favorite you heard a part of recently or the most recent pop hit on the radio. My head is a constant concert, and we get artists from all over the spectrum of music, it's usually a rockin' good time. It is a good mix and usually it doesn't bother me when music is stuck in my head, because normally it is good music. But ever since the disappearance of my ipod I haven't been listening to much music at all. Also, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the music that gets on my mind and stays there at all hours of the day has changed. Where it used to be songs I enjoy or thought were pretty good, now it has changed to a greatest hits of the 2000's mix of shitty annoying songs that I hate. I'm not sure where the hell I'm channeling this awful racket, but there it is, stuck in my head all the time.

There is probably a common theme to the songs, something in the lyrics, but I hate each and every one of them so much that I refuse to find out what it is. Whoever the DJ in my head is, he needs to be replaced, perhaps with a bullet. The worst part is that most of these songs are songs I not only hate, but didn't listen to when they were popular. So where did I learn the fucking tunes and lyrics? With all the other shit going on you would hope that at least the inside of my head would remain loyal and cool to me, playing songs I like, but now even that has betrayed me.

Arts and Crafts Day Hooray!

Part of my job involves signing documents that are worth considerable amounts of money to other government institutions. Some of these places put special rules on the documents they receive and they try to impose what they will or will not accept. One of these places, I won't mention which, has special rules that make them hate me everytime I send them a document that has some boilerplate rules on the second page that they don't want to see. They call me and tell me, "Marty we hate you and we don't want to see these rules you have on your document and you smell bad." I can't change the boilerplate because it is populated automatically. So that leaves me with the option of arguing with them that they should ignore these rules since it doesn't apply to them, or allowing them to change the document. Either way takes more of my time then I would prefer. So I came up with a third solution, and it's lots of fun!

But every time I do this I feel like it's arts and crafts day back in kindergarten! What happens is I print out the document, then take the page with the offending rules, and cute a slip of paper to cover up the inch and a half (approx) area where these rules are on the document. I take that covered sheet over to the copier and print out a new copy that should have the rules they don't like blanked out. But of course the first time I do it the sheet slips and I end up covering things I shouldn't and I have to do it again. Then on the second try it goes a little crooked and it shaves off most of what needs to go away but maybe leaves like a sliver of a sentence. So then I have to get rid of that. But eventually I have a reasonably neat new copy of that page. It makes me want to get out some glue and sprinkles and make glue drawings of like an eagle or something and attached that to the back of the document with a statement like, "Hey I made this for you guys while I was signing this document, I hope your whole office enjoys it!" And if everyone did it then I could like, hang up my favorite pieces around the office, and when someone came by I could be like, "Oh yeah, that's my favorite, I got it from my buddy at the Department of Homeland Security, he's got a real talent for line drawing/financial management documents."

How cool would that be? Different government organizations trading artwork they made themselves with the mundane documents and memos they send around. Of course then people would start making up ridiculous rules about what we could and couldn't send them, "All cross stitch patterns must contain less then 10% red thread." or "All crayon drawings must go through an approval process from your legal staff before we accept them." But that would lead to things like me getting a call from the legal staff, "Marty, was this supposed to be a drawing of a dinosaur? Because if so it is wildly unacceptable to our standards here. You need to colour inside the lines..." Only government bureaucracy could make arts and crafts no fun.

I need a portable thought collector

I saw an advertisement several months back that eschewed the many virtues of some random cellphone. One of the amazing qualities of this cellphone was the ability to blog on the go with it. I laughed and wondered who the hell would ever need that, I mean who needs to blog on the go? Well after "writing" a blog for several months I realize how amazing a tool it would be and I regret not having a device that would allow me to blog on the run. The number of ideas I come up with, then forget, then remember again, then forget, then remember partially is astounding. Or I'll think I have a great idea on the way home from work or something and when I get home I wonder what the hell my awesome idea was. So I'm sorry for mocking the ability to blog on the run, I now understand the value and wish that I had this capability. Just add it to the long list of gadgets I want but don't need (less of a receding hairline, new car, girlfriend, rocket boots, new workout shoes, etc.). Oh well, it's not like my blog would overall be better off if I was to remember these ideas, the only way it could be better off is if I were to cease writing it!

Yuck

I was going to write about facial hair or sweaters, but I saw something this morning that just boggled my mind. When I bought my BREAKFAST this morning the man in front of me purchased the following items: 4 cans Redbull(tm) energy drink, one large bag Lays(tm)Salt and Vinegar potato chips. I asked him if those were all for him and he said yes, that was his breakfast. One can of Redbull makes me feverish and sends my system into shock, I can't imagine what four cans would do to you. At the very least it would likely put you over the edge in several nutritional daily recommended values. I can say with some confidence that if I were to consume four cans of Redbull in a day (much less for just my breakfast) I would die. No exaggeration, I would outright die.

