better latent than never

You Are Small And Unimportant, But Occasionally Funny

2008-09-04T13:02:00.000-07:00

My kid brother fumbles through every day of his life convinced the world is out to get him. Every one of life's annoying little pains in the ass is greeted as the latest bit of evidence that he is the unluckiest person on earth. To the layperson, this seems like a horrible, depressing way to live. But once you get to know him, you realize that, actually, he might just be the most fortunate person you've ever met. This juxtaposition makes his incessant pissing and moaning hysterical, even if he is too busy cursing his lot in life to appreciate the humor. So it goes for The Boy, the tragicomic anti-superhero.

Boy sent me some sadpanda emails last week about lousy recent blog posts. He thinks I've become a snob. To prove my undying love for him, and to help ease the pain of his life of suffering and injustice, I present this story, the funniest thing Boy has ever done.

The year is 1994. More or less. Something like that. Boy is in high school, and I am not. Caller ID is not all that popular yet. So that sounds about right.

We have two phone lines in our house. One for the kids, one for the parents. Most phones in the house have little buttons that say Line 1 and Line 2. They are for, you guessed it, Line 1 and Line 2.

Stay with me.

Boy and his friend Danny would dial a friend's number on Line 1, then put the call on hold. They would switch to Line 2, and dial another friend's number. They would then conference the two lines, put both calls on speakerphone, and press the mute button.

For a brief second, both lines are ringing. Then the person on Line 1 picks up the phone and says "Hello?" But instead of a response, they only hear the other phone ringing. This is a strange experience when it happens to you, and it always confuses the person. "That's not what's supposed to happen when I answer the phone! What the hell is going on here?! This phone is crazy!"

There is something compelling about the sound of a ringing telephone line, so the first caller almost always stays on the line. In due time, the person on Line 2 answers their phone. "Hello?"

Confusion ensues.

"Did you call me?"

"What?"

"My phone was ringing, and I answered it. But when I picked it up, all I heard was your line ringing."

"Dude! The same thing happened to me! Oh my god!"

You see, it's perplexing. Life is complicated, but most people can say they're pretty confident that they've solved all the mysteries of telephones. Yet here they are, confronted with some kind of zombie superphone, and they're dumbstruck. But because it's their friend on the line, they just laugh and eventually hang the phone up.

"Well, that was weird. Talk to you later."

"Okay, bye."

But then it gets better.

What if the people you call aren't friends? What if they're strangers? The confusion factor increases, as does the suspicion.

"Who the fuck are you? What have you done with my phone?!"

"Who the fuck are YOU? What have you done with MY phone?!"

(etc)

But then it gets much better.

What if the people aren't friends, nor strangers, but merely connected in some way? Say, people who would recognize each other, but have no business calling each other? Like, for instance, your English teacher, and another kid in your class? Or, my personal favorite-

Line 1: (ringing)

Line 2: (ringing)

Line 1: "Thank you for calling Pizza Hut, can I take your order?"

Line 2: (ringing)

Line 1: "Huh?"

Line 2: "Thank you for calling Dominos, can I take your order?"

(tears hole in the fabric of spacetime)

But then it gets much, much better.

What if the people aren't friends, but enemies? What if it's, say, a guy you hate, and his ex-girlfriend?

Line 1: (ringing)

Line 2: (ringing)

Line 1: "Hello?"

Line 2: (ringing)

Line 1: "Oh well, at least it wasn't Mikey calling me again."

Line 2: "Hello?"

Line 1: "Mikey?!"

Brilliant.

Boy, you're a small, unimportant, angry little person. But you're a pretty funny guy sometimes.

Leukemia Is Funny

2008-08-27T06:41:00.000-07:00

From: KW
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 9:31 AM
To: Bryc3; [Names removed]
Subject: odd question

Have you guys ever felt dizzy for more than a day? Since Monday I've been feeling dizzy (like vertigo maybe?) when I turn my head or close my eyes, etc., but this morning it's been more frequent (just sitting/standing, etc.). It's really weird -- but I feel completely fine otherwise. I thought maybe I was dehydrated, but I've tried to drink a lot of water and it hasn't gone away. I'm wondering if I should go to a doctor?

From: Bryc3
Sent: Wednesday, August 27, 2008 9:32 AM
To: KW; [Names removed]
Subject: RE: odd question

I had vertigo for like a week once, I went to the doctor and it turned out to be leukemia. Might want to get that checked out.

Here We Go Again

2008-08-26T06:54:00.000-07:00

Stop me if you've heard this one before. Bryce decides to get married, makes big plans, invites all his friends, goes out on the proverbial limb. Six weeks before the big day, a confluence of relationship shit storms leads to the cancelation of the wedding, and subsequent exceptionally awkward conversations with all of the guests. In the aftermath, the relationship falls to pieces, any and all parties and factors are made to blame, and no one speaks to each other again. Sound familiar? Here we go again.

Baby is sick of my shit. She's fed up with me, she's soured on the prospects of spending the rest of her life with me, she's just not into it anymore. She wants 'a break,' that mythic relationship Hail Mary that is, in reality, a polite way of saying 'pack your shit and get out.' When you think about it, the writing was on the wall the whole time. And while I swear to god in heaven that I'm going to start looking for the hints and bail out early, I never actually manage to do it. Yet another woman has come to the conclusion that I am, after all, a terrible fucking person and not worth the effort. And I'm so stupid, I never even saw it coming. Last night I went to sleep next to my future wife, but today I'm alone again, with nothing but a shockingly large collection of emo records and a shelf full of videogames to keep me company.

At least, that's how the dream went.

In reality, everything is totally fine. Great, even. Sure, we have some stress from planning the wedding. And yeah, so maybe I make too many jokes and blow everything into comically epic proportions. But the waking Bryce has actually learned from past relationship mistakes. He listens instead of just waiting for his turn to talk. He does the things she asks him to do. He has learned that when she tells him he doesn't have to do something, that actually means he does. He has stopped sleeping with her friends. He occasionally pauses his game. He watches far less basketball. See? Progress.

So why the dream? Honestly, I don't know. Baby has nightmares that no one shows up for the wedding, or that it's 45 mintutes before her walk down the aisle and she can't find her veil. They're terrifying when they happen, but she can laugh them off (sort of) when she wakes up. Why do I have to have the incredibly realistic, infinitely plausible ones where I'm blowing it all over again, and I'm the only one who didn't see it coming? I've been calm as can be about the planning process, and this time around I'm actually looking forward to not just being married, but the actual wedding itself. Could it be that my relationship isn't going as well as I think it is, and that she's actually having second thoughts?

Probably not. But if I end up waking her up at 4:30am for the next six weeks to reaffirm her love for and commitment to me, I might just end up blowing it again after all.

All I Want To Know Is Why. That's All.

2008-08-20T14:37:00.001-07:00

I can't get my head around it. I try and try, I honestly sit and ponder, til I'm about to make myself sick, and still I can't come up with an answer.

What, on earth, would compel a human being to spit in a public place?

Baby and I were way the hell out in the suburbs today (don't ask), and we stopped at Fair Oaks Mall to get Chick Fil A for lunch (again, don't ask). We considered eating inside, but all the fat people and children in strollers were freaking us out, so we got lunch to go. As we're walking out the door, a young guy and a girl are walking in. We're a bit ahead of them, so we actually leave first, and I make a last second move to prop the door a bit more open for them to go through. But before the guy gets to the door, he takes a step to the side and spits a giant gob of god knows what on the ground. He doesn't even break stride, and the girl doesn't bat an eye. He grabs the door, and they go inside, presumably to eat.

What.The.Fuck.

They were well-dressed. His button down shirt was tucked into his khakis. She was wearing a skirt. It looked like it could have been a lunch date, or maybe just two co-workers going out to eat. But they were definitely not urchins, at least not on the surface. I live in the city, I see homeless people do crazy ass things on a daily basis. I once saw a homeless person on M street drop his bags, pull his pants down so his crack was hanging out, and scratch his back and butt up and down on every tree on the block. Just going from tree to tree, befouling them. At five in the afternoon. And okay, that was just fucking weird. But the spitting guy wasn't crazy, he looked normal. And the woman looked like she probably wasn't retarded. Hell, they might have even gone to college, even if it was just Virginia Tech- that still counts as college.

There were other people around, as well, and no one reacted as far as I could tell. For them this was, if not socially acceptable behavior, at least not something so boorish as to warrant some kind of response. I was dumbfounded. Not that spitting in public was invented this afternoon by some fat guy in Dockers at Fair Oaks Mall, but the singular repulsiveness of the act has been stuck in my head all day. There are so many things at work. For starters, you possess a complete obliviousness to the world around you, such that you're not even aware you're doing something that makes other people want to wretch. You also believe it's perfectly okay to coat the world's sidewalks with the germs and waste and filth of your body- you're already fucking disgusting to begin with, but you feel compelled to spit out this stuff because it's too gross even for you. How gnarly is that? And what about the woman? How'd you like to be the person who FUCKS the guy who spits in front of the mall? Honestly, what on earth is wrong with people?

I'm Actually Not Here To Fix The Copier, Thanks

2008-08-15T14:45:00.001-07:00

I appreciate that my appearance and personality don't exactly exude professionalism. It's this whole clinging to my youth, not selling out, corporate culture be damned thing. Not to mention abject laziness. But mostly it's about ideals, man, and aesthetics, and attitude, and other excuses! I'm just keeping it real, etc.

The other day I was at a going away party for a co-worker. Nothing all that unusual. But I spent a large chunk of time talking to a woman whose son is about to graduate from high school. She's a nice person, and the conversation was interesting because her son is considering colleges in Virginia, which is pretty much where all my friends and I went. I don't know much, but I can tell you that everyone, literally everyone, who ever went to UVA is a douchebag. I can also tell you it's okay to hate Virginia Tech again. And I can tell you that, contrary to what you might have heard, not every single woman at William & Mary is a lesbian. But the one girl who isn't is so scarily into horses that you probably wish she was. So yeah, I'm an expert.

People were wandering in and out of our conversation, but most of the time there were at least four or five of us actively engaged. At one point, though, there were probably ten or so people within earshot. I was talking particularly about grad school at the time, and someone asked me what I studied. Before I could even finish the sentence, another woman said:

"I didn't realize you had that much education."

Strangely, I didn't flip out. In fact, I quickly forgot what she even said. I had gone so far as to have somehow blocked it altogether, until several days later some of my coworkers asked me, "Dude, why didn't you flip out?" I have no explanation. I once saw a comedian (I can't believe I can't remember who, I'm usually good at that) talking about racism, and how when you're black you're occasionally confronted with something so incredibly racist that you're rendered incredulous. The ignorance is so incomplete, horrible, and shitty that you don't even process it, and you just keep on going. Could that have been what happened? Was her comment so patently offensive that my brain just returned some kind of error message? I think it honestly was. Weird.

But anyway, in hindsight, I hate you stupid lady.

Please Help Me I'm Falling

2008-08-12T10:43:00.000-07:00

Here is something that's going to come as a real surprise- I hate to fly. And not in a "oh, this is such a drag" kind of way. It's more like a "get me off this fucking thing" kind of way. The first couple of times I flew (which was very, very recently) the flights were really easy, and I was like a little boy looking out the window and asking Baby what was going to happen next. Then we flew to New Orleans this summer, in a thunderstorm, and It Happened.

We had a layover in some place in Tennessee. Nashville? Memphis? I don't know, some place. And as we were landing, a storm was coming in. We barely beat it, which was a relief. We had a tight window during the layover, but the storm delayed our departure. With nothing to do for two hours, we drank beers. By the time our plane finally took off for New Orleans, I was fucked up on Ativan AND drunk. It was not enough.

We're climbing through the clouds left over from the storms, and we'd maybe been in the air for twenty minutes. We hit turbulence and the plane starts to shake, but I'm okay because I'm all banged up. Then, suddenly, the plane literally FALLS! out of the fucking sky. Straight down, and BANG! at the bottom of the air current or pocket or whatever the fuck it was. It was terrifying. People on the plane were screaming. I look over at Baby, and she's white as a ghost. But we're okay, right? We lived! Not ten seconds later we're falling again, straight down, PLUMMETING! toward the earth. Everyone on the plane is screaming, everything loose is flying in the air. My iPod, which had been resting in my lap, lands two rows in front of us. BANG! we hit the bottom again, and level out. I cannot believe I have not pissed my pants at this point. The captain comes over the intercom and says, "Sorry about that, should be okay now." And that was that. No problem, right? Not so much. We land, we go to the hotel, we go out on Bourbon Street, we get drunk again. We get back to the hotel, and I can't sleep that night, because every time I close my eyes, we're FALLING! again. The next day we go to my friend's wedding, we get drunk again, and I can't sleep again because always always always with the goddamn FALLING!

We flew to LA last month for Baby's sister's wedding. Nonstop. I whiteknuckled my seat the entire way. There are not enough drugs around to make flying any easier for me. I just have to get on the plane and take it like a bitch until we get there. I'm hoping I get used to this shit. We're flying to the West Coast again for the honeymoon in the fall. I might take a train.

Buy Me A Hallmark Card, I Have The Cancer

2008-08-11T07:36:00.000-07:00

Is this progress? Indifference? Senility? I used to make this big deal about my cancer anniversary. I'd look forward to it and blog about it and talk about it. That was the best part, because no one, trust me no one, knows what to say when you talk about your cancer anniversary. Should they be happy? She they knit their brows? Pat me on the back? Back away slowly? I used to love that.

This year is number seven, which I guess has some sort of symbolic significance. It's lucky, maybe? My anniversary was last Wednesday, the big Seven. And you know what I did to mark the occasion? I fucking forgot all about it. Utterly and completely forgot. Like, whoops. I knew it was coming, too. I remembered a few weeks ago. I even talked to Baby about it. But I woke up on the day of, and it was just a plain old Wednesday. I had to go to meetings. I had to surf the internet. I had to go home and play videogames. And then it was Thursday, and my window was gone.

But not really though. I think I'll celebrate it this week. Nobody will know the fucking difference, and it will probably be even more fun.

Just Wait, Bitches

2008-08-08T13:33:00.001-07:00

I'm gonna write and write and write and it's gonna be awesome. And everyone who ever told me to "update your fucking blog already" is gonna be sorry, because its gonna be so fantastically funny and moving and tearjerking and harrowing and disgusting and epic and bizarre. You won't be able to finish it in one sitting, you'll have to read it in spurts, steeling yourself to muster the courage to go on, to spin the wheel of that annoying mouse as you scroll down to plumb the depths of my creative genius. On and on it will go, words jumping off your monitor, coffee and bagel spit takes aplenty as I change your fucking life with the gems I'm going to be giving away for free in this space. I will get elventy billion hits, I will sell ads for similar, but markedly inferior, blogs, I will retire a wealthy man. I will dabble in eccentricity, I will grow strange facial hair, I will surround myself with youthful hangers on, I will experiment with homosexuality, I will write a shitty book about an obscure subject no one cares about, I will shoot myself in the face.

But I'll probably wait until tomorrow to start, because right now I got nothing.

Ohi

2008-05-29T12:55:00.001-07:00

I was just standing at the urinal in the men's room, handling my business. Someone walked up to the one next to me and said, simply, "Howdy." This was unusual, but not unheard of. Being the friendly person I am, I turned to return the greeting. Only I realized it was the president of my company, visiting our office from headquarters today. Awkward. So awkward, in fact, that my stream was interrupted. So if I don't get promoted this year, I think we all know why.

***

I was at the oncologist on Tuesday, again handling my business. I go to Georgetown hospital, and it's always very busy, and I'm almost always 40 years younger than everyone else. They herd you into this giant waiting room, and they call you one at a time to check your vital signs. Not in an examination room, mind you, but in a cubicle right out there in the middle of everyone.

So I'm standing there on the scale, with the nurse about to check my temperature, when I notice a young woman I work with out of the corner of my eye. She's walking from the treatment rooms, and shes me and smiles. "Fancy meeting you here!" she says, and walks away quickly. Awkward. I had no idea she had cancer, and now I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that information. The next time I bump into her in the kitchen at the office, am I cleared to make cancer jokes? Or am I supposed to keep this a secret?

I'm Totally Not Dead

2008-05-23T08:30:00.000-07:00

I like to write funny things that make people laugh. And I'd be remiss if I didn't admit that I like to write funny things that people read and say, "Hey, that's a funny thing."

But I hate having a fucking blog, because it smacks of coffeeshops and goatees and effort. The vast majority of blogs, including yours, are stupid and boring. I spend all day on the internet, and I read exactly four blogs. Two are about the Washington Wizards, and the other two are about the housing bubble (I'm not kidding). I don't read any other blogs like mine because, well, they're dumb.

Still though, it is nice to have a place to whine and bitch and rant about things from time to time. Although I do worry that I sound like all I ever do is whine and bitch and rant. I worry about that because that is in fact all I ever do, as every woman I have ever dated can attest.

This blog also doubles as an update on my life for people I know. That's both good and bad. It's nice because we don't have to email each other, but it's not nice because I can't say anything bad about any of those people here. By now, friends, family and co-workers are all aware of this blog. That greatly cuts down on the number of things I can really talk about. It's no fun when you think of something to write but immediately take it down because it might offend someone.

I know I should make an effort to write more, because I find that posts tend to come in bunches and sometimes all I need is that subtle kick in the ass to get started up again. So maybe this will be that motivation. Or maybe I won't write again for six months. You really never can tell.

Here's a quick update though-

I'm not dead. Osama bin Megan has a blog that she hasn't updated since like September. That makes me a bit nervous. I emailed her and she didn't respond. She very well could be dead. One time after one of our many breakups there was an obituary with her exact same name in the Post. I felt terrible. A word of advice: if you ask God to kill someone, be very fucking specific.

Our wedding planning is all but complete. Baby is a marvel. She has everything on complete autopilot. All I have to do is not say or do anything really stupid between now and October and I'm almost guaranteed to actually get married this time.

I never went anywhere for like 30 years, and now it seems like I'm never home. We were in Vegas last month, we're off to New Orleans next month, then LA the month after. Then California again for the honeymoon. I don't even know who I am anymore.

I hardly gambled at all in Vegas, and felt bad about it. So on the morning we left, I sat down to play blackjack. I lost nearly $300 before 9am. I'm kind of a big deal.

We got a new apartment, featuring such upgrades as windows, greater distance from housing projects, and no dead rats in the walls. It's also not underwater. And only $2,300 a month for 900 square feet!

Dude, look at my nephew.

How great is that? Want more?

I think that's about all. How can I top that?

Weeping For The Future

2007-12-20T07:05:00.000-08:00

Let me start by saying I respect your right to smack the shit out of your kid. In fact, I support and advocate it. That's not to say you should actually beat him, or slap your 9 month old baby. But if you're six year old won't stop playing with matches, you need to go ahead and spank him. I don't see a lot of grey area here. I know a lot of people frown on that sort of thing these days, but we all somehow managed to survive with our parents laying into us once in a while. And let's be honest, sometimes we really deserved it when we were kids. So, discipline? You bet.

Nevertheless, there is a time and a place.

One of the things that amazes me about living in the city is how some people have a complete disregard for anything resembling civility. You see absolutely crazy shit on a fairly regular basis. It makes you wonder if they even care what other people think of them.

As I came around the corner at the entrance to my Metro station this morning, I saw a teenage girl screaming and yelling at what I guess was her daughter. She looked to be about three years old. It's sad how often you see things like that. The other day I was at the grocery store, and I saw a girl no older than about twenty with three little kids, none older than five. The woman was on her cell phone, yapping away, while the kids were wreaking havoc. After they finally got her attention, she put the phone down and unleashed a tirade of obscenities at the kids, in front of at least thirty people in the store. She then went straight back to the phone, once again oblivious to the kids. Now, I understand that mistakes happen. Lord knows we all do stupid shit when we're teenagers, and we all had close calls (and some of us got pregnant). So everybody deserves a get out of jail free card on the first one. But my god, if you can't be bothered with the kids then for christ's sake stop fucking! How hard could it be? Couldn't you have at least learned your lesson after the second one?

But anyway, the mom and the kid on the escalator.

They were standing on the metal platform at the top of the escalator, so they weren't actually going down yet. There are two down escalators at that stop, and I wanted nothing to do with that scene, so I tried for the one they weren't standing in front of. It was, of course, out of order. (As an aside, in almost two years I have seen all four escalators in that station working a total of two times) So I had no choice but to use the one they were using.

As I got closer, I noticed the kid was really crying. The entire front of her coat was wet with tears. I was listening to my ipod, so I didn't hear what was happening, but I imagine the kid was freaking out about actually getting on the escalator. And that's understandable. I see adults every single day who are absolutely terrified of them. The mom was trying to coax to kid on. And by coax, I mean shaking the shit out of her. As I got closer, I could hear over my headphones "get your motherfuckin ass on the goddamn escalator." Nice.

At this point I'm only a few feet away. Miraculously, the mother actually notices me. I've got no choice but to give the "kids will be kids" sheepish grin and try to pass them. But then the mother does something totally unexpected. She gets on the escalator alone, leaving the kid at the top, crying and blocking my path to the escalator.

I respect this move, it was one of my mom's favorites. My mom was the mom who actually did pull the car over to smack us. If I was at the playground and didn't want to leave, my mom would start walking towards the car. It's an effective last resort, and I can attest that it works. So, well played, ma'am.

But the kid wasn't buying it. The mom is rapidly moving away from us, and the kid hasn't budged. I have no idea what to do, but I know things are bound to get worse before they get better.

Exasperated, the mother looks at me and says, "Can you get her?"

WHAT?!

Look kid, I appreciate it's difficult to raise a kid who is only fourteen years younger than you. With my upbringing, I've got nothing but respect for what you're going through. But dear god, this is not my fucking problem. I don't want to be stuck in the middle of this, and I don't want to give you even a hint of complicity. This is your kid, not mine. Things like this are precisely the reason why people use birth control.

But at the same time, I feel for the little girl. If your mom treats you like this in public, imagine how bad things are at home. And escalators are scary, and your mom is lousy, and, let's be honest, you've got a long road ahead of you growing up. So it becomes, "Are you ready? 1, 2, 3!" and I lift her up.

Only she's not buying that either. She starts kicking her feet and flailing around. I try to set her down anyway, and she goes completely limp. She's not gonna stand up, and I can't put her down, and by now the mother is almost to the bottom of the escalator.

Out of ideas, I step onto the escalator and wait until it's taken off. Then I set her down next to me, and that seems to calm her down a bit. I help her put her hand on the railing, and ride down with her. Crisis averted.

I'm not saying I'm a hero or anything. I'd like to think any decent person would do the same thing in that situation. What kind of a monster leaves a three year old kid in distress? But I wasn't prepared for what happened next.

As we got to the bottom of the escalator, the mother doesn't even acknowledge me. She grabs the kid by the arm and drags her away. She doesn't even look at me, let alone say thank you.

Awesome.

You're Driving Me Crazy

2007-12-14T10:28:00.000-08:00

I just can't explain it to you, and I don't even feel like I should have to.

I appreciate that you have emailed me, out of the blue, to offer me a new job. I understand that it's a great opportunity, that your company is prestigious, that it represents a nice jump in pay. I get all that.

But I'm not taking it, because taking it means I'd have to haul my ass all the way out into the suburbs every single day.

Oh, I see the irony. I was born and raised there, spent thirty years of my life there, so now I don't want to go back? How metrosexual of me, to have invented myself in this fancy new urban mold.

No, you douche. It's not about where you are (although dude, where you are sucks). It's about the getting there. The act of dragging my ass out of bed every day, and figuring out how to get way the fuck out there. I could:

1. Buy a car, deal with the DC DMV, spend an hour a day looking for parking, spend 3 hours a day wondering what day it is, hoping I'm parked on the non-street cleaning side, worry about gas, pay astronomical insurance rates, contribute to the destruction of the planet, fight traffic for hours every day on a highway full of people I want to die (but please pull over first), have to listen to the same nine records that have been playing on a loop on corporate controlled radio for the last 15 years as I sit in my car (honestly, Stone Temple Pilots weren't even good then, can you please add something new to the rotation, Clear Channel?), kill kill kill, die die die, everything everything everything, etc.

2. Use some combination of atlas and GPS to devise a way to take public transportation all the way out there, involving taking the Orange Line to the bitter end, then getting on some kind of bus or shuttle and sitting in traffic on the beltway for hours on end, which is supposed to somehow be better because I don't have to worry about the driving? If I'm not driving, I don't even get the benefit of fantasizing about standing on the gas and plowing my car into every fucker that cuts me off. Explain to me again how sitting on a bus with a bunch of whack jobs (have you ridden a fucking bus?) is better than sitting in your car by yourself?

Or I could just not take the job, which is what I'm gonna do.

You just don't understand, because you haven't tried it. My commute takes, at the very longest, a half hour. And that's if I walk from door to door and get stuck at every light. It takes about fifteen minutes if I take the Metro. Do you get that? I'm home and drinking a beer before you even pull out of the parking lot. Guess when the last time I scraped ice off my windshield was? Guess how much time I spend waiting in line at Jiffy Lube?

So spare me the condescending tone that suggests I'm a flake. There are more important things in life than salary. I value those extra hours I'm not sitting in my car every day, and I relish not having to worry about any of that car nonsense. Some people only care about money, and they're willing to commute four hours a day for every last dollar they can get their hands on. Some people value the piece of mind that comes with never having to worry about any of this shit. And fuck you if you can't see the difference. If you're going to be a cunt about this, why on earth would I ever want to work for you?

How To Be Cool, Chapter One

2007-12-05T08:45:00.000-08:00

If you read this blog, you probably get the impression that I like to make fun of everyone. That's not really true. I prefer to pick on a particular type of person- the guy who thinks he's cool. If you're a nerd or just plain weird I'll definitely tease you, but it's a good natured kind of thing. If you think you're awesome, I probably hate you. I can spot that guy a million miles away. How? Because I'm him.

We celebrated my old man's (Daddy #2) birthday last weekend, so we had to drive way out to the sticks. That requires getting a car from Zipcar, and sitting on Route 66 for an hour. But I hadn't seen my dad in a while, and he does have a full bar and a ping pong table. So, you know, you take the good with the bad.

On the way out of town we stopped to pick him up a bottle of Maker's Mark, because he had specifically requested booze for his birthday. Lately I've taken to drinking Maker's straight, which I admit is probably not a good idea. Back when I was a kid, my friends had to ban me from drinking any hard liquor because I would become a complete trainwreck. I could sit down with you in a bar and drink 900 beers and get in my car and drive home (I'm not proud of this). But give me a few shots and dear god, there is no telling what will happen. The straw that broke the camel's back when we were younger happened at a party my friend threw at his parent's house when they went out of town one weekend. I had disappeared for a while, so my friends had to go looking for me. They found me in the basement, behind their little bar, open bottle of Crown Royal in one hand, book of matches in the other. I was trying to set things (bar, stools, etc) on fire. The next morning, when I came to, we had a little mini-intervention. We agreed to the ban, and I stuck to it for years and years.

But over the last couple of years I've branched out a bit. It started with gin, and it was harmless enough. But then I branched out to Maker's. It feels somehow more grownup to drink booze instead of beers, like it's somehow more sophisticated. I've been drinking Budweiser for like fifteen years, and I felt like I needed a change. I used to mix the Maker's with ginger ale, but it was always too sweet. So I started chasing it with Budweiser, and I felt pretty cool. I fancied myself the guy sitting at the bar with a beer and a shot in front of him, in some charmingly drunken Rat Pack moment. But lately I just drink that fucker straight. Good times.

We got out to my old man's house and started with the ping pong. In case you haven't heard, I'm kind of a big deal at table tennis. Such a big deal, in fact, that I've asked my mother if my long lost biological father might actually be Asian. No dice.

Somehow my brother managed to beat me the first game, which surprised everyone. Perplexed, I lost the rematch. So I opened a beer. Normalcy returned. I beat him three straight times to save face. He was devastated, and I loved it. I rubbed it in so much that my old man started speaking up in his defense. I was getting drunk from the beer, and carrying on a shit-talking contest against my old man and my kid brother. Even though I knew I would have to face my father, and my motorskills were declining by the second, I broke open the Maker's. My dad poured himself a thimble full, and I discovered yet another way to demonstrate my superiority over the other men in my family. I poured myself a glass (the amount I actually poured is subject to much family debate), and started drinking.

From what I gather, the following things happened next. At least, that's what they tell me. Because I don't remember any of it.

1. My father beat the ever living shit out of me at Ping Pong. It was like it was 1981 all over again, and I could barely see over the table. By all accounts, the asswhipping was truly legendary. My dad actually called the next day to apologize, and suggest I don't drink so much.

2. I somehow convinced my kid brother that I was not that drunk, and he should let me hold his one month old son. My brother has never had a drop to drink in his entire life, and because he is stupid, he let me hold the baby. Apparently at this point I was still fooling my family, because nobody objected to this. In fact, there are reportedly pictures of me doing this, but I've yet to see them.

3. We had to have the car back, so Baby urged me to go get my coat. She found me in the den, face down in the giant chair where all the coats were piled up. This sounds plausible, as I have a vague memory of falling at some point. I also have an unexplained bruise on my shin. Is this why?

4. I told Baby I needed to use the bathroom before we left, apparently to pee. She obliged, and waited by the door. After several minutes passed and I didn't come out, she came in looking for me, certain I was throwing up. I was not. I was, in fact, just standing there, in a daze. She ushered me out.

5. Somehow I said goodbye to my family. The consensus is that I appeared drunk, but not nearly drunk enough to explain what happened next.

6. I got into the passenger seat of the Zipcar, and we hit the road. We were on the highway for about nine seconds before I realized I was going to be sick. Baby then asked if she should pull over, and I told her no. (?) My explanation was that I didn't want her to have to merge back onto the highway. So instead, I just rolled down the window and started heaving.

7. At first Baby didn't know if I was actually throwing up, because we were probably doing seventy and the windows were rolled down. But then she was hit with the smell of whisky and birthday cake, and the mystery was solved.

8. This went on for thirty five miles.

9. According to Baby, only one car full of people pulled alongside us to taunt me. I don't believe this, and I think she's just telling me that to be nice. She was probably actually flagging people down to witness it.

10. We got the car home with about two minutes to spare. They track the time you return your Zipcar by the last time you use your card to lock the doors, so we were up against the clock. We pulled into the parking lot, and Baby asked me if I needed help getting out. I assured her I did not, and I opened my door. I fell, face first, out the door, but was held in place by my seat belt. I began a slow descent toward the ground until Baby made it around to my side of the car to save me, with my face just inches from the asphalt.

11. She dragged my drunk, staggering, vomit-smelling pathetic ass two blocks from the Zipcar lot to our apartment. We thought we had managed to make it home without running into anyone we knew, but the gay couple in the apartment upstairs were coming out of their place right as we got to the front door of our building. At that point I was still in my coat and scarf, which were literally covered in used whisky and birthday cake. What's going on, guys?

12. She opened the door to our place, and dropped me in the bathroom. She then went back outside in the freezing cold, to the dark, scary, inner-city Zipcar lot to clean my puke off the side of the car.

