Boricua 4 Life!

So I've got a hangover. Not a terrible one, but just enough to annoy the hell out of me. Just enough that I can't be bothered by incompetence, especially my own. Unfortunately, I got out of the retarded side of bed this morning.

I subscribe to Yahoo's LAUNCHcast music thing. It's a form of internet radio. I have the upgraded, subscription service. It's worth it. You can fine tune it (sort of, see below) to play the types of music you want, and it actually has an amazing amount of variety. It has its share of bugs and glitches, but its a godsend at work.

My cubicle buddy and training partner is out of the office today, so I was lucky enough to be able to head straight to my desk, turn on LAUNCH, and pretend to get to work. Things were going fine for about forty five minutes. LAUNCH was playing good songs and no one was bothering me. I guess it was about 8:30 when things started going downhill.

One of the best things about LAUNCH is you can skip as many times as you want. The software continually 'recommends' songs you might like based on your preferences, and if you get a dud you can just skip it. I love this, as few stations let you do it. But excessive skipping tends to make the application act buggy, and sometimes crash altogether. Not the end of the world, as you can just fire it up again.

One of the worst things about LAUNCH is that it often 'recommends' complete fucking crap. When it actually recommends something good, it will show a message that reads "This song is popular with fans of (insert band or record)." These are things I can deal with. What I cannot stand is the messages that say "This song is popular on LAUNCHcast." You can only imagine the shit that passes for popular. So even though I've banned country, rap, pop, and god knows what else I still get the occasional tracks that make me weep for the future of music. If I've got bands like Fugazi and Minor Threat rated highly, can't LAUNCH pretty much assume I'm going to hate everything on the country, pop and urban charts? I mean, can that be that hard to figure out?

Sitting in my cubicle this morning, I'm happily wasting the first hour of work rocking out to my emo cryfest when some horrible Latino hip hop song comes on. I'm nearly deaf, so I've got the volume turned up very high and the change in music is startling (and disappointing, and frustrating). I understand that this new kind of hip hop is getting very popular, but it's probably safe to say thirty year old white emo guys are not the target audience. I fumble to bring up the correct window so I can ban the song and artist (of course the genre is already banned- thanks LAUNCH).

I skip the song and the goddamn thing glitches. I get a Windows error and the application closes, but the fucking song is still playing! I bring up the processes window and can't see the fucking thing running, yet it's still blaring in my headphones. I take them off, and I've got the volume up so loud I can still hear the song. I'm very professional at work, and I'm embarrassed that my nearby cubicle mates can hear what I'm listening to. I'm sure they can hear my punk stuff sometimes, but I can live with that. What I can't live with is the image of the old white guy pumping the hip hop. I loved this stuff when I was a kid, but that was damn near fifteen years ago. Like I said before, it doesn't quite speak to me like it does to my younger amigos.

So I mentioned I'm hungover, and it doesn't occur to me to turn down the system volume. Instead I get the bright idea to reach behind my laptop and unplug my headphones. I would like to stress that this was a very bad decision. By default the laptop switches to its external speaker, so now I'm broadcasting Spanish profanities at full volume to everyone in my department. Suddenly 8:30am in Reston becomes the Boogie Down Bronx. I panic, and reach behind my laptop to try to plug the headphones back in. I'm already shaky from last night's Budweisers, and the embarrassment doesn't help. Heads begin to appear over my cubicle walls. I finally plug the fucking things back in. I don't even bother to explain what happened, I'm too busy counting the seconds 'til five o'clock.

Staff Directory

Kathryn's post a few days back about Miltons got me thinking about other work types that are common to every office. A few of my favorite characters:

He Was Here A Minute Ago...

For the life of me, I cannot figure out what you do all day. You stop by your cubicle about twenty minutes late, bitch about traffic, drop your things, and then disappear. You pop back in throughout the day to check your email and your voicemail, then you disappear again. Where do you go? And when do you actually do your job?

Senior Analyst, Germ Distribution

OK, I get it. You are very dedicated to your job. You obviously feel that you're so important that you simply cannot take a sick day. I am not impressed. I am pissed. I do not want to hear your grating, hacking cough all day, and I am not interested in contracting your bird flu. Go home already. This is why God invented paid sick leave.

