Even though I am a self proclaimed sloth I have had at least a part time job since I was 15. Anything that I am doing for money will eventually become (at least sometimes) something that I inherently dislike. Even if I was the oil-boy for the Tropicana Girls Bikini Team the alarm would go off some mornings and I would dread even having to rub down some scantily clad honeys. Jobs to me are just that – JOBS – they are a means to an end. Whatever I can do to make the most amount of money and suffer the least aggravation then that is what I want to do. It opens up more freedom in my personal time where I can enjoy life. In this 2 part series I am going to dig into the past and relive my career job by job and try to pull out some lessons that I still hold on to today. Part one covers everything up until my college graduation… Continue reading Career Lessons – A Retrospective (Part One) →
There are not that many things that suck about living in Southern California but the holiday season is one of them. The holidays come and go and it is pretty much unnoticed except a few decorations at the mall or the shitty Adult Contemporary music being replaced by shitty Christmas music at Starbucks. Southern Californians make some pathetic attempts at holiday activities that never really turn out right. In Del Mar they put up Christmas decorations at the horse track and people pay 15 bucks to take their car around the track and look at shitty light displays. I did it the first year I moved here and it was so lame that halfway through we decided to “Tokyo Drift” the rest of the track and get out as soon as possible. No cold + No snow = No REAL holiday feel. This is the one time in the year where I wish it was a bit colder so it would FEEL more like the holidays (Only I could find something to bitch about with the beautiful weather here.) Since I am selfish and I want to feel more holiday-ish I am dedicating this Top Nine Friday to the random things I love/hate about the holiday season. Continue reading Top Nine Friday – Kwanzaaaaa Spirit Edition →
My laziness is infinite. It is like the universe or a fat chick’s FUPA… always expanding and threatening to envelop everything. Some people manipulate situations so they get their way or gain power in a relationship… not me. I manipulate things so I can sit on the couch longer, avoid work or get someone else to do something for me. Is it pathetic? Probably. Is it childish? Definitely. Do I hate when people ask themselves rhetorical questions and immediately retort with one word answers? Abso-fucking-lutely. The problem is though that I have been this way for so long that I am most likely never going to change and I just need to live with it.
To give you an idea of my laziness here are a few examples: Continue reading LaaaaaaZZZZZyyyy!!! →
I have a suggestion for society. It is groundbreaking and would change the nature of communication as we know it… We need to completely do away with small talk. These conversations are so painful for me yet I find myself involved in them all the time at work or just with random people. Do we really need to be babbling 24/7 about some bullshit that neither party really cares about? I have a difficult time being really enthused about things that I ACTUALLY care about. For me to feign enthusiasm about someone at work who cornered me in the break room regaling me with a story about their weekend is a pointless endeavor for both parties involved.
I’m not trying to be pretentious or say that everyone is boring and my daily life is one fascinating event after another. I feel like there is no reason that we need to be communicating with each other all the time just for the sake of talking. I know that most people could give a shit about what I did this weekend, how work is going or what the weather is like. I am completely OK with not knowing things about someone who I am not really friends with and I am sure that they don’t want to hear my crappy story either. We have just been trained by our culture and society to feel awkward if we do not converse with someone when we are placed in certain social settings (running into an acquaintance in public, stuck in a elevator or the work break room). There are a few things that we can do to immediately cut down on this useless banter immediately. Continue reading Lets Kill Small Talk! →
Birthdays are interesting rituals. It is supposed to be a special day but in reality it doesn’t make much sense why we put such an emphasis on that day. I have always thought that is was funny that we celebrate our emergence from our mother’s vagina. I guess it is something that everyone has in common and surviving another year on earth is a pretty impressive feat.
Basically everyone tries to be as nice as possible to you that day. You can be a dick to anyone and just say “Awwww, c’mon, its my birthday…” – and all is forgiven. All for doing something that no one remembers – graduating from a fetus to a human! Some people take it to the extreme – I have one friend that will literally extend her birthday to cover over 2 weeks of activities. Unacceptable – I can’t be overly nice to someone for that long. I refuse to buy in to that program. Your birthday is one day, you can only use your birthday to get off the hook once. After that your friends are allowed to treat you like shit again.
