Work Stuff

First. Everybody stop loud talking. Use your inside voices. We are all in offices and I can still hear you planning your life outside of work all day over my iPod headphones. It has gotten to the point where it takes Ozzy at 85% to drown you out with the stock iPod headphones. Yeah, my bad for not ponying up for the Bose Noise Canceling headphones so that I can listen to M.Ward while you talk to your kids. I'm this close to closing my office door. This close. |------------------------|

Second. People that adjust their schedules to ease their commute are annoying me for some reason. First of all, it makes me have to come into work at seven because you have been here since four. Basically, you wake up for work when normal people are getting kicked out of bars and leave work when normal people go to lunch. The trickle down effect lands in my lap as I get off at four and have to shop with the blue hairs. I will die alone because even my last chance of grabbing an orange at the same time as some perfect representative of the female species that enjoys oranges has been ruled out because I am shopping with old people who can't park. Are these my peers? Would this be my jury? Do I need to fight aisle wrapping pharmacy lines to get to the bread aisle? Did you seriously just take a half day at 8:00 AM? This can't be real. I am done with laundry and dinner and in my jammies when my friends/friend are/is getting off of work.

Third. How hard can it be to maintain a comfortable climate in an office building? I can't feel my hands. I'm going to look like Bob Cratchit by Christmas. I'll have some fingerless gloves and a sweater on while I type and look at my breath. While I see the appropriateness of holiday decorations to boost morale, I feel that people should not be used as window dressing while they work and especially if it is not entirely their doing and instead some kind of secret HR department plot.

Fourth. Try this at work. In a meeting, casually put your thumb up on the edge of the table. Then, while actively participating in the discussion, see if anyone else puts their thumb up on the table. It's just a relatively accurate coolness gauge. You do, however, run the risk of being called out on it. If you do get called out on it, excitedly pronounce that you are President and point at someone and say "And you are asshole." If someone busts out a deck of cards and a twelve pack of Miller High Life, you've just won the meeting and qualified as President for a game of Asshole. That, my friend, is called winning at being awesome.

Fifth. I skipped soccer and drinking after soccer last night to install an Oracle database on my personal laptop. I felt about ten feet tall while I talked to my neighbor about how he lost six pounds drinking Gimley's vodka and lime juice instead of beer. There may have been a diet book deal in that conversation if we had written it down. He was wasted, but power to him. He invited me out drinking on Friday, but I told him I had a soccer game and really wanted to cuddle up with my newly installed database that I can do whatever I want with. Change is afoot and it feels pretty good. I plan on winning this thing.

Sean Paul Jones

I'll admit that I ironically subscribe to the genius of all that is Sean Paul. He is like a more aggressive and more legit Shaggy while still being watered down and not legit. You can, however, hear his music coming out of everything from Escalades to Berlinettas at stop lights from the left to the right of the United States as a whole. I'd like to add right here that not only are we the home of the Whopper, waterboarding and Wikipedia, but we are also the home of Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader, Deal or No Deal and Don't Forget the Lyrics. Anyway, here is what you hear when you sit at the stoplight next to Sean Paul fans. It made me laugh real hard this morning.

Good Ideas for Autoreply Messages: Vol. 1

In these days of spam and mailing lists and general Inbox maintenance, it is a good idea to put some rules in place or even use the autoreply function for certain messages like "Thank You" or "Good Job."

The question is, what do you put in the autoreply that conveys sincerity and alleviates the automation of the whole process? How do you inject humanity into a reply that you may have never even seen go out of your outbox? Well, I have it. It's right here:

"You just don't get it.
I am not communicating with you for your sake.
The e-mail was strictly in an effort to hope you leave me alone all
together.
I don't want anything to do with you and I don't want your help or your
best wishes.
I know its harsh but it's how I feel."

Just cut and paste that into Outlook and you are set. I've got it set for anything with "Viagra" in the body text.

All The Things You Are

Made it. The first leg of the holiday mental gauntlet is in the books with minor altercations and negative points. There were some not entirely positive things that happened, however, and because I try to be completely honest through a veiled guise of anonymity even though many friends read this and can finish my sentences when I try to relate a story that has been chronicled here. Therefore, I'll run down some of the things.

First negative point was Black Wednesday. It would've been smart to stay home for this one, but something drew me out. To be honest, I've totally figured out what it is and it's so lame that it shoots pangs of guilt throughout me whenever I tap into my subconscious and see what's really going on. Sadly, I get drawn out when I feel lonely in the hopes that I will find some kind of stimulating conversation with someone who is attractive and intelligent. My god, that is so sad. Too stubborn to join a book club or e-date, though, still. That's a whole can of worms, though.

Here is a clue for anyone considering this type of action because it must occur in other people. I've been informed that I'm not special, so at least three other people must have experienced this. It rarely to never works. Perhaps the reason I still do it is because it has worked in the past (at least in a temporary form), so I intrinsically know that there is a chance. Anyway, the clue is that it may not be a good idea and it will probably not work. At best, you will wake up the next day and feel like crap and realize you just wasted time and money and may have even said something horrible to someone. Worst quote yet has been "Hey butterface. You should really be nicer to people that are more attractive than you." That is the most vain and mean thing I have ever said to anyone, but she deserved it.

So, the negative point on Black Wednesday went down like this. I was at my goto bar and this thick neck guy and his two personal trainees were with him. They had incredible Rottweilerish backs. So, anyway the two trainees started talking to me about how much better real ones were when compared to fake ones. Seriously, I'm not a fan of this argument. To each their own. I don't care about how a TV works or where your breasts came from. Not really my business.

Long story short, one of the trainees grabs my hand and puts it on her breast as I say "That's really not a good idea." This was the spark that the powder keg needed as I was about to be jumped by Thick Neck. This culminated with a heated (his side) and disinterested (my side) argument that probably had an under the breath comment of why would it matter if I touched a dude's breast anyway which then pissed off everyone involved.

I'll also admit that, at this point, every one of my drinking stories is sounding like it is from the point of view of Holden Caulfield. That's not really where you want to be. So, anyway, this situation did not end pleasantly, but I did not get a bloody nose or anything, so it's merely a minus one. I did, however, wake up the next morning still pissed and decided that this stuff needs to stop.

The next day was Thanksgiving and I went to my broken home to be with family. I refused to touch a drop of booze as I feared it would Irish up Thanksgiving and instead drank Diet Cokes and Ginger Ales which were very pleasant. I exchanged pleasantries with my maternal grandmother who explained to me that Mitt Romney is spoken to by the lord and not, in fact, George Bush. I told her I really didn't know who to trust on that one and it was kinda he said/she said for me. She then relayed that the Middle East would play out the way that the bible has prophesied.

At this point, I was looking for anything to gouge into my chest warranting an exit from this nightmare conversation. I can't believe that we even share any DNA and really think that she would have been better off had my grandfather never taken her from Canada. America has not been good to her.

Regardless, it was the best food on record and was great to see everyone, for real. My mom gave me one of my old books from when I was three and my neighbor read it to me. Sadly, the theme of the story kind of matched my mood even though I didn't learn from it 29 years ago. It was Hucklebug and was about a little bug that runs away and then feels bad, but doesn't want to go back because he feels bad for the mistake that he made by running away. I might add that I ran away twice before I was eight and I still have problems with mistakes and learning from them.

So, crap, day after Thanksgiving, I just bummed around and then eventually went out to get dinner. All the places that I tried were closed for holiday parties and I ended up at my other bar. The definition of insanity as determined by Jung is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Started talking to one of the bartenders instead of getting tacos. Beer. Beer. Beer. Whiskey Shot. Beer. Beer. Smoke. I ended up "dancing" at one of my all-time unfavorite bars while drinking "handsomes" with a girl from my softball team. This didn't go well and they took my beanie as it broke dress code.

Saturday. Did nothing. I read some stuff from my programming book and watched a couple of episodes of Twin Peaks and four episodes of Top Gear, which is one of the best shows on TV that I know of. Be careful, however, because you will start dreaming in an English accent if you watch too much BBC. It happened last night and I slept horribly.

I ended up at a party on Saturday night with Pappy at Warner's house and saw some really good friends and had an awesome time rocking out to Rock Band. I have to buy it now and put a Rock Band together. Right now, my official profile is Gay Pete. He looks like a short, fat Dee Snider and his name is considered "not Classy" by the XBox Live program. Whatevs. He is badness.

