tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-141180002024-03-13T21:25:19.278-07:00THE JakeTHE ego has landedJakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.comBlogger33125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-67926062864103800882008-05-30T02:12:00.002-07:002008-05-30T02:14:46.399-07:00Bang Your Head<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Although this particular topic has been blogged about and commented on <em>ad absurdum</em>, I thought I would give a stab at arguing with a few of you who seem to have nothing better to do than complain about a few of us.<br /><br />I was sitting in a coffee shop yesterday with a few friends of mine, when the subject of getting together for a “Rock Band” night was discussed. For those of you who don’t know what “Rock Band” is, you might want to consider yanking your ill informed head out of the sand for a few minutes to glance around at the culture surrounding you. For those of you who know the game, and maybe, have played it a few times, can relate to someone posing the statement that was posed to me.<br /><br />“I’m opposed to that game! I play the guitar, and it doesn’t make sense to me, why won’t people just pick up an instrument and play?”<br /><br />For those of you who have posed this argument in Internet forums and amongst your friends, I suggest that you not only find more interesting things to argue about, but let it go. The game isn’t going away any time soon, you aren’t going to convince anyone not to buy the game in lieu of an actual guitar, drum set, or microphone. Besides, you are missing the point of video gaming entirely.<br /><br />Gaming, like any form of entertainment, is a mode of escapism. It is a way for us normal, everyday plebes, to experience things that we normally wouldn’t experience. In other words, entertainment, in all of its forms, is a channel to live out our own personal nerdish fantasies, without the messiness of things like shark bites or prison sentences.<br /><br />In the case of “Rock Band”, we get to pick up and play a guitar, drums, or microphone without the complete embarrassment or frustration of incompetence though six months of practice, lessons, DVD’s of Esteban, and sour versions of “Three Blind Mice”. It’s simply a grown up version of ‘let’s pretend’, especially for some of us who might just be musically retarded (me), to the point where even watching colored bars scroll down the screen and banging on a fake drum set is an impossible task. (I have had the game since launch, and as of yet, am still unable to complete any tracks on the drums - on easy). I’m not a musician, I know this, I’ll never be a musician, I have no inclination to put the time and money into something that I will suck at for years, and I’m totally ok with this fact.<br /><br />Neglecting the fact that the game is, in fact, inspiring people to go out and pick up real instruments, the argument doesn’t make any sense when held up as analogous to other examples. Military shooters such as “Call of Duty 4” and “Rainbow Six: Vegas” are as popular, if not more so, than games like “Rock Band”. These games are reality-based simulations, situations that are more plausible and easier to experience in the real world than starting a successful band from scratch. I play and enjoy the hell out of these games often, but I have yet to hear anyone suggest that I should join the military and ‘experience what it’s like first hand’.<br /><br />Simply put, these games we play are experiences, but not necessarily things to which we want to devote a good portion of our time or lives. We want to see, feel and enjoy the exciting and fun things we see in them, without having to make certain sacrifices. This is the fundamental reason we play games, watch movies, TV, and read pieces of fiction.* </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><br />One thing that I find as troubling as the statement in whole is the choice of wordage used. I understand ‘not liking’ a fictional piece of entertainment, I even understand ‘hating’ a movie, but being ‘opposed’ makes no sense, especially in this particular context. Being in opposition of something implies that it makes a statement or takes a position that you are adamantly against or find offensive. Unless there is another cut of the game with cut scenes that make political or moral statements that I am not aware of, there’s nothing in the game to oppose. Saying that you are opposed to a video game that makes no statements, implicit or implied, is akin to saying that you are opposed to a color. You may think that hot pink is horrific (and you should), but no one is going to protest.<br /><br />For those of you who think that people who play “Rock Band” or “Guitar Hero” should just go out and get an instrument and learn to play it if we want to know what it’s like, I suggest taking a look at your shelf. Gloss over your DVD’s, books and games to see which experiences you simulate or passively watch from the comfort of your living rooms. Count the number of these things that you can do in real life, but are extremely difficult to accomplish.<br /><br />For those of you who enjoy these games, I only have three words…<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*Exceptions, of course, would include bowling and fishing games, which are just plain stupid.</span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-37131157453219930442008-02-13T06:54:00.001-07:002008-02-13T06:55:36.738-07:00'I Don't Carry Cash'<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Culturally, there are quite a few things, both good and bad, that one will notice when they move from a town barely large enough to have its own university to one whose university is the size of their hometown. Some are beneficial, museums, restaurants, and 24-hour stores-a-plenty tend to litter larger towns. Not having to go on wild goose chases every time you are looking for something specific makes life simpler. The ethnic diversity found in larger places is enlightening.<br /><br />Some things, however, are disturbing. Increased crime rates, pandemic idiocy, the sound of gunfire and police helicopters will keep new residents up at night. Nothing seems quite as disturbing as the rampant homelessness and panhandling that seems to take place more in the city than in a town.<br /><br />My first experience with Tucson upon moving from the village that is Flagstaff came in the form of a quick walk to a Circle K that was conveniently located within walking range of the dorm in which I was moving. When approaching the front door of the building, a gentleman of unknown ethnic origin asked me for a small amount of change. Like the naïve schmuck that is every 18 year-old, I gave him a handful of change I happened to have cluttering my right pants pocket.<br /><br />Don’t get me wrong; I am a fairly sympathetic person to the blight of the truly unfortunate ones who are trying to get themselves back on their feet, but there is only so many times you can watch a sympathetic mother of three, trying to buy food for her brood, get harassed by a beggar for some change, only to come out of the store ten minutes later to find the same man concealing a new bottle of ‘Premium’ vodka and sucking it down when he thinks no one is looking. My sympathies only go so far.<br /><br />The fact is, that if you are truly looking for help, you can’t walk into a state, local, or federal government facility without tripping over an agency whose sole purpose is to feed, clothe, and shelter hardworking people who have hit a string of bad luck. Not to say that these agencies aren’t abused as well, but that’s a subject for another blog altogether. The fact is that my good, hard earned, money is already going into social programs and non-profit organizations to help these people. Call me heartless, but the last thing I feel a compulsion to do is to give my money to a stranger so that he could use it to vomit in an alley behind a convenience store.<br /><br />Compassion only goes so far. I’m certain that mine turned into annoyance over a period of a couple weeks, shortly after moving to Tucson. Amidst meandering back and fourth on campus, going from dorm to dorm a gentleman in his late thirties approached a friend of mine and asked him for a few dollars to get a bus ticket home. A good friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, drunkenly felt sorry for the man and gave him a $20 bill. The man appeared to be grateful, and left us to go about our business.<br /><br />Over the next few weeks, walking about with different friends, I repeatedly passed over the same part of campus to find the same man with the same story, simply trying to get a bus ticket to Texas. Considering how long he had been perched at the same location, I am willing to bet that he had garnished more than enough cash from loose-pocketed college students to get a plane ticket to Tahiti, had he felt like traveling. More than 6 times, he approached my friends and I, every single time, my friends gave him money. It’s not too much of a stretch to say that the man was more likely than not simply a fraud.<br /><br />A few months later, as a sociology experiment, a group of U of A students bought a handful of clothes from Goodwill, messed up their hair, threw some dirt on their faces, and sat on the medians of busy intersections across Tucson, begging for money. To the surprise of the students, they were able to collect more, on average, than they were earning in their real part and full-time jobs. Some of the students actually considered quitting their real jobs in favor of panhandling. Shortly after the experiment was publicized, Tucson Police Department heard of the results, and panhandling on the median of busy intersections was outlawed.<br /><br />Aside from the one or two occasions when I was on a date and wanted to make myself look like I was the sappy caring type, I learned to simply give the panhandlers nothing more than a, ‘sorry, I don’t carry cash’ and go about my business.<br /><br />Being polite and turning these people down worked wonderfully, that is until I dragged my crap back to my hometown of Flagstaff to find some of the most aggressive, blatantly intoxicated, assholes I have ever met in my life. These aren’t the ‘politely asking you for change as you walk in or out of a store’ types that I encountered while living in Tucson. I have, on more than one occasion, been followed into and out of stores, to my car, approached getting out of my car, and out of all places, in front of a restaurant that is literally across the street from a soup kitchen. In not once instance, was there any reason to believe that they were simply trying to get enough money for a meal. Every single one who has approached me in Flagstaff was staggering, slurring, and had alcohol on their breath.<br /><br />For anyone who is looking for an at home version of this experience, and plays games such as I do, rent or buy the game Assassin’s Creed for the XBOX 360 or the PS3. Start walking around the poor district of Damascus and try to get anything done without being constantly assailed by beggar women asking for money. This is the only comparable experience I can imagine, except in real life, there are consequences for throwing a panhandler in a wall, or shanking them and leaving them for dead.<br /><br />My personal tolerance for the situation reached critical mass one morning last week. I was minding my own business when a visibly drunk man (marked by his inability to stand up straight and a brown jug in his right hand, labeled with three X’s) proceeded to place himself directly on a path between my intended location and myself. The man probably wasn’t privy to the fact that I was already 10 minutes late to work, and already in a mood. I can’t fault him for that. Something that he should have picked up on however, was that the path he was standing on was in fact, a street, and I was in my car as I tear-assed down the icy road trying to get to work. <br /><br />The light was green, and as I approached, I honked and waved in an attempt to get him out of the way. He refused to move out of the crosswalk, so I eventually had to slow down. I waited for him to approach my door then drove off again. Not particularly attached to a random stranger, I had no intention of seeing him injured, no matter what I thought of him. Plus, aggravated vehicular manslaughter tends to raise your insurance rates.<br /><br />I may be cold at times, but I’m not cold hearted. The thing that disturbs me most about people who would rather drink their lives away than becoming a functional member of society is the lack self respect. No thoughts as to the family and friends that worry about them, no desire for greatness or even so much as a name for themselves. Nothing but lost potential, and a parent’s lost dream of their child having a better life than their own.</span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-36170604961420145622007-08-31T19:01:00.001-07:002007-08-31T19:04:08.982-07:00...'Cause I Wrote Something and Thought Someone Besides My Prof Should Read It...<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">For as long as I can remember, I have heard varied opinions from teachers and professors regarding the subject of what literature is. I always understood their points of view, but never quite agreed with them. Although I agreed with most readings that they considered being literature, I rarely agreed to why they were. To me, there always was far too much emphasis in analyzing nuances between the lines, and trying to determine if the author was making a political or social statement. To me, what makes a book a piece of literary work is much more subjective, and much simpler.<br /> </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">In the morning, when we get into our cars and turn on our radios to begin our commutes, we often hear meaningless songs. They might have a catchy tune, but they are superficial in nature, meant for no more than monetary gain. Less often, we happen across a song that reminds us of a family member who has passed, a girlfriend who cheated on you, or a missed opportunity. We feel a connection to the musician, we can relate to things they are singing about. We feel emotions, not as a society, but as a person. Some might argue that literature discusses politics, society, religion, or the human condition. In my eyes, literature is about the condition of being human.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">For me to consider something a piece of literature there is no need for iambic pentameter, no need for rhyme or structure. Quite simply put, I want to feel. I want a book that will make me forego much needed sleep to finish a chapter. Not just because I want to know what happens next, but because I can sympathize with the main character, and I want to see him or her thrive. I want to be excited when I know that the protagonist is going to pull through, and I want to be depressed when he or she doesn’t. I want to resent the antagonist, but still relate to them in some way.<br /> </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Literature doesn’t need to be analyzed. It gratifies instantly. I can’t put it down, because it makes me laugh out loud. It makes me sad on a personal level. Literature isn’t limited to stories, or people and places. When reading scientific texts, I often find myself in awe of discoveries being made, and imagining the possibilities.<br /> </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">The difference between literature and any other text is the difference between a blues song and a pop song. When listening to a blues song, you know that the artist feels his music. When reading literature, you know that the writer feels his words. Literature creates a deep and emotional connection between the reader and the writer, using the printed page as the medium.<br /> </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">What I read isn’t a political statement. It has no moral or societal implications, nor should it be a judgment of my character or who I think should be in charge. What I consider literature is a reflection of the way I believe that most people see the world, not as nations, cultures, societies, or any other types of groups. We see the world as a large place that’s hostile and often isolates us. It is a foreboding place, where humans, despite our best efforts, repeatedly make the same mistakes. When I read, I want to know that others feel the same way I do. It makes life easier, and makes me feel less alone. </span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-87412635139792287792007-07-31T07:36:00.000-07:002007-07-31T07:38:04.383-07:00Small Talk<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Anyone who has ever spent more than a few minutes in my presence is well aware of two things. The first and foremost is my unadulterated hatred for those bubble lids that come on some specialty drinks from Starbuck’s. As inexplicable as it is, this device throws me into a tizzy every time I see it covering my beverage. I have come to the conclusion that this reaction stems from some sort of childhood trauma involving a backseat, a quick brake by my mother or father, whoever happened to be driving at the time, and a 16-ounce Icee covering the face, chest, and crotchial regions of an eight-year-old boy.<br /><br />Besides my parents vividly teaching me that 16-ounces is too much of anything for a eight year old, every five minutes or so they told me, just as your parents told you, never, ever, ever to talk to strangers. Like the bubble lid, this is something that I carry with me to this day. Well aware that in the adult world, a few exceptions must be made, I keep my conversations with the random Joe as short and sweet as possible. Anyone and everyone who has spent any time with me are aware of my distaste for small talk.<br /><br />For anyone who I might run into in public, who I have not known for more than a few months, let me quickly fill in my part of the conversations you so want me to be a part of:<br /><br />I don’t care about your sports teams. I will never care about your sports teams, even if they are my sports teams. I watch sports for the joy of watching sports, sitting back in front of the TV or at the ballpark and relaxing for the day, not to argue with you yahoos about who has the best pitching or quarterback.<br /><br />I have a phone that makes it rather easy for me to look up the weather for the next few days. If I am waiting for my food and you are a cashier, I do not need to speak to you of the forecast. If I want the current conditions, I will glance out the window.<br /><br />Finally, and most importantly, if you are not a friend or a member of my family, I do not give a damn about your political or religious affiliations. If you want to vote for whomever or pray to a geode, that’s fine and dandy, but you have no business imposing your views onto anyone else.<br /><br />All this being said, whenever I am in a public situation that requires a fair amount of waiting, such as a doctor’s office, I do my best to bury myself in a magazine, a book, or if readily available, a gaming apparatus such as my GBA or PSP.<br /><br />Most women, although more outgoing and social creatures will by their natural distrust of anything with a penis, are kind enough to leave men to our own devices when in a waiting room. This arraignment works to the benefit of both the female and the male in any given situation. First, the female can rest assured that she is not going to be psycho-killed by a loner who she happened to be nice to. The man, on the other hand, can get a few minutes of respite from women. When it comes to doctor’s offices, the chances of being left alone are increased considerably, due to the fact that (and I am saying this as a warning to everyone out there) doctor’s offices are the worst place to pick up a date. This goes doubly for the waiting room of an urologist. Common sense should suggest that there is a good possibility that the potential date has some sort of disease that you should avoid.<br /><br />Most men, when coming into contact with other men at a medical facility, will keep their space such as the women will. They will pick up a magazine, sit in a corner, and wait for their turn like all of the other infested people in the office. Although the threat of disease still exists, a man is much more likely to open a conversation with another man in this situation. First of all, men do not feel as threatened by men as they do when trying to converse with women. Second, chances are that the first man that walked in the door took the only copy of Time or Sports Illustrated off of the magazine rack, which is full of Conde’ Nast and Oprah magazines, and now the second man has nothing to do.<br /><br />Such was the situation early last week when I stumbled into my doctor’s office. As I usually do, I showed up at the requested time, fifteen minutes before my scheduled appointment, so that my doctor could see me forty-five minutes after my scheduled appointment. I grabbed the only aviation mag’ left on the rack, checked myself in, and took a seat.<br /><br />At the front desk, there appeared to be a gentleman in his mid to late forties, complaining and causing a scene because he was on his lunch hour and couldn’t be seen immediately. After the receptionists finally got him to shut the hell up, he took a seat next to me.<br /><br />“Man, these doctors always take their fucking sweet time…” He said as he took a chair next to mine.<br /><br />“Don’t you think?”<br /><br />I could see by the look in his eyes that he was waiting eagerly from a response from me, and knowing that people pester me more when I ignore them than they do when I give them short answers, I mumbled out a, “yeah…whatever…” Which was much more polite than the, “I think you should leave me the hell alone…” that was sitting at the tip of my tongue.<br /><br />My strategy, when dealing with these social butterflies, is to keep the answers as short and as sweet as I possibly can, without sounding rude, in the hope that the guy will lose interest in the conversation and fade into oblivion.<br /><br />“Whatcha reading about?”<br /><br />“Planes…”<br /><br />“No shit! I was a pilot a few years back… lost my license because of a back injury I had in a crash. It was nothing serious, no one was killed, but I broke my back in six places and my son broke his arm. It was a damned miracle that we walked out of that heap in one piece! Such a shame I can’t fly anymore, I used to take my family everywhere. What’s your interest in planes? You a pilot?”<br /><br />I should have just said ‘no,’ but instead “I am studying to be an aerospace engineer.”<br /><br />“Is that right?! Well, I just keep seeing the darndest things on Discovery and TLC, you know, like Seconds From Disaster, where they show how engineers screw up the plane and hundreds of people die-“<br /><br />Needing to change the subject on him before I punch him in the teeth, I interrupted.<br />“I never got your name…”<br /><br />“I’m Rick! And you?”<br /><br />“Jake.”<br /><br />Rick stuck his right hand out in hopes that I would shake it.<br /><br />“Sorry man, I never shake hands in a doctor’s office, you know how it is.”<br /><br />Seemingly dejected, “Yeah, I guess…”<br /><br />I found a crossword puzzle in the back of the magazine and started to fill it in. Seeing the puzzle, Rick took it upon himself to look over my shoulder and start giving me answers.<br /><br />“Aileron!”<br /><br />Confused, “What?”<br /><br />“Six across is aileron!”<br /><br />Well aware of what the answer was, and annoyed to all hell that the man refused to leave me alone, I decided that it was time to end this conversation.<br /><br />“So Rick, what are ya in here for?”<br /><br />“Oh ya know, routine checkup type thing. How about yourself?”<br /><br />“Do you know what a stressed induced psychotic episode is?”<br /><br />Stunned, Rick leaned back. “Uh… kinda…”<br /><br />“Well let’s just say I am recovering from one, and need to refill my meds.”<br /><br />“Meds?”<br /><br />“Between you and me, Rick, I don’t think I need the meds, it was an isolated incident, but if I don’t take them they revoke my parole.”<br /><br />Hook.<br /><br />“Do you mind if I ask what happened?”<br /><br />“Well, towards the end of last semester, I was sitting at a dinner downtown studying for a math final. If I were to do poorly on the final, I would have to retake the class. A guy sat down next to me and started making small talk, asking me what was good there, what kind of math I was doing, and interrupting the work I was trying to accomplish. Finally, I snapped.”<br /><br />Line.<br /><br />“What did you do?”<br /><br />“I took my pen and stabbed him in the leg with it.”<br /><br />For added affect, I clicked the top of the pen I was using for the crossword.<br /><br />Sinker.<br /><br />“I…I…I’m gonna grab a magazine…”<br /><br />“That will shut him up…” I said to myself as I smirked. My turn to see the doctor was only a few seconds later.