13. She came home to find me passed out in the bathroom on a pile of dirty clothes. She tried to get me to go to bed, but I refused. So she cleaned me up as best she could. I was shaking like a leaf, so she got me a blanket. We have many in the house, but she chose a special one. My ex, the dreaded Osama bin Megan, used to hand-sew quilts (yeah, I don't know either). I have a small, nice one she made years ago that I never managed to give back to her. I've held on to it, because it really is nice and I just don't have the heart to toss it. Baby gave me that to cover up with. How awesome is that? Sweet revenge.

14. At some point in the middle of the night I awoke and crawled into bed. I don't remember this.

15. I do remember waking up at 6am, in the bed, confused. I got up to pee, and found my clothes strewn all over our bedroom. When I got back to the bed, Baby was awake. I asked what happened. She told me. "Really?" I says. "Really" she says. "That's funny, I don't feel sick now" I says. Duh, I was still drunk.

16. I woke up at around 9am, as sick as I have ever felt. I could not get out of bed literally all day. Although it was a Sunday, Baby got up, made me breakfast, and put in twelve hours at the office. Shen she got home at 10 o'clock she found me where she left me, in bed.

17. My hangover lasted through Monday, and was so bad on Monday evening, nearly 48 hours after I stopped drinking, that I could not work out after work.

The entire episode is utterly humiliating. Just complete amateur night. And to have put Baby through everything just makes me feel horrible. She took every single thing in stride though, never got mad or bitched or even complained. Until yesterday, when we got this email from Zipcar:

"After your reservation in [deleted] on Dec. 1st it was reported to us that the interior of the vehicle was left in poor condition with vomit inside the vehicle."

Honestly, could I be any more cool? The asshole guy I make fun of in my blog, the guy who puts his fiance through hell, endangers infants, throws up on himself, forces his some poor bastard at Zipcar to have to clean up after him, the guy with no regard for what an asshole he is, and how he fucks it up for everyone else? Yeah, that guy is me.

Salad Days

2007-11-27T11:35:00.000-08:00

I went to the gym last night after work, and really pushed myself. I was exhausted when I finally finished, but I needed to pick up something for dinner because Baby was working late. The original plan was just to order a pizza, but that seemed counterproductive to all that working out. So I decided I check out the new salad chain place that just opened in Chinatown. First mistake.

I didn't know too much about the place, but it seemed pretty cool. All sorts of fresh salad stuff, made to order for you. When I first walked in, I was a bit overwhelmed by the number of choices and the entire ordering process. But they had someone standing at the back of the line explaining how everything worked, so soon enough I had picked out what I wanted and was waiting to order. I'm not one to be adventurous when it comes to food, so I ordered a very basic salad with just a few vegetables. I noticed, however, that everything looked very fresh and very good, so I was excited about coming back with Baby sometime and trying something new.

As I stood at the counter, watching them assemble my salad, something dawned on me. The woman immediately in front of me and the man immediately behind me both ordered shrimp on their salad. If you're a regular reader, you know that shrimp = poison for me. I noticed that the bin with the shrimp in it was precipitously close to the other ingredients, but that wasn't the worst part. After they mix all the ingredients, they dump everything out and chop it all up and toss it again. They do this on cutting boards, and there is plenty of chaos happening with so many salads being prepared in such a small space. I realized that it was almost impossible to avoid getting shrimp bits and juice and poison in my salad, and I felt deflated. But at that point I was already at the register, so I just paid and planned to give the salad to Baby when she got home.

It's a bit of a walk to our place from Chinatown, so I called Baby on the way and told her what happened. More than anything, I was disappointed that I wouldn't be able to eat at a place that otherwise looked pretty good. But in talking about it, we realized that maybe I had overreacted. Surely I'm not the only one of their customers with a shellfish allergy. And plenty of vegetarians don't want any meat in their salad, and my Muslim grandmother damn sure wouldn't want pork in hers. I still had a few blocks to go on my walk home, so I got the phone number for the place from my receipt and gave them a call. I asked to speak to the manager, and he assured me over and over again that everything is sanitized after every single salad. They wash everything thoroughly, including all of the utensils and cutting boards, to protect against just this sort of thing. And although I didn't notice them changing anything while I was there, I had no reason not to believe the guy. He really did seem very nice. Second mistake.

I wanted to wait til Baby came home to actually eat it, because I'd be in trouble if I had an adverse reaction and I was all alone. While I waited for her, I did some more research on the company, to see if anyone else had blogged about this kind of thing. I couldn't find anything. In fact, all I could find were comments from the owners about their commitment to quality ingredients and sanitary preparation. I even found one blog where someone had complained of catching the stomach flu, and he went down the list of everywhere he had eaten that day, including the very same location in Chinatown. One of the owners actually commented on his blog, talking about their commitment to providing healthy food and hoping it wasn't anything he might have picked up in their restaurant. They seem like nice folks, right? By the way, the fact that they're scouring blogs is precisely why I'm not mentioning their name here, although I imagine they'll probably show up anyway.

By the time Baby finally made it home, I was ravenous. I already had everything planned out. I was going to take my basic salad and add some of the leftover turkey we're still working our way through. It was gonna hit the spot. So I was pretty bitter when I opened up the container and found chicken in my salad, especially when you consider I didn't order any fucking chicken. If there was chicken in there, there was bound to be shrimp as well. I was furious, but I tried not to go through the roof. Mistakes happen, the place is brand new, the staff are probably still in training, blah blah blah. Nevertheless, the manager swore up and down it was safe. Had the chicken not been there to tip me off, I might still be in the hospital or even worse. I wasn't happy.

But rather than do what you'd think I would do- blog about it and mention their name and threaten to burn the place down and put them out of business and other acts of comic hysteria- I decided to try to be constructive. I wrote a nice, calm email to them through their website. I expressed my disappointment with not only the preparation, but the manager's story as well. I explained that I understood the growing pains associated with opening a new business, but I also voiced my frustration. I did not say fuck one single time. In fact, I was almost trying to be helpful by alerting them to a breakdown in the way they do business. I was fortunate that I didn't get sick, and the next person might not be so lucky. Third mistake.

About a half hour later, I got a call from a number in New York. It was one of the owners, calling to apologize. I didn't even know what to say, but I thanked him for calling. He offered to buy me lunch to make it up to me, and promised to speak to the staff to make sure they follow protocol in the future. It was a nice touch, and my faith in humanity was restored. The company obviously cares, right? Would McDonald's do that?

A little while later, I got an email from someone in their company, and this morning I got another. Then another. Then one from the regional manager, or something, explaining that he had tried to call me to offer me my free salad, and hoped I could stop by soon. At this point I'm freaking out. Who are these crazy salad guys? You have a business to run, stop worrying about me so much! I emailed him back to thank him, and praise his company for taking customer service so seriously (it's almost scary). But I told him I had to decline his offer, as I just can't see how they can safely do what they do and not end up getting poison in my food. It's nobody's fault that shrimp is made of poison- certainly not the guys working in or running this restaurant. I've seen the guys in Cosi make a shrimp salad, not wash their hands, and then make my turkey sandwich. As a result, I don't eat at Cosi anymore. I'm going to do the same with the salad place, because honestly it's just not worth the risk. And I can chalk up the lost six dollar salad as a lesson in how much shellfish ruin everything for everyone.

So if you're reading this, please stop offering me a free salad. Just make sure the people who work for you follow the rules, and try to come up with a way to keep the poisonous stuff away from the stuff that's not poisonous. I'm not gonna try to sue you or put you out of business. I respect what you're trying to do, and I think it works just fine for people who don't mind having their stuff all mashed up. But it's not for me, because it might kill me.

Thanks.

Don't Be That Guy

2007-11-15T13:21:00.001-08:00

When Baby and I are angrily talking about which people we are better than (everyone does that, right?), the conversation often turns to people who lack self-awareness. These are our favorite targets. See if you can think of people who fit these descriptions-

"Make It Up As I Go Along Driver"- The rules of the road are merely suggestions. My SUV with the Virginia Pentagon Memorial plates and Support Our Troops yellow ribbon stickers affords me the opportunity to create my own set of driving guidelines as the situation dictates. Make a U Turn across traffic from the far right lane? No problem. Right turn on red when people are in the crosswalk? Go for it. It's not like there are other people out here sharing the road with me, right?

"Don't Hold The Door"- Look, I'm in a hurry. Glancing behind me to see if someone else might be standing there will waste valuable nanoseconds. I simply can't be bothered. Manners be damned, I am late for shit!

"Stop Somewhere You Shouldn't On The Metro"- Some tourists get a pass on this one, because I understand how the Metro can be confusing (if you can't read, listen, or even understand basic symbols on signs). But how completely unaware of your surroundings do you have to be if you feel compelled to stop at the the top or bottom of an escalator to get your bearings? How do you not notice the wave of human beings standing right behind you? And did it ever occur to you to fish through your pockets for your farecard BEFORE you got to the turnstile?

"Waiting In Line Talking On Your Cell Phone"- Hang up the goddamn phone. If you were really that important, you wouldn't be standing in line in Subway, would you?

I've recently added a new person to the list, and he/she is climbing the charts with a bullet.

"Fucking Wheelie Briefcase Douchebag"- The wheelie suitcase is very helpful. Makes you wonder how you ever got along without one. But how fat and lazy do you have to be if you have to get wheels for your goddamn briefcase? For starters, consider not carrying so much crap with you wherever you go. I regularly bring books, my gym stuff, and my lunch with me to and from work. It makes my bag pretty big. But I certainly don't need goddamn wheels to lug it around. And please miss me with the 'my back hurts' argument. My back is in goddamn shambles, to the point where I sometimes can barely walk, even with a cane. And yet I somehow manage to carry my stuff without wheels. Get rid of some of your material possessions, man, or they will only end up owning you, man. Why on earth do you need to carry them all with you, anyway? Is this some sort of hobo training program? Harden the fuck up and invest in a good, sturdy bindle. Your dignity will thank you for it.

If you absolutely have to have the wheelie suitcase, because your combination of abject laziness and utter apathy has rendered your muscles useless, can you consider trying to remember that the bag you're trailing behind you leaves a twisted path of stumbling commuters in its wake? Every second of the day, things are occurring outside of your meager little mind. And not just things directly in your line of sight! Look around, including behind you. You'd be amazed at what you might find back there. We're tired and just want to go home, too. And we're actually carrying our shit, so give us a break, k?

And I'm just gonna say this last part once, people. This is your only warning. You know that backpack you bought for your kid with the wheels on it? You've got one chance to go get it at this instant and set it on fire. Do you honestly believe you can raise your child to be anything other than the World's Biggest Pussy if he can't even carry his own books home from school? If he has that many books, have you considered that maybe he should start doing things other than homework for a change? Give him a football or a slingshot or a book of matches and let him be a real boy for once. Tell him to go outside and climb something. Set him free. Because if I see him standing on the Metro platform lugging that thing around one more time, I'm pushing both of you in front of the next train. The future of the human race is at stake, god damn it!

Tell That God Damn Baby To Shut The Fuck Up

2007-11-02T10:23:00.000-07:00

I had this big fight with my mom once, where I tried to convince her we were white trash. She denied it vehemently, it was almost frightening. My mom, true to her psychopath nature and bless her heart, is in complete denial. If you ever want proof that we have it good in America, you need only remember that my family doesn't live in a trailer park. If we can make it, anyone can. Just to win this argument again, I present our credentials.

-I have never met my daddy +15 points.

-I refer to my daddy as "my daddy" +25 points.

-My mom dropped out of high school when she was 17 to have me. +15 points

-My mom was on her third attempt at 9th grade when she 'decided' to drop out. +25 points

-My mom, very pregnant with my sister, married my stepfather (daddy #2) in our apartment. In the pictures, I am 2 years old and featured prominently. +10 points

-Also featured in those photos is my cousin Shawn, daddy #2's sister's son. Shawn is 14 months older than me, even though his mother is 2 years younger than daddy #2. That means she was 15 when he was born. +20 points

-Shawn is black, his mother (and daddy #2) is/are Turkish, and I am white. We don't, ahem, look very much alike. +50 points

-When I was about 7, I learned that daddy #2 was not my real daddy. My mom's sister's daughters (my cousins) told me. Their mother had both of them before she turned 20. Their dad, although not completely missing, wasn't exactly "around." +25 points

-Both of those cousins had children out of wedlock before they turned 20. One of them was arrested for trying to stab the father of two of her three children. She has since lost custody. +50 points

-My brother is named after both of his grandfathers. My mother, to get even with daddy #2 (his father), called him by yet a third name well into his childhood, leaving many to wonder what ever happened to that kid Ryan who used to be my brother. +25 points

-My sister decided to finally marry her high school sweetheart, in between the birth of her second and third daughters. They now have a total of four little girls, and they appear to be the perfect little family. Of course, you have to ignore that she dropped out of high school to have the first one (at age 16), and that her husband, by lying on his resume, was able to land a job as a marketing executive for a tobacco company, where he makes more money in a year than I make in a decade. +100 points

-My mom's father lives in a double-wide rambler in Woodbridge, VA. A 'renovation' to the house has allowed it to stretch from one end of the chain link fence to the other, to match the empty swimming pool in the backyard. The car in the driveway is a Lincoln, and has not run in at least 20 years, if ever. +50 points

-His wife (my grandmother), rest her soul, was named Jo Ed. That is not an abbreviation, that's the whole name. But it could be worse. Her mother was named Gay, and my grandmother liked that so much she named my aunt (the mother of the detectives who uncovered my birth secret and shared it with me) Gay as well. I'd tell you my mother's name, but honestly I'm just too embarrassed. +50 points

So I win, right? I mean, it's not even worth arguing about, is it? Let's call a spade a spade (just kidding, Shawn!). It's a miracle, not to mention a testament to the greatness of the United States of America, that we're firmly planted in the middle class. And my god, it scares the shit out of me to wonder about the people who haven't been able to make it. I mean, really.

I would like to think that I have some great gift, because I seem to be the first person in the family with the self-awareness to realize we're a couple of bad decisions away from dragging our knuckles and having to divide the family up into hunters and gathers. I'd like to believe that I can take these lessons learned and pave the way for a brighter future for my family. And maybe that does happen in the movies.

But in reality, this is where I am. I'm calling my brother, frantic, at 1 o'clock on a Friday, scrambling to get advice for this weekend's football picks. And he, clearly in his element, takes the time to pontificate about the point spreads and interesting matchups. It should be perfect- a bonding moment between two brothers. Only I'm distracted, because he's holding his newborn son in his lap and he won't stop fussing. And my brother is distracted, because it's hard as hell to play online poker, talk on the phone, and juggle your fussing newborn son in your lap. As we both grow ever more exasperated, I finally shout, "Jesus, will you tell that god damn baby to shut the fuck up!?" And when we both laugh, I realize daddy would be proud.

"Because It Is, You Know, Black People"

2007-10-30T13:12:00.000-07:00

Blog-

You may have noticed I messed with the format a bit. I wanted to create an index, so that people could find posts on a particular topic. I started to go back through the posts and categorize them last week, but I ran out of time. I do hope I can finish that project though. It has the added benefit of allowing me to quickly find out if I have written about something before. Things tend to run together in my mind, and the drinking doesn't help. To that end-

Drinking-

My god, I was trashed on Friday at happy hour. I have recently shown this blog to some of my co-workers (welcome)- a group of people I regularly go to happy your with. We had a happy hour scheduled for Friday, but I woke up that morning with an incredibly sore back. It happens to me sometimes. I'm not sure if it's a complication from my car accident a few years ago, or a recurrence of the herniated disk I got as a result, or even the surgery I had to fix the disk. But whatever it is, it hurts like hell every few months or so. And there isn't a whole lot I can do except whine and take drugs for it. So I loaded up on Vicodin all day on Friday (at work- good times), then we went out drinking. Could you guys tell? I can't believe I found my way home.

Housekeeper-

And speaking of home, our housekeeper is batshit crazy. I know what you're thinking- "A housekeeper, how decadent!" You couldn't be more right, and you can suck it, bitches. I don't have a big fancy TV, and I don't own a car, but I don't clean my fucking toilet, either, and that means I'm living on easy street. I don't need a lot of material possessions. I'd trade them all for never having to even know where we keep the broom anymore. Normally I'd probably feel bad about having someone else clean my house, like I'm too good to do it. But we pay her a king's ransom for it, and she's nothing less than an artist. She cleans things we didn't even know were dirty. I actually admire her for the absolute dedication she has to her craft. You can tell she is one of these people who just can't handle things being dirty, and she has channeled into a crusade against eliminating dirt. She is a treasure, except for this one little problem.

She is not so into the black people. She's Brazilian, and old (sixty one!), so maybe that excuses it somehow? I don't know. But on maybe her third or fourth visit to our house, she was explaining to us how happy she was to have found another client (she was recommended to us by blog readers K+N, you racist bastards). In her broken English, she told us how relieved she was when she came by to give us the estimate and saw we weren't black. Baby and I were honestly dumbstruck. What do you even say? In our housekeeper's bizarre little mind, there is a fundamental difference between cleaning up after black people and white people. We've tried to wrap our minds around this, to come up with some way in which that's an objective statement to make. But it's impossible. She's a racist, and that is wrong wrong wrong. But my god, can this woman clean! So we sold out and kept her, I'm ashamed to say. And thankfully it didn't come up again, until...

This morning, she was gossiping with us about K+N's new house. She was telling us that she needed to clean it before they moved in, and it was a bastard because, of course, black people had lived there before. She said it so matter of factly- "Because, you know, it is black people." Baby and I just squirmed. Should I feel so guilty about this? Because I really do. Of course, I'll feel much better when I come home to a sparkling clean apartment.

Embracing Failure

2007-10-24T09:05:00.000-07:00

Well, I should have seen that coming.

I had this giant test last week, to test my project management acumen. It's a made up discipline (sort of like business school), where they assign incredibly specific definitions to everyday words that make no sense in the context in which the words are normally used. For example, here's the definition of Activity Attributes:

"Multiple attributes associated with each schedule activity that can be included within the activity list."

Got that? And no, I'm not citing my sources. Go ahead, lock me up.

Like any of the management theories, it's 10% useful and 90% crap. People at a place called the Project Management Institute don't want to get real jobs, so they've made up an entire discipline and several credentials, and they've convinced people that these credentials are important. So important, in fact, that you have to pass a test to get them! Ignoring the convenient fact that there is a shit ton of money to be made in the credentialing process. You're charged to join the Project Management Institute society (I'm not making that up), you're charged to take the test itself, and you're charged to buy the study guides and books and classes to help take the test. An entire industry created around something that is completely made up. Fucking brilliant. And your Government is spending money hand over fist to pay its employees and contractors to get the credentials.

But I'm buying into the process, because I want to get ahead. The getting leukemia in my twenties thing really fucked up my whole Alex P. Keaton career track, and I need to catch up. I've decided to take the process seriously, to use the buzzwords religiously, to demonstrate that I'm the very embodiment of the project management discipline. I am drinking the Kool Aid.

I've decided to apply for the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM) credential. The goal would be the Project Management Professional (PMP) credential, but I don't have enough experience to qualify for that one yet. Actually, that's not entirely true. I could demonstrate work experience that would more than qualify me, but it would require me to get into contact with bosses at old jobs and do tons of paperwork. They seem to audit almost everyone who applies for these credentials, and I just can't be bothered with dealing with all of that. The CAPM is treated like a lite version of the PMP, with less stringent experience requirements. Plus the test is easier. Bonus. I figure next year (when I have enough continuous experience at the firm I'm at) I'll upgrade to the PMP. You don't care, do you?

I signed up to take a three day seminar in August, on the company dime (cost: $1,500). It was grueling- classes ran from 8am to 5pm, covering the most boring material imaginable. But I was committed to taking it seriously and learning the concepts. The course was offered from a third party, but it came with the usual guarantees about passing the exam and learning the discipline. It seemed like a good idea, and I did very well on all of the practice exams in the classes. I consistently scored in the 80's, when I only needed a 60 on the pass/fail actual exam to receive the credential. I left the class feeling good, like I was prepared for the real exam.

Getting registered was a nightmare. It took forever to join the society (cost: $129), then get cleared for the exam (cost: $225). I ended up being audited, so I had to document that I was qualified to take the test. Weeks passed before I was finally able to schedule, and I chose last Friday to allow myself ample time to study.

I hit the books hard. I made flash cards, I took and re-took the practice exams. My class had an optional online component with additional practice exams, and I took all of those as well. By the time I finished studying, I was consistently scoring near 90%. I never had to apply myself in college or grad school, because I'm one of those people who excels at taking tests. And the practice exams were full of easy questions, the kind where common sense is usually all you need. Hypothetical example:

You are a project manager in charge of evaluating several sales proposals. On the eve of the day you're scheduled to make your decision, a sales manager from one of the bidding firms calls you to offer front row seats to the Super Bowl, and use of the corporate jet. You should:

A) Take the bribe. Football is awesome!

B) Take the bribe, but murder the sales manager to cover your tracks. The perfect crime!

C) Take the bribe, but have the sales manager give the tickets to your wife so as to not arouse suspicion. You clever bastard!

D) Do not accept the bribe. Integrity is awesome!

I'm not a rocket scientist, and my IQ is only 147, but I figured I had a pretty good chance of passing the test.

I got to the testing center, and they sat me down in front of the computer. I took the tutorial that taught me how to use a mouse (seriously), and clicked through for my first question:

您是项目负责人负责评估几个销售提案。在天的前夕您预定做出您的决定, 一个销售主任从出价的企业的当中一个叫对公司喷气机的您为超级杯提供前排位子, 和用途。您应该:

A) 采取贿款。橄榄球是令人敬畏的!
B) 采取贿款, 但谋杀销售主任盖您的轨道。完善的罪行!
C) 采取贿款, 但让销售主任给到您的妻子的票以便不激起怀疑。您聪明的坏蛋!
D) 不要收受贿赂。正直是令人敬畏的!

Okay not really, but close enough. I had no fucking idea what I was doing. For several minutes I thought I was taking the wrong test. But there were enough vaguely familiar terms that I realized I was, in fact, just screwed. I fumbled my way through 150 questions, feeling dumber than I've ever felt in my life. I guessed wildly, but I knew I was getting at least some right. The math questions, at the very least, were like the ones in my book. The rest, however, were full of terms and concepts I had never seen before. My class and study guide were completely useless. I was on my own. But hey, I only needed to get 90 out of 150 right, right? This just might work...

No chance, I failed. I walked out of the test center with my tail between my legs. The test is divided into 14 "Knowledge Areas" and each area gets a random number of questions. The test results don't tell you how many questions you actually got right or wrong, but they do give you a percentage correct for each area. In the places with the equations, I got scores as high as 92%. In places with the unfamiliar terms, I got scores as low as 40%. To add insult to injury, if you take the average score of my percentages and weight them evenly, I would have passed with a 66%. But, of course, the exam was randomly weighted toward the shit I didn't know, and I failed. Wonderful. Did I mention it was raining when I left the test center? Of course it was, for the first time in months.

为什么坏事总发生在我身上?

Live Strong, Die Like A Pussy

2007-10-17T10:12:00.001-07:00

For years I wore one of those yellow, LIVESTRONG cancer bracelets that you think went out of fashion in 2005. Not because I look good in yellow, and not because I want to draw attention to my freakishly small wrists. No, I wore it despite your snickers, Johnny Fashion Ass, because I've got a case of the cancer, and I was too afraid I'd die if I took it off. If you live your life at the mercy of symbolism, there are certain commitments you just don't want to break.

The details of how I received the bracelet are inconsequential. Well, I'm making them inconsequential. Because if I told the story about the girl who gave it to me, and how we used to be friends, except one night we all got really drunk at Townhouse Tavern, and they pulled some kid out of one of those terrible clubs next door on a stretcher, and my friend and I were laughing at the pathetic thought of the kid ODing on some horrible club drug at one of the most horrible dance clubs in the city, and the girl who gave me the bracelet started giving me shit, and I explained that we were just kidding, but she was drunk and she wouldn't let it go, because that's what she does- she gets drunk and doesn't let it go, and I just couldn't stand it anymore, so I shouted "Becky, shut up you fucking cunt!" in front of all of our friends, all of the onlookers watching shirtless club boy getting put in the stretcher, the paramedics, and half of the Dupont Circle neighborhood, and that pretty much ended our friendship- if I told that story, I'd look like a real asshole. So instead, let's just say I got it from a friend.

Because I'm a slave to both superstition and symbolism, I never wanted to take it off. Unfortunately, I'm also occasionally batshit crazy about germs, too, so there were times when I did actually have to take it off. The bright yellow would fade to a sort of fake butter color, the little engraved letters would fill in with some class of schmutz. If you play videogames (and of course you fucking do, you're reading this), I'm talking precisely about the kind of shit that gathers in the nooks and crannies of a controller. I would ignore it until I couldn't stand it anymore, and I would dunk it in bleach for a few hours. Problem solved. But other than that, I never took it off.

Only a couple of weeks ago, I was playing with it while I was talking on the phone at work, sort of stretching it out while it was still on my wrist, when the damn thing snapped. It didn't go easily- there was a loud crack and it flew across my office. It scared the life out of me, but I quickly realized I had much bigger problems at hand. The signs were clear, and the end was nigh. I IM'd Baby to break the bad news, and she had some ridiculous story about how it was actually a good sign, because that meant I'd survived long enough to outlive the bracelet, or some such nonsense. Whatever, I told her she'd be sorry when I actually did die. She said, "lol." Women.

But it's actually happening! First, I was afflicted with the Dreaded Handpox. Then just this weekend I received the Curse of 1,000 Unpleasantly Urgent Trips to the Bathroom. That one is particularly ironic, because I've recently cut all caffeine and almost all chocolate and saturated fat from my diet because I think it's been upsetting my stomach (that and, you know, 32 years of rampant anxiety and a daily handful of god knows what in the medicine that I hope is keeping my leukemia at bay). I had actually been feeling pretty good, like maybe I was onto something with this whole healthy food crazy fucking person thing, when this gastrointestinal disaster struck. We went out on Friday night, had a few beers, and spent Saturday laying around. I felt progressively worse all day Saturday, managed to fall asleep around midnight, and then woke up around 3am and immediately ejected every morsel of food I'd eaten in the last 48 hours, along with what looked like considerable portions of a lot of really important looking internal organs. I was in hell. I dropped at least five and probably ten pounds in the next two days. I became a human sieve. It wasn't awesome.

(Two additional things I learned that proved women make no sense: 1) For some reason, they don't like it when you call them into the bedroom to demonstrate how much weight you've lost, and how loose your clothes that used to be tight now fit with room to spare. 2) When the man is lying in bed, dying from some disgusting parasite thing, the woman is actually hoping she will catch whatever it is, so she can loose weight. Seriously.)

There you have it. Two horrible plagues unmistakeably brought about by the broken pact I made with LUCAMIA. At this point I'm just waiting for the bout of whatever that horrible staph infection thing (do you think I'm dumb enough to actually read those articles?) that's in the news today to finish me off.

This Time I Might Mean It

2007-10-11T13:09:00.001-07:00

I'll try, really I will.

It makes me very happy to hear that people read this blog and enjoy it. I've come to grips with the fact that you're not going to leave many comments though. I'm not sure if that's because I attract shadowy, lurking figures to my blog, or if maybe it's just so awkward and uncomfortable that nobody really knows what to say after reading it.

I hate nearly all of the blogs on the internets. I would say categorically that I hate each one, but I can't accurately make that statement because I don't have the patience to slog through them to find out if they're bad or not. I'm willing to bet they're sucky, though.

And because I hate blogs (and myself, frankly), I have this fear of my own blog becoming lame and boring. So I sit down to try to write in it, and I get five paragraphs in and hit delete. Or I come up with something I think is halfway decent and show some poor sap over IM, and they explain to me that, after all these years, I should probably just stop fucking bitching about Osama bin Megan already. Point taken.

I want this to be funny. And I absolutely don't want this to become a journal where I thrill you with the details of everything I watched on TV, read in the paper, and viewed on the internet in the past few hours. My life is actually extraordinarily boring. Lately it involves playing the same videogame on two different computers at the same time for hours and hours each day. The only quality time I spend with Baby is when she sits on the couch next to me and flails about with the Wii remote. Do you really want to read about that? Of course not. Although, if I put that shit on youtube it would be a smash. And why god why can't girls keep their mouth closed when they're playing videogames, anyway?

So yeah, I'll try harder. And does anyone know of any fancy technology where people could receive updates whenever I post? I looked around a bit, but all I saw were subscription things where you had to use your email address. I'm sure some of you would have no problem with that, but you lurkers would probably never use it. Isn't that right, Osama?

A Pox On Both Your Hands

2007-10-10T13:24:00.000-07:00

I went out drinking with an old work buddy (well, he's young and I'm old, as he reminded me) on Friday night, and I had a good time. But I made sure I came home early, because I had important, civic-minded things to do. Baby and I were planning to participate in the AIDS Walk bright and early on Saturday morning, and I felt it very important that I only get somewhat drunk so as not to be too hungover. We also had a long trip out to the distant suburbs on Saturday afternoon for my brother's wife's (sister-in-law still seems weird) baby shower. I knew I'd be seeing a lot of family, so I didn't want to look like the disheveled wreck they usually see when I happen to visit with them. So, see? I was trying to be good.

We got up early, only a little bit hungover, and met the rest of our 'team' (made up of co-workers) for the walk. We were short on time with our long drive ahead of us, but we stuck it out and walked the whole thing, hangover and all, because we wanted to show solidarity and all that good stuff. Plus we felt like we needed to earn our tshirts, which are scratchy and way too big. Make a mental note about the tshirts, they may or may not be important later.

