EggsOverEggs

Allow Me To Introduce Myself My Name is…

I picked up Jay-Z’s latest collection of beats written by…someone else the other day.  It’s a little album called “The Blueprint 3″  I’m not a huge fan of Jay-Z, but I figured I’d purchase this one since I could get it for $1.75 off my Russian music site, and since Hov was supposedly “retired” I assumed this album must have contained such great songs it was worth it for him to come out of retirement just to make it.  A lot of people retire from their normal jobs just so they can make music so what the hell was Jay-Z doing while he was retired?  Working as a greeter at Wal-Mart?  Could you imagine that? 

Jay-Z  “UnHH!!! Welcome to Wal-Mart.  Allow me to introduce myself my name is Hov!!!”

Customer “Now listen here feller.  I’m lookin fer two things in perticular.  I’m lookin fer some bras and panties fer the little lady, and I’m fixin on pickin up some 12 Gauge buck shot fer ma over-under.  Goin huntin’ in the mornin.”

Jay-Z “Yeah.  UHHH!!!!  All my niggas wit the rubber grips Bust shots.  And if you wit me ma I’ll rub on your tits and what not.”

Customer “Boy what the hell did you just say to me?”

Jay-Z “UHH!! We must not let outsiders violate our block”

Customer “This ain’t a block it’s a Goddam Wal-Mart git yer head outta yer ass.”

Well you could imagine how the rest of that forced social interaction would go so perhaps it’s a good thing Jay-Z came out of retirement. 

Getting back to this new album, I would like to examine the title for a hot sweaty moment.  When Jay-Z made “The Blueprint 1″, I assumed the title of the album was to make all other rappers aware of the fact that this is how rap albums are made and that this is what hip hop now sounds like.  What else is a blueprint but a set of detail schematic drawings intended to denote precisely how something should be made?  In that vein I would make the arguement that the following two “Blueprint” albums are a misnomer.  If the blueprints had already been laid out in the first “Blueprint” album, then second two should have been entitled thusly: “The Blueprint: Lyrical Revision with enhancements by Kanye West”, and “Blueprint: Revised Edition 2009-10 with auditory augmentations by Alicia Keys, Young Jeezey, Mr. Hudson and AutoTune.” This way the albums would have been properly labeled as continuations of the original as opposed to completely separate and different albums from one another.

I’ve only given “The Blueprint 3″ one run-through so far and I was driving so I spent most of that time screaming “I HATE YOU”  at other motorists and texting, but what I heard wasn’t that great.  Two songs stand out from the rest of the album and they just so happen to be the two singles that are in heavy rotation on all the top 40 radio stations today.  If you listen to contemporary/pop music, you will know these songs are; “Empire State of Mind. Feat. Alicia Keys” and “Young Forever. Feat. Mr. Hudson” The latter samples the late 80′s German SynthPop band Alphaville’s hit single “Forever Young” made wildy popular among today’s “college know it all/ I think this is cool because MTV tells me so but really I don’t get it and I want to go home and study but my friends would call me a loser and make me take prescription drugs until I’m not depressed anymore so I just smile and go along with it like all the other sheep” crowd by the movie “Napoleon Dynamite”.  The former “Empire State of Mind” is, IMO, the only good song on the album.  It is the only one with a good beat, and the hook with Alicia Keys’ vocals is irresistable.  The louder you listen to it the better it sounds. 

The rest of the songs are so-so.  Just filler.  There are a few guest appearances but nothing mind blowing.  It seems as if all the things that made Jay-Z’s songs so cool to listen to listen are missing from this album.  Not great beats or hooks, no super clever lyrics that really stand out.  I’m thinking this was a “search for more money” thing more than it was anything else.

Please keep in mind that I really have only listened to this album once.  If you base your decision on wheter or not to purchase “The Blueprint 3″ off this review, I feel bad for you.  Perhaps a few more run-throughs and I’ll start to pick up some good metaphors and solid bass-lines but none for right now.  Except for “Empire State of Mind”.  That song is quickly making it’s way up my Itunes playcount.

So I’m standing in line at the post office today and I got thinking “man these people can really be a bunch of assholes.”  Does that ever happen to you.  If you think about, what does a Postal employee do?  They sort mail, they run mail, and they deliver mail.  All day long they deal with the same shit over and over again.  I don’t blame them for being a little short with the customers from time to time, but I think they would be a little more curteous with the American public if they just relaxed and took a step back to examine just what their jobs really are.  Allow me to explain.  The United States Postal Service has America by the balls.  Furthermore they are backed by the American government which gives them the advantage of no one really understanding how they are run or who they answer to.  The head of the post office is the Post Master General.  What the fuck does that mean?  Is he a military official?  If so, and he is a general that would mean he would have to be nominated and voted into that position by the United States senate just like any other general.  What branch of the armed forces does the post office belong to, and why would it even be necessary to give them a military designation?  They don’t even carry guns (that I’m aware of). 

What I’m getting at is that it seems as if every postal employee is aware of the fact that they are desparately needed by the American public.  This is due in large part to their obscenely low shipping prices espcially small parcels and letters.  Think about it.  You couldn’t even FedEx a letter to the end of your driveway for 44 cents let alone ship it across the country, but guess what, the USPS can, and they do, and all you have to do is put up with the attitude.  Por ejemplo, the letter carrier who delivers to my office is a great guy.  He even got me with a “that’s what she said” joke the other day which we all know is the highest, most sophisticated form of humor ever discovered by man.  But if you stack the outgoing mail improperly or grace a certified letter with just your signature and not your printed name, you’ll never hear the end of it.  Several times he has threatened not to deliver certain pieces of mail because the plastic address window on our envelopes makes it difficult for his scanner to pick up the zip code.  (I thought those things were meaningless anyway.)  I would like to tell him to enter the zip code manually, but that goes against my better judgement.  So we have no choice but to comply and purchase completely different “scanner-friendly” envelopes because he and I both know there is no one else out there who will pick up these envelopes and promptly deliver them to their desired location for as little as 44 cents apiece.

This post sucks I’m done.

Half Indian Land Mine (A.K.A. The Three P’s)

All right so the whole post is probably not going to be focused solely on farting at work (although it probably could be), but I feel as if I need to make some statements on this topic that have been on my mind for a while.  Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about workplace etiquette and what being polite and curteous to co-workers entails.  Some of the major n0-nos include, but are certainly not limited to; sexual harassment, inappropriate attire, excessive foul language or verbal abuse of any kind, and of course certain bodily emissions which are best done in the privacy of a bathroom stall or in bed while holding the covers over your girlfriend’s head. This leads me to my major point.  Farting is a part of life.  We all do it.  If God didn’t want us to fart he wouldn’t have made gas a by-product of digestion.  I understand that it smells bad and I agree whole-heartedly that farting in any public place is rude and wildly inappropriate.  With the exception of strip clubs and subways, both of which smell oddly like farts to begin with.  