</span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-25260238632619380142007-05-05T07:50:00.001-07:002007-05-05T07:52:25.358-07:00Poor Career Decisions<p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"></span></p><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">I have always found it curious as to the type of jobs not only that people choose as either part time or for a profession, but the jobs in which are actually in demand in the real world. Take the next few cases for example: </span><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><img src="http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a64/numatix/arrow1.jpg" /> <strong>The real estate sign holder dude</strong> </span><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">I suppose if you were a teenager and were looking to make a few quick bucks over the summer to pay for your dating expenses, or to save up for college, this wouldn't be a bad gig. But the fact is that most of the people I see around town holding up and waving these balsa wood signs are in thier 20's and 30's. This leads me to believe that these unfortunate people were either born with a very dehabilitating learning disability, or they are complete morons. Considering thier function, you know that these people must make squat fo pay, I mean, for God's sake, thier employer had to have done a cost-benefit analysis between a dude and a stick, and decided that the dude was the cheaper option. </span><p><strong><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"></span></strong><p><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong><img src="http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a64/numatix/shitter.jpg" />The Porta-Potty Cleaner</strong> </span></span><p><strong><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"></span></strong><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">I'm not sure what paths these poor souls took in thier lives, but I know one thing: you could never pay me enough to do this job. There are homeless people desperate enough to eat thier meals out of a garbage can who look down on this job. Even if it paid a half-million a year, it wouldn't be worth it. If you think about it, you would have no chance at having a wife or kids. The foot-thick stench of shit, piss, and whatever that green stuff is, is enough to repel any potential mate for up to a year after leaving the job. Forget about having anyone else who wants to hang out with you, including long time friends or family. The only chance you would have for companionship would be from others who carry the foul odors you do. Even then, you would be limited to hanging out at someone's house. Even if you and your work buddies can handle it, the patrons at Chili's would start puking when you were within 30 feet. </span><p><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong><img src="http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a64/numatix/stinker.jpg" />Deodorant Research Scientist</strong> </span></span><p><strong><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"></span></strong><strong><p></strong><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Imagine, if you will, going through 4-5 years of college, then into Grad school. Taking loans out, working your ass off day and night throughout your late teens and early twenties to become a researcher for Old Spice or Gillette. It is one thing to get stuck in a shitty job because you were never able to go to college or weren't intelligent enough, but these people have educations and chose to sniff armpits for a living. I bet their parents are proud. </span><p><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><strong><img src="http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a64/numatix/pooper.jpg" />Elephant Fecal Collector</strong> </span></span><p><strong><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"></span></strong><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Imagine being the ever supporting parent when your son or daughter came to you with their dream in hand. </span><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">kid: mommy! daddy! I know what I want to do when I grow up! </span><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Dad smiles at the child and all of the child's innocence. </span><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">dad: what would you want to do? </span><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">kid: I want to run away to the circus! </span><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Dad and Mom are now laughing. </span><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">mom: what do you want to do in the circus, honey? tightrope walker? trapeeze artist? </span><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">kid: I wanna hold a bag at the end of an elephant and catch its shit before it hits the ground! </span><p><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">-Jake</span></p>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-35746519610533454492007-04-24T03:00:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:38:19.676-07:00My Obsession<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Most people will never know.<br /><br />In fact, unless your brain works like mine, there is no way for you to relate. I know a few people who are like me, we are all around you, just pay attention to the people you see. We walk around work, pacing with our arms crossed. When you tap us on the shoulder, we jump. When you ask us a question, we kind of stare at you blankly and then say, ‘I’m sorry, did you say something?’<br /><br />At times, it sounds as if we stop in the middle of our sentences and then start again. If you aren’t one of us, you will never understand. You will never know what it is like to have your brain run faster, and with more thoughts than it can handle. You will never know what it is to obsess constantly over everything and nothing at all.<br /><br />Some of us go even further than obsessing. We have taken pessimism to a whole new level. We will, invariably turn a casual meeting that someone couldn’t make into an attempt to stab us in the back. We will, without a doubt, start imagining car accidents and funerals for friends that are ten minutes late. Mark my words, we can, and we will find a way to take anything and quite literally turn it into the end of the world.<br /><br />The things we think about don’t make any sense. Quite literally, and quite often, they don’t make any sense to us. We are intelligent people who have overactive imaginations, and for some reason, a way of looking at the world that turns everything negative.<br /><br />We spend a good majority of our time second-guessing what we want to say, what we need to say or what we are trying to say. We do this before, during and after we say it. Sometimes, we obsess about something we said a few YEARS after we originally said it.<br /><br />Quite honestly, if I ever had a chance to THINK what anyone thought about these blogs, I would probably stop writing them. Things I have such a hard time saying in person flow so freely from my fingertips that you would never imagine that Jake the Writer and Jake the Person were one in the same.<br /><br />I spend most conversations with people thinking, ‘well, if I say that, they will think…’ Over time, it has just become easier for me to assume that no one reads what I write. It takes a lot for me to open up either mentally or emotionally to most people. I have spent a good majority of my lifetime assuming that I am being indicted for the things that I feel or think. When people tell you that you are weird or crazy for thinking the way you do, or liking the things you do, or worrying the way you do, you stop telling them these things. It’s only human nature to try to fit in to the way of everyone else’s thinking.<br /><br />As much as I have tried, I can’t help it any more than a cripple can help walking with a limp. The only thing I can do is to start thinking about other things, besides the thing I’m obsessing about. By this time, I am trying to stop thoughts by thinking about them, which literally makes no sense. It is for all intents and purposes, throwing gasoline on the fire.<br /><br />There have been numerous instances when I have been in the middle of a few thoughts when someone asked me a question, and it has taken a few seconds of contemplation before I understood what was being said. There has been more than one occasion when I have had so many thoughts running through my head that I have forgotten to breathe.<br /><br />At any given moment, I have so many thoughts running through my head, that I wish I could hide from them. I think about things, then wonder why I think about things, THEN think that I am crazy for wondering about thinking about things. My brain can develop scenarios that no one has ever experienced before. It is a melting pot of ideas, and they flow from me faster than I can handle them.<br /><br />Reading about it can ill express what it feels like, but here is an example of some things that pass through my brain in an average second:<br /><br />“What did I do this time, why wont they tell me about the job, god, I’m hungry, my head hurts, I’m tired, my brother needs to stop drinking so much, well at least the expensive shit, when are they going to realize how little actual physical work I do all day, why do all my black shirts fade when no one else’s do, dammit they shorted me on my check, they better fix it or I’m gonna raise hell, shrinks suck, every one I have called has the same office hours I have, they are going to fire me, my eye itches, my head hurts, why am I so damn hungry, I want a GT, I cant afford a GT, my cell phone sucks, I need to stop buying crap that I don’t need, how am I ever going to afford that car, god, I cant believe I said ‘I cant let you drink alone’ in that dorm room in ’98 what the hell was I thinking that was stupid it just made me sound like I was trying to be cool, I cant believe that I am obsessing about something that happened in ’98, at least I’m not obsessing about something that happened in HS, god I hate myself for yelling at Matt that one time, crap, I’m obsessing over something that happened in HS, why is my mom calling over and over again, oh god, oh god, my brother must have gotten in a car accident, that’s the only reason she would try so hard to get a hold of me, get a hold of yourself Jake, she would call you at work if it was an emergency, I need to stop worrying so much, commas slow me down too much what the hell are those little rubber things for we have them all over but they don’t seem to serve any purpose why wont she believe me why do I obsess so much about things I cant control my knee itches F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 Alt+F4 how come everyone else seems at peace and I feel like I am at war why do I assume only the worst out of people how come I can identify what is wrong with me but I cant fix it I don’t want to go to a shrink I’m not crazy I just need to reason myself out of this like I reason myself out of every other problem I can fix myself I can fix myself son of a bitch why do I feel this way do I tell people the way I feel or the way I want to feel I hate myself I love myself people don’t understand self loathing they understand narcissism everyone hates me why do I have to fight everyone to get what I want why do people lean on me when they need to talk about things and I cant get the same courtesy in return why does everyone feel the need to try to make me feel worse when I talk about my problems no one knows no one knows I am ashamed to have emotions my father says it is a weakness my mom starts crying over Folgers’ commercials I cant relate to anyone why am I so damn hungry I cant eat I feel like a pig when I eat I have to be perfect I have to be perfect no one wants me around it seems like I always have to be the one to make the effort to spend time with anyone maybe I am trying to hard maybe I’m trying too much billions of people on this planet how come I feel like they are against me maybe I am being to selfish what are you talking about you aren’t being to selfish asking to be appreciated once in a while how come I bend over backwards for people and I don’t get the same in return god those machines are perfectly symmetrical this pen sucks ass I need to know I need to know why am I so afraid and ashamed to be myself where did they get a red swingline stapler I cant fall asleep I cant fall asleep I am so bored I want to cry this is my own hell I feel like I am being stifled I am so afraid that I am going to say the wrong thing and she is going to hate me I need to try she doesn’t understand how much she has changed me and my life she is everything I have to show her I have to tell her I have to keep her I cant let her go not now not ever I have to make our lives better I have to be everything to everyone I cant wear glasses I look like a dork I know I am a dork but it doesn’t mean I have to look the part I wish I was never a kid and had to deal with some things how can she not know what she means to me I need to be more open with her is that a gun to my back I cant get fat I cant get fat these walls feel like they are caving in I just want to be normal I just want to be normal I don’t want to think anymore this is torment who names fonts anyway I feel so inferior that I need to paint myself as a narcissist to hide why hasn’t my brother called oh god he got in a car accident stop looking over my shoulder I should be designing aircraft not databases I’m a fucking loser why do I keep looking at my cell phone cant stop moving cant stop moving that doctor is a liar why aren’t I fixed I wish I could forget everything and not be this person any more I misspelled classes why do I always have to fight for people to understand why do I always have to yell for them to listen no one knows no one knows no one knows what its like to…”<br /><br />If any of you are still there and you could read that in a second or two, you now know a little more about what it is like to be me.</span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-3918314957102424962007-04-17T08:48:00.000-07:002007-04-17T08:56:55.476-07:00Fall of the House (Fiction)<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">It was during a monthly ritual, a Saturday evening affair when I heard the news. As a standing rule, the last Saturday of the month was saved explicitly for what I affectionately refer to as ‘Game Night.’ The guys from work bring over their girls, their steaks and their drinks. I fire up the grill and the hot tub. Everyone eats, drinks, and soaks, then we break off into separate rooms based by gender. The girls run off into the living room to watch which ever sappy Sandra Bullock movie Dave’s girlfriend happened to pick up on the way. The boys take off into the pool house to smoke cigars and play poker.<br />I could tell something was amiss by the way Trish looked when she walked through the door, before she even said a word. For the first time in the year and a half since her and Dave started dating she actually looked happy to be at my place on Game Night, she floated into the kitchen with a smile on her face. She waited until the nine of us were all in exactly the positions she had imagined we would be for her announcement. It seemed as if she had been planning out every detail of her moment, even as far as orchestrating what Dave would be wearing.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><br />I was preparing my famous shrimp kebobs when I turned towards Dave. “So… What’s up with the suit, kid?”<br /><br />Dave turned to me, somewhat in a daze, and before he could utter a single syllable, Trish piped in.<br /><br />“Everyone! We have an announcement to make! Dave and I are engaged!”<br /><br />In shock, I stopped mid-skewering to turn and see Trish holding her left hand out with what appeared to be a three karat stone perched on her ring finger. I glanced towards Dave and saw a look of what could only be described as a mix of pride and shame. <br /><br />The general discomfort of the situation seemed to be shared between the men in my kitchen. Cameron began to choke on a jalapeno pepper he had just fished out of a jar. Tim, standing beside him, looked as if someone had just informed him that his mother had passed. Dale looked like a deer, caught in the headlights of an 18-wheeler, waiting for the driver to brake.<br /><br />The women, on the other hand, broke out into unbridled joy. Shelly, Cameron’s girlfriend, was the first to hug Trish and start to cry. The other girls fallowed suit, apparently unaware of the disapproving stares that the boys in the room were giving Dave, who leaned against the kitchen counter, speechless. We all kept the looks in our eyes as we gave Dave our half hearted handshakes and congratulations, then feigned elation as we hugged Trish.<br />As everyone finished dinner, I excused myself to setup the pool house for our weekly game. I set out the usual fare, chips and dip, and an open bar. A green felt table served as our playing surface. I was setting up the table when I happened to glance at the wall, laden with pictures. The five of us had spent the past seven years working together and being there for each other, in good times and in bad. There are pictures of baseball games, business trips, office parties and road trips. There are moments that I will never forget, emblazoned for all time, framed, matted and nailed to the drywall.<br /><br />We had all, myself included, passed in and out of different relationships. There are scattered pictures of each one of us with our arms around different women. It started to appear to me that the girls that they were with now might actually stick around. Shelly and Cameron had just moved in together, Tim and Leslie were shopping around for a place, Dale and Ashley had just celebrated their first year together.<br /><br />The light of the setting sun shone on the far corner of the wall, highlighting a picture that I had forgotten even existed. It was three years since it was taken, and it made me a little uneasy.<br /><br />As the five of us sat down, and the shock was beginning to wear off, everyone anted up and I dealt the first hand. Being the ever supporting, nurturing friend that I am, I said what every man says when one of his best friends gets married.<br /><br />“What the hell are you- Wait a second, did you knock her up?” I interrupted myself mid sentence.<br /><br />“No.”<br /><br />“Do her parents have money?” I said, only half kidding.<br /><br />“No.”<br /><br />“A rich uncle?”<br /><br />“No.”<br /><br />“Does she have money?”<br /><br />“Uh, no.”<br /><br />“What the hell are you thinking, Dave?” I finally finished the sentence.<br /><br />“I love her, I love her a lot.”<br /><br />“That’s no reason to marry her!” I didn’t actually think about the sentence until a couple of seconds after I blurted it out.<br /><br />“You just don’t want us to get married because you don’t like her. Not one of you have given her a chance since we got together!”<br /><br />“That’s not true at all!” Tim spoke up, always the one who followed the letter of the law rather than the spirit. It’s not that we didn’t like Trish, the fact is, we hated her.<br /><br />Since the guys started seeing their respective girlfriends, we had all started seeing less and less of each other outside of the office. But the situation seemed a little different for Dave and Trish. Since they met, it was as if we had to plan things a month or two in advance, and the concept of guys-night-out seemed to have flown out the window. It seemed as if the situation was getting worse, being that the last two outings he attended were Game Nights.<br /><br />“Alright Davey, when was the last time we went to a Mariners game?” Cameron fired his first volley.<br /><br />“May.”<br /><br />“May was the last time you went to a game with us. We have been to seven games this season, the last one being last weekend.” Dale spoke, for the first time since he heard the announcement.<br /><br />“So what? I missed a couple of games.”<br /><br />“You missed six you moron, in a matter of three months. And it’s always been the same excuse, some half-baked story about Trish being sick.” It was my turn again.<br /><br />“I didn’t want to leave her alone when she wasn’t feeling well.”<br /><br />Tim started laughing uncontrollably. “She’s 31, not 12 for Christ sake! Throw a pillow under her head and get her some medicine. Besides, no one goes on for three months being sick unless they have something they should be in the hospital for!”<br /><br />“Guys, I know she seems a little controlling to you, but she makes me happy, shouldn’t that be all that matters to you?”<br /><br />Completely dodging the question, I changed the subject. “I’ve gotta ask you kid, does it bother her that the ring you gave her is a fake?”<br /><br />“It’s no fake.”<br /><br />“Bull. I know how much you make, and I know for a fact that you could never afford a ring that big, unless..”<br /><br />And that’s when it hit me. Dave had owned, since his 18th birthday, a silver and black 1968 Mustang fastback. It was given to him by his father as a collectors item, hoping that Dave would pass it down to his own children. Dave had spent the years I had known him treating the car as if it was his first born, at times, talking about it more than he talked about any woman he was seeing. It continuously caused fights between Dave and Trish. She hated the fact that he loved the car.<br /><br />“You sold the Mustang, didn’t you?”<br /><br />“It was sitting in storage, collecting dust. I wasn’t doing anything with it. Besides, it wasn’t my idea.”<br /><br />“It was hers, wasn’t it Davey?” Cameron piped in again.<br /><br />“Well, yeah.”<br /><br />“Do ya get it now, Dave? You aren’t rich, but you make decent money, enough to afford a decent ring. Instead, she twisted your arm to get her a ring she doesn’t need and to get rid of the car she didn’t like.” Tim spoke for us all.<br /><br />“Can we just get off the subject and play some poker, please?”<br />The five of us finished the night off, not breathing another word of the situation.<br /><br />Monday morning came around, and I had thought a lot about the situation, feeling guilty for the way we treated Dave. Even though we saw sides of Trish that he was apparently oblivious to, we, as his friends, should have been more supportive of his decision. Each one of us felt remorse for the way we acted. It was his funeral, after all.<br />I called Dave into my office to apologize.<br /><br />“I wanted to say sorry, for all of us. Our reaction was… unbecoming. If she makes you happy, then we are happy for you.”<br /><br />“Thanks Javi.”<br /><br />“We just want you to be careful, and occasionally take time to look at the situation objectively.”<br /><br />“Understood.”<br /><br />Tim, Cameron, and Dale walked in only a second later. We were preparing a contract negation that would bring millions into the business. My company, Soliton Dynamics is young, but growing fast. Within five years, we became one of the few independent aerospace contractors that sells avionics suites to the military, civilian, and private sectors. Dave, who had just started a couple of years ago, had been an intern for us in college. He is an electrical engineer, and works as Tim’s right hand, designing the avionics components. Cameron is the top program manager in my company. Dale is the second best software engineer in the company, second only to me. Besides the owner, I am an aerospace and software engineer, it was my job to put everything together.<br /><br />“Tim, how is the hardware holding up?”<br /><br />“There were a few problems with overheating, but we just slapped in a more powerful cooling system and it seemed to clear them up.”<br /><br />“Cam, are we on track?”<br /><br />“We are actually ahead a couple of weeks, under budget.”<br /><br />“Dale, is our suite ready?”<br /><br />“Assuming there are no changes to the airfoil, everything has been tested and is up to spec.”<br /><br />“Good deal. Now, guys, I cannot overestimate how important this contract is to us. We need to knock this meeting out of the park. Bring your best, got it?”<br /><br />Everyone nodded in agreement, just in time for the reps from Airbus to show. My receptionist came over the intercom with the announcement.<br /><br />“Grab your presentations guys, I’ll meet you in the conference room in twenty minutes.”<br /><br />The guys walked out and I sat alone in my office for a couple seconds, trying to center myself. In the corner of my eye, sitting on an end table was the same picture that had caught my eye two days ago in the pool house. I had walked by it day in and day out, always knowing that it was there, but never really noticing it. It bothered me more this time than it did the last, giving me a sense of impending gloom.<br /><br />Six months later, having settled the $40,000,000 contract with Airbus to build the software suites for their next line of passenger jets, I decided to reward the guys. With Dave’s wedding only a few weeks away, I decided we could kill two birds with one stone and throw him a bachelor party at the same time. Normally, it was policy only to give managers trips as bonuses’, but I decided just to let this one slide.<br /><br />Dave had recently made me his best man. And although my own home would have been more than adequate to host a gathering of this type, I had remembered the last bachelor party thrown at my place. Tim was playing the role of best man for a friend of his from high school a couple of years back, but his apartment at the time was, in a word, laughable. Dale once described it as ‘a shoebox with a toilet.’ It was not large enough for the fifteen people we originally invited, let alone the 150 that showed up. Dale happened to invite the wrong person, someone who not only couldn’t keep his mouth shut, but doesn’t know what the meaning of “small gathering” is. I awoke the next morning to find a random 19 year-old girl next to me. There were people passed out in my bathrooms, my bedrooms, my closets and my kitchen. There were pairs of women’s underwear in the most inauspicious of places. My living room looked like Beirut, couches were overturned and broken bottles were strewn about. Fifteen hundred dollars worth of booze was gone, and I won’t even begin to describe what clogged my hot tub and pool filters.<br /><br />It was the greatest party ever. But the aftermath took two weeks and a biohazard team to mend. It was a situation that I would never like to face again. So Las Vegas, a place far, far away from my house, seemed to be the best place to throw the party. <br /><br />I put up everyone in suites at the Luxor. Cameron and I shared a room; Dave, Tim and Dale shared the other. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to get rooms next to each other, and the two suites ended up in opposite towers.<br /><br />The night of the bachelor party, I readied myself before Cameron, so I took a seat on the couch and started to watch whatever movie happened to be on at the time. <br /><br />Cameron’s voice came from the bathroom. “Did you hear what Trish is making Dave do now?”<br /><br />“No.”<br /><br />“According to Tim, she’s making him toss out most of his old magazines.”<br /><br />“What? Like Playboys?”<br /><br />“All his old magazines. Playboy, Maxim… anything that has anything to do with girls that aren’t her. She’s also making him give up his season tickets. She says that baseball is distracting from their relationship.”<br /><br />“You’ve got to be kidding me. He was finally starting to make a few games.”<br /><br />“I’ve been thinking about getting rid of mine, too.”<br /><br />Cameron’s laptop, on the desk in the corner happened to be in screensaver mode, flashing random pictures, and the picture that had been haunting me for the past few months happened to show.<br /><br />“Cam, why do you have that pic on your computer?”<br /><br />Cameron, stuck his shaving-cream-laden face out for a moment and looked at the screen.<br /><br />“Oh that? I’ve just always thought that was a cool picture of you. You remember that trip?”<br /><br />“All I remember was Dave getting the call from his father and how broken up he was about his mom dying. To tell you the truth, the picture kinda bothers me.”<br /><br />“That was three years ago, Javi. I think he’s pretty much over it by now.”<br /><br />“It’s not that, it’s just…” I had a moment of hesitation.<br /><br />“What is it then?”<br /><br />“We have to stop this wedding. I think I have a plan.”<br /><br />“What is it?”<br /><br />Just then, the phone rang. Tim suggested that we should meet them in the lounge in 10 minutes. Cameron finished shaving, as I explained the plan to him. Ready to put our idea into motion we headed down stairs and walked through the lobby. It was so simple, yet so brilliant, that I thought I was the smartest man alive. As we headed toward the lounge, I was hoping for a song like “Seven Nation Army” to play on the casino P.A. system. Instead, “I’m Just a Girl” started. It completely ruined my moment. When everyone finally arrived at the lounge, I bought five shots of Jack Daniels’ and we briefly took a seat.