On our way home we stopped by the new Au Bon Pain on the corner. We're thrilled that it's there, because most of downtown DC becomes a ghost town on the weekends. It's a blessing to be able to get my sausage croissant on since Sparky's closed to make way for the wine bar (omfg rite?!) and Breakwell's nearly burned down. So we ate there for the first time, and it was marvelous. (make another mental note, this time about the food)

After lunch we took showers, and started packing up the Zipcar. We went to the beach a couple of weeks ago, and we borrowed things like beach chairs and towels from my mother that we planned to give back to her at the baby shower. The chairs were all sandy from the beach, and they were crappy to begin with, so I left them on our back patio in the alley. Miraculously, no one had stolen them, or used them for illicit sex acts. As I was carrying them into the house to set them by the front door, a prehistorically large bug flew out of one, whizzed by our heads, and out the open back door. It was so big my first instinct was to take cover, so I didn't really see what happened. Baby was visibly shaken, but she assured me that whatever it was (dragonfly from the beach? pigeon? pterosaur?), it was certainly gone. We were relieved. (Mental note: soap; shampoo; used items; alley in large, downtown American city used almost exclusively to exchange sex for money; potentially disease-ridden predator)

We were checking all the stuff we had to return, to make sure we remembered everything, and I noticed my right hand was itching, just below my thumb. And I mean really itching. So I put some Cortisone on it, because of course I'm the guy who has that kind of thing in his medicine cabinet. (Mental note: first onset of symptoms)

The drive sucked. We love Zipcars, but this one had a problem with the air conditioning. Air was coming out of the vents, but it wasn't cooled at all. And since it's 90 degrees in the fall in DC these days, that was problematic. The traffic was miserable as well. It was 1pm on a Saturday, and it took an hour to drive 30 miles on the highway, with stop and go traffic almost the whole time. Where the fuck are all of you people going? And do you really need a giant SUV to get there? When we finally arrived at our destination, beautiful Prince William County, Virginia (motto: latinos are the new poor/gay/black people) I was literally stunned. I can remember when Fairfax was the distant suburbs to DC, and anything beyond that was straight up country. And that wasn't that long ago. But by the time we finally pulled into the cul-de-sac (directions: it's the 209,328,916th McMansion on the left-hand side, can't miss it), I felt like the fucking Lorax. As an aside, I hate all of you people. You laugh at me when I explain how great living in the city is, and you tell me how you feel so much safer living in the suburbs where your kids can go outside and play. I buy that, because I was raised in the suburbs and practically lived outdoors. But each time I drive to one of these neighborhoods, there is never a kid in sight. They've got mile-wide streets, impossibly green lawns and skateparks, (SKATEPARKS!) in the suburbs these days, and the kids are either wiped out from their exhaustive schedule of playdates, or glued to their PS3's in the den. (Mental notes: poor air quality (suspicious airborne car bacteria?); road rage; SUVs; racism; deforestation; Dr. Seuss; hypocrisy; conservation; fat children; suburbs)

The baby shower was fine. It was good to see my family, and easy to ignore the people we didn't know. We'd bought cheesy but cute tshirts for my nieces at the beach, and they even seemed happy when we gave them to them. I drank a beer and thought about getting something to eat. As I'm reaching for a "quesadilla," someone mentions how delicious the "shrimp quesadillas" are. Alarm bells. Shellfish are poisonous, and they make me die. What kind of sadistic bastard puts shellfish in quesadillas? Remind me to give peanut-and-milk lollipops to the pasty, allergic to everything children my unborn nephew will undoubtedly have to have playdates with. In a rage, I go outside and call my brother. He was boycotting the baby shower because "they're like, I don't know, fucking gay and stuff," so I was gonna stop by his house and check it out. He just bought a townhouse out there, and you wouldn't believe the place. It's beautiful inside, of course. Gigantic, really, when you consider what small people he and his wife are. He showed me his enormous new TV, and we played some videogames. He told me about his neighborhood, and it sounds like typical Prince William County: he bought his place for 20% less than the places across the street were selling for a year ago; several of the houses on the street are in various stages of foreclosure; the builder has closed up shop, either bankrupt or close to it, and much of the neighborhood is unfinished, including the roads; the commute is a bastard, but hey he's got hardwood floors and marble countertops, right?; and the neighbors are okay, well, except for maybe that guy with the Confederate flag in the back window of his pickup truck. Sounds grand. (Mental notes: presence of unidentified strangers; close proximity to small children; genuine pleasure; beer; POISON!; misplaced rage; ridiculous logic; mini-McMansions; diminutive siblings; television envy; videogames as a viable hobby for thirtysomethings; falling property values; did you really think you could afford a half million dollar house on your Applebees salary?; unsound business practices; commuting; superfluous luxury; neighbors; rednecks)

My dad calls eight times, begging us to come back to the shower. He's the only man there (besides my sister's husband, whose own parents and children don't even consider a man), and he's getting antsy. I convince my brother to come with me. It's about 4 o'clock by now, and he's on his way to his wife's baby shower, full of her friends and our families. He has not showered, nor shaved, and he's wearing sweatpants. (Mental notes: nagging dad; pathetic brother-in-law; clueless brother) (Note to self: more posts about brother, untapped comic gold)

In the car on the way home, my hands are starting to itch. And by itch, I mean ITCH. I'm sweaty because the air conditioning doesn't work, and I'm starting to feel funny. We get out of the car, and I take a good look at my hands. They're swollen, and they've covered in dozens if not hundreds of tiny, hard, red bumps. Fucking everywhere. Not good. Thank God I don't tend to overreact about these things, especially the ones involving my health and the uncertain status but obviously bleak outlook of it. And phew, wouldn't it be terrible if I was one of those people who has those things, what are they called again? Oh yeah, FUCKING PANIC FUCKING ATTACKS FUCKING I'VE FUCKING GOT FUCKING TO FUCKING GET FUCKING OUT FUCKING OF FUCKING HERE. (Mental note: itching; POX! POX! POX!; Caps Lock is cruise control for cool)

I run inside and grab Baby. I say maybe two words to my family, and bolt for the door. She knows the crazed "How the fuck have you NOT NOTICED that the goddamn SKY IS FALLING!?" look in my eye, and she does not ask questions. She knows that to show concern is to validate, no verify, my worst fears. She pretends that all of this is very normal, and she tells me about the baby shower. She knows I'm not listening, knows that all I need right now is for everyone to not notice that I'm losing it. She pretends not to notice. She's the most amazing woman I have ever known. She should win an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize. She goes on and on, but finally she breaks character. "Does this mean we're going to miss Chick-Fil-A?"

Baby is a connoisseur of fast food, and she understands that Chick-Fil-A is a delicacy. They do not have any franchises in DC, so she only gets to eat it once or twice a year. She will put up with this maniac of a future-husband, his alcoholic white trash family and a gorgeous 95% humidity, 90 degree October day in the suburbs, just so long as she can get her chicken sandwich with extra mayonnaise and pickles, please. How can I say no to that? We go through the drive through, and she feeds me waffle fries all the way home while I drive. My hands are a wreck, but who cares? Have you fucking seen this woman sitting next to me?

I still don't know what brought on the mysterious handpox though. I took a shower and a handful of Benadryl when I got home, and it didn't do a thing. They finally started to subside a few days later, but even today the skin is still a bit rough and bumpy. Now that I think about it, I may have encountered a few things during the day that could trigger some kind of allergy. Probably shouldn't have much trouble singling out the actual cause.

Pouring Syrup On Shit Don't Make It Pancakes

2007-08-27T11:34:00.000-07:00

It's dawned on me that I just don't post as often as I should anymore. The problem is that I rarely feel the rage and anxiety I used to feel. Don't get me wrong, I still get pissed sometimes. And I'll have a well-publicized breakdown from time to time. But the general "I'm not gonna pay a lot for this muffler!" mentality has waned lately.

It's back today.

I had a meeting this morning at our client site, and I needed to read up a bit first. So I left home early, and I made my way to the site. I arrived even earlier than I had planned, so I decided to sit down outside and do my reading there, because it was early enough in the morning that it was still kinda nice outside.

As an aside, my client site is near the DC courthouse. I find it equal parts hilarious and sad what I see coming in and out of there each time I pass by. Inside, rich old white people are deciding what happens to poor, young black people. Of course, I'm generalizing, but not to a ridiculous extent. Unfortunately, this is the way our justice system is set up. So everyday these young kids go to appear before the court, where a series of important decisions are going to be made. Call me crazy, but if I was in these kids' shoes, I might pull my pants up. Or not wear a Deion Sanders jersey or a gigantic, plain white T-shirt. I appreciate freedom of expression, and I hate getting dressed up as much as the next guy. But for fuck's sakes, there are people in there who can send you to jail! Tuck something in already. Play along. If I could figure out a way to take the pictures without getting my ass kicked, I could run a blog called "You Wore That To Court?" and make a million dollars. Anyway.

I'm sitting outside and I get a call that the meeting is canceled. Awesome. I didn't bring my lunch today because I had a meeting first thing, and I skipped breakfast to get there early. So now I have nothing to eat all day. Even better, I have no cash on me so I can't afford cab fare. I have no choice but to walk all the way back across the mall to my office. When I get there, work just starts piling up and I keep getting more and more grumpy. Finally, I manage to get a break for lunch and head to Subway.

Let's get this out of the way right off the bat: Subway is not good. No one ever thinks, "Yum! Subway!" You eat it because it's there. It's across the street from your office, or it's open late, or you're on a diet, or some other combination of sub-optimal conditions. This isn't up for debate, right? They don't charge four dollars for a sandwich because they care about helping you save money. They charge four bucks because if they charged five, you'd probably go somewhere else.

So why, why God why, is there always someone in line who treats ordering their sandwich like picking out the coffin they want to be buried in, and why must I always be standing behind them?

I'm hungry, and I want to eat, and so does everyone standing behind us. We have the common sense to understand that no matter much thoughtful customization we apply to our six inch turkey sub, it's still going to taste pretty much the same. If you put five different vegetables on your sandwich, can you really tell the difference between them? Does it even matter? Just fucking eat it already! Or are you so completely lacking in self-awareness that you don't hear the line groaning behind you? Have you noticed us shifting our feet impatiently, as you grow ever more frustrated with the minimum-wage earning poor bastard in charge of creating the World's Most Important Tuna Wrap? When you finally stop yelling at him for making mistakes, and you turn to us with that "Can you believe how incompetent the service is here?" look, can you feel our group, as a whole, desperately, silently, wishing you and everyone you care about was dead? We're not nodding our heads in silent approval. We're trying different head angles in hopes of killing you with our minds.

$80?! You Have Got To Be (Blanking) Kidding Me!

2007-08-07T12:48:00.000-07:00

Andray Blatche is a young kid who plays for the Wizards. He's long on potential, but apparently short on judgment. In the summer before his rookie season, when he was drafted right out of high school, he was shot in a carjack attempt gone wrong. You'd think he was the victim there, except it happened at 6am in Alexandria. I'm no detective, but something tells me that if you're getting carjacked at 6am in Alexandria, you're up to no good.

Now he is 20 years old, and he's a free agent. He's entertaining offers from teams, trying to convince them to give him millions of dollars. Last week, the Wizards offered him about $12 million but he's reportedly holding out for something better. Well, he was... until he made a trip to my neighborhood Thursday, where he was arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover cop.

I was out of town all weekend, so I missed this when it first happened. Forgive me for being a few days late. But I find the whole thing fascinating for a million reasons. For starters, it happened close to my house. And by close, I mean next. Literally. Mapquest puts the distance from the arrest to my house at "<.1 miles." Had we been home, we would have heard the sirens.

Here is a rundown of the episode as quoted in the Washington Post blog written by Ivan Carter, the beat writer for the Wizards:

According to the document titled: "United States vs. Andray Blatche (sic), the event occured on 8/2/07 at approximately 12:11 at 10 Thomas Circle NW in Washington DC. Blatche and Palmer were both accused of solicting an undercover officer working in the prostitution unit.

From the document, here is how it went down: Blatche and Palmer were in a vehicle when they pulled up at Thomas Circle.

Defendant 1 (identified by police as Blatche) : "Hey, what's up with you?"
Undercover cop: "You tell me."
AB: I'm trying to see what you're doing."
UC: "Do you want (Blank) or (Blank)?"
AB: "Well, I want both."
UC: "And what about you?"
D-2 (identified as Palmer) : "I want the same."
UC: "I charge $80 but I do two at the same time."
AB: "Yeah, I'm good with it."
UC to Palmer: "And what about you?"
GP: "Yeah, $80 is good."
UC: Aight, you want to pull right?"
AB: "Naw."
UC: "I have a room right here."
AB: "Uh, ok?"

I want to get one thing out of the way right now: the hookers in Thomas Circle are banged up. So banged up, in fact, that you wouldn't let them pay you $80 to blank you. But that's neither here nor there.

What I want to know is, what is she talking about? I'm gonna assume that "blank" and "blank" mean oral and regular, if you know what I mean. Seems logical, right?

But what does "UC: "I charge $80 but I do two at the same time."" mean? She does two dudes at once? Or both blanks at once? Is she gonna finish one guy then move on to the next? I just gotta know.

And how that hell can that only cost $80? I honestly had no idea the hookers in my neighborhood charged that little. And I have no clever way to introduce this, but it's funny enough to include. I sent the link above to Baby, asking a question along the lines of "Did you know you can get all this for $80 in our neighborhood?!" Her response: "Why the fuck am I giving it to you for free?"

I'm Rich! And I Didn't Even Have To Let A Man In My Porch!

2007-07-09T13:12:00.000-07:00

Good news, my money worries are over. For a while there I was having trouble, trying to figure out how to pay for a wedding and a new condo. But lady luck visited my inbox this morning, and it's easy street from here on out, I tell you. Check out my ticket to the good life:

Dearest Beloved One,I am Mrs. Anita Adams Johnson from Ivory Coast. I was married to Late Cheif Adams Johnson who was a contractor with the government of Cote D'Ivoire before he died after few days in the hospital. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of $8.700 Million with a Bank in Cote D lvoire. Presently this money is still in the custody of the Bank here in Cote DIvoire.My Doctor told me that it is very likely i will die within the next 3 months due to A Blood cancer {LUCAMIA}. I have decided to donate the money for charity to you since i do not have a child to inherit it and it better i do not die leaving the money here without it reaching the poor and the lessprivilaged ones in the society. As soon as I receive your reply I shall tell my bank to transfer themoney to you.
EMAIL ME ON : kkkanitaadams200@yahoo.co.uk
Mrs. Anita Adams Johnson.

Pretty fucking sweet, am I right? I mean, I'm no expert on Cote D'Ivoire, but this all does sound pretty promising, doesn't it? Intrigued, I spent the morning investigating and I picked up a slew of facts about the good old Ivory Coast:

1. Government contractors and their spouses have adopted several spellings for their homeland, including: Cote D'Ivoire, Cote D Ivoire, and Cote DIvoire. Note that the correct spelling is actually Cote d'Ivoire. Man, I thought us government contractors in the United States were creative when we made up terms like Earned Value Management and Business Processing Engineering. But we've got nothing on the guys in Africa, who make up new names for the places they live!

2. Despite living in a French-speaking country, the people of Ivory Coast have recently begun the very hip trend of giving their children American names. Anita Adams Johnson- doesn't get any more American than that. Oddly, boys are often named for their distant Icelandic relatives, including the late Cheif Adams Johnson, obviously a modern take on the name of his ancestor, Leif Ericson, of Ivory Coast-founding, possible America-discovering (don't tell the Sopranos) fame. Finally, it's good to see the ancient Ivory Coastian tradition of wives adopting the middle and last names of their husbands is still intact.

3. Poor Anita, stricken with such a terrible disease. When I got the cancer the diagnosis was pretty bleak, but not so goddamn bleak that they called it A Blood cancer. That sounds terrible! When your disease is capitalized I think you can pretty much kiss your ass goodbye. And I confess I was unfamiliar with {LUCAMIA}. Are the brackets a part of the word? Or is that the worst spelling of leukemia in history? Maybe it's like Mad Libs for doctors with poor spelling? I google'd it, and this is troubling and funny enough to warrant posting here. Someone posted the following on a translation request website (Proz- who knew such a thing existed?), asking for help figuring out the meaning of:

"That man in your porch is like lucamia on your face."

The response he got:

"that man is as welcome as leukemia (skin lesions) on your face"

Dude wtf? I have leukemia, and I ain't got no skin lesions of my face. But then again I've never had a man in my porch. Doesn't that sound kind of dirty, actually? I honestly don't know what to make of this entire exchange, and this post is getting derailed, but for some reason the whole thing makes me laugh. Where was I?

4. Oh right, Anita is gonna die, and she wants to leave the money to the "the poor and the lessprivilaged." Look, I'm not rich by any means. But if you're picking me out as lessprivilaged than your fellow Ivory Coastians, then a lot of fucking people have been telling me a lot of fucking lies about the standard of living in Africa. Oh well, at least I don't feel so bad about Baby's engagement ring. Next time I see that Leonard DiCaprio I'm gonna tell him to piss up a rope. Blood Diamond my ass.

5. Best part- Anita's email address: kkkanitaadams200@yahoo.co.uk. If I had any doubts about your charitable intent Anita, they melted away the minute I saw you were a member of the Brotherhood. The KKK in Africa. Really, who knew?

Condos at The Whitman: Getting Cheaper, Staying Sucky

2007-06-15T09:35:00.000-07:00

We're in the condo market, but it's a goddamn minefield. In case you hadn't noticed, there are 2,308,729,571 units for sale in Northwest DC, and they're all nearly identical. Five or six sell each week. Now I've never taken one of those real estate seminars advertised in infomercials, but it looks like we've got more condos than buyers. And I seem to remember something from Econ classes in college about supply and demand, so I think we're in the driver's seat. I imagine there are deals to be had.

So we've been waiting for the proverbial bubble to burst, and it looks like it's about to. Over the Winter, there was a steady supply of condos coming on to the market as new developments opened. But when Spring arrived, the number for sale skyrocketed. People are bailing out, selling existing units and backing out of contracts on ones under construction, but the developers continue to flood the market with new units. In the meantime, sales agents have grown desperate.

Exhibit A is The Whitman, a gigantic new condo building adjacent to the Convention Center. I've been walking by this building every day for two years now, and I have to admit it's impressive. It does appear to have a bit of character, unlike so many of the cookie-cutter places going up. And you can't beat the location. Unfortunately, that's about all it has going for it.

When it was under construction we were actually pretty excited, and we contacted the sales office to get more information. We weren't surprised- $500,000+, minimum, for a one bedroom loft unit with a den. Plus another $35,000 for parking (not that we need it). What a deal, right? Sadly, that's been the going rate in the neighborhood for a few years, and we've decided we like the area enough that we want to stay within these few blocks. So I contacted them again to get more specifics.

They started flooding me with emails and phone calls for open houses, private showings, special events, and everything else imaginable. The message was always the same: Get them while they're hot! These condos won't last forever! Ignoring the bullshit, I asked pointed questions.

bryc3: "Where are the loft units located in the building?"

The Whitman: "On the ground floor, so you'll have your own private entrance!"

bryc3: "You mean those ones in the front? Those are condos and not retail or something?"

The Whitman: "That's right! You're just steps from all the neighborhood has to offer!"

bryc3: "There are no bars on the windows, they're just french doors."

The Whitman: "Rest assured, the neighborhood is perfectly safe. Shall I send over a contract?"

bryc3: "Safe, sure, got it. Where do you live?"

The Whitman: "Alexandria. Why?"

bryc3: click

Shaw is, to put it delicately, a neighborhood in transition. It certainly isn't Southeast, but it ain't Reston, either. And you would have to be a certified fucking idiot to move into one of those places without bars on the windows. People can, and do, walk right up to those windows from the sidewalk and peer inside. You could rob each of them blind by merely breaking one pane of glass and turning the door handle. You'd be gone with some metrosexual's plasma TV and the keys to his Jetta before he even woke up. And lord only knows how dangerous it would be for a woman in one those places. But in order to keep the prices high, and to project the air of safety, they've refrained from putting bars on the windows. Nice. That's crossing some ethical line in my book. There have been several murders in the immediate neighborhood this year, and there is a long-standing (although hopefully cooling) gang war happening just a few blocks away.

Thankfully, other people seem to have noticed, too. Those units are generally empty, although a few brave souls (read: idiots) have moved in. That hasn't stopped The Whitman's marketing campaign though. They're plowing ahead, continuing to pledge that the units are going fast, and you need to act now! I got this email yesterday:

"The time is at hand when The Whitman will be sold out. Thanks to the overwhelming response to The Whitman's unconventional elegance, this summer is the final opportunity to purchase a one-bedroom/den/two-bath or two-bedroom/two-bath condominium - parking included.

$15,000 Incentive! For a limited time, The Whitman is offering a closeout incentive of $15,000 any way you want it: toward closing costs, toward condo fees, as a discount on the purchase price - whatever (except cash - sorry!)."

Hang on a second, I wanna make sure I've got this straight. The "overwhelming" response you've received (not to mention the "elegance" that comes with broken beer bottles and cigarette butts on the roof) has created a buying frenzy, and you just can't manage the demand. To compensate, you're now throwing in parking that used to cost $35,000, and you're offering to give me $15,000 if I move in? Man, those things must be flying off the shelves!

Why even both lying to me? Why not be honest, and admit you've slashed prices by 10% in attempt to move units that are unsafe and sitting on the market? Oh, right, the whole panic thing. Sorry.

Thanks LeBron, Thanks A Lot

2007-06-14T09:31:00.000-07:00

So I hate that LeBron James. Something about him rubs me the wrong way, and I assure you it has nothing to do with his team knocking my Wizards out of the playoffs the last two years. I just think he's a dorknob.

My feelings are unlikely to change soon, as I've just read that he's fathered a baby delivered this morning named:

Bryce Maximus James

I don't know where to begin. A childhood of torture for having a sissy name has left me scarred and bitter. Why couldn't my mother have thought to name me Maximus? Think how much more masculine I would have become! I'm willing to bet that Maximus will never be taunted with the name Bryciepooh. Although to be honest, Maxiwuss has potential.

Bryce is cursed name. On the one hand, you meet women who say, "Oh, I love that name!" Let's face it, you're not going to hear a woman say, "His name is Mike/John/Dave, isn't that just the coolest name ever?!" So that's pretty cool. But those women become the mothers who name their kids Adrian or Perry or Brantley, and then the poor bastard gets the shit kicked out of him every day until he mercifully graduates from high school, assuming he doesn't Columbine first.

That *ahem* benefit doesn't begin to counter the most pressing problem. Every single man who meets a guy named Bryce will immediately think he's a douche. I could extend the blood-stained hand I've just used to bludgeon the dead deer I'm carrying home to feed my wolves, and the guy is still going to think I'm a fairy.

And finally, we all know that Bryce is absolutely a gay name. LeBron's take on homosexuality is remarkably mature, so that probably shouldn't be a big deal, right?

"You take showers together, you're on the bus, you talk about things. With teammates, you have to be trustworthy. If you're gay and you're not admitting that you are, you're not trustworthy. It's the locker room code; it's a trust factor.'' -Akron Beacon Journal

Uh oh.

Today Show: "Webkinz Carry Smallpox"

2007-06-12T12:54:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately that's not true.

So I'm watching the Today Show this morning because it's my personal Two Minutes Hate. They were running a segment on something called Webkinz- the latest kids toy in the vein of Cabbage Patch Kids and Beanie Babies. Ignore, for a moment, that as is the case with nearly all of these crazes, the people who are most excited are poorly adjusted adults. Webkinz are different from typical stuffed animals, because somehow the internet is involved. Apparently kids go online and take care of the pets, decorate their houses, and attract sexual predators. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but the segment featured a lot of pasty little seven-year-old kids clicking their mouses on the computers in their bedrooms.

Kids are going batshit crazy for these things, and what's a parent to do? You just can't find them anywhere, the stores sell out too fast! The segment focuses on young girls who have dozens of them in their bedroom, and they love them all ever so much. And if you're into the Children of the Corn, you can't help but feel for these poor little girls who want, nay, FUCKING NEED, more Webkinz. For God's sake, won't someone think of the children!?

So, like:

1) We're on the verge of any number of world wars, and the entire earth is turning to shit by the second. If your biggest concern is that you can't find Webkinz for your spoiled children, you need to re-evaulate your priorities. If you feel compelled to save the children from this tragedy, and you believe the correct avenue for doing this is bitching about Webkinz on the Today Show, then you simply have to kill yourself.

2) We only have a 'shortage' of Webkinz because you bought ninety of them for your rotten children the last time they were in stock. As you drove your SUV from toy store to toy store throughout the suburbs, did you ever once consider the poor kids who would go without as you snapped up every one you could find, all along knowing it still wouldn't be enough to satiate your own materialistic children?

3) Your seven year old son (Cole, Maddox, Banana Republic, whatever his name is) who loves Webkinz? Gay.

4) Tomorrow's Today Show will almost certainly contain a segment on childhood obesity. Parents and researchers will wag their fingers and blame Oreos and commercials. They'll petition the school board and get cookies removed from the cafeteria. And the kids who actually, I dunno, go outside and run around sometimes will be punished while your kids become fatties as they sit in front of computers playing with their virtual pets.

5) Everyone at Ganz, the company who makes Webkinz, should be fired today. The company has stated that demand has been crushing, and they've been unable to come up with a strategy to manufacture what has become the hottest toy for American girls, ages 4 to 8. You're lying or retarded. What idiot doesn't know that the best way to make toys for American girls, ages 4 to 8, is to pay Vietnamese girls, ages 4 to 8, to make them?

"She's Going To Ruin My Life Again, Just Like She Did When She Was Born"

2007-02-20T13:07:00.000-08:00

We had a pretty eventful weekend. A very us kind of weekend.

First a short story about me. I went to play cards with my brother and his friends in the suburbs on Saturday night, which afforded me the opportunity to get stinking drunk. At some point later in the evening I decided to bum cigarettes from one of the guys there, even though I've decided several times over the last few months that I'm never going to smoke again. I've never been much of a habitual smoker anyway- I'm the annoying guy who never gets truly addicted but still smokes when he goes out. But I don't even do that any more, as nearly everyone I know has quit. Still, once I get drunk and someone is smoking, all bets are off. We smoked a couple of cigarettes before we ran out of matches. No biggie, as the place we were at had a gas stove. I've probably lit a thousand cigarettes in just this way over the course of my life, but through some miracle of misfortune I manged to singe both eyelashes in my right eye this time around. Awesome. How I didn't just go ahead and melt my contact lens onto my cornea will remain a mystery until the end of time.

But the big news of the weekend actually came the night before, on Friday. Baby's middle sister lives in LA, and she's been living with this guy for years. She had been getting frustrated that he'd yet to ask her to marry him, and she told us over Christmas that she was fixing to give him the ultimatum. To his credit, he's a nice guy and he lives for her. But he's not exactly the most romantic guy, and I get the feeling he's not so in tune with the ladies. He may have just even realized that it was high time for him to shit or get off the pot, as my scholarly mother always says.

So on Friday night he finally asked her. Well, that's not entirely true. He never actually asked her, he just gave her the ring. What can I say, the dude has game. Of course she said yes. Well, I guess she said yes. She took the ring, so that probably signifies yes. Anyway, they're getting married.

You would think, if you're a man and you're not retarded, that Baby would have been thrilled that her younger sister, who has so desperately wanted to get married for so long, was finally going to be a bride. I expected Baby to hang up the phone and tell me how excited she was that she was going to get to plan their weddings together and exchange 476 emails a day while they conduct research to find ice sculptors who can capture the essence of what they feel THE! MOST! SPECIAL! DAY! of their lives is truly all about.

No, not so much. Turns out Baby was bitter, and I'm a lot more retarded than I originally thought.

She nearly burst into tears, and she said, "She's going to ruin my life again, just like she did when she was born!" Because now Middle Baby is going to get all the attention, all the affection, all the focus. Baby has always resented this about Middle Baby- she's very much the "me too" sister to Baby's very grown up, mature example. Baby remembers actual conversations from nearly 30 years ago where Middle Baby was begging for attention, and she still holds grudges about them. That's not to say that Baby doesn't heart Middle Baby, because they're BFF. But she's definitely not stoked that she's had all her thunder stolen.

I've replayed that scene in my mind a million times, and as much as I love Baby there is no way I ever could have guessed that she'd react that way. Oh well though, it's probably just an isolated incident. And the chances of some strange reaction to the wedding planning process happening again in the TWENTY MONTHS between now and the actual day we get hitched are slim, right?

The Bad Touch

2007-01-31T13:47:00.001-08:00

I'm a consultant. My company has a lucrative contract with a large Federal agency. We're helping them design a large IT system. We're not actually building the system, mind you. We're just helping them figure out how to pay for it and then build it. The Federal government is awash with many of the most grossly incompetent, unmotivated idiots you'll ever meet, so there are lots of opportunities for companies like mine to help them figure things out. And let me tell you, business is booming.

Most of my coworkers have some specialty. Some are programmers and some are accountants. I, however, have no specialty. I'm a generalist. They hired me by design, I believe. They need someone to talk to the client, and that someone is me. I have people skills, damn it, and I often find myself in the role of shaking hands and making promises and telling Government people that everything is going to be okay if they'll just butt out for a while.

So my job is to make friends with everyone, and I'm pretty good at it.

Today I was on site, getting ready for a status meeting with Joe, one of my favorite Government people. He's a self-proclaimed Maryland redneck. He drives a Mustang, and he recently told me how excited he was to be taking his wife to see Rascal Flats for her birthday. The guy really couldn't be less like me, but I'm actually very fond of him. Joe is one of the few Government people I've met who takes the idea of civil service seriously, and he works his ass off. You see that a lot in the Government- a phenomenon my boss calls work magnets. If 90% of the Federal workforce is a waste of oxygen, the other 10% must be doing all the work. Joe just attracts everyone else's assignments like a magnet, and he does the work of ten bureaucrats. Plus he drops the F bomb a lot and calls Asian people Orientals. That always makes me laugh.

I was standing outside Joe's cube, organizing the materials for the meeting. He walks up and stands next to me and puts his hand on my back, between my shoulder blades. That's a little inappropriate, but I'm willing to overlook it because he's Joe and that's just kinda how he do. He's standing way too close, and I'm easing back ever so slightly, probably imperceptibly. But because Joe is a close talker, he's got a sub-conscious awareness of that kind of thing so he presses more firmly on my back and leans closer to me. He's just making small talk at this point, asking how I'm doing and kidding me around a bit. I realize I'm probably being silly, so I just loosen up and let him violate my personal space. I like Joe, and having Joe like me is integral to not only my personal success but, to a smaller extent, the success of the company. I can take one for the team and let him grope me for a while.

But then it gets much, much worse. He slowly starts to slide his hand down my back, til it comes to rest on my belt. He's got his hand open, so half his fingers are below my belt, dangerously close to my buttcrack. The rest of his hand is on the small of my back. It's exactly where you put your hand when you're slow dancing with your girl. It's also exactly where you touch a 31 year old consultant to make him feel like a whore.

There is nothing I can do at that point. I have to finish the conversation and let him cop his feel. Mercifully he doesn't get any closer to my no no parts, but I'm afraid my lack of action implies complicity. This is bound to happen again, and I probably won't say anything next time, either. My review is coming up in July, and I have a wedding to pay for. The things I'll do for love.

Everyone Is Talking About The Ban, But They Should Be Talking About Race

2007-01-26T11:26:00.000-08:00

Background: Seventeen year old Taleshia Ford was shot and killed at 1919 nightclub (also known as Smarta) early last Saturday in Northwest Washington, DC. The media jumped on the story, wondering what, exactly, was an underage girl doing at a nightclub in the first place? Opportunistic DC Council member Jim Graham of Ward 2, home of the nightclub, pledged to introduce legislation that would ban minors from nightclubs serving alcohol.

On the night Ford was killed we were at a club called DC9, located directly across the street from 1919. On our way there, around 11 or so, we passed a number of groups of young black men who were very intimidating. The minute I noticed I was alarmed I was immediately mad at myself. I felt terrible because I knew that had these kids been white, I probably would have felt differently. But at the same time I knew that the color of their skin probably had little to do with why I felt uncomfortable. These weren't my neighbors, or the people I ride the Green line with every day. These kids were thugs, or were at the very least trying to look like thugs. I forgave myself. If I passed a group of white kids in soccer uniforms at 3am I probably wouldn't worry about it. If I passed a group of skinheads at 3am I'd probably be nervous. It's got nothing to do with the color of their skin, and everything to do with the image people try to project. Later that night, someone from outside the club, perhaps one of the people we passed, would get into a scuffle with a bouncer at 1919 and Ford, an innocent bystander, would be killed when a gun went off by mistake.