Sometimes, however, the body, or more accurately your large intestine, reaches a point of critical mass under which one of two things need to happen. 1You fart. 2Your large intestine catches on fire and you burn to death from the inside out.  You see, fartology is the study of pressure..and time.  Over a long enough period of time even the toughest colon can be reduced to a quivering  balloon of gas and excrement.  My point being that sometimes farting at work is 100% necessary.  Take my job for example.  I need to call someone who is trained to work the swithboard if I ever need to get up from my desk and walk somewhere else in the office.  If I did this everytime I needed to fart, I would need to make approximately 5 to 600 calls a day to have someone cover for me.  This is inconvient for all parties involved including myself so I have chosen to accept the fact that I simply must sit at my desk and fart. 

There is  a science to this which I have not even come close to perfecting.  My desk is in the lobby which sort of segregates me from the rest of the office.  This makes it easier to get away with farting, belching, shooting rubber bands at insects and sniffing magic markers, but for some reason sound travels very well in the office.  Sometimes I’ll be sitting at my desk and everything will be completely silent and I’ll just figure I can’t hear anything going on in the office and then I’ll hear someone sitting 30 feet away from me drop a pencil or clear their throat and I’ll realize that everyone can hear everything. 

(A note to the reader: I’m going to go into some serious detail on this now so if you are reading this post and are only semi interested in what I’m saying, or if you find no humor or relevance to this topic whatsoever, I suggest you stop reading and never return to this site…ever.)

My preferred method for getting a fart out unnoticed is the one-cheek-sneak.  For those who don’t know, it’s very simple.  I just sit in my chair and raise one side of my ass.  I then gently push the fart out which is an art form in and of itself.  I say this because there are varying levels of intesity with which one can expell gas.  I find the best way to make a fart silent is to let it build to about a medium pressure in the colon and then apply a gentle push starting with the upper abdominal muscles and working your way down.  Try to sort of hold the fart back while pushing if that makes any sense.  It’s sort of a finesse thing that’s more easily practiced than explained.  Remember not to hold back or push too hard at any given point because this increases the risk for a potentially loud, high-pitched, “squeaker”.  A fart which is difficult to mask with another sound and virtually impossible to explain in any professional environment.  The one cheek sneak is a very basic method for the silent fart which can be done with great efficiency after a few practice runs.  I would suggest trying this several times in the privacy of your own home before bringing it to the office.

Another “seated position” method is a more subtle version of the one cheek sneak I like to call the “half-indian land mine”.  In this situation one of your legs is folded under the opposite thigh and rests atop your chair sort of like you are sitting half “indian style”.  This position naturally raises one of your ass cheeks slightly higher than the other taking pressure off your ass and allowing the fart to escape.  Let the fart build to a medium/high pressure.  This is where it gets slightly complicated.  Find a way to position your torso so the gas feels like it will escape in one uninterrupted stream.  I find that leaning back moderately to significantly is the best position.  Then grip both arms of your chair tightly and sort of lift yourself off the chair to relieve the rest of your body weight from your ass.  This should ensure a natural flow of gas from your asshole.  DO NOT PUSH the fart out in this position.  Because you are already tensing a lot of muscles in your arms and torso to lift your ass off the seat, you are almost guaranteed to push too hard.  This method is all about the three P’s: preparation, pressure, and proper form.  If at any point you feel the gas will not escape naturally, ABORT THE POSITION and try the one cheek sneak.  Upon proper emittance of the fart, relax your arms and kind of plop back down on the seat.  This is where the “land mine” part comes in.  When you plop down on the seat, some of the gas will naturally be forced into the fibers of seat cushion and, if done with enough force, some of the smell may even become embedded deep, deep in the foam.  The next time someone sits in the chair, the smell will explode from the cushion not unlike a land mine.

Ever more challenging are the standing postition farts.  For some reason you just cannot get as much control over the flow, volume, or timing of these farts.  However I have found one of the major benefits of standing and farting is that everything seems to move along a bit more quickly and naturally.  Under normal circumstances, I would never recommend standing up to fart at work.  It would just look ridiculous.  This is because the “three P’s” rule cannot be feasibly applied to farts while in the standing position.  Sure, the first two, Positioning and Pressure, can be achieved quite naturally while standing.  Sometimes standing even makes the proper pressure build easier, but the third P, Proper Form, cannot be achieved without calling unwanted attention to yourself.  Think about it.  What do you look like when you fart while standing?  Hand on hip? Back arched? Knees Bent?  Furrowed brow? Sweating?  Maybe even a wince?  It’s virtually impossible to fart without a slighty questionable look on your face.  Don’t believe me?  Next time you’re home and you have to fart, do it in front of a mirror.  You’ll notice that you have a worried, somewhat quizzical look on your face.  Now when you sit down and fart and this look comes across your face you can just stare at papers or your computer screen and pass it off as if you are reading a confusing email.  When you’re standing, everyone knows you’re just fuckin farting. 

I can think of only three situations in which a standing office fart should be executed.  The first situation is one of extreme emergency.  Imagine you’ve just finished your third McDonalds breakfast burrito and washed it all down with a nice large Blueberry Nut Crinkle Coffee with extra cream and12 sugars.  You start to get that feeling way down in the depths of your bowels.  Maybe you try to eake out a half indian at your desk only to get the dreaded needle point.  That sharp pang you get right at the ring of your asshole when you try to get away with a fart but you know theres something blocking it.  So you jump up and start doing that awkward looking penguin walk to the bathroom trying your best to look and act natural but somehow you know everyone who sees you knows your on a collision course for the handicapped toilet.  Everyone, that is, except for your boss who corners you in front of the bathroom door and for some reason has waited until this very moment to launch into an in depth conversation on the positioning of the rug that everyone is supposed to dry their feet on in front of the entrance.  A bead of sweat forms between your eyebrows and you stand there nodding, wondering if he notices as the sweat becomes too heavy to stay rooted on your brow and trickles downward between your eye and nose like a single tear.  A shit-tear if you will.  The conversation continues, but a miracle has occurred.  A slight rumble and the needle point has shifted, making way for the fart.  You know this one won’t wait for the conversation to end but how do you get it out without your boss hearing?

A method I’ve stumbled upon which I would say works effectively approximately ninety percent of the time is one I call the “Gassy Pigeon”.  When in the standing position simply point your toes inward toward each other so you are standing “pigeon toed”.  The more inward you can point your feet the better.  What I’ve found is that standing like this somehow allows a fart to flow more freely from the ass.  It’s an intangible which I doubt will ever be proven in a lab but I’ve found it helpful nonetheless.  Discretion is clearly the key factor here so don’t make it too obvious you’re trying to stand pigeon toed or, you know, people will just think you’re an idiot.  Like the Half Indian, do not try to push this one out.  The proper Pigeon Toe position should enable the fart to just coast right on out.  Of course you’re not out of the woods yet since those breakfast burritos smell even worse on the way out.  You have to get yourself and your boss out of the danger zone.  Try to think up some ways to end a lengthy yet pointless conversation.  Something that I love doing is interrupting the unwanted talker by just saying “cool” and then kind of  half patting half rubbing their shoulder while making solid eye contact.  This should shut them up for enought time for you to walk away.  Or sneeze in your boss’ face.  Hard.  Make no attempt to cover you mouth.  This is unsanitary, but he or she will be blinded by saliva and mucous long enough for you to make your escape to the bathroom.