<br /><br />“Guys, I want to make a toast! To Dave, and to everyone. Dave, you are one of my best friends, and putting my misgivings aside, I hope for nothing but the best for you and Trish.”<br /><br />Looking at me rather surprised, Dave managed to eek out, “Thank you.”<br /><br />“And you three… Dale, Cam… You have been there for this company since before it had a name, Soliton wouldn’t exist without you. Tim, you may not have been with us as long as Cam or Dale, but you are as responsible for its success as anyone at this table. I want to thank you all, for your work and your friendship.”<br />We raised our shot glasses, and as is tradition, tapped them together.<br /><br />“Salud.”<br /><br />As we downed our shots, the lounge act, a local cover band, began to play “Tom Sawyer” by Rush. At that time, I knew it was our cue to leave, we got into a cab and headed to the middle of the strip. After six hours of boozing, carousing, and general debauchery, the five of us returned to the hotel, and I put my plan into action. I called a number on a flier that a rather generous Hispanic gentleman happened to hand me as we were walking down Vegas boulevard, and had an entertainer sent up to the other suite. Sometime in the middle of her third dance, Dave passed out, and I happened to catch a few provocative pictures of her straddling him.<br /><br />Tim gave me a disapproving glance, and said, “Dude! Pictures?”<br /><br />“Blackmail, Tim!” I had to yell across the room for him to hear me over the stereo. “Who wants another drink?”<br />Dale, standing in the corner, put his hands up like a receiver waiting for a football. I grabbed a beer out of the cooler and threw it his way. Not realizing how much he had to drink, he completely missed the glass bottle flying at him, that is until it hit his forehead and knocked him out.<br /><br />“Cam, you’re over there, is he still breathing?”<br /><br />Cameron looked down briefly, and spat out, “Yep.”<br /><br />That is the last thing I remember from that night.<br /><br />It was three days later, and we were back home in Seattle. Tim, completely unaware of what I planned in Vegas, walked into my office rather livid.<br /><br />“What the hell, Javi? Why did you post those pictures online?”<br /><br />“What pictures?” I said, knowing full well what he was referring to.<br /><br />“Dave and the stripper, they are all over your blog!”<br /><br />“You know full well that she controls the hell out of him. It’s not healthy, Cam and I thought those might break them up.”<br /><br />“What the hell kinda friend are you?”<br /><br />“I believe friends should be there for each other, even when you don’t see the error of your ways.”<br /><br />“Man, I just don’t know… I can’t fathom, what was going on in your head when you did this. You can’t just leave well enough alone, can you? I’m not sure I want people around who do this to each other. God knows when you’re gonna try to get Leslie out the picture.”<br /><br />“Oh, come on now Tim! That’s not fair, the situation with you and Leslie is different.”<br /><br />“Yeah? How so?”<br /><br />“Well, I can handle Leslie…”<br /><br />“You cannot go around imposing your will onto the lives of the people around you, it doesn’t work that way! Dave’s looking for another job, in Georgia out of all places! Trish saw the pics, had kittens, and decided that his friends here were a bad influence.”<br /><br />“He’s leaving?”<br /><br />“Right after the wedding, as soon one of them gets a job.”<br /><br />Tim left Dave’s resignation on my desk and stormed off, leaving me in shock. Cameron walked in a second later.<br /><br />“Did you hear about Dave?” Cameron seemed in shock as well.<br /><br />“Yep.”<br /><br />“I kinda thought the stripper thing was a bad idea.”<br /><br />“Cam, then why the hell didn’t you say that in the first place?”<br /><br />“Well, cause at first I thought you were just joking, and by the time I figured out that you weren’t, it was a little late. Besides, I know why you tried. I mean, I really know why you tried, and although it blew up in your face, I know what you were trying to do. It’s kinda…” Cameron stopped for a second, it seemed like he was looking for<br />the right words.<br /><br />“It’s kinda what?”<br /><br />“I want to say that it’s kind of… nice, but you did embarrass one of your best friends in a very public medium.”<br /><br />“You don’t like that word do you, Cam?”<br /><br />“I couldn’t think of something more fitting.”<br /><br />“You know, I was just trying to help him. I was just trying to do something good.”<br /><br />“You have a fucked up sense of propriety.”<br /><br />“I think it’s time we cut our losses, keep our traps shut, wish them the best, and not make things any worse for him than they already are. I have been telling him since they got together that the whole situation was unhealthy. He’ll just have to learn his lessons on his own, agreed?”<br /><br />“Agreed.”<br /><br />As soon as Cameron left I decided to meander over to Dave’s office to discuss the situation, fearing that it was already too late to change his, or Trish’s mind. Instead of Dave, I found an empty office, and decided to have a seat at his desk. Restless, I happened to glance about and came upon something interesting. It was a post-it note tucked away under a pile of paperwork with a hastily written message on it:<br /><br />Josh Wade… stang… has money and is ready to buy. 206-555-8394<br /><br />For Dave to have a telephone message in his office for a matter of 6-8 months is par for the course. The fact was that on any given day, the place looked like an unkempt monkey cage. The janitorial staff refused to clean the place, and I couldn’t blame them. Dale once joked, “Ya know, I wouldn’t be surprised if they found Jimmy Hoffa in there.”<br /><br />Sensing another bad, yet irresistible idea coming on, I took the note and left for my office.<br /><br />Two weeks later, it was the afternoon of the rehearsal. Trish was still relatively upset with me, although I apologized profusely. Dave, not surprisingly, only showed signs of being angry with me when she was around. I Trish demoted me from best man down to usher, with Dale taking my place. It was a conversation that Dave didn’t take place in, even though he was in the room.<br /><br />Nursing hangovers from the night before, Cam, Dale, and I staggered into the church. It was at this point that I realized how lucky I was not to be the best man. This was a catholic church, and when the priest stated that the wedding would last two hours, I sighed and Dale started to mouth obscenities.<br /><br />Sitting in the pew, watching people walk up and down the aisle, I started milling over the situation. I looked at how happy Trish seemed, and how apprehensive Dave was. He feigned a smile every time she looked at him, and although I had suspicions of it before, something became painfully obvious to me.<br /><br />“She made him go through with this, she had to…” I tried to talk to myself as quiet as possible, but Cameron still<br />heard. He leaned over and started whispering to me.<br /><br />“What? How do you know?”<br /><br />“Look at them, he doesn’t want to be here any more than I do…”<br /><br />“I know, I wasn’t gonna say anything but-“<br /><br />“But what?”<br /><br />“Well, we have to say something to him, we have to talk about it.”<br /><br />“I’m through trying to reason with him, it’s time we butt out.”<br /><br />“Weren’t you the one gung-ho about them not being together?”<br /><br />“Trust me, they won’t last. It’s time to let them fail.”<br /><br />“You seem a little hostile about the situation.”<br /><br />“And you aren’t?”<br /><br />“It’s his life, Javi, not mine.”<br /><br />“I’m sorry, but I have a little bit of a hard time sitting and watching a friend make the biggest mistake of his life. Out of all the people he chose to be with, why her?”<br /><br />“Well, she’s hot…”<br /><br />Although I already knew where he was going, this was a point of view I had not really considered before this moment. Trish’s one, solitary enduring feature was that she was ridiculously hot.<br /><br />“Javi, look… I’m not trying to be mean here, but have you seen Dave? The guy’s a slob, pudgy, dorky…”<br />“Yeah, yeah, get to the point.”<br /><br />“He hasn’t dated much, so when he found a girl that looks like that, he latched on to her like a drowning man to a life saver.”<br /><br />“It just… every time I think about the situation, it makes my ulcer worse. I mean, he wants to spend the rest of<br />his life being controlled and tormented by her… he might as well have signed up to be a friggin indentured…”<br /><br />I am not sure if it was my ulcer flaring up, the $2.99 breakfast I had at 5:00 that particular morning, or the 1.75 liter bottle of Captain Morgan’s that Cam and I put away the night before, but at precisely this moment, I started to get violently ill.<br /><br />“Javi?”<br /><br />“Move!”<br /><br />I shot up as fast as I could, but it was too late to find a bathroom. I ran into the closest door I could find and started to throw up. There was no mistaking that it was loud and violent enough for all in the next room to hear. <br /><br />A few minutes later, I stepped out of the confessional to find everyone staring at me with their jaws on the floor.<br />I glanced over the shocked faces, and as calmly as I could raise my right hand and said, “Don’t worry, I’m cool...”<br />Everyone continued to stare. I was obviously interrupting the rehearsal, so I closed the door of the confessional and took my leave.<br /><br />“I’ll be outside if anyone needs me.”<br /><br />Sitting on the curb, I called Josh, the new and former owner of Dave’s Mustang. After finding his number in Dave’s office I called him and explained the situation.<br /><br />“Dude, I can relate, my brother just married some chick who is a real bitch. The car was supposed to be an investment, but it looks like you need it more than I do. Here’s the deal, you can have it for 20% more than what I paid for it…”<br /><br />“Jeez, thanks…” I winced, hoping to spend a lot less on it.<br /><br />Josh and a friend dropped the car off then sped off. Dave and Trish walked out of the church even more surprised than they were when I walked out of the confessional.<br /><br />“Did… did you buy this back?” Dave stuttered.<br /><br />“I wanted to apologize about the internet-stripper thing. I know how much the car meant to you, and I think you deserve it.” I tossed him the keys.<br /><br />Trish looked at me and produced the worst fake smile I had ever seen. It turned into a grimace as soon as Dave began to hug me. Trish got in her car, Dave followed in his, and they took off for the rehearsal dinner.<br /><br />“Javi, weren’t you the one just telling me that you were gonna butt out?”<br /><br />“Did you see the look on her face, Cam? It was worth every cent…”<br /><br />“You can’t leave well enough alone, can you?”<br /><br />“I might not be able to burn the house down, but that doesn’t mean I wont throw gasoline on a flame.”<br /><br />“Remind me never to make you my best man if I ever get married.”<br /><br />Lately this place, my home, seems too quiet. The winds have picked up recently, and when the TV or stereo isn’t running, all I can hear are the tree branches rustle in my front yard. It is now six months after Dave’s wedding, another game night, and for the first time, no one showed. Instead of poker tonight, I’m in the pool house, practicing for a nine-ball tournament I am entering next week.<br /><br />The wedding went as well as one would hope for. Although no fights broke out, I felt Trish’s disapproving eyes every time she looked down the table at the reception. According to Dale, the Mustang is a continued point of strife between Trish and Dave. It was just as I had expected.<br /><br />We expanded our contract with Airbus, requiring a European office. We needed a Chief Electrical Engineer for our new European Division, and it was a position that Tim was all too eager to fill.<br /><br />A little disturbed with the way things are going this evening, I decide to give Dale a call.<br /><br />“Dale! Where are you? It’s Game Night, why didn’t you show.”<br /><br />“Well, Cam and I thought it might be nice to take the girls out, you know, for something a little different.”<br /><br />“You guys could have at least called!”<br /><br />I recently had a picture from the wedding, probably the last one of us the five will ever take together, printed, framed and matted. I decide now is as good a time as ever to hang it up, on the same wall that holds so many others like it.<br /><br />“Well, we’re at the Boxcar on Gillman, if you want to come by.”<br /><br />I see a perfect place for the picture, right next to the one that has made me anxious for the past year. Looking at it now, I see it a little differently. It doesn’t bother me the way it did before, it seems as if I have come to peace with it.<br /><br />“Actually Dale, I think it might be good if I get some time to myself tonight.”<br /><br />“Cool. If you change your mind, we’ll be here. If not, we’ll see you Monday.”<br /><br />“Have a good night, Dale.”<br /><br />“You too.”<br /><br />I hang up the phone, and head toward the wall. It is a shrine to the memories I have shared with my friends. The picture that has unnerved me is now to the immediate left of the picture that I just framed.<br /><br />The picture was taken three and a half years ago, on a skiing trip we took in Canada. I am standing on a balcony, with a drink in my hand and the red sky above me. It may be the fact that it was a two-week trip, or the amount of partying we did in those two weeks, but I can’t remember whether the sun was rising or setting. Out of all the pictures on that wall, it is the only one I have where I am alone.<br /> </span><br /></span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-9913474121446890282006-12-01T09:03:00.001-07:002007-05-04T06:37:58.153-07:00Giving Thanks<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">It is a tradition that is held in many various forms around the world. Thanksgiving is a time of year when Americans gather around a table with their families to reflect on the things in life that they are grateful for. It is a time of introspection and reflection, and a time to be with friends and family.<br /><br />To some, it is one of the times of the year that Americans fly across the country to be with people that they don’t even like to talk to on the phone all that often. They gather around a smorgasbord that outweighs the collective group at the table, to eat more food than is reasonably healthy. They hold their hands, and bow their heads to pray to a god that they don’t believe in to thank him for things that they put absolutely no thought into.<br /><br />Regardless of your religious beliefs, whether you thank Jesus, Buddha, Yahweh, or a Golden Calf, I believe that spiritual figures give points for originality. Every time I think about the “pregame prayer”, as I like to call it, I imagine how bored god must get listening to the same drivel, over and over again.<br /><br />In my head, he is sitting at his desk, floating above the clouds. There is a nameplate in the front that says “Big Guy” on it. Angels are scurrying about with headsets and PDA’s like busy stockbrokers, this is a modern heaven, after all. God’s administrative assistant, Stacy, walks in with a report.<br /><br />“Sir, the last of the day’s prayers just came in.”<br /><br />God puts his conference call on hold, “Ok Stacy, what do we have? Anything new?”<br /><br />“Well sir, it looks like more of the same as every other year.”<br /><br />“Give me the numbers Stacy.”<br /><br />“Well sir, it looks like at least 248 million Americans would like to thank you for the meal they are about to receive. 230 million want to thank you for the roofs over their heads and the clothing on their backs. 266 million thank you for their kin, brothers, sisters, parents and the like.”<br /><br />“Any weird ones?” God asks, accustomed to the outliers that occasionally pop up.<br /><br />“Well, at least a couple hundred thousand want to thank you for being paroled this year.”<br /><br />“Hmm… The number was higher last year.” God’s brow furrows.” Can’t these people be more creative?”<br /><br />“What do you think we should do sir?” Stacy is concerned.<br /><br />“Stacy, send out a memo. We’ll make the place cold and windy for the next few months; maybe drop some snow on their heads. Hopefully after that they will at least be thankful for summer.”<br /><br />“Yes sir.”<br /><br />The meal is over and I am watching football. Nearly comatose, I sit down on a recliner and think about the things that I couldn’t get along without. My family members are trying to talk to me, but I developed the ability to drown them out with my thoughts years ago. Halftime finally starts, and it gives me a few minutes to have a little one-on-one time with the “Big Guy.” I close my eyes and pray.<br /><br />“God?”<br /><br />“Yeah?”<br /><br />“It’s me, Jake.”<br /><br />“Yeah, thanks, I got that…” Sarcasm is oozing out of every word.<br /><br />“I just thought that I would thank you personally for a few things.”<br /><br />“Is this gonna be like the rest of them? Did you actually put some thought into this?”<br /><br />“Yes, I put some thought into it, but I have to warn you, this might be, well… a little unorthodox.”<br /><br />“As long as it’s not the same old food, roof, family thing that everyone keeps spitting out, I’ll be fine with it.”<br /><br />“I want to thank you for caffeine and sugar, which make it possible to stay awake and alert long enough to get through work and school. I want to thank you for sleeping pills that counteract the caffeine and sugar long enough to get a few hours of sleep. I want to thank you for caller ID and text messaging, which allow me to ignore people’s calls when I’m stressed and don’t want to talk to anyone. Thanks for not allowing me to snap like a twig, even though I have been a little burned out lately. Thanks for all the little things that get me through the day.”<br /><br />God smiles, amused. “Is there anything else?”<br /><br />“Well you know, family and friends. I guess they are kind of important.”<br /><br />“No food or roof talk?”<br /><br />“Those are gifts I give myself.”<br /><br />“Agreed.”<br /><br />I am about to open my eyes to watch the rest of the halftime show, and I remembered one more thing.<br /><br />“Oh yeah, that dream that I had a few months ago…”<br /><br />“What about it?”<br /><br />“I want to thank you for that, too!”<br /><br />I opened my eyes to rejoin the halftime festivities, already in progress. I turned to see my entire family asleep in the living room, so I sneaked out to get a little time at home to myself. Interestingly enough, although it has been snowing and cold all week, I have yet to see a snowflake hit my car or frost cover my windshield.</span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-23692148996955925152006-11-14T08:12:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:37:21.213-07:00Guys' Night Out<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">I am looking sharp, wearing a black collared shirt and blue jeans. My face is shaved, my hair is cut and gelled, and I am ready for anything that happens tonight.<br /><br />Out with my friends, a Coke in my left hand, a cue in my right, rested on my foot. I have owned the table for the past few games, and I am waiting for my next shot. Aside from myself, there are three of my friends circling the pool table, discussing the week’s events and the women scattered about the pool hall. A petite, early twenty-something blonde from across the floor comes up to me and speaks.<br /><br />“Hi, I’m new in town, and my new roomies and I were looking for some cute guys to party with after we get outta here. (Giggle Giggle)”<br /><br />I divert my eyes for a second to look over her left shoulder. One of her friends waves at us. There are five of them in total, three brunettes, and two blondes. They are all in their early twenties, and all extremely hot. I wave them over.<br /><br />“Why don’t you and your friends come and play pool with us for a while?”<br /><br />She smiles at me, “That sounds good to me! (Giggle)” she says. The nine of us play pool until closing time, and then go back to the girls’ rented house for a while.<br /><br />Things like this never happen to me.<br /><br />More likely is a scenario in which, in a last minute effort to get out of my apartment for a few hours, I call fifteen or sixteen of my friends. I do this knowing full well that out of the people that I call, only two or three of them will want to leave their homes for a game or two of pool.<br /><br />We get to the dive bar that I hate, but my friends love. One of my friends is wearing a faded t-shirt, torn blue jeans, and a hat that looks as if it hadn’t been washed since he received it as a birthday present in junior high school. Another wears a brownish-bluish hoodie over a stained, formerly white, t-shirt. The hoodie is smattered with paint from art projects and grease from working on his car.<br /><br />After a number of times trying to look decent for these outings, and seeing my friends look as if they were homeless, I have become complacent and given up. I am wearing a pair of camouflage shorts, decade old sneakers, and a black hat to cover my uncut, uncombed hair. My face hasn’t been shaved in four or five days, and my shirt has the words ‘This Is What Cool Looks Like’ printed across it.<br /><br />After snatching defeat from the jaws of victory on the pool table, I take a seat on a bench a few feet away and await my next embarrassing game. My friends taunt me, and I blame the loss on the leaning, poorly maintained table.<br /><br />After a few minutes of watching my friends play, I notice one of my friends actually talking to a woman. She isn’t the cute little blonde that I was hoping for. Instead, she is in her late thirties, her hair is gray and thinning. She is missing a few teeth, and bears a striking resemblance to someone I once saw on a Discovery Channel special about methamphetamines.<br /><br />My turn to play finally comes up, so I stand and start walking to the table to put my quarters in. Joe stands next to me and bumps me with his elbow.<br /><br />“Dude, she thinks you’re hot!” Joe says, laughing.<br /><br />“Great…” I say in disgust. I take one of my rings and hurriedly move it over to my left ring finger.<br /><br />“Alright Joe, let’s hurry up and play, I wouldn’t want to keep my wife waiting!” I say as loud as is reasonably possible, making sure she notices.<br /><br />I sit down and wait for Joe to break, she comes and sits next to me. I pull my hat down and scoot away from her. She turns to me and tries to start a conversation.<br /><br />“So, what’s your name?”<br /><br />I try to keep the answers as short as possible. “Jake.”<br /><br />“How come I don’t see you in here more often?” She asks, obviously flirting with me.<br /><br />I hurry a response that I vaguely remember in an attempt to get her to leave me alone.<br /><br />“(Blah blah blah) wife (blah blah blah) two kids (blah blah blah blah). (Blah blah blah blah, blah blah) happily married (blah blah). (Blah blah blah, blah blah blah) seven years.”<br /><br />She inches closer to me, gives me a two-toothed grin, and puts her hand on my knee as she says, “Your wife isn’t here, is she?”<br /><br />Trying to be as nice as possible, I get up and walk into the restroom, praying that she is gone by the time that I get out. Stalling for time, I splash water on my face in an attempt to get the circus-freak-attracting pheromone off.<br /><br />Ten minutes later, I finally emerge from the restroom to find a friend from work had joined our party. Justin was an odd character that I had only hung out with once or twice. He said his hellos, and went about his business with the group of guys he came to meet.<br /><br />I sit down again. Apparently not getting the clue, the crack head sits next to me again. She leans over and whispers in my ear, “You know what I like to do to guys?”<br /><br />Before she could get another word out, I say, “Hey, you see my friend over there?” I point in Justin’s direction.<br />She looks at me, confused, “Yeah, what about him?”<br /><br />“That dude thinks you’re hot! You should go talk to him!”<br /><br />Finally getting the clue, she takes leave. The party animals that my friends are, they decide to head home.<br /><br />“Guys, it’s only midnight!”<br /><br />“I got things to do in the morning, man. I gotta run.”<br /><br />“He’s my ride, sorry Jake.”<br /><br />The next evening, I get a call from Justin.<br /><br />“Jake, whatcha doin’ tonight?”<br /><br />“I’m just gonna kick it at home tonight.”<br /><br />“Dude, that chick that was hanging out with you guys was a freak!”<br /><br />“You’re telling me!”<br /><br />“Man, she didn’t get outta here ‘till noon today!”<br /><br />Not fully grasping what he is saying, I continue the conversation. “She wouldn’t stop trying to hit on - wait, what did you say?”<br /><br />“She didn’t leave here ‘till noon! She made me breakfast this morning and everything!”<br /><br />In shock, I eek out, “Tell me you didn’t…”<br /><br />He did.<br /><br />He then proceeds to tell me the whole story. After ten or twelve too many drinks, he took the poster child for drug rehab centers back to his place for, what I will henceforth describe as, ‘relations’.<br /><br />“Dude, she does this thing with her tongue-“<br /><br />“Man, I don’t want to know! You should probably see a doctor and get tested, and then a shrink and get tested!”<br /><br />I’m not sure what I find more disturbing, the fact that he actually had relations with the girl, or the fact that he is bragging about it.<br /><br />“Jake ya gotta take what you can when you can. Anyway, we stayed up ‘till about four this morning and-“<br /><br />“Justin, I think I’m gonna puke.”<br /><br />I hang up the phone and run into the bathroom. I still get nauseous when I think about Justin, the side show, and their ‘relations’.<br /></span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-56725629659776893192006-10-30T08:53:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:36:53.827-07:00Days of Innocence<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Summers spent at the local pool, playing Marco Polo. Celebrating with the team at the local pizza joint after winning the last game of the little league season. Ice cold lemonade and fresh baked cookies with friends after a water balloon fight. Many images can come to mind when one starts to reflect on their childhood.<br /><br />For some reason, when I think of the times I had growing up, I tend to remember the pranks I played on my brothers. As long as I can remember, I have been somewhat mischievous. Strewn about my mother’s photo albums are pictures of me holding down one of my brothers, punching them or pouring some sort of liquid on their heads. In my defense, I saw it as toughening them up. I always saw myself as a very creative child, finding new and interesting ways to (as my parents described it) torture my family.