Receptionist/NOVA Student

I need you to make important announcements such as "There is a blue Honda Civic in the parking lot with its lights on" and "The bagels have arrived and are in the kitchen." I do not need elaborate, prosaic emails concerning corporate policy esoteria. And I can certainly do without the daily updates documenting your refrigerator-cleaning projects. I understand that you are simply putting your Word of the Day email subscription to good use, and I appreciate that you've bookmarked www.thesaurus.com, but I feel compelled to remind you that the "All Staff" list in the email directory is not to be abused. You are not nearly as important to this company as you think you are. There is a reason I cannot remember the name of the person who was doing your job three weeks ago.

Situational Profanity

"God fucking damnit, traffic fucking sucked this morning. I got stuck behind the biggest asshole in the world. They should pass laws to keep these fucking idiots off the road. I swear to God, the next...wait, hang on a second, I need to take this. 'Hello, how can I help you? I can certainly take care of that for you! There you go! All set! Is there anything else I can help you with today? Wonderful! Thank you very much, and have a great day! Bye bye!' OK, where was I? Oh yeah, so this fucking asshole..."

I Have A Question

Honestly, how many times do I have to show you how to use this program? Do you not understand that operating your computer, and the myriad programs installed on it, is an integral part of your job? Could I get a job as a jockey if I didn't know how to ride a horse? Then how the fuck did you get a job at an IT company if you don't know how to use a computer?

I Have Another Question

At the end of the meeting, when the boss says, "Does anyone have any questions?" that means "OK, get back to work." It is not a call for you to discuss the intricacies of how this particular administrative change is going to affect your job. The rest of the team doesn't care. I realize that you developed this technique in college, where you dominated entire classes by engaging the professor in utterly pointless arguments that left everyone dumber for having listened. What I want to know is, didn't you notice everyone (including the professor) sighing and rolling their eyes whenever you raised your hand? Do you notice it now? Do you even care? I'm not completely sure about this, but I believe fixing this flaw in your personality might go a long way toward that 'Can't find a girlfriend' problem you've had your whole life.

Windows Key + M

I'm going to catch you. I'm going to figure out whatever it is you're looking at every time I come by your cubicle and you frantically minimize. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but one of these days. Please make sure it's worth my suspense.

This Is My Daughter, Madison

There is a reason "Bring Your Daughter To Work Day" only happens once a year. It's because I don't want your fucking children in my cubicle. Work is for grownups. I'm not impressed by your progeny, I'm too busy thanking God my girlfriend doesn't want kids. And spare me the pictures, unless you want to see them on a milk carton.

An Awkward Peesition

I have to pee all the time. In fact, I'm peeing right now.

There are a lot of reasons why I pee all the time, lots of theories including "bryc3 drinks way too fucking much" (obvious) and "bryc3 likes being around other semi-naked dudes" (unsubstantiated, yet persistent). The problem has been exacerbated by Baby's insistence that I drink more water. So every day I bring a bottle of water and down that along with my usual one or three Cokes. So yeah, I gotta make yellow a lot.

The amount of time I spend in the men's room has made me an old pro. I go in, I pee, I leave. I don't make small talk, I don't dick around looking in the mirror, and I'm not the insecure guy who's afraid to use the urinal and waits for the stall. I've noticed a lot of otherwise normal men fall into this last category. I don't understand it. We are all peeing, and nobody is checking you out. I know that some men avoid the urinal because they get stage fright. This doesn't happen to me. I have noticed that as I have gotten older it has taken progressively longer to get things going once I do step up to the urinal, but again my long experience in the men's room has taught me that this is normal with older guys. Just give it time, it's coming out sooner or later.

The other day I'm headed toward the men's room and I notice the distinct voices of our owner and the senior vice president in the hall behind me. I push open the bathroom door and as I look back to hold it for anyone who might be behind me, I notice that they're both headed my way. I'm not stupid, I hold the door for them. So the three of us enter the bathroom together and head for the three urinals.

By default I head for the middle urinal. This is a mistake, as the two men are carrying on a conversation which has continued even as they're unbuttoning their pants. Now they're talking back and forth, and I'm standing there holding my little guy and cursing my infant's bladder for having to pee all the damn time. I'm starting to get nervous, as I realize just how emasculated I am. I am literally caught with my pants down, as these men who control my future at the company are inconvenienced because I'm too stupid to have given them adjacent urinals. I curse myself again for being an idiot.

What can I do in this situation? How can I save face? I'm fairly proud of my urinal etiquette, but these men are obviously not impressed because they're violating the talking rule. They don't care that I have the practiced, eyes-forward method of a seasoned veteran. Should I comment on their conversation? Am I allowed to do that? I did fairly well in business school, but I don't remember any Peter Drucker books on corporate pee strategy. To make matters worse, something seems not quite right. Everything seems to have followed protocol, but something is definitely missing.