The next instance in which a standing fart is acceptable is of course the Crop Dust.  Not only is this an acceptable standing-fart position, it’s actually encouraged.  For those of you who don’t know, Crop Dusting is the timeless art of farting while walking.  But so much more than that, it’s a way to obtrusively invade the space and senses of your friends and co-workers.  Say you’re heading to the copier.  It’s a few rows down and you’ve got some gas left over from last night’s trip to Taco Bell.  There’s really no challenge to this.  It’s just walk and fart. Fart and walk.  Maybe do some whistling or make some pretend airplane noises.  A quick note: The up and down impact of walking while farting may create rapid expulsion of gas from the anus and cause loud and unwanted trumpeting.  A slight clenching of the ass cheeks while walking should help prevent this from happening. 

The final instance of acceptable standing position farting is simply called “The Fire Alarm”  If you’re lucky enough to have the fire alarm go off in your office, you can fart as loudly and frequently and with as much body language you desire for the duration of the fire alarm.  Those fuckers are so loud everyone in the office will be deaf by the time they’re turned off.

I hope you use this guide to its fullest potential.  These are just a few techniques which have helped me tremendously in my mindless journey through the office politik.  Although farting in the office is and probably always will be unacceptable, it is important to remember that it can still be done with some discretion and a bit of practice.  And if you ever get called out on a fart just deny it till you’re blue in the face.

Athenian II

In my formative years my father often spoke of an establishment he would frequent as a youth following long nights of playing shows to sell out crowds, drinking, and hauling musical instruments in and out of night clubs.  This establishment was the Union 76 Truck Stop.  A diner at a rest area on I95 in Branford.  He would speak of the amazing breakfast food they offered 24 hours a day at dirt cheap prices.  Most noteable was one dish of which he spoke very highly.  The “Tandom Special” was six eggs over easy with sides of sausage, bacon, and a “truckload” of toast.   Enthralled with stories of this mythical restaurant I started out to find my own Union 76.

My father was/still is a musician, and in his younger years he played in bands in the New Haven area.  These gigs would regularly last until the wee hours of the morning so a place like the Union 76 truck stop was vital in order to refuel, ingest some caffeine and be prepared for the day job which he would attend on little or no sleep.

I am not a musician.  I do not play shows in night clubs or haul around musical instruments.  My knowledge of musical instruments is extremely limited and sometimes when I touch them they break.  I do however enjoy drinking and staying up late.  And more than that I enjoy awesome breakfast food available 24 hours a day at dirt cheap prices.  For this reason I felt it necessary to find a place of my own.  Everyone knows the usual “breaksfast all day” places like IHOP and Dennys, but those places fuckin suck.  I don’t care what you think.  If you’ve ever eaten at one of those place and not had to immediately run screaming to a bathroom clenching your asscheeks together, you are inhuman.  Nothing tries my intestinal fortitude more than these two restaurants.  I’ve had some pretty bad days, but I think the absolute worst day of my life would be if I were forced to eat at both of these establishments as like a breakfast/lunch combo.  I would be out of commission for the rest of the day.  My stomach can handle spicy food, mexican, indian, chinese and pretty much anything else you fry up and throw at it, but poorly prepared, cheap breakfast food is a deal breaker.  Not only does it offend my most delicate palate, but I don’t think I even have time to digest it before it’s on its way out the other end. 

Sorry that was kinda gross.

So, chain restaurants aside, by way of habit I fell in love with the Athenian Diner in Middletown, Ct.  The full name is the Athenian II as there are three others located in New Haven, Waterbury, and Milford, but that’s neither here nor there.  My first experience with the Athenian Diner was when I was 16.  I had just recently gotten my driver’s license.  It was February and bitterly cold old, and my friends and I were driving around looking for a place to hang out.  We had all recently taken up somking.  With this in mind we were looking for indoor establishments where smoking was still allowed.  One of us suggested the Diner, and for the next two hours we sat in the smoking section drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes.  I left there that night with a feeling of awe.  “How could I have never known about this place before?” I wondered.  There was a great feeling of freedom or independence knowing there was this place where I could go with friends and be among other smokers and coffee drinkers.  To me it was like the site of the last stand against the Ct state legislature trying to crack down on smoking in public places.  More than that, it provided a place to go every day to get out of my house for a few hours and be with friends away from the crushing, demoralizing confines of our high school. 

I honestly believe from that first day, I was at the Athenian Diner no fewer than three times a week until I left for college.  In that time the only items I ever ordered were eggs, french fries, and coffee.  I did not even think to venture into the elaborate menu that lay before me day after day.  So many times I ignored its pleas of “Read me! Read me!”  Then one woeful day in early in 2004 something ultimately tragic happened.  Smoking was banned at the Diner.  I was devastated.  What once made the Diner such a great place to gather, relax, and hang out with friends had now been demolished.  My initial reaction was to boycott the Diner in protest of this harsh policy change.  That lasted about a week.  I learned, or more accurately speaking, I had known that smoking was to be banned in all restaurants in Ct sometime during the year, but I didn’t want to believe it. 

After my mini-boycott fell through, I was back at the Diner full-bore.  I was attending college in Massachusetts (the stained mattress on which United States’ Ultra-Liberal fornication takes place), but every time I came home I was at the Diner.  For the first time I was seated in the now defunct “non-smoking” section.  Having frequented the Diner for four years prior, I was having trouble adjusting to the non smoking section as well as the new atmosphere of the entire place.  To replace the habit of smoking cigarettes, I began venturing deep  into the menu.  I tried Reubens, Patty-Melts, Omelettes, Gyros, Belgian Waffles, and they were all remarkable.  I was always genuinely impressed upon ordering something new at how damn good it tasted.  In addition to this they offer a full dinner menu seven days a week from 3 to 10PM.  The portions on these dinners are so massive they can be divided into three separate, yet equally tasty meals. 

On one hopelessly drunken night around 3AM sometime in 2005 I stumbled upon my “tandom special”  Seated at a booth, starving but with no clue what to order, Flabio, my all time favorite Diner waiter, came over to the table to take everyone’s order.  My turn and still undecided, my eyes rolled into the back of my head and I blurted out ”french fries with cheese and gravy.”  I still don’t know why I said it.  I had had Diner fries before and they were good.  I know cheese is good, and I had the gravy there before and decided that was also good, but I cannot tell you why I decided three together sounded like a good combination.  Anticipating the worst, I took my first bite and fell in love.  Salty, starchy, and cheesy are easily three of my favorite food groups so I guess it should come as no big surprised that I really liked this dish.  I learned later on that many of my friends had actually ordered this before, and someone may have even suggested it to me that night, but in my innebriated state had completely forgotten.  The Canadians even have a name for the dish; “Putin”, but this is America so it’s called French Fries with Cheese and Gravy. 

I strictly order this dish after long, labrious nights of driking way too much usually on an empty stomach.  There is simply no better food to eat in this condition. 

