Ultraparadoxical

The best/worst souljob of my entire life…

By Ultraparadoxical on August 18th, 2011

I have come to terms with the fact that I am in a soul sucking line of work. I get a pretty good (read: bad) souljob pretty much 5 days a week. Weather it be coddling managers and telling them what they want to hear or kissing the ass of some douchebag customer, it is pretty much nonstop. Sales is a totally worthless profession and anyone that tells you otherwise is a sociopath or deluding themselves. Does it really matter if someone buys doodad “A” or doodad “B”? Probably not, and my entire job description is just that, networking with people that I pretend to care about and influencing them to do the things that will eventually make me money (kill me now).

I don’t have many different options though. I have gone down this road for the last 10 years and any type of career change now and I will take a massive pay cut. That is the thing about sales, fundamentally it requires very little “skill”, yet pays extremely well considering the workload. I am stuck and it is a bit depressing. On the other hand, I feel like I am having another “this is why the terrorists hate us” moment because I AM making good money right now, not doing too much and due to this job they just moved me to Sydney. Basically, I know I am not going to change anything but a guy can dream can’t he? I have been thinking about some career change opportunities and the pro’s and con’s of each. Continue reading The best/worst souljob of my entire life… →

Musings No comments yet

Abandon all hope ye who enter here

By Ultraparadoxical on July 21st, 2011

So… KS and I have been thinking about a collaborating on a project for a while now. You may remember KS from her last post here. After many back and forth conversations through email we finally settled on something that we could both get a little mileage out of: taking advice columns from religious websites and giving our own “secular” responses to their problems. I sat through my share of religion classes and pointless homilies in my day. Its time to turn the tables on my religious brethren. Advice from religious people gets far too much weight in my estimation. How can a celibate priest give marriage tips? When is it a good idea to get relationship advice from a guy who never gets laid? We decided to embark on this potentially god angering project a few weeks ago and have both been doing research ever since. Well, actually, by “doing research” I mean procrastinating, drinking heavily and looking at internet porn. Even though we have not actually done any actual writing on the topic we have both stumbled onto some things that were pretty hilarious in their own regard. Here are few of the interesting nuggets (by the way, if you are easily offended by comments about religion you may not want to scroll down, and now that I think about it you should not have just read the last paragraph… my bad): Continue reading Abandon all hope ye who enter here →

Musings, Philosophy, Relationships 6 comments

RIP Jurgen 2003-2011

By Ultraparadoxical on July 10th, 2011

One of the hardest things that I had to do before I moved to Australia was leave my cat. Yes, I am a gigantic pussy. Yes, I am under homo suspicion etc. I don’t care. I loved him and he was my buddy. I entered into cat ownership with a bit of trepidation. My girlfriend who I had moved with to San Diego got him from the shelter to give our dog a companion. We eventually broke up and I won the cat in the custody battle – my ex took the dog and I took Jurgen. **Sidenote – You may be asking yourself why someone would name a cat “Jurgen”, and everyone who met Jurgen asked. Well, here is the explanation – I lived in the Lakeview area of Chicago and my girlfriend at the time pretty much stayed over every weekend, one Monday morning when she was leaving she ran into a hobo “selling” some artwork that he most likely fished out of the trash. She felt bad for him and gave him 5 bucks for that painting. That painting was the ugliest goddamn thing I had ever seen framed in a extremely tacky faux gold frame, yet it still made it into the U-Haul and ended up on the wall of our new shit-hole apartment in San Diego. The artist who created this artistic nightmare – none other than “Jurgen Peters”. (I couldn’t find the original painting that we had but here is an example of what I am talking about.) Continue reading RIP Jurgen 2003-2011 →

Sports, Television No comments yet

My First Date with Rugby

By Ultraparadoxical on June 16th, 2011

I have always been into sports and moving to Sydney has given me a unique opportunity to expand my horizons into some more exotic pastimes that don’t get covered in the US. I have seen cricket a few times at the bar and tried on several occasions to watch for longer than a few minutes. It is pretty much impossible for me to follow it. Cricket is baffling and brutally boring. Like coffee, tequila and anal sex, I am sure it is an acquired taste but I have no intention of acquiring it. The SHORT matches last around 8 hours and the long matches can go for 5 days. Fuck that. I wouldn’t spend 5 days watching a live feed of a dozen lipstick lesbians at lube factory and I defintely wouldn’t spend those 5 days watching some guys in white linens prancing around a cricket pitch. In short, cricket is not for me. Soccer isn’t exotic enough and it kind of sucks so my last option is rugby. Last night I watched a complete rugby game for the first time all the way through. It was actually pretty entertaining once I started understanding the rules and near the end I was definitely getting into it. Here is a running diary of the action: Continue reading My First Date with Rugby →

Writing 2 comments

Book Report: Less Than Zero

By Ultraparadoxical on June 5th, 2011

While I was wandering around the bookstore last weekend looking for a new book and I picked up “Less Than Zero” and read the back cover. One of reviews said:

“One of the most disturbing novels that I’ve read in a long time. It possesses an unnerving air of documentary reality.” – Michiko Kukatani, New York Times

Tonight I finished the novel and as I flipped the last page and closed the book I read that review again. It doesn’t ring true anymore. Actually I should qualify that, both statements are only half true. I was prepared for some disturbing shit. I have read American Psycho, another one of Bret Easton Ellis’s books and that is or comes close to the most disturbing novels I have ever read but save for the last 30 or so pages of “Less than Zero” was pretty pedestrian relative to the subject matter. I could see where someone reading this in the mid-eighties could have that notion but in 2011 I have become numb to stories of this nature. It seems dated from a shock value standpoint but from a representation of the way US society is moving it seems fairly prescient. Continue reading Book Report: Less Than Zero →

Musings No comments yet

Crappiest. Post. Ever.