<br /><br />My brother, 4 years my junior, has always been terrified of Chucky from the “Child’s Play” movies. As a child, whenever a commercial for one of the films started, he would run to his room and shut the door. It would take my parents quite a bit of coaxing before he would come out again, requiring them to convince him that the ad had ended.<br /><br />As what would be considered to most to be a thoughtful gesture, my grandmother once bought him a My Buddy doll for Christmas. The doll was intended as an educational toy, with buttons, zippers, Velcro fasteners and shoelaces. The popular toy, given to tens of thousands of children, also bore an uncanny resemblance to Chucky.<br /><br />Upon opening the gift, my brother dropped it and ran to his room. He slammed the door, and was sheltered inside for half an hour before my parents were able to coax him out. The doll was stored in my closet, with my parents and my brother hoping that he would never see it again.<br /><br />The My Buddy doll, which wrought terror into the heart of my little brother, was the best gift my grandmother ever gave me. Over the months following that Christmas it gave me unbridled joy. Somehow, the doll found its way to the most inexplicable of locations. My brother would often open his toy box to find it sitting atop a fire truck. He would awake early in the morning to find My Buddy lying beside him, smiling. Being woken at 3 A.M. by the screams of a three year old let me know that I had accomplished my mission. I would spend those nights giggling myself back to sleep.<br /><br />After 3 months of not being able to sleep, and weekly trips to a local department store for replacement sheets, my parents curbed the activity by burying the doll in a box deep within the garage. It was never to be seen again.<br /><br />At an early age, the youngest out of the three was my shadow. He tried to emulate or be involved with everything that our middle brother and I did. From swordfights in the front yard to chores around the house, he followed us every step of the way.<br /><br />One summer afternoon, I had just pulled a jar from the refrigerator to snack when curiosity got the better of him. He approached me in the kitchen, wondering what I was eating.<br /><br />“Whatcha eatin’?” He looked up and asked me.<br /><br />I pulled the fork out of my mouth. With it still full, I garbled, “Pickles... Ya want some?”<br /><br />His eyes lit up, and with enthusiasm, he said “Yeah!”<br /><br />I took the fork and drove it to the bottom of the jar, making sure I could pile on as many of the small green disks as was physically possible. I handed him the fork, and with a swift bite, he cleaned off the tines. His eyes lit up again, when he came to the realization that the kosher dills that I had promised him were in fact, ultra-mega-wicked hot jalapenos. They were of the variety that had labels only written in Spanish. On the front of the jar was emblazoned a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark, and underneath, the word “Aviso!”<br /><br />He opened wide and started to try fanning the flames, but it did him no good. Laughing, I grabbed a class from the cabinet, filling it with water from the tap. I did this, knowing full well that water has the effect of opening the taste buds on the tongue, intensifying the effect.<br /><br />“Here! Drink this!” I handed him the full glass of water, and he sucked down every last drop.<br /><br />My brother started to scream obscenities that were, under the given circumstances, appropriate. However, at his age, they might have gotten the both of us grounded for ten to twenty years. I gave him a few slices of bread to scarf down, and he never asked me for food again.<br /><br />My mother hated the little pranks I played on my brothers. My father on the other hand, had the tendency of encouraging this type of behavior. He snickered every time I described pranks I would play on by friends. The encouragement ended however, one April Fool’s Day, when he found himself as the target of one of my jokes.<br /><br />My parents’ room and my brothers’ room happened to lie right across the hall from each other. They both had doors that opened inwards. This makes it rather easy to forcibly prevent the doors from opening by tying the door knobs together. I woke at 4 A.M., tied the doors with a jump rope, and sat in the end of the hall, waiting.<br /><br />6 o’clock came around, and after a few rattles on the handle, my younger brothers started pounding.<br /><br />“Jake! I hafta pee!” The youngest one started to scream.<br /><br />“April Fool’s!” I went into the living room to watch my cartoons, but promptly untied the jump rope as soon as my dad started to yell.<br /><br />These are the kinds of things that I look back on with a smile. It makes me proud to know that I had a hand in raising my brothers. This is especially true when I see the youngest, now 18, being scolded by his girlfriend for unscrewing the cap of the salt shaker at the dinner table.<br /><br />Having burgers at my mom’s house, he asks me “Dude, can you pass the pickles?”<br /><br />I open the jar of jalapenos and slide them his way.<br /><br />“Very funny…”</span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-1160423762644379172006-10-09T12:55:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:36:22.140-07:00Travel Diary Study of '06<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">I, like many other residence of Flagstaff, was asked to participate in a household travel survey last week. This was to depict the experiences and patterns of the average person while driving around our town.<br /><br />These are the results of my survey.<br /><br />Thursday, 9:06 AM:<br />When driving to school this morning, cut off by yippee (my name for a person who owns a black Excursion with a bumper sticker that says ‘save the trees’). Yippee comes within approximately 2 feet of front bumper when cutting me off. I pass the Excursion to the left hand side, beep twice, and after obtaining driver’s attention, display my right middle finger for him to see.<br /><br />Driver retaliates by rolling down window and throwing large peanut butter and banana smoothie at my passenger side window. Smoothie container is destroyed upon impact, dispersing its contents about the entire right side of my vehicle.<br /><br />No comment on how the flavor of the smoothie was ascertained.<br /><br />10:15 AM:<br />While traveling behind Subaru Outback, I was forced to slam on my brakes to avoid a collision with said vehicle when it suddenly stops for no apparent reason. I glance in rear view mirror to notice that six vehicles brake and swerve to avoid a collision with each other and myself. Two of the vehicles behind me veer into oncoming traffic, narrowly adverting an accident with a motorcycle and a 16-wheeler. Two others swerve to the right. One goes off the road, the other stops just in time to avoid hitting a rather large pine tree. In my estimation, at least 7 people are nearly killed or seriously wounded.<br /><br />Two seconds later, the reason the driver ahead of me stopped suddenly becomes obvious. A squirrel appears from the front of the Outback, and attempts to cross the street. Squirrel is then hit by opposing traffic.<br /><br />10:33 AM:<br />I receive text message from classmate who previously requested assistance with homework problem in calculus. Classmate previously tried to convince me that I was wrong about a certain point that I had showed her on the problem. She had sent me the text message to explain that I was right and to apologize.<br /><br />I attempt to respond to the message, while driving and not paying attention to the words that I was typing. I attempt to type phrase “I told you!” but somehow, it comes out “I love you!” I do not become aware of the mistake until she types back “I love you too!” By this time, the damage has been done. I am now being stalked by a 19 year old obese woman with three children.<br /><br />11:45 AM:<br />I make the mistake of jumping on the freeway to make a “quick” trip to Target. I-40 westbound is backed up like a clogged toilet for 120 minutes. I take advantage of the time, traveling at less than 5 mph the entire trip, to finish my homework, balance my checkbook and play Lumines. I finally reach my destination at 1:50 PM.<br /><br />2:30 PM:<br />Waiting for a light to turn, a cute blonde girl around my age in a red Focus pulls along my left side. She looks over and waves, I wave back. She smiles, I smile back. She starts making kissy faces at me; I write down my number and hold it against the window. She takes down my number and waves again. The light finally turns green and we both drive away.<br /><br />My girlfriend is less than impressed. She slaps the back of my head and calls me some rather vulgar names. I loose my handle on the fresh cup of coffee I had just purchased at the Starbucks inside of Target. All 24 ounces of the piping hot coffee spill into my lap, causing burns and blisters.<br /><br />I cry, girlfriend laughs.<br /><br />Friday, 7:33 AM:<br />Now at work, God punishes finger used to flip-off yippee by lacerating it. I am working on computer, replacing a burnt-out power supply. Upon attempting to remove the wires from the motherboard, I jerk the wires away, forcing finger into sharp edge of case. Finger is punctured, causing bleeding for 5-10 minutes, as well as tainting the 26-year-old perfect safety record of my IT department. </span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-1160048459457961142006-10-05T04:40:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:33:57.395-07:00Lost Cause<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Over the years, a few responsibilities have become intrinsic parts to any position that I hold in a company. Besides being ‘the dude who rants a lot,’ ‘the dude who always looks like he needs sleep’ and ‘the really irritable guy’, I have also spent a portion of the last few years as a trainer, in one extent or another. First, as the lead mentor at a call center that offered directory service for cell phone users, and as a pseudo technical trainer for end users in my building.<br /><br />I started training, specifically mentoring, with admittedly inauspicious intent. I wasn’t looking to share my knowledge with those who were lacking, or make the team better as a whole. I started training because I absolutely hated answering phone calls all day.<br /><br />The job consisted of sitting in front of a computer with a headset on and connecting people to phone numbers we found in a database. I was one of the faster operators in the building, with my call times averaging between 15-25 seconds apiece. Stretch that out over a few hours, and there was often a case where I would take 1000 or more calls in a day. Stretch it out over the year, and well, you get the point. For someone who gets bored with everything easily, all the calls that I had answered had taken their toll.<br /><br />I also saw training as an opportunity to impress management with the wide variety of abilities in my skill set, and hopefully, an opportunity to meet girls. Unfortunately, after just a few weeks, most of the management learned that I was an impatient ball of nerves. Even though my trainees would walk away from the experience with a greater knowledge of the job, they might also walk away emotionally scarred. Management kept me on as a mentor, but never promoted me any higher.<br /><br />The experience with the women at the job wasn’t much better. With the exception of one girl that I met in my tenure, the girls that were coming in were too old, too young, too dumb, too aggravating, too boring, too crazy or just flat out not my type.<br /><br />Although I started with mixed motives, but ultimately I found the experience rewarding. As many times as I had to prevent myself from choking the trainees, the time I spent with them taught me patience and teaching techniques that have traveled with me to other positions. The biggest lesson that I learned was, no matter how hard you try, no matter how intelligent some people are, not everyone is capable of learning everything. Most everyone is naturally either right or left brained, favoring one over the other since birth.<br /><br />After a certain amount of time trying to teach someone, a trainer must write some trainees of as a lost cause, wish them the best of luck, and show them the door. It’s not something that a trainer likes to do, but is necessary as part of the job. A new hire who isn’t keeping up with the rest of the class, slows the class down as a whole, becomes a liability to the manager they are going to report to, wastes the trainer’s time, and ultimately, wastes their own time. Giving them their walking papers just helps them to find something they are better suited at.<br /><br />Take one trainee I had for example. For our purposes, we will call her Sharon (mostly because I can’t remember her real name). Sharon was a woman in her early to mid-thirties. She had spent a good majority of her adulthood as a stay at home mother, taking care of her two kids and the home. With her kids getting a little older, and not needing her at home during the day, she decided to get a job to occupy her time.<br /><br />Sharon was a musician by nature, more comfortable with the keys on a piano than the ones on a keyboard. The only real experience she had with computers was checking her e-mail and browsing the web. Her typing skills were sub-par, compared to the other trainees in her class, she barely had enough speed to pass the typing test required to get the job.<br /><br />After three weeks in classroom training, learning the ins-and-outs of the job, like everyone else, she was handed off to the mentors to refine the skills she would need to be successful. I was the first one to sit with her and watch her work.<br /><br />“Sharon, is it?”<br /><br />The only response I received was a slight nod, indicating that she was a little nervous.<br /><br />“Ok, Sharon, I am going to plug my headset in and listen in to a few calls of yours to see what rough spots you might have, and how we can polish them out.”<br /><br />“Ok…”<br /><br />I plugged myself in, took a seat next to her and began listening to a couple of calls, noticing that her average call time was well over a minute. The expression on her face was looking more and more anxious by the second. I tried to ease her into the experience as simply as possible.<br /><br />“Just relax, pretend that I’m not even here.”<br /><br />Her first call came across the line. A friendly recording played, asking the customer what city and state to look for information in. The customer promptly responded.<br /><br />“Phoenix Arizona, please.”<br /><br />Sharon managed to finally put a sentence together.<br /><br />“How can I help you, sir?”<br /><br />“I need the number for a Dairy Queen on Bell and 29th.”<br /><br />“That will be just one second sir.”<br /><br />Completely in a daze, she sat there and stared at her terminal for about twenty or thirty seconds. No typing, no looking at her notes, just sitting there and staring. She looked as if she was about to type something, then turned and looked at me, completely at a loss as what she should do next.<br /><br />Hoping that all she needed was a direction, I wrote down ‘type the word dairy in the first box’ then showed her my notepad. She read the note, followed the directions to a letter, sat and stared for another twenty seconds, then stared at me again, looking for another clue.<br /><br />I wrote her another note, ‘Begin your search’. She read the note, stared at me again, and then wrote. ‘How?’ directly below the message I had just written.<br /><br />At this point, I was starting to get a little irritated. Either she was too nervous to function properly in this job, or after three weeks of paid training, she had not yet learned what key to use to complete her primary function. I pointed to the proper key, and she did something that no one I had ever mentored had done. She slid the keyboard in my direction.<br /><br />As a general rule, to prevent dependency on others, everyone in the mentoring program had decided collectively not to enter anything into the trainee’s keyboard. We were there as advisors only, not to do their jobs. We wrote notes, gave them pertinent information and spelling, and gave them pointers along the way, but never did their job.<br /><br />I slid the keyboard back in front of her hands, and pointed at the key again, this time more explicitly identifying the key she needed to use. She gave me a dirty look, angrier than any other I had ever seen, then pressed the button. Thirty or so listings appeared on her screen, they were various businesses with the word ‘dairy’ in the name from around the valley. With the listings and their street names in front of her, she should be able to scroll the listings to find the proper one. Instead, she starred at the screen for another twenty seconds, and slid the keyboard in my direction again.<br /><br />“Sharon, I’m not here to do the job for you, just to help you out. Scroll down until you find the listing.”<br /><br />She did as I had instructed, scrolling down to the bottom of the list, where I saw, quite clearly, a listing for Dairy Queen at 2900 E. Bell. I promptly took the tip of my pen and pointed it at the entry displayed on the screen.<br /><br />She pulled her hands away from the keyboard, leaned back, and tried to soak in what I was telling her. To help get my point across, I started tapping the listing with my pen. Either completely oblivious to what I was trying to say, or functionally illiterate, she informed the customer of the progress of her search.<br /><br />“Uh, I’m not finding anything for that listing, sir.”<br /><br />Now, fairly irate, I took my pen and started poking at the listing on the screen with the enthusiasm and fervor of a convict shanking a prison guard. My pen tip bounced off the screen 6-7 times, leaving ink marks on the glass. I did everything I could think of to point out the correct entry besides taking a Sharpie, circling the listing and writing, “This one, stupid!” on the glass.<br /><br />“Just one moment, sir.”<br /><br />A two minutes after she picked up the phone, Sharon’s flickering, 3-watt light bulb she calls a brain, finally turned on. She turned to me and smiled with a sense of relief.<br /><br />“Here we go sir, I have…”<br /><br />I put her calls on hold and explained what she did wrong, making sure to inform her of every minutia of her errors. Repeating them 3 or 4 times to make sure that she was aware of them.<br /><br />I took her calls off hold and the pattern repeated itself. For two hours, she would get a call, slide me the keyboard a few times, and I would resist the urge to smash it against the desk in front of me. After fifteen days of training, she was unable to make sense of the system. I took some time to browse the average call times of the other students in her class. Each and every one of them had reduced their times well below the recommended 48 seconds they needed before being passed off to their managers.<br /><br />Sharon’s average time was in the 120-second ballpark.<br />Afraid of having an aneurysm, and fearing I was taking the wrong approach, I backed off for the day to let her get some time to go it alone. I headed back to my desk, chanting, and finished my notes on that day’s progress.<br /><br />“…Calmblueocean, calmblueocean, calmblueocean, calmblueocean….”<br /><br />I usually keep my notes rather professional, but I was so wound up from the day’s events that I couldn’t help myself.<br /><br /><em>Notes on first mentoring session for new hire Sharon:<br />Despite my apparent inability to aid in Sharon’s development whatsoever, I continued to sit with her in the hopes that something, anything; that I was trying to tell her was sinking in. I was sorely disappointed.<br /><br />Sharon is completely unable to figure out even the most simple of calls on her own, turning to me as a crutch, even for listings that were well known landmarks down the street from the building we are now in. She repeatedly makes the same mistakes, even after being told how to correct the mistakes a multitude of times.<br /><br />Her inability to retain any knowledge that I have given her whatsoever shows either complete contempt for my experience as a CSR, or the attention span of a 5 year old.<br /><br />A short list mistakes Sharon made repeatedly in my two hours sitting with her:<br />Using the word ‘The’ as a keyword for searches<br />Asking what state ‘New York City’ was in<br />Letting the air go dead for more than 3 minutes<br />Putting customers on hold to get a drink of water<br />Mistaking the ‘call termination key’ for the ‘begin search’ key<br />Repeating words such as ‘crap’ on the air when unable to find a listing<br />Not searching all available outlets when trying to find a difficult entry<br /><br />In short, she is completely unable to perform even the most basic tasks required of her as a CSR. Furthermore, I am not an expert, but it is my recommendation that she be tested for a learning disability. Sharon, at times, exhibits signs of illiteracy.<br /><br />I also think that HR should review the requisites for hiring, if only to save the time, money, and effort it takes to train someone such as her.<br /><br />My recommendation:<br />TERMINATION!!!<br /></em><br />I came into the office the next day after some introspection. After much thought, I gave her the benefit of the doubt, and figured that I might be the problem. I passed her off, along with my notes, to another mentor. I figured someone with a softer hand and more patience would have better luck.<br /><br />Out of sight and out of mind, I was at my desk finishing up some notes on a rather successful session with another trainee in Sharon’s class. The training lead, Amy, took a seat next to me.<br /><br />“Uh, we need to talk about your notes on Sharon…”<br /><br />“What about them? I thought they were pretty concise.”<br /><br />“Well, Jake, they’re rather…”<br /><br />“Rather what?”<br /><br />“Mean!”<br /><br />“Mean?”<br /><br />“Jake, listing mistakes she made is expected, but questioning her literacy? Don’t you think you are being just a bit rough on her?”<br /><br />“Actually, I thought about it a lot last night, and came to the same conclusion.”<br /><br />“So, what did you do?”<br /><br />“I handed her off to Stacy.”<br /><br />Stacy, was without a doubt, the best person I could think of to mentor Sharon. Calm, personable, patient, and persistent, she was always the best fit for someone who needed a seemingly insurmountable amount of improvement.<br /><br />No sooner had I spoken her name, she walked up. Her face carried a look of shock, as if she had just witnessed a violent crime. This was completely out of the norm for someone who usually had a smile on her face, even when things were rough.<br /><br />“How’s it going, kid?” I came to the conclusion that she had the same luck that I did, but she looked like she needed to vent.<br /><br />“She typed the word ‘return’.”<br /><br />“Say again…” Amy was confused, as was I.<br /><br />Stacy started again. “I told her ‘now hit return’ after she typed the name of the listing. I looked down to write something, then looked back up, and the word ‘return’ was in the search box. I was with her for two hours and I still can’t drop her time below two minutes.”<br /><br />I looked at Amy with a smirk that had ‘I told you so’ written all over it. “So Amy, you still think that I was being mean?”<br /><br />“Well…”<br /><br />Tired of the hemming and hawing, I looked over to Stacy. “Let’s just see what she has to say about it.”<br /><br />“Can her!” Stacy is not known to be mean, but those words came out with so little hesitation that I think that she might have actually experienced some sort of joy saying them.<br /><br />Amy looked at the both of us, shocked. “But she is so nice!”<br /><br />“She sucks! She sucks a lot! She might be the dumbest person I have ever met in my life! We sat with her for four hours, Amy, four hours, and she hasn’t improved! You really think any manager is gonna take her with her times that high?” I’m never at a loss for words when frustrated.<br /><br />“No… They won’t.” </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><br />“Nice is not competent, Amy, you know that as well as I do. She has had three weeks of training, two days on a fairly simple job, and shown no improvement at all.”<br /><br />“Ok… I’ll take care of it…”<br /><br />Amy reluctantly walked over to Sharon’s desk and started to talk to her. It was in inaudible conversation that I didn’t want to witness. I turned back to Stacy, still standing in front of me, aghast.<br /><br />“Go to break, kid, you look like you need it.”<br /><br />“I’m gonna go talk to HR.”<br /><br />A few minutes later, after she had done the dirty deed, Amy came back with a look of relief on her face. Under the shadow of the muffled obscenities coming out of the HR office, we began to chat again.<br /><br />“We both kind of decided that she was better off somewhere else.”<br /><br />“So she wasn’t upset?”<br /><br />“No, I actually think she was expecting it. Well it just goes to show you…”<br /><br />“Goes to show you what?”<br /><br />“Like my dad always said, you can’t expect a painter to fly.”<br /><br />“What? What does that mean?”<br /><br />“Never mind.”<br /><br />To this day, I still have no idea what she was talking about.</span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-1158928589967506452006-09-22T05:32:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:33:30.064-07:00Everyone Says I'm a Cancer...<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">The cancer is often described as moody, but rarely mean. He is only mean when he is afraid of losing something that is valuable to him. I, on the other hand, am rarely moody and only mean when someone initiates the feeling, elevating my stance based on the stance of the person that I am arguing with.<br /><br />The cancer male is often characterized as unconfident of his own appearance, and an extreme romantic. Neither of these could be further from the truth. In reality, at a young age I was both of these things. But after a matter of time, a greater understanding of self, and a few restraining orders, I have come to the conclusion that most women see me as a Greek god. And although some romanticism is important in a relationship, extreme romanticism demeans the value of romanticism, such as inflation lowers the value of the dollar.<br /><br />Cancer men are known to understand women very well, and are fond of children. I, on the other hand, only know enough about women to point one out in a police lineup. Everything that I know about women can be found quite easily by flipping through an anatomy book. My fondness for children is still up in the air. At this point in my life, I am fond of children when they go somewhere that isn’t my apartment. Children might be in my future, but it will definitely be the distant future. I still feel like a child myself, and I am not ready to let go of that just yet.