Thursday, November 30, 2006

Pick A Winner

So I got an email from my boss this morning at 6:45am, asking me to attend a 9am meeting I didn't even know about with our client. I had to haul ass to get ready, but I was excited because I was being called in to talk about something I had worked hard on. I wanted to look good, so I put on my best big boy clothes (including my big boy shoes!) and got just about as dolled up as I could get. Baby even commented that I looked put together, so I was feeling good about myself.

I stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of our building, and made for the Metro. On my way I pass an older apartment building that seems to be home to a lot of young people, mostly hipster gay guys and lots of very cute woman. Sure enough, there is a very pretty girl walking my way. She gets within maybe fifteen feet before she makes eye contact. Then, in the very next instant, she sticks her finger, knuckle deep, into her nose. This wasn't some ill-fated clandestine effort to take care of a creeper or anything. She was digging, vigorously.

Gross, right?

But wait, there are greater implications here. Picking your nose in public is generally frowned upon, right? And people don't do it because they don't want to look bad in front of other people, right? And I don't know about you, but my feelings about those sorts of things are typically magnified when I'm in the presence of attractive people. It's largely subconcious, but I'm sure I try to carry myself a little better when I'm around good looking or otherwise desirable people. I think we have this tendency (especially if you're as insecure as I am) where we want to demonstrate that we, too, are attractive.

This woman, who was more attractive than me on pretty much any scale you could create, felt that I'm so goddamn banged up that she doesn't even need to disguise the fact that she has some class of booger problem. Oh him? I don't care if that guy sees me picking my nose. I was devastated.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

If Peeing Your Pants Is Cool, Consider Me Miles Davis

I really hate it when something embarrassing happens to me, and there is no one around to share it with. It ruins the joke for me. I nearly ran to my desk to tell Baby about this, but she didn't pick up the phone. So you get to hear it, hot off the press.

I was just standing at the urinal, minding my own business and thinking about something work-related. I was jolted back to reality when I realized the sound of me peeing had changed dramatically. This is never a good sign. I looked down to see I was peeing on my unbuckled belt. Worse yet, the pee was splashing back onto my goddamn pants! Unbelievably, whatever 'stain defender' fabric these pants are made of repels liquid. Including, apparently, human urine. So I just brushed those drops of pee pee right away. How great is that? Where was this technology when I was in grade school?

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

To: AllStaffDC Subject: Advice Priority: High

I present, in no particular order, advice to my co-workers.

-Everyone, and I repeat everyone, can see you adjusting your crotch. I am a man, and I understand that, at times, it itches or is otherwise uncomfortable. Yet in all my thirty one years I have never encountered a situation where I simply needed to move my penis and or balls in a public place. I understand that you're hoping no one will notice. They will. Just leave it alone. Go back to your office and tend to it there. None of us need to see that.

-The carpet in the hallway is not interesting and does not warrant such careful scrutiny. You might consider actually making eye contact with me when I pass you in the hallway. Smiling is also nice, although certainly not necessary. But be aware that because I know you are uncomfortable in those awkward hallway situations, I will be making a point to not only meet your eyes but actually speak to you, loudly. I enjoy making you nervous. I think that kind of thing is funny because I'm an asshole.

-The human body is truly amazing, but I promise you that we do not find yours all that awesome. As such, you might want to spend a bit less time picking at that thing on your neck in our next meeting. It's been what, three weeks in a row now? I'm sure you feel that, sooner or later, you're going to unravel the mystery behind whatever the hell that thing is. But I know that it's going to get infected any day, and I'm going to have to do your work while you're in the hospital. It's not getting any better, and it's all banged up because you won't stop fucking with it. Go to a doctor and get some medicine for it. And if it's some kind of weird compulsion that's making you do it, go to a doctor and get medicine for that.

-You're too shy to use the urinal in the restroom, so you pee in the stall. You probably do that to avoid being embarrassed. But, in case you didn't know, men who use urinals think men who are afraid of urinals are pussies. Don't believe me? Ask around.

-If you don't drink, stop coming to happy hour. You're unhappy cause you're surrounded by drunken idiots, and we're unhappy cause you're making us look like drunken idiots. You're ruining everything.

-The cute new girl does not like you. Or you. Or you. Or you. She's being nice to you because she's new and that's what you do. She's only been at her new job for a week, she's certainly not going to start dating anyone in the office yet. Give up, you're embarrassing yourself.

-That email you sent out last week with information about window washing, while attempting to be informative, only served to make the 85% of the people in the company without window offices hate the 15% with window offices even more.

-I will now be spending 2% of my pre-tax salary on prescription co-pays because we've 'adjusted' our 'benefits' for 2007. No, I am not interested in buying your kid's fucking girl scout cookies.

Friday, November 17, 2006

I'm On Your Internets, Stealing Your Funniez

As a rule, I generally don't post links to other internets. But I simply cannot look at this page without laughing. Maybe it's the gamer dork in me, or the overall internet dork. But I dunno, I usually pee a little bit in my underpants when I look at these. No worries, SFW.