We need a bass player, but I think we've got the guitar and drums nailed at this point. The name's up in the air, though, because we need to have a band meeting to discuss it. It was something like Anal Stripes at last argument. The redeeming thing of the night was that fact that I drank three beers in six hours and was considerate to mostly everybody. The gay guy didn't really care for the name of my Rock Band guy. Like that was in my control. That's his name. That's it.

So, starting Saturday night stuff started getting good. I tooled around the apartment on Sunday and did laundry and stuff and felt good about most stuff.

A couple of things here, though. I'm starting to sound like Colin Oberst, but I'm thinking about quitting drinking again. I realize it's horrible timing for it with the holidays and all, but when I tally up the points, the good ones rarely come after a few. Let me clarify that, having sex in a hallway of a Sheraton at four in the morning or having sex with a semi-stranger and not remembering their name in the morning are not good points. Good points are feeling warmth in your chest from meeting someone as you walk away and go home to bed or doing something really considerate for someone and not for yourself. Very rarely are these points scored even with a drop of alcohol anymore. All the good points come under the influence of conscience and intuition. I've given myself a mulligan on saying things that are offensive in the spirit of self-degradation or lightheartedness, but I really am getting sick of it. The regret and guilt will wipe you out when you are sitting by yourself wondering why you are still smoking and alone.

It's harder than it looks and it breaks down to loneliness and regrets. It's weird. It starts out with you feeling lonely. The next phase is the guilt because you start to think that you wouldn't be lonely if you hadn't blown it about 25 times. Basically, you feel like you were given what you want and bit that hand that fed it to you. That's not healthy, is it?

Oh, the other thing is that The Girl from a couple of months back had a boyfriend and that's probably why she went AWOL. It's some form of closure and I still wonder why I got and am still a little hung up on her. The thing about that question is that even having the answer to it wouldn't mean a whole helluva lot. So, here goes.

Update: Proof that iPod shuffle functionality can read your mind. "Textbook" by We Are Scientists came up on my shuffle right when I finished writing this. No one should have to relate to that song, but it happens. It's like sad girls and Faith Hill songs. Has it really come to this? Seriously?

Hyperlameity

Holy crud! Still tired from Oracle OpenWorld last week where I was made to feel real dumb, inspired to learn more, stranded at the CalTrain station with no way of getting a ticket (second time that's happened), and the recipient of an Oracle umbrella. My first umbrella since my ex took my Stanford umbrella a long way back.

So, last Monday, I made it to OOW around Noon. I had to run my gear to my sister's house in the Marina and then get back to the conference. I had a gig on Monday night in the Richmond district and wasn't going to leave my gear in my car. Four guitars later, you know not to leave musical gear in your car. Not only does it promote the theft of the gear, but is usually really bad on your windows.

First day of OOW can be summed up like this: Business Intelligence, Web 2.0, Dashboards, Green, Next Generation [any word here]. The night before the first day there had been a shooting at the Metreon because some kid didn't go down the escalator fast enough. Another action pushing the culture as a whole an evolutionary step backwards. Got home Monday and was exhausted after pounding Diet Cokes through the gig.

One note about the gig, is that the guy who used to play drums for the band showed up. I think he is aware that I clowned him and also have already stated that I'll never play with him again. I watched him tune his floor tom for a half hour one night while we were late for a start and he also wears socks with Birkenstocks and I'm sure by now the Birk's have evolved into Crocs. What a fucked up world we are living in when people can do this. Managed to get home around Midnight and get into bed whilst having one pair of clean pants left to wear the next day that were a little short, to be honest. Whatever, floods at a dorkfest shouldn't be too bad.

Second day of OOW. I had missed the cocktail reception the night before, but this crowd didn't party real hard, so everyone was pretty with it. There were over 40,000 people at this conference and sessions were held in a ten block radius that you could get to via an intricate shuttle system that must have cost Oracle a fortune. It was clear from the onset, however, that money really wasn't an object at the conference. Some highlights:

-They shut down Howard street between Moscone North and Moscone South to build a tent a block long where events were hosted and meals served. It was impressive.

-They had a customer appreciation event at the Cow Palace and booked Billy Joel, Lenny Kravitz and Stevie Nicks and Mick Fleetwood. They also had Envogue. That's pretty tight.

-They were running a fleet of full-on tour buses between the hotels and also their headquarters in Redwood Shores.

-They provided palatable lunches everyday. I had a Thai wrap that could very well have been unstoppable. I would eat it again.

-The tchotkes at the conference were some of the better tchotkes I've ever seen. I think it was Tuesday that I saw about twenty people walking around with Guitar Hero III from the NetApp booth. My Oracle bag is pretty nice, too.

That was the second day. Business Intelligence sessions and a little bit of PL/SQL in there. I went home Tuesday and managed to get some laundry done.

The third day was the day of the big concert at the Cow Palace and Larry Ellison's keynote with Michael Dell. The next day the concert was followed by reports of noise complaints from the event from as far as ten miles away. They must have just rocked. I think I still would have been more impressed by the keynote that day. It was bigger than some rock shows that I've been to and people were pumped. Pro tip-for the next 5 years, at least, "Green" is the thing. That is all anyone is fucking talking about besides dashboards, of course. I think I fell asleep at like eight that night. Walking around with 40 pounds of backpack and sneaking work into session breaks was taking its toll on me.

Now, by the fourth day, I was done. I bought a new book for $75, but it was to replace one that was stolen a while back and it's super good. It was a slow day as everyone had left or was tore up from the night before. I still went to a bunch of sessions and talked to some guy from the UK for a while about database development and footie. I wrote some random notes down in my notebook during one of the sessions, though. Here they are:

-Jawas in the exhibition hall. These are the old Asian people that comb the tradeshow exhibition hall for branded junk. They are easily spotted by their bags full of stuffed bears, thumbdrives, hats, mouse pads, key chains, etc...They will take anything and are absolutely unqualified leads. They also bug the shit out of me because I used to do tradeshows for a living.

-Keynote Speaker Cellphone Videotapers. At least four of these guys were in front of me during the Ellison/Dell keynote. I was concerned that I would catch their hyperlameity. I did, however, send a few texts during it and was genuinely impressed by an uninterrupted data migration between two 11g servers. I would never tell anyone that, though. Seriously, though, impressive.

-Personal Space Invaders. After two days of people walking right into me constantly and bumping into me almost twice as constantly, I started to believe that I may have become invisible. Could people seriously bump into me that squarely if they could see me? It defied all explanation. I also became a fan't of the person who gets on the escalator and puts a head in your ass. Seriously, this dude had his nose in my ass going up the escalator one day. Perhaps he was a budding proctologist, but he was violating my personal space in a bad way.

-Grown Man Stuffed Menagerie Makers. These are the grown men in jeans and sport coats with brown boat shoes and branded stuffed animals. I managed to spot one with three different types of plush toys and made a tiny little prayer to myself that he was going to bring them home to his son or daughter because it wasn't even really desk worthy.

-Escalator Standers. The rule is that if there is room in front of you, then walk. It's not a fuckin' ferris wheel. It is meant to speed your travel from one point to another faster than it would take to walk the stairs. It is to decrease time, not your effort, you fat fuck. Put down the cookie and start walking. Look what happened on the Metreon escalator (even though it's totally wrong and uncalled for). Escalator related violence is increasing at an alarming rate, so please follow the rules of the road, therefore, decreasing the chance of anyone experiencing Escalator Rage.

-Lunch Chasers. The lunches served were very decent, but they still came in a box. Is there any reason that you should be seen running across a plaza to get a ham and cheese sandwich? If you've done this, you should probably roll a ten sided di to see what damage you just took to your dignity.

-Beanbag Sleepers. These folks were definitely web 1.5, but they are still out in full effect. For some reason, if you are sleeping on an Oracle beanbag, you don't look homeless sleeping on a concourse floor. That's right. People are merely a shower, laptop and a beanbag away from looking homeless sometimes. I will kind of stick up for these people, though. The conference was super exhausting.

-BO Aficionados. There were dudes at this conference that brought BO to a new level. Sadly, every time I would get behind a guy that smelled of BO, I could only think of Sting. Why did he ever get into singing that as his thing? It worked the first time, but he throws it in everywhere live. BO is to Sting as "Dyno-Mite" is to ________________. A little SAT prep thrown in.