I have noticed over the years that there is an evolution process to the actual birthday celebrations and I want to be the first to chronicle the import birthday “eras” Continue reading The Evolution of the Berfday →
As a person gets older a perception that has been generating over the course of a lifetime takes hold and things become far less dynamic over time. As a child a person is constantly in flux and their perception changes at a rapid pace. Events and experiences major and minor can completely change someone’s view on existence and the things going on around them. As someone ages the way that they perceive the events going on around them solidifies and their focus increases but their ability to take in their surroundings from different viewpoints decreases. This is positive for a deeper understanding of the “chosen” perspective but it is detrimental to one’s ability to broaden one’s perception on a person’s environment.
Everyone can remember seminal events from their childhood that changed how they take in the world around them. These events are numerous and many of then caused radical shifts in how we live our lives today. Every single event changes us as we proceed through life but there are only certain things that can really impact the way that we process the information that is constantly flowing into our sensory mechanisms. As we age fewer of these perception changing events occur and we become more set in our ways. Events happen and we use our existing perception mechanisms to process the events. Rather than changing the way external events are processed a person uses the mechanisms already entrenched to perceive the events happening in a familiar way. Continue reading The Aging of Perception →
There are times in life where you wonder why you ever waste your time drinking and going out… then your friend makes an ass of themselves and it is all worthwhile. These are a collection of those incidents…
Top 9 Drunken Moments (In no particular order)
Cabo Cantina, San Diego – 2 for 1 drinks sound like a great deal but it can get ugly fast. One of my friends was hitting on some blond at the bar and she started to playfully slap him in the face. In his mind it turned from playful to annoying quickly. He asked her to stop 3 times and when she didn’t he made her pay the price with a buy-one-get-one-free-corona-douching. He unloaded both beers over her head… when I looked over I thought they were celebrating winning the World Series – the bouncers did not think it was so funny and booted him. Continue reading Top Nine Friday – The “I Did WHAT Last Night?” Edition →
Dreams are so fascinating to me because everything is so random and logic does not apply the way I use it in every other part of my life. Dreams are jumbled and fleeting yet they can compel me to do things or infuse me with real emotion. ”I had the most fucked up dream last night…” usually precedes a convoluted story that makes no sense the the person hearing what the speaker dreamt. Invariably the story ends with “… I don’t know, it’s hard to explain… but it was fucked up”. The reason it was fucked up is because interpreting a dream is like translating a language that is different for each individual.
The subconscious contains all of the urges, impulses, intentions, perceptions, thoughts, deductions and feelings we have ever experienced. Most of this information stays cordoned off in the recesses of our subconscious and may only bubble up as an instinct, idea or at times a rational thought in our waking lives. Our minds have evolved and developed a rational sense that is unparalleled in the animal kingdom. Having the conscious and subconscious working in tandem is a uniquely human characteristic and elevates us to be able to think in infinite terms while the subconscious unites us with our instinctual heritage in the animal kingdom. I imagine when we are able to more clearly determine exactly how animals think that we will discover it is very similar to our experiences in the visceral simplicity of a dream-state. Continue reading I Had the Most Fucked up Dream Last Night… →
I spent over 9 hours on a plane or at an airport yesterday! Wheeeee! I shouldn’t bitch, I don’t mind traveling at all really – it is a good time to read, think or do things you otherwise I would not do if I was already at my destination. For the most part I travel with very few complaints but there are a few things that surfaced on this trip that I would like to address.
1 – My ticket said my flight takes off from Detroit with a layover in Kansas City then on to San Diego. Simple enough, I should only make 1 stop, correct? “No” said the chick at the ticket counter who looked like she needs a chisel to take off her makeup – “there was an additional stop in St. Louis but I didn’t have to deplane so it doesn’t count as a stop” (then gave me a look like I was the biggest shithead in all of Detroit for even asking her why the flight board at the terminal said St. Louis). That is bullshit. That would be like me telling my girlfriend that I was going to stop at Target before I came to her place except in actuality I was going to pick up my ex-girlfriend and get road-head on the way. According to the airline that is technically not cheating. To them any stop that does not have me exiting the plane is on some alternate universe and they don’t need to clearly indicate it on the ticket.
