Embrace mediocrity!

New blog name. Revel in its ironicism.

Why does it feel like a Monday?

Maybe it's because I'm exhausted and I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it's because for the next 9+ days, there seems to be something happening that requires careful planning with several parties involved. Maybe it's because I know I'll have to be back here in two short days, over half of which I'll be sleeping through (if all goes well). Maybe it's because I have to be writing every moment of my life from now until November 30th to catch up on my novel. Or maybe it's because I'm Irish.

Happy Friday.........?

More unoriginal content

Hey.

I'm wishing a few things at the moment. They're all trivial, because honestly who needs anything deep and dramatic aside from emotional masochists?

Anyway, I wish I had come up with Garfield minus Garfield. Second, I wish I were Jim Davis and came up with Garfield, just so some other guy could come up with Garfield minus Garfield. I'm liking it almost as Calvin and Hobbes. The last is from the 13th, which is mildly baffling. Maybe the guy's on vacation. But really, this is one that I can't even picture that dumb orange cat being involved in in the first place. Maybe his ears are peeking above the window sill and he's making clever little quips about Jon's sorry state. Who cares. ERASE. But wait, what? He's standing in front of a window? That's comedy. But with a simple shift in interpretation, it turns to complete TRAGEDY: put Jon in front of a mirror for the first six frames and then consider the transition from frame six to seven a time jump, where in Jon actually then took the time to walk over to the window and just stands there, as if in light of his recent discoveries of a deteriorating body, he just can't bring himself to go outside. It's even more tragic when you put the last frame much later in the day, as if it were hours later and he still hasn't progressed at all, physically or mentally. Jon, how do I help you? What mistakes have you made in life that has made you this way? Why didn't you get a stupid cat at some point to make light of your situation enough for everyone including yourself to camouflage your manic depression as good natured silliness? More importantly, how do I not become you?

Well, so much for trivial.

Ah, to be 24 and bold again

Ok, I know this is out of hand, and I have now officially shattered my monthly posting record (at least as far as this blog is concerned), but this caught me...actually about twenty minutes ago.

I've done little work today. Not a surprise. A large part of my day has been spent on blogger. That experience includes resting my eyeballs on their cute little dashboard, the central artery for blogger extraordinaires. Now anyone who's known me for at least a few years also knows that I've had many online homes. This is the latest. But the predecessor of english however also lives (and breathes) on blogger.

Until now I've just kind of ignored it. I remember why I had moved away from it; I hated the title. It showed up in a google search, and at some point it seemed vulgar to have yourself directly connected to a blog with "shit" in the title. But by some possession unknown to me, I started reading some of the posts again and it's kind of mindblowing. I started it in September 2005. I was living with my girlfriend for the first time in Winter Hill and the Tribe Mainstage was just starting out. Just from reading it it's unbelievable how different things were. E.g. the second post details one of my first visits to Improv Asylum and the glitz and glamor and mystery of it all. And all the entries seem lighter, funner, as if I had much less weight on my shoulders only three years ago. It's an interesting thought, if not mildly upsetting.

If you'd like a look, it's here. Me, I'll be spending my weekend reading about the wonder years.

Are you literate? Keep reading!

I already hate how dark it is. Next week will be even worse. Somehow one extra hour's sleep doesn't seem like adequate compensation for an enitre season of darkness. Right now it's ten to five and every car streaming by on the Route 2 on ramp can distinctly see my every move, that is if they turn their heads slightly to the left. And if they're as distracted a driver as I am they surely will. The prospect of peering into a lit office window is something a lot of people can't pass up. What if there's an AFFAIR happening right before my eyes? Or a party? Or BOTH? Of course as I mentioned, they'd be bombing up the Route 2 westbound ramp, so a slight turn of the head could mean free catastrophy show for Ryan, which wouldn't be so bad so long as no one was maimed or burned or launched. Though the pond might provide an adequate landing pad for each case. My point was that the day grows dark, with or without ominous cloud cover. Not only that but today's freak wind gusts seem to have stripped a good many of the trees half naked. This does not bode well. If I thought I was unproductive this summer, I can't imagine what sloth will over take me in the oncoming sleepy food filled months. Time to research possible medical study participation opportunities.