To compound the fact that he got 4 energy drinks, upon completion of his transaction (that was over $10) he opened the bay of chips. Walked over to the condiments counter. And poured hot sauce into the bag. He then gingerly walked out into the rain and beagn eating his chips. I've never tried Salt and Vinegar chips with hotsauce, but I'd imagine that it isn't the best breakfast. To each their own and all, but this guy's diet is revolutionary. And not the good kind of revolutionary (overthrowing your oppresors), the bad kind (a vending machine full of used schoolgirl underwear).

He also purchased a pack of gum, and by my calculations it is going to take at least one pack to cover this man's breath and gastric emissons (from his mouth) after consuming 4 redbulls and a bag of hotsauce chips.

Out going

I don't understand sometimes why I leave this house to go out and hang at a bar or club for the night. It always ends in me having no fun and having my wallet slightly emptier, and to be frank I could be having no fun in the comfort of my own home which is considerably less expensive. Maybe it's because I stopped drinking or maybe it's just that those activities don't appeal to me anymore but let's make a list of the pro's and con's of both staying home and going out to a club.
Going out to a bar/club:
Pros: Get to see lots of exotic people. Sometimes you get to watch some jackholes get in stupid fights.
Cons: Your out $31 for cover charge, buying drinks for two girls, and tipping a dollar for a glass of water. You get to listen to a shitty 80's band do covers of songs you hate and are sick of hearing. You get to be jostled by the large crowd and drunk people spill crap on you. Girls talk to you to get drinks and then shut you down at the end of the night when it comes time to get their number. You can't hear a goddamn thing and your ears are ringing the next day. You end up taking care of drunk people/friends, which gets old. You get your coat stolen.

Staying at home:
Pros: It's cheap. Your ears don't hurt afterwards.
Cons: You just hang out by yourself doing the same thing you do every night (try to take over the world).

So as you can see, there are a bunch more cons to going out to a bar/club and they far outweigh the benefits. Staying at home and being lonely has the side effect of you feeling like a desperate loser, but the feeling is a little bit better then getting shot down by girls and going home desperate and lonely with the feeling of rejection. On the other hand that money isn't going to spend itself on frivolous evenings on the town! I'm not sure when I lost the desire to go out and have "fun" but that feeling is dead, and every time I do go out it ends up sucking.

Union blues

This writer's strike situation really highlights another issue that I have in general, and in writing about it I'm going to reveal some of my political views. Which are views that I keep very closely guarded even to friends and loved ones. The use of unions to squeeze an industry, possibly until it dies, is one of the biggest problems I have with the whole union structure. I'm not against unions, a group of workers banding together to strengthen their interests is fine, in fact it is a completely necessary tool in some industries. However, oftentimes a union gets so caught up in fighting for the little bits and pieces that it fails to see the overall picture. What happens then is that the union begins to bite the hand that feeds it, and sucks life from the industry that the workers serve. Instead of working to better the industry, which would in turn help the workers, the union can, and oftentimes will, cause unrepairable damage to the organism which provides them their precious jobs to begin with. The goal of getting what they want, however small it might be, seems to blind the union and galvanize it against any form of logic or reasoning.

Take the steel industry as an example. The steel industry was one of the major things that this country was built on, a vast moneymaking empire that was a juggernaut for this country and it's success over the last century. Yet for all intents and purposes the steel industry is dead in this country. Where once the steel companies were Goliaths in this nation, now there is only one or two companies in the U.S. (Nucor being the only real one that exists, also the only steel company in this country that has a great philosophy check them out) that survive, the others having faded into obscurity or gone away altogether. The U.S. now largely imports the majority of the steel we use, and if a world war were to ever break out, we would be largely in trouble when it came to our steel needs. Two things (in my opinion) essentially killed the steel industry in this country. Unions, and lack of long term investing.

The lack of long term investing is evident in almost all of the industries in this country. Investors are rarely interested in putting forth the capital to improve an industry for the long term future, this would actually require that the investor remain patient and overall they would make more money in the long run. U.S. investors have historically gone for the quick buck, investing their money and making the quick dollar and then going off to spend their capital gains. The U.S. steel industry suffered from this much in the same way the auto industry is now. What the industry really needed was to upgrade all steel making facilities, make them more efficient, make them better, make them competitive with new technologies. Instead we ended up using patchwork investments to mend what we had, and just keep the great monster moving in small intervals instead of upgrading it for the long journey, and eventually the monster died from age and unions. It also didn't help that the U.S. helped build steel mills abroad after WWII that were more advanced then what we had. But a long term investing strategy of updating plants, and improving things would have helped the U.S. to still be the best steel producing nation in the world. I say helped, because even with those improvements it is unlikely that the steel industry would have survived with the financial pressures the unions placed on the companies.

The unions didn't have the foresight to see what their demands would do to the steel industry in this country. It wasn't all the union's fault, in fact management failings had a large part to do with it because of the unreasonable way that management had dealt with unions in the early part of the industry. The unions in the steel industry demanded high benefit concessions before the 1980's. Such lofty and unreasonable demands by the union put such companies as Bethlehem Steel into an inevitable chokehold from which it could not return, even under favorable conditions. And favorable conditions were not to be had due to foreign competition, lack of innovative investment strategies of steel executives, and the increasing animosity between management and union leaders.