No one is actually peeing.

These men are old, probably in their sixties or seventies. It takes them a while. I can respect that. I, however, am just plain nervous. I've got stage fright for the first time in my life. I simply cannot go. And the more I think about it, the worse it gets. The seconds are passing like hours. I'm certain they've noticed this younger guy who is too big of a pussy to pee with the grownups. I can see it all in my head, as they go back to their desks and order their secretaries to write "Inadequate urination, not management potential" in my personnel file. I'm finished, and all because I can't start.

Finally, mercifully, the old bastards get their business started. The noise is enough to mask my lack of noise, and I flush and hurriedly wash my hands and shamefully return to my cubicle, still having to pee. No worries, I'm due back in the men's room in another forty five minutes. But you can make damn sure I'm using the fucking stall.

Grandpa In A Coma (I Know I Know It's Serious)

My grandpa, my dad's dad, is in a coma. The doctors say it doesn't look good. I say, "Good riddance."

I struggled with this a bit the other day when I received the news. I struggled because I wasn't sad, and in fact I was almost happy. Happy that it's finally almost over with. Happy that my father can finally be rid of the bastard. I don't mean to suggest that I was joyful, but I've lost loved ones before and this sure didn't feel a bit like that.

My grandfather is famous- in a minor, local sort of way. If you're from the mid-Atlantic you've heard of him. Two famous companies bore his name, and there was a time in the 80's and 90's when that name was ubiquitous. I could even honestly say that those two companies had a far more reaching impact on their respective industries. They were innovative, very much in the vein of "Why didn't I think of that?" My family has a knack for coming up with ideas like that, and my grandfather started that trend. In that regard I respect him. In just about every other regard he sucks.

He came to this country in the early sixties with almost no money. He built a respectable business in the District and moved out to the suburbs, gradually expanding. In the eighties he jumped on an infant industry and quickly became the biggest in the business. The growth of the company coincided with my childhood, and it was fun to be a kid with a famous family and a famous name. It was also nice to have a dad who got to work and make a very decent living at the company. I (and most other people) figured my family was set for life. We were an institution from North Carolina to New York and all the way out to Cleveland. But the big boys got involved in the industry and started to muscle grandpa out. He was determined to remain the sole owner of the company, and he couldn't compete with the publicly-owned behemoth that was gobbling up market share and to this day dominates the industry. Rather than sell early, he held on and fought, to the grave detriment of the bottom line. A few years later he would sell the company for 40% of what he was initially offered, his ego having robbed him of tens of millions of dollars.

The sale of the company left my father in a precarious position. His salary was slashed, and it could not meet the lifestyle our family had become accustomed to. We were not on the high hog by any means, but we were in for a serious adjustment. We packed up and moved further out into the deep suburbs. My dad was unhappy with the way things had turned out, and pissed to be working for a new company for far less money. He decided he wanted a change, and he needed my grandfather to help.

He begged for the money to buy back a small portion of the original company and begin again, as the company was before my grandfather's idea had taken off. It wasn't easy, and my grandfather was reluctantto give up the cash. Since he had sold the company he had begun to live a lifestyle even more lavish than before, as he now had no work to occupy his time. After enough pleading, he agreed to give my dad the money but wanted to retain ultimate control of the new/old company. Bad move, dad. But nevertheless my dad took the deal and reopened shop, and we had a company again.

After a few years of seven day workweeks and long hours the company hadn't really grown much. Then suddenly my dad stumbled upon an idea. It was so simple, just a minor change to an existing established business practice. But the idea took off like wildfire, and suddenly we were famous again. Orders started pouring in, and the company was growing faster than we could manage. By this time I was old enough to work for the firm, and I took some time off college to help out. This was right in the thick of the internet gold rush, and we were poised to make a fortune. Wary to make the same mistake he had in the past, my grandfather explored the option of an IPO and again I thought my future was set. But seemingly out of nowhere my grandfather sold the company outright, and kept the proceeds for himself. My dad and other members of the company got a small payout, but my grandfather kept the big bucks and stock options. The options would continue to grow in value, and I can only assume that my grandfather's fortune reached astronomical levels. My dad, meanwhile, got dick. My father had done all the work, had come up with the idea and nurtured and slaved over it, while my grandfather spent his days gambling and watching his fortune grow. Yet when it was time to reward my dad for what he had done, my grandfather hung him out to dry. All of this because my dad had allowed him to maintain ownership of the company, a move he had to make in order to buy back the company and provide for his own family.

