Ultraparadoxical

My Uncle’s favorite quote is “People don’t change”.  When I was a kid at family parties I remember him saying this as a response to hearing about what someone in our family experienced or just talking about current events.  I would hear one of my cousins saying how her boyfriend was treating her like shit and she couldn’t believe that he was acting that way.  Everyone in the room knew the guy was an asshole but she seemed not to be able to see it.  She thought that things would be different over time.  She could have saved herself a lot of time and heartache by listening to my uncle.

It got to the point where my brother’s and sisters would poke fun at him for saying his line and try to beat him to the punch before he could say it.  Back then I really didn’t get it.  As I got a bit older I thought that he was totally wrong.  People DO change… I mean, as a child I thought I was changing all the time.  The way I acted changed dramatically as I grew up and I felt like almost as if I was a different person.  Since then I have realized something.  He was right. read more »

The opening day of the Olympics was the first day that I was officially moved into my new place.  Since I have been at home cleaning, rearranging and getting my shit together I have watched a ton of the Olympics. While putting my bookcase together I cheered for cross country skiers and as I was swearing at a half assembled desk in front of me curling was on in the background.  I have never been a huge fan of the winter Olympics – instead of running, jumping and swimming of the summer games the winter has bobsled, ski aerials and the luge.  Most of the events are more of a drunken dare than a sporting event.  Regardless I have a few observations about the past 2 weeks: read more »

I just endured a meeting at work today that was 40 solid minutes of nonsense.  My manager went on and on about sweet-baby-jesus-knows-what and everyone listening had a mix of confusion and annoyance on their face.  He opened it up to the audience and looked over to me for input.  “What do you think” he inquired.  I paused a second to wipe the glazed look off my face and said “Well, I feel that in this type of situation it is best to use a framework of structured flexibility and went on to use an analogy of building a house to reinforce my position.  He ate it up.  I had no idea what the fuck I was talking about.  For the minutes running up to when he called on me I had been spaced out thinking about winning the lottery, flinging myself off of the office balcony or some-such thing.  This made me realize something – any crackpot idea can be swallowed by someone as long as the idea is accompanied with a easy to understand analogy.  Tough to understand the mortgage crisis?  Compare it to car maintenance, or a baseball game.  Need to explain quantum physics to an idiot?  Say it is like a rubber band. Even if it doesn’t make any sense, people think they understand and will go on to believe whatever you just said.  Go try it in a meeting, I guarantee it will work.

These kinds of meetings and conversations are really just a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.  That problem is Corporate America.  A place where no one works hard or gives a fuck but everyone (according to them) is “stressed out” and “sooooo busy”.  It is a crock of shit.  80% of people work just hard enough to keep their job and most people do less than that but have become experts at hiding the trail of their laziness.  In my 10 years after college I have seen incompetence get commended, brilliance get discarded and wasteful behavior get rewarded.   I just got off the phone with a colleague who was confronting someone who had just stabbed her in the back.  My colleague had email proof of the backstabbing yet the backstabber denied the allegations and said she was trying to be a “team player” and “strategic”.  This backstabber is loved by management and is always getting promoted.  How does that kind of shit happen?  The more full of shit someone is, the more respect they get in the organization.  That is fucked up. How has society been built to have everyone doing jobs that they don’t believe in to buy things that they really don’t need?  Another good question – why am I always a whiny bitch about work on my Monday posts?

Better go swing by my bosses office before I leave because I stayed at the office late today!  Ugh… I hate this shit.

I am winding up my work day and I am in the midst of watching Tiger Wood’s apology video. There are a few things that need to be said: read more »

My move is basically over… sweet baby jesus, my move is OVER!  It has been a few days of aggravation but I have moved 99% of my crap over to the new pad and I just need to add a few little things and I will be all set at my new pad downtown.  For the past 4 days I have done 2 things – move my shit and drink heavily.  I’m not Mama Cleo or anything bu I have a feeling that “downtown me” is going to have a serious drinking problem.  My new apartment is a 3rd floor loft in the heart of downtown San Diego and there are just too many options.  In fact, on my first night in the new place I went to the Sound Tribe Sector Nine show at the House of Blues and got absolutely blown out.  I was to the point where even I knew that I should not be out in public being that trashed.  I eventually had to pull a “Houdini” halfway through the concert and took off without telling any of my friends.  I ended up stumbling back to my apartment and passing out in my shoes…. IN MY SHOES.  That is not a bad showing for the first night downtown.  I woke up in the morning to a text from my buddy that was received at 1AM: “Dude… I’m at the Ramada Inn. 24 HOUR FOOD… GOOD”.  Looks like they had a good time without me.  In addition to feeling like shit I frantically searched my apartment but couldn’t remember where I packed my bath towels so I had to dab myself dry with t-shirts after.  All time low or all time high… you make the call!  I lasted about 5 hours at work before I had to give up and  to curl up in the fetal position on my couch.  This could be dangerous for my professional career! Bottom line is that with my new living situation there is really no reason for me NOT to drink, except that my liver may decide to say fuck-off and leave me downtown by myself.  Barring a organ relocation I should be good to go though.