I should of course elaborate on how management had quite a bit of responsibility with all of the problems. In the steel industry's case, management worked the day labourers to the bone with little to no concessions or benefits and wages for years and years. So when the time came for the union to get it's turn, they took all they could get from the management. Also there is absolutely no fucking way to justify the salaries of some of the company executives in this country. $20 million dollars for executives is absurd because there is no way that any of these clowns mean that much to their large companies. So fuck them for the crops they sewed then and fuck them for what they are reaping, both in the steel industry, and now with the writers. Those overpaid penny pincher's had this coming for quite some time.

So we're left with the writer's potentially shutting down entertainment in various forms. Almost 20 years ago when the writer's guild last went on strike it cost the entertainment industry close to $500 million dollars. So assuming the strike is just as bad, you can go ahead and multiply that $500 million by 20 years of inflation. Will this be a huge burden on the entertainment industry, specifically movie and t.v.? You bet. Especially given that new forms of media have already been taking over a large portion of the pie from the more traditional media. This "new media" like videogames and blogs and other such digital media is huge, in fact video games alone are burying the motion picture industry by some measures, and it will likely get worse. Has the writer's guild thought about how much smaller their slice of the pie might be over the long run if they hurt the television and movie industry now? Although the writer's guild is trying to unionize and control much of this new media, which I hope they won't get a red cent of.

So in the end shame on the writer's union for potentially not seeing what kind of harm they could do to themselves and their industry in the long run. I hope the short term gains are enough to placate you before you lose your jobs altogether. Shame on the executives for being so greedy and being way overpaid compared to your average worker. And shame on me for presenting this whole thing in a badly written blog post.

A new age of darkness

I'm going to do this in two parts, the first part will complain about the Writer's Guild of America strike. The second part will talk about some of my views on unions in general. the first part will probably be more entertaining, the second is more of a history lesson. Enjoy, or don't whatever.

Welcome back to the dark ages, where quality writing and programming takes a back seat to garbage on television. Or at least that's what I perceive, with the onset of this writer's strike that affects both Hollywood and television. Now it looks as though in a few weeks we will be subjected to a rash of reality television and worthless unimaginative game shows, both of which require no writing. I hate reality television, to even watch 15 minutes of the garbage makes me hate myself. The only reality show I watched with any consistency was "Joe Millionaire" which I only listened to over my shoulder as I worked at the computer in college. Also for some reason every person in my fraternity watched that show and we would all stream out into the hallways afterwards to gossip about what had occurred. The entire house would groan whenever something ludicrous or unbelievable happened on the show and we all acted like gossipy women in a hair salon when the subject came up around the lunch table. An entire house filled with mostly football players, talking about a reality television show...

I equally hate mindless game shows and talent competitions. Things like "Jeopardy" are acceptable because it is not mindless chance or luck that drives the game. However besides "Jeopardy" it is difficult to think of any prime time game shows that have come out in the last 2ish years that require any skill other then making a blind choice and coming up lucky. I guess maybe "Are you smarter then a 6th grader" or whatever it is called, I never saw it. The point is that any game show that requires nothing more then backing your way though a trial by absolute luck is worthless to me, and I suspect a large number of my peers. Talent shows like "American Idol" will continue but I've never been a fan, and frankly I'd be relieved if I never had to know that something as dumb as "Kidnation" ever existed. So basically this strike leaves a situation where one of two possibilities.

1) We get a mindless rash of game shows and reality television, and network television falls to darkness forever. I had thought this possibility had been killed in the early 2000's but the guild of writer's apparently is a vessel of some cult that wishes to bring on the apocalypse. In just a few short months our society will burn in the flames of stupidity and mindlessness in the absence of intelligent discourse on television (hahahaha that's a total oxymoron, intelligent discourse on television, haha). Not to say that many of the sitcoms were terribly intelligent, but some of them required the audience think for more then two seconds before slapping their ham fisted appendages together in glee.

2) Network television begins to show some of the successful shows from the cable networks they own. This is an interesting possibility, because it means that some of the more interesting shows that are around could be shown to a wider audience and the national stage. They wouldn't be new episodes, but the reruns would be new to a large part of the viewing public, who are too afraid to try and distance themselves from the mild warmth and comfort that network stations provide. Unfortunately for me I actually go out and seek the alternate cable shows that I might like and I wouldn't watch their reruns on network television (Unless they start showing Firefly or Eureka reruns…maybe "Nip/Tuck" and that show is fucked up from the two episodes I've seen). But overall it might get some of these shows to become a permanent staple on network television and that probably couldn't hurt.

For some reason I think we're far more likely to be doomed to the first possibility, in which case I should begin getting my worldly affairs in order. The next update will talk about Unions in general. It is much less entertaining.