People like Jim Graham have every right to wonder what on earth a seventeen year old girl is doing in a nightclub where adults are drinking alcohol. Although there is no evidence to suggest that minors or alcohol had anything to do with the shooting, you can certainly see why concerned citizens would want to stop the potentially volatile mix of adults, alcohol, and underage kids. That makes perfect sense. Ford was there that night to see a go-go band perform, and she was there with older family members and had the blessing of her parents. They knew she was there, she wasn't misbehaving. And now she's dead. So shouldn't we make a law keeping kids out of bars, for Christ's sake?

Just a few days before Ford was killed, a thousand or so kids were at a Fall Out Boy show at the 9:30 club, just around the corner from 1919. I was there, too. Although the crowd was overwhelmingly underage, there were a sizable number of us ordering drinks at the bar. No one was shot. In fact, in the hundreds of all ages shows I've seen at places like the Black Cat or the 9:30, I can't remember a single incident that can possibly compare with what happened at 1919 last weekend. Plenty of fist fights, a fair share of broken bones and bloody noses, but certainly no dead bodies. These shows are safe, these clubs are safe, these kids are safe.

The music community is up in arms about the possible ban. The usual local music luminaries (people I've admired for years for not just their musical ability, but their dedicate to the scene and the politics that affect our community) are speaking out. People are writing letters, signing petitions, calling for sanity. I've even written Jack Evans, my council member. The ban is just bad policy- it's a knee jerk reaction that will do almost nothing to help protect our kids, and it will certainly hurt local businesses if they're forced to kick kids out of their clubs.

But I can't help thinking about race, the elephant in the room in this discussion. One thousand screaming teenage kids from the suburbs hardly presents a security risk for the veteran, trained staff at the 9:30 club. It's their bread and butter. But can the same be said for a club that, say, caters to go-go fans in Southeast? It's taboo to raise that question, it's probably racist to even consider it, but shouldn't we?

Southeast is the capital of go go music in DC, but it's also the murder capital of the city. The music, of course, has nothing to do with it. The violence that plagues that area of the city is the product of dozens of social problems, ranging from lousy schools to inferior policing to an almost complete lack of opportunities for the young people in the poorest neighborhoods. Generations of kids from Southeast have embraced go go music, and they've brought their other problems with them. Go go has long been synonymous with violence, at least in the eyes of the local media, because the biggest fans of the genre are so often mired in the other problems facing kids from Southeast.

I'm conflicted on this issue, and I can't help but see the role of race in the discussion. If you'd been at the Fall Out Boy show at the 9:30 last week, you'd see the obvious errors in the ban. But if you'd been outside 1919 that night, you'd understand why folks might want these kids off the streets and out of bars. I was in both places, and frankly I don't know what to make of it. If a bar opened two blocks from me that featured all ages punk shows and swarms of suburban punk rock kids I'd be thrilled. If a bar opened two blocks in the other direction that featured all ages go go shows and swarms of tough looking kids like the ones outside 1919 last week, I might move. Does that make me a racist? And why aren't we discussing the obvious racial differences here?

Brief Updates: Now With More Fiancé

2007-01-22T08:36:00.000-08:00

The people who read this blog who are most likely to care about the details of the weekend were probably there to witness it, so I won't bore anyone with sappy romance. But Baby and I got engaged over the weekend. She was completely surprised and, from what I can tell, very happy. I owe a lot to you guys for helping me out. Thank you all.

To make a long story short, I asked her to marry me just outside our apartment, after running errands on Friday evening. When we opened the door to our place, Baby found her closest girlfriends there to surprise her. It was very sweet.

People have been asking about a date for the wedding, and we haven't set one yet. We're almost positive it will be Fall 2008, but I guess there is an outside possibility it will be Spring 2008. We have to buy an overpriced condo first. I need to remind myself to blog about that search. Hilarity abounds.

We went out to DC9 after our little engagement party on Friday. When we left at 1am everything was still calm, but soon afterward a seventeen-year-old girl was shot and killed in the go-go club across the street. That can't be a good omen. Idiots on the DC Council are considering a ban on underage kids at nightclubs serving alcohol. I'm furious about that, and I'll definitely blog about it soon.

But perhaps my favorite part of the weekend came on Saturday. We were sitting around, working off hangovers. I was reading some internets about the snow, and I turned to Baby and said, "Looks like we're going to get one to two inches in DC."

She deadpans, with perfect timing, "Big deal, I get that all the time in DC."

I love this woman.

Boy Was I Stupid

2007-01-05T13:35:00.000-08:00

I was a very curious little kid. I would ask a ton of questions, trying to figure things out. Then once I did, I would store that little fact away until I needed to produce it for Jeopardy or something. Is that the way all kids do it? I don't know. But that's what I did. And although I have since corrected the problem, I have to admit today that there were times when I was a little kid that I was wrong about stuff. Thank god that's over with.

A couple of examples:

I was about seven years old or so when I learned enough cursive to read the name "Seth Thomas" on all the clocks in my elementary school. We had these big, clunky clocks that were always breaking and needing to be fixed. Every time it would happen, my teacher would call the janitor, a guy with the unfortunate name of Mr. Thomas. So I would see Mr. Thomas fixing a clock that said "Seth Thomas" on it, and I just assumed that Mr. Thomas had made the clocks. And I always thought it was pretty cool when I would see a Seth Thomas clock somewhere outside my school, and I'd be happy for our humble janitor. I probably told the story about my Seth Thomas a half dozen times before junior high school, when my English teacher pointed out that unless the fat guy up on the ladder fixing the clock was a hundred and eighty years old, he probably wasn't the Seth Thomas. No worries though, as I wasn't at all concerned about embarrassing myself in front of my classmates when I was thirteen years old.

When I was a kid I was totally gay for The Cat from Outer Space. I can't even remember what the movie is about now (although I assume there are cats and outer space in it), but I'll never forget what my parents told me the night we got home from the movie. Although we didn't live particularly close to the airport, I heard what sounded like a huge airplane flying over our building. So I ran out to the patio outside our apartment to check it out, and I remember seeing a very weird looking thing flying through the sky. Now, of course it was just an airplane, but my parents told me it was the spaceship from the movie. Even though I was only about four years old, this sounded like a load of bullshit to me. Nevertheless, my parents managed to convince me that it wasn't a real spaceship, but rather a special airplane they'd used in the movie. This sounded a little more realistic, so I bought it. For years afterward, we're talking probably into my teens, I would tell the story about the time the special airplane from The Cat from Outer Space flew over my house. I can't remember when I was exposed for being an idiot, as the disappointment was akin to learning that Santa wasn't real and I've blocked it all. To think my parents wondered why I needed therapy when I was a teenager. They systematically destroyed my innocence. And the worst part is that they were probably too fucking stoned to remember doing it.

While we're on the subject of my parents, let me tell you about our dog Brandy. Wait, while I'm on the subject of my dog Brandy let me tell you about my ex-girlfriend's dog Brandy. When I was about twelve we used to have this sorta white cocker spaniel named Brandy, and my girlfriend when I was like sixteen had the exact same dog with the exact same name. One day I was supposed to drive her to school, but I was running late. So she decided to take the bus. She opened the door to leave and her Brandy ran out the door and totally got run over by the school bus, her fucking school bus. Dagger. Worst part is that when I got to school and I heard the news, I said, "You have to admit it is kinda funny." For some reason she didn't think so. I didn't always used to be so awesome with the ladies.

Anyway we had this dog Brandy that never got run over by the school bus. But she did pee on everything. Seriously everything- she peed every time you touched her. No one ever wanted to walk her or anything, and she was basically neglected. At their wits end, my parents decided to give her away and told us she'd gone to live on a farm with one of my dad's co-workers. I can't prove it, and they won't confess to it, but I'm 99% sure that "farm" means "sausage factory."

My favorite stupid kid story doesn't even involve me though, it belongs to Baby.

When she was a kid her grandmother had a ton of paintings in her house. This is a concept that is totally foreign to me, by the way, as my family never thought to actually put anything on our walls when I was growing up. But Baby loved her grandmother's paintings, and the stories behind each one. Her grandmother would tell her that the people in the paintings were members of her family, and the story sounded reasonable to sweet, seven year old Baby, despite the fact that the paintings were obviously prints of famous artwork. Fast forward a couple of decades, and a grown up Baby is on a date and goes back to some guy's apartment. Imagine her surprise when she's checking out his place and she finds a painting of her grandfather! Imagine his surprise when Baby, probably drunk, starts freaking out and screaming, wanting to know just where the fuck he got a picture of her grandfather and what the hell was going on!? How'd you like to be Baby, and have some guy you barely know explain to you that Rembrandt probably didn't paint your grandfather? And to think I get embarrassed when I do something like pee on myself. Poor guy didn't even get laid. That turned out to be okay though, as Baby got to save herself for me.

Man, thank god I don't believe everything people tell me anymore.

Puberty, Revisted

2007-01-02T11:28:00.001-08:00

I've been sick, on and off, for a few weeks now. Some kind of terrible cold thing that won't quite turn into something that will kill me, but won't go away, either. I woke up yesterday morning to find I had lost my voice. Sweet. So that got me thinking about some funny talking things, for example:

Baby likes to talk, but hates talking to strangers. She's the kind of person who will just let the phone ring and ring and ring if she doesn't recognize the number on the caller ID. So it's usually my job to handle those things. I use the authority of the role to my advantage, and I get to make awesome threats like, "Shut up or I'll make you answer the door when the pizza guy gets here."

At least once a day I find myself disclosing something breathtakingly personal to a complete stranger, and saying to myself, "Why the hell am I telling this person THAT?" I then reconstruct the conversation in my head to figure out how I managed to meander over to this particular anecdote about me failing to perform sexually and/or peeing on myself and I realize that at this point, there is no way I'm going to not look like a crackpot, so I might as well just finish telling it because hell, at least it makes ME laugh.

More than one person has told me that despite my desperate longings to the contrary, I actually have a terrible singing voice. We're talking awful. I can manage at least a comical falsetto, but that's about the extent of my musical ability. When I was a kid and I would lose my voice, I would secretly wish that when it came back, I would emerge from my laryngitis cocoon a golden-throated crooner. Alas, not so much.

Ban On Smoking: Check. Ban On Fun: Pending

2006-12-29T09:15:00.001-08:00

You're excited that the DC smoking ban goes into effect next week, making it illegal to smoke cigarettes in bars, nightclubs, restaurants, and pretty much everywhere else. You're an idiot.

I understand that smoking stinks. I get that you hate the way it smells in your clothes, in your hair, in your inflated sense of self importance. You'd go out more often, but you just can't stand all the young people with their chain smoking indifference to the obviously catastrophic health consequences associated with even being near a lit cigarette. You smoked until you were damn near thirty years old, but the important part is that right now you currently do not smoke, so therefore you have every right to demand that everyone else quit at once.

By your reasoning, cigarettes may as well be loaded guns pointed at the poor, innocent bar patrons who are simply trying to get their hands on yet another alcohol-loaded drink that is obviously not nearly as dangerous (well, except for the whole domestic violence, drunk driving, ruined liver thing) as something so terrible as a smoke. If we take a moment to ignore the bodies you've left in your wake as you puffed away until last call from the moment you entered college til the minute you bought your condo, we'll surely see what a victim you've become, trapped in your house while the young people are out enjoying themselves.
But what about the poor bartenders who are forced to work in that environment? Won't someone think of them? Someone as conscientious and aware as you, lawyer/analyst/researcher/human resources coordinator, someone with the foresight and compassion to make decisions for other members of the workforce relegated to such lowly jobs as taking your cash for your booze. Surely those poor souls didn't have the mental capacity to understand that, oh my god, people are actually fucking smoking at these bars where I've decided to work! Why didn't I think of that!? Thank you, dear upper-middle class patron saint of the service industry, for fixing the wrongs of the world. Perhaps you can help me get health insurance? Wait, where are you going? Come back!

So, you've gotten your wish. Starting next week, you'll be able to rejoin the cool kids again. You'll be free to restrict the rights of strangers, rights you yourself once enjoyed with absolutely no regard for people in your current position, just to further your own, selfish goal of extending your own health-conscience, miserable life a few precious days. Won't it be great? Bars full of late thirty-somethings dying to reclaim the night from those awful hipster kids who've been polluting the air these long years. Once we get Prohibition up and running again, this town might actually start to be fun again.

I, for one, can't wait.

I Won The Lottery!

2006-12-22T10:38:00.000-08:00

Well, not all of the lottery. I won four dollars. That's pretty cool, I guess.

If you know me, you understand that bad luck tends to hit me in unexpected, devastating ways. One minute everything is fine, and the next minute everything is bleeding or something needs to be cut out of me or that bitch done run off and left or somebody shoots someone. It happens so often that, perhaps naively, I have full faith that eventually karma will balance the universe and I will be met with tremendously good fortune.

So I was excited a few years ago when my mother called me to tell me she had a dream I won the lottery. She was convinced that it was only a matter of time until I'd be obscenely rich, and it seemed like such a nice idea that I completely fell for it. I started diligently buying lottery tickets in the big jackpots, looking forward to drawings and the inevitable tipping of the great big scale called Destiny. It didn't work out though, and I learned a valuable lesson.

Winning the lottery is hard.

I'm a math dork, I understand the impossible odds. But that's not what I'm talking about. The actual process of going to buy a lottery ticket is more difficult than you'd think. I'm the guy who can't remember to take his clothes out of the dryer, even as the buzzer goes off. So remembering to buy a lottery ticket every Wednesday and Friday is a giant pain in the ass. When you add in the pressure of knowing that you're supposed to win the lottery, you can understand the tremendous guilt I feel when I forget to buy a ticket.

Baby has made it even worse. When I confessed about the lottery obsession, I also explained that I didn't have any lucky numbers that were going to be the key to my success- I just used the random-generated ones. She got surprisingly angry about that, and she set herself to figuring out what my lucky numbers should be. She came up with a combination of our birthdays and ages and the year we started dating, and I allowed her to convince me that those numbers would be the ones. And for a while, I was relieved.

But the first time I forgot to buy a ticket I realized I had made a terrible mistake. I was honestly terrified to check the numbers the following day. Of course our numbers would hit, and of course I wouldn't have bought a ticket. This is me we're talking about, after all. If anyone is going to fail to win the lottery when they're supposed to hit the jackpot, it's going to be me. So now I'm forever cursed to play the lottery to avoid fulfilling my own shitty destiny. Awesome.

Everybody Does It, Don't They?

2006-12-08T12:52:00.000-08:00

I have this good idea. How do I know it's a good idea? Cause Baby thinks it's stupid.

I'm going to explain the idea, and I'm going to ask your advice. I would really appreciate feedback. You can simply answer if you do it or not, or you can comment on the merits of the idea and its chances for success. If you're ashamed to admit you do it, you can post anonymously. But I'd like to know what you think before I try it. I'll tell you what it is in a minute, but to fully explain it you'll need some background.

I love a trainwreck. I honestly do. I enjoy awkward situations, even if I'm miserable while they're happening. Even if they make my skin crawl after the fact.

Specifically, I love my past. It is full to bursting with an incomprehensible amount of embarrassing episodes and miserable failures. The kind of shit that decades of therapy cannot overcome. It's a miracle I haven't killed myself, it's that bad. But that doesn't stop me from coveting situations where I can revisit those misfortunes. Weddings, reunions, trips to the mall in my hometown, you name it. I go to those things looking for the last person on earth I'd want to see. Cause who the hell knows what will happen? It will be weird, it will be uncomfortable, and for some reason I don't begin to understand I will find it endlessly amusing.

Baby thinks that part is stupid, too, incidentally. But that's not the reason I think it's a good idea.

I can see what people searched for to find my blog. Blogspot must have some sweetheart deal with Google, because for some reason if you google "Gay Porn" you get my blog post about getting my neighbor's porn. Or at least, so I've heard. Phew, close one. So anyway yeah, for some reason this blog gets placed very well in search engines. I can sit and read the report each week and laugh and laugh at what people searched for to find me. At least once or twice a week I get some variation of "How much Ativan does it take to kill yourself?" I'm sorry, I don't have the answer for that one. But I can tell you that the answer is "a shit ton" because a handful won't do it. Trust me.

While we're at it, Baby thinks what people google'd to find my blog isn't funny, either. That email report comes each Friday morning at about 6:30am, and she's just not in the mood to laugh at that time of day. She has no sense of humor. But again, that's not the reason I think it's a good idea.

So I've been sitting around trying to think of ways to use this Google angle to drive traffic to the blog. I could make fake posts claiming to have pictures of naked celebrities, but that's sort of cheating. People looking for that stuff will just immediately click away from the site. Something tells me that if you're into that stuff, you won't find me all that funny. I want people to happen across this and actually find something interesting to read. And this line of thinking is what led me to come up with my Good Idea.

You know how you're bored at work and you google yourself to see what comes up? You do, don't you? Cause Baby swears normal people don't do that. She will admit that maybe she has done it once or twice, but she insists that she doesn't do it regularly, and she's certainly never sat around googling kids she knew twenty five years ago to see whatever happened to them. But I do it all the time, and I'm sure other people do it, too. So here is the idea:

I'm thinking of making a blog post that is just a long list of the first and last name of everyone I can think of from my past. Friends, enemies, people I barely knew, kids I got high with, teachers, bosses, girls I had regrettable sex with, everybody. I would try, where possible, to group them with similar people. That way, they would see their name and other people they might remember, and they'd be hooked. They'd figure out who I was (how many people know more than one person named Bryce?), and maybe they'd laugh. Or maybe they'd try to kill me. It's certainly possible. But I'm protected by the internets, so they can't really do anything. And as Lady Tiara pointed out to me, it's not like I'd be saying anything about them, I would just include their name.

So I'm wondering, do you ever google yourself? And do you think this idea is stupid? Cause I think it's awesome. And by awesome I mean potentially very fucking dangerous. But maybe also probably funny. Yet mostly scary.

December 15, 2006 update:

I'm still on the fence about this. Lady Tiara raises a good point about people being Googled for job interviews. That's not something I had thought about. And a friend recently pointed out that you pretty much always Google anyone you're considering dating these days. I'll need to do some more thinking on it.

Pick A Winner

2006-11-30T08:03:00.000-08:00

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.

If Peeing Your Pants Is Cool, Consider Me Miles Davis

2006-11-29T09:07:00.000-08:00

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?

To: AllStaffDC Subject: Advice Priority: High

2006-11-28T12:34:00.000-08:00

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.

I'm On Your Internets, Stealing Your Funniez

2006-11-17T09:36:00.000-08:00

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.

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

2006-11-09T14:03:00.000-08:00

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.

Dentists Do, In Fact, Exist. And They Are So Not Awesome.

2006-10-11T12:02:00.000-07:00

My kid brother (who is twenty seven, but for reasons I will one day blog about will always be called 'kid') got married two weekends ago. We went, it was nice, blah blah blah. While I was mingling with the guests and doing the usher thing someone handed me a piece of gum. I don't chew gum, but hey, I was drunk. I put it in my mouth and then forgot it was there, so I spent the entire ceremony chewing it, then chiding myself to stop chewing it, then drunkenly forgetting I was supposed to be remembering to stop chewing, then hating myself for being a lush. Finally it was over, and we walked over to get our pictures taken. In that process, the gum sucked one of the fillings out of my head.

Uh oh.

I hate the dentist. But big deal, everybody hates the dentist. Let me explain: I hate the dentist so much I have convinced myself that he does not exist. I live in a complete state of denial about the entire field of oral medicine. I diligently brush my teeth twice a day (and sometimes more often), and I've even been known to floss several times a week. I actually enjoy it. Of course, it helps that I tell myself that I'm doing it to ward off the dentist, who has taken on a bogeyman stature in my terrified mind.

It's not that I'm afraid of the pain, because I'm not. I know from pain. I could write a book comparing the various emergency rooms in the DC area. I've had actual medical procedures where they give you something to bite on to help with the pain. I'm serious. The kind of thing where the doctor says, "Look, this is going to really hurt and that's fucked up and I'm sorry. I forgive you in advance for all the terrible things you're about to shout at me, but don't worry because you will pass out before the pain actually does in fact kill you. Are you ready?"

But anyway I'm getting ahead of myself. All you need to know now is that I hate the dentist but the lost filling meant I had to go.

Of course I put off going right away though. Throughout the week I kept running my tongue over the hole in my molar where the filling used to be, and I kept telling myself that because there was no pain, I would probably be okay. In fact, I was doing just that on Friday when I jarred what appeared to be an even bigger piece of the tooth or filling or whatever loose, and I realized I had to see the dentist immediately. I frantically called all the dentists I could find with downtown offices until someone agreed to see me, and I jumped in a cab and went straight over. In retrospect, this was a bad idea.

Normally when I go to the dentist I load up on Ativan or Xanax just to make it through the ordeal. Again, it's not the pain I'm concerned about. It's the actual sitting in the chair, the anticipation and the concern and the wondering. The knowledge that once you commit, you're in it for the long haul. You don't get up with a tooth half-filled and say, "I can't handle it anymore today Doc, let's finish up tomorrow." You're pretty much stuck, and it always gets worse before it gets better. But on this day, I didn't have time to prepare and I didn't have any drugs.

I make it in to see the dentist, and he tells me I need a root canal. Soon. There is a bit of a language barrier. More specifically, an accent barrier. But we manage to communicate across the cultural divide, as he has apparently been observing my worst nightmares and taking exceptionally fucking detailed notes. He shows me the xray that shows how dangerously close to the root the cavity is, and how it's about to start really hurting. He explains that he can fill it, but he may hit the nerve and that would be bad. I did not go to dental school, but I'm guessing that if the dentist says 'bad' what he means is 'fucking agony.' I agree to have it done, and he begins to get ready.

Me: "Wait wait wait wait. You mean today, right now?"

Dentist: "Yes"

Me: "Oh my god! What kind of drugs can you give me?"

Dentist: "Just the novocaine"

Me: "Are you kidding?! Can I go get drunk first?"

Dentist: "Is joke?"

Me: "No really"

But no, despite what you may have seen in the movies, the dentist won't let you get hammered before he works on you. So I had no choice but to sit there and tough it out like a man. I laid back in the chair, they gave me a bib and a pair of goggles. A fucking pair of goggles?! When did they start doing that? They put the topical stuff on my gums to numb them before the novocaine shots. And then, in a move of unprecedented cowardice, I jumped up from the chair and called the whole thing off. I stopped them before they even started it. I just couldn't do it. No drugs? Not even an iPod to block out the sound of the drill? You've got to be kidding me. No chance.

The dentist, to his credit, tried to use psychology on me. He sat me down and started talking about the procedure. The intricate details of scrubbing out the roots and nerves in the holes in my skull and filling them with metal. I'm guessing that was to de-mystify the operation and therefore give me confidence. And in a way, it worked. It made me 100% confident that I couldn't do it. I tried to talk myself down from the ledge, but there was no use. I had found my happy place, and it was anywhere but the dentist.

I'm sure they made bets after I left about whether I would come back for my 8am appointment the following Monday. But they lost, because I did. I took an entire handful of Ativan, a dose of Immodium (you think I'm kidding- I'm not) and my iPod. I was a zombie by the time I got there (and I walked through downtown in rush hour traffic, to boot), but I made it to the chair and just tuned out. He did his thing, and I hated every second of it.

The worst part about a root canal is that there are so many worst parts that you can't pick which one to hate the most. Ten thousands shots in your mouth, keeping your mouth open for three hours, the inexplicable parade of torture instruments you see the dentist and his assistant pass back and forth in front of your face each time you're stupid enough open your eyes. And oh yeah, let's not forget the noise, inside your head, of an instrument actually drilling into the bones of your skull. Have you thrown up yet? Wait until you find out what drilled bone smells like.

Three hours later, the dentist starts packing it up. And I swear to god, he says to me, "I have some bad news." Did you ever have the acute feeling that you wished you were dead? I'm not talking about your high school goth phase where nobody understands you but Robert Smith, and you'll teach those jocks and assholes and they'll all be really sorry when they're at your funeral and they read your suicide note and you blame them for everything. No, I'm talking the sudden, overwhelming urge to kill yourself rather than endure what's about to happen in the next ten seconds. What, pray tell, is the bad news?

"I not finish, you come back tomorrow."

God, are you listening? It's not fucking funny anymore. I'm over it. If this is the way it's going to be, I'm checking out. If you thought the suicide note to the jocks was bad, wait til you hear what I've got to say to you. Clear your calendar.

(mouth full of gauze, head full of Ativan, soul full of generations of suffering condensed into three hours)

"Why?"

"Your tooth, it is problems."

You don't fucking say.

Turns out your average molar has three roots. This particular tooth has four. That means more work, more drilling, another morning at the dentist. The procedure has also become complicated because I have begun bleeding too much. Again, I'm no dentist, but I'm not exactly shocked that there has been some blood loss. He explains that he has filled the holes in my head with gauze, used pinball machine parts, and whatever else he had on hand. But if I come back tomorrow and be a good boy, he will try to finish. He actually said try, and he actually smiled when he said it. So, utterly despondent, I gather my stuff and walk home.

This time, the earliest I could get an appointment was 10:30am. Ever the optimist (that is so funny if you know her), Baby had the nerve to say, "Well, at least you can sleep in." Cause, you know, it's easy to sleep when you know you've got a root canal scheduled in the morning. But I took a potentially lethal dose of Ativan (how many milligrams are in a handful, anyway?) and walked back over to the dentist and finished the job.

What happened over the course of those two and a half hours during the second stint is somewhat of a blur. Crazy as it sounds, the combination of extreme anxiety, Ativan, and a veritable shit ton of novocaine knocked me out. Maybe my body just couldn't handle it anymore and I had no choice but to just lay there and take it like a bitch. I remember the dentist saying, "This part maybe is hurting" and then putting his hand on my forehead. I then remember crying out like a little girl before going limp. After that I just didn't fucking care anymore.

When he was finished, he told me about the necessary follow-up appointments and the concerns he had about the tooth immediately behind the one he just worked on. Apparently it's similar to the bad one, and it may need a root canal of its own. Consider this the first chapter of my suicide note. Are you there god? It's me, bryc3...

W, GTFO PLZ? K THX BYE

2006-10-05T11:05:00.000-07:00

This one isn't at all funny. But honestly, how often do you get a soapbox? Plus shit and goddamn it and crap and exclamation points! I'm too pissed not to rant.

I walked into the kitchen at work today and found a group of people looking at the windows. I walked over, and they told me that George W. Bush had just gone into the Department of Education (jokes for days) across the street. To protect W, the police and Secret Service had closed off the entire block. They also stopped people from leaving the surrounding buildings, trapping more than a few people in the Starbucks on the corner. My fellow pinko commie co-workers and I exchanged more than a few jokes about W as we waited for him to leave, in hopes of catching a glance. First he tricked us (and any lurking snipers) by sending out the double that looks just like him and moves to the dummy limo (aren't they all dummy limos when W rides in them?). The next time you bitch about your job, re-evaulate. You could be the man that not only looks like W, but whose sole job is to get shot in the face by a terrorist so W doesn't have to. Those TPS reports suddenly seem a lot more fun, don't they?

So anyway W finally comes outside, waves to the photographers, and gets in the limo and leaves with the motorcade. If you live in DC, you see these things from time to time. Having grown up here, I've been seeing them for years. And I tell you what, W's is mighty impressive. Far longer than, say, Reagan's, and that motherfucker got shot here! If you've never seen W's parade, it features truck after truck full of soldiers pointing fucking machine guns out the window at people standing on the street. They're not specifically aiming at any one person (unless you fit the profile, of course), but rather just training the gun from one person to the next to make sure nobody tries any funny business. I don't know about you, but I sure do feel safe about the state of our freedom when there is a fucking gun pointed at me. Thankfully W escaped unharmed. I hate the man to no end, but only a fool would want anything terrible to happen to him. Have you seen the demons who are on deck? Yikes.

But all these thoughts of W got me thinking that I should write him a letter. Here it is:

Dear Mr. Bush, you go on and on about preserving freedom and defending democracy, but you drive around in a fucking tank just a few blocks from your big White House. What's that say about winning the war on terror? If you need a private army to guard you just a stone's throw from the Capitol, how must your troops in the thick of the shit in Iraq feel every day? Have you ever thought about that? No, of course you haven't. Because you're a coward and an idiot.

You are also, however, our President. I keep hoping that one day you do something worry of living up to that title. Your father was on the Today show this morning, with your remarkably unattractive sister (seriously, what's up with that?). Dad was blathering on about something to do with Jeb, about how he's doing a heckuva job and all that bullshit you guys tell each other all the time. And then something truly scary dawned on me. I found myself remembering your dad fondly in comparison to you. Can you seriously have fucked up the country so badly that you've made your own father look good?

Do us all a favor. Stop even bothering with the appearances in DC. Nobody believes you're actually getting anything done. No more photo opps, no more press conferences, no more trips to Nats games. We spend way too much local money protecting you, and none of us likes waiting in traffic while you and your army drive by. We want you to be safe, we don't want anything to happen to you. This isn't because we like you very much, mind you, but only because we hate the men behind you far, far more. So protect your neck, and go back to Texas. Take Allen, Foley and the rest of your henchmen and hole yourselves up at the ranch. We've got work to do fixing everything you've broken, and the clock is ticking.

If we don't write then we're alright.

LYLAS,

bryc3

How Did She Ever Live Without Me?

2006-09-26T08:42:00.000-07:00

As a member of our household, I have a certain number of jobs. We're not talking about a large number of jobs, and they are definitely not very complicated. But I lie to myself and pretend they're essential, and that I'm pulling my share of the weight around the house. That process makes me feel better when I'm sitting on my ass playing my 9th online poker tournament of the day while Baby is mopping the floor.

I used to actually be much worse. When I lived with my family (my mom, then later my kid brother), I would avoid any and all household chores until they reached a breaking point. Things like making a tower of garbage in the trashcan rather than taking it out to the curb, or piling the dishes in the sink until the cabinets were completely bare. I knew that, eventually, someone would take care of them for me. And it worked.

This really drove my ex fiance nuts. I'm fairly sure that one of her motivations in our break up was her very real fear that she was going to spend the rest of her life cleaning up after me. She dodged a bullet on that one. Although after we broke up I lived on my own for the first time in my life. And in that time I gained an appreciation for housework. Turns out there isn't a magic fairy who comes along to take the trash out. In fact, when I spoke with the ex a few months after we'd split up, I proudly told her that she'd be happy to know that there were currently no dirty dishes in my sink. Her response: "My compliments to your girlfriend." Say all you want about Osama bin Megan, but at least she was pretty funny.

So I've tried to make a point to be better for Baby. I always ask about my chores, and I try to take pride in the few that I have. And I've got a pretty sweet deal, as I don't have many. They fall into four basic categories: reaching, fixing, checking and mashing.

Reaching is the easiest, as all I have to do is, well, reach. I'm nearly six one, so I can reach whatever is on the top shelf with relative ease. Baby cannot, so just by virtue of raising my hands above my head I have demonstrated how she couldn't possibly live without me.

Fixing isn't so bad either, as it usually involves the computer or the TV. Since Baby does know a lot about these things, I get to impress her with my finely honed skills. I also add in big words that make me look that much more knowledgeable and buy me extra time. "Sure Honey, I can move the DVD player into the bedroom. But it might have to wait a few hours, as I'll need to find a flux capacitor in my toolbox. Can it wait til after the Nats game?" Baby knows she is not! allowed! to touch! my toolbox! so this one always works.