-Cookie Cutters/Collectors. These are the people that would cut in front of me at cookie time. Everyday around 3:00 or 4:00, they would bring out the coffee, cookies, and soda and people would go ape shit. It was like feeding time at the zoo. I have to admit that I found a tremendous amount of pleasure in watching the whole event. A couple of the days, I would jump in for a cookie and a dude seriously pushed me out of his way the way my grandma does at Christmas and Thanksgiving. I seriously thought about leveling some old Chinese guy over a cookie. Instead, I just let him get his handful of cookies and went for one when the frenzy had died down a little bit. The cookie was really good, though. It was peanut butter and not too hard or too soft. I cared for it.

-Tennis Shoes and Suit Wearers. I've been trying to pull off a variation of this at work, but no matter what you do, you end up looking like Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick without a hat on. Sometimes, though, I've almost sold myself on the look. Black Adidas Gazelles can almost compliment some slacks better than dress shoes. It's a sense of aloofness combined with a projection of "I'm very serious about getting some work done today, but could still ride a skateboard home" vibe.

-PPT Slide Photography Enthusiasts. There was not one presentation that you could not get on a thumbdrive or download that was presented at the conference. There was, however, people that insisted on taking fuzzy pictures of the PowerPoint slides with their iPhones and e-mailing them to themselves. Was there something that I was missing that enhanced a PPT slide if it were caught in it's natural environment? Was it like seeing a lion on a safari versus seeing one at the zoo? Fuck these people.

That pretty much sums up my last week. I mean, yeah, Thursday night I got into a beer chugging contest with a guy named Bjorn from Germany and a guy named Edmundo from Mexico. We ended up bar hopping and I lost two credit cards and got stranded in the city, which lead to a night on my sister's couch and a commute of shame the next morning, but that's just a Thursday, isn't it?

Judo "The Art of Choking"

I've been following the Hans Reiser trial lately. I find it extremely interesting. There is sex, betrayal, shadiness, a Honda CRX, and Judo "the art of choking" involved. The San Francisco Chronicle has a blog that is updating very frequently as the trial progress. Here's the link: SFChron Hans Reiser blog.

On every side of this trial are high profile San Francisco Bay Area legal people. Prosecutor Paul Hora had the Sausage King of San Leandro case. In that case, a guy who owned a meat processing plant disagreed with some inspectors and shot them all. He died in San Quentin a year after he was found guilty.

William Du Bois is on the defense. He represented one of the dudes from the Newark Gwen case in the Bay Area. That was where a bunch of dudes had sex with this "chick" and then were super pissed when they found that she was a really pretty guy. The kid involved got 15 years to life for it.

The judge is Larry Goodman. He was the judge on a case out of Pleasanton. It actually involved a girl that I went to high school with. She was abducted by a couple while she was on her way to work, raped and dumped up in Tahoe.

Check out this gem:

4:08 p.m.: Oakland police launched a major surveillance operation of Hans on Sept. 18, 2006, 15 days after his wife went missing, Hora told the jury.

Cops tailed him in numerous undercover vehicles and even in a plane circling overhead. They followed him as he left a daylong child-custody hearing in Oakland, had lunch with a friend at Fonda restaurant on Solano Avenue and then watched as he was dropped off near his Honda CRX at San Pablo and Ashby Avenues. It's the car the cops had been searching for. Hans then drives the car to Monterey Boulevard off Highway 13 in Oakland, parks, gets out, circles the hatchback four times, fiddles around in the car and then leaves. A cop sees Hans talking to a cab driver who appears on scene. By then, it's nightfall.

When the cab leaves--and Hans is nowhere in sight--the cops radio each other excitedly, "He's in the cab! He's in the cab!" Police start following the cab and tail it as it heads toward the Oakland airport.

But wait! Hans isn't in the cab, the cops realize.

Then an officer sees Hans "sprinting up the hill" up Shepherd Canyon Road, looking nervously over his shoulder. The cops lose him in the Oakland hills and never see him again that night, Hora said.

But OPD still has Hans' car--and it's missing the right front passenger seat, Hora said. The seat was there when Hans was pulled over by Redwood City police six days earlier, the DA said.

So, read more at the blog. Their coverage is really good so far.

A couple of things:
1) I am officially denouncing the "Thank You" e-mail and putting a filter in my inbox to automatically delete it. Don't get me wrong; I'm appreciative that you are thankful for some kind of action that I performed, but it's not necessary to thank me over e-mail. It's enough that I've obviously been identified as someone with a small rig and erectile dysfunction that needs to make lucrative stock purchases everyday, but I need to do stuff besides delete e-mails all morning. So, from now on, I will assume that you are thankful and if you are not, then that's neither here nor there. I do nice things for people to make myself fell better not them. It's absolutely selfish of me.

2) Try and listen to SomaFM when you are stuck on the InterWeb at work. There is a really good Indie Rock station and the Groove Salad station is pretty good, too.

Profundity, Monkey Dancing, and Barbarella

I just died laughing. I'm not even going to explain how I got this link, but the tagline had me cracking up. The tag was something about Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran talking about the profound influence that Star Wars had on Duran Duran.

Welcome To Planet Duran Duran

Okay, they took their name from Barbarella, which is like the sexiest non-porn movie ever made. That movie still makes me feel funny in the same way that Erin Gray did on Buck Rogers. It's a feeling that is both natural and unnatural at the same time. Some day I will understand it.

So, anyway, Duran Duran definitely has a sci-fi link, but if you want to talk about profound influences on Duran Duran, you would need to at least put cocaine, disco, and homosexual financing on the list somewhere. Star Wars I think would fit in that list fourth or fifth and would probably fall more into the category of "pretty big" influence.

Star Wars was a profound influence on Coheed & Cambria, Kevin Smith, and Hardware Wars. Let's just get that straight.

Side Note: There is something that is so incredibly calming about listening to Sufjan Stevens. It's not real happy. It's not real sad. It's just calm. That'd be pretty cool to be able to do that. He must be like 42 seconds away from being used in a Target commercial if he hasn't yet. I just heard a Target ad where they took Jim Noir's song "My Patch" and changed the words for counting down to Christmas or some shit. Dude, it's not even fucking Thanksgiving yet. What the fuck? Should I be getting stuff for my New Year's Eve celebrations now, too?

Anyway, many people in America don't remember Jim Noir for his song "Eanie Meany" from Adidas' World Cup Promotion. Jim Noir is worth checking out. He's got some cool stuff. Yeah, corporate whore, but whatevs. If I could quit what I'm doing right now and not have to do it for a year to do a dog and pony show for Target, I would just ask you to point the way and then start doing the Monkey Dance.

Update: Finer Feelings by Spoon could be one of the coolest songs ever written. For some reason, this song is just really clicking right now. It's got such a fuckin' solid groove in it and the guitar plays just enough without playing too much. Everything is just perfect about it. Perhaps...too perfect? Finally, Ga (x5) had to be one of the best albums this year.

Here's a link to the Underdog video. Brilliant.

Also, you can't forget keepon dancing to Spoon's "Don't You Evah." One of the coolest bass lines ever. I love it, genuinely. If you don't like that video, you are evil. It's better than LOLcats.

If You Lived Here, You'd Be Home By Now

So, no soccer on Friday this week after work. You know what they say about idle hands. I managed to meet up with a friend for a drink after work. This shouldn't be a big deal, but it sure is nice to do every once in a while. It doesn't happen a lot anymore. I wore a pseudo-Friday night shirt and Friday night shoes so that I could go over to my bar that I like that sadly has turned into a nightclub of sorts on weekends. This means that I have to put on dress codeable attire. I have to admit that it does make me look more handsome. So, it may be a blessing in disguise.

By the way, these new Friday night shoes that I got are awesome. They are Kenneth Cole Reaction. I think the model is Punchual. They are super comfortable and have now become my official shoes of work. Comfy and cheap. That makes a good shoe.

So, hung out on the patio of my usual bar and was apparently doing a meet and greet with every late 20s early 30s single mom in the place. I'm not hating on breeders. I just found it weird. It was like someone had put them all up to it and I was the butt of some kind of elaborate practical joke. I'll admit, too, that the mom from Poland was super hot. Whatevs. Not dating or hooking up for a while.

Got home late Friday after counting tips with the bartenders and walking two of the cocktail waitresses to their cars so that we could all be robbed and assaulted together. Chivalrous, yes, but safe? No. A jacket over a puddle is one thing, but protecting two hot girls from whatever comes out of the dark at three in the morning is something completely different. I'm not calling myself a pussy. It's just that there were giant Samoan bouncers inside and they sent me out. The lesson learned is never make eye contact when someone asks for something.