Death in the family

Saturday night we had a party at my house. Your standard Halloween fare, decorations and such and plenty of snacks and booze. I dressed up as a zombie which was really just an excuse to wear ratty clothes and not wear shoes around the house. We also had a house full of people dressed up as news reporters from "Anchorman" as upwards of 10 people dressed up as characters from that movie (a movie which inspires me to remember a myriad of emotions). All together I guess it was a decent party, some inspired costumes, some not so inspired costumes (wearing a Nationals jersey that you wear all the time and having a piece of tape that declares you "Benny the Jet Rodriguez" is not inspired...). The night went by without any real incidents that I am aware of...almost.

Several hours before the guests arrived I sat down to make a playlist on my Ipod for the party, because I like to keep up with all the greatest hits of the 80's, 90's, and today! As I plugged in my ipod to my computer I was greeted with a message that informed me that the Ipod was corrupt. Fucking great. It had been acting up on Friday and I had hoped nothing was wrong with this relic (3 years old!) but it was not to be. I looked at the ipod and was greated with a screen that had a exclamation point, and an anthropomorphic picture of my ipod with an unhappy face and two x's where the eyes should be...no joke. Here is my artist's rendition of what this screen looked like:

Nice. So it looked like I was not going to be able to play any of my music during the party. That and I had lost valuable data and other things which I would not be able to recover. I was heartbroken, I loved my Ipod, and his death left a hole in my heart. I thought that I would need to mourn for days and cry myself to sleep.

That was not to be the end of the Ipod, it would rise again with the aid of a mystery man. A guest arrived at our house and upon hearing my tale of woe he pulled me aside and said he could help. The told me that he is of a profession that I myself one day aspire to be. An appliance healer. A man of the cloth who uses his supernatural abilities to drive demons and disease from appliances and small electronic items. My saviour had arrived. He spoke of a healing art that would fix my Ipod and allow me to continue using it for many moons. He then proceeded to chant a quick healing prayer, and drop my Ipod from 5 feet up in the air.

My Ipod responded immediately, it had been healed by this miracle man, and all were able to listen to music of my choosing for most of the evening. I meant to have this healer look at my vacuum cleaner too, but he disappeared as mysteriously as he came into my house. Taking all his secrets and techniques with him. The Ipod played on into the night, until it froze up again, but by then it had played its purpose.

When morning arrived I looked around the house but my Ipod was nowhere to be found. That's right, my newly healed Ipod has disappeared, and after scouring the house dozens of times it appears to be lost. Is it possible that it was stolen? Yes, but that is unlikely. I have searched the house and am confident that my Ipod no longer resides here. The irony is of course that at first I thought my Ipod dead, only to see it arise from the ashes to live again, and then go missing. Some birds are far too beautiful to be caged, my Ipod is apparently one of these amazing creatures. I wish him well in whatever travels he may decide to undertake, and if he returns to me I promise to treat him with the utmost care and respect. If not, then I wish him well in his second life, however short that may be.

2 Haiku's

I wrote these two haiku's today, no idea what inspired the writing.

Your perfume is smelly
Stay off the elevator
I might choke and die

Your scent is too strong
When you enter my office
I gag and can't breathe

A picture is worth about 7 words

Colorblind

Bright

Clown

Awful

Silly

Stupid

Weirdo

brrr cold

So I rode my bike to work this morning in near freezing temperatures and I was dressed kinda silly...Gold Shorts, blue running tights, bright orange hoody, black athletic gloves, it looked hilarious and I will post a picture later to show you how ridiculous I looked when I came into work. All of the aforementioned items of clothing did their jobs quite well except for the gloves. The gloves were not up to the task of keeping my hands warm at all, and when I finally got to work my hands were more akin to a popsicle then a human appendage.

I sat at my desk for nearly a half hour trying to warm my body before I decided to change into work clothes. When I did decide to change I was unpleasantly surprised by the fact that I was taking off warm athletic wear, and putting on ice cold dress shirt and pants which had been in my back pack. It was like stepping out of a warm shower into a moderately warm men's room and then being hit with a bucket of cold water and being forced to wear that water until your body heat made those clothes warm. Delightful.

Also this may count for my most forgetful day in the history of my life, the following things were left at home:
1) Bike lock chain
2) Belt for work clothes
3) Bills I need to pay
4) dignity (mine)
5) house keys
6) lunch (also mine)
7) lunch (my roomates)
8) racquetball goggles
9) change of clothes for yoga later

All those things are sitting neatly in a pile next to my bed in the hopes that I would have remembered to pack them in my bag. Was I able to figure out the clues that last night Marty had left for morning Marty to remember to take these things? No. Apparently morning Marty (normally the smarter Marty) had a very dumb couple of minutes before I got on a bike to ride to work in near freezing temperatures dressed like a colorblind clown. Actually, the more I think about it, the more morning Marty seems to have lost smartness.

Rain Rain Come again..

Go away another day!