You can probably guess some of what happened next. The tech bubble burst and grandpa's fortune came back to earth. That stock isn't worth the paper it's printed on anymore, although at least for his sake he sold it long ago. His lifestyle went from lavish to decadent to debaucherous, as he blew untold millions on gambling, women, booze, and lord knows what else. At first he was generous with the family, paying for things like college tuition and medical expenses. But as the money dried up the purse strings grew tighter. He was hell bent on blowing everything he had, and he needed the resources to continue to live the way he grown accustomed to. He cut everyone off save the whores and hangers on.

His health went from bad to worse, and a few months ago he left the States to return to the country where he was born. He left behind a ton of debt and almost nothing of the money he once had. Now he's lying in a coma in a hospital bed in a third world country, draining what's left of his money on medical care that his American health insurance won't pay for. With the big money gone, there is no one left to care for him save the family he fucked over.

So I'm not sad that he's finally going to die. I don't want the bastard to suffer, but I'd sure like him to realize what he's done to my dad. I hope that my grandfather, in his son, sees a man who knows what it's like to be a father to his children. And I hope that, right before he dies, he realizes that for all his success in the business world he will never be half the man my father is. Good fucking riddance.

Root Root Root For The Road Team

Just stop. Stop before you start. You're going to tell me that a)Washington is not a big-time sports town or b) everyone in Washington is from somewhere else. There might be some truth to those statements (more likely the latter as opposed to the former) but I'm sick and tired of hearing them. Just as I'm sick and tired of watching you come to my stadium and root for the goddamn road team.

I just spent the weekend at RFK watching the final Nats series of their inaugural season. I don't have the ability to express in words how much this baseball season meant to me, so I won't even try. Let's just say I'm one of those grown men that gets teary eyed at the very idea that we've got a team to call our own, playing in the stadium where I grew up watching the Redskins. And this weekend was the perfect opportunity to spend a precious final few spectacularly beautiful days with my team. We were out of the playoff race, but Iwas happy to go all the same. We laid down and took a beating, getting swept in our last three at home, and I still wasn't disappointed. These are my Nats, and I would have been overwhelmed with joy and gratitude had we lost all 162 games this season.

I was, however, sick to my stomach at the throngs of Philly fans in attendance. Don't you people know that Philly loses at everything? Look it up. Last Phillies World Series title? 1980. Last Sixers NBA championship? 1983. Last Flyers Stanley Cup? 1980. Last Super Bowl win? Never. You haven't had a decent champion since Rocky, and he was fucking make believe.

Go home. Please, seriously, just go home. You can get to Philly in a few hours and they'd love to have you. I hear they're even polishing the sidewalks so you're less likely to hurt your knuckles as they drag along the ground. You're stoked. Now off you go.

I don't understand the fascination of rooting for the opposing team, especially a hated rival. The Nationals have the Yankees coming to town next year, and I cringe at the thought of all the idiots who will be there to cheer on next year's overpriced, underachieving bunch of hired thugs. If you like your team so much, go back to where THEY play. Why do we tolerate so many people cheering on the bad guys? Where is the drunken fan violence we need to shut these people up? Am I the only one that's pissed off?

My girlfriend raised a very good point the other day. Actually she raises good points every day, usually immediately after I raise bad ones. But the other day she said, "Well, if you moved to Philadelphia would you still cheer for the Redskins?" Seems like a valid question at first glance. On further review it's a lousy question, because the answer is that I will never move to Philadelphia. The Eagles play there, for fuck's sakes! Baby, we're not moving to Philly, NewYork, or Atlanta (no big loss there). And dude, we're not even visiting Dallas.

What can I do to stop this? Do I have to start bringing a crowbar to games? Yesterday a family of Philly morons were sitting behind us, each one fatter than the next. They grew more rambunctious as the game wore on. The icing on the cake was their shrill-voiced, rotund ten year old boy squealing "Let's Go Seahawks" once it became clear the Phillies were going to beat the Nats again. What do I have to do? I considered turning around suddenly and slapping the living shit out of him, clean across the mouth. How do you like that, fatty? Was that worth your $10 ticket? I also mulled over the slightly more dignified "While it is true that your favorite baseball team might be in the playoffs when you wake up tomorrow morning, unfortunately you will be fat and your mother will be a slut every day for the rest ofyour life." Is that what I have to do to convince you that you can't act the way you do in my goddamn stadium? How many of you fucktards do I have to kill?

Am I the only one pissed off?