So, Saturday morning I missed some pick up soccer in the morning and then sat there figuring out what to do. I decided I would get a burrito for lunch. That was my plan for the day. I went and got said burrito and even threw in a quesadilla because I was jonesing for one. The problem with the quesadilla is that it prevented me from being able to eat the burrito. These are the problems that I deal with on a daily basis.

I watched Deathproof in the afternoon. I was a little biased against it and I didn't want to like it, but wound up really caring for it. The soundtrack alone is worth the price of admission. I have to hand it to Tarantino, his soundtrack taste is impeccable and full of deep cuts. So, after Deathproof, I watched The Fountain. I really like Darren Aronofsky, but this movie was challenging. Themes of love, despair, and immortality. Conquistadors, monkeys and yoga bubbles. It's visually stunning and a cool movie, but a lot of it had me going "What the devil?" Went to bed at ten Saturday night.

Woke up confused about what time it was because my phone had autoupdated for Daylight Savings. I don't really observe Daylight Savings, but do respect those that do. I finally figured out that it was 7:30 AM for everyone else, but 8:30 for me so I jumped in the shower and started my Sunday ritual which consists of coffee and the paper. Starbucks Coffee was apparently not serving coffee on this particular morning. Seriously, why don't they just change their name to Starbucks froofy espresso drinks with whip cream, trinkets and baskets of Cranium games? Stick to the basics. They invented the 400% markup on a cup of coffee and then can't even manage to serve it. Fuck You, Starbucks! Fuck You all to hell for not having coffee on Sunday.

So, I went to the other Starbucks down the street and got coffee and the paper there. I'm a total ass hypocrite. I'm aware of this. I burned through one crossword puzzle in the pink section and then struggled with the second one for a little bit. Browsed the Target ad, the Best Buy ad, and the Cost Plus ad. I don't know why I browsed the Cost Plus ad; it's not one of my usual ads that I browse. Oh, wait, I got angry because the Christmas push was starting and Cost Plus had a bunch of Christmas crap on sale. I disagreed with that.

So, at Starbucks there were nothing but weirdos and I decided to leave and go buy a vacuum because I had been putting it off for months. Buying a vacuum is the most thankless fucking act in the human action palette. No Dyson. No special pet hair function. I just need something that didn't require a bag, was not too loud and could handle the twenty square feet that is my apartment. I got it and for those keeping score at home it is a Bissel Cleanview II Plus or something. I think it's a piece of shit, but I was using a hand me down that resembled the vacuum from Mr. Mom and that thing started attacking blankets and the kids in the movie. So, I upgraded out of fear more than anything else.

Because I can never have a typical Sunday ever, I got a call from one of the dudes on my rec league soccer team and they were watching a game in Palo Alto. I had to give him the team bag and some jerseys, so I swung by the field and then watched the game. I've been thinking about joining an all mens team and wanted to see the level of play. It looked like an injury league, but fun.

After the game finished we went to a pub and watched Ac Milan versus Inter and then the Patriots versus the Colts. We drank some beers. We had some ideas and weird conversations. Well, at least I did.

We were with a couple of refs from our weeknight league and I basically laid out every trick that I ever use and asked them how they could possibly call me on them. They said they could now that they knew what I was doing. They really did respect my heel to the groin move, though. I stole it from Wayne Rooney. After you collide with a guy, you get up and act dizzy and then fall backward and grind your heel into the guys NADSAQ. If you put your hands over your face at the same time, it's a real easy sell.

So, we talked about rec league soccer for probably way too long, but managed to come up with the idea of combining some players from various teams into a tournament team. At the time it sounded like some kind of Axis powers super soccer team and crazy, but this morning it just seems like a tournament rec league team. No biggy.

After that, I went out on the patio to smoke and ended up talking books with this dude for about a day. We ended up talking about Steve Erickson for a bit and then came up with the brilliant idea of a book club. Not like a book club of a bunch of women in their late 20s, early 30s, reading John Irving and Oprah recommendations, but an elitist and pretentious book club that is centered around Finnegan's Wake by James Joyce.

I totally lifted the idea from Tom Robbins, but whatever. At this bookclub, however, we never have to read Finnegan's Wake, you just need a copy of it to get in. Once you are in the bookclub, we just talk about whatever books we are reading and music that we are listening to whilst drinking beers in paper bags. I'll stick by that idea the morning after.

Finally, best idea of the day came late. I remembered this news article about celebrities and people of interest donating their hair to charity. It's a cool idea and fun activity. It got me thinking, though. Are there firemen out there without moustaches? Cops without moustaches? Gay dudes without moustaches? Do they not have them because they can't grow one? D'you see where I'm going with this? I could grow moustaches and donate them to people in need of them to fill a stereotype that they aren't living up to. Plus, I would get to grow a moustache. It's a win-win situation.

OMG, foot in the mouth quote of Sunday:

"Hey, your buddy's pretty fucked up, man."

"Oh, he isn't. He just has MS."


That's all for now.

Uhhh.

I might have wore a fake moustache before posting this to youtube, but whatevs. It's basically a guy making fart noises in his hands that sounds like Sweet Child O' Mine. A better description would be that he is jamming along with the recording using nothing, but his hands and a super-vexed expression on his face as he concentrates on his art. I bet this dude gets real old at parties. Seriously. Watch his face. He's getting into it.

Simon Says Embed!

Muy In Telly Hentai

I had to train a new employee on our application this morning. She cut me off constantly and breathed real heavy. That's no big deal. I can handle that. She then took the documentation that I gave her and started fanning herself. My office is freezing all the time; it couldn't possibly have been the office climate. It's seriously cryogenically cold. I thought she might have farted and was trying to fan the smell away or something. Then I saw them.

She had banana hands. I have them, so I shouldn't hate too much, but they were bigger than mine. I've never met a woman who had bigger hands than me. From the point of visual contact, I was unable to make eye contact for the rest of the training. It was extremely uncomfortable. She is also the person who called my office phone and asked "Is this your phone number?" I replied, "Yes. That's why I answer it." It made me really confused.

So, after that, I get a little bit of work done and she sends out a weird e-mail regarding the meeting out of a form letter template. I read some of it, but it got me thinking about our recruiting process in my department and I actually Googled "Socially Retarded Affirmative Action." I didn't see any pertinent results in the InterWeb, so we must have it in a low key capacity at this point; it can't just be a coincidence.

On that note, here is my latest conversation with OfficeDwight. It took place while I was getting a soda from the fridge in the break room.

"Hey, man. I saw the dumbest martial arts movie last night" he said.

I replied "Dude, there really is no such thing as a shitty martial arts movie. Where'd you see it? Local Access or something?"

"No. I got it from Netflix. I've been checking out some martial arts and Japanese Anime." He made a hip pump gesture thing at this point and I immediately felt like I walked in on my parents doing it as I realized he meant soft core Hentai. He continued "I only get the rated R ones, but I rent them for the funny translations from Japanese. I wonder if they are that funny in Japanese."

I just walked away at this point, however, I love the Netflixian/anime usage of I read Playboy for the articles. That actually was truly awesome. It's like saying that you watch porn for the cheesy music. I've actually done that, but I actually recorded the music onto an audio tape while my parents were at work and then would listen to it when I delivered pizza in high school. I wouldn't sit there and watch a porn and be like "Oh, I'm just listening to it. I'm not really watching it." Dur, dude.

Link Smatters

This is a bunch of crap that I bookmarked last week, but was too lazy/busy to post.

Philosophy of Taoism - I actually found this off of Jeff Bridges' blog and have recently been reading up on it again. It's one of the better religions in my opinion, but that's a pissing match that I will abstain from.

Karate Depot - With Christmas around the corner, it's important that you take a look at Karate Depot. Everyone is getting fuckin' nunchucks for Christmas this year. Oh, pardon me. I meant Nunchaku. If I know one thing, it's that Nunchaku is a dish best served cold.

Andy McKee - Wunderkind. This guy plays nutty guitar and rocks the shit out of Toto. This is one of the best lyrics ever written "Sure as kilimanjaro rises like olympus above the serengeti." that's seriously in the song. Seriously.

Jeff Bridges - He was in TRON, Lebowski and he is also one of the best bloggers ever. It's mostly handwritten and it features some of his photography. The guy is out there, but super refreshing. He seems like someone who would be awesome to have a taco with. I spent a lot of time on his blog last Friday. It's great. There are links to stuff that your grandparents would forward you over e-mail.

