Wednesday, February 10, 2010

My Band

<a href="http://itsjustvanity.bandcamp.com/album/the-strangers-ep">I'm Really Concerned About Dying in the Fire by It's Just Vanity</a>

The Time I Woke Up

This afternoon I decided to take a nap. I set my alarm for 6:30 so that I wouldn't miss the re-run of PTI on ESPN (it's like watching your old Jewish grandfather try to keep up with an all black NBA, it's hilarious). I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before due to a nice growth of mucus that has been residing in my throat the past few days ( I took Nyquil, but that didn't kick in until about 5 am - when I had to go to work).

This nap schedule has become pretty routine for me, I like to fall asleep during the day, wake up around 6 something at night, when it's dark out, so for about 3 minutes I rush around thinking I'm late for work before I realize what meridiem it actually is.

Today was different. Today was different because it was not my alarm that woke me up, but the sound of my own bedroom door closing. Which is weird, because ummm...no one else lives in my room. I do have a roommate and he did used to have a "knock and walk problem" (where he thought we were still in college and could just randomly hop into people's rooms while knocking) but I thought we had fixed this. (I fixed this so well that last week while trying to give me a rent check he knocked 3 times and I said "Come In" 3 times and he still wouldn't come in. I should be a teacher.

10 seconds later the front door closed and locked, which either means it WAS my roommate or that the thief in my house had a key (bad) but was polite enough to lock the door on his way out (good). I'm not sure who to feel bad for though, if he did indeed enter my room (for whatever reason) he would've seen my gorilla-esque asscheeks, staring directly at him (with sheets covering every other inch of my body, a cinematographer in a Scarlett Johansson PG-13 movie couldn't have done it any better).

This is probably the most likely scenario (also why he had to immediately leave the house, probably to bleach his corneas.) What is the next logical step in this scenario? 3 more months of barely talking to each other, or would it better to be upfront and say "Hey, I know you saw me naked, we can work through this, I wasn't ready to be at this stage in our relationship, but we are here and if it was meant to be than it was meant to be." Then I'd grab his hand and say "We are one now."

I might go with the latter, just to see how long it takes him to move out afterwards.

Monday, February 08, 2010

Short Stories Tragic Endings #9

I know this whole story will sound terrible, but I'm a terrible person so just read on (no one watches House because he magically heals people whose illnesses mysteriously keep getting worse. While we are here, is he the worst doctor ever? Does every doctor misdiagnose diseases at a 5:1 wrong vs right ratio? I feel like if you gave me 5 shots I could probably get it.)

Last week, at work, I teched an award show for a bunch of nursing home aides (aka the 5 best aides at nursing homes in central NC) and it was probably the most horrifying display of intelligence in my entire life. This is a quick recap of the night:

6 PM - Doors Open

7 PM - Dinner starts, but not before the head of the group gets on stage, publicly shuns me, because I spotlight him and he's in "Edward mode," holding up and crossing his index fingers to try to block the light. (I would've believed he was a vampire had he not been on the north side of 250 lbs. If there is one thing we learn from this wave of vampire movies and shows, its that all vampires are sexy people (except John C. Reilly in that awful awful awful film.))

7:05 - His assistant comes to the back of the room to tell me not to shine light on him, apparently he prefers not to be seen by the crowd AT all the rest of the night.

8:00 - Vietnam POW speaks, it was a good speech, it was just a little ..uh..interesting to see him try to relate his truly brave and heroic 6 years of captivity to being someone who wipes shit off of old people's faces.

8:30 - The awards begin! Each of the 7 award recipients has a 5 minute speech given ABOUT them, before they give their own 10 minute speech. (Here comes the awful part). Their speech giving/writing levels were around the level of a 4th grader. Not only did they not speak coherently, but they even tried to write poems!!!! POEMS. I kid you not, one of them contained this line:

I love working in these halls,
I really have a ball.

NO JOKE THERE. THIS HAPPENED.

It was a writing tool that I used pretty mightily in my first batch of lyrics at the age of 13, rhyme every single line.

After sitting through 7 of these (and 1 who absolutely spoke no English) I was about ready to stroke out and try out these nursing home aids for myself.

Short story, tragic ending.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

What I Learned In College #2

The one thing I really learned in college was how to cook ramen noodles. It's the simplest, easiest and most unhealthy thing you could possibly eat all rolled into 1!

The phenomenon first started Freshman year. My suite Ben and I both had single rooms sharing one bathroom and this bathroom was actually a bathroom/kitchen (don't think about it too much especially the cliche "shitting where you eat"). Between the two of us we had a hot plate (for cooking things like eggs), a foreman grill (for cooking our meats) and a pot that you plug into the wall that boils water on its own (for the noodles).

We could've made lavish meals (and we once did - although retrospectively, I wonder how is ex girlfriend feels about having her Valentine's Day meal cooked on our toilet, and served in an 8x8 cell with wooden panels that would make any 1983 architect shudder,) but instead we normally made ramen. Delicious ramen, so high in sodium, so cheap in the wallet!

I only like 2 flavors, beef and chicken. (In fact I recently tried the oriental and almost immediately threw it out, I swear to you that it smelled and tasted like oxyclean.) But after literally months of eating Ramen nearly everyday I swore never to eat it again.

4 years later, ramen is back in my life and I'll be honest - I'm in love all over again. I bought 6 at the store the other day and almost shit my pants when the total was less than $1. I wish they could come up with more flavors other than beef, chicken, oxyclean and pork (which I've never tried, but I can't imagine my noodles tasting like ham). Maybe some vegetable tasting ones... so that I could pretend I'm eating healthy while my heart and it's surrounding veins slowly and tastily shutdown. Thank you college, for all you've learned me.

We're You Aware Of It?

All corporations use Tina Turner's "Simply the Best" for any sort of motivational speech, award ceremony or office birthday party. I believe I've narrowed down this down through 2 recent experiences.

First, at an award show for a medical technology company (yeah, real exciting) the VPs of the company literally spent an hour trying to find this song between their iPod and CD collections, before begging me to download the on my phone (and giving me a $1 in the process).

A few months later, as I'm setting up for a show for a realty company, they are blasting the terrible song and choreographing steps for the song (if you are trying to picture this - think a bunch of 46 year olds in suits who like look they are seizuring, but with smiles on their faces).

What possess corporations to play this song for their employees (hoping to ignite some sort of engineered company passion)? There is only one answer, these VPs were 25 when this song came out, this is the song that got them pumped as they were doing lines of coke off urinals while reciting lines from Less Than Zero (the book OR the movie). Never mind that the song is obviously about Tina Turner's songwriters' strong passion for their gay lovers (another recurring 80's theme, I've learned, is coked up homosexuality) it says "You're Simply the Best," which is enough to inspire employees (even though the next verse goes like this:)

Each time you leave me I start losing control
You're walking away with my heart and my soul
I can feel you even when I'm alone
Oh baby, don't let go

Pretty sure if a boss is trying to use a song to say that to an employee it's sexual harassment.

All this means is that in 20 years we will be playing the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling" (aka worst song ever) to pump up our underlings, just because it has the line "I gotta feeling, tonight's gonna be a good good night."

WE'RE YOU AWARE OF IT?