Nothing good or all that funny to report, but I figured I'd provide some updates.

The teeth problem continues to spiral out of control. I went back for my follow-up visit, where I was supposed to have my crown fitted. When I got there, the receptionist let me know that I was running out of my insurance allowance and I was going to have to start paying out of pocket. This threw me for a loop, because the dentist had told me the procedure would cost twelve hundred bucks and I have a fifteen hundred dollar yearly dental allowance. Well, he misled me, and probably deliberately. My insurance company paid twelve hundred bucks for the root canal procedure. The crown and the fitting were going to cost another sixteen hundred. I fucking lost it. I was completely duped. I'm in your teeths, stealing your moneys. Worst part- what can I do now? I have a temporary crown that will last, at most, a couple of months. At some point I'm going to have to have it fixed, and I'm going to have to pay for it out of pocket. I did get a bit of satisfaction by telling the receptionist to piss off and storming out of the office. I'll find some other place to get it done. And while I'm at it, here are some things for the Google fairies:

Dr. Carlos Abreu
1712 Eye Street NW
Washington, DC 20006

Dr. Carlos Abreu is a bad dentist. He caused me great pain and lied to me about the charges for my procedure.

You like that? I'm on the internet, stealing your patientz. Fuck you in your heart until you die.

Now that that's out of the way, I nearly wrote a separate post about what happened when I got home from that visit, but it seemed so ridiculous that I was afraid it would sound fake. Anyway, here goes:

The other day I heard a weird scratching sound in my bathroom. It sounded like it was coming from inside the walls. I figured that couldn't be good. I kept waiting for a wolverine or something to pop out. Needless to say, the cats were VERY interested. For the next few days, I kept finding them hanging out in there, sniffing at the walls. I figure it must have been a rat or something, probably trying to get in from outside with the changing weather. But thankfully there is no place for whatever it was to actually get inside, and the scratching has stopped. The cats still hang out in there, though. On that day I came home from my last dentist visit, I knew Jezebel had been in there. How did I know? My fucking toothbrush was on the floor in the corner. I swear I'm not making that up. She must have climbed on the sink and knocked it onto the floor (I've since started putting it in the holder again). So while I'm at the dentist, plotting to blow up the building, my arch nemesis is at home with her fecal matter-packed claws and her zoo ass-licking mouth all over my fucking toothbrush. I'm in your bathroom, pwning your oral hygienez. Sounds fake right? How bad is it when your life is so shitty people don't even believe it when you tell them about it? I got such problem!

---

My dad (Daddy #2) is turning 50 in a couple of weeks, and we're trying to plan a little get-together for him. He's not the kind of guy who likes a lot of fanfare, and he's been openly threatening to boycott the party if he gets wind of it. So we've decided to take him out to dinner, planning to surprise him. He's suspicious, so we've had to resort to some complicated measures to make all the plans. None of them, however, has been as complicated as teaching his girlfriend about how to use internets. I just got this email from her, re-posted here in the same format in which she sent it to me:

Hey Bryce,

Called Ruth Chris tonight I booked it for 14 people but we have to have 2 tables at 7:45 I think its alittle late for your dad also called arties they wont do
large parties on Sat nights thought about costal flats or Mikes in Spring field what do you think Ley me know I work all day tomorrow call
me on my cell if you can I know we need to get it booked with the holidays etc cell is 703 XXX-XXXX There just alot of us... Think about it ask (Baby)
too.

So apparently my father is dating a retarded character from a Faulkner book. I can't even begin to imagine how I'm supposed to process this. I'm in your email, ignoring your rules of punctuationz. Here is the scary part- she tries really hard to make me like her, much like my mom's boyfriend. She goes out of her way to be sweet. I figure she must know that she's functionally illiterate, so she probably agonized a bit over this before she actually sent it out. That means THIS was the product of her editing. Yikes.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Potential Felonies, Snooping, Broken Marriages, Gay Porn- Yeah, We Got That

Baby and I rented the first place we looked at when we were apartment shopping last winter. We loved the space and the location, and we didn't really want to bother with a long search. Our landlord seemed nice enough, too. When he first showed us the apartment, the previous tenants hadn't moved all their stuff out yet. The furniture was all gone, but the leftover crap that nobody ever wants to pack was scattered around. Our landlord didn't seem very happy about this, and he made a few remarks that led us to believe they were problem tenants. He didn't provide any additional details and we didn't ask- we liked the place too much and we didn't want to pry.

Over time, though, it became obvious that something had been going on with these tenants. Ever nosy, I brought the subject up with my neighbors whenever I got the chance. To their credit, nobody told me anything all that revealing, although I got the feeling they were pretty weird. But when we kept getting their mail delivered, we knew something was wrong.