Ryan is 80% water, but 78365% UNHEALTHY.

There was a time when I got up early in the morning and pounded the shit out of myself. There was a time when protein and fiber were a major concern for me. There was a time when I'd hydrate so much I'd need to make at least 12 trips to the office lavatory. There was a time when I drank, yes, but seemingly not nearly as much as needed to keep pace with the world's best and brightest alcoholics. There was a time like that, but that time has past.

I'm coming off of five straight nights of drunken foolishness. I count last night only because I managed to kill three Liteskies with dinner alone, though debauchery was only truly present on the preceding four. On top off this my diet this weekend consisted of mainly things of the color orange, and let me assure you there wasn't a single carrot in the bunch. And yesterday I slept for about 12 hours spaced out over three different "sessions".

There's a strange tiredness about me today that's wholly unnatural. I'm having trouble pinpointing certain words. And I'm working...well. It seems as if up to now I've manage to kill every available expendable brain cell and am now moving into light stroke territory.

So with any luck, I'll be on disability by November. See you in hell!

Stalling for Dimes

I'd never been so happy to be at a Roxbury gas station. In one fell swoop, I released all the pressures of the entire day from my lungs, popped the cap and turned to face the familiar concrete island.

Press here for credit. Press here for debit.

Debit please, thank you!

Now the next step would have been to reach for my wallet which, since my having entered the working world, has taken up residence in my back left pocket. And reach for it I did, only to find to my soul-sinking surprise that it wasn't currently at home. Its whereabouts wasn't an immediate concern, as it probably should have been. My main concern lay in two areas:

1) I just pulled into a gas station and am about to leave again without having performed any sort of transaction. That's embarrassing.

2) I may in fact not make it home on what fumes I had left in the 'ol g-tank (hollow clang).

You see, I was completely devoid of any fuel at this point. It had been my intention to swing by the local Shell during my lunch break earlier. But that idea somehow got lost in whatever activity I had been engaged in at the time, work or not. And if you know me, it was most likely not. Even upon reuniting with my vehicle for the commute home, I saw the gauge E-ing at me. And within the fifteen minutes it takes for me to pass a station on the way, I had completely forgotten about it. It was only until the Vibe she sputtered a bit more than usual on the pickup did I remember. "Oh fuck," I believe was my response to no one. The rest of the ride to fabulous Roxbury consisted mainly off easing on and off the gas, staying under 25 when possible and a racing heart at each worsening enginey burp. Miraculously, she lasted until I could sidle off at Exit 18 and float into the Mobile-McDonalds complex.

But let's get something straight: this whole situation isn't completely my fault. There's no audio cue in the Vibarino signaling "I'm about to lose my shit because my straw is gurgling". Just a quiet yellow light and a defeated looking gauge meter. My last car, the trusty Cavalier (apply named Cavalier), let you KNOW. You'd get all that was mentioned previously with a pulse-increasing DONG to boot. And God help you if you tried squeezing out a Cleveland Steamer from the Cav's tank, because unlike my current transport, it would just flat out give up. Like dead-stall-on-the-highway-you'd-better-pull-into-this-uphill-off-ramp-immediately-with-no-power-steering-and-manage-to-stay-out-of-the-way-of-everyone-who-now-thinks-you're-an-asshole give up.

Even despite the warning system seemingly designed by the national weather service though, I must have run out of gas in that car at least five times. It was just the finality of it. Driving along then suddenly BOOM! I'm all done. See, I'd always try squeezing out just a little more than I should have. Sometimes after a stall I could get her started again. Other times she wasn't having it. I even started carting around a few silly red gas cans in the back officially making running out of gas seem like more of an occurrence than food shopping to the unknowing passerby. But since then I done shot that horse.

I know, it's idiotic. And I realize that as an independent adult my basic responsibilities are to pay the bills, clean up after myself, and make sure I don't run out of frigging gas. It's a retarded thing. But then again, my life has been fraught with retarded things.

And so, we join our hero back in Roxbury, if there ever was one in such a place. I slipped back into the Vibe, wide-eyed and mulling over options with a panic I'm all too conversant with. There weren't many. In fact there was just one: drive home with fingers crossed.