To this day I still frequent the Diner.  I feel like it needs me as much as I need it.  This restaurant is as much a part of my life as my job, my friends, and air.  Every once in while I’ll glance over at the “smoking section” and reminisce on the days of sitting, smoking and drinking coffee for hours on end, but the Diner does not dwell on the past.  It is a place of progress.  It’s a place to grow unemcumbered by the monotony of the outside world.  It is also sovereign Greek territory.  Below is a list of some of my favorite Diner foods.  I believe they represent an accurate cross section of what their menu has to offer.  All of these dishes are great in their own unique ways, yet they all taste strangely similar.  If you ever find yourself at the Athenian Diner in Middletown, Ct, try out one of the following.  You won’t be disappointed. :

French Fries With Cheese and Gravy:  An off-the-menu item packed with salt, starch and cheese.  If you’re three sheets to the wind and need to sober up quickly, polish off a plate of these bad boys, pound some coffee, and sprint for the nearest toilet. 

Patty Melt (cooked Medium):  A cheeseburger on rye toast with sauteed onions.  Make sure to ask for “no tomatoes” as they are pulpy and never in season.  The juice from the burger and onions turn the bottom piece of rye toast into a soggy paste like consistency.  Recommend ketchup application is to simply pour ketchup onto plate and dip.

Cheeseburger Club (cooked medium):  Simply stated; a club sandwich with a cheeseburger instead of coldcuts.  Once again sans tomatoes.  Request the french fries well done and salt and pepper the shit out of those fuckers.  The burger adds a nice change of scenery to the club sandwich lineup.

Chicken Scampi over Linguini:  One of the afformentioned dinner menu items.  If you eat this dish in one sitting, your name is Jesus Christ; you are the son of God, and your stomach’s name is Thunderdome.  I know it sounds strange to order something like this at a diner, but it is fucking fantastic.  If you have ready access to refrigeration, I recommend you gorge until full, take the rest home, and make two more meals out of it.  Your friends will avoid for a week because you will reek of garlic, but it is well worth it.

Grilled Cheese and Bacon:  Nuff said.  Buttery, cheesy, and bacony.

Three Fried Eggs Over Easy; side of French Fries well done; said of brown gravy for french fries:  A classic dish.  This is first food item I ever ordered at the Diner.  The eggs are always done to perfection.  I get the fries well done because I like them crispy.  Dip the fries in gravy and you’re go to go…to the bathroom.

Down Fall; Illness

We’ve reached the time of year, in New England, when the weather begins to change rapidly.  A lot of tourists from surrounding states like New York and New Jersey will travel to Ct and other states in New England to stare at leaves and drive around like assholes.  Traffic on 95 becomes worse than usual and random mafia wars will sometimes break out in the quiet, little towns along the shore.  But I’m ok with all of this.  In New England, fall lasts for about a month.  It begins mid-September when it is technically still summer, and it ends rather abruptly in mid-October with the first snowfall which, like clockwork, is predicted for this coming Thursday, October 15th.  During this month’s time the leaves on the trees do turn fantastic shades of yellow and orange, and yes when they are ablaze in the sunlight of an autumn day one can be struck with a certain sense of beauty and awe, but then you go to bed one night and the next morning your fucking car is covered in fucking snow and there’s not a single leaf left on a single F’n tree.

I’m not exaggerating.  One day you have beautiful fall colors and everyone’s wearing thick cable-knit turtle neck sweaters and going apple picking and drinking warm cider, and the next you’re scraping ice of your goddamn windshield with a broken ice scraper because, who thinks to buy a new ice scraper when it’s summertime and you have better things to do?  In short, the transition between fall and winter in the great New England territory is abrupt and leaves me with a sense of longing and usually a nasty cold.

Which brings me to my next point.  Over the weekend I was sick.  Around this time of year I always catch some stupid cold.  This year, apparently, will be no different. 

It started around the middle of last week.  I noticed a slight pressure building in my head.  The first couple of days I chalked it up to being over tired/seasonal allergies.  I think I was averaging about six hours of sleep per night last week which, for me, is far too low.  Anything under seven hours of sleep per night and I just don’t feel right.  I become tired and cranky much like a two-year-old who has missed his afternoon nap.  I’m easily irritated, I snap at people for no reason, and my thoughts often become sad and depressive.  It’s really quite pathetic but what can I say?  I needs my sleeps.  Also, I truely believe that I’m being affect by seasonal allergies just to make things that much worse.  I’m a fairly bad allergy sufferer during the spring months when there is a lot of pollen floating through air and all that shit, but I’ve never before been affect by allergies during the fall.  Apparently that has changed.  For the past month or so I’ve had all the allergy symptoms I normally get during the spring.  So for the past month really I’ve felt like shit, and over the past weekend it would be more accurated to say I felt like a bag of smashed assholes.

The overall feeling was one of a general fatigue or malaise.  The sickness really hit home on Friday making work particularly brutal.  The overwhelming pressure in my head, which I’m assuming was caused by hopelessly clogged sinuses, was an experience I won’t soon forget.  I still feel it slightly today, but through the use of various decongestants and several hundred tablets of ibuprofin I’ve been able to greatly reduce the pressure.  Friday evening I made a feeble attempt to “power through” my condition.  I vigirously drank three gin and tonics and made some phone calls to see what was going on for the evening but it was no use.  Instead of my usual Friday evening “amped up party guy” mood, the more I drank the more tired and fatigued I became.  I finally succumbed to my condition and decided to stay in.  My friend Erick, also having nothing to do, was kind enough to take a trip to my home and play video games with me for a few hours.  Big ups to Erick for that.  I know if he was sick and I had nothing better to do, I would’ve stayed the hell away from him, but his superhuman powers have rendered him immune to pretty much any disease you can think of. 

Saturday wasn’t much different.  I was confined to bed for most of the day.  My mother made me chicken soup.  The smell of which got me out of bed in the first place.  Big ups to her for that.  At least I know I have some people I can rely on if I ever fall ill again.  Most of the day was spent watching TV, dicking around on internet, and playing xbox.  So all in all it was a very typical Saturday. I just felt more tired and like someone had stuck my head in a vice and was slowly clamping down.  Saturday night I had every intention of once again trying to power through the illness.  Erick met me at my house and we headed out.  Moments after I got in the car I began to miss the warmth of my house.  All I could think about was being in bed watching TV.  I had already spent so much time in bad that day my back hurt, but it was all I could think about.  We couldn’t decide on a place to eat, and the idea of going out and drinking until I felt better just seemed less and less appealing.  We ended up getting food at our old stand-by, the Athenian Diner in Middletown which, if you did not already know, is the greatest dining establishment in the state of Connecticut.  I will not go into more detail now, but I’m sure I’ll dedicate a post or two to this culinary institution sometime in the near future.  Erick and I ended up renting a movie and going back to my house and watching it.  Thanks again uncle Erick.

I want it to be known that if this had happened two or three years ago, there is no way the thought of staying home all weekend resting and getting well would have ever crossed my mind.  I would’ve been out drinking until three in the morning both Friday and Saturday night.  Sure, my condition would’ve worsened considerably, but I never would have sacrificed an entire weekend simply to get over a cold.  Does this mean I’m getting too old to party?  Have I passed my prime and with it my ability to prioritize my life in a fun-oriented manner?  Or does it mean that I’ve become resposible enough to know when I need to slow down and rest.  After all, devoting two days to rest and relaxation has greatly improved my condition.  I can sit here today typing this and tell you in all honesty that I feel fine.  On Friday I never would have guessed that I’d feel better by the following Tuesday.  Perhaps I just have super regenerative powers and regardless of what I did over the weekend I would have felt fine by today anyway.  Odds are that’s not the case.  I’d like to think I still know how to have a good time, and maybe I’m realizing I don’t even need to drink in order to do so, but I’m gettin way ahead of myself.

