Monday, March 31, 2008

The Buy a New Fucking Computer

You are still doing technical support for eight hours a day. And you have a lot of advice to give to the customers about their issues.

At work, you give them the advice you're paid to give them...but there is more advice to give.

You'd like to start with:

BUY A NEW FUCKING COMPUTER!

If you're using a version of Windows older than XP, then buy a new computer.

If you only have a telephone modem, and you don't have an ethernet port, then buy a new computer.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

The Good Things About Your Job

This morning, you had the DVR set to go off at 8AM so that you could wake up to Home Alone 2 on Starz Kids and Family, which is a channel that you didn't even know existed until last night when you set the DVR to "wake up".

The DVR is a perk of your shitty job. You get like 1000 channels, which includes all the premium movie channels (even obscure ones like Starz Kids and Family), and all the Spanish language channels, and all the digital music channels, and all the HD channels, and etc. You also get 6 M of free high-speed internet access. You could also have the home phone service they offer, but it's an inferior product you wouldn't sell to your enemies, so you didn't install it.

There are only two good things about your shitty job. The free services, and the view from your desk.




Here's what the view looked like yesterday:

That's the Robert Street Bridge over the Mississippi River with the St. Paul skyline behind it.

Can you see the tugboat?

Nice, huh? Yeah, otherwise your job sucks ass.

There will be much more about how your job sucks ass in the days to come.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

The Sunny Attic

This is Sweetie and you in the sunny attic.

The sunny attic is where you live.

The sunny attic is where most of these posts are/will be created.

The sunny attic is not always sunny, but, when it is sunny, it's a great place to be, especially when Sweetie is there with you.

Sweetie lives one floor below you in Sweetie's room. You both have the same view of Minneapolis, except your view is one floor higher.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

The Road Rage

There was an incident yesterday, so today you've decided to take 35W to Diamond Lake Road in order to get to the gym. It's faster that way, so you should probably go that way anyway.

You usually take Lyndale. It's usually scenic and relaxing. You like to look at the houses that line the street, especially down toward Tangletown where they become beautiful two-story structures with ornate windows and brick chimneys and balconies and peaked roofs and carriage houses and etc.

However, Lyndale Avenue has an issue. Most of the time it's a two-way thoroughfare that has one lane going in each direction with plenty of room for parking on each side. Seems simple, right?

Well, here's the complication: Twice a day, during the morning and evening rush hours, Lyndale Ave becomes a no-parking zone, and the parking lanes are then used for the overflowing traffic.

Ordinarily, the fact that any street in Minneapolis becoming a four-lane rush-hour raceway for douchebags is not an issue for you, because you do not drive during rush hour. You've scheduled your entire existence in the Twin Cities around that premise.

But here's where the complication gets even hairier: During the non-rush-hour times, douchebags seem to think that they can use the parking lane as a passing lane. This turns your nice, relaxing drive to the gym each day into a Mad Max movie.

The street is always peppered with parked vehicles, so douchebags are constantly weaving in and out and cutting other drivers off, which is stupid, because the douchebags who do the most weaving and speeding are always caught at the next stoplight just like the drivers who choose not to speed and weave.

So, being the douchebag you are...yesterday, you got caught up in the douchebaggery of it all:

A douchebag in a green Ford Taurus careened up behind you and then attempted to pass. In response, you stepped on the gas. You thought this was pretty funny until you got to the next red stoplight where you had to sidle up next to a gargantuan purple Chevy Suburban (why do so many douchebags in Minnesota drive purple vehicles? Is it a Viking thing?) in order to keep the green Taurus from doing the same. We'll the douchebag in the purple Suburban took that as a challenge and gunned it when the light turned green.

Now, here's the thing: You have a fast car: Nissan SE-R Spec-V. It doesn't look like a sports car, and that's part of the reason you love it, because it's so unassuming, but it has a 175-horse-power 2.5-liter engine, with a six-speed manual transmission, which goes 0 to 60 in 7 seconds.

Anyway, you passed the Suburban like it was sitting still. This, I guess, emasculated the driver of the heavy-ass, gas-guzzling, Detroit-steel monstrosity, so at the next stoplight, he proceeded to not only pull out in front of you at the next intersection to block you in, but then he jumped out of the Suburban and started yelling profanities and flipping you off at the same time.

This would have been extremely hilarious except that he was standing in the middle of a busy intersection blocking traffic and putting himself in a serious mortal-idiot-squashed-by-automobile predicament, and you really don't like seeing people die right in front of you.

Also, although you doubt he recognized you, you know this particular douchebag. He works at the NAPA store down the street, and you occasionally buy auto parts there.