By Ultraparadoxical on May 23rd, 2011

I made a huge discovery today. It is something that I know should exist but I had no idea that it ACTUALLY existed. I present to you the Bristol Stool Chart:

Continue reading Crappiest. Post. Ever. →

Music, Work 1 comment

The Visitor…

By Ultraparadoxical on May 10th, 2011

One of the nice things about being at a remote office away from my company’s headquarters is that I don’t have to deal with the various bullshit that comes with having a bunch of “bosses” all in one place. I am virtually done with useless company “all-hands” meetings, executive ride-alongs to customer visits, and other forms of corporate grab-ass have all thankfully become a thing of the past. Well, kind of a thing of the past.

That’s right, this was the week of the dreaded “executive visit”. My boss’s, boss’s, boss decided to grace us with his presence at the small office here in Australia. It has been a constant agitation for the month running up to his visit and has made the office into a virtual hell-scape. Everyone had been wringing their hands in anticipation of his visit making sure that everything goes right. This is how it must be for women married to men in the army. Their husbands come home for a few weeks and they better make those few weeks fantastic otherwise they man may be fucking some 19 year old Philipino chick on his next tour of duty. Basically, this one visit will shape the executives view of our office until the next time he decides to come down here so if we fuck up there will be bad blood for 6-10 months. Everyone is acting differently trying to look “productive” instead of actually doing their job. The local management is getting up in everyone’s shit to make it look like they are in active control of all of the salespeople. It has led to a halt in actual productivity, left morale at an all time low and increased my weekday drinking 5-fold. Continue reading The Visitor… →

Social Issues, travel No comments yet

Oh ANZAC day, Oh ANZAC day…

By Ultraparadoxical on April 28th, 2011

The Australians got something right. This last weekend I experienced my first ANZAC day. This is similar to Veterans Day except people actually observe it and if you walked out on the street you could tell it was a holiday. To paraphrase to how one of my Australian friends described it, ANZAC day is “the remembrance of the British sending us to fight on the wrong beach and getting slaughtered”. Beyond that I couldn’t really piece together much of what it was really about. I saw a few older looking Australians in funky military uniforms walking around the street and most people had a small pine branch pinned to their lapel.

Although I have never been in the Army and am probably more on the pussy side of the scale than the badass side (I’m a lover, not a fighter) I feel like I could relate to them. Not in any type of military context, since 100% of these guys are way tougher than I am, but rather in a symbolic way. The previous night I played wingman to one of my buddies who had been visiting for the weekend. Continue reading Oh ANZAC day, Oh ANZAC day… →

Musings, Social Issues, travel 2 comments

I am a Proud Over-saucer…

By Ultraparadoxical on April 20th, 2011

I have been in Sydney now for the past 4 months and it has been glorious… absolutely glorious. I could not have pictured a better transition for myself. My job has been going well, I have been meeting a ton of cool people and I have found Sydney to be a clean, friendly, beautiful city to live in. In my limited travels I have seen a lot of interesting things but it is the differences that are the most interesting and those differences are what everyone talks about.

In the same way that San Diego is a town full of visitors and migrants Sydney is the same except a bit more international flavor and absolutely no black people or Mexicans. [Insert racist joke here] There are so many different cultures that find themselves drawn to Sydney and conversations always meander towards the things that people notice about the culture that strikes them as odd. At a base level it is the same anywhere one goes but the more superficial one gets the more the differences bubble to the surface. For example:

Sauces and Ice

I ordered a meal from McDonald’s and I asked for ketchup. They put 1 packet in my bag… one fucking packet. I can slather that on about 3 fingerfuls of fries. The next time that I went I specifically asked for extra ketchup. That time she put 2 in the bag and corrected me (you mean tomato sauce?). I mentioned this to a friend and she explained to me that Americans are notorious as “over saucers”. I was never aware of this… I didn’t know if I should be insulted or proud.

In the same vein of the Australian stinginess on sauce they never put enough ice in any drink, especially mixed drinks. I am a fast drinker and each time I finish my Jameson and Ginger Ale and there is no ice left. I don’t get it, don’t people want cold drinks? This is a hot desert country one would think that they would load their drinks up with ice. I have already started to assimilate to the culture a bit but I like my drinks icy, my foods properly sauced and my homosexuals flllaaaammmming (tip of the cap to Homer Simpson). I ain’t changing.. USA USA USA! Continue reading I am a Proud Over-saucer… →

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