Checking is the most dangerous of my jobs. Our 'neighborhood in transition' creates a fair amount of strange noises in the night. Usually it's just hookers in the alley, but the other night Baby woke up to the unmistakable sound of a police dog, apparently eating a bad guy. It's my job to go out there and make sure everything is ok. This is a sucker job if there ever was one, as my real role is to occupy my own murderer long enough for Baby to get away. She's sneaky like that.

Mashing is my most essential job. We live in a pretty nice building, but we're in the basement and we're in the city, so we get the occasional bug. I wouldn't say we have an insect problem by any means, but we get spiders and silverfish and a stray roach from time to time. I have to rescue the Princess by sending them to bug hell. It's usually not so bad. I am, after all, a big tough man.

But a few weeks ago Baby came home from jogging and woke me up in a panic. She explained that as she was coming back into our apartment, a roach that was out in the hallway crawled through the doorway. Our front door is near the back door of our building, and I imagine it must have come in through there. Half asleep, I got out of bed and got a trusty wad of toilet paper to save the day. I walked out into the living room and realized immediately I was in over my head. This wasn't your average roach. It was one of those big, fuck all city roaches you see on the sidewalk. If you've never seen one, they are, I'm crapping you negative, two inches long. The kind of bugs that crunch when you step on them with your foot. There was no fucking way I was going to kill that thing with toilet paper. I was certain I'd feel it's heart beating as I smashed it. And, I have to admit, I wasn't entirely sure roaches of that size don't have some kind of self defense mechanism. I wasn't trying to find out. So I did what any man would have done- I got the vacuum cleaner and I killed that son of a bitch good. Unfortunately it was too early in the morning to have a beer, even for a big man like myself. So I just went back to sleep, knowing I had saved my girl's life. And, to her credit, Baby confirmed that I am indeed her knight in shining armor.

It's not always that easy though.

Yesterday morning we were sitting in our kitchen, having breakfast. Baby has her toast on a paper towel, and she looks down and goes apeshit. A bug, and no bigger than a ladybug, is crawling across what she had been using as her plate. I spring to the rescue. I do this thing I do where I start having a conversation with myself. I'm wondering aloud what kind of bug it is, where it came from, what it's after. It looks a bit like a tick, but that's kind of weird. Do they have ticks in the city? How did it get in here? This isn't an inner monologue, mind you, I'm actually having this conversation with myself. Then it dawns on me that I'm supposed to be doing my job. I spring to action, and I mash him with my index finger. He gives a satisfying little pop, and blood squirts everywhere. Ah ha! It was a tick! I triumphantly hold it up for Baby to see. "Look, Princess, I have saved you! And my powers of deduction are razor sharp. It was indeed a tick, and I have slayed him. Have no fear, all is well. Rejoice!"

I expect her to weep with appreciation for my bravery, to call her girlfriends and sing my praises. I consider, once again, discussing the possibility of her starting a blog dedicated to how awesome I am. I am SO about to get laid.

She looks at me, looks at the dead bug, looks back at me, sighs, rolls her eyes, and walks away.

I think it's so sweet that sometimes she's so overcome with my awesomeness that she can't find the words to express herself. You know, when she finished that eye roll thing they were pointing toward the bedroom. Maybe I should follow her in there...

I Can't Talk To Girls

2006-09-22T11:02:00.000-07:00

Contrary to what you might have heard, I don't have any game. None. I have absolutely no idea how to pick up women. No clue. I've always done the friends first, dates later approach. Never in my life have I had the courage to just walk up to a girl and talk to her. I always have some other way in, usually being introduced by a friend or something like that. I'm trying to remember, but I'm fairly sure I have never gotten a girl's phone number at a bar. I certainly know I've never asked for one.

It's not like I have any interest in meeting women right now. Don't get me wrong. I'm gay for Baby on levels that are far too embarrassing to even talk about. But I've come to realize, now more than ever, that if I ever have to try to pick up a woman again, I'm fucked.

Baby has cleaned me up a lot. She convinced me to grow my hair out, get contacts, and buy some clothes that fit. I fought it tooth and nail, but she was right. Something she did is working, because more women look at me now than ever did before. I always kinda figured I would never be that guy that catches anyone's attention. I'm ok once I get to talking and telling funny stories and all, but I'd given up on ever being that guy a woman sees and decides she wants to talk to. I'm not all banged up or anything, but I'm certainly not hot. But Baby has shown me how to fake it, and I'll be damned if it doesn't work.

But that leads me to the problem. What the hell are you supposed to do when you see the girl is looking at you? If I pass a woman on the Metro platform, and I see she is looking at me, what do I do? I know I know, I have a girlfriend. So of course I'm not going to do anything. That's not what I mean. What I mean is, what does that cool guy that gets all the chicks do in that situation? Smile? Look disinterested? Whip it out? I honestly have no idea.

It's even worse in a bar. Even back before Baby did what she did, I would occasionally make eye contact with a cute girl. But I could never muster the courage to go talk to her. Ever. I could never come up with anything that didn't sound hopelessly cheesy or obviously suggestive. I'm not the kind of guy that can deliver a line. What is an average guy supposed to do? Woman say they're looking for a nice guy, but everyone knows that's not true. Because each of us can name 10 nice guys we know that never get laid. And then we can name 10 assholes we know that go home with a different girl every weekend.

What I want to know is, what does the girl in the bar want to hear? And I don't mean the sorority type with aspirations of landing a man with a crew cut. I'm talking about the intelligent, funny, charming women. I can tell you this much- they don't want you to just smile and look away, embarrassed. Because I've been trying that approach my entire adult life and it's gotten me nowhere.

Wait A Minute Wait A Minute Wait A Minute- You Took A Dump Where?!

2006-08-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

I get pissed about things. Like, really pissed. I scream, I yell, I say absolutely horrible things I later regret (sometimes). I throw stuff, I break stuff, I'm generally terrible. I am by no means proud of this. I realize I have trouble controlling my anger, and I've worked hard to keep it in check. I have raised my voice exactly once to Baby, and that was in the middle of the "Biggest Fight We Have Ever Had" and she was yelling as well. And even though that fight was horrible, I didn't say anything abusive or hurl any insults or accusations I would later have to take back. I was just mad. So a year and a half with no other outbursts is nothing short of miraculous.

With that as the background, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the heavens that Baby was out of town three weeks ago. Because things almost got ugly. And it has taken this long to find the patience to tell the story.

Baby was in Chicago with family and friends at Lollapalooza, and I was stuck at home taking care of the cats. I wasn't stoked. Baby will tell anyone that listens that I hate them and I wish they were dead. That's not technically correct. If they were dead, Baby would be really upset. I wouldn't like that. But hate them? Check. Wish she had never owned them in the first place? Double check, circle, exclamation point, underline.

She adores these cats, treats them as if they were her children. The disgusting things they do and eject don't bother her in the slightest. She loves their neverending supply of cat hair, their incessant vomiting, their utter lack of shame when they lick their genitals. Recently the more tame cat of the pair, Lola, has developed a condition I've taken to calling Zoo Ass. How a cat of that size can produce turds that smell that bad is beyond me. The homeless guys that take dumps in the park don't smell that bad, and I've seen the things they eat. Baby will clean the litterbox, replete with the byproducts of Zoo Ass, and put everything in a plastic bag next to the trash can in the kitchen. The fucking kitchen! They don't make a pair of rubber gloves thick enough for me to take that load of trash out, so it just sits there giving me toxoplasmosis. That's about how far apart Baby and I are on the subject of what she calls "the princesses."

These god-forsaken animals and I have found a way to co-exist, we've come to an understanding. I stay as far the fuck away from them as our apartment will allow, and they make every effort to be as close to me as possible at all times. I don't understand it. If god should someday decide, in his infinite kindness, to give me the ability to lick my own balls, I would probably do it in private. But Lola and Jezebel (the most aptly named cat ever), make a point to puke, shit, shed, and drool on everything I hold dear, right in front of my face. Baby was gone less than an hour before Lola threw up on my Gamecube controller. And that was the best thing she did all weekend.

As Baby has never even introduced the concept of discipline to these animals, they have enjoyed free reign in destroying everything she has owned over the course of their eight malice-filled years on earth. Every piece of furniture is in tatters, every square inch of fabric covered in layers of cat hair and dander. In fact, the imminent destruction of everything I own was the sole reason I was originally hesitant to move in with Baby. But I told myself I was being silly. I decided I could train these horrible bastards. I am a complete fucking idiot. We talked about getting the cats a scratching post for them, but figured it was a waste of money. I told Baby that a surefire way to get them to use it was for me to treat it as if I cared about it, but frankly that's an experiment in spite that's probably not worth the expense.

About six months before we moved in together I treated myself to a brand new bed and boxspring. I've had back problems for a few years now, and my parents offered to give me a few hundred bucks to buy a better bed. I took that money and applied a considerably larger sum of my own to buy what is, in my estimation, the most comfortable bed on earth. Can you tell I'm proud of it? But Baby loves it as well, and I brought it to the relationship like a dowry.

The cats immediately set up shop under the bed, as it's the darkest place in the apartment. I put boxes and things under there to keep them out, because it's a pain in the ass to clean under there after they've been camping out. But they just squeezed their way in between the boxes, or nudged them all out of the way. So I gave up. What else could I do?

The first night Baby was at Lollapalooza I fell asleep with the TV on. I woke up around 8am, hungover, to a strange sort of scratching sound. The TV was on but I could tell it wasn't coming from there. I sat up and Jezebel hauled ass out from under the bed and into the living room. I went back to sleep. I woke up a few hours later to feed them, and Jezebel didn't come out to eat. I went looking for her, and I found what she'd been doing. She'd clawed a hole out of the boxspring from underneath, maybe the size of a baseball. As she's a gigantic fatty (I bet you could have guessed that Baby doesn't exactly feed them a healthy diet- Jezebel's favorite is McDonald's french fries), I didn't even consider the possibility that she had climbed through the hole. I went around to the other side of the bed to check over there and I heard her hissing at me.

Now let me explain about the hissing. Jezebel hisses at everyone and everything. I'm sure that, in her kitty eyes, she's the baddest motherfucker that ever lived. But in reality, she is an incredibly overweight sissy of a housecat that has never, in her entire life, put a foot outside her apartment. The hissing just pisses me off. You're the fattest cat anyone has ever seen and I'm still ten times heavier than you, you piece of shit. I can kill you with my bare hands and make mittens to use to strangle your sister.

So anyway, hissing. But I couldn't figure out where she was. She does both scratch and bite, so I wasn't stoked about sticking my face under the bed to take a look. Still, the hissing was making me mad and I was sure she was up to no good. I got down on my hands and knees and realized that not only had she climbed into the hole in the boxspring, but she had worked her way all the way across to the other side of the bed and had apparently gotten stuck. Usually she runs when she's been caught doing something bad, but I could see her in there, her big fat ass causing the fabric to sag. I got worried, fearing she was stuck and had somehow hurt herself. I considered calling Baby, but figured it was best to try to get her out on my own. I poked her, I yelled at her, and I finally crawled under the bed and actually lifted her, inch by inch, until she got back to the hole and made a run for it. I chased her around the apartment and cornered her, and I just unloaded on her. Literally.

We keep a squirtgun full of water for situations like this. Jezebel hates the squirtgun. When she gets squirted she knows she has done something wrong. So she got more than a mouthful of water, and a serious lecture. I would never actually physically harm these cats, as they're only animals. But I gotta tell you that shooting Jezebel in the face with a squirtgun brings a level of satisfaction that honestly scares me. When I'm done punishing her I put the gun down and go to find Lola. I want her to know that all the yelling is not about her, and try to make her feel better. She's incredibly timid when she's scared, and I didn't want her freaking out on me. But I looked and looked and I couldn't find her anywhere. Exasperated from my fight with Jezebel, I just gave up. I went back into the bedroom to lie down.

I must have fallen asleep, because I awoke to the terrifying and unmistakable smell of Zoo Ass. The cats, to their credit, are generally good about using the litter box, so this was unusual. I searched the bedroom and couldn't find Lola anywhere. To be certain that Zoo Ass wasn't contagious, I went to find Jezebel. I found her alright, crouching under the kitchen table. She obviously hadn't forgotten about the squirtgun incident, because she literally spit at me, like a fucking camel, when I got close to her. I didn't even know cats could do that. Having learned something new, I made an informed decision to immediately stop fucking with Jezebel.

Back in the bedroom the smell had gotten worse. With an overwhelming sense of dread I checked under the bed and discovered that a) Lola was now stuck, and b) Lola had taken a dump inside the motherfucking boxspring.

I lost it.

I shouted. I threw whatever I happened to be holding (I don't remember). I tore the covers off the bed. I lifted the mattress off the frame. I lifted the boxspring, with Lola still in it, and turned it on it's side. I heard her dig her claws in and climb, upside down, to the part of it that was resting on the ground. I heard the turds rattle around. I swear to god I heard the blood boil in my ears. I went to get a knife.

I learned that I am a man of tremendous restraint. I opened my preposterously sharp knife and cut the fabric from the bottom of the boxspring. Inexplicably, I took care not to fucking murderize Lola. There is more than one way to skin a cat. I considered all of them. But in the end I cut every inch of fabric from underneath, giving them nowhere to hide and no place to take their secret dumps. Lola, obviously terrified, didn't move the entire time. She cowered in the bottom of the boxspring, her turds of hell in piles around her. I finally had to flip the boxspring yet again and force her to drop out. Of course, I also dumped the turds onto my carpet.

You've had bad days in your life, days where everything seemed to go wrong. But honestly, has it ever been so bad that the best thing to happen to you all day was to have the good fortune of accidentally discovering an easier way to clean up catshit?

A Cry For (Marketing) Help

2006-08-21T07:38:00.000-07:00

I dream the big dreams. I'm a man of ideas, a virtual wellspring of outside the box. I am, fairly regularly, struck with brainstorms so revolutionary, so remarkable, so sure thing that it's practically a miracle that I'm not obscenely wealthy. But it dawned on me today that it's no coincidence that I haven't struck it rich. Something has been holding me down. And, for the sake of argument, let's rule out the abject laziness and utter lack of anything resembling ambition. Instead, let's blame girls.

The dreaded ex, Osama bin Megan, was particularly adept at destroying my dreams (go figure). Over the course of our something like twelve years of sometimes loving, most times hating each other she shot down the following three brilliant ideas that would (or will) later make someone else rich:

1. The bendable toothbrush. I actually got so psyched about this idea that I made a special trip to the grocery store AND the drug store to see if any such product was on the market. It wasn't. I called her and told her about it. She scoffed. Now they're everywhere, and I don't have a dime. Just think of all the relationship counseling we could have afforded with those millions. Yeah, I know, probably not enough. Still, I blame you.

2. The reverse microwave. Everyone claims to have invented this, so I don't know if I can really get all that upset about it. But I'm putting it on the list because, honestly, there can never be enough reasons to blame another people for my station in life. Honestly I can't even figure out why she wasn't more supportive of this one, as it would have been the perfect place to store her cold, black heart.

3. Band Aids for black people. This one is really good. At least ten years ago it occurred to me that it was awfully racist to only have Band Aids in that fleshy color that matches Johnson & Johnson's vision of the ideal master race (that's right, I said it). What we need are some Band Aids for people of color. The recent rapid growth of the Hispanic population in America only makes the need more urgent. And here is the real genius- imagine the secondary market for white kids who want to be black? We could have made billions. But alas, she said it was stupid. Doesn't that make her a racist? Yeah, I think so, too.

I thought I had found a true supporter in Baby. She's been so great to me in so many ways, of course she would be willing to do all of the legwork (and research, and investing, and production, and marketing, and so forth) for my next big idea. Boy, was I wrong. Here is the deal:

Baby watches the Today show every morning before work. I have no choice but to get roped into it. My least favorite guests are the people pushing self-help books for every imaginable malady. So I'm watching one of these idiots this morning and I realize I'm imminently qualified to write my own self-help book. I have issues doctors haven't even found names for yet, and I've overcome no small amount of personal misfortune. Plus my self-righteous streak is a mile wide. Fuck it, I says to myself, I'm writing a book.

I explain the concept to Baby, and she doesn't even consider it. In fact, she flat out dismisses it. "You're not gonna stay pissed about this like the black Band Aids thing, are you?" Fine, I will do it without her help.
Here is my idea, tell me if I'm an idiot:

My self-help book will be titled "Things Will Probably Be OK (But They Could Get Much, Much Worse)." It will be a smartass' guide to dealing with anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, hypochondria, and depression. Each chapter will contain one of the valuable lessons I've learned in life. A selection of chapter titles:

"Never, Ever Graduate From College"

"Germs Can Certainly Kill You, But So Can Everything Else. As Such, You're Only Wasting Precious Seconds By Washing Your Hands Every Ten Minutes"

"Can You Please Explain To Me Why You're Afraid To Touch The Doorknob In A Public Restroom, But You're Perfectly Fine Having Unprotected Sex With Girls You've Only Just Met When You're Out Drinking?"

"Finding A Girlfriend Who Has Her Own Well-Documented Issues Might Seem Like A Good Idea In Theory, As You Will Have Someone To Commiserate With. But In The Long Run You Will Realize That You Hate Other Crazy People Even More Than You Hate Yourself"

And finally-

"Don't Tell Anyone I Told You This, But Suicide Is Always An Option"

I'd be stupid not to do this, right?

Dear Washington Nationals, Go To Hell

2006-08-16T11:49:00.000-07:00

Here are ten things the Washington Nationals can do to stop sucking.

1. Start winning games. I realize this might seem like an obvious solution, but apparently it has not dawned on the Nats that the object of baseball is to score more runs than your opponent.

2. Refuse to let anyone into RFK stadium wearing a jersey worn by the opposing team. This one should be easy enough to enforce. When the Yankees, Mets or Phillies are in town, you can effectively keep the gates closed. No one is coming to root for the Nats anyway.

3. Move the team to somewhere in the vicinity of New Jersey. We're not talking about a serious downgrade here, as the team currently plays on the banks of the Anacostia River. And judging by the way these fat sons of bitches from Jersey pound hotdogs and swill Miller Lites at games when the Mets are in town, the team stands to make a fortune at the concession stands.

4. Consider fixing the clock high above home plate that has been broken since my childhood. This would be particularly helpful for the 20,000 Virginians who come to each game, as it will help them get home in time to watch The O'Reilly Factor.

5. Install microphones at every concession stand, and monitor all conversations. Track down every fat, white asshole from the suburbs who is rude to the kids working behind the counter. Take their privileged, ungrateful children out of whatever private school they attend and force them to grow up in Southeast. Make them work their summers at a grill in 100 degree heat cooking hotdogs for insensitive assholes for minimum wage. Then, once they've gained perspective, fucking murder every single one of them.

6. Find the idiot who spent money fixing the PA system that blares music throughout the upper deck, and fire him. We liked it better when all we could hear was the crowd and the game. No one needed to hear Babe Ruth's theme song to know he was coming to the plate.

7. Speaking of music, be made aware that the lyrics to Fall Out Boy's "Sugar, We're Goin' Down" are "...and sugar we're goin' down swingin'." Someone tell catcher Brian Schneider, who has recently 'raised' his batting average to .236, that he may want to pick out a new theme song.

8. Find the guy who was selling t-shirts in front of the stadium this weekend that simply said "Mets Suck," with the sales pitch "It's never too early to start teaching your kids poor sportsmanship" and give him a job. He's better than anyone you have in your marketing department.

9. Consider promotions and games between innings for people who don't happen to be sitting in the ten most expensive sections in the stadium. As thrilled as that lawyer's kid who gets a free t-shirt from Screech every game seems to be, I'm willing to bet the Boys Club of Northeast that's sitting in the upper deck would appreciate it more.

10. If you have bobbleheads next year, and you make the last one of the set Screech, but you make it only available to kids under 12, and you don't advertise that fact, and season ticket holders show up with a screaming hangover and don't get one, and then they show up on eBay for $115 two days later, I'm going to kidnap one of YOUR goddamn children and get my fucking doll. Watch me.

It's Even Hotter In Hell, You'll See

2006-08-03T13:12:00.000-07:00

More short ones-

This might come as a shock to everyone, but it gets hot in DC every August. I know that sounds crazy, but it's true. And sometimes, it gets really hot. Other times not so much. And we measure the temperature through something called an average. See, actual temperatures fluctuate around the average. So some days we're above, some days we're below. When it's ten degrees hotter than usual, that's not an emergency. They don't cut into the Simpsons with Breaking! News! Updates! when it's 68 in April. So they probably shouldn't do it when it's 98 in August. I appreciate that you're sweating, and you're pissed. I hope it gets worse and you fucking move. Because if I see one more fatty on TV bitching about the unbearable heat I'm going to scream. We all feel really sorry for you, because you're braving the oppressive elements to make your daily slouch from your McMansion in Fairfax to your SUV in the driveway, and the trek from your covered parking garage in Reston to the 68 degree mausoleum-styled nuclear missile building defense contractor's factory of death where you earn your six figure income defrauding decent Americans of their freedom and liberating Iraqis of their lives. Fuck off. Sweat with the rest of us.

--

I got stuck in the elevator in my office at about 8am on Monday. When I was younger I suffered from acute agoraphobia. I can safely say I don't any more. We were probably only stuck for about a half hour, but there was no ventilation and the two women in there with me were handling it with varying degrees of insanity. One woman kept drinking her hot tea from Starbuck's to stay 'hydrated.' The other kept calling the emergency help desk on the elevator phone thing. Each time the operator said, "Help is on the way, call back in 3 to 5 minutes to check in." Each time the lady waited 90 seconds and called again. I stripped down to my tshirt to try to cool off and called Baby to curse my luck. We were finally 'rescued' when a repairman, without warning, made the elevator drop a floor and a half and let us out. I thought for sure we were plummeting to our deaths. But alas we lived. Once we got our he informed us that due to security measures, we couldn't use the stairs to go UP to our offices. We had no choice but to get back on the elevator. Awesome. I finally got to our office and passed a VP in the hallway. I was covered in sweat and wearing a tshirt. A hour later HR sent an email to all staff members reminding us we must stick to our business casual dress code even in the heat. I hit Reply All but quickly hit Delete. I'm telling you, it was close though.

--

Baby is leaving for Lollapalooza this afternoon, and she won't be back until Monday. I literally have no idea what to do with myself. I don't know what I'm going to eat. I don't know where I'm going to go. I don't know what I'm allowed to watch on television. I don't know where the following things are: cat food, cleaning products, stove, dignity. She's actually going back to Chicago again next weekend. If I don't die of scurvy it will be a miracle.

--

Twice now in the past month or so I have been on a Metro train with a guy holding a bag of rotting fish. The first time was before a Nats game, when I picked up Baby at Federal Triangle. The smell of fish was overpowering on the platform, but we figured it was something at the station and we could escape it when we got on the train. The combination of rush hour and the Nats crowd made it hard to tell where the smell was coming from, so we just jumped in the first car of the first train that came by. We were packed in, but I was positive that I could still smell it. Baby tried to convince me that it was just still in our noses from the platform, but I could still smell it over the general reek of rush hour Metro. Sure enough, when we finally got to RFK a guy got off the train carrying a plastic shopping back that must have been the source. This is not a fishy smell as if he'd spent the day fishing and had his catch in his bag, mind you. This was at least a day old, and rancid. Same situation (different guy) happened a week or so later, this time between L'Enfant and Convention Center. Same plastic bag. What the fuck is going on here? Can you imagine what would possess you to bring rancid fish on a Metro train? Was this an act of terrorism or something?

A Series Of Updates, None Of Which Are Very Funny

2006-07-25T13:42:00.000-07:00

Nothing new going on really. A few funny things have happened recently. Not haha funny. More like yikes funny.

One day last week the blind woman that makes the same Metro commute I do got on the train right as the doors were about to shut. I had long since sat down, and someone sat next to me in the aisle seat. This woman (who I once saw trip another young girl with her cane/stick/poker thing at the L'Enfant station- awesome) makes it onto the train and tries to fumble for a seat. Nobody gives her one. How classy is that? So she has to try to find her way down the aisle with her poker and she ends up just fucking ringing her head on the center pole. I mean, it sounded like a fucking church bell. I couldn't help it, I laughed. But come on, it was pretty funny. Of course I know I'm going to hell, but no way I can be as bad as the people who couldn't be bothered to let her have their seats. But wait, I did immediately wonder if maybe she hit her head so hard that she could see again. Okay, maybe I'm just as bad as the rest of them.

The other day at work I (and everyone else in the company, inappropriately) received an email advertising a pair of tickets to see the Indigo Girls at Wolf Trap. I was on the phone with Baby at the time, so I asked her in my always inappropriately loud voice if she wanted them. Baby likes one female singer. Joan Jett. That's it, that's the list. Indigo Girls is not exactly her thing, but we had a laugh because neither of us knew the Indigo Girls were even still alive. The following day the girl that sits directly across from me was telling a friend who dropped by how much she loved the Indigo Girls show last night and, like, oh my god thank you so much for the tickets!

I had extra tickets to the Nats game on Sunday and nobody to go with. So I screwed up my courage and went by myself. I have never been to anything like that (including movies) by myself before, so this was quite an accomplishment for me. I celebrated by selling my three extra tickets for beer money and drinking by myself in beloved Section 470. Not long after I sat down the people who ended up buying my tickets from a scalper showed up. We shared a laugh, and the woman with them swore she knew me from somewhere. After a lot of guessing it turns out she's seen me at the Black Cat before. No shock there. I spend most of the afternoon talking to her fiance, but a good deal of the time speaking with her as well. They've both very nice. As the game ends we're all pretty drunk, and we shake hands and exchange nice to meet yous. She then kisses me on the cheek. Awkward! This woman isn't European, and we're at a baseball game and sweating, not in some hipster hang out. I had no idea what to do, I was literally paralyzed. And from the look on the fiance's face, he wasn't stoked either. What the fuck was that all about?

At the same game I stumbled to the bathroom and somehow ran into the latch that they must apparently sometimes use to lock the entire bathroom. I use this bathroom 20 times a week, and I'd never noticed it before. It's on the outside door that leads into the concourse, and it's jagged and rusty. It took a chunk out of my arm. I am, without a doubt, dying of hepatitis and lord knows what else. Seriously, every time I think about it I want to pass out.

News reports came out yesterday warning that the drug I take to treat my leukemia causes congestive heart failure in a small number of people who take the drug. Because hypochondriacs with leukemia got nothing else to worry about. Concerned friends sent me the news articles all day. Luckily for my hypochondria, the symptoms of congestive heart failure include really distinct things like being tired and sometimes coughing. Each time a new email came in I climbed a little further out on the ledge. But then my dad called me to tell me he'd heard that my drug might cause congestion, so I should be careful. Thanks pops, good looking out.

Midget Porn, While Awesome, Is Not For Me. Thanks Though.

2006-07-14T13:08:00.000-07:00

Baby made a very astute observation the other day. "All your friends are assholes" she says. Short, direct, and absolutely true.

At some point, many years ago, some still-unknown friend put my name and address on some porn mailing list as a joke. And not good porn, either. We're talking low budget, weird stuff. Midgets, old ladies, pregnant ladies, she-males- you name it. If it people whack off to it, they sell it. Awesome. Mind you, we used to do that stuff all the time. Wait, not whack off! Ok yeah, I guess we did ('did,' who am I kidding?) do that all the time. But no, about the mailing lists. I can't even imagine the postage on the metric tons of filth I had delivered to the fathers of all the girls that ever dumped me. But the statute of limitations has passed on that (almost), and anyway that's probably untraceable.

Back to the story.

So periodically I get these gnarly fliers and print catalogs that have pictures of the covers of all these movies. They come in a thin, paper envelope that I'm sure is deliberately just see-through enough for you to be able to tell there is dirty shit going inside. Even better, there is a customer number right above my name and address on the mailing label. This gives the appearance that I've purchased something from them in the past. Nice touch, but everyone knows that only amateurs actually buy porn. Why do you think God invented the interweb?

Anyway, these catalogs have found me everywhere I've moved. Because they're in the envelopes I guess they get the forwarding orders. It's honestly been like 8 years by now. If I don't have hepatitis just from handling the fucking things it's going to be a miracle. You'd think they'd give up as I never buy anything. But nope, I guess they're waiting for that one particularly hot cover shot of Pregnant Bitches to spur an impulse buy. Thankfully I've held out so far.

They were a nuisance enough when I lived alone. But now that Baby goes through the mail I've decided I need to get rid of these once and for all. I made that decision when Baby opened one and spent the next twenty minutes critiquing the pictures. I decided that if Baby can't make midget porn hot, nobody can. Plus if she gets hooked on this stuff that just can't end well.

So I called up the phone number that's on the front of the envelope, but it went right to voicemail. And by voicemail, I mean some dude's answering machine. No chance I'm leaving a message. So I went to their internets. Lo and behold they have all kinds of good porn on the website. These girls are cute. And not pregnant. Why the hell don't I get catalogs full of this stuff?! What kind of fucked up mailing list did someone sign me up for? "No, no, bryc3 doesn't like hot chicks. He likes fatties." God damn it.

I find a "Comments" form and send them an email. "Dear So and So, please remove bryc3 from your mailing list because he's dead. Thanks. But PS, his surviving relatives wouldn't mind getting the hot chick porn catalog. And does he get some kind of long-time member discount?" Just kidding about that last part. Except not really.

I never got a reply to that email, but I haven't received any new catalogs, either. Baby did call a locksmith and had a special doorknob placed a few feet below the one on our front door. I wonder what that's all about.

What Do You Mean I Grab Your Butt Too Much? I LOVE You!

2006-07-10T11:49:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm weird. Maybe I'm a jerk and a pervert and disrespectful. Maybe I have problems. Or maybe I'm normal. I honestly don't know.

Doesn't everyone else grab their girlfriend every chance they get?

Not in public. Not in front of her parents or our friends. Not in her nono parts. But definitely in our apartment, often about her curves, and always when I haven't seen her in a while. I simply cannot keep my hands off of her.

It doesn't bother her. She teases me about it. She thinks I'm weird and she laughs and tells me to keep my hands to myself. But she doesn't get mad, or push my hands away. I think she secretly likes the attention, and like I said it's not overly sexual or suggestive.

Yet the other day I playfully suggested I would write in my blog to ask if this was normal behavior. She was all for it. Am I weird? Do you do this with your girlfriend? Does your boyfriend do that with you? Is it good? Bad? Do I need therapy? Am I some kind of sex pervert?

Is this the kind of thing she's going to tolerate while we're happy, and fucking hate when we're not? One of those idiosynchrasies you think are cute when you're in love, but make you want to cut yourself when the relationship goes south? Or will I, as she suggests, get tired of the grabbing? Do you ever reach the point where you think, meh, my girlfriend's boobs are ok, I guess...? Will I be seventy years old, puttering around the house waiting for her to bend over so I can pat her on the butt?

Well?

Dear Cute Girl At George Mason University Lecture Hall Circa 1996, I'm Sorry We Never Got To Do It

2006-06-30T13:28:00.000-07:00

You know how sometimes you supress moments of humiliation or stupidity because they're just too much to deal with? Me too. So I'm just sitting here at work and the Braid song "Do You Like Coffee?" comes on my internet radio station. I don't even like the song. But the memory floodgates opened. I'm so J. Alfred Prufrock it's not even funny. Listen to this:

It's about 10 years ago, and I'm in college. I'm taking one of these lecture courses in a giant auditorium with like 300 people. I'm almost certainly very high every time I go to class. But I keep noticing this pretty girl who was just the type of girl I liked back then. Shy, pretty, disarming in that Charlie Brown's Little Red-Haired Girl kinda way.