So, the outlook on your karma portfolio is way the fuck down this quarter, and you're certain the cosmos will cash it in any time now. Uhg.

And now you take the interstate, where drivers expect to be passed, and cut off, and raced, and etc. And it's not scenic AT ALL.

The Pizza Luce

Where to start...where to start?

As always, today sucked ass.

You drove by the house after work in case Sweetie was still awake. Her light was on so you parked and went into the house. When you got to her room, you found her tangled in the comforter with the TV and lights still on, but she was dead asleep.

When you flipped off the light, she immediately bolted upright in bed. You said, "It's OK, Sweetie. It's just me. You fell asleep with the light on, and I turned it off." Then you kissed her and told her to go back to sleep.

She won't remember any of that tomorrow.

So, you decided to go out for a slice at Pizza Luce, because it's close and they have half-price pints of beer after 10 PM.

You walked in to find the waitress who has the pink hair and the nice butt (in blue Dickies pants) sweeping and mopping the dining room floor. She had all the chairs up on the tables, and you immediately feel guilty, so you ask the cute girl (with the nose ring) at the counter if it's still OK to sit. "Oh, yeah," she says. So, you wait next to the "please wait to be seated" sign.

The waitress with the nice Dickies butt asks if it's just you. "Yes," you say, "just me."

"Are you ordering from the menu or slices," she asks.

"Slices," you say.

She tells you to order at the counter.

So you go back to the cute girl at the counter, and she gets you one meat slice and one veggie slice, and a pint of Amstel light.

She checks your ID, and you hand her your bank card, which is...uhg...declined. For what reason...who knows, because there's money in the bank. Not a whole lot of money, mind you, but enough to cover pizza and beer.

You say to her, "Ouch. Well, that's never good." And you hand her another card, which immediately goes through, but it's still an awkward moment, and you wonder why, because you have a girlfriend, and you certainly don't need another one of those. One woman at a time is more than enough. So, what the fuck do you care what this other woman thinks? This woman you don't even know. A complete stranger.

You tip her two dollars.

Ego. It's a shitty thing. If you could hack it off yourself with a butcher knife like a sixth toe or a second head...you would.

And with the above thought in mind, you eat your pizza, and drink your beer, and order another beer, and drink that beer.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

The Fat People At Work

There are so many fat people working for your employer. It's a good thing they aren't paying by the pound.

You walked past two of them talking outside the door of a conference room today and overheard this:

Fatty #1 said, "...and in the middle is a meatball. Oh, it's just great."

Fatty #2 replied, "Just unexpected, huh? Like cheese? That does sound good."

The fatties at work waddle down the hallways breathing heavily. They sit in the break room eating microwave Lean Cuisine meals and drinking Diet Rite, but you know they go right home and cram Big Macs and Ding Dongs into their gaping maws, and wash it down with Yoo Hoo and Kahlua.

You think, is it just here, or do this many fat people work in every office building?

Monday, March 24, 2008

The Dress Code

You didn't shower today. You threw on a pair of unwashed jeans, an unwashed sweatshirt, and a North Stars baseball cap. And that's what you wore to work. You smell...and you smelled for eight hours at work, because fuck work.

At one point, while peeing, while your zipper was open, you got a good whiff of the odor coming off your crotch area, and it was quite pungent. It made your eyes water just a little. Your coworkers kept their distance.

Awesome.

Tomorrow, the corporate dress code that everyone pretends to conform with kicks in again for four days. Instead of jeans and untucked collared shirts, it'll be untucked collared shirts and varying shades of wrinkled khakis or painter pants.

What a joke.

You’ll be going with the Dickies work pants, and faded Gap polo.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

The Families In Commercials

You've begun to notice that families in TV commercials just don't add up.

Like the one you just saw for Splenda artificial sweetener while you were watching a syndicated episode of Seinfeld (“The Vasectomy”). The family seemed perfect except that the “father” and “mother” in the commercial both had brown eyes, and the children (one girl, and one boy) both had blue eyes.

Whoops.

I mean, genetically, that’s impossible…unless the makers of the commercial want consumers like you to think those are someone else’s children. In which case, how nice of that nice couple to feed someone else’s children breakfast. And how nice of them to consider the health consequences of feeding someone else’s children too much sugar.

The Easter In Minneapolis

You can't sleep. It’s Easter, and you’re awake early.

You consider going to mass, but this is the busiest day of the year for church, so that idea is just cliché.

You decide that it’s probably best to get out and get some breakfast before all those bandwagon churchgoing fucks fill every restaurant with their frilly, Easter-colored Sunday best.