It's been raining for the last three days and I've loved every second of it except for the 25 minutes when I had to drive on busy highways yesterday evening. I love the rain, and when I rode my bike into work this morning in the rain it was pure fun! I'm not sure there are many other people that really enjoy the rain, I mean I know some but most people complain about it. I on the other hand wouldn't even own an umbrella if it weren't for days when I wear a suit to work. I think it is fun to walk in the rain, without an umbrella. Sure there is more cleanup later, but it's worth it. I think the pitter patter of raindrops hitting your roof when you are inside is relaxing and there is nothing that is as much fun as playing in the rain. If every day was like today, a little bit cold outside, rainy, and overcast, I would be happy as a clam (you've got to wonder why clams are always so happy, they don't really do much, maybe that's why...). Hopefully it will rain all day and I'll get to ride my bike around in the rain some more. Oh fun!

edit - Wow this sounds really gay when I read it. I guess maybe I should brush up on the ole masculinity. How about this? I like (note: not love, like, because like is more manly) playing football in the rain. I like driving my car through mud in the rain. I like bare-knuckle boxing in the rain. Take that pansies.

Not even in my dreams

I had a dream last night where I was at a bar, talking to an attractive woman. We left the bar together and I walked her back to her house. It was all snowy outside on the walk back and I gave her my coat. When we got there I wished her a good night and went on my way...wow. Apparently I can't get any even in my dreams...awesome. This bodes not well at all for my chances outside of my head if the most I can aspire to in my dreams is to be a gentleman and walk a girl home from the bar. I mean what the fuck? That's the best I can come up with? That is pretty lame. "Hey baby you want to go out sometime so that I can walk you home at the end of the night and then be on my way?" The next time I get shot down and the girl says, "In your dreams asshole." All I will have to fire back is, "Not even there."

I r smart

So a trip to buy a light for my bike was highly unsatisfying. I mean 25 bucks for a small light to put on the front of my bike? Get real pal. How about a $3.99 flashlight and some duct tape? Booya.

It looks even classier from the front.

Who's laughing now? That's what I thought.

The Quest for Pancakes

When I awoke from my 2 hours of sleep on Sunday morning I had an unnatural craving that had to be satisfied. Something that would ruin my life if I didn't quickly fill the void left by its absence. This was not something that I would normally need/want and I'm not sure what brought on my desire but I knew one thing, I had to have this thing. That thing was pancakes (yes I get that this was given away in the title of this post and it kills the suspense but I like the title so :P). I wanted them, I needed them, I would slowly descend into madness without their pancakey goodness to quench my bizarre desire. However, what should have been a simple, straightforward task became a quest that consumed far more time and effort then one would think, also I believe that pancakes steal a part of your soul. So I also eventually lost some of my soul, assuming I have any left.

This quest started with the realization that making pancakes by myself wasn't going to cut it. Both roomates were asleep and there is no practical reason to make pancakes for myself alone (practicality outweighing my desires...a common theme in my life), also i lacked the ingredients to create these ovals of delight. So that left the other option, the pancake repository (aka somewhere that would deliver unto me a feast of no less then three golden brown saucers of joy). Again this situation raises issues. Specifically the issue of dining alone, I'm not a big fan of going out to eat alone because the conversation is so much more one-sided. So I needed a companion for my pancake hunting expedition and since it was 530am I knew that I would have to wait for such a hero to emerge so I would be able to dine on the objects of my desire.

So I bided my time, managed to stave off insanity until 9 am. It was a struggle I must tell you... waking dreams of golden brown flapjacks, sweating visions of delicious syrup covered wonder...mmm. Those 3 and a half hours were my personnel hell, hungry, bored, violently attracted to a breakfast delicacy that I'm not accustomed to having. So the hour of 9 I was prepared to call my friend to get him to go to breakfast with me and lo and behold I got a phone call. This phone call required me to be on the phone for approximately 45 minutes. No big deal, still plenty of time for pancakes. So I quickly drove over to my buddies house and picked him up, 10am.

We contemplated where I could successfully devour pancakes, IHOP. So I drive to IHOP, and what do I see! I line out the door! So I drive to the Silver Diner, 45 minute wait and a line at the door and we're approaching 1030 and I want pancakes as bad as I've ever wanted anything in my life. Fuck! Every diner in time was booked. But then I had an idea...it was as if I'd been stuck by lightening. A small place right next to my house...Two Chefs...had I seen a sign in the window? No. Had I seen a menu? No. Pure luck and inspiration was what guided me and my stomach to this small establishment of bliss. We arrived, and they were open for breakfast, we went in and there was a booth open, no wait. We sat down next to an obnoxious family with two little girls and two grandmothers...that wasn't ideal but it was annoying...I don't know how that adds to the story. But 15 minutes later I was dining on exactly what I had been wanting so badly since 0530 that morning. It only took 5 1/2 hours.

So I returned home after eating pancakes, and what did I find? That's right, my roomates had woken up and made pancakes...at 10 am.