Cardboard Tube Fighting League - This will catch on much quicker than soccer ever had a chance to. There are leagues in both San Francisco and Seattle. Check the FLICKR pools and buy a shirt or something. Or, better yet, find out when the next event is in your area and start practicing.

Hudsonia - Ray Hudson is a sportscaster for GOL TV. He is like the soccer equivalent of Harry Caray. Check out this gem "Zigic barely touches him and Palop goes down like a bunch of broccoli."

The Interrobang - Simply fascinating. I would get a tattoo of this. It was my gateway to fringe punctuation. Also see the acclamation mark, the irony mark, and the sarcasm mark. These would come in handy on text messages and e-mail.

To Each His pwn3d

Okay, picked up mom's at the doctor and talked to "Paul's Homie." If you drink enough, you will know everyone everywhere. Or, at least they will know you. I'll be mayor someday.

So, here's some random stuff. I had this epiphanical Sunday where I accepted happiness into my life as my personal savior. I was sitting in a a pair of sweats, watching soccer, waiting for a pizza and it happened. It felt like 1000 pounds of weight lifted off my shoulders. It was just in time, too. The previous Friday, I spent a half day with my sister and she explained that she had never seen me truly happy since we were kids and said that she worries about me constantly. She asked me very nicely to go on meds and I was pretty much ready to. It's really a last ditch effort for me because I'm not a huge fan of medicated happiness. See Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and you will understand. It doesn't end well.

The truth is that she is right. I've lived through other's happiness most of my life and find satisfaction in making others happy, but have never truly understood how to be happy personally based on my own personal merits. I'm aware of it and it's scary as hell. I do feel, however, that it's getting seriously better. I've road tested the new happiness and thrown it up against family, booze, and whatever else I could find that might ruin it and it's been bulletproof so far. Of course, dating is out of the question and should not be approached under any circumstance. The last girl that I "dated" (it's in quotes because the term "dated" is a real loose use of the word) indirectly caused me to start smoking again and really left a mark. She was pretty cool and pretty cute, but it wasn't in the cards. Hung me up for a little bit, though. I didn't care for it.

So, no dating and spending Fridays that aren't on a soccer field at home watching this piece of shit. The Next Great American Band is one of the most dog shitty shows I have ever seen. An analogy would be if you were playing Trivial Pursuit with someone and every question that they answered, they got wrong and the person reading the card encouraged them by telling them that they got it right and you are stuck there never hearing the right answer to any of the questions. It's horrible. The glimmer of great was the little kids playing Iron Maiden, but the novelty wears off too quickly. Plus, thirteen year old boys with their shirts off feels weird. The dog shit supremacy award goes to the douche lead singer of The Hatch. I really hope they didn't take their name from Lost because that would be super gay. They are horrible, though. They are the chick at your party singing Bonnie Raitt with her finger in her ear as if her monitor went out and she was on stage. Like they look like they are doing it for real, but they sound like grilled ass.

On paper, I'm currently reading A Long Way Down. I got it at the Salvation Army for a dollar. I try to go once amonth and buy all the decent books that they have for a dollar. It brings used book shopping to the next level. Plus, you get to see all the freaks at the Salvation Army which is like taking the freaks at Walgreen's to the next level which is just the freaks from Long's at the next level. Anyway, it's an easy read and Nick Hornby is always enjoyable. I wasn't really into it at first, but there were some really weird coincidences in the book that kind of hit home, so I kept going. I'm almost done. It's good. I'm also reading Oracle Database 10g SQL. Not real interesting, but reinforcing my Structured Query language skills. I need structure in my life.

I'm currently listening to, of course, the new Ween. Pulling out old DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist stuff. Recently discovered Mac Lethal and I think I like him, but I'm wary of his Slim Shadiness. Calm Down Baby is one of my favorite jams right now, though. I found it extremely inspiring. He seems legit. The new Aesop Rock never gets old. I've also been getting melancholy to Feist and Cat Power when I'm hiding from the world. Tons of Elliot Smith which is very dangerous sometimes, but he was so fucking good. Also sneaking in old Stevie Wonder and some Coltrane. I like to throw my iPod on shuffle every once in a while to see what it shakes out. It loves the Karate Kid soundtrack very much. Also, digging Veto and KEXP live performance podcasts. Currently, listening to one by Magnet from April '06. It's pretty good.

So, funny story. I was on my way to my soccer game last Friday and discussing relationships and the caveats of dating married women to my neighbor. Then we discussed the importance of finding individual happiness and being okay with yourself and being okay alone. I looked at him and said "Dude, I'm happy with myself right now and even if a cute girl walked up to me and asked to exchange numbers, I would tell her 'no'."

So, after soccer, some of us went for beers at the bar near the field and it was full of Halloweeners. The one night of the year that I didn't stick out for having a soccer jersey on. It was kind of cool. I had taken a pretty bad shot to the neck from someone's cleat (you can still see it on my chest) and was out front squatting down because everything ached.

This red headed girl dressed as something Bavarian squatted down to talk to me. I just assumed she needed a cigarette. So we talked for a little bit and then I stood up and she started getting really close talkey. So, whatevs, I told her my name after she gave me a fake name and went inside. She was cute and I was in danger of being a hypocrite. The worst of all the crites combined.

I went out for a smoke and bumped into her again. I ended up buying her a drink while she started getting touchy and telling me how cute I was. I won't lie. I appreciate being told that I'm cute. Her friend ran in and told her that their friend was sick and that they had to go. This is the part where I got pwn3d. She asked to exchange numbers. Pure pwnag3.

She ended up coming back and we hung out for a bit. It was nice. She said "really" a lot and also tried to make out with me in the bar, but I'm not real down with that. It tends to send a mixed message to the bar patrons and I find it a disrespectful gesture to the public. And the crowning achievement of the night for me was waking up alone with my credit card and no hangover. I cared for it.

La Cucaracha

So, it's been ten days since I last posted anything. The reason? I've been happy as fuck. Like on drugs happy. I have no reason for it, but it's been...uncomfortable? It's nice, though. It's been a nice exploration of self enjoyment through solidarity.

A new Ween album came out last week. It's called La Cucaracha and is pretty good. They get back to the Pure Guava days on a couple of the tunes and "Your Party" is arguably one of the best songs ever written. Dave "Quiet Storm" Koz plays saxophone on it and the lyric "Cream Puffs and bourbon and the music was louder/My wife was competing in a game of chance/The party raged and the guests were screaming/I could've danced all night."

Crap. Gotta run and pick up my moms. She got an epidural. Gross. I just looked at what it is. Also, totally yelled at her last night like she was a kid. It's an uncomfortable role reversal.

Seriously

This is one of the best written songs in like ten years. The lyrics are so...penetrating? The Dance Dance Revolution line is awesome and the "The second plane hit at 9:02" brings it home more than a Giuliani $9.11 dinner. That second verse is absolutely chilling. Thank you John Vanderslice. You make the Bay Area proud.

I Bet You've Done This

Have you ever woke up an hour late for a meeting at work and then walked to your car 10 blocks away in the rain while texting your ex-wife and then realized that you gave your key and your credit card to the bartender the night before so you wouldn't drive because you were wasted and singing Van Halen at karaoke and then walked back home and got yelled at by an ex-girlfriend in a crosswalk who then gave you a ride to your apartment to get your spare car key and gave you a ride back to your car which you then drove to work to the meeting that you were late for and just killed it?

Responsibility is hard at 32, but I'm pretty sure I've nailed it.

Chest hair. Not just for breakfast anymore.

More Shredding

Steve Sanders on Dancing with the Stars. I don't know what star he is with, though. Image borrowed from Yahoo!

I found a direct link to all of StSanders youtubes. They are awesome and endlessly entertaining. The Santana one is so awesome. Also, Steve Vai Shreds in Denver is great with the tri-neck guitbox. Also, if his user name was short for Steve Sanders it would be even better, but he's Finnish, so I do't think so.

Link of the Month

This is from Wired. It's an article titled "Hilarious YouTube Parodies 'Shred' Guitar Gods." It's a brilliant premise. A Finnish guy came up with the idea while watching Steve Vai with no sound and playing along I guess. It's really funny. The clapping on the Ozzy/Jake E. Lee clip is so funny. Check it out.

Now, You Really Can't Go Home Again

So, last night, I was putting the final touches on the resolution of The Girl thing. It took a text from her that said calling late at night drunk was not cool. She was right. It's not and I did. I felt horrible and just apologized and took her number out of my phone so that it would never happen again. I followed it up with a nice e-mail letting her know that I would put her belongings that she left at my house in the closet in the event that she ever wanted them. It wouldn't be that big of a deal, but she left a laptop that I put back together like the king's men couldn't do for Humpty Dumpty.