But of course I never walk up and talk to her. I'm just too ineffectual. I sit and stare and then look away when she catches my eye. I don't even have the guts to smile when I look away when she catches me. No, I just give her the creepy, stalker vibe. Sexy.

So one day after class she walks up to me and starts to make small talk about the course. I'm ok once I actually start talking to a girl. Or so I always tell myself. But this girl finally says, "Do you wanna get a cup of coffee?" and gives me this smile that just melts me. Because I wrote the book on being suave, I smile and deliver a classic line. Are you ready? Wait for it...

Wait for it...

I says to her I says:

"I don't drink coffee."

Without a word she turns and practically runs away. And I never saw her again.

Can you see why I blocked this?

I IM'd Baby to tell her the story, and she reminds me that every girl that got away isn't worth the one I've managed to keep:

Me: "and i never saw her again"

(Baby is typing a message)

Baby: "Idiot"

(Baby is typing a message)

Baby: "How did you ever get me in the sack? If she offers you a steaming cup of poop you take it. Are you retarded?"

Me: "i know right? poor girl probably spent all that time building up her courage then went home and hung herself"

(Baby is typing a message)

Baby: "Please, you're not even that cute."

(Baby is typing a message)

Baby: "pwn3d"

Identity Crisis

2006-06-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot today about who I am. No really.

While I'd like to think of myself as an individual, I've always defined myself as a member of a group. Throughout my life I associated with particular kinds of people, and they were who I was. I've been, in rough order, a Skateboarder, a Basketball Player, a Slacker, and an Indie Rocker. When I'm in that phase of my life I tend to hang out with those kinds of people, act that kind of way, do those kinds of things. Yet there was always some overlap. When I get bored of my current group I could always go back to the old group. But not anymore.

As I've gotten older, I've grown out of these groups. I'm too old to really skateboard anymore, not without feeling foolish. My body won't cooperate enough to play basketball. I've accomplished too much to really be a decent slacker at this point. And I've lost my desire to seek out new bands. So I'm not connected with these groups anymore, and honestly right now I don't know who to connect with.

I'm resisting the temptation to just be the guy that becomes the male version of his girlfriend. Baby is fantastic, and her taste in music and fashion and life and everything else has really grown on me. But I don't want it to get to the point where people are laughing at me because I've changed into her. At least I don't want them to laugh any more than they already are.

I feel like I should be able to find some group to belong to. But I don't know where to look. I'm stuck in between being too old for stuff that teenagers do and too old for stuff that old people do. I don't have the health to handle becoming an Alcoholic, and I don't have the means to become a Golfer. I can't give in completely to my nerdy urges to become a full-time Gamer or Computer Dork, but I'm not cool enough to work the Aging Hipster angle.

So I'm just sorta lost right now. I'm rapidly losing touch with my friends from my previous groups, and I don't really have any plan in place to find new friends. I'm used to friends drifting in and out of my life- that's happened to me since I was a kid. But I was able to balance that with what was always an influx of new people. These days the number of people I keep in my cell phone seems to keep shrinking, and I seem to get more spam than real emails. I rarely see people I considered close friends just a year or two ago. And worse (although good for them), I see them adjusting to their changing groups and identities with greater ease than me.

I guess maybe this is part of growing up, but it's lousy. I have this fear I'm going to end up like my parents. Sitting at home in the evening and building my life around my TV shows. Maybe the group I'm joining is Old People. Bitter.

Baby, Why Are We Happy That Britney Is Crying?

2006-06-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

My girlfriend is a smart, sophisticated, successful woman. She makes more money than me, has a better job than me, went to a better college than me. She reads the entire newspaper every day while I play videogames. She has traveled to places I could barely locate on a map (who takes a vacation to Croatia?). I ask for and follow her advice about any number of things, because she is as street smart as they come. Baby has her shit together on levels I can't even fathom.

But the celebrity schadenfreude thing makes no sense.

Baby has tried to explain it to me. She hates these women because they're stupid. She resents that they're rich and famous for having no discernible talent beyond perfect skin and a great rack. She cannot stand that the world worships these women as if they're perfection, when on closer inspection they're glorified tramps. So she revels in the stories of their imperfection. She wants to take the piss out of them, because she feels like they get too much attention. In her eyes it's a slap in the face to the hard working women of the real world who don't have the time/money/resources and most of all luck to be starlets. And that makes sense. I appreciate the solidarity angle. Men are pigs, and these women are tramps. I get it. Only here is the thing- you broads are the reason why these broads are famous.

Men don't care. Well, straight men don't. We see these women on TV or in the movies and we think, 'Wow, she is hot.' But really, that's the end of it. We don't care about her favorite food or where she shops or where she puts her baby when she drives. We might fantasize about them, but the fantasy is dirty and short lived and not fit for print. We don't care about the personal details of their lives- we don't want to know. Because that ruins it for us. We know they're fake. We know they're just the fantasy. We're fine with that. You start adding details and it becomes more like real life. Where is the fun in that? Here is proof. I've got no idea how many men are using the internet to look at porn, but I'm willing to venture it's a lot. Do you think we care what these women's names are? Of course not. Are these women household names? No. There is a reason the stories in Playboy aren't about the girls in Playboy. Nobody cares.

So that makes us assholes, because we're treating these women like objects. We've got no respect for their feelings. We're supporting an industry that takes advantage of them, that puts them in a poor light, that degrades women.

Ok ladies, now explain to me how that's different from what you're doing.

I Am Only Happy When I Have Something To Bitch About

2006-06-13T07:18:00.000-07:00

This is a common misconception. I can't say I blame people for believing it, because I have this habit of bitching about everything that ever happens to me ever. Lately I've come to realize just how much I bitch, and I've taken to bitching about how much I bitch. Everyone is good at something, and I have mastered complaining.

Thing is, I'm honestly not an unhappy person. Really. In fact, I'm strangely happy almost all of the time. I actually don't mind getting up in the morning, don't mind getting ready for work, don't even mind taking the Metro.

Yet if you listen to me, it sounds like I've got the barrel in my mouth and my toe on the trigger.

The more I've thought about it, the more I've come to believe that the bitching is my avenue for letting everything out. I tend to have rotten luck about a lot of things, things that would probably get most people really down. So I complain about them. And after a while, they don't seem so bad. In fact, they usually end up being funny. I tell a story about a bird shitting on my head on the way to the grocery store that has no products on its shelves and I've got a hangover and my medicine isn't ready at the pharmacy and the woman in line in front of us is arguing with the checkout lady like the price of Twinkies is fucking negotiable (this really happened the other day), and I feel better. The person hearing the story laughs, I laugh, and everything is okay.

Or is it? Because sometimes I catch myself complaining and I realize, 'This person just asked you how you've been, and you've been bitching for five minutes and haven't let them get a word in edgewise.' I do this kinda thing all the goddamn time. I forget they don't really want to know how I've been, they're just making conversation trying to be polite. Or they want to hear that everything is good, and how have you been? But I jump all over that question. I honestly answer it. 'I've been sucky, because...and then...which made me...can you fucking believe that?'

So just bear with me. It's my catharsis. Baby noticed from the get-go that when I'm really angry I don't say anything at all. I just sit there and stew, waiting to explode. If I'm complaining, it means I'm just trying to make myself feel better. And it will work. It might make you miserable in the meantime, but then you can just go bitch to someone til you feel better. See? Everybody wins.

I'm In Love With A Man Named Albert Pujols

2006-06-01T07:09:00.000-07:00

I'm an enormous baseball fan. I wrote this for another place, but I'm posting it here because I like it. A lot of the numbers will go over your head if you don't like baseball, but you might appreciate the part at the end. Then again you might not. Sorry, but nothing embarrassing has happened to me today. Then again, it's only 10:00Am.

One of the most amazing stats about Albert Pujols is his remarkable consistency. In his first five full (2001-2005) seasons he has the following total number of at bats: 590, 590, 591, 592, 591. Barring injury, I’d venture it’s safe to assume he will get 590 at bats this season.

If he continues at his current pace, Pujols will hit 82 home runs, score 169 runs and drive in 215 more (numbers rounded down). In addition to breaking the home run record of 73 set by Barry Bonds in 2001, he will also demolish the RBI record of 191 set by Hack Wilson in 1930. He will not eclipse the single season runs scored record, set by Billy Hamilton in 1894 with 192. Pujols would end up third on the all time runs list, scoring the most runs since Babe Ruth’s total of 177 in 1921.

At the risk of sounding too partial, I should also point out that Pujols’ batting average is down considerably this season. If he continues at his current pace he will only hit .315. His steals are down as well, as he is on pace for only 6 this season. He can perhaps be forgiven for that one, as there is no need to steal second base when you’re jogging past it on your way toward home.

I’m not naïve enough to suggest that Pujols will continue his torrid pace. But I do think he is a legitimate threat to the hallowed Hack Wilson RBI record and the steroid-inflated Bonds home run mark. The runs record may be out of reach, but Pujols is lined up to smash the record for the modern era.

Buster Olney’s column from the June 5th ESPN Magazine raises the suspicion that Pujols’ numbers are the product of steroids. It’s a reasonable assumption given the apparent widespread use of steroids in professional baseball. There are currently no tests for human growth hormone (HGH), and it’s certainly plausible (probable, in fact) that professional baseball players have merely switched to HGH and other steroids that are undetectable under MLB’s laughable drug testing program.

My question to Olney is: Who cares?

Which would you prefer, Sosa and McGwire dueling for the home run crown in 1998, or Mike Schmidt swatting a league-high 31 in 1981? Chicks aren’t the only ones that dig the long ball. If we’re going to assume a large number of baseball players are dirty (and honestly, isn’t it time we do?), then it’s safe to assume they’re not going to change. As Olney points out, we’re not beyond the age of steroids in baseball- we’ve only just begun. I, for one, am not disappointed. If steroids are helping Alfonso Soriano hit home runs in cavernous RFK Stadium, then more power to him. If Albert Pujols’ numbers came from a lab, how can you blame him? He’s no more tainted than anyone else, he’s just got the right combination of ability and chemical engineering. So keep swinging Albert, we will all keep watching. We’re all in this together and we’re all guilty. My advice to Olney and the other critics is to come down from their high horse, because this is pretty exciting.

I Hear The Secrets That You Keep...

2006-05-30T12:02:00.000-07:00

So apparently I talk in my sleep.

I've had other girlfriends tell me that I mumble in my sleep, or occasionally even say a few words that don't seem to make sense. But now that Baby and I have been living together long enough to gather a reasonable sample size, there is simply no denying that I talk in my sleep. And knowing me, I'm bound to say something stupid and get into trouble.

The first episode happened right after we moved in together. In the middle of the night, for no apparent reason, I rolled over and punched Baby in the arm. I hit her so hard that I woke us both up. What's scary is that I wasn't the least bit groggy. I woke up on impact, and heard her say, "Ow!" Confused, I asked, "Did I just hit you?" And she says, "Yeah, what the fuck was that all about?" No telling. Thankfully she forgave me, and thankfully I haven't hit her since. Well, not in my sleep anyway. (These are jokes people! ...is this thing on?)

Baby goes running in the mornings before I get up. On days when she runs I don't set my alarm clock, and she comes in and wakes me up. She usually does this by kissing me, because she's just that awesome. So she comes home one morning last week and sits on the bed and kisses me on the lips. Still asleep, I clearly say the words, "Hi Mom." No, I'm not kidding. But again, I knew right away that something was amiss. I immediately say, "Did I just call you Mom?" "You sure did, Son." Yikes.

Then just this weekend we saw this crazy vampire band at the Cat. I don't mean to imply that they're really vampires, although they might well be. But they wear these campy vampire costumes, and they rock in a way that would be derivative if it weren't for the fact that they're dressed up like vampires. When Baby pitched the vampire band idea to me earlier in the day I had balked at it, because I'm a sissy and that kinda thing gives me nightmares. But we ended up having a good time and getting awfully drunk. So drunk, in fact, that Baby fell down a few blocks from home and in front of not a few cars at the traffic light. I laughed, because sadly I'm the guy that laughs at that kinda thing. I also didn't get laid. That's just one of the drawbacks of being that guy.

So anyway later that night I passed out drunk, flat on my back. I started snoring, and Baby told me to roll over. I don't remember this one, but according to Baby I shouted, "Shut up! I'm trying to communicate with the dead!" and just kept on snoring. Your guess is as good as mine on that one. I'm just glad I followed the 'shut up' part with the nonsense part, otherwise I probably would have spent the following night communicating with the dead from the couch.

Ducktails, Boo Hoo

2006-05-25T06:27:00.000-07:00

My hair is growing out. I feel pretty good about this. I used to keep my hair short and kinda messy. It was my way of not conforming. Then short and messy became the look, and I started seeing guys in the boardroom wearing their hair that way. So I had to make a change. I'm vain like that. It also helped that my girlfriend really wanted me to grow it out. I'm a pussy like that.

My hair is painfully straight. Like, if it grew all the way out I'd look like the guys from Nelson. Not that that wouldn't rule, but I've kinda wished my hair would at least do something other than hang. But hang it does.

It's ok though, because at least I don't have to do much to tame it. I pretty much just dry it and put this crap in it that Baby buys for me that keeps it from getting frizzy. It takes thirty seconds. Time is money.

When I was a teenager my hair was really long. Like, middle of my back long. I really don't know why. I think it was one of those 'trying to be different' things. Of course, in trying to be different I looked like every other heavy metal (why don't more people call them grits, like we did?) kid in school. But dude! I was SO not into heavy metal. I was into Jane's Addiction, and they weren't metal! I was alternative. I looked the other way when the guitar players made out on stage. I tried to score with the goth chicks. I failed miserably.

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah, so my hair is growing out again for the first time since I was a kid. Only I've got this goddamn problem that's making me rethink the whole thing.

When I leave the house in the morning I'm all shaggy and it looks the way I want it to. But by the time I get to work the back right side has completely curled, leaving me with a gravity-defying little ducktail that makes me look completely retarded. What the fuck is that all about? I gotta think it's because it hits the collar of my shirt and gets all banged up. But why only the right side? Do I have some bizarre cowlick down there that's fucking it up? Is the guy sitting on the metro behind me fucking with it while I'm sitting half asleep on the train? Is this the beginning of the rest of my hair curling? Should I curl the front left side to balance it? Or maybe braid that part and let it hang down? Rat tails are still cool, right? Maybe I should cut it off and grow a fauxhawk? Those aren't too trendy, are they?

Who Are These Fucking People?

2006-05-22T13:02:00.000-07:00

Honestly, is there anyone in America that doesn't understand that everyone makes fun of people with mullets? Is there a barbershop you can go into somewhere and say, "Business in the front, party in the back" and not have the guy laugh at you?

There have been movies, websites, and entire stand-up comedy careers based on ridiculing the mullet as a hairstyle. When you see the look, you immediately think of the cliche. It's instinctual at this point. I mean, nobody wears the Hitler mustache anymore, right? There are some looks that we just know are not for us. And I can't, for the life of me, figure out why the mullet hasn't achieved this status.

I was at RFK this weekend for the Nats and Orioles series. RFK is in Washington, DC, the capital of the United States of America. You'd think that people living within driving distance of a major American city would at least be hip enough to understand the no-mullet rule. This isn't Alabama, this is the Mid-Atlantic.

But there they were, in all their glory. Mullet, jean shorts, high top sneakers, Marlboros and Miller Lites and fanny packs. I don't mean to suggest that everyone in attendance had a mullet. But they weren't exactly rare, either.

And the more I think about it, the more puzzling it gets. These weren't hipster kids with faux mullets trying to be ironic. These were manicured, styled mullets that take years to grow. The kind of thing you have to work on, the kind of thing that takes planning and thought. Growing a mullet is like planting a garden. You have a picture of the finished product in your mind, and you painstakingly work at it until it's ready.

This is the part that gets me. They've obviously been thinking about growing mullets. They're aspiring to do it. What the fuck? Where does that come from? Who are they looking at and saying, "I want to be like that guy!"? All the kids these days want to look like rappers, and that's understandable. Rappers are all over TV, and people emulate what they perceive to be cool. We all do it, in a way. We have a look we're going for. Who the hell is going for the mullet? Who is the role model? When is the last time you saw a mullet on somebody even remotely famous? Hockey players and professional wrestlers don't even have mullets anymore.

Who are these fucking people?

Pales In Comparison

2006-05-17T09:16:00.000-07:00

Everyone judges people. We all do it. We're internally critical of people, noting flaws and differences and unfortunate aspects of others' appearances, personalities, lifestyles- you name it. But we've been taught (some better than others) that it's not a good idea to make those criticisms known. The idea of "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything" is sound advice, even if we don't follow it as often as we should.

Yet there are certain things we feel we've got free reign to comment on, despite the fact that they're every bit as hurtful and judgmental as some of the things we're not allowed to say. And frankly, I'm starting to get a little pissed at your supposed right to tell me how I'm somehow inferior because I'm not just like you.

Until a few years ago I was embarrassingly skinny. Weak beyond words. I had a number of issues, chief among them that I just wasn't that into eating and I didn't eat particularly regularly or well. So I was always underweight. And if you've ever been in that boat, you know that being skinny in a society full of fat people is an uncomfortable place to be.

Heaven forbid I should ever discuss a fat person's weight or diet in public. So what on earth gives you the right to declare how I must never eat, how I'm so lucky to be so thin, and- my personal favorite- actually put your fucking hands on me to display how skinny I am? Let's turn this one around. Let's say your fat ass walks in the room and takes two servings of birthday cake. Am I allowed to tell everyone in earshot what a fucking fatty you are? Maybe comment on how lucky you are to just not give a fuck that you could fit three of me in those pants of yours? And while we're at it, the next time you put your chubby little thumb and finger around my wrist and hold it up for everyone to see, how about I take a deep breath and see if I can't wrap my arms around you? Maybe stand behind you and try to figure out how you take a leak when you can't find let alone see your peepee?

Do you think I liked being different? The butt of the joke? Would you? Do you even care about the reasons why I got this way? I'm supposed to be sensitive to your condition. I'm supposed to understand that you're unhappy, and it's having an adverse impact on your body. Hey Slim, when I graduated from high school I was six feet tall and one hundred and fifteen pounds. I know from eating issues. So how about we start talking about this goddamn double standard?

Lately I've put on weight and I'm much healthier. But I've got a new issue that's apparently everyone's business. One that makes even less sense, if that's possible.

I'm pale. I am, and I will be for the foreseeable future. I wasn't when I was younger, but things have changed. I'm anemic. And I'm anemic because I take medicine to treat my leukemia. Leukemia is cancer of your bone marrow. Let me tell you, it's a bag of dicks. Anemia makes you weak and tired and pale and generally all banged up. It's not fun, but it sure beats being dead, which is where I'd be without the medicine.

So I'm concerned that it's ok for you to tell me that I need some sun. I realize it gives you a tremendous sense of self-satisfaction to place your desirable, golden brown arm against my unattractive pale one and declare yourself the winner of the great suntan contest, but I think it's a little fucked up. I know white people are supposed to get suntans. It's what all the cool kids do. But I can't get one. I just burn. And it hurts and so I'm over it.

When I was younger I took all the skinny cheapshots without fighting back. Those days are over. I'm trumping your suntan attack with the cancer card, and I'm clearing out the goddamn room while I'm doing it.

"My God bryc3, do you ever go outside? You're white as a sheet!"

"Yeah I go outside sometimes, but I can't get a tan because I've got cancer and I'm dying. So tell me more about your vacation. Hey wait, where are you going?"

Chocolate City Laments

2006-05-01T19:11:00.000-07:00

You know, it's not my fault that things are the way they are. I didn't cause this situation, and I'm not exacerbating it. I just live here, same as you. Sure, I'm new here. But nobody told me I wasn't welcome. And for the life of me, I can't figure out why you want me to leave.

I was born right across that river. I'm not from this hood but I know it. Thirty one years doesn't go back all the way but it goes back far enough. I know the history, I know who lived here when things were good and I know who lived here when things were bad. And honestly let's stop kidding ourselves, because we both know that there was a hell of a lot more bad, and the bad wasn't exactly a long time ago.

My family has been here even longer than me. Plenty of them, older ones mostly, can't even imagine why I would choose to live where I do. They remember the riots, the fires, the crack, the hookers and the murder rate. They remember the white flight, the black flight, and the vacuum that ensued. I explain that things are changing, that things are safer, that most of those problems (ok, maybe symptoms) are fading away. They seem to want to believe me, because that doesn't sound so bad.

So why does it sound so bad to you?

I don't own this apartment or this building. I'm not on any community board to clean up the neighborhood. I don't care if you sell single beers or single cigarettes at the corner store and I'm not lobbying you to replace all those forties with bottles of wine. I think the selection of cheese at the Giant on 8th is just fine, thanks, and frankly I couldn't care less about a lack of good coffee shops or restaurants.

Now that you know a little bit more about me, can we maybe take it easy on the dirty looks? I'm just walking home, not to the 'let's turn this place into Georgetown' rally.

I'm not trying to steal Shaw from you. I just live here.

I'll Give You Something Comcastic Alright

2006-04-28T12:04:00.000-07:00

I moved into a new place, in the city, just about two months ago. Because I contribute so little to the relationship (hey, who are we kidding?), it's my job to handle the activation of the cable, the phone, and the internet. These are hassles under the best of circumstances, of course, but when I'm involved they tend to turn into fiascoes. And of course, we're neck fucking deep in fiasco right about now.

I <3 teh teevee. So does Baby. We've got three TV's in our two bedroom place. As such, we need some serious cable. When we were shown the place the landlord informed me the building was wired for DirecTV. I was happy, but I figured we'd be better off just getting cable for the internet and television. That was my first mistake, and it was a big one.

I set up appointment after appointment with Comcast. I had a week off during the move, so I had plenty of time to meet the guys that came to set it up. Or so you'd think. The first guy that came out informed me we hadn't been set up yet, so he couldn't do anything. The second guy never showed. At the end of my week off the third guy came out and finally got things up and running, but just barely. The picture on the cable was atrocious, because the signal was so weak. HDTV didn't work at all. And our internet access was incredibly unreliable. But hey, at least I could watch Mason play in the tournament.

I set up our fourth appointment to have the signal worked on. Another no show, and a missed afternoon of work. A week later the fifth guy showed up and explained to me the initial setup was wrong, and they'd have to re-wire from the street to the building to fix the signal. Thankfully that appointment was in the evening, so no missed work. I scheduled the next appointment for a week later (soonest I could get), this time having no choice but take another afternoon off. In the meantime another group was supposed to come out and fix something in the street, meaning I didn't need to be home. OK.

The following week, guy number six (although technically number seven) shows up four hours late. This is an extra bonus, as he got there at 6pm so I didn't need to take an afternoon off after all. He informs me that although our building was scheduled to be re-wired, and the technician filed a report that stated he had completed the work, nothing was actually done. I'd had enough. I thanked the guy and told him that would be all. I called the office and waited on hold for one hundred and three minutes (it's ok, I drank the time away) and canceled my service. No thank you, Mr. Comcast. This was March 21st.

I received a bill in the mail from Comcast yesterday. Apparently my account is past due. Imagine that- they fucked up the cancelation order and they're continuing to charge the account. The letter states, in no uncertain terms, that I will no longer be able to enjoy Comcast cable unless I pay my bill immediately. The total? Four hundred and thirty nine dollars.

I'm writing the check right now. Do you think they will notice that it's signed with the blood of their recently murdered children? I hope so.

I've Tried Nothing And I'm All Out Of Ideas

2006-04-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

I envisioned this great comeback post. This heartwrenching, hilarious, comment-inspiring masterpiece that says, "See? This is what you've been waiting for!"
Yeah, not happening. I got nothing.

I miss writing here. I miss the catharsis. I also miss the sense of pride I used to get when I saw how many people were actually reading. I'm not ashamed of that. Should I be? No, definitely not. This isn't a diary. This is written mostly to make people, including myself (well, mostly just myself) laugh. I wasn't doing it for the kids, or the music. I was doing it for the hits. No point in being fucking coy about it.

But with that came the pressure to be funny, to be angry, to be thoughtful. I got to the point where I felt guilty for producing some crappy posts when I didn't have much to say. And then I was SO over it. Days turned to weeks and I had nothing good to say. Hence, silence.

I think I might try a different approach. This time I'm just going to suck and not feel bad about it. I'm going to choose frequency over quality. No more pressure to perform.

So welcome back to my blog, now shittier than ever!

Impending Doom

2006-02-24T12:05:00.000-08:00

Get away from me, I'm warning you. Something terrible is about to happen.

You see, I'm cursed. Bad things just happen to me. Always have. I had an ex who used to say that lucky people seem to have rainbows following them around, and unlucky people have stormclouds. Only bryc3's stormcloud rains knives and broken glass. It's true. If you read this regularly you know that I must have done something to someone at some point that basically screwed me for life. My karma is pwn3d. There's no way around it.

You learn to live with it. When you're constantly prepared for the worst case scenario you develop an almost Zen-like calm when the shit hits the fan. "Oh, bad luck. I was wondering when you'd show up." Case in point: when my ex-fiance and I split up I barely batted an eye. Now granted, I was happy to be rid of the shrieking, hateful harpy. But on the other hand, catastrophe was inevitable. Instead of thinking "Woe is me, only six weeks to the wedding" I instead realized "Meh, at least I got that out of the way." It's as if acceptance of my own bad luck as destiny has led to a pessimism so extreme that I take comfort in it. So I just always make sure I'm wearing clean underwear, I avoid buying green bananas, and I carry around the names of next of kin in my wallet. I'm so sure the lightning bolt is aiming right at me that I don't even bother to look up when it rains. Death is coming sooner rather than later.

Except there is considerable recent evidence that suggests that my luck has changed.

Listen:

My girlfriend is the greatest person in the world. Like ever. Baby is simply the best thing that has ever happened to me. She's so great, in fact, that I have no idea what she's doing. She's way too good for me. But she hasn't caught on to this yet, and if you tell her I will fucking kill you.

When Baby and I decided to look for a new apartment recently we fell in love with and successfully rented the first place we saw.

I let my current landlord know that I would be moving out prior to the actual expiration of my lease, and that I was going to have to be on the hook for two places in the month of April. A week later she called to tell me she had rented my current place, saving me an entire month's rent.

On a lark I decided to apply for a job I saw listed in the paper. I didn't think I stood a chance, and I didn't think the interview went well. They told me they'd call me the following week and inform me of their decision. Imagine my surprise when they called two days later to offer me the job. Oh and by the way it pays 30% more than my current salary. And I will never need to drive my car again. And I have my own office. And on and on.

My current boss walks up to me today and says, "I know your last day is next Friday, but would you mind if we just made it next Wednesday? It will be easier for the people in HR. We will still pay you through Friday."

The George Mason Patriots are ranked 25 in this week's ESPN/Coaches poll.

And did I mention how great Baby is?

What the fuck is going on here? What on earth have I done to deserve this? And what unspeakable peril is about to befall me? This really doesn't look good. Baby swears my luck is changing. In her argument I hit the bottom and kept on going, and now I'm being rewarded. I'm way too jaded to buy into any of that crap (again, you tell Baby I said that and I'll kill you), but she may have a point. Time will tell I guess.

In the meantime, don't say I didn't warn you. And promise to say nice things about me at the funeral.

My Penis: Three Vignettes

2006-02-17T10:23:00.000-08:00

It’s probably not news to you that I’m a calamity magnet. In fact, it’s probably why you read this. I’ve gotten the impression that people most like to read about my misfortunes and mishaps. I’m ok with that. I think you’re going to like this one.

I hurt myself all the time. I also drop things, misplace things, forget things, overreact to things, and generally fuck most things up. This isn’t the end of the world when I stub my toe or lose the remote. But when a certain body part is involved, it tends to magnify the gravity of the situation.

This is going to be a bit graphic, so be warned. For the sake of saving some decency, I’m going to refer to my penis as my Little Guy. This isn’t some ironic joke, like calling a big fat guy Tiny. This is just what Baby happens to call it. And that’s not even the humiliating part of the story.

In fact, I have three other humiliating stories to tell about my Little Guy.

Number One

Back when I was in high school I was sleeping with a girl with a less than pristine reputation. Granted, my reputation probably made her look like a saint, but that’s a different story for a different time. Let’s just say we were both rather sexually active.

I had just gone through a whole series of those really graphic sex ed classes where they show you how banged up your privates get if you get things like warts or herpes or the clap. Because I wanted (and was miraculously able) to do it all the time I figured it was basically a given that my Little Guy was going to rot off sooner rather than later. I was very paranoid.

So I am about to have sex with this girl and it’s completely dark in the room. She has the protection I insist (against her wishes) on using, and I fumble my way through putting it on in the dark. We finish doing what we did, and I get up to go to the bathroom to get rid of the condom. I stumble, completely naked, into the also dark bathroom and hunt for the light switch. I eventually find it and flip it, only to be blinded by the lights. When I am finally able to see again I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and my knees literally buckle. My Little Guy is a shade of red that nobody’s Little Guy should ever be. Think fire engine. Now think of an infected, contagious, biohazard colored fire engine. I am certain my sexual career is over. When I regain my composure I realize I’m fine. It’s a bright red novelty condom. Crisis averted.

Post script to this story: If this ever happens to you, don’t go back to the bedroom and say to the girl, “Holy shit, for a minute there I thought you gave me the worst STD ever!” Chicks don’t dig that.

Number Two

There is a guy in every gym that everyone hates. He is the guy that doesn’t have an ounce of basketball ability, but insists on playing to get a workout. He takes up space on the court, turns the ball over, fouls the hell out of you, and is really nothing more than an injury waiting to happen.

In college I had the misfortune of having to be guarded by That Guy one fateful day. Knowing my luck, I’m basically just trying to get through the game without having to be put in an ambulance. At one point the ball gets lose and That Guy and I are running towards it from opposite directions. A collision is eminent, so I brace myself for the impact and grit my teeth. That Guy comes in front foot first, in an inexplicable karate kick motion that makes a fucking beeline for my Little Guy. I take the full force of his foot to my groin and I go down in a heap, only immediately I know something is very, very wrong.

You see, normally when you get hit down there it’s in the balls. That is the part that hurts, and it’s a sickening feeling that you really can’t describe unless it’s happened to you. This pain isn’t like that at all. This is stinging. And stinging on your Little Guy is fucking catastrophic.

As I’m laying there I realize I’m going to have to check Little Guy out, because something is definitely amiss. Only that’s hard to do when a crowd of people has gathered around you to say really helpful things like, “God damn, that must have hurt!” They get me up, and I make my way to the locker room and into a stall.

This time my knees buckled and gave out, and I had to sit on the edge of the toilet. When I looked down at my Little Guy all I saw was blood. That Guy’s foot had apparently caught Little Guy at his very base and peeled the skin off from the base to the tip. Like a goddamn sardine tin rolling back. I bled through my underpants and my shorts. And Little Guy was completely out of commission for weeks.