Oh, Vibe. She was going to be so pissed at me and she didn't even know it yet.

"Oh, a gas station! Great, I'll just take a rest while he puts in the usual 20 bucks...All right, ready to roll! Hey what the--hey you forgot--I'm still EMPTY you moron! Oh nooooo!"

That's what I imagined going through my car's mind as we pulled away from her oasis. It's a problem when your own car thinks you're a moron. Or really when you're anthropomorphizing your own car and making it call you a moron.

Regardless, I sat hunched over the wheel, analyzing every shift and bump I took for the next fifteen minutes. Sitting at red lights was complete torture, as it was unclear if the next acceleration would be her last. Occasionally she'd doze off, but then find a surge from somewhere in the depths and lurch ahead steadily for another few minutes. I coasted around turns, took full advantage of downhills and climbed the ups with upsetting slowness. I was that driver with a parade of other drivers behind him all thinking, "What is this, a PARADE!?"

I came to one last uphill battle. After that it was all on the down. I was maybe several hundred yards to home when I decided it was in my best interest to break the law and turn down a one-way. It's fine, I live here. There's never anyone driving down this street. Well, except this guy.

Hi, thanks, sorry.

All in the face of an obvious "What the hell are you doing, idiot!" greeting through the glass. She coughed once more turning onto Plain Street, finally passing out as I turned the key to off. I sat momentarily, fully amazed at both my stupidity and my gray girl of a hatchback.

Without a wallet to my name, I now had to scour the house for at least nine dollars. Easier said than done, because I failed to find more than several quarters. Cut to a few hours later. I had managed a meal fit for a court jester and some other bullshit in the meantime, but I knew my window of oil opportunity was closing. I resorted to pulling out the step stool and reaching for one of those Don't-You-Dare-Use-This credit cards. A justifiable emergency, yes?

Starting her back up was a thrill in itself. She rolled over about sixteen times before finally catching. And with a renewed sense of uncertainty, we puttered down the street and around the corner. Once she wholly died on me. I flashed back to Cavalier momentarily, having to fight unfamiliar resistance to turn her to the side of the road. She started again, but I considered it her last warning shot. Stopped at the longest light in the neighborhood, the beacon of Gondor lay just tens of yards away still lit and serving motorists at quarter to eleven. As if she herself saw the glowing yellow hope just ahead, my Vibe she held, and upon the eagerly anticipated switch from red to green, let me ease her across the three lanes of empty traffic. Pulling underneath the steel canopy, Amex in hand, I'm pretty sure I had a dumb smirk on my face, leaving the guy at the pump across from me wondering why in hell I was so happy about paying for gas.

Press here for credit.

I read no further. Swiping a credit card never felt more relieving. And with that, and seemingly all the gasoline in the world to burn, we raced up the highway ramp toward the city we'd driven through a hundred times before.

As for today, my wallet is still no where to be found. And I'm kind of ok with it. For now.

Jellybelly3 is broken.

There’s a story there, just in the name itself, but the short of it is this: Jellybelly is the name of my computer, third iteration. And isn’t that the way. It was a cliché right out of the gate for these computing machines to screw up royally. In what seems to be a C-story line for my life, these machines are constantly lagging behind. Words are typed and a noticeable ten seconds pass before they show up. If this were 1900 house, would my hand flit across the paper with the inky words piling in a few inches behind? Maybe if my pen didn’t work correctly. So it all comes back to technology. Pen = computer. Both can stop working correctly. Maybe in the future our thoughts will be linked wirelessly to some sort of device that records them in real-time like 24. Of course, there I threw a device into the mix, so likely at some point it will break and probably send your thoughts careening into moon space (because by then we’ll be living on the moon) or worse send them across moon-town to the very device whose owner you were thinking about. There you go, my hypothetical situation proves that technology is a dangerous mistress. Pen broken? Grab another one. Ink well empty? Go squeeze some more flowers. Computer broken? Spend your RENT MONEY and get another one. Streaming thought device broken? EXTREME MORTIFICATION. So not only is technology dangerous, but it’s embarrassing.