I basically took the text as a "Please don't call me again, freak." Oh and there was a weird myspace friend drop that is so stupid for a man of 32 to experience and then even feel bad about. The weird part was that she even dropped my friends to sever any type of six degrees of Kevin Bacon connection. I felt a little vilified. I lightly self-medicated on Tuesday under close self-supervision and then just tried to take it easy and watch a movie last night. things were recalibrating back to manageable. I want happiness, but I need content. It's a matter of wants vs. needs.

I'm at home watching Knocked Up which was not living up to its word of mouth status at all. Paul Rudd is a genius and the dick and fart humor was funny at times, but it was no cult classic or anything. The movie was in Act II where the heroes experience something bad which they will always resolve in Act III in these type of movies and my phone rings. I look down and see that it's my mom. My first thought was to finish watching the movie and call her when I was done, but then decided I would answer it because maybe I could talk to her about feeling down lately. I know better than this, but I was planning on doing some mom and step-dad time this weekend in hopes of stabilizing my personal world. It turned out to be one of those calls. Apparently, I was going to add more complexity to what has got to be my Act II in life. I just wish it would only last 20 - 30 minutes like in the movies. It would also be nice to have some good one-liners in there. Actually, I do have a lot of funny moments in my Act II. I'll admit that.

I picked up the phone and my mom said "Are you home alone?" and I replied "Of course." She then says I moved out of the house and your step-dad and I are separated. My chest cinched up like a knot and I could almost physically feel the couch ripped from beneath me followed by the carpet, by the foundation of my apartment, by the dirt beneath it, all the way down to the immensely heated liquid core of the earth. The first urge was to throw my phone into the wall and find some satisfaction at the pieces flying all over my living room, but stuck it out because that would be selfish.

The back story, at this point, is that I've been through this before when I was 5 and had recently put it to bed with my dad. Like in the last six months. That was a cool silver lining of The Girl. She gave me some good perspective and great energy to go visit him and let all the bad stuff go because I was pretty much belligerently beside myself with happiness. Euphoria is dangerous. Pro tip. So, to go through this at 32 makes you feel like an asshole. Life is supposed to be like this: High School, College, Meet someone, Get married, Have babies, Grow old together. It's not for me. The last three years have felt like I'm walking through a stumbling block factory during an earthquake in a rain storm while wearing roller skates and sponge pants. My dysfunctional family was the last thing holding it together. There was always some solace when I was around them in almost any situation. They were my rock.

So, I paused the movie and did the phone call. Breaking down a couple of times. There is nothing masculine about a 32 year old man breaking down, but you know what, people do it. It's real life. Halfway through the phone call I was severely disappointed that I didn't have a cigarette and self-medicating was out of the question as I had cleared my apartment of any type of booze this last weekend. That's the point where you realize there is nothing you can do and every mental direction that you turn in your head has a locked door in front of it. In fact, on the locked door is a picture of you in a precarious position to just add a little guilt to the situation. It's so you can turn it around on yourself and kick your ass while you're at it.

She said that it's nothing permanent and they had talked about it for a while now and she was just unhappy. I feel horrible for both of them and just want them to be happy, but it's a situation that is so incredibly out of your control that it's a little ridiculous. On top of that, how the fuck can you help someone else when you are having a hard time helping yourself?

We finished the phone call after about an hour and I hung up the phone and just kind of stared at the wall for a while hoping that my Saturn would somehow rise before everything became too much. I think that's astrological or at least lifted from Tool lyrics. I wanted really bad to talk to someone about it and realized that I had no one. It was as alone as I have felt in a long time. I texted the oldest friend that I have and he stepped up and called me to talk about it, which was very nice. The coolest thing through the whole situation is that my kill switch engaged. No bar. No booze. No running from the problem at hand. It was just a mental list of bulletpoints of the reasons that were causing me to think that a drink might make things better. It doesn't. Then, going beyond the bulletpoints and realizing the real reasons and fears that were buried underneath them.

At this point, however, I just want to let it all go. I never want to go home again. No Thanksgiving. No birthdays. No Christmas. No anything. I don't want to go there anymore. I want to withdraw into my own deal and just not deal with chasing the ideals that are absolutely impossible for me to attain. Nothing is "normal" and there are others that have it much worse than I. That doesn't make it better, but it rains on my pity parade. The world waits for no one and I've already been sandbagging for long enough now.

Had to get that off my chest. I apologize completely and everything is what it is. That's all it can ever be. May have to browse some therapists today. It all just feels very overwhelming. That's a big deal. I hate therapy. Duh!

You Can't Ever Go Home.

Friday, I went to the East Bay to visit Pappy. It's approximately 40 miles and it took me an hour and forty minutes to get there from the Peninsula. By the time I got to his house, I was ready to kill something. I really cannot understand how people can do that everyday. It's, perhaps, the number one reason that I'm never going to move back to the city again.

So, we go to San Ramon to The Hopyard and meet a friend from LA. It was actually really good to see her. It had been a while. She drank root beer while Pappy and I drank a pitcher of bad ideas. She bailed and Pappy and I decided to go visit Pleasanton again. That's the bad idea part. It's true that you can't ever go home. It felt like Fresno. We went to a bar in a strip mall where I guess people hang out now. After forcing down the worst Ketel & Soda that I've ever drank in my life and listening to some song that went like "Save a horse. Ride a cowboy..." we left and went to another bar in Pleasanton. It actually worked out because the bartender that Pappy had an attitude crush on was pregnant. At the second bar, we were actually there for even less time. We didn't even order a drink.

We decided to head back to Livermore to get closer to Pappy's place. We also called my little sister and asked her if she wanted to get a drink or two. She met us at the ghettoest bar ever where I tried to teach the bartender to make a lemon drop. They were horrible. He didn't understand the sugar concept of it. So, when life gives you lemons, sometimes you are just stuck with them, apparently.

We got out of there and went to AM/PM where Pappy and Ashleigh bought $40 worth of candy. Got home and slept.

I woke up the next morning and was still a little dizzy from the night before because I hadn't eaten in a while. I grabbed my sister and got coffee and took her home. Hit a gang of traffic on a Saturday trying to get home and still wasn't feeling right, but thought if I laid down that I would feel better. After an hour nap, I still felt weird, but went and got my hair did in Los Gatos.

This is where stuff gets weird. After my haircut, I went and visited my ex-in laws. Why? I have no idea. It wasn't so bad, though. I haven't seen them in a little over two years and I really liked them, so it felt all right. One of their dogs had gone blind and I found it immensely entertaining. So, I got to visit with my ex-in laws and their pets for a bit. It was nice, but I still wasn't feeling right.

From there I ran home and fell asleep during a baseball game for an hour and went to a work party at my former boss' house. It was for Oktoberfest and all of the guest's had gardeners that made more money than I do. I think some people owned their own planes. Whatever, though, there was free beer and good food. This is where it got real weird.

My boss' sister was kind of talking me up a bit and I thought it was just to get smokes from me. She's a single mom and my boss had kind of warned me about her. Plus, this lawyer was all over her. As the families started to disappear and the party started to get a little more adult, she ends up in a bikini trying to get me to go hot tubbing with her. I think she was implying suit optional, too. I let her know that that wasn't a real good idea.

An hour goes by and she returns from the hot tub and incites some other women to douse my shirt with white wine. That got my shirt off and I realized it was a full on cougar attack. I grabbed my pullover and put that on while my shirt dried. The crowd was severely thinning out at that point and I was just trying to get my stuff dry so I could get out of there in one piece when I got referred to as a "Hot, Young Stud" for the first time in my life. It was crazy and so cliched that it was ridiculous.

Anyway, I'm appealing to a new market now. I guess it's always good to broaden your demographic. Now, if I could just get the one I want to work out to work out, that would be truly awesome. For now, I guess I've got this.

Pro Tip #480

Married girls should not send e-mails like this:

You seemed busy and I am not one to bother.
So I think your hot and besides that you are interesting, and interesting is good.

Enjoy your Tuesday. Email me when you get a chance.


However, hot and interesting? I'll take that. One day it will come from a single person. The "your hot" typo is kind of a turn off, though. It's not recent, but I just found it in my inbox when I was looking for an e-mail address. Needed the ego boost today. She also signed her name very cutely.