Shave and a haircut, two fits

Life is funny in a bad way sometimes. You can frequently have bad days and then weeks and then months. So the bad days start to mean less, it stops being such a big deal, and you move through the mire that is your life. No big deal. But every once in awhile you have a really bad day, it upsets you and you don't think much else can go wrong. However, when something else goes wrong it becomes comical in a way that it shouldn't. It's like getting dumped by your girlfriend in the morning. Getting fired from your job in the afternoon. Then when you get to your car to go home, you realize that you've locked your keys in the car. At that point in the day you just kind of have to laugh, because this event that might normally change the nature of your day, has little or no impact on the severity of your day. Having your keys get locked inside your car is just superfluous to what made the rest of your day suck.

Case-in-point, yesterday I had a very unpleasant day, I'm not going to go into exactly why but needless to say I was pissed off. It sucked, royal smurfs (whatever the hell that means), and when I got out of work all I wanted to do was go to the gym, workout, and maybe do some yoga. Well as I was walking from work to the gym, contemplating all the things that had happened to foul my mood, I crossed the road and twisted my ankle on the curb or the sidewalk. It hurt, and mind you this is the same ankle I injured a couple of weeks ago and have been rehabbing ever since. Instead of being pissed off, I laughed, because up until that point my day had already been awful. The ankle just made it over the top ridiculous, and frankly it seemed like I was trapped in a Benny Hill rerun or something. So, still smiling ear to ear because of the absurdity of it all, I limped to the gym. When I got there yoga class was cancelled, and my workout was pretty awful to boot. Then I went home and Katy wouldn't come near me for some reason...great day.

Today was much of the same. My morning has been filled with folly and frustration. For relief I decided to get my hair cut. Getting my hair cut is one of the most stress relieving and relaxing things I can do. It's usually quite spiritual. Plus my hair was obnoxiously long at that point so I needed it done anyway. I'm going to take a little bit of time here to explain why getting my haircut is so nice. Getting my haircut is refreshing, regardless of the time of year, walking outside after one is an excellent feeling of freshness! While I'm getting my haircut there's not much to do but contemplate life. Sure you can make small talk with your barber but for the most part you have a solid 15 minutes where you can't squirm or do work, so you have to sit down and think. If you have a good barber you come out looking better than you did when you walked in, if your barber does a bad job wait a couple of weeks and next time find another barber.

Men usually stick with the same barber after they find one who they like. I am no exception to this even though for most of my life I have not had a consistent barber. The last two years I have settled on a barber and I'm quite happy with her service. Once a month I go in for a 15 minute hair cut and I give her $20 for a $14 haircut (which is kinda expensive for a haircut). She is a Vietnamese lesbian who owns the barber shop around the corner from work along with her partner who does women's nails. She does a wonderful job cutting my hair, and I really appreciate it. Also I don't have to explain to her how to cut my hair since she already knows.

Today however she was not in the barbershop when I got there, she was apparently at the doctor's office. I decided (foolishly) to get my hair cut anyway. Two minutes into it, I realized two things. First, that this was going to take forever, and second, that it was not going to be what I wanted. I suffered through one of the worst haircut experiences of my life. Here are some of the highlights:
1) My barber decided to answer her cellphone...twice...extending the length of the ordeal and increasing the angst which I felt. Don't fucking answer your cellphone while you are in the middle of playing with my hair!
2) Another guy who gets his haircut with my barber walked in, saw that she wasn't there, and told everyone that he would return, which is what I should have done. He gave me an understanding glance of sympathy.
3) I was not at ease at all during the process, which was part of the reason I went in there to begin with.

The end result, was me walking out of the barbershop after 45 minutes (3 times my normal haircut) with a masterpiece I could have created by myself at home and a wide smile on my face. Because honestly, why wouldn't something else bad happen today? This morning has been terrible, why wouldn't something that normally relieves stress end up poorly? I mean it's not like my boss would walk by and make fun of my haircut right? Oh wait...she absolutely would, and did. But it is funny because at this point my day was already pegged as bad, and the haircut didn't do anything to make it worse, it just made me laugh. If I walk downstairs and my bike is missing...that will be about par for the course.

The girl I love

There's a girl I love and I wanted to tell everyone about her. She is extremely beautiful and everyone tells her so. All the boys want to talk to her and go out with her whenever they meet her. She's smart and she's never afraid to tell people what is on her mind. She's a good listener and she is always attentive when you speak to her. She loves outdoor activities and we go on dates outside all the time. She like long walks in the park and hiking in the woods. She is also really understanding when I feel bad and I come home and need her affection. She doesn't mind when I have to work late, or go out without her and come home late, she is just glad that I came home to her. She is the kind of girl you want to introduce to your mother and everyone you know, because you know that everyone will think she's spectacular. She's always dressed to impress and she lights up whatever room she's in.

Her name is Katy and I wouldn't trade her for the world. Here's a couple of pictures of her, isn't she pretty?