And apparently sickly. Out of nowhere my hard drive crinkles like gravel trying to expel some information to something else asking for it. I don’t even know why, but it’s my computer, so I must have requested this transfer? Such activity usually signals an ETD (electronically transmitted disease) of some kind. If it weren’t for losers sitting in these abstract rooms full of wires and grates and rotten pizza boxes and sweaty nerds called the Internet, then our digital pastime wouldn’t have to be so secure, and we wouldn’t have iterations of the same piece of software making it increasingly impossible for everyone including lonely old innocent Online Shopper Man to do anything. My CPU usage is consistently set at 10%, sometimes jumping to 40. My 1900 pens usage is of course unknown to me and only comes to a catharsis when it will write ghost words on my parchment. My thought streaming device’s usage would be wholly unknown to me because by then the software will be so secure that you won’t even be able to change the exciting default colors it shipped with. But when you start seeing someone else’s thoughts across town barrel through your own, you’ll know something’s wrong. At least it’s nice to know someone’s thinking about you.

Yet despite all these technological shortcomings throughout history and beyond, the speed at which we attempt to get the job done is ever increasing. Letters delivered by the pony express, email allowed through by all of the various filters and flaming brick walls in the Internet room, thoughts delivered via our jacked-in, logged on, hacked up, hooked on brain-o-chips. Communication will always progress I suppose, but how much faster could it get? We’d hear something before someone thinks of it themselves? Then where would we be? We’d die before we were born.

And for all the screw ups it makes, your smug little thinking screen has no problem pointing out your dumb human mistakes. For my money, there’s nothing less grating than a jagged colored line underlining your once great idea, forever branding it a mistake. Or at least until you have the initiative or attention to change the cause. Your beautiful thoughts and feelings have been instantaneously judged and characterized and wrought over and corrected. Instant grading. You could shut off the feature, but then how will you know if you’re laying your mistakes bare for all to see? Not only is technology embarrassing but it also warns you of IMPENDING embarrassment. Thanks, Jellybelly3, but no thanks!

Then there are the corrections that don’t even need idiot human input to make: the auto-corrections. It’s the equivalent of a piece of plastic and metal saying, “Oh, clearly you meant this instead. Continue. I’ll take care of it.” It’s the benign beginning stages of artificial intelligence.

Perhaps though if you had learned to type correctly in the ninth grade you could have avoided these squiggly lines and automatic letter swaps entirely. Five seconds eyes on the keyboard, two seconds on the screen. Only use your pointer finger and middle finger. Once in a while throw in a pinky. It’s as fast as anyone else mind you, just a little less streamlined. Like how I snap or drum my fingers backwards. Little quirks that make a person less than perfect that some piece of computing power wishes it could get its non-hands on and underline like crazy. What the hell is this jagged green line doing under my fingers while I’m dancing? Oh shit, I’m snapping wrong and now everyone knows it. EMBARRASSING! Thanks, Jellybelly27, but no thanks!

It’s only a matter of time though when technology becomes an unrecognizable part of ourselves. I'm only now considering getting back to the ol’ fashioned land line for your house lifestyle, if anything just to be able to step away from having what amounts to a tracking device on your person at all times. Can technology progress so much that things begin to backtrack, like some sort of crumbling economy? Or is it the lone beast of an exception in nature that will just keep swelling and dominating? These are questions that seemingly only Hollywood can butcher.

As for me, I’m consistently five years behind electronic trends as it is. So by that estimate, I should have an iPod around 2011, and in two years possibly upgrade to Jellybelly4. That is of course if number 3 doesn’t kill me first.

My Job Is Pulling My Hair Out...Literally

The fourty-five minute drive to Lexington is totally worth it. Especially when twenty minutes after I arrive, I'm handed a phone headset to wear to cut down on speaker usage disturbing those working within three feet of me. I've officially entered the world of the phone operator.

It took a good half an hour to setup myself. And even after that it didn't work. I got one of the Voice engineers to come over and tell me I needed to push the "Headset" button. Brilliant.