Living Las Vegas

It should be stopped before it spreads. They should build a fucking wall around Las Vegas and fill it with water. It would be painless to all the jaded fucks that inhabit its boundaries. There would be minimal losses, but we would all be saved from the virus of gaud that threatens to spread from its horrible horrible bowels. The popped collars, Friday night shirts and stunna shades that would float to the top of the Vegas ruins cesspool would be somehow satisfying. Oh, and all of those fucking giant, whalebone drink containers would all float to the top, too. I'd take them and tie them all together and make a giant raft to do tours for young children so that they could learn from our mistakes.

So, went to Vegas last weekend. Didn't really want to, but went for my sister's 21st. Any excuse for a family trainwreck and I'm pretty much in. Went past the Super 8 that I was staying at during my last major life changing event and the 7-11 where I had a taco roll of some sort right before it happened and was cool with it. I've recovered from all that finally, but have managed to find a host of new problems to deal with. It keeps one busy, I guess. Without problems life would be a conglomeration of Entertainment Tonight, Extra! and Wheel of Fortune with an occasional wordsearch on Sundays. New problems make it possible to look at your bed and fear it because you aren't going to get any sleep and will feel your chest tighten immediately when you lay down and close your eyes and your mind spins off into a loop about all of life's problems. You hear of the footloose and Fancy Feast set (intentional cat joke), but I find it hard to believe that they are truly evolved to the point that there isn't something dragging them down late at night in a dark room.

So, flew in Friday around 4:00 PM and went straight to a blackjack table and lit up a smoke. After an hour and $100 I was reprimanded for dropping too many F bombs on grounds of creating a hostile work environment for the dealer. I acknowledged the problem and recommended going to community college and getting out of working in a casino as a good idea to dehostilize the dealer's work environment. I was lucky to not get cattle prodded, but I was kinda punchy and uncomfortable in my surroundings.

So dudes next to me are straight from the OC and none of them look like Seth or Ryan at all. They looked more like the dudes in the episode where Ryan goes back to Chino and starts stealing cars, but that's revealing a little too much about my TV viewing habits, doesn't it? So, OC dudes are smoking Newports and talk me into putting Binaca on the filter of a Newport and smoking it. When was the last time any motherfucker even saw Binaca?

So, we're playing and having a nice time and the dude right next to me looks at me and goes "Shit, dude. My friend just came out today." The way the sentence was accented on the "today" made it sound like his friend had just arrived in Vegas. No. That was not the case. His friend had just come out of the closet. This was fine, but I didn't know which friend it was until a little later when I said "Sorry, your friend ended up gay, dude, but don't be bothered by it. He's still your friend." Then he replied "Shut up, dude. It's the guy right behind me." I looked at the guy behind him and just said "Duh. That dude's gay."

So, after that I met my family for drinks in the bar and we started getting wasted. I told some waitress that she had shelf titties. That was kind of mean, but she was pushing up these A or B cups and creating no cleavage and her boobs just turned into something that was reminiscent of flan.

We then went to the dueling piano bar thing at New York New York so that my family could spend $400 to stop anyone who requested the Eagles. It's become a tradition. I even got to sing some Van Halen Jump when they played it. Killed it, by the way. Holy shit, I just remembered that I sang Time of My Life from Dirty Dancing with some chick at karaoke last night. Nice.

After the piano thing, the rest of the night was spent herding cats as my sister's started to fall apart. One of them even called The Girl and told her it would be smart if she stopped texting me for her protection because I was going to get real wasted. I've got to shake The Girl, by the way. I don't care if it takes blunt cranial trauma. I want this to end. I've managed to stop myself from calling her for the last three nights and I've wanted to call her real bad, but I don't even know what I'd say. I used to be so much cooler than this until she got in and scrambled my eggs. Whatevs. She's just not that into Ol' Jauge and that's fine. what was I talking about? Oh, So I spend the rest of the night until 6:30 AM the next morning at a blackjack table. Basically, this is what happened between Midnight and 6:30. I spilled a drink on the table about every 20 minutes, was reprimanded for dropping F bombs and zatted Blackjacks like nobody's business. Zatting is when you've drank enough Red Bull and vodkas to kill a young cow and can see through the cards. When a face card is dealt and the unseen card comes around, you point at it and yell "Zat!" as it hits the table. When this completes a blackjack, you have zatted correctly. I even zatted a drink into a dude's lap and he thanked me for it because I zatted him a blackjack. Only in Vegas.

More later. I'm going to go solve the world's pressing problems now.

I'm So Getting One

Hasbro is putting out the Power Tour Electric Guitar next month. I need one to go with my One Man Jam. Go to that link to see this horrendous tool give lessons on using one. He talks about two-handed hammer-ons in the Advanced Techniques section.

Tiny Horses

So, in the last 72 years while you were a gleam in your father's pants, maybe born, got housebroken, learned to throw a ball, and grew up into the wonderful person that I assure you you are; in that 72 years there have been seeing eye horses. WTF?!?!?! you say? Yes. So did I, but it's real. I saw a picture of one in action and sent it to a friend who then sent me back a link to the Guide Horse Foundation's website and I stared at my monitor like I was seeing a UFO land in my backyard (if I had one). The term used was "bedazzled."

I've seen miniature horses before and I'm a big fan. I mean there are cat people, dog people, and even bird people. Then you get to the less common, fringe animal owners. These are your reptile and ferret people. Cat people are usually weird. Dog people are usually trying to fill a gap in their lives. Bird people...Weren't there bird people in Flash Gordon? God, Queen is awesome.

I don't know what to say about bird people. I had one and it died after it ate guacamole. Guacamole doesn't kill birds, people who give guacamole to birds kill birds. Anyway, he was named Tweety and after he died he lived in our freezer for months or maybe a year. The go-to joke was to pull him out of the freezer in his freezer bag home that had expanded with air death particles and throw him in someone's lap during a family party. As a family, I'll admit that we are twisted and dysfunctional, but it's kinda like when you are walking around in the Winter time and you just plant one shoe about 4 inches deep into a puddle. At first, you're all pissed off and your foot is cold and your sock is wet while your other foot is completely dry and normal. After about 17 steps you come to grips with the fact that that's your shoe now and that's just kinda how it is. Once you accept that you have a fucked up shoe, it's usually not as bad as it was initially.

So, bird people are like that. Whatever that means. The fringe animal arena is filled with people that are craving attention. That's why they are on the fringe and own illegal animals like ferrets. One popular ferret owner is none other than Perres Helton (that's misspelled on purpose to avoid getting picked up in search results of people looking for that name. I learned an important lesson when I namedropped Sisqo). So, yes, ferret people and reptile people are weird, attention cravers.

Now, I will fully admit that I'm making broad accusations almost to the point of being specist, but using the broad generalizations depicted above have got me this far and been in the area of 97% accurate. Broad generalizations rarely fail in the realm of Tommy Bahama shirts, tribal armband tattoos, guys that wear visors and are not golfing, people that drive large trucks, hippies, uber-recyclers, Prius drivers, gingers, people who wear eye patches, people who wear stunna shades in a club at night, croc wearers, people in sandals and socks, guys in moustaches who are not cops or firefighters, cops or firefighters without moustaches, guys in fanny packs, anyone from Orlando, anyone in Orlando, office talkers, etc...Broad generalization is a proven system that works.

So, anyway, what I was trying to say and totally getting sidetracked, was that out of all of those animal people it would be cool to be a mini horse owner. I'll acknowledge that it's totally in the fringe subset of animal owners and probably has elements of all of them wrapped into one. It would be weird, attention craving and filling a hole in my life that a human has been unable to do. So, I guess now is the point where I let everyone reading this know that I'm a huge hypocrite and have no right to judge weird cat people...and did "Don't Stop Believin'" really just come up on my iPod while I was shuffling? All of a sudden I feel like I'm in the work montage from a romantic comedy that has some guy writing on his computer as seen through the window by the camera. At the end of the montage it has him running through the rain while he's holding his trench coat in his hand. He turns the corner and goes to the spot where he met the girl interest in the movie because they had a fight over a misunderstanding and he chose his job over her. He sits there for a minute and looks down as the montage turns into the real scene and the girl gets out of a cab and runs to him. Pro tip: This does not happen in real life. Second Pro Tip: It would be The Shins or anything with Ben Gibbard in it instead of Journey.

So, I'll sum it up by saying that miniature horses are awesome.

Is This Really Necessary?