Sunday was pretty good as far as Sundays go.  I noticed a marked improvement in my health.  With my spirits restored I was free to venture out as I pleased.  This resulted in my second trip to the diner in a 12 hour timespan and a leisurely trip to the Meriden mall where I yelled at a high school girl in Journeys for not having a pair of shoes in my size and a cashier at Best Buy because her register was down.  Yep everything was back to normal.  The rest of the day/evening was spent watching the Patriots lose (ouch) and all of season 4 of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.  Quaint.

So maybe I am becoming more responsible.  I suppose it had to happen eventually.  It’ s not as if I can’t still get drunk on a Wednesday night and call out of work on a whim.  If I was so inclined, I could do that whenever I wanted.  I have plenty of sick time, but I like to hoard it so I’ll probably never do that.

Yahoo Answers

Many of you are aware that there is a site on the internets called Yahoo.com.  It’s a relatively entertaining site with a few decent features.  For instance; I have a yahoo email account which I check thirty to forty times an hour while im at work.  Most of the time there are no new messages in my inbox, but it’s not really about receiving new messages anymore.  I use it more as a jump point.  What do I mean by this?  Well say I’m sitting at my desk working.  Like actually working.  Every ten minutes or so an alarm will go off in my head, and I’ll think “hey I haven’t checked my email in a while.  Maybe there’s something new and exciting on there.”  Most of the time my inbox remains unchanged, but that’s ok.  I believe that my subconscious goal in habitually checking my yahoo mail is to divert my attention away from my work and focus it toward the interwebs.  If this is truely what my brain is trying to do, it is doing a fantastic job.  By the time I hit the refresh button on my browser to see if any new messages pop up I’ve already forgotten about my work.  Then it’s play time. 

The newest internet tool of distraction I’ve discovered is Yahoo Answers.  This an online forum hosted by Yahoo.com on which people can ask and answer open questions on any subject they so desire.  All you need to participate on Yahoo Answers is a Yahoo.com profile with one of those gay little avatars and you’re good to go.  So you may be thinking “what’s so great about this?  How is it that you can claim to be so enamoured with this site?”  Well let me explain about the dude.  I enjoy giving people a hard time.  I enjoy being sarcastic…extremely sarcastic like all the time.  I have a very very super dry sense of humor, and my perception of the general public is that they could probably afford to turn the tv off for a while and read a few books. (if you catch my drift.)  With these character traits combined, Yahoo Answers becomes the absolute best place on the internet to fuck with people. 

I have been a Yahoo Answers member since July 9 of this year.  I heard about the service through a little site called failblog.org which posted a question which was previously asked on Yahoo Answer.  This question was as follows: 

“Why are there school?  Is it a point to it?” 

Does that make sense to you?  I mean I understand what the person was trying to ask, but the grammar is so bad I have difficulty believing that this was a legitimate question and not just a joke.  But imagine for a minute that it was truely a legit question posed by some moronic high school student whose failed English seven years strait and is just itching to turn 16 so he can drop out.  How funny is that?  I sat there and thought about the question for a few minutes, and I was able to picture the kid sitting there at his mom’s computer convinced that someone on Yahoo Answers who spoke bad grammar would be able to explain just what the point is to school is.  I laughed.  I had to laugh because there was nothing else to do.  To think of that question being legitimate, and to think there are people out there who are that dumb, makes me feel a lot better about myself.  Now, I’m no genius, and I certainly have never held myself out to be.  Add to that the fact that my brain reduces in sizes by 50% every weekend due to alcohol consumption, one could make the arguement that I’m only getting dumber.  So this kid who asked this question makes me feel good for two reasons. 1) I know that I’m a lot smarter than some folks out there, and 2) when my brain finally does turn to a soft gooey consistency perfect for watching Springer and breeding with an obese woman in a hammock I know I’ll have plenty of company.  Ignorance is bliss as they say.

Then I thought to myself maybe this kid isn’t as dumb as he sounds.  Maybe he’s writing questions like these just to get a reaction out of people.  There’s nothing quite as interesting as seeing how someone responds to a certain stimulus.  An outrageous question like that, however poorly worded it may have been did indeed provoke quite a response from the Yahoo Answers community with over 100 users posting a response to the question.  As expected most of the users took his question seriously and pleaded with this this poor lost soul to stay in school and apply himself.  The majority of the participants who didn’t anwer sincerely simply called the kid an idiot an moved.  Rightly so.  Then there were a select few who left responses such as “dude this jut made my day.” or “hahaha i’m laughing so hard right now there’s milk coming out my nose and I’m not even drinking milk.”  These people get it.  It was a joke, they understood it was a joke, and they are letting this kid know that they liked the joke and thought it was funny.  After some thought I realized that this was probably the case.  I mean whose grammar is really that bad?  Beyond that, if the kid was so stupid, then how the hell “school” correctly.  That’s not an easy word.  It doesn’t even have a “k’ in it.  Although you’d think it would cause it sounds like it does.  It took me decades to figure that out. 

So I took this idea and ran with it.  The first thing I did was take this kid’s question and repost it under my profile, just to see what kind of response it would get second time around.  As expected the results were pretty much the same.  A lot of people called me stupid, some people laughed, and some people thought I was serious. 

For my first orginal question I decided to get a bit more elaborate and see how far I could stretch the tolerance of the Yahoo Answers community.  I posed the query “how much blood loss is too much?”  The great thing about Yahoo Answers is that they give you an area to elaborate on your question to make it as specific and point focused as possible.  My elaboration on this question was as follows:

“Basically what I want to know is how much blood a person of average size can lose before he passes out or dies.  Like say I’m trying to break into my Ex’s apartment to go through her shit and maybe steal some stuff and I cut my arm on on a piece of broken glass while I’m climbing through her window.  How much time do I have and how much blood can I lose before I pass out.  The only reason I ask is cause it would be super embarassing if she found me in her apartment like that again.”

The responses I got from this question were few and frankly I was surprised at the lack of reaction I got from this.  I think there were only three responses and all of them were very well thought out and seemed to generally ignore the part about me losing blood because I’m breaking into my ex’s apartment.  The responses told me how much blood I could lose in a short period of time (I think they said like three pints, but I don’t remember) before passing out.  The question was actually removed a few days later for some “terms of use violation” which was never explained to me.  I was disappointed to say the least.  I had put a lot of thought into that question, and it turned out to be all for not.  Apparently people are more interested in the rantings of a poorly educated high school student than the maniacle acts of a suspicious ex boyfriend who may or may not be a hemophiliac. 

From then on I sort of dumbed down the questions.  I won’t go into detail on all the questions I asked, but I will tell you I came up with some pretty good ones that got some great responses.  The fun of it kind of died down after a while, but it was entertaining while it lasted.  I made some people LOL.  I pissed some people off, and hopefully I touched the lives of more than just a few of them.  These days I find myself answering more questions than asking.  I seem to get a certain satisfaction in answering questions in totally fucked up ways.  Sometimes it even works out.  I have an 11% best answer rate.  That means out of my 200 questions answered, 22 of them have been chosen as the best answer for that question.  So apparently there are some people out there who get me.