After that, the day proved trying. The thing is comfortable enough, but only after swapping out the hang-on-your-ear hard-as-nails configuration. From then on, I experience several things you'd expect to see in an hysterical montage of workplace buffoonery: the headset ripping my glasses off, a mess of confusing wires, hitting the wrong buttons and swearing at customers, cutting back to me entangled in the previous chaotic mess of wires, hitting things, hitting people, writhing on the floor screaming amidst a wire cocoon. Then I saw it: the headset hanging on its out of place holster, and a single hair alighted atop it, follicle and all.

Twenty-seven isn't that old is it? Time to go!

Buffa-low

I hesitated at the fifth chicken finger. It was huge. And orange. But it's what I've come to expect from Windy City's signature menu item. I also expected it to be so delicious, which was the very reason why I was so conflicted at that moment. How fat do I want to be today? Just a little fat? Or extraordinarily fat? It wasn't a matter of space. Number five would fit with room to spare into the TakeAlong tupperware I had picked out especial. And it wasn't a matter of stomach girth. If the past week and a half had taught me anything, it's that R.P. McMurphy can suck down pounds of food in one sitting if provoked by people or special events or a varying degree of depression. It all came down to whether or not I wanted to experience a regrettable afternoon.

I decided to go the road less fat, and placed the fifth glowing finger back in it's glistening orange tub. And the tub went back into the refrigerator, wedged in between several other engorging items left over from a birthday week feeding frenzy. The lid snapped tight, the container placed in the lunch bag, and it was done. As if attempting to hide all indiscretion to my diet, I quickly piled on fare like an apple, a banana, CARROT STICKS, a Kellogg's breakfast bar.

"Did he notice? ...I don't think so. Let's just zip this up slowly."

I knew it wouldn't be long however until I was face to face again with the fowl offenders: dipped, battered, buttered, lathered, coated, breaded, fried, SERVED. The mouth watered at the thought, like Homer Simpson deprived of...well, anything. It's silly to think of, but the man tells an honest tale.

Lunch came and went with a mixed amount of fanfare. Almost always someone points out the use of the toaster oven. From my experience, most office lunches tend to be fridge-direct or, at their most complex, microwaved into another state entirely. But buffalo tenders cause a ruckus, or however much of a ruckus can be kicked up in a business setting. Beyond the use of the mostly still kitchen appliance, the pungency of the buffalo permeates the entire office space. And like gophers coworkers would emerge and inquire. I made myself scarce to avoid such situations. The items in question were taken back to my cube-space and inhaled outright quicker than the reheating. My innards put up little fuss, and thankfully so.

Who can tell though what would have transpired with an additional meaty portion thrown down the hatch? My top three guesses were pain, guilt and retribution. With the day's foody drama behind me, what lay before me now was the greasy tub which I knew occupied a substantial portion of refrigerator real estate at home. My silent hope was that they would magically disappear. Because the next time we met, and we would meet again, I may not have that same hesitation.

I'm actually seven years old.

So this happened yesterday:


A bunch of dudes went to fucking SPACE. Of course nowadays it's a sidebar to some scummy governor (scuvernor) getting some lipstick on his dipstick, and it's just as worn out to mention how space travel isn't really news to anybody anymore. But it's fucking SPACE. It's so intense I feel that to do space justice, it needs to be preceeded with an uncomfy F-BOMB.

In case you don't know, and if you don't you will never ever ever know me, I'm an avid fan of space. But despite my superfandom of the final fronteir, I fear I may never be able to travel there. The train left on the astronaut track somewhere around the time I was flunking Computer Graphics. And if space travel ever does become privatized in my lifetime, chances are I won't have the funds to do it. My only shot is maybe to take up the Carl Sagan cross, and just write about crazy space shit.

At any rate my unfounded love for it, like space itself, is unreasonably huge.

Where's my giant looney tunes gangsta t-shirt?

Right now I'm completely stuck in 1996. I blasting Silverchair, stuffing my face and tuning out everyone around me and not even GIVING a shit. 

Granted some things are different, like I'm at work and I have headphones in so as not to disturb my coworkers with my rock...and I'm eating an apple instead of a hot pocket.

Man.

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UPDATE:What's weird about this post? I hadn't even watched the latest LOST yet. That, and Donnie Darko is randomly on-demand now. WTF is happening?

If only my coffee was a little more Irish