<br /><br />We are known to avoid serious relationships for as long as possible, treading lightly when committing. In my case, this is the most accurate of these generalizations. In my personal life, if things aren’t perfect then I have the tendency of getting bored quite quickly. I get queasy at the thought of signing a lease for more than six months, and I am quick to break things off with women before any chemistry has had a chance to develop. Despite what my dating record might tell you, I am the type of guy who doesn’t mind being single for a while, and enjoys the respite that comes from a night alone at home.<br /><br />We are known not to be easily flattered. This has been proven wrong to me many times by attractive sales clerks and waitresses across the state. I consider myself very stubborn, but for some reason, I am also a sucker for the cute girl behind the counter. A simple, ‘You look cute in that…’ or ‘That’s hot… (giggle, giggle, giggle)’ makes my wallet automatically jump out of my back pocket. I have a pair of Oakley’s, two pairs of Ray Ban’s, a lime green polo that I have never worn, and a subscription to a magazine that I have never read, (because it is in German), to prove this fact.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Men born under this sign are often said to be excellent cooks. The only thing I can make is money, which is used at restaurants and at grocery stores to purchase Hot Pockets and microwavable burritos. When asked about my prowess in the kitchen, an ex-girlfriend once told my family, ‘My daughter wouldn’t eat it, and she eats dirt!’<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">I believe that your personality is not predestined. It is not handed down to you by the fates, but by your parents, friends, and your environment. The positions of the planets at your birth cannot tell you who you are or who you will be, that is a decision that you need to make on your own. Any correlations you might have with the traits of the sign you were born under are purely coincidental.<br /><br />(I know it's not my usual fare, but it was a class assignment...)</span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-1158323681439096902006-09-15T05:29:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:33:01.240-07:00An Ode to Jake<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">A few days ago, my girlfriend and I were leaving a local coffee shop after breakfast. Upon opening my car door to get inside, I happened to glance at the front window of the shop. I saw a gentleman, about 5’10” tall, brown eyes, black hair, Hispanic. He carried an aura of confidence about him; he seemed like the type of guy who could and would accomplish anything he set his mind to.<br /><br />My girlfriend glanced at me with a somewhat puzzled look, confused as I took a couple of seconds and stared into the window.<br /><br />“What is it, Jake?”<br /><br />I turned to her and smiled.<br /><br />“God, that’s a handsome devil in the window!”<br /><br />Still confused, with her mouth agape, she turned and looked at the window. Noticing that the window I had been ogling for the past few seconds was opaque and rather reflective, she turned back to me more confused than before.<br /><br />“All I see is you, Jake.”<br /><br />I turned back to her for a second, and smirked. As soon as she saw the smile on my face, she knew what I was going to say, but that didn’t stop me from saying it.<br /><br />“Exactly!”<br /><br />She looked at the ground in front of her, put the sunglasses she hand in her hands over her eyes, sighed, and shook her head. I turned my head towards the window, looked at myself for another second, and then got into my car. I took a grin with me that I carried for the next few hours.<br /><br />How do I love me? Let me count the ways.<br /><br />People have asked me time and time again if I am as cocky and vain as others observe me to be. I often repeat the phrase, ‘If I could, I would run across a grassy field into my own arms.’<br /><br />Often sarcastic, occasionally inappropriate, always opinionated, I am my favorite person. I bathe in the glow of the intelligence that I possess. I carry it with me like a protester with a placard, holding it above my head for all to see. I love sharing the knowledge I have with the people around me.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I have a great sense of humor, if I do say so myself! Sharp, witty, and poignant, I have always had an intrinsic ability to make those around me laugh. Not afraid to be self-deprecating, my friends always have a great time in my presence. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I am ridiculously good looking. And let’s be honest, as much is you value the company of friends and family who are less than attractive, it’s always better to be seen surrounded by beautiful people. Being around attractive people makes you feel better about yourself. I make people feel better about themselves. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">By no means whatsoever am I perfect. Every time I think about my attributes, I think about my flaws, my vices, and my errors. I look at these things the same way I look at my favorite work of art. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I stare at my favorite painting and admire the work. I look from afar and notice the time, skill, and soul that the artist put into the canvas. I begin see how much of himself he conveys through his hand. The closer I get to the work, and the more I begin to stare, the more flaws I begin to see. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I see sections of canvas that have frayed over time. I see portions of the painting that have faded, and streaks where the artist put a little too much pressure on the brush. I see the things that some might consider imperfections, and they make the picture more beautiful, they bring the picture to life and make it more real. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I love the picture that is me. I love my frayed canvas. I love my flaws. I believe they bring me to life, and make me a human. To hate the imperfections, is to hate the painting as a whole. I would love me if I weren’t smart, if I wasn’t funny, if I wasn’t attractive. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">But I don't have to worry about that, because I am smart, I am funny, and I am attractive, and more than anything else, I love me because I am humble.<br /></span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-1154963911585718472006-08-07T08:18:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:31:44.374-07:00Who's Afraid of...<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">In my experience, there are two flavors of people who suffer from problems with anxiety. The first, and most common would be your normal, average, everyday moron. These are the type of people who get anxious about everything because they don’t know enough about anything to really know what goes on in the world. They know just enough about what could happen in the world, and they think they know why, but they are so far off that the reaction makes no logical sense.<br /><br />These are the type of people who don’t get their children inoculated for diseases because they believe that the government is going to use the shot to chemically control their children. Conspiracy theorists without proof, a great deal of these people invent situations in their head to make them feel as if they are more important than they really are. Don’t get me wrong, there is a need for conspiracy theorists, especially in this country, but some just straddle the line between thinking outside of the box and paranoid.<br /><br />Then, there are the polar opposites. A group of people who are informed enough about most things that they know enough to be dangerous to themselves and the people around them. These people are rarely conspiracy theorists, and more likely than not to be hypochondriacs, spending a great deal of time with their heads in medical texts of some sort, trying to figure out what that scratching in the back of their throat is.<br /><br />Admittedly, I am one of the later. In the age of information, born of the Internet, it has become ever increasingly easy for us hypochondriacs to gather information about the diseases we have this week. All we need is a small symptom, a sneeze, a headache, or a cough to make us start looking on the net for information, and at our wills to make sure they are up to date. All we need do is to pick a disease, and our brain will fill in the blanks, developing any symptoms that we don’t already have.<br /><br />In an age when we are bombarded by information about diseases from sources such as Web MD, Discovery Health Channel, and various other sources, there are very few sites or informational programs that wont tell you what will kill you in your sleep tonight. For those with Internet addictions, and a compulsion to learn more about ourselves and the world around us, this is a curse.<br /><br />September 1999:<br />I had to be excused from a late morning Latin class because I thought I was having a heart attack. After much, much retrospection, I determined that the 6 cups of coffee I had that morning, nervousness I had due to an upcoming test, and an upset digestive system caused by my breakfast had caused me to have an acute anxiety attack with heartburn. I took four Tums and two Tylenol PM and the heart attack ended.<br /><br />August 2000:<br />After staring at my red, itchy hands for an hour at work, I convinced myself that my hands were swelling up, and I was breaking out in hives. This was something that actually happened to me in high school, but not once since. At the time, I was a 411 operator, and when a customer was kind enough to ask me how my day was going, I replied:<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">“I think I am breaking out in hives, my hands are all itchy and swollen…”<br /><br />This turned out to be a bad idea. Unbeknownst to me, a classroom of 35 new-hires was sitting in a room 30 feet away listening to every word I said over a muted speakerphone. This was only pointed out to me after I passed 15 people chuckling and pointing at me.<br /><br />My dermatologist suggested I obtain a bottle of what he called ‘moisturizing lotion’ and use it on my hands. Within three days, my hives were gone.<br /><br />Late 2001:<br />Sitting in a training class, after a long lunch and a news report about the latest anthrax scare, I started writing an email to my parents about what ‘arrangements’ I wanted to be made. This included, what songs I wanted at my funeral, who my pallbearers were to be, and who was to be invited to my rosary service and funeral reception. Interestingly enough, I had no symptoms whatsoever until I started to read a synopsis on Web MD.<br /><br />February 2002:<br />After waking up with sharp, stabbing pain in my right hip off and on for a while, I was convinced that I either had a bone spur or some sort of ligament or cartilage problem in my hip. Interestingly enough, the problem stopped immediately following when I started to make sure that my keys weren’t in my pajama pants pocket before crashing for the night.<br /><br />November 2002:<br />Could not sleep for three days before finally going to the doctor. Even though I had already started feeling better, and I was quite certain that I had never been to Asia, I was convinced that I had somehow contracted SARS. After a multitude of tests, and arguments with my physician trying to convince him of what I knew, regardless of the results of the tests, it was determined that what I had was, as he called it, ‘a common cold’.<br /><br />June 2003:<br />After noticing an oddly suspicious red mark on my right forearm, I was determined that I had necrotizing fasciiatis, or as the common folk would call it, flesh-eating disease. After further inspection, and pacing about my apartment for 5 hours, I realized that the red mark was caused by accidentally bumping into a brick wall earlier that day. My killer bacteria was, in fact, a simple scrape.<br /><br />November 2004:<br />After watching a Discovery Channel special, and feeling under the weather for a week or two, I somehow managed to convince myself that I was the first American to come down with the avian flu. I kept imagining myself giving interviews to various news sources from my hospital bed, with the eyes of the entire country on me, wondering if I was going to pull through or if others would come down with the disease. As it turned out, my fever and headache were caused by nothing other than sinusitis.<br /><br />July 2005:<br />After awaking with my left arm numb, my heart started racing, and I believed that I had been in the middle of a stroke. My first instinct was to go online and double check the symptoms of a stroke before I called for an ambulance.<br /><br />In a panic, I was unable to find any sites with stroke symptoms listed. After ten minutes of still being alive, with my arm getting less and less numb by the second, I started to calm down. Considering I was starting to feel better instead of worse, my vision wasn’t closing up, and there was no blood shooting out of my nose, I came to the conclusion that my arm was just asleep from lying on it all evening.<br /><br />March 2006:<br />After bringing all of this to the attention of my shrink, plus a laundry list of psychological ailments that I thought I once had, including Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, ADHD, and Tourette’s Syndrome , she determined one thing. As she put it, I am a reasonably intelligent individual who knows too much about what can go wrong and has an overactive imagination, or as I like to call it, a dude with too much free time on his hands, or a fucking nutjob, for simplicity sake.</span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-1152231651271223742006-07-06T17:20:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:31:02.232-07:0012:06 PM<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">“Watch, look to the left, over by the payphones.”<br /><br />She had a daily routine that she followed religiously; I could practically set my watch by it. There had only been rare occasions since I had first seen her that it had changed.<br /><br />“What the fuck is the deal Jake, are you stalking her or what?”<br /><br />“Dude, just shut up and watch!”<br /><br />Her daily early afternoon routine involved a large cup of coffee and a stroll into the basement of the student union to watch the drama majors perform monologues and improvisational comedy sketches, badly, I should add.<br /><br />Today was no different, she had her coffee in her right hand, her backpack was on, and she was completely oblivious to my existence. She passed by the payphones across the hall from where Joe and I were sitting on this day, the same place I sit everyday at noon.<br /><br />“12:06 P.M., I swear to Christ Joe, she shows up and passes the same spot within 4 minutes of 12:06 everyday,”<br /><br />“So what?”<br /><br />“So what? What do you mean ‘so what?’ You don’t think that’s a little fucking strange dude?”<br /><br />“I’ll tell you what’s fucking strange man, the fact that you know that.”<br /><br />“Don’t you think she’s cute?”<br /><br />“She’s cute. So why don’t you just talk to her?”<br /><br />“I don’t get to class in time to sit anywhere near her. I have class at Old Chem and then have to bolt up to AME.”<br /><br />“How about now? Why don’t you catch her now?”<br /><br />“What the hell am I supposed to say? ‘Hi, I know you don’t know me, but I have had my eye on you for a few weeks now’? Do you have any idea how fucking odd that sounds?”<br /><br />“That doesn’t seem odd at all.” There were more than subtle undertones of sarcasm in his voice.<br /><br />“Goddamn smartass.”<br /><br />Admittedly, it did sound kind of odd that I knew what time she pass that particular point in the hall, but it was entirely coincidental. She wasn’t the only student in Tucson who had a lunch routine. I would usually grab a cup of coffee and a pastry or bagel from the same small stand that she would frequent. I would then take a seat on a bench down the hall.<br /><br />Over a matter of a couple of weeks, I slowly started to casually observe her lunch routine. I had first noticed her in my engineering 181 lectures. She was impossible not to notice. An attractive young female tends to stick out in a group of students that is predominately men and women who could only be described as such by the anatomical definition. I really hate to categorize people into stereotypes, but out of the 300 people in our lecture, no more than 50 of them were female. And out of those 50 women, only about 15 of them were anything you would want your friends to see you in public with.<br /><br />She was 5’4”-ish, with shoulder-length brunette hair, blue eyes, and great legs. Physically, she had absolutely everything I was looking for in a girl. The fact that she was as engineering major let me know, that at least intellectually, she was my type.<br /><br />A few days had past since I had pointed her out to Joe, with him unsettlingly quiet about the event. I walked into our engineering lecture to a surprise. Whether it was to be good or bad was to be determined.<br /><br />“Jake! Over here, yo!”<br /><br />I looked to the front of the room to find Joe sitting two seats away from her, with a single seat in between.<br /><br />“Dude, I saved you a seat! Right here buddy!”<br /><br />I begrudgingly took my place next to him, giving him a dirty look in the process, but giving him high-fives in my head. This was the opportunity that I was looking for; I had just wished that it wasn’t as contrived as it was. Considering the standard format for the lecture, it was also the perfect environment.<br /><br />I will admit, this wasn’t the first time that I had taken a seat next to an attractive woman in one of my lectures. I will also admit that this wouldn’t be the first time I had tried to get one of them to notice me. Three times before, I had tried to strike up conversations with girls in lecture classes. Three times before, I was shot down or ignored before any substantial progress had been made.<br /><br />The problem I faced was the fact that the professors in my other classes were almost strictly professors. They had few distractions in their personal or professional lives, and had plenty of time to prepare lectures and notes for their sessions. This means, in short, that these college teachers were actually teaching things that weren’t in the textbooks to their students. This ensured that the young, cute, impressionable females that I was trying to corrupt were paying attention and taking notes rather than talking to me.<br /><br />This challenge simply did not exist in my engineering lecture. The few of us guys who were confident, thin, attractive, and all-around, normal enough to hit on the 15 desirable bachelorettes in the class were free to do as we will. The professor who led the lecture section of the class was completely overwhelmed with overseeing a project that was to be taken to a national competition at the end of the semester.<br /><br />In the occasions that he did make it to class, his lectures were almost strictly taken from the text. There was little to no reason to take notes, because everything we were being taught we had already read over. He had little to no time to prepare, and neither did the substitute profs who filled in on occasion. The meat and potatoes of learning in the class happened in the discussion section, when we were in a group of 30, rather than 300, with a professor who had time to prepare.<br /><br />Most of us did the honorable thing and showed up to lecture, even though we thought it was completely useless. Personally, I was afraid that the project would be completed and the professor would come back to actually teach us something. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the students weren’t really paying attention. At least a third of the attending used it as an opportunity to take a nap between classes in an air-conditioned building. Most of the rest caught up on their homework in other classes, or worked on the crossword in the Wildcat. Some kids actually took notes, which means that they truly didn’t understand the text, or they didn’t read it.<br /><br />I took my copy of the Wildcat out of my messenger bag and feigned a lost pen. After a sufficient fake search, patting my pockets and glancing in my bag once or twice, I leaned over and bumped her with my elbow.<br /><br />“Excuse me…”<br /><br />She was thumbing through that week’s issue of ‘People’ magazine when she looked up and smiled.<br /><br />“Yes?”<br /><br />“You wouldn’t happen to have a pen I could borrow, would you?”<br /><br />“Maybe…”<br /><br />“Maybe?”<br /><br />“What do you need the pen for?”<br /><br />“Writing…”<br /><br />“I know that, I mean what are you writing?”<br /><br />“The crossword.”<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">“How ‘bout we do it together? I’m kind of bored.”<br /><br />“That works for me, what’s your name?”<br /><br />“Kate.”<br /><br />“Kate, my name is Jake. It’s a pleasure.”<br /><br />“Same here. What’s with the smirk?”<br /><br />I have an uncontrollable reaction to some things. The same way one would laugh when they are being tickled, or flinch when someone swings at them, I have the tendency to smirk when I am attracted to a girl, (or when I think I am getting away with something that I shouldn’t be.)<br /><br />“Nothing, it’s nothing.”<br /><br />We spent the next 40 minutes ignoring what we were supposed to be doing, making jokes at the others expense, and filling out the crossword to the best of our ability.<br /><br />“Do you not know how to read, Jake?”<br /><br />“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”<br /><br />“Transceiver! It’s E-I not I-E!”<br /><br />“It’s I before E-“<br /><br />“Except after C, dork!”<br /><br />“Engineering major, not English, remember?”<br /><br />“Me too, remember?”<br /><br />“Let’s see, 33-down, ‘Pain in Jake’s ass’ four letters, begins with K-A. Hmm, would could it be?”<br /><br />She cocked back and punched me in the arm.<br /><br />“Dammit woman!”<br /><br />This was now noticeable enough to get the attention of the professor, who was at this point, reading his lecture directly from the book. He glanced up for a second, and attempted to discover the cause of the disturbance. Kate and I both slumped in our chairs and shut our mouths.<br /><br />The prof leered at us for a couple of seconds, and then continued to read.<br /><br />“What is it with women and punching me?” I whispered to her as she tried to hold in her laughter.<br /><br />“I’m willing to bet that this isn’t the first or last time a girl has punched you.”<br /><br />Class ended, Kate and I packed up our belongings and walked outside with Joe close behind. We parted with the usual ‘nice to meet you’ and ‘I’ll see you around’, then went our separate ways.<br /><br />Joe walked up behind me and lit a cigarette. I waited until she was out of visual range and did the same.<br /><br />“So, how did it go, man?”<br /><br />“She is an insufferable, stubborn, sarcastic, cocky, pain in my ass.”<br /><br />“Really? That sounds a lot like someone else I know.”<br /><br />“Yeah, who?”<br /><br />“Who do you think, dude? You! The way you describe her, she actually seems like she would be your type.”<br /><br />“Joe, I’m thinking she is definitely my type.”<br /><br />“So, what’s the next course of action?”<br /><br />“We are going to lunch tomorrow.”<br /><br />“Was it your idea or hers?”<br /><br />“Actually, I just thought of it. She doesn’t know it yet, but we are going to have lunch tomorrow.”<br /><br />“So, I take it you got her number.”<br /><br />“Well…no, not, exactly.”<br /><br />Joe gave me a confused, blank stare. It was akin to when you pretend to throw a tennis ball for your dog to retrieve, and he can’t seem to find it.<br /><br />“I don’t follow Jake, we don’t have a lecture again this week, how are you meeting for lunch?”<br /><br />“Damn, I really need to quit smoking…”<br /><br />“Jake! Don’t change the- Uh oh…”<br /><br />“What?”<br /><br />“I’ve seen that look before. You have something up your sleeve, don’t you?<br /><br />“Joe, you should know this by now, but once in a great while, you need to expedite things a little by arranging coincidences.”<br /><br />“Arranging coincidences?”<br /><br />I have never believed in karma, or kismet. I have never been the type of guy who was ever willing to let ‘fate take its course’, if you will. There are only two types of events in this world that takes place with a human being involved. There are entropic, or random, unplanned events; and there are planned events. Not events planned by a creator or some sort of spiritual being, but by one or more of the participants.<br /><br />If someone trips on a rock, it’s entropy. If someone sticks a foot out as someone else is walking by, it is planned. Everything a human will experience falls into one of these sets, but there is room for a gray area. If someone walks down the sidewalk and trips on a rock that someone purposely kicked into their path it is both entropy and order. It is a planned or arranged coincidence.<br /><br />In the dating sense, there may be times in your life where someone you might be a little interested in has the tendency to show up at really odd times, or more often than they did before. A good deal of the times when you are meandering about in your life and you happen to ‘run into’ someone who has caught your eye were planned out well in advance without your knowledge.<br /><br />There is a caveat to be aware of. There is a very fine line between arranging coincidences and stalking someone. When setting up a ‘chance’ meeting with someone, you need to make sure it is a public place that they go to regularly and often. If you know, for example, someone happens to go to the same coffee shop everyday at about the same time, it would be a great opportunity to bump into her. It should be somewhere you have seen them before, a place where they frequent. Setting up an accidental run in with someone isn’t about knowing where she is going to be, it’s more about increasing the chances of encounters by frequenting the places she frequents.<br /><br />On the other hand, if you start following someone to figure out their routine, have their phone tapped, bugs placed in their house, and a tracking device placed on their car, it’s a pretty good bet that you are the definition of a stalker. In review: running into a girl between classes, in public, is acceptable. Running into a girl on her driveway at 12:30 AM as she is throwing her trash, not cool.<br /><br />It just so happened that I had a good idea where she was going to be at 12:06 the next afternoon.<br /><br />I got out of class a little early, ran over to the union, grabbed some coffee and sat at the normal bench. 10 minutes later, at 12:09 PM, she walked by.<br /><br />“Kate!”<br /><br />“Hey, what’s up Jake?”<br /><br />“I was supposed to meet a friend here for lunch, it looks like he flaked. He was supposed to be here 10 minutes ago.”<br /><br />“Where were you going?”