So, there is a Grease 2 fan site. Technically, the ultimate Grease 2 fan site. Granted, Michelle Pfeiffer helped me discover my special purpose during the ladder riding, cool rider scene and Adrian Zmed was brilliant, as usual, but does it warrant a fan site. Could/Did the Internet go to that place that TV did? I'm not one of those Kill Your TV shirt wearing hippy elitists, but I will admit that it is just fucking cluttered with crap. Somebody needs to clean the cat box that Comcast calls digital cable. It's not that TV sucks, but so much sucks on TV. Hate the playa, not the medium that it's transmitted on. Guns don't kill people, etc...So, when there are fan fiction sites for Good Times and extreme erotic guilds in web based RPGs, it may be time to build an app that will sift through the crap. I know there are some things out there that can help, but that's the Google killer, it's the application that cleans up your path down the WorldWebSuperHighway. Not censorship or rating systems of any kind, but simply streamlining. Now, here is Michelle Pfeiffer on the ladder. Thank you YouTube. At 1:32, you get jazz hands and the ladder. That's so rad.

HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is going to be cooler than being born:

I'm Really Glad That I Read This Today

Not only will you die alone, but more quickly than non-alone people. That's great. At least the doctors figured out why. Might as well keep up the smoking.

Also, for the ladies that have participated in the sanctity of life: TrueMomConfessions.
And for those about to rip their office phones out of the wall and throw them down the stairs at work: TrueOfficeConfessions.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Drinks

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What is a Pinback?

Pinback is releasing Autumn of the Seraphs next week. I've been listening the shit out of the album and just have to say that these guys are such a breathe of fresh air and are truly unique when compared to emo, indie, or whatever term the rack at Target that houses their album calls their music.

Basically, there is tons of interplay between the bass and guitar utilizing a gang of syncopation, dissonance and resolution. Lyrically, they are extremely interesting and the delivery is usually subdued and mellow even when they are yelling.

So, here's the tracks:
1. From Nothing To Nowhere - The introduction almost sounds like it could be a Police song. It's got a driving guitar line that pushes the song through while the bass line just wrecks it through the verse and then players reverse positions while the bass plays it straight through the chorus while the guitar just riffs. Also, if you've got heeadphones listen for the organ low in the mix.

2. Barnes - Quintessential Pinback. It sounds like the bass and guitar are fighting playfully in this song. They really push that syncopation thing. It's almost like a King Crimson song or something. Totally prog-rock.

3. Good To Sea - The drumbeat on this song sound like it's coming off an old organ's presets, in a good way. It's just chill. "It's really not that kind/To terrorize one in one's sleep/And if you really tried/You'd probably cut the chase to deep." I care for that line. There is something truly nautical about this keyboard line, too. It sounds like it's being played on a submarine barely submerged. Don't ask me why.

4. How We Breathe - Dude. Rob Crow and Zach Smith are so better than you. I love the way this song starts. Again, the drum line is so subdued, but perfect for the song. Do they seriously say "Overneath" in this song? This song is about having anxiety I think. Not much to say about this song except the guitar tone sounds a bit like a grandfather clock at the end.

5. Walters - This song has a verse about a guy who tied balloons to a lawn chair until he floated away. The balloons pop and he comes back to the ground. It's a tribute to him. His name is Larry. One of the simpler Pinback songs I've ever heard. Then, it gets all hard in the last minute or so. It's kinda cool.

6. Subbing For Eden - Spoken verse. Has a line "Folder reference cache/zeroes, ones and tildes." Pinback uses words in songs that Bad Religion couldn't even use. Kinda short.

7. Devil You Know - This has a cool rolling guitar line. Riffs. The verse has that in the round thing that Pinback do where they sing syncopated verses. It's really cool, but I don't know how these dudes can do that and still play at the same time. That's really hard to do. The first verse, I believe, is referring to leaves as the tears of trees. That's good writing. a piano line follows the verse really effectively on the chorus in this one.

8. Blue Harvest - Wasn't this the code name for Return of the Jedi while it was in production? You can totally hear the Police influence in this song. The guitar line evokes "Message in a Bottle" a lot. I'm not calling biters or anything. I'm just sayin'. Plus, if you are biting a little bit of The Police, you are paying homage.

9. Torch - This is probably my favorite song on the album. It's totally a sci-fi nerd song. Check this line "You're close to me/I push you away." Speaks volumes in the middle of a sci-fi nerd song. I think there might be something else going on in this song under the surface.

10. Bouquet - The keyboard intro on this song made me think that my computer was scanning me and importing me into a world run by an entity called CPU and I would have to fight other programs for users in the real world and perhaps fight Sark and play electric jai-alai and light cycles...Oh shit. I thought I was in TRON again. My bad. Pinback is Nautical. That's all I'm going to say.

11. Off By 50 - What's up King Crimson? Cool guitar line at the beginning. "Mindless Hateful/There's no such thing as a free lunch/No such thing at all." Syllabically, this line is delivered brilliantly. These guys are good. Everyone should buy this album. I really care for it.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Popcorn will kill you. I knew it.

Official Laugh At The World Day Is Today

Because of a three day weekend and a brain damaging Sunday bout of day drinking, today is official laugh at the world day. Yes, I just invented it.

First, Friday night? I don't remember what I did. Oh, wait. It was beer Friday at work and then I showed up on my bike drunk at my team's soccer game that I took the night off from to actually do something, but it just turned into a Plan B night. Plans have been very difficult to make as of late, however, there has been an increase of spontaneity and mostly pleasant surprises.

Saturday? Pappy came over and watched me play Guitar Hero until he got bored (2 songs). Pappy does not like video games, so we drank vodka and tequila drinks while we waited for a couple of friends. A trainwreck developed while we discussed how much of a pussy Ozzy Osbourne was and how we were dumbfounded that anyone thought that he was a satan worshipper and instead it was because of his album covers. Then, we decided the same thing happened to Maiden, but they rocked a little harder and never recorded a song called "Mama, I'm Coming Home."

Woke up Sunday morning to find that a piece of my dash had been forcefully dislodged from my car. Drunk strength can be compared to adrenaline. How come you hear stories about women lifting cars off their kids in emergency situations, but never a drunk picking up a houseboat to get a horseshoe? That's a really good question I could sit on for like an hour. Sunday afternoon was a pretty intense situation of day drinking. A lot of it will remain untalked about. A lot of blurred faces like on Cheaters or cops due to incriminating actions. We drank dollar beers out of styrofoam cups, saw a Bay Bridge half-dollar from 1936, met Dennis and his wife, met Gabe and Devon, I got invited to a fight club this weekend in Oakland, lost my sunglasses, and managed to find transport to a friend's house to have a barbeque with her mom and sister while we were mostly drunk and some slept.

So, by Monday evening, my brain was suffering in like a manic way. You get all wasted for 48 hours and then your brain starts putting the pieces back together and none of them fit and you get all bummed because the euphoria can not be maintained of being wasted and not really thinking about all the stuff that you are doing wrong or at least not right in your life. This version was especially bad for some reason and still was lingering Monday morning. Nothing going to bed at 8:00 pm Monday night couldn't fix, though. Binge drinking is not what it used to be, but I still think that the press is unfair to it. It's not as bad as binge eating.

So, what am I saying? I know there are things going on right now that are not what they should be for a young, "marketable" (my old doctor called me that), 32 year old male like myself. I can do way better than putting up binge tabs every weekend because I don't want to put the effort into anything else productive outside of laundry and vaccuming. It just makes my head cloudy and prevents me from getting smarter and moving a step closer to world domination. Seriously, if you are reading this, I am like -(negative)685 beers away from running your life. If I quit drinking, I will eventually become the equivalent of a Bond villian or a superawesome ninja. You've been warned.

So, instead of sitting there thinking about how bad stuff is and taking it personal, I'm just laughing about it and it makes it feel so much better. Try it next time you walk by your couch and catch the corner of it between your big toe and index toe. Instead of yelling "Shit!" because it hurts hecka bad, just start laughing. Or, when someone comes up to you at work and asks you the stupidest fucking thing that you have heard that would sound cute coming out a five year old, but when it comes out of an adult you want to punch them in the fucking face, just laugh. You'll start to build a weird association between anger, pain and funny. Do it enough and it sticks. Yeah, it sucks to be the guy laughing at a funeral, but it's the price you pay. It's really a better alternative to feeling any type of pain, trust me. It's worth the price of everyone thinking that you are absolutely shithouse rat crazy.