2 – Why do all pilots sound like they are stoned when they come over the intercom to talk to the passengers? “Uhhhhhhhh – we will be cruising at – uhhhhhh – 30,000 feet for approximately threeeeeeeee . . . . hours – uhhhhh – arriving…” The pilot always has the same kind of dazed breathy voice that reminds me of someone who I would rather have roll a joint for me than control a few hundred thousand pound aircraft traveling at 500mph. In any other profession this would not work at all. If my surgeon was talking like that before he was going to dig a tumor out of my abdomen I would tell him to take a hike. Pilots of the world my message to you: Either get your shit together when you come over the intercom or pass the bong to the back of the plane.
3 – The “no carry-on liquids” rule has to end. It has to be one of the stupidest things to ever come down from any bureaucracy. I always just check a bag no matter how small it is because I do not want to have to deal with getting a travel size for every toiletry that I want to travel with. The few times that I have accidentally taken a liquid in my carry-on I have gotten it on board only to realize it after the fact. The semi-evolved retard who looks like an extra from “Deliverance” that operates the x-ray screen is not the sharpest of federal counterintelligence agents. I understand that everyone wants to be safe but if I was a terrorist I would tape the fluids to my nut-sack rather than put it in a bottle of Head and Shoulders in my carry-on (actually maybe not my nuts – the screams in the bathroom as I took the duct tape off would probably give me away - I guess that is reason number 2,093 why you shouldn’t be a terrorist.) My suggestion would be to allow a shampoo here or a bottle of water there but be vigilant for milk gallons of kerosene or other items that could ACTUALLY be harmful. That is probably a bit easier for our less than valedictorian TSA employees to look for. For complaining publicly I am probably getting put on a blacklist right now by the government and I am going to be cavity searched the next 5 times I fly – I hope this rant was worth it.
4 – I would like to broker a peace settlement between all passengers in a battle that has raged for decades. The fight I am referring to is the virtual 38th parallel of passenger aircraft, the armrest. Just because you sit down first does not mean the armrest is yours and the person next to you must sit in some sort of a contorted yoga pose the rest of the flight. If someone is being a dick about the armrest and not sharing my usual move is faking an arm spasm to regain armrest superiority. This bumps their arm off for a second so I can get in a position where the area is shared properly. The one time that the “arm spasm” trick did not work and the guy next to me tried to take the whole armrest again I was forced to pull out the big guns. In a loud voice (so the other passengers would hear me) I said “Hey Chief – we are going to have to share this armrest or we are going to have some issues” (that’s right, I gave him the Chief Treatment). He looked at me like I was a madman but finally relented, muttering that he was sorry and not talking to me for the rest of my flight. It doesn’t have to get that ugly, don’t be an asshole, just share the armrest.
In the end, I arrived in San Diego to be no worse for wear but the aggravations of flight do not need to persist. Small changes in everyone’s normal routine can be beneficial for everyone – that way I can bitch about other things. Is there anything I forgot that pisses you off?
There will be no post on Friday (I know, put away the razor blades and drain the luke-warm water from the tub, I will be back on Monday) because I will be traveling back to my Alma Mater to hang out with some friends. I have not been back in a few years and I didn’t think I would go back for a long time. I am excited to go – even though I am going to feel like an old sack of douche compared to the students (some of which that had been born in the 90′s – *GASP*) Looking back on my previous posts it is obvious that I had been thinking about college in anticipation of this trip and I think another walk down memory lane couldn’t hurt.
When I was a student and the alumnus would come back I thought that they were the massive tools. I mean, why would you come back to campus when you are that old? Didn’t you have better things to do once you had graduated than get shit faced and act like a complete asshole? No… the answer is a resounding, NO. Back then I thought after graduation I would magically transform into an adult. In reality though, the weight of life after college is slowly dropped on your back - jobs, debts, obligations, marriage and kids are piled on and sleeping until noon and 3 weeks off for Christmas become distant memories. Don’t get me wrong – I love my life now – but college was fantastic. I know I am old – but fuck it – I’m going to go back to school and become the same asshole that I hated 10 years ago. I have earned it. Continue reading Back to School for some Payback →