Target and a weird dream

I went to Target last night to purchase various sundries and within moments after entering the store I noticed something was amiss. No they weren't having a paperclip sale, although I need some paperclips. No it was much more visually pleasing, the Target for some reason, was filled with attractive women. Not just one or two, but 15 or more. In the ten minutes I spent in Target I couldn't believe the number of attractive, un-attached (no wedding/engagement ring), well dressed women there were in the store. It was like someone had decided that it was necessary to tease me for some reason.

Now normally I would have just chalked it up to my desperation and loneliness. But my roomate was there with me and he noticed the same thing. It was hard not to notice, considering the store was filled with babes. At first I thought, "Wow this is great!" But quickly I realized that these women would want nothing to do with me, more then likely they would think it was weird that some random dude was hitting on them at the store. How would I even strike up a conversation at a Target? "Oh hey there, I see you have grapes in your cart, I like grapes, want to go on a date?" Maybe I'm just timid but having all these attractive women shopping with me was about as useful as the hammock in my back yard in the dead of winter. I wasn't going to talk to them, I wasn't going to interact, and the only thing that probably could happen would be them catching me staring at them, and them calling security. So I quickly got 1/3 of the three things I was looking for (thanks for nothing target), went to the register (where I was in line between two very attractive women), and left the store.

(INSERT STORY SEGWAY HERE)

When I finally fell asleep at 3:30ish, I had this crazy lucid dream. What's strange about that is that I rarely have such vivid dreams, and this one in particular was really long, and I didn't have that much time to sleep since I woke up at 5. What made the dream odd was the setting, which was some dilapidated 4 story house in a swampy area. Who was in the dream, which were many of my friends past and present and oddly my grandmother who I do not speak to (long story). The dream essentially was about me and a random selection of friends killing the owner of the house and his partner (in self defense) and then trying to hide the bodies. One of which we buried in a shallow grave in the backyard next to a fence around the house in the back left, and the other of which we threw over the fence right next to where the other dead body was. We had to hide the bodies because apparently we knew the police were coming and we were afraid they wouldn't believe that it was self defense.

The police arrived and found the bodies, which were very poorly hidden, and they proceeded to chase us around the house. While this occurred my grandmother walked up to the police and took the blame for the whole thing. Then I woke up...I'm not sure what the hell that all means, I'm not used to having lucid dreams of that nature. I'm not sure why I felt the need to blog about it. But what I am sure of, is that in my dreams I apparently need to learn how to hide corpses from the authorities better. Either that or I need to figure out how to talk to attractive women that are shopping at the same store as me and not come off as some creepy pervert. Although given that the last two sentences I just wrote included the words, "hide corpses, attractive women, creepy pervert," my guess would be that this might be one mystery that remains unresolved for me.

Fans

I've been an Eagles (professional football) fan for the majority of my life. I grew up watching the Eagles not because I lived in Philadelphia (I didn't), but because my father loved the Eagles, and so did my late grandfather. Therefore whenever I was watching football when I was young with my father figures it was always the Eagles. In many ways I'm a pretty typical Eagles fan, cynical, critical, sarcastic. Watch an Eagles game with me sometime, try it, you will see a completely different person, then you would if you were around me in any other setting. If the Eagles are winning I will bitch that they aren't winning enough, they could and should be winning by more and they look really terrible regardless of how much they are winning by. Also if they are winning it is possible at any minute for them to be losing, this is a thought vocalized quite frequently between my father and I when we watch the Eagles. If they are losing...well let's not talk about the kind of language I use but needless to say you won't hear it in your local knitting club. When they are losing I expound about how every player should be traded, the coach should be fired, and the owner ought to be taken out back and shot. These are things that are attributable to your stereotypical Eagles fan, and in my case I fit the stereotype pretty well.

The other day I was talking to someone and we got into what our favorite NFL team was. I said the Eagles and they replied, "No way, I never see you wear any Eagles stuff." This is where I differ from many of my fellow Eagles fans, whereas even the most casual of fans may own a jersey or have a closet full of green, I don't. I don't feel like spending a ton of money on shirts or jerseys, or zubaz pants. I will now list all the Eagles items I own and where I got them from.
1) Eagles Sweatshirt that doesn't fit(grey with green logo on front)- Given to me by my late grandfather as a christmas gift, I keep it for sentimental value and because I don't like closet space.
2) Eagles Visor (Green and snazzy)- Given to me Senior year by a boss when I worked in the sports equipment department at my Alma Mater, he had it because the Eagles practice there during the summer (I have lots of stories about working around the Eagles when I worked during the summer).
3) Eagles hat (White with green/black brim)- Given to me Junior year by a boss when I worked in the sports equipment department at my Alma Mater, he had it because the Eagles practice there during the summer.
4) Eagles Doormat that is hidden in my storage room in the basement- Given to me last christmas by one of my roomates who thought it was hilarious that I had no Eagles stuff.