Your Sweetie is sleeping next to you. She is usually the early riser. You move over and slide a knee under her butt. She moans and smacks her lips. She says, "You're up early. Maybe you should go to the gym, and then we can get breakfast."

You say, "I'm not going to the gym today. It's Easter." Besides, your abs are sore from yesterday.

She stands up on the bed and looks out the window. "Oh, my god. It snowed again," she says.

What a fucking mess. Nothing brings people out like a religious holiday, and nothing makes them stupider than driving in new snow.

I'm going to need a miracle to get to work in one piece today.

Help me, Jesus!

Saturday, March 22, 2008

The After-Work Routine 2

You drank a beer, then swallowed a sleeping pill, and then drank another beer.

Today was Good Friday, and it snowed six inches, which meant sacrificing a lot to get to work on time.

Your sister's birthday was yesterday, and you forgot to call. Her baby is due in April, so it's a double whammy. You'd like to blame your absent-mindedness on how complicated your life is, but your life isn't that complicated. It's work, sleep, work, sleep, whatever, etc.

Get real.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

The Food Poisoning

You are on the toilet. You had food poisoning yesterday, and the remnants of the illness are leaving your body now.

The night before last, you hardly slept. Your guts felt hard as stone, and any movement increased your nausea. You laid there all night in pain staring at the ceiling.

There are windows above your bed, and, at some point in the night, the moon came into view. The sky was clear and the moon was nearly full. For some reason, it made you feel a little better to see it there hanging above you.

Yesterday, you felt old and off balance, as if the virus, or bacteria, or whatever, had aged you and fucked up your equalibrium. Other than a visit to the bathroom, where you spent nearly five minutes squirting something out of your penis that looked more like root beer than urine, you spent most of the day in bed watching episodes of Star Trek Voyager from your DVR (yes, you watch crappy televised science fiction. You shouldn't be judged for that). Thank god you had the day off, but what a big fucking waste of a day off.

After your Sweetie got home from work, she got into bed with you and rubbed your back. The she drove you to Lund's, because you needed soup and saltines to choke down for sustenance, and on the way back to the house she honked at some idiot double-parking an SUV on Lake Street, and you said, "Please don't get me in a fight today, Sweetie. I'm too weak to defend myself." And then you laughed weakly. And she said, "Sorry." But then she honked at the idiot again.

Today, you not only feel better, but you feel vigorous. You're drinking coffee with a lot of cream. You're going to eat a big pile of scrambled eggs. Both would have disgusted you yesterday.

The sickness is draining out of you now. It smells horrible, like rotting death. Not even the flowery spray your Sweetie leaves in the bathroom can cover it up. It's dripping everywhere. Toilet paper will not be enough for this mess. The final insult of this sickness will be skid marks on your Calvin Klein boxer briefs.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

The Douchebag Who Shovels At the Butt-Crack of Dawn

You're awake at 5:30 AM, because the idiot across the street is shoveling his front walk.

"SCRAPE! SCRAPE! SCRAPE-SCRAPE! scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPE!"

What a fucking asshole.

Is their no fucking common courtesy any longer? He must really be one bored son-of-a-bitch if he's up before the ass-crack of dawn scraping cement. Or maybe he's just that fucking anal. Or maybe he's one of those righteous, flag-waving, my-way-or-the-highway douchebag fucks who thinks everyone should wake up at 5:30 AM and do manual labour.

Sheesh! Douchebags everywhere!

He's lucky this is probably the last snowfall of the year, or they'd be removing that shovel from his colon.

The Fuck Poetics

You don’t want to be poetic. Fuck that shit.

And you don’t like attention…ordinarily.

You just need a way to vent. A way to get things off your chest. That way you’re not boring people around you with the mundane bullshit that is your stupid life. You're just boring everyone else...but whatever.

Monday, March 17, 2008

The After-Work Routine

You come home and you open a beer. You eat the leftover pizza in the fridge. You eat it cold, because nuking it would take effort. Then you open another beer.

You watch syndicated episodes of old sitcoms. King of Queens, Just Shoot Me, That 70's Show, King of the Hill, etc.

Your girlfriend's cat rubs against your leg and yowls. You tell the cat to shutup because your girlfriend is downstairs asleep, and the cat's yowling tends to wake her up, and she has to get up in a few hours to go to her job.

You should be looking for a new job. A job that gets you home before midnight. A job that doesn't involve driving in the Twin Cities' shitty traffic twice a day.

Minnesota nice? Whatever. These people drive like serious fucking douchebags.

You're tired. The sitcoms shut down your brain. And, soon, the beer will knock you out

Time to brush your teeth and then pass out.