On a side note, there is no ex girlfriend whose apartment I want to break into.  I have ex girlfriends, but I’d like to think we’re all either on pretty good terms or simply have no interest in each other whatsoever.  Sometimes I feel I need to make these things painstakingly obvious for the more “literal” reader.  Also I do not suffer from Hemophilia.  On a sub side note, Hemophilia used to be referred to as the “Royal Disease” because a large number of the Nobility carried it in Europe due an inordinate amount of inbreeding intended to maintain the royal bloodlines.  I am also not inbred or of Nobility.  I just am.

I Hate The Internets.

I do.  I really really do.  That may sound weird coming from someone who has a web log and tells total strangers intimate details about his life for no particular reason via the INTERNET, but I can tell you with no great hyperbole that I hate it.  It’s not that I don’t have fun with some of the content on the internet.  I believe it is a vast source of information.  One certainly can learn about anything he so chooses with a few clicks of a button.  The internet has made in-store shopping obsolete.  You can buy anything you want online.  Food, vacuum cleaners, animals, hats, viruses, drugs anything.   You can read books online.  You can watch movies online.  You can order movie tickets online.  You can even video chat with your mom while ordering a delicious Pizza Hut pizza.  And for all this, I hate that fucking internet.

I can’t stand the stupid language that has evloved from AIM and MSN and thousands of different chat rooms.  Do you really have to write LOL at the beginning and end of every sentence?  You’re starting to sound insecure.  LMAO?  Dude just write “that was funny”  How hard is that?  And then there’s that stupid fucking lolcatz shit where they take pictures of cats doing retarted things and make captions for the photos using poor grammar and incorrect spelling.  How dumb can humor get?  I mean…what the fuck is that?

Then there’s the whole anti-social aspect of the internet.  I understand that there are a ton of chat rooms, discussion boards, facebook, twitter, myspace, that video chat site I can’t think of the name of because it has a retarted name, but none of these come even remotely close to what I would consider “being social”.  If you are sitting in a room by yourself staring at a computer screen, it does not matter how many people are looking into a camera starting back at you.  YOU ARE ALONE, and you’re going to stay that way until you can pull yourself away from the internets.  In order to be social you must physically be around other people.  You cannot make real friends over the internet even if you think they really “get you”.  Nor can you reproduce over the internet.  There is no button on your keyboard to have a little robot pop out of your computer and rob you of your sperm and then travel through the internet lines to inseminate some girl you met on MSN from Russia.  It just doesn’t work like that…cause Bill Gates hasn’t invented it yet. 

All that being said, I will tell you that I am a pretty big hypocrite.  I have a facebook page.  My AIM is always up and runnning and I’ve had the same SN since I was 15.  That’s ten years to those of you who don’t know how old I am.  (That would be 25 to those of you who don’t know how to do math.)  In addition, I am hopelessly addicted to youtube because you really can find videos about absolutely anything on there and you really can stay on it for hours and never get bored.  Its. Fucking. Amazing. 

Sometimes when I’m not dicking around on the internet, I’m thinking about dicking around on the internet.  I could be at work or outside walking around and I’ll see something that will trigger a memory of something I saw on youtube.  I could be listening to a conversation or reading a book and come across a word I’ve never heard before.  Some really cool sounding word that I want to get to know, and I’ll have to make a mental note to go on to google and look it up.  Did you know if you type “define:” followed by the word you want to define in the google search, google will give you the definition?  Worried you spelled it wrong?  It don’t fuckin matter because google will know what you’re talking about.  Sometimes I play a little game with google.  I call it the letter game. I’ll take any letter of the alphabet and type it into the google search bar.  Just one single letter, and I’ll try to guess what the first search suggestion google gives me will be.  For instance; If I type the letter “a” the first search suggestion that comes up will be “amazon” as in “amazon.com”.  You should try it sometime.  It’s really quite entertaining.  Sometimes I’ll hear a song on the radio that maybe I’ve never heard before but I really like it.  I try to remember just one line of the song.  Maybe a line from the chorus if possible, and I’ll try to keep it in my head until I can get to a computer.  Then I’ll type that one line of the song into the google search bar and boom! There’s the song, all the lyrics and the option to download it for 99 cents and have the ringtone sent to my cell.  Sometimes I think the google machine just “gets me”.  You know?  Or maybe I want to read up on King Henry VIII.  Did all of his wives die or just some of them?  Well that’s what wikipedia’s for.  Maybe you saw some weird car part they were talking about on the last episode of “Pinks All Out” and you were like “what the fuck is that thing?”  Well you can just go on wikipedia and type in the name of that alien car part and read up on it to your heart’s content. 

Yes for all these things I really and truely hate the internet.  I am a lazy, lazy man and there is no reason why my life derserves to be any easier.  Every minute I spend on the internet is a minute I’m not spending reading a book, exercising, hanging out with friends/family, going on a date, kicking my cat, kicking my neighbor’s cat, kicking my neighbor or any of the vast amount of activities that make this life worth living.  So I implore all of you to please turn off your internets once in a while and enjoy life before you become an amorphous blob that gets raped in a chair by a sperm robbing robot.  Yeah.

Wknd.

My life is very repetitive.  Allow me to explain.  There is no travel involved in my job.  I drive to work.  I have a desk.  I sit at it for eight hours a day then I go home.  Monday through Friday from 8AM to 5PM if you want to know where I am just say to yourself “is it a weekday?”, and you will know that I am sitting at my desk, at work, staring at my computer screen.  Am I working?  Sometimes.  Chances are though that I’m reading an article on Wikipedia about neutron starts, amateur rockety, or the Japanese Anime saga Dragonball.  AKA Dragonball Z, AKA Dragonball GT.  If it is a week day and between the aforementioned hours, I absolutely guranantee you with one hundred percent certainty that I will be sitting at my desk.  I have never called in sick.  I don’t take days off in the middle of the week.  All doctor, dentist, eye exam, or any other appointments are scheduled on the weekends.  I don’t even particularly enjoy national holidays.  I feel as if they throw off my routine.  I am definitely a creature of habit and as such, I find myself extremely predictable.  And I’m ok with that.  The most exciting thing to happen to me at work recently occurred a couple weeks ago.  I went on to google to look up the lyrics to the Lil Wayne song “Let The Beat Build” off his album “Tha Carter III”.  I clicked a link to a lyrics page and my computer started downloading tons and tons of spyware applications.  I frantically clicked ”x’s” trying to close the spyware windows but it was no use.  Within two minutes my computer restarted itself to finish the spyware installs and within five minutes after that my computer was rendered as useless as a velvet painting of a whale gettin’ it on with a dolphin.  I panicked and tried to come up with a story as to how my computer got so fucked up so quickly.  (The same thing happend about month before this too so I wasn’t too high up on IT’s “this guy is super fantastic awesome” list.”  My conversation with the IT guy went something like this:

Me: “uh remember that thing that happend to my computer like a month ago?  Well it happend again this morning and it seems to be much worse this time.”

IT guy: Lets out a long sigh. “Is there a little exclamation point on the bottom right hand corner of the task bar?”

Me: “Yeah…how did you know that?  Is that not supposed to be there?”