Post script to this story: “No honey, these scabs are from basketball, I’m totally clean” is a very, very, very hard sell.

Number Three

I just recently got contacts for the first time, and I’m having a hell of a time putting them in. I typically have to stand in front of the mirror for a long time and force them in. I’m getting better, but it still takes about ten minutes each morning. I don’t exactly pick up new things easily or gracefully.

So I’m standing at the sink on Monday morning in my underpants, trying to put my god-forsaken contacts in. I’m leaning toward the bathroom mirror, over the sink, trying to line everything up. I’m about to take a stab at insertion when I get that all-too-familiar knee-buckling feeling again. I’m paralyzed with fear, as I have an icy, stinging sensation on the tip of my Little Guy.

I manage to jump back and survey the situation and quickly find the cause of the problem. In my effort to lean over the sink to get closer to the mirror I have somehow found the one square inch of countertop occupied by my open contact case. With my Little Guy. I’ve then dipped the tip of my Little Guy directly into it.

Post script to this story: There is a reason the bottle says “For external use only.” Contact solution in your peehole? Bad idea.

Verdict: Everyone In Florida Is Retarded

2006-02-08T13:48:00.000-08:00

I'm at a loss.

I work in government contracting. A solicitation (an invitation to bid on a contract) for a contract in Florida was recently canceled. I need to find out why. I sent the following very simple email on Tuesday:

"Hello Ms. X,

Can you tell me why this solicitation was canceled? Do you anticipate a new solicitation will be released soon? Was this canceled permanently, or simply postponed?

Thanks,"

I received this in my inbox this morning:

"Please note; that the ITN-DOT-05/06-8007-EH have not been cancelled, what was cancel was ITN-DOT-03/04-8007-EH, due system fail and the " New One" is ITN-DOT-05/06-8007-EH is on line and can be down load.

ELIZABETH E. X
PURCHASING AGENT III
FLORIDA'S TURNPIKE ENTERPRISE
E-MAIL elizabeth.X@XXX.XXX.fl.us
(407) XXX-XXXX EXT.XXXX/SC XXX-XXXX
Fax (407) XXX-XXXX
"In Search of Love & Peace""

I've X'd out most of the details to protect her anonymity. Sort of.

In order:

1) Ah, the semicolon. Should have known this was a harbinger of fuckups to come. Rule of thumb- if you can't form complete sentences, you might want to avoid the semicolon. Its usage is a mystery you will never possess the faculty to solve.

2) A single solicitation (ITN-DOT-05/06-8007-EH) 'have not' been cancelled. Nice.

3) A single solicitation (DOT-03/04-8007-EH) apparently 'was cancel', and apparently 'was cancel due system fail', whatever the fuck THAT means

4) " New One" - this one is my second favorite. Note unnecessary quotation marks. Note unnecessary space between first quotation mark and 'N.' Note unnecessary capitalization.

5) Observe that the "" New One" is ITN-DOT-05/06-8007-EH is on line and can be down load." On line. Down load. Have you ever used the internet, Ms. X? Can I ask how you got the job answering email about information technology contracts if you're unfamiliar with such high-tech jargon as being 'online' and 'downloading' files?

6) Purchasing Agent III?!?! What's the prerequisite for becoming a Purchasing Agent I?

7) This one is my favorite. Check out her signature: "In Search of Love & Peace" Baby suggested she should be in search of remedial grammar. Honestly, she should be in search of a fucking job at Wendy's.

This woman has a very American-sounding name. I'm willing to guess she's an American. This is not a case of making fun of someone new to the language. She's also not an intern or a front line, minimum-wage type. Her title implies seniority. Beyond that, she's employed to be the point of contact with the public, meaning she should be able to at least read and write, right? Is that too much to ask?

The only thing I can come up with is that it's "Bring Your Daughter To Work" day in Florida, and Ms. X's daughter is fucking retarded.

The Accidental Racist

2006-01-26T12:43:00.000-08:00

I am keenly aware of race. I always have been, and I don't know why. My family is pretty diverse, although I'm as white as you can get. Yet from the time I was very little I have always noticed race and how it affects things. When I was a kid we lived around the corner from my cousins- my father's (Daddy #2) sister's kids. They're both black (black father, Turkish mother). To this day people look at me sideways when I explain they're my cousins. As if the idea of a white kid with black cousins is preposterous. This may have put the chip on my shoulder in the first place. But for whatever the reason, I always notice racial tension and I always seem to side with whatever minority happens to be involved. Over the years my friends, particularly my black friends, have found this very funny. It does seem silly to have a white guy on the lookout for racism. If I were black I probably would have joined the Black Panthers when I was seven.

On Monday night Baby and I were in Subway (no cheap dates for bryc3, thank you very much). The kid working behind the counter was obviously in a bad mood. It looked as if nothing had been prepped, so he kept slamming things around and having to go back in the back to get stuff. I've mentioned before that I'm always nice to people working service jobs because I've been there, and it's horrible. Baby feels the same way, so we just sorta stood there and tried to make it as easy as possible on the guy. By the time he gets to us he's completely over it. He's being unprofessional and rude, but like I said we're sympathetic so we just went along.

It goes without saying that I've noticed the kid is black and he's serving two white people. If I were in his shoes, this would have pissed me off. Look, I know I'm an idiot. But it's the angry little pissant in me that gets mad about racism even though I'm white. So I completely cringe when he asks Baby, "Do you want cheese on that?" and she responds with, "Yes, White American, please." He never even pauses, but I immediately think, "Fucking whitey." And this is the woman I love.

After I pay for the sandwiches (what can I say? I'm a classy guy) and the guy goes in the back, I explain to Baby what she said and how it looked. She confirms what everyone suspects- I'm an idiot. Obviously she meant nothing by it, and obviously the guy didn't even notice. But then she starts laughing, and she tells me a story along the same lines.

Back when Baby was in college she was decorating her dorm room, and she wanted one of those reading pillows. Or at least that's what I've always called them. But apparently they're also called husband pillows. Do you know what I'm talking about? They look like this. She wanted a black one, because she's into this whole mod look. So she's with a group of her friends at the Roses department store in Fredericksburg, going through the pillow aisle looking for one. She can't find any, so she yells to her friends, at the other end of the aisle, "God damn it, I need a black husband!"

I laughed, but then I told my story.

My kid brother's nickname is "The Boy" (you might be able to see where this is going- but trust me, it's worse). I gave it to him years ago, I can't even remember why anymore. But it stuck, so he is generally referred to as that, or simply "Boy" if you're into the whole brevity thing.

The Boy and I used to work together at one of the family businesses- an electronics repair shop. One day The Boy is working behind the counter and I'm there helping him out. A black guy walks in to pick up his VCR, handing his claim check to The Boy. I volunteer to go get it from the back, in the storage room behind the counter. But when I get back there I realize there are three or four very similar models and I'm not sure which one is his. I'm too lazy to walk all the way back out, so I simply go over to the doorway between the two rooms to ask The Boy which one it is. I can't see The Boy from where I'm standing, so I'm just looking at the customer. Without hesitating, and looking right into this black man's eyes, I say in a loud, clear voice, "What's the name, Boy?"

I immediately realize what I've said, but it's too late. The guy gives me the single greatest "You have got to be fucking kidding me" look you have ever seen. I am paralyzed with embarrassment and shame. But mercifully The Boy answers immediately. The guy then gives me the "I knew you weren't that fucking stupid" look and I fetch his VCR.

Fucking whitey.

I'll Do It, I Swear I Will!

2006-01-18T10:24:00.000-08:00

I went to get gas yesterday after work. I was tired and had skipped my lunch, so I was in no mood to be bothered. I was waiting in line at the gas station when I noticed that some dick had left his Mercedes in front of both pumps at a particular island, ensuring he would be the only one pumping gas on that side. As this was a small station, that meant he was occupying 2 of the 8 pumps. Wait, it gets worse.

I probably had to wait about five minutes to get to a pump. I then had to get out and pump my gas. In all that time there was no sign of the driver of the Mercedes. There was no one in the vehicle, and worse yet there was no hose sticking out of the tank. About this time I noticed a guy in a suit and overcoat walking out of the Starbucks across the parking lot and headed toward the Mercedes. Sure enough, he puts his cup of coffee on the roof of the car and starts fumbling for his keys. At this point he notices me glaring at him. "What?!" he says. "Did you just park your fucking car at both pumps so you could go to Starbucks?" I ask. "Yeah," he says, "You got a fucking problem with that?" This presented me with several options:

1. Go the tough guy route, and walk over and fight him.

2. Stand where I was and publicly humiliate him, as by now people had noticed the shouting and the profanity.

3. Drive away and do nothing.

I chose number two. I'm like that.

I says to him I says, "Well, parking there was pretty bad, but acting like an asshole about it is making it a lot worse." This gets a chuckle from the other pumpers. Obviously a quick wit, he replies with, "Well, what are you gonna do about it, pal?" Me: "I'm going to point out what an asshole you are. I thought I was making that pretty clear." Louder laughs this time. But I can tell he is a bit flustered, because he says, "Where are your fucking balls? Come do something about it. I'm not going anywhere." Regrettably, I hit him back with, "I see that, and it's only exacerbating your whole asshole problem." This met with general silence and confusion among the pumpers. You'd think in my thirty years of being a smartass I would have learned that confrontations with the bully are no place to show off your vocabulary. It works in the movies, but extras seem to be a lot smarter than your average bystander.

But I felt as if I had achieved my goal. I got a few laughs and humiliated the guy. So I just got in the car and drove away. There was really no point in getting into a fist fight, and I probably would have lost anyway.

Situations like that are precisely the reason I don't own a gun. Because if I would have had one, I would have pulled it out. I don't necessarily know if I would have shot him, but I would have let him know that I was considering it. I would use it for the shock value, to explain in no uncertain terms that no, I'm sorry, but today is definitely not the day to fuck with me.

As I was driving home I was having a conversation with my friend Steve, explaining my need for something gun-like that would serve the same purpose. Something so immediately shocking and recognizable that whoever I was arguing with would just give up in fear. I've mentioned before that I used to think a fake badge would work in those situations, but surely there must be something better and scarier. That gave me an idea- a whip. Think about it. You get into an argument and they pull their coat up to reveal a whip on their hip, Indiana Jones-style. Who knows how to use a whip? Probably somebody who means fucking business, that's who. I was pretty proud of this, but without hesitation Steve offered up the answer:

Bees.

I should carry around a jar of bees in the event that someone messes with me. It's brilliant in it's simplicity. Should an argument escalate into a potential conflict I could slowly remove the jar from my pocket and hold it up. "You don't want me to use THESE, do you?"

Admit it, you'd be scared.

Cat Fancy

2006-01-17T03:35:00.000-08:00

My family pretty much always had a pet. When I was just a kid we had a cat named Buttons, and she hung around til I was about twelve or so. Then we got a cocker spaniel named Brandi, but that didn’t work out and my folks shipped her out. We then got another cat when I was probably about sixteen. We loved this one so much that we never gave it a name. We just called it Cat. That’s a true story. Cat died the summer before last, when my Mom was in the process of moving to Richmond. My mom packed Cat on ice, put her in a cooler, and drove her down to her new place to bury her in the yard. Kind of a gruesome story. But even better, that Thanksgiving when I went to visit my mom she packed up the Thanksgiving dinner in a cooler for me to take home. A week later, after I had finished eating everything, she confessed she used the same cooler that Cat had been in. Nice.

So in a roundabout kind of way I’m a cat person. Not that I like cats, or think anyone should have cats, but I understand them and I’m familiar with them. Because I was home all the time and up at all hours of the night I developed a bit of a relationship with Cat. She was an outdoor cat, so it was my job to let her in at night and make sure she was fed. But once she came in the house she did her thing and I did mine. The arrangement worked for us. And when I moved out of my mom’s house I thought my cat days were over.

But then I started dating Baby.

Baby hearts her two cats like most people heart children. She feeds them from the table, by hand. She lets them sleep in the bed. When they throw up (daily) or inexplicably poop next to the litter box she cleans it up without getting angry. You know how an infant spits up or has an ‘accident’ and people think it’s cute? Baby does that with the cats. She’s just that devoted. I, however, am repulsed.

Here’s a good example:

On Tuesday night I picked Baby up after work and we went and got some dinner. We went back to her place and I was trying to take a nap in her bed. She was laying beside me, reading the paper. Lola, the more docile of the cats, had taken her usual position beside Baby, on the side of the bed furthest from me. The fat, mean one, Jezebel, was nowhere to be seen. Yet.

Right as I’m dozing off I hear a sound I’ve honestly never heard before. It was a kind of scraping, slurping sound. I’m half asleep, so I ignore it for a while in hopes that it will go away. But when I notice the bed is shaking ever so slightly I can’t take the annoyance anymore.

bryc3: “Baby what is that?”

Baby: “It’s just Jezebel.”

bryc3: “What is she doing?”

Baby: “Licking her butt.”

bryc3: “You can’t be serious.”

Baby: (laughing) “Yeah, she has butt problems.”

The noise was horrifying, nightmarish. Does the mental image work for you? Good. Baby was completely unmoved. Apparently this is a normal occurrence.

We’re moving in together in two months. What the hell am I gonna do? I love Baby, more than anything. She’s the best thing since ever and I’d do anything for her. But I’m simply not a cat person. And I can tell this bothers her because she watches how I interact with the cats. It hurts her feelings that I don’t feed them French fries when we’re watching TV, or let them sleep on my side of the bed. She frowns when I spend the whole night picking cat hairs off my pillow. I have tried to explain that I love her, and in turn love her cats because they mean so much to her. And she admits the cats like me, because they’re typically unfriendly but took to me the minute they met me. I’ve had other people tell us that that’s because the cats can sense I don’t like them. But that’s simply not the case. I do like them, just in my own way. I’m not affectionate (and disgusting) with my pets. I keep them at arms length. But I would never do anything to hurt them, and take care of them as if they were my children.

Yet none of it is enough for Baby. She wants me to be a cat person. Is that even possible? Can I change? Or can I find a new way to explain to her how I feel? Or perhaps I need to just put my foot down and drown them in the Potomac?

You're Always Going To Work In Admin, So Just Get To The Fucking Point Already

2006-01-09T08:34:00.000-08:00

It has been brought to our attention that, through the use of interoffice memos, emails, and announcements on the bulletin board, that, some of you it seems, are finding yourselves in a state in which you feel as if it is appropriate, necessary, or perhaps even beneficial to use, wherever possible, as many words (and commas, and ellipses, and the ever-confounding and dreaded semi-colon) as possible to convey, express, or describe a situation, feeling, or idea that could, and probably be should, be spit the fuck out in ten words or fewer so we can get on with our day.

"Typing is fun! I sit here and push the little buttons with the little letters on them and they show up on my screen! I get to, you know, like, express myself, and stuff."

I'm loading my gun.

Look I'm not going to kid anyone. If you get me talking it's quite possible that I will never shut up. I can literally talk until I have nothing more to say. I don't mean the subject has been exhausted. I mean everything that has ever happened to me and everyone I have ever known has been exhausted. This is just one of my charms (read: character flaws). But in the course of a human conversation you can pick up the subtle context clues (blood streaming from the ears is my favorite) that it's probably best to get back to work.

Written communication at work is meant to be digested quickly. I need you to tell me "The building is on fire. Please use the South exit." See how easy that is? Concise, efficient, necessary. No creative license. And look! I'm not on fire!

Let's talk promotion.

Fag It Out, Bitch

2006-01-06T04:36:00.000-08:00

I’m gay.

And not in a cool homosexual way. No cute boyfriend, no shaved head, no hardbody, no Jetta. No, I’m gay in a Steven Cojocaru kind of way. My gayness is only exacerbated by the fact that I know who Steven Cojocaru is.

There was a time in my life when I was at least somewhat manly. I used to build things, I used to play sports, I used to own a pair of Timberlands for outdoor work, not hip hop video cameos. Yeah, those days are gone.

In the last year I’ve gotten contacts, dyed my hair, bought clothes that are size Medium, experimented with various hair care products, started using a facial moisturizer, and even eaten a handful of vegetables.

I could take the easy way out and blame my girlfriend. But who am I kidding? I’ve put up the minimum amount of resistance possible in her efforts to make me more fabulous. Turns out getting in touch with my feminine side was a lot easier than I originally thought. I’m positive that I’m only a few weeks away from finding a nice cowboy and settling down.
So this is me coming out of the closet. I’ve been in here all morning throwing away band t-shirts and color-coding my wardrobe. Fuck! Entertainment Tonight is on in fifteen minutes! Where does the time go?

New Year's Resolution: I'm Not Going To Pay A Lot For This Muffler

2005-12-30T07:43:00.000-08:00

I used to have this really hot temper, and I used to fly off the handle a lot. But then I got sick and mellowed out. This was generally a good thing, as I stopped getting into (and subsequently often losing) fights and started getting along better with my friends and family. It's been a few years now though, and it's starting to kinda suck a little bit. Because while I'm much more calm than I used to be, I've also started letting people walk all over me.

That shit is going to stop.

Don't get me wrong. I don't intend to become an asshole. But I do intend to speak up and stop rolling over.

Would examples work? Ok.

A few months ago I was picking up my prescription and the pharmacist fucked it up. This always happens. But this time he offers up this excuse: "I had it right when I left the other day, but these goddamn foreigners working here on the weekends screwed it up, you know?" Dear Whitey, 2005 bryc3 just shrugged that off. 2006 bryc3 is going to say, "I don't appreciate your insinuation that I share your ignorant, racist beliefs. Cunt."

Want some more?

Dear Mrs. Talking On Your Cell Phone, you can't merge. I see what you're doing, sneaking up in your Ford Expedition to the very last second in the merge lane. It's cute, but you're not getting over. Hit me, I dare you. We can explain it to the cops together. Hell, we can even call them on your goddamn cell phone. Tell them it's 2006 bryc3 on the line, they're going to be seeing a lot of me this year.

Dear Ms. Can't Be Bothered, would it have fucking killed you to hold the door open for me? You walked through two seconds before I did and you didn't so much as glance backward or push it open a little more as you passed through. 2006 bryc3 is calling you out on that.

Dear White 2004 Honda Accord with Texas Tags That's Been Parked Illegally In The Handicapped Spot In My Arlington Apartment Complex, you might be interested to know that 2006 bryc3 is the one that keyed your car the other night.

Dear Nationals Ticket Holders In Section 470 At RFK, you might want to cover your childrens' ears. 2006 bryc3 is going to be telling out of town fans like it is. To the ushers at RFK stadium- the other guy started it.

Dear Coworker, when you ask me where I go out and I say I go to a lot of shows, that's the end of that conversation. Don't ask who do I go see, and then explain you used to go to a lot of Dave Matthews concerts. Because if you do, 2006 bryc3 is going to tell you what he thinks of people who used to go to a lot of Dave Matthews shows. And then you're probably going to cry.

Dear 2005 bryc3, stop being such a sissy. Sack up, bitch.

Dear Paramedic, I'm allergic to iodine and my health insurance card is in my wallet. And do me a favor? When my girlfriend shows up to pick me up, just say, "You should see the other guy." Thanks.

Daddy #3? Yeah No

2005-12-26T14:31:00.000-08:00

My parents got divorced last week. This isn’t sad. It’s been years in the making and comes as a surprise to no one. They got married when I was two years old. My mom had me with Daddy #1 and split shortly thereafter. She started dating Daddy #2, an old flame, when she was still pregnant with me. Daddy #2 had several redeeming qualities Daddy #1 did not possess, including: 1) a job and 2) a checking account. When you’re seventeen years old and pregnant and on welfare, this is apparently all you can hope for. They may have been in love at some point, although nobody can really remember when. They dated for two years then decided to get married when (again, surprising no one) my mom got pregnant again.

The thing is they stayed together for years and years. They never had one of those obnoxious, head over heels loves you’re supposed to have, but they raised the kids (the last one, my brother, came when I was five) and didn’t kill each other. They even got along, although there certainly weren’t any fireworks. Very early on Daddy #2 became just Dad, and the kids liked it that way thank you very much.

Sometime around the time I graduated from high school my mom got tired of Daddy #2 and started dating one of Daddy #2’s employees. The fact that this embarrassed everyone involved apparently didn’t matter to my mother. Neither did the fact that this guy was a complete tool (he was a computer technician in literally every sense of the word) and only a few years older than me. She swore up and down she was in love, and she made Daddy #2 pack his shit and get out. There are more details, but it’s a bit hazy. I was very, very stoned at the time. Who wasn’t? I was eighteen. So, doing the math, Daddy #2 left when I was eighteen and the divorce became finalized last week. Apparently it took them twelve years of living in separate houses and dating different people before they were sure about things.

Daddy #2 has been with one woman this whole time- he lives with her and her college-age daughter. My mom has bounced from man to man, looking for Daddy #3. I thought that was bad. But now that she swears she’s found him I’ve realized I really don’t want any more Daddies.

I just got back from spending Christmas with them at her place. This was the last chance for me to make up my mind about him. He’s rubbed me the wrong way from the start, but I love my mother so I figured I’d give him another go. Yeah, he sucks.

There’s no way to sugar coat this- my mom is fucking crazy. Not in a cool, inspiring-sympathy Mommy Dearest kinda way. More in a drama queen, publicly humiliating kinda way. She’s the nicest and most considerate person in the world, but there’s no denying she’s an absolute trainwreck.

She’s gone over the top for this guy. On the surface he seems okay- a bit older, divorced, wealthy, clean criminal record. But once you get to know him he’s simply an intolerable asshole. You know that guy who makes really stupid jokes you’ve heard a million times, then punches you in the ribs over and over keeps saying “You get it?” until you grit your teeth and admit that yeah, you get it? He’s that fucking guy. He’s also the guy that feels he needs to relate to me, like he’s worried his impending marriage to my mother my derail if I don’t approve.

Hey buddy, I’m thirty years old. I know what people who are ‘in love’ do to each other in the bedroom. You’re the guy that’s having sex with my mother that isn’t my father. I don’t care about your opinion about anything. Keep spending money on her and be there for her so I don’t get the drunken, hysterical phone calls at 3am when my latest potential Daddy fucks off. Just leave me alone and do whatever it is you two wanna do. You and I don’t want me to have to kill you, but we both know I will.

You get it?

Idiot Tax

2005-12-20T12:54:00.000-08:00

Last Monday I started off on the wrong foot. I'd had a long weekend and never really got a chance to relax. My girlfriend's mom was in town, and it was my first chance to meet her. Everything went fine but it was definitely stressful. By Sunday night Baby and I were at each other's throats from dealing with the pressure so I never got an opportunity to just unwind.

I left my apartment in Arlington at about 7:15, bound for my office in Reston. I have a reverse commute, so I take the Dulles Toll Road and don't worry about the HOV restrictions. Only I got to about Route 7 and realized I had forgotten my laptop at home. Bitter. I turned around and headed back toward town, calling Baby on my cellphone in the meantime to bitch.

Right as I'm passing the exit for 123 I remember the Toll Road is HOV inbound in the mornings. But at that point it's too late to stop. I say to Baby, "Man, it's really going to suck if I get a ticket to boot." Sure enough, not ten seconds after the words leave my mouth I see the state trooper, lights on, in my rearview. Great.

He comes up to my car and says, "Do you know why I pulled you over?" I smile and say, "HOV, right?" I then explain that I normally reverse commute, that I'm aware of the law but was flustered because I forgot my laptop, and that I've never been pulled over for HOV before. He seems sympathetic, but he's a fucking cop and I have never talked my way out of a ticket for anything. You'd think being honest would be a good idea, but it's honestly never worked for me. Next time I'm playing the cancer card, because the current strategy ain't working.

After he's written the ticket he walks back and explains he's sorry but he has to give me a ticket and blah blah blah. You know the drill. He tells me I have the right to contest it in court (what kind of asshole does that?) or just pay the fifty dollar fine. He also advises me that the fine for subsequent offenses increases drastically. I then ask him what I'm supposed to do next, as I have to drive on the HOV lane for several more miles before I can get to an exit and get off. I explain that I don't want to get another ticket. He laughs at the possibility. Great. Even the cops laugh at the idea that 99% of the fucktards that willfully violate the HOV restrictions get away with it. I drive away and curse my luck, certain that I'm going to get pulled over again. Luckily I do not.

Later that night I show the ticket to Baby in disgust. Baby, being the genius she is, looks over it carefully and points something out. The time on the ticket says 9:00, but the cop has checked PM instead of AM. The inbound Toll Road is HOV only in the morning, not the evening. He checked the wrong box by mistake! I'm stoked, I can beat the ticket. "Why Your Honor, surely there has been some mistake. I obviously could not have been in violation of the HOV restriction at 9:00 PM. I am a law-abiding citizen." But then I start to wonder if that's going to work. Will the judge realize the mistake and fine me anyway? Can he even do that? What are my rights? Surely I can't be charged with something I probably did, can I? The only evidence that documents the offense says I didn't do anything wrong. Baby, in yet another stroke of genius, suggests that maybe the cop really did feel sorry for me, and he deliberately 'accidentally' checked the wrong box to give me a way out if I bothered to read the ticket!

So now I don't know what to do. Do I spend the day at traffic court trying to beat a fifty dollar ticket (and remove the risk of paying an even bigger ticket if I screw up again), or will that backfire because the judge can still fine me? Can I honestly keep a straight face in court? Or can I flaunt the mistake and refuse to pay? Or should I just suck it up and pay the fifty dollar idiot tax?

Boricua 4 Life!

2005-10-28T10:31:00.000-07:00

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

2005-10-20T11:29:00.000-07:00

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

2005-10-18T10:14:00.000-07:00

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)

2005-10-07T09:23:00.000-07:00

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

2005-10-03T10:13:00.000-07:00

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?

Here Comes A Regular

2005-09-28T11:18:00.000-07:00

I'm not the kind of person that seeks out new bars. You've got to drag me if it's a place I've never been. It's not that I don't like new places, or even that I don't enjoy being in new places. Rather I'm just a creature of habit, and I enjoy myself most when I'm somewhere I know. I also love the idea of being a regular. Being a regular takes time and energy. You have to pay your dues. A very long time ago I decided that I wanted to become a regular at my favorite bar and I succeeded. I didn't formulate a plan or hatch a scheme, I just got drunk there all the time until people started to remember me. I made friends with the staff and a lot of the regulars and before I knew it I was also a regular. Now I've been a regular for so long that I'm old school, and I like that as well.

I count the staff at this place among my friends. I'm genuinely happy to see them and I believe they're happy to see me as well. This is not friendship for the sake of cheap bar tabs and plus-ones to get into the show. This is friendship that comes from hanging out on weeknights and making stupid jokes. It is true that I value getting served first, and I value impossibly low bar tabs. But I think they value knowing that I'm never going to make a fool of myself. I'm never going to make trouble or over-step my boundaries. I think the trick to being a good regular is to never expect to be treated differently. Would you go to your friend's house and expect them to bend over backwards and do you a million favors? Then why would you expect the same from your bartender?

As I said before, my favorite bar is a popular place. On any given night my girlfriend (also an established regular) and I might have ten friends meeting us at the bar or at a show. The first question is always "Who is your tab with?" I'm starting to hate this question. Because that question really means "Hook me up with cheap drinks." So Baby and I have made a decision. We're going to only pay our portion of the tab unless we specifically put others on ours.

Am I being petty? I'm trying to avoid the hassle of collecting money from 76 people after a night of drinking, and I'm trying to let my bartending friends know I'm not trying to take advantage of them. Nevertheless, I know people are going to complain. Does this make me a dick?

This Stupid Job Is The Reason Why I'm Broke, Dick

2005-09-23T13:36:00.000-07:00

People like the stories where I do something stupid and everyone points and laughs at me. I usually like those, too. But today people are probably pointing and laughing at me at work, and I don't think it's the slightest bit funny.

I work in a giant maze of cubicles. Clients never visit our office, we go see them. The atmosphere is generally relaxed. The employees have lobbied for years to loosen up the dress code to the point where they can wear jeans to work, but management is steadfast. I honestly don't care one way or the other. Sure, it would be nice to dress down sometimes, but khakis and a polo shirt is not exactly a three piece suit. And frankly, I don't want to see some of these fat asses in their relaxed fit denim monstrosities.

About a week ago management started a campaign to raise money for Katrina relief. The company offered to match donations dollar for dollar, and to sweeten the deal they handed out free 'tokens' for every ten dollars you gave. Tokens could be exchanged for the special privilege of wearing jeans to work any Friday between now and the end of the year. Naturally everyone gave and got tokens, so now we essentially have casual Fridays through the end of the year.

Well, not everybody.

You see, I didn't have any fucking money to give. I'm flat broke. I'm practically a charity case myself. So I just avoided all discussions about the charity campaign last week. I figured it would be over once they stopped with the pep rallies and the email campaign. Wrong. I keep getting asked why I'm not wearing jeans. People are genuinely amazed. It's as if I'm wearing no pants at all.

This morning I went with the very lame excuse of "I already gave before the campaign started." A downright lie, and one I'm not proud of. I've got no qualms about not giving, because I know I would have had I had the money. I also know I would have given immediately, rather than wait two weeks like my coworkers did. But as the day has worn on I've grown progressively defensive. Now I am defiant. "You can't give money to charity when you've got no money to give." Take that.

So I'm feeling pretty resentful. Pretty resentful that the precious allure of blue jeans is what it takes to get people to open their wallets. Pretty resentful that I'm made to look like Scrooge because I can't afford to give anything. And pretty resentful that the company would do something so tacky. This is not exactly altruism at work here. I feel humiliated, but I'm sure glad everyone is comfortable with their shirts untucked.

Life Is Good (Because The Cowboys Suck)

2005-09-20T13:36:00.000-07:00

I have trouble describing how much I hate the Dallas Cowboys. I'm fairly satisfied with my vocabulary and my ability to insult others, and yet I still cannot adequately capture my utter contempt for them. The closest I can get is this:

I hate the Dallas Cowboys more than I hate the New York Yankees.

Seriously, it's that bad.

I hate the city of Dallas, the entire goddamn city.

I hate their retarded half-roof stadium, I hate their hot ass cheerleaders, I hate Troy Aikman and Tom Landry and Jerry Fucking Jones.

I hate their legions of mouth-breathing, pick up truck-driving, Coors-guzzling mongoloid, redneck fans. I hate the fact that even the black people who root for the Cowboys are rednecks. I hate the pomposity with which they've declared themselves 'America's Team.' I hate that douchebag who was holding up the sign last night that said "Daniel Snyder May Have Bought The Redskins, But The Dallas Cowboys Own Them."

(OK, maybe they have ONE clever fan)

But I love beating the Cowboys. I live for it. And lately I've been on life support. No one gave us a chance to win last night. My own girlfriend, a diehard Redskins fan, went to sleep and wrote us off. Al Michaels (you ultra-conservative Republican fucktard) had a field day bashing us. We looked dead in the water. But I never lost faith. True, I did spend most of the fourth quarter devising a way to suicide bomb Derek Jeter and Bill Parcells at the same time, but I knew we were going to pull it out. And pull it out we did!