Aside from my drunkenness and towellessness, being downtown has been nothing but fantastic.  I can finally walk to the bars and restaurants that I most often go to and drunk driving will be down about 95%.  I should get a congratulatory letter from MADD for moving!  Another bonus that I did not realize until after I moved in was all of the interesting stuff I get to see while walking around downtown.  On my way to my car the first morning I overheard 2 bums talking.  One bum was trying to fish something out of the trash and the other stopped him short when he wanted his help and said “Hold on, I need to take a shit, then I will help you with that.”  Who said bums don’t have a schedule?  The next afternoon on my way back home I saw a guy wearing old school roller skates loading empty bottles into his 1970’s style cargo van.  It was magical, he even had the jewfro circa ‘72.  He was like Rollegirl from “Boogie Nights” except 10 times as dirty and not hot at all.  Wait… he was actually NOTHING like Rollergirl but that’s beside the point.  He could have being the star of “Rollerhobo 2: Electric Bugaloo”… damn you cruel fate!   What I am getting at is that life just got a bit drunker and more interesting for me.  Good times…

Let me start by saying that Drew Brees has the ugliest baby I have ever seen (yes, I am an asshole).  That kid is fucking ugly – hopefully he grows out of it for his sake.

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So… after ranting about our society at the precipice of a giant metaphorical toilet bowl I have been conspicuously absent from my own website.  Have I been busy/lazy/tired/bored/apathetic and the thought of writing on ultraparadoxical.com been a bit daunting of late?  Yes – but I am back and reinvigorated… kind of… maybe… a little bit.  Anyways, I’m back and that’s all that matters, right?  I beg your forgiveness for being lazy and I will apologize with my favorite get-out-of-jail-free lines… “My bad?”  “My bad” is perfect because I get to take blame for something, never actually apologize and make light of the situation, all with 2 short words.  Works for me… moving on…

One of the reasons that I took my impromptu sabbatical from the blog was I went on vacation to Vail, Colorado.  I was initially skeptical about how much fun I would have because  (1) – Last time I was in Denver I came down with a wicked altitude related sickness that concluded with me puking at about 10,000 feet in the middle of my decent down the ski slope. (2) – I hate the cold.  After I landed I realized that (1) – I must have been a pussy when I was 13 because the altitude did not bother me at all and (2) – I only hate the cold when I need to wake up in freezing temperatures, scrape my windshield and go to work.  If it is cold and I get to do whatever I want to do the mornings are not THAT miserable when it is freezing outside. read more »

“Success” in America has less to do with actual talent than any time in recent history.  We have forsaken competence, responsibility and intelligence in our country and replaced those attributes with shallow illusions of each.   It has been all around me lately in my workplace, in popular entertainment, and watching the government in action.  It aggravates me at times but mostly I just join in with a sense of apathy and embarrassment.  Incompetence and stupidity are part of every day life and in some aspects is accepted and embraced as a positive thing.  I cannot speak for much of the past as I have only experienced the last 30 years personally but it seems to me like talent, perseverance and commitment used to be things that guided Americans.  Now attitudes seem to be different. read more »

I recently posed this questions to one of my coworkers: If you were married would you rather have your husband go to a sales conference or a guys weekend in Vegas?  Her answer: unequivocally – guys weekend in Vegas.  People are absolutely shameless at our company events.  I just had my annual work conference (which is the reason that I have not posted in a while) and it did not fail to deliver.  All kinds of shit (literally) went down – even accounting for the fact that 50% of the rumors are probably lies still leaves that other 50% which is true.  Let me tell you… corporate America is not as up tight as you would think. read more »

I read “Man and His Symbols” by Karl Jung a while back and his thoughts have had a lasting impact on me and the way I view the machinations of my mind and the impact of the unconscious side of myself.  The subconscious is a critical  aspect of the mind to analyze in order to fully understand human motives, feelings and ideas that bubble up into the conscious mind as coherent thoughts.  Humans are the only creatures that have a split and clearly defined conscious and subconscious.  *sidenote* I think the way that animals think and operate in daily life is similar to how humans operate in a dreamlike state.  They flit along having a sense of the world around them “knowing” and “feeling” on a superficial level but not having a clearly delineated duality of thought capable of being finite yet thinking infinitely.  As animals have physically evolved the same has happened in the mental sphere and the biggest evolutionary leap was achieved when humans were able to have a clearly defined conscious and subconscious. *End sidenote*   This is both the source of human intelligence as well as the root of many problems which stem from integrating both aspects of ourselves. read more »