IT guy: another long sigh. “I’ll be up in a minute.”

I proceeded to tell the IT guy that my computer got fucked up because I visited a porn site.  I was just too embarassed to tell him that I was trying to look up the lyrics to gangster rap song.  I ended up getting a brand new computer out of the deal so all in all it worked out to my advantage.  Needless to say I don’t get my Lil Wayne lyrics from that site No Mo.

The bottom line is that every weekday I know exactly what I am going to do.  I know exactly what is going to happen at work, and I know exactly what I’m going to do when I get out of work.  This is not difficult because my post-work activities are usually confined to eating dinner followed by six to seven hours of TV watching, reading, or playing halo.  (ODST is amazing by the way and has given me a new reason to get out of bed in the morning.)  I’ve accepted the fact that I need this predictability, this routine, in my life in order to fit in with society and keep my job which I don’t particularly love but it does pay the bills. 

So I try to mix things up a little on the weekends.

This usually involves leaving work on Friday and getting as shit-faced-drunk as possible at a happy hour somewhere.  Drinking Guinness and/or Jack Daniels and picking at a happy hour buffet, the thoughts of the week quickly melt away as I imagine the possibilities the weekend has in store.  With every intention to plan elaborate trips to near-by cities or attend sporting events or something else incredible and spontaneous, I usually just end up staying at the same bar in which I partook in the happy hour and drinking myself into oblivion.  I would say on average my whole weekend is shot within three to five hours of my departure from work on Friday afternoon.  This is a direct result of the mass quantities of alcohol I consume on Friday evenings.  Now I know what you’re thinking. “So you get really drunk on Fridays.  Everyone does that.”  And you’re right in saying so.  The problem is that I happen to be a particularly bad hangover sufferer.  If I really tied one on the night before, it could take an entire day of rest and rehydrating until I feel normal.  Sometimes I still feel messed up two days later.  This is how my Friday night drinking often ruins my weekends. 

Most of the time I do not let my hangover get the best.  Instead, I’ll meet up with friends for a noon time breakfast (bloody mary and Athenian omelette) and then head on down to ye olde package store to buy some more booze.  Drinking is one thing that will always cure a hangover…temporarily.  I’ll normally spend my Saturdays eating vast quantities of shitty food and drinking beer until I feel better.  Then I’ll drink more beer and eat more shitty food and then I’ll go back to sleep.  For instance, this past weekend I ate more Chinese Food than most Chinese people will in a lifetime.  It wasn’t even a large variety.  It was just a shit load of chicken fried up in a wok and tossed in different sauce.  Damn you General Tsao!  Why the fuck are you so tasty?

Sundays are devastating.  Most Sundays I’ll spend about 3 to 5 hours out of 24 away from my bed.  In no way is that an exaggeration.  Regardless of how much I drank over the weekend, this is just always how my Sundays go.  I lay in bed and watch TV, read, dick around on the internet, play video games, and dick around on the internet.  I never make plans for Sundays, and I rarely go out to do anything.  To me Sunday is the most depressing day of the week.  It gives me time to reflect on exactly how much I ate/drank over the past 48 hours.  It also affords me an entire day to dwell on the fact that I have to be at work on Monday.

By the time Monday rolls around I’m so relieved to be back at work I don’t even miss the weekend.  I think I just gave you a rundown of my entire life.  You know those people who always have some kind of secret?  Like they always leave your group of friends during the middle of a party or something, but they’ll never tell you what they’re doing or where they’re going to go?  That’s definitely not me.  I like to keep it as simple as possible.  Honestly I don’t think my brain could handle much more than I throw at it these days.  Especially if I’m killing so many brain cells on my weekend excursions. I promise if I ever do anything out of the ordinary on a weekday or on the weekend, y’all will be the first to know.

Public Restrooms and Other Things That Bother Me

This post is intended mainly to be about things that annoy me.  From the title you might be able to tell that it will focus mostly on public restrooms and more specifically: my contempt for them.  That being said I would like to take a moment to follow up on my last post regarding Karma. I mentioned toward the end of the post that it had been kicking my ass and all that good stuff.  Well it still is but I don’t really care anymore because something amazing happened shortly after I published that post.  One of the acts I mentioned which may have had something to do with me being affected with bad luck was my interaction with a mentally challenged person on the telephone.  I won’t dive into the details again but I can assure you I feel sorry for what I did.  Well about two days later I got a call from another retard, working for the same newspaper.  I jumped all over the opportunity to redeem myself for my previous antics and was more than polite to this hard-working person in our telephone conversation.  I listened to everthing she had say and calmly and seriously told her that although we appreciate her call we have no need for the New Haven Register at this time.  I hung up the phone feeling downright proud of myself.  I had found my lost patience and social tolerance and summoned them at the proper time.  I exhibited maturity and control and felt all the better for it.  After all that, I couldn’t help but think about how odd the coincidence was of such a similar person calling from the same company just days after I wrote about how bad I felt about the first one.

I know if you didn’t read the previous post this doesn’t make much sense, but I felt as if I needed to share this bit of info with the casual reader nonetheless.  Now onto the topic at hand. 

There are some things in this life that just annoy me to no end.  The number one pet peeve of mine is public restrooms.  I don’t know if it was my upbringing as a child, my time spent in college where for four strait years I used only public restrooms (the ones in my dorms included), or the fact that I’ve become increasingly pee shy every year since I was six, but I have grown to absolutely despise public restrooms.  I know that shitting and pissing is a natural part of the lives of every single human being on the planet, but there is just something that grosses me out about it.  I don’t like to discuss it with other people, and I firmly believe that it’s something that should only be done in the privacy of one’s own home.  I’ll make an exception for urinating.  That’s OK to do in public.  But number 2 should simply be held in until you get home.

Every morning, around 11:30, I walk into my office bathroom to piss, and I am immediately hit in the face by a wall of stink caused by someone’s “hangover black” shit.   I’m not  saying that it’s just from one person in particular.  It very well may be, but more proabably it is a collective of a dozen or so very different very distinct shit odors.  The mens room in my office building is shared by four other offices with an estimated total of 50-100 males.  The mens room has five stalls and three urinals.  Invariably, no matter what time of day I walk in there, there is someone taking a shit.  I don’t know if it is poor ventillation or just the fact that these people are dying slowly from the inside out, but I have never smelled worse smelling shit anywhere on the face of the earth.  I’ve never been inside a two-weeks-dead camel, but the smell, I would image is comparable to or slightly less offensive than the smell on the inside of the men’s room in my office building.

