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.