<br /><br />“I dunno, it was my turn to pay, so some place cheap! You eating alone today?”<br /><br />“Yeah.”<br /><br />“Want some company?’<br /><br />Our first date was lunch at the Taco Bell in the middle of the union. Neither one of us ate much. We both spent a majority of the hour together talking about or respective backgrounds, and it turned out that we had a lot in common. She was the elder of three children, two girls and one boy. She was born and raised in Palo Alto, and her parents had recently separated.<br /><br />The thing that I found most intriguing about her was that she got my sense of humor, and she had one that was similar. She was smart, funny, and ridiculously hot, everything I am looking for. We exchanged numbers and planned on meeting up later for dinner and bowling, out of all things.<br /><br />Three weeks, 9 dinners, 12 lunches, 4 breakfasts, and twelve flowers later, we were somewhat of an item. From the moment we started spending time together, absolutely everything seemed perfect. Every meal with her, every movie, every hole of miniature golf, every joke that we made at the other’s expense was perfect. The only thing left to do was to introduce her to some of my friends, and one night in particular seemed like a perfect time to do it.<br /><br />Joe and I had recently had an encounter with a sophomore who happened to be the treasurer of U of A’s chapter of Theta Tau, the engineering fraternity. He practically accosted us as we were walking out of our physics class.<br /><br />“Guys! Hey Guys!”<br /><br />We both looked at each other with a ‘do-you-know-that-fucking-asshole?’ scowl on or faces, and then turned towards him.<br /><br />“Yeah? What’s up?” Joe still looked confused when he answered.<br /><br />“My name is Steve, and I was wondering if you guys have pledged.”<br /><br />Having listened to a few of my frat buddies speeches from time to time, I was ready to walk away.<br /><br />“Steve, I am meeting someone for lunch, then studying for a test I have in 2 hours. You are going to have to get to the point, rapidly.”<br /><br />“I think you guys should join Theta Tau.”<br /><br />“I already have friends Steve, and I don’t really want to pay for new ones.” Joe piped in with his two cents.<br /><br />“Just hear me out, guys.”<br /><br />I glanced at my watch and realized that I had been released from my last lecture a few minutes early.<br /><br />“You have two minutes.”<br /><br />“Theta Tau is a fraternity exclusively for engineering majors; we are a professional fraternity that focuses on building networking skills for the future. We are having a little membership get together next weekend and we would like you two to attend.”<br /><br />“Why us? There are 200 engineers in that physics class, why choose us?” Joe was still confused.<br /><br />“Well, quite frankly you two seem to be two of the most socially capable people in that room.”<br /><br />“So essentially, you picked us because we seem to be cooler than everyone else?” It was just as I figured, even in a professional organization, acceptance was based on looks.<br /><br />“Well, yes, and the fact that you seem quite popular among everyone in class, and could possibly bring more members to the table.”<br /><br />“What’s in it for me?” Joe took the words out of my mouth.<br /><br />“Free food and booze for you and a date. And if you don’t like us, just don’t come back.”<br /><br />That’s about all I needed for the sale to be completed.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">“I’m in.”<br /><br />“Great! It’s next Friday at 6 PM, business casual. We are trying you out too, you know! Invite any other engineering majors you want.”<br /><br />Steve handed us a couple of fliers with the when and where and went on his way.<br /><br />“I’ve got a bad feeling, about this, Joe.”<br /><br />“Then why did you agree to go?”<br /><br />“Free booze dude, free booze.”<br /><br />The day of the event came along, and I ran to Dillard’s for a new pair of shoes and pants. They were quite possibly the most expensive pair of dress shoes that I have ever purchased, putting me back at least a hundred bucks. I was looking to impress that evening, joining a frat didn’t really appeal to me, but one never knows if their mind will change. Kate and I had never done anything where we weren’t wearing t-shirts and jeans, so this was an opportunity for me to impress her as well.<br /><br />The place where the party was being held was within mere walking distance of all of our dorms. Joe’s dorm was next door to mine, so we met up and walked to Kate’s together.<br /><br />“So dude, have you and her…?”<br /><br />“Have we what?”<br /><br />“Oh you know, consummated the relationship!”<br /><br />“That’s none of your fucking concern, dude!”<br /><br />“So, I’ll take that as a no.”<br /><br />We met Kate and walked the mile and a half to the house just off of campus, arriving at least 40 minutes before the event was to begin. As it turned out, we weren’t the only people from our section of our engineering lecture that were invited to partake in the festivities. Four others, three guys and one girl, were also there as potential pledges.<br /><br />The guys were relatively unknown to me, but Camille, the girl, was a good friend of mine, and as it turns out, one of the other 15 smoking hot girls in our lecture. Kate went to the bar and grabbed a couple of drinks for the two of us.<br /><br />“Camille! How are you doin’ hon?”<br /><br />“I’m great, and you?”<br /><br />The two of us carried on for a few minutes. Kate came back with our drinks and a scowl on her face. I introduced the two, we parted ways, and Camille kissed me on the cheek as we started heading to our seats for dinner. Thankfully, we were on opposite ends of the dinner table.<br /><br />“What the hell was that, Jake?”<br /><br />“What was what?”<br /><br />“That little show with what’s-her-name? I saw the way she looked at you!”<br /><br />I took a glance into her right hand, and it appeared to me that her drink was already more than halfway done. It was a Long Island that I could smell from 50 feet away, both from the glass and now, her breath. A few things became apparent to me at that moment. First, to the best of my knowledge, she was completely unaware that I had female friends, and I had no idea if she was the jealous type or not. Second, I had never seen her drink before.<br /><br />“How many of those have you had, Kate?”<br /><br />“This is only my second…”<br /><br />“Christ, we have only been here 40 minutes!”<br /><br />Dinner was a buffet, I wasn’t feeling too well, so I bypassed the food and out of courtesy, served Kate a plate. But when I turned around and walked back to the table, she was out of eyeshot.<br /><br />“Where did she run off to, Joe?”<br /><br />“I think she went to get another drink.”<br /><br />“Son of a…”<br /><br />As much as I wanted to say something to her, I kept my mouth shut. In my opinion, there was no point in drawing attention to us unless she was drawing attention to me. She hadn’t done anything to embarrass herself, or more importantly, me. I just figured that she was letting off a little steam from the midterms we had that week.<br /><br />She sat down and ate, and the frat’s VP gave a small presentation about who they were and what they were about. Kate picked at the plate in front of her, visibly buzzed, but at least now slowing down. The dinner portion of the evening ended, and the fraternity president led all the gentlemen on a tour of the house, leaving the women alone.<br /><br />Alone with an open bar.<br /><br />The tour concluded, and a few of us went out back to smoke a cigarette. Four of us gathered and started talking about dues, activities and such, then our significant others. A classmate in my discussion group informed me that he had recently started hanging out with Camille, and mentioned that she was fond of me as a friend.<br /><br />In suit, I started talking Kate up, and telling everyone how great I thought she was and how compatible we were, even after a short amount of time. I took a quick glance at my watch, to realize that it had been at least 30 minutes since the tour had started.<br /><br />“Speaking of Kate, I wonder what she is up to…”<br /><br />At that moment I heard a scream that changed the mood of the evening irrevocably.<br /><br />“You fucking bitch!”<br /><br />I burst through the back door and ran into the kitchen to find exactly what I was afraid was going to happen. Kate was staring down Camille and backing her into a corner, and as interesting as a cat fight would have been, I didn’t want to see one between these two.<br /><br />“That’s it Kate, you’re done.”<br /><br />I grabbed the drink from her hand, put it on the counter and as gently as I could, grabbed her arm. I quickly thanked everyone, and walked out of the door.<br /><br />“What the hell is your problem?”<br /><br />“I don’t know… I just don’t like to see other girls flirting with you…”<br /><br />“I have a lot of female friends, if that is going to be a problem, then we are going to have a problem.”<br /><br />“I know, and I know you wouldn’t do anything, I just… It’s been a long fucking week and I have been feeling a little insecure lately. I don’t… I don’t fucking drink that much normally and when I do, I have a hard time, ya know?”<br /><br />“I know, this week sucked for me too babe, its ok. Let’s just go home.”<br /><br />“I’m sorry…”<br /><br />“I know, it’s ok…”<br /><br />We started to trek back the mile and a half to her dorm, her shoulder on mine as not to fall over. She stumbled here and there, but not enough to bring her to the concrete. We passed a bus stop under a streetlight at about the midway point and she sat down on the bench. I stood beside her, rubbing her back and trying to comfort her.<br /><br />“I’m sorry about tonight babe…”<br /><br />“I know, I know, it’s ok…”<br /><br />“I just love you so much, Jake…”<br /><br />This was an interesting turn of events, considering that the L-bomb had never been dropped with us outside of the content of 24-hour restaurants or Magic Mountain. So I did what every guy does when his girl says something that he knows she is going to regret or forget in the morning, I changed the subject.<br /><br />“There’s a 7-11 right here, do you need any water or anything babe?”<br /><br />“Please stay here.”<br /><br />I stood beside her and continued to rub her back as she held her head in her hand. At that moment, something happened within me that changed the way I saw her. I’m not sure if it was her behavior at the party, the fact that she said that she loved me, or the fact that the streetlight made me keenly aware that her hair was dyed and she was not a natural brunette. I am fairly certain that a great deal of my sudden loss of interest had to do with the fact that she took this opportunity to throw up all over the hundred dollar dress shoes I had just purchased.<br /><br />To this day, I still don’t know how much she drank that night, unfortunately, I am all too aware of how much she ate.</span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-1150151770586682732006-06-12T15:35:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:30:32.490-07:00The Morning Show<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">It had tried to make it become a force of habit. On the rare occasions when I did have my dorm room to myself weekday mornings my freshman year, I would always attempt to do the same thing: take a shower, get dressed, turn on the radio, and start working on my studies.<br /><br />Of course, not only would I need the room to myself, but also I would need to wake up in time to lounge about in the morning before my classes started. This alone is a rare enough occasion to limit the morning study session to a weekly event, if I was lucky and feeling particularly ambitious. Most mornings, even those that I did have to myself, involved hitting the snooze bar 6-8 times, rolling off the bed and hitting the concrete floor, falling asleep in the shower (if I had time to take one at all), throwing on whatever clothes I had clean and getting my ass where it needed to be, approximately 2 minutes before it needed to be there. This is a tradition I still carry with me today, sans concrete floor.<br /><br />I knew that the activities and pace of the morning would be indicative of the day that was to follow it. If I somehow managed to drag myself out of bed with enough time to study, and get the occasional cup of coffee and éclair on the way to class, I always felt more alert and had a better attitude that I did if I was in a rush. Bolting out the door and barely getting to class on time was a sure sign that paying attention that particular day was going to be rather difficult, especially when falling asleep in the middle of my classes.<br /><br />When I did manage to get up early, my favorite activity when studying was listening to the local morning show on my favorite rock radio station. It was your normal, average, everyday morning show, hosted by two smart-ass guys in their early thirties. They talked about how much they hated the movie they saw the night before, the odors that emanated from their cohorts in the booth, and how much they hated the band Oasis. They would have guests such as bands that would be in town for a short stint, girls that could bend themselves into interesting shapes, and the occasional midget. Of course, none of these claims could be substantiated unless they posted pictures on the Internet.<br /><br />Like every other morning radio show, they also had the propensity to give away prizes to their listeners who call in and answered a trivia question, identified a song that had just played or the likewise. One morning in particular, one of the hosts came on and announced a rather simple contest to win.<br /><br />“The 99th listener to call in and correctly give us the name of the city that U2 hails from will get a limited edition copy of their, as of yet, unreleased ‘Best Of 1980-1990’ album!”<br /><br />This to me just sounded too good to be true. I was never a huge fan of U2, but everyone knows where they are from. A fourth grader could answer the question. Not to mention, it was a chance to get free shit. I, like every other red-blooded American male, will jump at the chance to get free shit. It doesn’t even matter if you want the free shit, you will try to get it.<br /><br />U2 wasn’t necessarily a band that reached out and said ‘buy me’ whenever I walked past their albums on the record store shelves, but I would listen to a free copy of their greatest hits CD. I’ll be honest; I really wouldn’t care if they were giving away a Chinese version of ‘Ishtar’ on Betamax, I would have tried to get my cheap hands on it. One never knows when they have to show a foreign exchange student who has an obsolete piece of technology how bad some movies could be.<br /><br />I picked up the receiver and frantically dialed the phone, getting a busy signal at least 6 times before I got through. When I did manage to finally get through, I was in shock to hear my voice echo in the dorm room, emanating from the sound system inside of it.<br /><br />“Hello… Sir, would you mind turning your radio down a bit?”<br /><br />“No problem.”<br /><br />I cranked down the volume almost all of the way so I could hear what he had to say. I was still in shock to hear my own voice over the radio, but I was even more shocked to realize that there was no tape delay. The conversation was going out over the airwaves live.<br /><br />“So, what’s your name?”<br /><br />“Jake!”<br /><br />I was chomping at the bit; I had already known that they wouldn’t have put me live over the air if I wasn’t the 99th caller. I was a shoe-in to win. I had never been that excited before, I had spend a good portion of my life winning academic and athletic accolades, but I had never won anything important.<br /><br />“Alright Jake, you’re the 99th caller! Can you tell me what city the band U2 is from?”<br /><br />“Of course I can! They are from Dublin, Ohio!”<br /><br />My nerves got the best of me; I think the host of the show just let it slide.<br /><br />“What was that?”<br /><br />“I said they are from Dublin, Ireland!”<br /><br />“That’s correct! A copy of U2’s next album is yours! Now tell me Jake, what is Tucson’s number one rock station?”<br /><br />“That would be K-… uh…”<br /><br />At that moment some things became blaringly obvious to me. I had spent the past few months listening to and enjoying a rock station that had been the only station I had ever listened to in my, as of then, short tenure in the city of Tucson. I left the station on in my car as I drove around town. I left it on in my dorm room when I was there alone. I had listened to it at parties and other social gatherings around campus from time to time. It was preset number 2 on every radio receiver I owned.<br /><br />In this short period of time, I had become an avid listener of the station. I had not, however, bothered to learn the call letters to my new favorite broadcaster.<br /><br />“Uh… KROK?”<br /><br />“Uh, no.”<br /><br />“KZGL?”<br /><br />I knew that wasn’t it. KZGL was a radio station in Flagstaff. At this point, I was grasping at straws.<br /><br />“No, not KZGL.”<br /><br />Getting more and more nervous, I started blurting out any four-letter combination beginning with ‘K’ that came to mind.<br /><br />“KORN.”<br /><br />“Korn?! Now you’re reaching! Let me help you out, it’s KFMA. Now, what is Tucson’s number one rock station? ”<br /><br />Tripping over my words, dying of embarrassment, I tripped over my letters, and for the first time, demonstrated my dyslexia.<br /><br />“KAFM!”<br /><br />“Dammit Jake, you are killing me. Try it again, it’s KFMA. What is Tucson’s number one rock station?”<br /><br />“It’s KFMA!”<br /><br />“Thank you!”<br /><br />Now thoroughly embarrassed, I grabbed a cup of coffee at the student union and tried to slither my way into my first class, as cool and as calm as I could possibly be. If need be, the event would not be spoken of for a few years, but apparently, I wasn’t the only listener of KFMA in my circle of friends.<br /><br />I walked in to class greeted by six or seven of my friends, standing, clapping and cheering. My face turned red, which, believe it or not, does happen to Hispanics. I sat down and slumped in my seat, trying to dispel the scene that was developing in a lecture hall of 260 students.<br /><br />“Jake, what’s your major again?”<br /><br />“Aerospace engineering, why?”<br /><br />“I would really reconsider that, buddy!”<br /><br />“Fuck off.”<br /><br />Over the next few months, the event somehow found its way into my dating life. I am still unsure as to whether every female I was asking out in this particular stretch of time was listening to the morning show that particular day, or if my chances were being sabotaged by my friends. One thing is for certain, over the next few weeks and months, I heard the following phrase far too often:<br /><br />“You’re the jackass who got the call letters wrong, aren’t you?”<br /><br />It was beginning to happen so often, that I began to start most of my conversations with women by posing one query in particular.<br /><br />“I have an off the wall question for you.”<br /><br />“Ok, what is it?”<br /><br />“Tell me, what is Tucson’s number one rock station?” </span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-1148961740616495732006-05-29T21:01:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:29:52.610-07:00Translation<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">I have over the years, taken much offence to the fact that due to my last name and the color of my skin, I have wrongfully been accused as an expert in certain things. A short list of the talents that have been falsely associated with my skill set are; picking grapes; fitting 40 people into a Volkswagen; swimming across rivers; jumping fences; digging tunnels; making tamales; and drug trafficking.<br /><br />Although most things I have taken with a grain of salt, the one thing over the years that still irks me is the fact that a good portion of the people that I have met over the years have expected me to speak Spanish simply by the assumptions that have been made by looking at me.<br /><br />I have never been able to speak the Spanish language. God knows that my parents, especially my mother, tried like hell to teach me the language. My mom speaks the language fluently, having learned it at a young age along with English. My father doesn’t exactly speak it fluently, he does however, understand it well enough to comprehend what my mom is trying to hide from her sons when she starts in on one of her rants.<br /><br />Like any good set of parents, they only wanted to provide a better, more comfortable childhood than the ones they had. This led them to purchasing a home in a relatively stable, small, upper middle-class, predominately white community. The situation did not allow for a lot of the use of Spanish, unless you counted the ritual ordering of a burrito or tostada at the neighborhood Taco Bell.<br /><br />In a four year span covering Junior High and High School, I managed to take 8 semesters of the language without failing one of them, but never getting anything other than a B. I am more than convinced that the only reason I did that well was that my parents paid my teachers to get me through, not wanting to bear the shame of having the only Hispanic son in the school who flunked his Spanish classes.<br /><br />Entering 12th grade, after years of education, three different teachers, and some unknown thousands of dollars spent by my parents, I was no better off than I was when I started. I was, at most times, able to conjugate verbs solely based on a simple chart that had been browbeaten into me. My pronunciation made me sound like I was Keanu Reeves, in a Spanish version of “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”…<br /><br />“Yo quiero mas nachos, dude!”<br /><br />“Dammit, Jake, stop saying ‘dude’!”<br /><br />My sentence formation wasn’t much better. It was as if I was a third grader who knew how to count to 100, but was completely convinced that 30+70 equaled eleventeen. In fact, one of my Spanish teachers once had a meeting with my parents and the Vice Principal of my High School to discuss the possibility that I might have a learning disability.<br /><br />When I spoke to my Guidance Counselor as to what my options for a major would be as I was preparing for college, the choice was rather easy…<br /><br />“So what lets me out of a foreign language prerequisite?”<br /><br />“Well, Jake, there’s engineering, and…”<br /><br />“I’ll take it!”<br /><br />By 17, I was convinced that I would never have to deal with the subject or situation again. I had my plan laid out, my entrance tests were complete, my school and major were selected, and I had been accepted and given a scholarship. My life was on cruise control, and I had no reason to worry about Spanish again. That is, until one morning in April.<br /><br />I was sitting in my Advanced Placement American Government class, discussing the questionable morality of the actions of the ACLU, when a darker skinned, older woman stepped into the room. She spoke with some of the worst broken English I had heard in my life. It was in fact, so bad, that I have no way of describing it visually.<br /><br />“I need Jakob.”<br /><br />“Excuse me, there is no Jakob, but my name is Jake.”<br /><br />I am indeed aware that I misspelled my own first name, but that’s how she pronounced it. The name Jacob sounds different depending on how you chose to enunciate the letters and read the word. This particular woman decided to make it sound Swedish, rather than taking the straight Spanish translation of Jocobo, which was odd considering she spoke as if she just crossed the border.<br /><br />We started walking down the hall, her, another minority student that was pulled out of the class, and I. The two of us were rather confused, considering the facts that neither one of us had been in an ounce of trouble, and the rather random person removing us from our AP class had no discernable authority and sounded as if she needed remedial English lessons.<br /><br />“Ma’am, what is this about? I am in the middle of a rather important class, and with all due respect I don’t appreciate the interruption.”<br /><br />“You need a test.”<br /><br />“What kind of test?”<br /><br />“It’s for your English, for your graduation.”<br /><br />“You mean an English proficiency test?”<br /><br />“Yeah, that is it.”<br /><br />I have been known over the years, for a complete inability to keep my mouth shut when challenged by any form of authority. I have been called staunchly indignant and the type of person who will do the opposite of what I am told, just to prove a point.<br /><br />“The fuck I do lady! I’m going back to the class that you interrupted. It sounds to me like you are the one who needs to take the test!”<br /><br />“For your graduation…”<br /><br />“If need be, I’ll speak with the Superintendent of the district. But for now, you can take the test your damn self!”<br /><br />I realize that the situation was out of her control, and I realize that she was just doing her job. I just needed a way to vent, and that seemed as good as any. I had never been so insulted in my life. Considering the fact that my SAT scores were high enough to have me recruited by Ivy League schools, and my English grades in school were exemplary, higher than those of my Spanish grades, I was well aware that I was singled out due to my Hispanic last name.<br /><br />Two classes later, she tried again, thinking that I had calmed down and was going to be more cooperative. This time, I dragged her to the Principal’s office. With my guns drawn and firing, I confronted the Principal.<br /><br />“What the hell is this about? They want me to take some sort of English proficiency test!”<br /><br />“I’m sorry Jake, I know how this looks…”<br /><br />“Do you? It makes the staff of this district look like a bunch of assholes!”<br /><br />The random Hispanic woman chose this time to pipe in with her two cents…<br /><br />“For your graduation…”<br /><br />“I am not taking the test, and I am walking with my friends. If there is going to be a problem with that, I can take it up with the Superintendent, clear?”<br /><br />My Principal, always the voice of reason, apologized for the incident and assured me that the matter was settled. The administrator of the test was still a little confused by the situation.<br /><br />“What is this word, clear?”<br /><br />My friends have at times, been no different than the random people I have encountered, assuming that there is some Spanish gene that is passed down over the generations. Almost same way that hair color and eye color would be passed down, my friends expected that I popped out of the womb able to have fluent conversations with Mexican nationals.<br /><br />This was never more apparent than a day trip with a couple of friends into the Mexican side of Nogales. My friends had picked out an ugly blanket that no self respecting Mexican would own, and decided that it would look great draped over their couch. Unsure how to begin negotiations, they turned to me.