Aside from the smell (which causes me to gag so frequently that my abominal muscles have been worked into a six-pack) I have never experienced such a poor display of bathroom etiquette.  There are certain rules of conduct which I feel should go without mentioning, but apparently there are some people who are so absorbed in themselves that they seem utterly incapable of observing even the simplest of the unspoken rules of the restroom.  For instance: there are three urinals in the restroom at work.  One of them is built lower to ground which is so necessary what with all the midgets and children who work in my office building.  It should go without saying that if I’m standing at the far right urinal and the other two are open, the far left urinal should always be the next one occupied not the middle.  This will create a sort of invisible barrier.  The separation of at least one urinal’s width is an easy way to protect one’s personal space or “comfort zone” which I feel is important especially when my hang is exposed to the world.  It is amazing to see just how many people are incapable of observing this rule.  On several occassions I have been the first to the bank of urinals and moments later someone will stand right next to me and use the middle one.  As long as the stream has already begun, I’m relatively ok with this, but if it hasn’t, and there is someone standing right next to me, it will never get started.  There have also been a few occasions in which I and another person will walk into the restroom at the same time and that other person, when faced with an empty row of urinals, will go directly for the middle one.  I find this rude, offensive, and downright unbelievable.  That’s like the guy saying “hey come stand right next to me.  If you’re lucky I’ll stare at your dick the whole time and maybe piss on your shoe.”  The same thing goes for the actual stalls in the restroom.  To me, there is just something not right about two guys taking a shit a foot away from each other.  It grosses me out and I don’t partake.  I don’t know maybe that’s just me being crazy, but I really don’t understand why that’s socially acceptable.  And my God the smell!!!

Aside from urinal/stall positioning and offensive odors, it is my opinion that restroom conversation and any chatter of any kind should be kept to a bare minimum.  When I am using the bathroom, be it for number 1 or number 2, I am focused on getting in and getting out as quickly as possible.  I cannot have a “stop and chat” at the urinal with the guy from accounting who clears his throat so loudly and frequently that the rest of the office knows him as “throat clearing guy”.  A simple exchange of pleasantries is as far as I’m willing to take a restroom convo.  Most of the time if I see someone I know in the bathroom I offer a nod of ancknowledgement and continue on my way.  A typical restroom conversation for me may go something like this:

Co-worker “hey Mike did you catch the end of the Sox game last night?”

Me “No.”

Co-worker “Papelbon’s right arm fell off at the shoulder and struck Derek Jeter in the mid-section.  The Sox subsequently lost the game 4-6.”

Me:  I don’t say anything.  I just finish drying my hands and leave.

If someone ran into the bathroom while I was taking a piss and said “If you don’t pull this needle out of my arm for me I will die in the next thrity seconds”, I would glare at them and continue urinating.  Bottom line?  Don’t talk to me in the bathroom.  Whatever you have to say can wait until we are done evacuating unusable waste products via various orifices of our bodies. 

I’m going to end this right there.  I know was supposed to mention various aspects of life that annoy me, but apparently all I wanted to do was touch on my disgust for public restrooms.  There will be plenty more opportunities for me to talk about all the other stuff that pisses me off.

My Friend Karma

More and more I am becoming a believer in Karma.  I don’t know what it is exactly that has inspired this shift in my thoughts and actions other than the feeling that I’ve been getting shit on a lot lately.  That being said I could only deduce that, if Karma exists, I’m getting the bad kind and am most certainly getting my ass kicked by it.  Now you may be saying to yourself; “if he’s receiving all this bad Karma and getting “shit on” as he so elloquently put it, he must be doing something to deserve it… Right?”  Oh absolutely.  I’m not saying that I lead an evil life or that I intentionally go out of my way to harm or hurt people, but I can narrow down my misdeeds to a couple crucial events that, if they had gone another way, may have let me avoid this “bad karma” that’s been haunting me as of late.

As you may recall, I mentioned in an earlier post that I am a receptionist.  Part of this job requires me to take all incoming calls and transfer them on to the appropriate parties.  Unless you have ever been a receptionist, you have no idea how annoying this task can be when people call up and seem as if they have no idea why they called or to whom they need to speak.  Sometimes it’s as if the person on the other end has an uncontrollable urge to pick up the phone and dial a random number out of the phone book.  When the phone rings on my end, I pick up and say “(company name) how may I direct your call?”  This is where the chain of communication begins to deteriorate.  The most popular responses to this greeting are “I have no idea”, “what is the name of this company?”, and “do you speak eh spanish?”  To me these responses are unacceptable, and after a string of ten or twelve calls in a row which typically result in me telling the person he or she has the wrong number, I start to lose my patience.  I’ve never told anyone to fuck off or anything like that, and I’d like to think, even when I’m on the brink of insanity, I am able to keep my cool and assist these people.  These people whom I have come to realize for the most part are severly to profoundly retarted. 

So what does this have to do with me being on the receiving end of Karma’s ultimate wrath?  If I’m able to remain calm and keep my composure, certainly only good things could come of that.  Well I’ve realized that I’ve developed certain habits, perhaps even prejudices toward some of these callers.  For instance; I’ve reached the point where anyone with an incomprehensible foreign accent is treated with the least amount of class possible and is transferred to customer service within five seconds of the phone ringing.  This has resulted in a general loathing of yours truely by most of the nice ladies in our customer service department.  If there’s anyone who hates dealing with foreigners more than I do, it’s a group of middle aged white women who have never seen the inside of a 7/11.  But what else am I supposed to do?  I’m not even supposed to help these people.  It’s not part of my job.

There was another instance which I could have handled a bit more delicately which I will explain now and, depending on your personality and general disposition toward the mentally challenged community, may cause you to reflixively click on the red “x” button on the top right hand corner of this window never to return to this site again.  I don’t blame you for this, and I think if I was any other kind of person, I’d do the same thing…But I’m not so here goes.  There is a local newspaper that caters to the south/central region of Connecticut called “The New Haven Register”.  Every once in a while this paper will employ people to make sales calls to past and existing customers with the hopes of renewing their subscriptions or making a small donation to help support the very, very, super quickly dying breed that is print media.  I have received a multitude of these calls throughout the months at my current post but there was something about this last one which, for me anyway, set social tolerance back about thirty years. 

The phone rang, and I glanced at the caller ID “New Haven Register”.  I picked up and quickly went through my spiel, my mantra, that opening line I say reflexively dozens of time a day; on certain nights when I wake up sitting in bed and a cold sweat has broken out on my forehead it is the first phrase that comes to mind or I’m already mouthing it as my eyes struggle to adjust to the infinite darkness.  After this, there was a slight pause, an instance of silence which immediately dictates to the person on the receiving end that this is a sales call.  I sighed heavily and said “Hello” in not such a polite tone, and then I heard a voice come from the other end.   This voice was…different, not normal, special I suppose you could say.  The slurred words read from a simple script as if each one was being pointed at with the tip of the reader’s forefinger his eyes hovering a few inches above crinkled paper.  Riffling through the sales pitch as quickly as possible there was no hint of inflection in the dull monotone of the caller’s sloppy diction.  It was then I realized exactly what I was dealing with, a gainfully employed retard, and for an instant a broad smile flashed across my face as I thought of the possibility of fucking with this person.  I quickly banished those thoughts and wiped the grin off my face, but it was too late.  Somehow, after the poor simple soul struggled through the first part of his sales script, before I could even think about it I said “what?”.  Sure enough he launched back into the pitch right from the beginning.  At this point I gasped and fought back a chuckle and hung up the phone.  “Did I just fuck with a retard?”  I asked myself.  I had.  That much was obvious.  The saddest part was that it was almost instinctive, reflexive as if some deeply embedded genetic code was triggered when I heard this person’s voice and I had to give him a hard time.  At least I caught myself and hung up before things escalated, but I know what I did, and Karma knows what I did, and now I”m paying for it. 

You hate me don’t you?