Final score: Karmic Justice 1, Crybaby Bitches 0

Tony Kornheiser Is My Homeboy

2005-08-30T12:19:00.000-07:00

I am totally gay for Tony Kornheiser. I think he's riotously funny. And he's smart enough to surround himself with people that are also funny. I listen to his radio show every morning at work, and I try to watch Pardon the Interruption when I can.

This morning he was talking about a power surge at his house that left some of his electronic equipment fried. Among the things he lost was a small TV. Tony is not technologically inclined, so he went on to talk about what he needed in a TV and expressed doubt that he would be able to find it. He also mentioned that he'd been advised to get surge protectors to prevent this from happening again, but confessed to having no idea what surge protectors are.

I wrote him an email giving him advice about what TV and what kind of surge protectors to get. I explained that my family owns a rather famous TV business and we prefer a certain brand. I wasn't looking for a plug, I was more trying to explain that we know what we're talking about. Well, Mr. Tony read my entire email on the air! I was so thrilled that I didn't even mind that he mispronounced my name. I did, however, write him back to tell him that he had also mispronounced the model name of the television, and told him the correct pronunciation and origin of my last name. Then he read that email too! I was beside myself.

Unfortunately, it seems that no one else heard him read it. I expected a flood of congratulatory emails and phone calls. I didn't get a single one. I even called my brother to tell him, and reminded him that he could hear the re-broadcast of the show later in the morning. At this point I don't even know if he rolled out of bed to check it out.

Oh well, I'm not letting that bother me. I'm famous in my own mind today.

I Still Miss You, But I'm On To You

2005-08-29T10:10:00.000-07:00

It started out innocently enough. My allergies were bothering me and I wanted cold medicine to help me sleep. Baby had been at my place all weekend and I was tired and just wanted to go to bed. But when I looked in the drawer in my nightstand all the medicine was gone. I was puzzled, but I didn't sweat it. I went to the medicine cabinet. That is where the good drugs are anyway. After taking the good drugs I didn't worry about the missing cold medicine.

Then last week I needed a measuring cup and couldn't find mine anywhere. Again, Baby had been visiting recently.

Finally, Baby had to go visit her 'parents' in West Virginia this weekend.

So now I need relationship advice:

When is it okay to tell a girl that you know about her meth lab?

I Miss You

2005-08-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

I was out of town for four days last week, but I cut my vacation short by a day to come home Saturday to see you. We spent every free minute we had together until Wednesday morning, when I said goodbye and you left for work. You got on a plane to visit your parents Wednesday night and I won't see you again until Tuesday. I miss you already.

I've got guy stuff to do. Played basketball last night, going to the Nats game tonight. Gonna visit my old man tomorrow afternoon and may go see the Nats again on Sunday. I've also got plenty of Playstation to play. Doesn't matter. I still miss you.

I'm starting to believe that this is a sign of something serious. I always fall hard and fast, and I've promised myself not to get caught up with you. I went into this with you expecting it to fail, but determined to give it my best shot. Now that we're in deeper than we ever thought we would get, I've moved past "Hey, this could work" and jumped headfirst into "How the hell did this not work sooner?" We fit together so naturally that I could kick myself for not getting off my ass and going after you sooner. But then again, going through all my other relationship disasters makes me appreciate this one even more.

Tuesday can't get here soon enough.

The Other Woman

2005-08-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

Baby,

I’ve got a confession to make. I am out of town, that much is true. And I am staying with mom, that’s also true. But I’m not alone. I’m with my other girlfriend, my ex-girlfriend, in a way. I know this is going to upset you, but you’ve got a right to know.

You see, I came down here to visit with every intention of spending time with my family. I was going to hang out with my mom, go see my sister and my nieces, take them to the pool- all that stuff. But the weather has been rainy, and I’ve been stuck in the house. With all this free time on my hands, I was doomed to go back to her. I went hesitantly at first, but she embraced me with open arms and didn’t even mentioned how I left her as soon as I met you.

I feel bad about all of this. I’m thirty, and that’s way too old to be acting the way I have been. I also feel like I’m sneaking around behind your back, so it’s high time I just confessed and let the cards fall where they may. I love her, I just do and I can’t deny it anymore.

But I have been thinking- there really is no reason why I can’t see both of you at the same time. She fills a part of my life that has been neglected since you and I started dating. In the times when we aren’t together I think of going back to her, but I really haven’t had enough time to commit to her. She can be demanding, and it’s especially difficult to be with her because I lose track of time when I am with her. Yet I think I can find a way to juggle you and her together. I don’t want to lose you, yet I feel obligated to her. She has been through so much with me, and she has always been there when I needed her. I’ve kept her from you because I am embarrassed, but I have to finally admit that I need her. She makes me happy and I cannot live without her.

With that in mind, I have to ask you if we can try to make this work together. If we try, I think we can all be happy. So Baby, can we make it work? One big happy family. You, me, and my Playstation. Please?

And You Thought Your Life Was In The Toilet

2005-08-09T05:59:00.000-07:00

My toilet has been running for a week or so now. It's not the end of the world, but it keeps us up at night. I've called the property manager and she hasn't returned my calls. I've also taken off the lid and checked out what's going on back there. Looks like a toilet to me. A plumber I am not. So I've just been dealing with a noisy toilet.

This morning I'm getting ready for work and I have to blow my nose. I toss the tissue in the toilet and flush it and walk away. I come back in the bathroom about thirty seconds later and water is coming out of the back of the tank, pouring out on to the floor. Awesome. I grab the trashcan and bathmat and move them before they get wet, and I get towels to put down to soak up the water. Being the inquisitive guy (read: idiot) that I am, I decided to flush the toilet again to see if it does the same thing. Lo and behold, more water. In a stroke of pure genius, I pull the lid off the tank. Water sprays straight up into my face, in a scene straight out of a cartoon.

Like I said I'm no plumber, but I've got a basic understanding of how toilets work. Inside the tank there is a hose that is normally held in place by a plastic tube. Water comes out of the hose and fills the tank, allowing the toilet to flush through the miracle of physics. If it weren't for that tube holding the hose in place, it would spray everywhere. Somehow (perhaps as a result of the toilet running? I don't know) the hose had freed itself of the tube, and was lodged up against it pointing straight up. God himself could not have booby-trapped it any better. My only saving grace is that I did not have my mouth open.

Putting The Emo In Chemo

2005-08-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

On August 6th, 2001 I was diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia. I was twenty six years old. I went in to the doctor for a routine checkup and blood test and came out with cancer. Things have not been the same since.

They have been infinitely better.

I was pulverized on the day I found out I was sick. I've struggled with terrible anxiety my whole life, and I was certain that I would never be able to handle cancer. I resigned myself to the fact that I was going to die. The five year survival rate for CML was 38%. I have a history of other health problems, and I didn't think I had the physical or mental strength to fight leukemia.

But it turns out that I did have the strength, and it took something as awful as cancer to finally give me the confidence to get my shit together. Four years later I keep my cancer in remission with a remarkable new drug called Gleevec and a steady diet of Budweiser and McDonalds.

In the last four years I've learned that nothing ever turns out the way you expect it to, and that that isn't such a bad thing. Life is full of surprises, and while a large portion of them suck there are more than enough pleasant ones to make life worth living. I have let go of all of the expectations I had about myself, and with that the disappointments of not fulfilling those expectations. I am focused on enjoying myself and taking steps to put myself in the best situation possible. Things don't always work out, but sometimes they do. That approach has made my anxiety a fading memory, and allowed me to look forward to the next great thing to come along instead of just waiting for the sky to fall.

This is not to say that these years have been easy. There have been days when I have been overwhelmed by my sense of my own bad luck, days when I wanted to just stay in bed and cry. But I have realized that I cannot lament the bad cards that I have been dealt without being thankful for the good ones.

So today I am happy. I am happy that I have medicine to take, happy that I have a job and insurance to pay for it. I am happy that I have so many great friends that have stuck by me, and happy that I have had the strength to tell those who were not supportive to get the fuck out. I am happy to be a cancer survivor and not a cancer patient, and happy to appreciate the difference between the two. But mostly I'm just happy.

Kitties or Scouts? Choose Wisely

2005-07-27T06:14:00.000-07:00

There have been two rather gruesome stories in The Washington Post recently that have reminded me of a funny story my friend the Prof3ssor (nod, 3tta) likes to tell. He was watching some dumb TV show (maybe The Man Show?) where people were shown a picture of 100 cute little puppies and a dirty old homeless man. The people were then asked which was the greater tragedy, the death of the homeless guy or the death of all the kittens. Nearly everyone answered 'puppies.'

I could make the same skit with the stories from The Post.

Here is the background information:

A woman in Northern Virginia was recently charged with hoarding animals. How many constitutes a hoard? Only 488, spread between two houses. 222 of the cats were already dead, and all but 8 had to be euthanized for being feral. So by my reckoning, that leaves the death toll at 480 dead kitty cats.

Just yesterday I was shocked (Oh come on, these are jokes people! What, too soon?) to read that four Boy Scout troop leaders were electrocuted when, apparently, one of the support poles in the tent they were setting up struck an overhead power line. Death toll: 4 Man Scouts.

So today I am wondering aloud-

What's worse, Kitties or Scouts?

My Insurance Company Wants Me To Be Dead

2005-07-26T07:21:00.000-07:00

I am your insurance company's worst nightmare. On the surface I'm ideal. I'm thirty years old, so I am past my reckless "I got drunk and fell down and broke my leg" phase. I'm also not married, so there probably won't be any costly babies or dependents to add to my policy any time soon. And frankly, I should be in the prime of my health. That is the rub. My health is nothing short of calamitous. I'm a marvel of modern medical maladies. I've got no less than three doctors' phone numbers on speed dial, and I can comment with expertise on the relative merits of at least half the emergency rooms in the region. If there is something sticking out where it shouldn't be, I will trip over it. I will find the one carpet tack in your entire apartment to step on, and it will get infected. And you know those genetic booby traps you read about in magazines? The ones that lie in wait in your DNA, watching for the opportunity to kill you? Yeah, I got those. All of them. What can I say? I got problems. And MAMSI, my insurance company, wishes I would just fucking die already and save everyone a lot of paperwork and money.

Outside of my typical mishaps (car wrecks, freak sports injuries, obscure syndromes, etc), I have one big problem that haunts my medical records: Cancer. Not a nice, tidy little "We're just going to cut this one nut off and you're good to go" type of cancer. No, I've got the kind of cancer you whisper about, the kind that kills children.

My cancer is not cheap. I'd be in serious trouble without my medical insurance. My medication alone is almost six thousand dollars a month. Of course that's retail. Mr. Bush, tell me again why I can't import drugs from Canada? Oh that's right, your buddies at the pharms give you fat campaign contributions. My bad. Where was I? Right, expensive.

I have no doubt that insurance companies put cases like mine into a cost/benefit analysis to determine the way they will handle me. I am cutting into their profit margins in the worst way possible. I'm one of those cases that gets put into a file and 'reviewed' every so often to look for cost savings. MAMSI is particularly bad. They look for every opportunity possible to deny coverage. Highlights:

-At least every other month I arrive at the pharmacy to find that my medication isn't covered. They need proof of condition, or a letter from my doctor, or an act of Congress- anything to avoid paying. Once I picked up my medication at Giant and the woman said, "That will be fifty seven eight one." And I said, "Wow, they raised my co-pay?" And she said, "No, that will be five thousand seven hundred eighty-one dollars." Like I have that kind of cash on me. "Do you want that in twenties?"

-Because my medicine is so expensive, they are very strict about how often they disperse it. I can only get it every thirty days. So I have to go to the pharmacy on the day it runs out. I guess this is to prevent me from hoarding it and selling it to the few thousand other poor bastards that are unlucky enough to have my form of cancer, the rarest in it's 'family' and the only one treatable with my medication.

-I have to constantly prove that I have had continuous coverage. By Federal law, insurance companies cannot deny coverage for a pre-existing condition as long as the insured has had continuous insurance coverage. They pull this one all the time. I get a threatening letter that says they're not going to pay for doctor visits because I haven't proved that I'm covered. I keep my letters proving I'm covered on file. I don't fall for that one anymore.

-At some point I will probably need a bone marrow transplant. The place to get this done is the Hutch in Seattle, the undisputed industry leader. The procedure is inherently dangerous (75% survival rate, best case scenario), and even more dangerous in hospitals where the procedure is not performed regularly (<25% survival rate). None of my insurance companies have ever authorized a trip to the Hutch. They want me to get it done at Hopkins. The doctor at Hopkins told me, on no uncertain terms, that I will die if I have the procedure there. This is immaterial to the insurance companies. They won't pay to have the procedure in Seattle, even if I put up all travel expenses and other costs associated with the trip. Why? They've cut a deal with Hopkins, of course.

The bottom line is that they'd get rid of me in a heartbeat if they could. I'm a problem case. But I'm not going anywhere and I'm playing by the rules. The law protects me, and if they're dumb enough to offer me insurance you better believe I'm going to take it. I just want them to know that I'm on to them.

Dear MAMSI,

Fuck you, I'm not dead yet. Pony up the cash. We had a deal.

Love,

bryc3

The Plot (To Burn Down My Office) Thickens

2005-07-25T03:36:00.000-07:00

This is turning into the "I hate my job" blog and I'm not going to let that happen. But one last update and then no more for a while. It's driving me crazy as it is.

We had a meeting Friday at 4 (who has meetings at 4 on a Friday?) and my product got absorbed into the larger team. This means that I have to train them on my product and they have to train me on theirs. This also means that the hierarchy established for my product, including the senior position recently vacated by J, has been eliminated. The one saving grace here is that I am the lone remaining 'expert' on my product, so I have some leverage. This might give me a chance to at least demonstrate to the rest of the team that I am not a complete idiot, and that might help when I finally transfer out.

I started my job in March, and in that time I have had three different bosses and three different job objectives. Nice.

Ok, no more bitching about work.

I Don't Want To Buy Or Process Anything Bought, Sold, Or Processed

2005-07-22T10:54:00.000-07:00

It's high time for a work update, and I apologize for not doing this sooner.

The honest answer is that I haven't updated because I have no idea what the fuck is going on. My boss is now my ex-boss. Shortly after the episode I wrote about we had a massive organizational shakeup. Somehow she ended up getting promoted. Me and J got moved over under another boss, and he has turned out to be fantastic. But I've grown disillusioned with being on a product that everyone seems to hate, and I'm locked behind J and won't get promoted as long as she is here. But wait it gets worse. I started looking around at transferring (which my company supports) and found someone who was receptive to me moving to their team. I go to J and ask for advice about how to bring the subject up with my new boss, and J tells me that she is transferring, too, and that she just talked to the boss about moving. So now I can't move, because I'm the only one left over here that knows this product. You'd think I'd be stoked, because this means that I can assume J's senior position and get paid more money (think 25% annual), but that may or may not happen because we might reorg again and eliminate the senior position. What the hell am I even doing here? I'm more qualified than these people (in experience, education, professionalism, and age), but I'm not part of the clique. Do I really have to start going to happy hour at Ruby Tuesday with these fucktards in order to get promoted?

-edit- I just taught the spellchecker to learn 'fucktard.' Sw33t!

Oh Emo, I Love You So Much That It's Killing Us Both

2005-07-13T06:46:00.000-07:00

Q and Not U announced that they were breaking up late last week. This comes just a few weeks after Engine Down announced that they are calling it quits as well. I've gotten used to this happening lately, as nearly every band I've loved in the last ten years has broken up in the last five. I understand that this is, of course, part of the natural aging process. The members of these bands are (mostly) about my age, and my priorities have shifted and theirs have as well. I can respect that. I also understand that what made a lot of sense musically at 20 just doesn't hold the same urgency at 30. Many of these guys have expressed an interest in working on other musical projects, and it's safe to assume that what they're trying to say is, "I'm tired of shouting on stage all night for gas money, I need to work on my rock opera."

But I'm beginning to wonder if this break up phenomenon isn't part of something larger, some fundamental change in music. Independent rock and roll music in the DC area has been primarily defined by a specific sound- an angry, loud, aggressive style with an eye on rhythym and structure that could turn even the most noisy song into a catchy tune. I don't have the talent or the background to describe the history of the DC music scene with any accuracy, and that has already been done terrifically anyway, but I do feel like a brief description is necessary. Rock and roll in DC, specifically punk, hardcore, and indie rock, is about emotion and musical sensibility. It's about making you think and moving your ass at the same time.

Or should I say, it was about those things. We've lost nearly every band that embraced those ideals.

And I can't help but notice that as the genuine articles are packing it in and taking day jobs, the airwaves are choked with so-called 'emo' bands that sure sound a hell of a lot like my music. Now granted, the production is ten times better and the boys in the band are a lot cuter, but if you can't hear DC in this major label crap then you're either in denial or you're not paying attention. These kids grew up on Fugazi and Jawbox, and they've melded it with Green Day and Nirvana. They've glossed over and perfected a style that was deliciously imperfect and edgy when it was being played here. It's like someone recorded the sounds of the Wilson Center, Fort Reno, and the Black Cat, put it into a computer and polished it up, and out came Now That's What I Call Emo Volume 19.

I wonder if this trend in popular music has had any influence on the break-up decisions of so many of my bands. I wonder if J. Robbins ever catches MTV and wants to strangle these handsome little bastards who have made DC rock and roll mainstream. Maybe he is actually happy. Maybe I should be as well. Our music won. It's not the same, it's lost its edge and a lot of its relevance. But it's a hell of a lot better than the rest of the pop music wasteland. Maybe it's a logical progression from underground to mainstream. And maybe it's my cue to start acting like a grownup and let the kids have their rock.

But goddamn it, I still want to rock. I still think heaven is a sweaty rock and roll club, a Budweiser, and a bummed cigarette. And what the hell am I supposed to do with all these Chuck Taylor's, black nerd glasses, and band t-shirts?

Bowhunting And The Beltway, A Love Story

2005-07-07T11:17:00.000-07:00

I played basketball after work yesterday (poorly). I met my kid brother after work, which means I drove a different route than I normally do. Mercifully, traffic is rarely a problem for me because I have a reverse commute. But yesterday I had to take the exit for the Beltway, southbound, from the Dulles Toll Road. There might not be a better place in the entire Metro area to find the lowest fucking scum on the earth- the asshole that cheats his way all the way up the merge lane to get in front of six cars and shave 39 seconds off his commute. Because there are three different roads merging together, this gives Johnny roadrage and his wraparound sunglasses and 'W' bumperstickers multiple chances to demonstrate that if you drive a luxury SUV, you must be really fucking important.

I'm sitting in line, waiting to go south, watching people dart into the line at the last second. I've noticed that this strategy has the ancillary affect of terrorizing the timid drivers who are waiting in line, causing them to inch along slowly and cause even further backups. Of course this only hurts the courteous drivers, because the slowpokes leave huge holes for even more Republicans to come diving into the lane at the last second.

So I'm sitting there when a guy in a pickup truck cuts in to the three feet of space right in front of me. I don't let him in, I move forward. He accelerates, and I accelerate. He's in the shoulder now, and I can read his bumperstickers, which are plentiful. There are the usual Bush and "Support Our Troops" (because lord knows liberals want all our troops to die) stickers, but there is one that stands out, something or other espousing the merits of bowhunting. I laugh out loud at that.

Look, if shooting little furry things with an arrow makes you happy, knock yourself out. I remember we had archery classes at camp in sixth grade and it was kinda fun, so I can imagine you get a kick out of it. I just find it funny that you feel the need to tell the world that you're macho enough to be a Bowhunter. It's funny because you're telling us other things as well, such as:

-You're the guy that won't sit next to your buddy at the bar. You make sure there is an empty seat between the two of you. Sitting next to another man is for fags!

-You walk by the urinals on your way to the stall. You can't pee with those other men around you, you might get tempted to look at their penises. Looking at penises is for fags!

Why go on? I think you know the type.

So I'm hating this guy, and I'm enjoying him glaring at me as I won't let him merge in. But eventually I realize that I'm being childish, and I let him in. He gives me the finger. I laugh. We go forward another hundred yards or so, and we get to another part of the exit where another road is merging in. The driver in front of my new Bowhunting friend is the timid type, and is getting spooked by all the Escalades that keep merging at the last second. This is pissing off the Bowhunter. He keeps throwing his hands up, and while I can't read sign language, I'm pretty sure those hand gestures mean "Stop letting people in, being nice is for fags!"

Finally he gets so mad that he tries to drive BACK OUT into the merge lane to go around the slowpoke. He gets halfway out into the lane and has to stop, because his brethren won't let him into the merge lane because they're too goddamn busy trying to cut in front of the slowpoke in front of us. Now he is really pissed, and he has turned completely around in his seat to watch the merge lane for a chance to go around the slowpoke. But dumbass doesn't realize that slowpoke has finally moved. Since I can see it, I hit the gas and try to drive around Bowhunter by squeezing into the opposite shoulder. He sees what I'm doing and goes apoplectic. There is NO FUCKING WAY he is going to let me in, buddy. Don't even think about it, pal! We get into another merge war, and at this point his car is close enough to reach out and touch. I look up, and he's rolling down his window to scream at me. He's pointing and making a fist. He is going to KICK MY ASS!

I'm really laughing now, but I'm also getting angry. I can appreciate that he is a fucktard, but the Chickenhawk in me is feeling like a fight. Thankfully cooler heads prevail and I let him in. He continues to glare at me in the rearview mirror, and I get my revenge by blowing him kisses. This shuts him up, blowing kisses at guys is for fags! Have I just stumbled on the perfect way to beat these guys? I used to wish I had a fake badge to hold up when guys get all roadragey. But could it really be true that all I have to do is play on their raging homophobia?

Work Is Not For Sex Talk

2005-06-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

I don't get along with my boss. I've only had this job for about four months, but in that time she has made it clear that she simply does not like me. My coworkers have commented that she appears to have it in for me, but no one can really tell why. Because I aim to please, I have tried everything I can think of to make her happy. I bust my ass, I produce a ton of work, and nothing seems to be enough. At this point I have just given up. You can't please all of the people all of the time, and this is one of those situations.

I am continually amazed at her complete lack of professionalism. My company is growing very rapidly, and in that growth they have promoted a number of people out of necessity. This is the only explanation as to why someone with no apparent managerial skill could have been placed in a management position. She came to my company directly out of college, when the firm had only a few dozen people. Now, four years later, we number over 150 and she finds herself a manager at 25 years old. It is this kind of dedication and commitment to its employees that makes me like my company, but at some point loyalty should give way to sound business practices. Management is a skill that must be developed, and this woman is in over her head.

Beyond the professionalism, it's apparent that Boss and I are two very different people. She is the absolute prototype suburban twentysomething. Business degree from Virginia Tech? Check. Sorority? Check. Townhouse? Check. Fiance? Check. Volkswagon Passat? Check. Bush/Cheney bumpersticker? Check. Vacation in Nags Head? Check. I abhor the kind of person that she is, but I keep that all in. I've got a job to do, and I try to make nice.

What makes the situation worse is that she tries to be friends with me, in a superficial and deliberate way. It's obvious that being The Boss doesn't sit well with her sometimes (although I'm sure that sometimes she LOVES it), so being chummy helps her feel better about herself when she bitches at me. She tries to make small talk to show me what a nice person she is, and how concerned she is about me. But by doing that she only demonstrates how different we are. Two examples of why Boss and I do not and will not ever get along:

1) My fellow employees are all very young. This is one of the things I like about my job. I'd say the average age is 30, tops. Because of this, hangovers are a badge of honor. I'm glad I have realized this. Drinking makes me job so much easier. It's perfectly acceptable to talk about how drunk you were the night before. One morning in a meeting Boss makes a comment about the stamp I have neglected to wash off my hand, and I explain that it's from a bar called the Black Cat. She's never heard of it, and I say, "It's like the 9:30 club kinda, but only smaller." She says, "What's the 9:30 club?" This woman has lived in the Virginia suburbs for five years, from ages 21 to 25. If you don't know what the 9:30 is, you and I really don't have much to talk about.

2) My team consists of Boss, me, and J, a senior-level staffer that ranks between us. One day after I had been on the job about a month we are sitting around in a conference room after a meeting, bullshitting. J and Boss are friends, or at least Boss thinks so. J actually cannot stand Boss, but has learned that kissing her ass can be very beneficial, hence the promotion to senior level. J and Boss are talking about Boss' wedding (let me tell you how much I love hearing about her wedding every day) when Boss gets an IM from someone. She has her laptop plugged into the projector, so J and I can both see what she is typing. Boss is surprised, because the person on the other end is an old boyfriend, someone she had a thing with in college. At this point Boss should have ended the meeting or at least turned the fucking projector off, but instead she starts giving us uncomfortable details about the poor bastard. She also tells us that she wants to find out good gossip to tell her friends. She proceeds to ask pointed questions to find out things like: How much money is he making? Does he own his house, or is he only renting? He's recently gotten married and had a baby, was the wife pregnant when they got married? She is doing all this conniving shit directly in front of me and J, and we cannot escape. This is the kind of person Boss is.

So lately the people that sit near me have taken to making fun of me about this Friend that I have been hanging out with recently. They tease me that my Friend is really more than my friend, and people laugh when I assure them that we're just friends. I'm always going on about plans with the Friend, or what I did last night with the Friend, or blah blah blah. My co-workers tease me about it, but they don't pry. It's all in good fun. Unfortunately the Boss has a little less tact.

Before a meeting on Friday, Boss was talking about her plans for the weekend. These involve planning something about the wedding or something, something I don't care at all about. She asks me what I'm doing, and she says, "Are you going out with your...friend?" in a very condescending way. At this point, J walks in. I say that I am, and she asks "So what's the deal with just being 'friends' anyway?" I sorta shrug my shoulders and don't really say anything, and then she asks, "Are you sleeping together?"

!

It is true that I have a very laidback office, where personal lives are often discussed openly. But this is just none of her goddamn business. I am obviously very put off by the question, because Boss turns to J and says, "Oh look! I made him uncomfortable!" She is happy about this. J is mortified. But what can I do? I just don't answer.

There are a thousand ethical issues here. For starters it's an inappropriate question to ask someone at work. It's also blatant sexual harassment. And if she were a man and I were a woman, it would probably be grounds for termination. It's also complicated because she has been with the firm forever, and has friends in high places. If I were to make a fuss about this, I would have to take it up with her pals. If they reprimand her, she will make my life hell as she already doesn't like me. If they reassign me, she will gossip all over the office and I will be even more ostracized.

I like my job, although I don't intend to stay here very much longer. I took this position right after grad school, and I plan to use it to move on in another six months ago. I'm tempted to just suck it up and not say anything, to not rock the boat and just deal for a little longer.

But it chaps my ass that I'm considering letting her get away with this. I'm sure that Kant is rolling over in his grave. I know that I should make an example of this, that I should bring it up with the big bosses to make things Right and Good and Just. Only I really want to just make it all go away and come to work and ignore it, knowing I won't have to deal with shit like this for much longer. I feel like a heel, but I'm a heel with a job I enjoy and a greater plan that involves getting the fuck out of here.

What should I do?

Ineffectuality, Super-Sized®

2005-06-19T07:59:00.000-07:00

I like fast food. I know it's bad for me, and the fast food companies exploit their workers, and the food is crap. I'm aware of all of this. But I can't deny it, I just like it. And I'm not just talking about the convenience and the fact that it's dirt cheap. I actually like the taste of it. I mean come on, burgers and fries?

Fast food joints are interesting, too, because you never know what kind of people you're going to see there. They're a great equalizer of sorts.

There is, however, one type of person you find at these places that drives me crazy- the people who treat the staff like shit.

Male fast food employee hater:

I am a very important person. I mean, look how expensive my watch is. And you know I have no tolerance or respect for people who make less money than I do. Obviously these idiots behind the counter never went to college, and even if they did it was probably a state school. And lord knows they weren't cool enough to have been in my fraternity, and so they definitely did not have access to my extensive network that allowed me to cheat my way through business school. Could they have gotten that copy of the Accounting final the morning before the exam, allowing them to get totally fucking hammered dude at the DMB concert the night before? Hardly. Hell, they probably don't even like DMB! And that's a shame, too, because these people appear to be ethnic, and the DMB is ethnic. I mean, they've got black people actually IN the band! But anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, these people don't seem to be able to speak English, either, which can only mean one thing: terrorist. That's it, I'm getting another 'W' sticker for my BMW. It's time we got rid of all of these people once and for all.

Female fast food hater:

First of all, do you know how hard it is to park a Hummer in one of these parking spaces? (sighs audibly) Can I have a Big Mac meal, super size, with a Diet Coke? Yes...that's...Diet...Coke! Jesus, can't any of you people speak English? (rolls eyes) Why are all these Mexicans so stupid? No, I'm not a racist. I just think that if you come to this country, you should be able to speak the language and get a good job. I have the same problem with my gardener and my maid. Oh and don't give me that shit that this is hard work. I cook for my family at least twice a week, and have you seen my rose garden? I appreciate a hard day's work.

I hate all of you. I hate you every time you shout at the poor woman behind the counter because you think that will make it easier for her to understand your language. I hate you every time you turn around, exasperated, and give me that sympathetic "Can you believe white people have to deal with this shit?" look. I'm crossing my fingers that the guys in the back are putting god knows what in your food.

You see, I've worked in fast food before. It sucks. It's demeaning and exhausting. It's hot as an oven in there, you get treated like a machine, and you make minimum wage. You burn yourself constantly, you sweat incessantly, and you're trapped in a polyester uniform that was designed by some asshole who has never set foot behind the counter. The people you wait on judge you simply by your respective positions at the counter, and no matter how fast you are or how hot the food is, the only time you will hear from them is when you fuck up an order.

So I am unfailingly polite to the staff at these joints. I am sympathetic to how hard their job is, and I know that the last thing they want to do is serve low-grade dogfood to my drunk ass at 3am. This is particularly true of the poor folks at the McDonald's at the corner of Lee and Glebe, which is miraculously open 24 hours. Needless to say that the latenight weekend staff is getting to know me.

There is one woman in particular who gets my deepest sympathies. A few weeks ago I pulled up to the window after the group of kids in front of me had just given her an especially difficult time. I seem to see her every weekend, and she gave me a smile of semi-recognition. She looked pretty depressed. I smiled back, made some small talk and apologized for the drunk kids (in Spanish, which appeared to delight her), and thanked her. It can be awkward in that kind of situation, because in the middle of the night it takes a while at the window because they often have to actually make the food. But hey, I was fine. I was drunk and chatting up the fast food lady, and my act was killing.

Fast forward a few weeks, to maybe two weeks ago, and I am at the same McDonald's but this time on a weeknight after work. It's maybe 7pm. I pull up to the window and it's the same lady. This time I get a big smile, a smile that, if we were in a bar, would say, "Wow! I didn't know you hang out here! It's so good to see you!" I smile back, nervous. What am I supposed to do? I so do not understand the etiquette in the situation. Thankfully the whole episode is mercifully short, because it's the dinner rush and I've got to get a move on. But after she takes my money and starts to hand me my food, she leans out the window and whispers to me, conspiratorially:

"I gave you some extra straws."

I am literally paralyzed. I've got a shit ton of self-loathing for my tendency to handle social situations in the least-cool way possible, but this one takes the cake. How the fuck are you supposed to respond to that? All I can do is smile and say, "Thank you" and drive away. Straws?! What the fuck is that all about? French fries I could understand. French fries says, "Next time, ask for my number." But straws?