<br /><br />“Jake, you talk to them.”<br /><br />“Why me?”<br /><br />“Well, you’re Mexican, right?”<br /><br />“Yeah, man, we have a secret handshake and everything! You had better turn around; we don’t like white people to see it…”<br /><br />“I didn’t mean anything by-“<br /><br />“Oh shit, dude I forgot my card!”<br /><br />“What car-“<br /><br />“My race card! I usually keep it with my Green Card, but fuck it if I didn’t forget that too!”<br /><br />“Jake, you’re a fucking-“<br /><br />“Hey, you’re blonde haired, blue eyed! Can you speak German?”<br /><br />“You know the answer to that-“<br /><br />“Can you speak German?”<br /><br />“No.”<br /><br />“That’s what I thought!”<br /><br />I turned my head and scoffed.<br /><br />“Retraso de mierda…”<br /><br />“Huh?”<br /><br />“Nothing.” </span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-1148718591686618252006-05-27T01:29:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:35:23.967-07:00Insight<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">It is a situation that has played out over and over in my long, tumultuous dating career. I am sitting on the couch, watching a movie or my favorite sitcom. My right arm is draped around the shoulders of a girl whose head is on my chest. She looks at me and smiles, I get a little uncomfortable at the stare that she starts to give me, then she says the words…<br /><br />“Jake?”<br /><br />“Uh huh?”<br /><br />“What are you thinking?”<br /><br />Being that I am male, there are only three possible categories of true answers that can possibly fit the question. The first, and most common for most men would the standard ‘nothing’. Men, unlike women, can actually be thinking nothing and be quite happy for sometime, requiring quiet time for our heads as well as our ears.<br /><br />Although ‘nothing’ is the most common verbal answer to the question, it is most likely not the most common actual answer. In reality, at most given times, there are two types of things that are occupying our minds. The first would be something so vulgar, disgusting, or rude that if it were to come out of our mouths, you would never stop kicking us in the nuts.<br /><br />I have been told that it is as of yet inappropriate to talk to girls we are dating about such things as dreams of their sisters doing things that are beyond description to a squad of female college cheerleaders. This is especially true in the early stages of dating. Unfortunately, honesty only goes so far when dealing with women. I learned this the hard way, forcing me to get in the habit of wearing a cup on all of my first dates.<br /><br />It is said that a man thinks about sex once every 8 seconds. In truth, this is an approximation. Once every 8 seconds is an average, when the approximation takes into account the time we are asleep and not in REM, the number drops to every 5 seconds, and the average duration of the thought is 3 seconds, which means 60% of our thoughts are about sex.<br /><br />In all honesty women, the thoughts are usually about us and another woman, or you with other women, or other women with other women, or us and you and other women. Well, you get the point.<br /><br />The second type of thought that mills about in the brain of ours is usually the type that makes us look like morons. They are things that are so ridiculous that if we were to actually admit them to a women, they might have us declared clinically brain dead and try to have us euthanized. They are things that you might overhear guys talking about when they are hanging out with other guys.<br /><br />Take my brother and me, for example. We are two smashing young men of intelligence that is far beyond average, yet every time we hang out, we tend to get into the most ridiculous conversations imaginable.<br /><br />“You’re a fucking idiot.”<br /><br />“You’re telling me that you think that the professor got more action than anyone else on that island?”<br /><br />“Ok, think about it, jackass! There are two single women on the island and three single dudes. The skipper is a fatty and Gilligan is functionally retarded, who do you think is going to get the most tail?”<br /><br />“Mr. Howell!”<br /><br />“Fuckhead, his wife is there, and she looks like she is quite a ways past menopause, of course he is going to get some from his wife!”<br /><br />“No dude, I am talking about him nailing Ginger and Mary Ann.”<br /><br />“What would Ginger and Mary Ann possibly see in his old ass?”<br /><br />“Money, dude!”<br /><br />“They live on a fucking desert island, asshole! What the fuck are they going to do with money? Not to mention, do you really think Mrs. Howell is cool with her husband banging a couple of other chicks?”<br /><br />“They can do it when she is out picking berries or something.”<br /><br />“You know how fast information travels in a small town? Think about how fast it travels in a community of seven! This whole thing is stupid! The show didn’t make any sense anyway!”<br /><br />“How so?”<br /><br />“Who the fuck takes a trunk of goddamn clothing, a chemistry set, or encyclopedias on a three hour tour? How far could they have possibly gone out to sea in those three hours? What kind of professor was he?”<br /><br />“How would it matter what kind of professor he was?”<br /><br />“How the hell would a philosophy professor know rare languages and chemistry?”<br /><br />“Ok, you have a point."<br /><br />“I know I have a point.”<br /><br />Besides waxing intellectual about the sexual exploits of the castaways on Gilligan’s Island, (and in public, scaring away potential dates), we have argued over the directing prowess of Spielberg and Kubrick; debated who would be a better running back, Spider-Man or the Hulk; and discussed who would be the victor in a no-holds-barred fight between Superman and Jesus.<br /><br />These things that we find important are mere trivia for women. These are things that they just don’t appreciate, and if we tried to explain what kinds of Kryptonite have what effect on Clark Kent, the conversation would just get lost in translation.<br /><br />Besides the gratuitous, ‘nothing’ answer, there is always the I-am-trying-to-score-points-by-telling-you-a-bold-faced-lie answer…<br /><br />“I’m just thinking of you, babe.”<br /><br />This is only true in rare occasions. In the case it is true, it rarely if ever involves our feelings for you. We aren’t thinking of running across a field, hand in hand, with our as of yet unborn children in tow. There is no white picket fence surrounding a two story house in the suburbs, and I guarantee you, there is no minivan in the driveway.<br /><br />The overly sweet answer of ‘I’m thinking of you’ has a way of backfiring horridly. One lie leads to another when you expect us to elaborate on the thought that wasn’t in our head in the first place.<br /><br />“What about me?”<br /><br />I am now engaged in a conversation that I did not want to be in when we sat down for the movie. I try to kill it as swiftly and vaguely as possible.<br /><br />“Oh you know, stuff…”<br /><br />“What kind of stuff?”<br /><br />“I was just thinking about how beautiful you are…!”<br /><br />…When you’re quiet.</span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-1148071150568080292006-05-19T13:38:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:34:54.079-07:00Tier One<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Most everyone I know who works on computers for a living has done it. It is a virtual right of passage for anyone who is an information technology professional. It is the foundation of a techie’s resume, the experience one needs with the certifications they have.<br /><br />It’s tier one tech support.<br /><br />I was a tier one tech in Tucson for a small software company that shall remain nameless. Whether you were a novice or you were an experienced IT professional, the job was arduous and frustrating, demanding flexible thinking skills and the utmost patience.<br /><br />The turnover rate was the highest I had ever seen in any job. After one week on the floor only two of us remained from the thirty students that were in my training class. I am quite convinced that I know why people left in droves. It wasn’t cause the job itself was difficult, even though at times it was damn near impossible. It wasn’t cause the company treated us poorly, ‘cause I have never worked for a company that treated its employees better than they did.<br /><br />The reason people were more than willing to run away from a great job to put on a resume is, for all intents and purposes, you. Ok, maybe not you, specifically, I mean you are intelligent enough to read my work. However, statistically speaking, at least 88 percent of calls to tech support are from the functionally illiterate. More often than not, it’s not the operating system or the software or hardware that needs to be fixed, it’s in fact the end user.<br /><br />The hardest part of working with computers is the end user. A computer, with few exceptions, will be nice enough to tell you exactly what is wrong with it. A friendly ‘hey fix this’ or a ‘please install that’ in the event viewer can solve most of your problems. It’s the average end user that causes most of the problems.<br /><br />You can tell the intelligent ones; they are friendly, polite and easy to talk to. They always start the call the same way:<br /><br />“Hi, uh, I was a little unsure how to do this thing, I tried to look it up online, and some of the answers I got seemed to vary quite a bit. I didn’t want to do anything until I was absolutely certain that I was doing it right, can you help me out?”<br /><br />“Absolutely! Just tell me what I can do for you.”<br /><br />“I just need to set up a folder so that no one else on the machine can get to them but me.”<br /><br />“That’s not a problem ma’am, we’ll get you set up in a few minutes. The first thing I want you to do is…”<br /><br />It is as simple as that. The people that I appreciate are the ones who are willing to go out and do some leg work, people who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and try to learn something new on their own. Ultimately, when they feel that something is out of their comfort zone, they call and ask for help before they kill the machine.<br /><br />Unfortunately, most of my calls were from the ones that weren’t willing to learn. They were the ones who knew how to do more harm than good, and the ones who loved to waste my sweet time.<br /><br />“Uh hi, Jake is it? Well anyway, I have a problem, I’m hoping you can help me out with it.”<br /><br />“Go ahead and tell me about it sir.”<br /><br />“Every time I log in to my computer everything turns black.”<br /><br />“Does it restart? Does it shutdown?”<br /><br />“No it just turns black, I went in to my display settings and turned all of the colors black.”<br /><br />“You did what now?”<br /><br />“I turned everything black, and now I can’t see anything.”<br /><br />Tier one support is the kind of job that makes grown men bang their heads against the desk in front of them. It is the type of job that makes adults run of the door yelling and screaming in frustration.<br /><br />“Hi, Jake, I just got XP and now I want to install it, can you walk me through it?”<br /><br />“Sure thing, just give me some more information about your machine.”<br /><br />We spend the next 5-7 minutes going over every detail of his machine, from CPU speed to front side bus, to RAM. We discussed every minutia of his computer.<br /><br />“Well sir it sounds good, and it sure sounds like your machine meets the basic requirements for XP, so let’s get started. First I need you to put your CD in the CD-ROM drive.”<br /><br />“Well, I can’t.”<br /><br />“And why is that?”<br /><br />I already knew the answer before he gave it to me.<br /><br />“I’m not at my computer, I’m at work.”<br /><br />“Sir, how do you want me to walk you through the procedure if you aren’t at your machine?”<br /><br />“I don’t know, I never thought about it, really. I was just kind of hoping you could tell me how to do everything.”<br /><br />If anyone wonders why I don’t have any tact anymore, it’s because I spent all of it doing tech support.<br /><br />“Thank you for calling Windows XP technical support, my name is Jake, can I get your name and case number please?”<br /><br />“Goddamnit! I just went out and spent two-hundred fucking dollars on this Windows Millennium 2000 and now it says it won’t install on all of my computers!”<br /><br />“Ma’am, I need you to calm down for just a moment. I need your case number so that I can take notes about what we do here.”<br /><br />“You don’t need my goddamn case number!! You just need to fix my computers so I can install fucking Millennium 2000 on all of my computers!”<br /><br />It’s a good thing for me the case number popped up when the phone rang. The woman calling sounded so ignorant that I am surprised she was able to match the digits in the support number with the ones on her phone keypad.<br /><br />“Ok ma’am, first thing is first, this is Windows XP technical support. I need to know if you are using Windows Millennium, 2000, or XP.”<br /><br />“It’s Millennium 2000!”<br /><br />“Ma’am, there is no such thing as Windows Millennium 2000, now, is it ME, 2000, or XP?”<br /><br />“How the fuck am I supposed to know?”<br /><br />“It will say on the box, ma’am.”<br /><br />It’s a good thing most people can’t tell if I am being sincere or if I am being smarmy.<br /><br />“It’s XP, but it still won’t install on my fucking machines!”<br /><br />“Ok, ma’am, let’s look at one of the machines it won’t install on, we need a bit more information. Tell me, what does the machine tell you when you try to install it?”<br /><br />“It says you can’t do it.”<br /><br />“Can you be a little more specific ma’am? Can you maybe try to put the disk in the CD-ROM drive and start the installation process?”<br /><br />“Ok, there! It said it again!”<br /><br />“Said what, ma’am?”<br /><br />“You can’t do it!”<br /><br />“Specifically, what did the error message say, ma’am?”<br /><br />“Installation not a supported upgrade path.”<br /><br />“Ma’am, what version of Windows are you currently running on this machine?”<br /><br />I already new the answer but I wanted her to answer the question for herself, so she new exactly why the installation wouldn’t work.<br /><br />“I have ’95 on this machine.”<br /><br />“Windows ’95 cannot be upgraded to any version of Windows XP.<br /><br />“Well, how the fuck was I supposed to know that?”<br /><br />“It says that on the box, ma’am.”<br /><br />I was starting to lose my patience, but I knew that this call was far from over.<br /><br />“Alright, let’s look at your other machines.”<br /><br />“It installed fine on my laptop, but when I tried to install the fucking thing on my desktop it says something about activation!”<br /><br />And there it is, the idiot’s trifecta, she bought one license for XP, tried installing it on one machine without reading the box, installed it onto a second machine and activated it, then tried to install it on another machine.<br /><br />“Ma’am, how many copies of the software did you buy?”<br /><br />“Just one.”<br /><br />“Windows product activation allows the use of a single license on one machine only, that’s why it is saying you can’t activate it on more than one computer.”<br /><br />“Goddammit! I bought the program, I can put it on as many machines as I fucking want!”<br /><br />“No, ma’am, you didn’t buy the program.”<br /><br />“Excuse the hell out of me? I have a receipt from Best Buy right here that says I did buy the program!”<br /><br />“Ma’am, you bought a disk with the program on it, we own the program. You just own the product ID for it.”<br /><br />“Explain that in English, asshole!”<br /><br />“We own all rights and privileges to the program, we created it, and it is our intellectual property. You own the right to use the program on one, and only one, computer with the one license that you bought. We own the program, you just bought the right to use it, according to our terms.”<br /><br />“Your terms? I didn’t see any terms that you gave.”<br /><br />“Yes you did ma’am.”<br /><br />“What in the fuck are you talking about?”<br /><br />“Did you at any point click something that says ‘I agree’?”<br /><br />“Yeah, what about it?”<br /><br />“Did you read anything in the textbox that you agreed to?”<br /><br />“It’s to damn long! How am I supposed to read it?”<br /><br />“Ma’am those are the terms that you agreed to when you installed the program, the terms that I just outlined. So it seems that all of your problems are resolved, is there anything else I can help you with today?”<br /><br />“All my problems aren’t resolved asshole! I still can’t do what I want!”<br /><br />“You aren’t allowed to do what you want.”<br /><br />“Fuck you!”<br /><br />Click.<br /><br />Now if they only let me answer the calls the way these people should be dealt with.<br /><br />“Thank you for calling Windows XP tech support, my name is Jake, can I get your name and case number please?”<br /><br />“Uh hi yeah, I need to get this antivirus program working with my computer, it’s causing all sorts of problems and I can’t seem to fix them.”<br /><br />“Ok, what is the name and version of the program?”<br /><br />“(Program name) <name>by (Company name) <company>version 6.”<br /><br />“Sir, that antivirus program isn’t compatible with Windows XP.”<br /><br />“Yeah, I know, that’s what the upgrader thing said. It had a big exclamation point in a yellow triangle and it wanted me to remove it but I thought it was just full of shit.”<br /><br />“Let me get this straight, Upgrade Advisor explicitly told you that the program was incompatible, and you went ahead and installed Windows without uninstalling the program first?”<br /><br />“Yeah, what’s your point?”<br /><br />“You’re an idiot.” </span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-1147741641663898632006-05-15T18:05:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:35:41.910-07:00Journal of an Insomniac<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><strong>Thursday, November 4th 1999; 9:45 AM:</strong><br /><br />I had a bit of a problem sleeping last night and I’m not quite certain why. I could have just a bit too much on my mind lately or there could be something physiological going on. But in any case, I’m at school, waiting for chemistry to start, so I thought I would take a few moments to write something down, being that I have already finished the majority of the crossword puzzle in today’s Wildcat.<br /><br />The guys should be here soon. They will undoubtedly ask for help on the crossword and maybe, just maybe, help on the homework that is due tomorrow. That is, if they even attempted it. I need to start giving them the wrong answers.<br /><br /><strong>Sunday, November 7th 1999; 10:10 AM:</strong><br /><br />I got home from work last night at around 11:30 to find my roommates with about 10-15 people in the living room watching “The Crocodile Hunter”. Apparently they had planned a party and didn’t tell me about it.<br /><br />I made myself a drink and went to my room just to chill out alone for a few. Whatshername… a chick that I used to pseudo-date for a little while, Alison or Ashley or something that begins with an A, walks in a little buzzed and lays down on my bed and starts rolling around…<br /><br />“Your bed is SOOOO comfy!!”<br /><br />Why she couldn’t act like that when we were dating is beyond me. In any case, I kicked A-name out of, I mean off of, my bed just before my girlfriend showed up. As is her usual, she got belligerent-drunk, started shit with my friends, and had to be carried downstairs before someone killed her. I took her home about an hour and a half after she got here.<br /><br />Me, on the other hand… I’m still having a hell of a time trying to sleep. The nights have slowly gone from mildly restless to moderately disturbing. Last night was the worst it has been since I started on this little bout of insomnia. I think I only slept about 4 hours. Tonight I will try some OTC meds.<br /><br /><strong>Thursday, November 11th 1999; 8:16 AM:</strong><br /><br />Well, the Tylenol PM officially doesn’t work anymore. It does kinda work, but only when I take a damn-near-lethal dosage of it. I decided to cut out the Tylenol for, hopefully, more natural forms of sedation. Besides, I may need my kidneys some day. We’ll see if swimming at night before I go to bed does the trick.<br /><br />School is being a pain in the ass, but what more can I say about that? I’ve been busting my ass to keep up, but I am working full time and going to school full time, so it’s to be expected. Damn, a coke sounds good right about now…<br /><br /><strong>Tuesday, November 23rd 1999; 2:28 PM:</strong><br /><br />The insomnia is finally starting to get to me. It’s now been almost two weeks since I have had a decent night of sleep, and three weeks since I have had a natural night of sleep. Last night is the worst it has ever been, I’m not sure of an exact number, but I would be surprised if I had 90 minutes of sleep. And to get those ninety minutes, I had to take two shots of JD.<br /><br />I’ve tried swimming, smoking, showering, reading, listening to music, watching TV, taking a walk around the neighborhood, and the occasional… well you know. Well not a damn thing worked.<br /><br />I went online this morning and looked up cures for insomnia on Alta Vista, only to realize that some people have a hard time sleeping after they work out, smoking, listening to music or walking long distances. So much for all of my theories…<br /><br />This prof is starting to get on my nerves. The guy smells like bourbon and pipe tobacco, I wish he would just shut the hell up…<br /><br /><strong>Saturday, November 27th 1999; 3:15 AM:</strong><br /><br />Well, it finally happened. My girlfriend and I broke it off. She essentially said that I was insufferable since my bout of insomnia started. I think the chick needs to grow up a bit and not start shit with my friends every time she fucking drinks. That’s the last time I date a chick who is 18!<br /><br />Can’t sleep more than oh about 20-30 minutes a night now. When I do sleep, it’s more of a conscious dream than actual sleep, although I keep having the same dream.<br /><br />I am crossing a catwalk inside a cave when it gives way. I fall and hit the side of the cave wall, bouncing and falling, hitting and falling until I finally wake up. Whoever said that you die if you hit the ground in a dream is a bloody idiot.<br /><br />Well if you can’t tell, I am progressively getting more and more irritable. Everyone, including myself, is starting to get on my friggin’ nerves. I’m not sure if it’s my fault or theirs anymore.<br /><br /><strong>Friday, December 3rd 1999; 12:38 PM:</strong><br /><br />I have taken to tape recording my journal entries, due to the fact that I am having a hard time reading my own handwriting anymore. I know what the words are, and I know what the definitions are, but they might as well be numbers, ‘cause words in a sentence no longer make any sense when written down.<br /><br />I had an attack in the middle of Latin class today, I have no idea what brought it on, I just know I had to leave class and sit outside for about twenty minutes ‘cause I was hyperventilating.<br /><br />I just hope that sometime in the future, when I play this tape, I will be able to understand what I am saying. My speech is getting worse and worse, too, or at least that’s what people have been telling me. One of these days, I will be able to get… why is that chick looking at me like that…? Hey you! What the hell is your problem?!<br /><br /><strong>Wednesday, December 8th 1999; 10:10 PM:</strong><br /><br />I just got out of work. Spent most of my time today talking to a five-inch tall Puerto Rican who was standing next to my computer on my desk. Miguel talks a lot of shit considering how small he is. I haven’t quite determined if it’s because he is Puerto Rican or if it is a napoleon complex he has. No matter, I’m sure I can take him anyway.<br /><br />The girl I have been dating for the past couple of weeks is starting to get concerned, she wants me to see a doctor or a shrink or something. She says that I always look like I’m ‘zoned out’ and my rants don’t make any sense at all.<br /><br />I think she just doesn’t like the fact that I am making friends with a Puerto Rican.<br /><br /><strong>Tuesday, December 14th 1999; 11:40 AM:</strong><br /><br />Finally broke down and went to doctor and a shrink. Still haven’t slept lately so, I’m not so sure what the hell the shrink was babbling on about, said something about some sort of anxiety something, I’m not sure, the picture behind his head started waving at me. Also said something about the reoccurring dream I’m having, but didn’t understand that either.<br /><br />In any case, the doctor gave me drugs. It’s a new pill called Ambien, it’s supposed to help cure insomnia. So now I am sitting waiting at the pharmacy for my prescription to be filled.<br /><br />My girlfriend is happy that I am trying to get help, probably the happiest I have seen her since we started dating. Miguel called me a pussy and spat in my water.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><strong>Wednesday, December 15th 1999; 2:15 PM:<br /></strong><br />I’ll be damned if the pill didn’t work! I slept like a baby last night. After last night, I am quite convinced that 1 Ambien will knock out a full grown Clydesdale after an all night coke bender! I got a good 10 hours of sleep last night.<br /><br />Details about last night are kind of sketchy, I’m not exactly sure, but I might have fallen asleep lying on top of my girlfriend last night. I will need to apologize to her when I see her tonight.<br /><br />On other fronts, I am writing coherently again, and Miguel seemed to disappear off of the face of the planet. I think he’s pissed off at me, I might just be the only person I know that got ditched by his imaginary friend.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><strong>Thursday, December 16th 1999; 8:09 AM:<br /></strong><br />Well she dumped me. Apparently, not only did I fall asleep lying on top of her, but we were semi-‘busy’ in the process. I don’t blame her, I probably would have done the same had the roles been reversed. I don’t think we were a good fit anyway, she’s a little too crazy for me. And I’m not talking, ‘get drunk and get naked’ crazy, I’m talking, ‘cries over a Folgers coffee commercial’ crazy.<br /><br />At this point I’m not sure if she was ever real, or she was a figment of my imagination.</span></span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-1145900884439442752006-04-24T10:47:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:27:02.816-07:00RTFM<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">I have always seen business trips as golden opportunities. They are a chance to see different parts of the country, or world if you are lucky, and do so for free. They allow for new experiences, from things that others would find commonplace to the extraordinary, and all on the company dime, no less.