It's just not my thing, and I don't like the negative reaction or unnecessary conversations or irrational spite you get from some people when you are out in public wearing something with your team logo on it. I see it all the time and it pisses me off when people are jerks just because someone is wearing an opposing team's apparel. Whether it is someone being rude, saying something inappropriate, or in rare cases, doing something physical just because of a stupid shirt. I don't think it makes me less of a fan, but I just don't feel like declaring to the world what sports team I enjoy rooting for(actually in the case of the Eagles it's less enjoy then endure, because they fucking suck). If you really want to see how much I support the Eagles, watch a game with me, don't get on my case because I don't have a Randall Cunningham throwback jersey on underneath my business suit. Plus I look stupid in green anyway.

Lonesome October

So there has been a book I've been looking for about 10 years. I read it when I was 13-15 and living in Florida. The book was about Victorian era monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein, Jack the Ripper, etc..) and their quest to compete and either open up a portal to allow the Elder Gods (Cthulu) back to earth. The book was told from the point view of Jack the Ripper's familiar, a dog named Snuff. I really enjoyed the book when I was younger, but right after I had finished reading it I lost the book and I was never able to remember the title. Apparently the book goblins felt that it was necessary to steal it, that or one of my family members got ahold of it, since my mother's side of the family is notorious for stealing books. A family pastime really, other families go camping together, my family steals books from one another and compiles them. For the last 10ish years I've been looking for this book on and off, never looking like I absolutely couldn't live without, but with renewed interest here and there.

Last week I went to a bookstore with my roomate, and we were perusing the fantasy section and I again looked in vain for the book. Well on our way out of the store I told my roomate about the book and he mentioned to me that I should search on the...wait for it...INTERNET. Well how fucking dumb did I feel, not doing a word search on Wikipedia or Google or Amazon. I mean it hadn't even entered my mind to look for it on the place I buy 90% of my books and search for things, a tool I use every godamn day. So we get home, and 5 minutes later I'm purchasing it online. "A Night in the Lonesome October" by Robert Zelazny was the title I've been searching for all this time and you would think with such a unique title I might have remembered this. But no.

So I got the book in the mail yesterday and it was quite a bit shorter then I remembered. Each chapter represents one night in October, and 5 nights in I was quite a bit disappointed from the expectations built up by my memories. This has been a pretty common occurrence, re-reading books I read when I was much younger and being disappointed. However, I kept reading it, hoping for the best. Well after I finished the book last night, I put it down quite contented. The book minus the first couple of chapters was everything I wanted it to be. Mysterious and clever, very abstract with lots of loose ends that tie together at the end. I'm glad I found the book again, I feel dumb that it took me so long to do so.

Manly and Tough

I got a new bike. It was a used new bike and it has a butterfly on the seat but it's still totally manly. Butterfiles are like pretty boys who have to keep fighting other bugs to prove they're really tough. They kick ass and look good doing it, just like me...just kidding. I currently don't do either of those things. Butterflies are the street tough fighters in the insect world. They're all about like getting in fights and doing hardcore man stuff. Which is why having one on my bike is totally manly and gruff...

Also, here is a picture of me from my vaction awhile back. As you can see I'm wearing bright colors and I look roughed up. Because like a butterfly, I'm tough that way. It's not a very good picture, because I took it by myself. Also, I just got done eating a huge meal and sitting in the sun all day. And I'm sad that we were done eating and there was no more food :(

Lost

Where am I? Where am I going? What was my goal, my plan, what was I thinking? Why are all my compasses broken, or confused, or unused? There's no map. If there was a map I think I would be suspicious of it. There shouldn't be a map, but it sure would make things easier. There's no clear path, no clarity, no road markers. But would I walk it or see it or follow directions if they were there? It all seems so easy, and yet so hard. Am I fighting the wind, or putting my sails in it's comforting embrace. What do I do, when do I do it, why should I do these things. Why so many questions? Why not more action, rather then reaction? What happened? How did I get here.

If I were a horse...

They'd have taken me out back and shot me a long time ago. Knee injuries, shoulder problems, hand issues, turned ankles, all around gimpiness. The latest in a series of injuries is a bad ankle sprain that has sidelined me from doing basically anything. I wish I could say that I rolled my ankle doing something amazing on the racquetball court, but actually I was just resetting my feet when my left ankle turned and popped. It was fun trust me. So in a heartbeat there goes all the fun, no racquetball, no tennis, no hiking, no dancing, no working out my legs, no moonlight walks. At this point someone with a shotgun, and a degree in horse husbandry or veterinary sciences would take one look at me, pat my head, and shoot me. Maybe if they were feeling nice they would feed me a carrot or some oats first.

Most people wouldn't be that broken up by it, because after all there's still the car to use. Sadly my car needs a new wheel, so like its owner it is having trouble getting around. So this morning I had to ride my bike to work. It was easy and nice. But no doubt when I go downstairs I'll have a flat tire, or someone will have stolen my front wheel, or I'll have a broken chain. Sigh, I guess things can only look up right? Oh yes, it's supposed to rain this afternoon, at the time I am going home. At least I like the rain.