For the first few months we dutifully saved everything they got. We would periodically ask our landlord about it, and he would tell us to just throw it all away. We complied, but we felt strange about throwing away important mail- credit card bills, official-looking correspondence, all manner of things. At first we figured they'd requested a forwarding order and it hadn't been processed yet. This is perfectly reasonable- I bet African villages have better mail service than DC. But after about six months we realized these people had absolutely no intention of ever letting anyone know they'd moved. So I did what any person would have done in my position. I started opening all of their mail.

OK so maybe that wasn't the most mature thing to do. But I really wanted to know what was going on. Plus the guy was getting a letter at least every two weeks from Playboy, and how could I keep throwing those away? The mail had really become a nuisance at this point anyway. The woman had signed up for all sorts of grassroots political mailing lists, and she was getting propaganda every day as the election was getting close. They were also getting the same catalogs we did, so we really didn't need four copies of the Ikea catalog cramming our little apartment mailbox. Plus I'm a dick and I'm nosy. Sue me.

The letters from Playboy turned out to be offers to renew the guy's expired subscription. They were desperate- they were offering to let him sign back up and didn't want any money up front. I'm not fucking stupid, I checked that little box and put that one in the mail immediately. It was a trick though. They sent me (him) one issue then wanted more money. I didn't even get the College Girls DVD they advertised. Why does bad stuff always happen to me?

The other mail was more interesting, though. We learned the tenants weren't too keen on paying their bills. Hopefully you've never been six months behind on your credit card bills, but if you have been, you know they send you a very threatening bill at least once a week. And let me be the first to warn you- the IRS is not stoked if you don't pay your taxes and they decide you owe them money. And they're even more pissed when you owe them twenty thousand dollars. I don't know who these people are, but their credit is ruined and they've got a lot of explaining to do.

So I started wondering why these people would stop paying their bills. I came to the only rational conclusion: they got some horrible disease, undoubtedly from living in our apartment, and they lost their jobs and went broke. Our landlord didn't tell us about it, obviously, because he is trying to cover everything up. A poltergeist may have even been involved. You see where I'm going with this, right? He moved the headstones but he left the bodies. How could I be so stupid?! We had to get out of there, now!

Thankfully Baby isn't crazy. She explained that life is not, in fact, television. There was most likely a much simpler explanation, and it probably didn't involve the supernatural or some class of plague. So I called my landlord and told him I was concerned about the threatening letters (I certainly didn't tell him I was opening them, I said they "looked" threatening. And he actually bought that shit. I may never pay the rent on time again). I asked him bluntly what had happened, and he explained that they'd gotten a divorce and moved away. Stupid Baby, always right about everything. Their marriage fell apart because they were having financial problems, the neighbors didn't say anything cause they'd probably heard them fighting all the time. It all makes perfect sense, and I have to admit I was a bit disappointed.

This didn't, of course, stop me from opening their mail. I needed to know why, precisely, they had gotten a divorce. I wasn't about to give up on my mystery simply because it had actually been solved. Pretending is fun. And hello, I'd already gotten a free Playboy magazine out of the deal.

So last night I came home from work and checked the mail, and there was a big fat manila envelope in the box. Big surprise, it wasn't addressed to us. It was suspiciously plain, bearing only the simple message "Free gift offer inside." Needless to say I almost ran to our apartment to open it.

Again, disappointment. OK yeah, sure, it was filled with porn. But goddamnit, it was gay porn. An entire catalog, filled with pictures of men doing things to men that I didn't even know men did to men. Hell, I didn't know women did that kind of thing to men. So I rubbed one out. I mean threw it away! Phew, close one. Anyway no really, I threw it away. And I kinda buried it in the kitchen trash just in case anyone might see it. I wouldn't want anyone to find out I was looking at a gay porn catalog. Anyone besides, I dunno, the entire Internet.

But then it dawns on me, "My god those gay dudes are in good shape." And THEN it dawns on me- "Dude, their marriage fell apart because she found out he was gay!"

Proud of my sleuth skills that would put Encyclopedia Brown (a known gay porn aficionado) to shame, I opened a beer. I notice I've yet to throw the empty manila envelope away, so I pick it up and realize I've made a terrible mistake. The envelope wasn't addressed to the no wife-having, no money-having, no tax-paying, no straight porn-wanking ex tenant. It was addressed to the guy in the apartment next to me, and put in my mailbox by mistake.

Dagger!

So now what the hell am I supposed to do? Knock on his door? Explain that I'm concerned he might be missing out on whatever his free gift is? Slide it under his door? What if he happens to be standing there right as I do it? How weird will it look if I he catches me slinking away after I've obviously looked at his porn? Especially considering it's gay, and he's met Baby and knows I'm straight. I thought about it, and even if it were straight porn I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable knocking on his door. I've written about the weird midget porn that kept showing up at my place. I damn sure wouldn't want my neighbor dropping by to let me know he'd accidentally happened upon that. What should I do? I mean besides fetch it from the trash and explain to Baby that I need to keep it in my bathroom until I decide what to do.