<br /><br />Last year, I was flown out to a small town just outside of Texas, and for the first time in my life, had an opportunity to rent a car. Now to others, this might not seem all that impressive, but considering I was not yet 25, and I had not one clue how to get from Dallas-Fort Worth Airport to Waxahachie, TX, this was to be a grand adventure for me.<br /><br />I knew the company reserved some type of compact car for me at the rental agency, but like anything else, I tried to slither myself into something better.<br /><br />“Good afternoon sir.”<br /><br />“Good afternoon.”<br /><br />“Can I see your ID, sir?”<br /><br />I handed him my ID and swiveled my head back and forth a few times, just getting a feel for what was going on around me. The agent looked down and started typing away at his computer.<br /><br />“Well sir, it seems that we have you down for either an Oldsmobile Alero or a Ford Focus.”<br /><br />“Excuse me?!” I tried like hell to sound surprised; unfortunately, I am nowhere near as good as an actor as I am a cook or a singer.<br /><br />“Well sir, whoever made your reservations specifically stated that you were to get a compact car.”<br /><br />“I was specifically told that I was to get a Mustang.”<br /><br />I can’t help it; I never have been able to. I always like to see how far I can take things before people realize that I am bluffing. It is something that has got me into more trouble than is reasonable to explain in this medium.<br /><br />“Well sir, it says right here that you are only to get a compact car, and those are the choices that we have.”<br /><br />“Can I speak to your supervisor?”<br /><br />“Of course you can, sir.”<br /><br />I must admit, this was quite the stupid mistake on my part. I have the tendency, along with trying to bullshit my way into a better situation, to assume that if I bitch enough, businesses are just going to give me what I want to get me the hell out of their line. Unbeknownst to me, the rental agency had my travel coordinator’s phone number on file.<br /><br />The agent went into the back and grabbed his supervisor, who promptly picked up the phone and placed a call to my travel coordinator.<br /><br />“Sir, my supervisor is calling the person who set up your reservations to clear up this mistake; it should only be a couple of minutes.”<br /><br />I hate it when people call my bluff.<br /><br />A few minutes later the supervisor comes out of his office with a grin on his face.<br /><br />“Sir, your travel coordinator said, and I quote, ‘There’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that he is to get anything other than a compact unless all you have left are Mustangs.’”<br /><br />“Is that all she said?”<br /><br />“She laughed for a while too, and explained that you like to play pranks on people that you work with.”<br /><br />It’s a good thing that she has a good sense of humor. The supervisor went back to his office snickering, and the agent behind the desk, now with a vindicated smile on his face turns to me and asks me again:<br /><br />“So what will it be sir, the Alero or the Focus.”<br /><br />Now embarrassed and admittedly pouting a little, I made the rest of the answers in our conversation as short as possible.<br /><br />“Whichever one’s the cheapest.”<br /><br />“Ok sir… would you like a vehicle with or without the built in navigation system?”<br /><br />On my way out of work the day before, I hastily printed out directions that I obtained from the Internet from destination to destination. However, I neglected to pick the directions up from the printer on my way out of the door.<br /><br />“With, please.”<br /><br />I was handed my receipt, along with two booklets. One detailed the basic features of the Oldsmobile Alero. The other pertained to the on-board navigation system equipped on the vehicle. I loaded the rental car, started it up, and did what every technically minded person does when faced with a new gadget. I immediately flung the instruction booklet onto the floorboard of the backseat without so much as cracking it open, preferring the I’ll-figure-it-out-my-damn-self method of training on new technology. It was a mistake I would have the next two hours to regret.<br /><br />After only a couple minutes of fiddling around with the device, I learned how it worked well enough that I could program a destination into it. I entered the address of a hotel on a list of hotels that my company normally uses to put people up in, and I took off.<br /><br />Navigating the surface streets was easy enough using the system. A warm and friendly female voice followed an attention-grabbing chime to guide me to my destination. The goal of the system was obviously to feed me audio clues, rather than visual, so that I would be more inclined to keep my eyes on the road.<br /><br />“(BING!) Right turn in 100 feet…”<br /><br />I got onto the freeway and accelerated, I traveled only about three quarters of a mile before I reached my first exit. It was a freeway junction just outside of DFW airport.<br /><br />“(BING!) Veer right in 300 feet…”<br /><br />Here is where I had my first trouble. The junction I was about to enter had one exit that branched off into two exits, one northbound, one southbound. I had a feeling I was going the wrong way, but it wasn’t justified until I glanced down and got a look at the GPS system on the dash.<br /><br />I pulled off of the freeway to turn around when the voice came up again. I stopped in a McDonald’s parking lot to let the system regain its bearings.<br /><br />“(BING!) Recalculating route…”<br /><br />With the new route in front of me, I resumed my travels. I passed by a junior high school that was just letting out for the day. As I slowed down to let the kids cross the street, I received a handful of odd looks from students, faculty, and parents alike. It took me a second to realize that if I saw a Mexican driving in my neighborhood, yelling obscenities and flipping off his dashboard, I would be a little worried too.<br /><br />I started heading towards DFW again, without a clue as to my whereabouts, only knowing that I was in Dallas. Following my co-pilot a little less blindly than before, I started to pay more attention to the display than the voice. I glanced up for a couple of seconds to see where I was driving, as not to kill myself, and the voice popped up again:<br /><br />“(BING!) U-turn in 50 feet…”<br /><br />At this time I was in the right lane, going 60 miles an hour. I slammed on the brakes, causing the driver behind me to follow suit. I traveled across three lanes of traffic, missed causing an inadvertent PIT maneuver by only mere inches, and barely made the u-turn without getting killed or killing the people around me.<br /><br />I made it back onto the freeway, southbound, the way I was supposed to be going. I was a little shaken up, and glad that a cop didn’t see the General Lee impersonation my rental car just pulled off. After a couple of minutes I finally settled down, it would be some time before I had another exit to take.<br /><br />“(BING!) Veer right in 300 feet…”<br /><br />I saw a billboard for Six Flags over Texas, and I took a moment to think about what I was going to do with all of the free time I was going to have over the next three days. I had never been to Dallas before, and I started thinking about taking a day to see the sights, and at least one day for the amusement park. It had been forever since I had been on a roller coaster and it sounded like a good time-<br /><br />“(BING!) Recalculating route…”<br /><br />Due to my daydreaming session, I neglected the fact that I was driving and missed the turn. I pulled off again, turned around and started to head in the right direction. Now completely frustrated, I kept my speed down to 45 mph, as not to miss any more exits. When realizing that the posted limit was 55 and the observed limit was somewhere in the 80’s, I lowered my right foot just a little more.<br /><br />Fifteen miles of driving and I was about to hit another junction. This time I was prepared, I was paying attention, I knew exactly what exit I was supposed to take and how far away it was.<br /><br />“(BING!) Veer right in 300 feet…”<br /><br />Another junction, another exit.<br /><br />“(BING!) Recalculating route…”<br /><br />Another wrong turn. I took exit A instead of exit B, leading me northbound instead of southbound, again. I cocked my arm back to knock the living hell out of the navigation system. I realized that this was a fight that my fist would most definitely lose, and I was sure as hell not going to be able to get around without the stupid thing.<br /><br />At this point, it was almost as if the system was starting to get frustrated with me. I could sense it in the now not-so-friendly female voice that followed the chime.<br /><br />“(BING!) Left turn in 100 feet, asshole…”<br /><br />It was like driving with a nagging girlfriend. Granted, it may have been all in my head, but I did hear it nonetheless. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;"><br />Now back on course, it was a straight shot of 20 miles or so until I reached my hotel. I spent a good 15 out of those 20 minutes en route trying to find a radio station that played something that wasn’t country or in Spanish, not being a huge fan of the music of my people. Relieved, I finally arrived at my destination.<br /><br />I eagerly jumped out of the car, wanting to get a small nap before I had to be at a sister site of ours for training. I stretched for a couple of minutes, popped every joint in my body, and walked inside to check in to my temporary home.<br /><br />“Hi, I have reservations.”<br /><br />“Can I see your ID sir?”<br /><br />Again I hand a clerk my ID, but this time I wasn’t expecting the response I received.<br /><br />“Uh, sir… We don’t have a reservation for you here…”<br /><br />“Excuse me?”<br /><br />“There’s no record of you having a room with us this week.”<br /><br />“I’m with-“<br /><br />“I know who you are with sir, but there’s no reservation for you.”<br /><br />At a loss for what to do next, I double checked my itinerary and confirmed what I was afraid of. As it turns out, the list of hotels that my company uses for business has more than one hotel on it. The hotel that I programmed into the GPS system wasn’t the one listed on my itinerary. I was at least 5 miles away from my hotel, and only 2 ½ hours away from my training.<br /><br />After finally getting to the right hotel, getting checked in and in my room, I had a chance to take a look at my watch. I had managed to make a simple drive of just over an hour last just under two. As I laid down on the bed to relax for a few minutes, I thought about something I tell people about their computers often.<br /><br />“When in doubt, read the fucking manual!”</span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-1140985126503529292006-02-26T13:17:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:26:43.355-07:00Are You There God? It's Me, Jake...<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Last night, after 6 games of MLB slugfest and a rather horrid case of insomnia, I had a rather lengthy dream.<br /><br />I was vacationing in Barcelona alone, taking in the sights, soaking in the culture, and meeting new people along the way. I stopped in to a rather small café for a quick cup of coffee and a bite to eat. The inside of the café was no larger than my bedroom at home, big enough for only a few tables and chairs.<br /><br />I took my order to a small table in the corner, sat down, and proceeded to eat my lunch, picking up a local newspaper and pretending to be able to read it so I didn’t look too much like a tourist.<br /><br />A gentleman, about my age, height, and build walked up to me and started a conversation.<br /><br />“Do you mind if I take this seat?”<br /><br />“Take it where?”<br /><br />“Do you mind if I sit in it?”<br /><br />I looked about the room and saw that I was the only patron in the place, which I thought was very odd, considering the time of day.<br /><br />“There are other tables… Wait, are you an American? You speak English very well.”<br /><br />“Let’s just say that I am well traveled.”<br /><br />“Good enough, I have been looking for someone to talk to that I can actually understand.”<br /><br />The gentleman put his food down and sat down across the table from me. An odd presence emanated from him, it was kind of like an aura. It was oddly comforting.<br /><br />“My name is Jake, and you?”<br /><br />“People call me God.”<br /><br />Always the smartass, I had to say something to that.<br /><br />“They must have you mistaken for me.”<br /><br />“No, everyone calls you jackass; you’re the only one who calls you God.”<br /><br />This guy is good.<br /><br />“If you are God, what are you doing in a café in Spain?”<br /><br />“First of all, I am not in a café in Spain, neither are you for that matter. You are dreaming. I am here to answer a few questions that you have.”<br /><br />“Alright, but if I am dreaming, how do I know that it’s really you, and not some manifestation of my subconscious?”<br /><br />“There’s no way for me to prove that to you, at least not here.”<br /><br />“But you are God…”<br /><br />“I may be God, but you have already made up your mind regarding the nature of dreams, and to a certain extent, reality. Not to mention that in all of my infinite wisdom, there is only one thing I can do to prove that I am God.”<br /><br />“Explain.”<br /><br />“Well, if I tell you something only you know, then you are definitely going to think that I am a mere manifestation of your subconscious. If I tell you or show you something that you have never heard or seen before, you will only believe that I am a mere figment of your imagination. The only way I could prove that I am God, here and now, would be to kill you.”<br /><br />“Ok, just for arguments sake, and because I like being alive, I am going to take your word for it. But can’t you just force me to believe that you are God?”<br /><br />“I could, but then I would have to take free will away from everyone else too.”<br /><br />“Good point. Well, obviously if you are here, you know that I have some questions.”<br /><br />“Of course, I know the questions you are going to ask, I know the answers to the questions, and I know how this conversation is going to end.”<br /><br />“How is this any fun for you?”<br /><br />“Just ask, this is a dream remember? We don’t have an abundance of time.”<br /><br />“First and foremost on my mind is the situation with…”<br /><br />“Jake, the only thing I can say about that, is that you need to let it go. You are both so damn stubborn that the situation isn’t going to resolve itself anytime soon. You are going to give yourself a heart attack or an embolism if you don’t learn to go forward. Things are finally going in the right direction for you, don’t let yourself get derailed. Keep your focus on the future. Besides, I know you try to be the best man you can be, you know that you try to be the best man you can be, that’s all that matters.”<br />“I try, I try like hell to stay focused, but thinking about the thing tends to get me ignited…”<br /><br />“And what good is it doing you, Jake? You walk around tense and agitated when you think about the whole thing. You aren’t solving things; you are just making them worse for yourself. It’s going to affect your health and push away everyone if you let it eat you up. Besides, friends shouldn’t act that way.”<br /><br />“Ok I will… try… to let it go.”<br /><br />“Atta boy.”<br /><br />“Well, besides that, why am I so damn tense all of the time?”<br /><br />“Here’s a better question, why do you let everything bother you the way it does?”<br /><br />“I thought you knew that already…”<br /><br />“I do, but I’m not here to give you the answers, I am just here to help you find them yourself.”<br /><br />“Ok, ok… I guess that a lot of the reason I am always so angry is the fact that I never feel vindicated. I always, always feel like the only way to make the people around me understand my point of view is to fight or to hurt them.”<br /><br />“And how has that been working out for you lately?”<br /><br />“Not so good.”<br /><br />“Jesus Christ, Jake, do you think that maybe that attitude is the very reason no one wants to see your point of view?”<br /><br />“Wait a second; did you just use the lord’s name in vain?”<br /><br />“He is my kid, remember?”<br /><br />“The bottom line is that I feel like no one listens to me.”<br /><br />“No, the bottom line is that you have a fear of being wrong and everyone thinking that you are stupid.”<br /><br />“What’s wrong with that?”<br /><br />“The attitude promotes intolerance and pretension. And let’s face it Jake, you are very intolerant of people who aren’t as smart as you and less than tolerant of people that are smarter than you.”<br />“Well that’s not a fair assessment. That just about covers everyone!”<br /><br />“Hey, it’s your attitude, not mine.”<br /><br />“I know that I have a short fuse with dumb people, but I’m not sure I follow how I have a problem with smart people.”<br /><br />“It all boils down to one thing, you don’t like people who are smarter than you because well…”<br /><br />“Well what?”<br /><br />“They are smarter than you. One of these days you are going to accept the fact that you aren’t me, you don’t know everything, and it is entirely possible to be very, very intelligent without being an Einstein. You need to look at it as a blessing that you have the brains that you do have, and always realize that it could be much, much worse. Always remember that you don’t have to demean people because that they don’t have the knowledge yet, they are just untaught. You can’t blame someone for being malnourished if they have never been properly fed, can you? The bottom line, teach the ones who don’t know, and learn from the ones who do.”<br /><br />“Ok, that I can do.”<br /><br />“One more question, at least for now.”<br /><br />“What is my purpose?”<br /><br />“We both know that you aren’t ready for that answer, you don’t even understand the question yet. Besides, it would take all of the fun out of your life if you knew why you were here. Well Jake, I am afraid that our time here is up.”<br /><br />He snapped his fingers, and I awoke, sitting on my recliner in the living room, in a panic and a cold sweat.<br /><br />I haven’t quite decided if it was God or a documentary that was on TV when I went to bed that made me have the dream, but it doesn’t make the conversation any less valid. I could only hope that this becomes a reoccurring dream.<br /><br /></span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-1137790437278954002006-01-20T13:52:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:26:08.856-07:00Ignoring the Subtext<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">As long as I live, I will never understand what compels people to become door-to-door salespeople. I guess some people just have a knack for it; it’s just something that they are good at.<br /><br />Personally, I have never been a good fit in the customer service industry. I fit more into the corporate world where, for the most part, I constantly work with the same people. My forays into the world of retail sales and customer service have been, well, less than spectacular.<br /><br />One of my managers in my earlier days described me as, ‘Narcissistic, openly defiant, an egotist with an attitude, a person who believes that he is above the rules.’<br /><br />I just have a problem dealing with people who are stupid, lazy, and inconsiderate. My attitude stemmed from people in a store who passed what they looked for seven times, were too lazy to turn their heads to look for an item, and were too inconsiderate to thank me when I showed them where the item was.<br /><br />So for the most part, I decided that the way that my managers wanted me to do things was irrelevant, I tended to spend more time helping people that were thoughtful and actually needed help, and in turn, virtually ignoring the ones who couldn’t find the nose on their own face. I am the type of person that is only willing to help people if they are willing to do their best to help themselves.<br /><br />I still don’t understand why my managers thought I had an attitude.<br /><br />I took a stab at door-to-door sales, briefly in college. It only took a couple of days before I realized that I fit into the demographic of people who definitely don’t have a knack for it. Most people are volatile as it is, add the fact that you are knocking on their door at home, interrupting their dinners, asking money to sell them something that they don’t want and will never use, and people will be ruder than you can possibly imagine. On my three days on the job, I heard obscenities that I thought people were making up, and for the most part, I curse like a drunken sailor.<br /><br />“If you want to be good at this job Jake, you have to be persistent, ignore the subtext, and don’t take no for an answer.” My sales manager had been doing the job for a couple of years, apparently, he had no idea who I was.<br /><br />The difficulty of the job was compounded for me by the fact that I had no salesmanship skills whatsoever. A dyslexic, drunken orangutan is a better salesman than I am. I couldn’t sell a free life preserver to a man drowning in an ocean.<br /><br />I never understood what my sales manager meant by ‘ignore the subtext’; maybe it was because there was no subtext involved with any of the people behind the doors that I knocked on. There were only threats to my life, racial epithets, and the occasional ‘no’.<br /><br />I never understood what he meant until last night, when a door-to-door magazine saleschick knocked on my door, and not once understood the subtext behind my attempts to be nice to her.<br /><br />The first mistake that she made was knocking on my door at seven o’clock on a Thursday. There are only two television shows that I watch religiously, Scrubs and Smallville, last night was a brand new episode of Smallville. She was lucky that I didn’t throw her down the stairs when the commercial ended.<br /><br />The only reason I answered the door during one of my weekly sacred rituals was because I thought my brother was on the other side of the door with a calculator that I loaned him three and a half years ago. I opened the door to find a short, thin, blond girl in her early 20s, shivering from the cold weather.<br /><br />For the purposes of simplicity, our conversation will be in quotes, with my subtext defined inside of parentheses. For example “Blah blah, blah blah blah (subtext)”<br /><br />“Have you seen a young kid with green hair, kinda smells bad, running around this complex?”<br /><br />“Uh, no…(Who the hell are you?)” I was under the assumption that she was looking for her little brother or a friend.<br /><br />“Are you the man of the house?”<br /><br />“Yes… (Hell yeah, I’m the man!)”<br /><br />“Hi, my name is ‘her name here’, I am doing a contest for school in which I try to collect points by going door-to-door and selling magazine subscriptions to popular magazines. I am currently in first place. The grand prize is an all-expenses-paid trip to, guess where?”<br /><br />She spat out her pre-scripted monologue in about half a second. She handed me a laminated brochure, complete with the rules for her little contest and a picture of Mexico with the word ‘Cancun’ emblazoned below it.<br /><br />“Cancun? (Really, how friggin’ stupid do you think I am?)”<br /><br />“Yep! Have you ever been to Cancun?”<br /><br />“Of course! (No, never)”<br /><br />“Cool! The trip is for two, you can go with me and show me all the sights!”<br /><br />At this point, she is starting to feed on one of my weaknesses. It is a weakness of all men. You can call us simple-minded creatures, but we can’t help ourselves. All guys, without exception, will buy something from or for a woman who flirts with him. It is an undeniable fact of nature. I personally remember walking out of a store in Las Vegas this summer with a new pair of sunglasses that I didn’t need, 200 dollars poorer, cause the saleschick that worked there said that I looked hot with them on.<br /><br />“Do you mind if I come in for a second to show you this?”<br /><br />“Ok… (You have until the end of the commercial)”<br /><br />She walked in just past the door, far enough to lay her pamphlets and other sales material out on the kitchen counter. I left the door open just in case I had to physically throw her out of my apartment if she pulled a knife on me, or something to that affect.<br /><br />“If you don’t mind, could you leaf through this booklet and pick out four magazines that you would be willing to subscribe to?”<br /><br />“Ok… (I ain’t buying a damn thing, lady!)” In retrospect, I was being far too nice, especially considering the commercial break was almost over.<br /><br />I proceeded to thumb through the booklet she handed me, looking at the brief number of magazines therein, all with a number of points listed in their description.<br /><br />“Oh, by the way, you can’t choose ‘Details’, we’re out if it.”<br /><br />Now, this sent up a huge red flag for me. If someone knows how a company could ‘run-out’ of a magazine subscription, please inform me. I still played along with the game, wasting more of my time. I picked out four magazines that were on the list, and she wrote them down, assuming that I had already made a decision.<br /><br />“Now this is what I can do for you…” She showed me her sales slip and explained the price scale on the four subscriptions that I chose. Not wanting to wait for her to finish her speech, I did some quick math in my head and soon realized that the total dollar amount was just shy of 250 dollars.<br /><br />“I’m sorry, but you really caught me at a bad time, I have a lot of things going on in my life right now, and I can’t really afford the money… (Lady, if I wanted to spend that kind of money on magazines, I could do it at the newsstand!)”<br /><br />“Well, if you write me a check, you can post-date it for up to nine days from now and it won’t be processed for another two weeks!”<br /><br />“Things aren’t going to be much better for me in two weeks… (In two weeks, I still won’t want to spend 250 dollars on magazines!)”<br /><br />“Well, here’s what you can do then, just to help me out with my contest, you can post-date the check, then call this number in about a week, and tell the operator that you want to cancel your order. That way, I will still get half of the points for the order!”<br />This little contest of hers was getting on my nerves. As it turns out, the scoring system was more complicated than the scoring system of professional auto racing.<br /><br />“I’m just a little cynical about things like this… (Let me get this straight, you want me to give you a check for more than 200 dollars for knocking at my door, and assume that you aren’t going to cash the thing, based on good faith?)”<br /><br />“Well, see, that’s why we don’t take credit card numbers anymore. Some of the kids in the contest were stealing them and trying to do bad things with them.”<br /><br />“Really? (Now, how exactly is that supposed to make me feel better about giving you a check?)”<br /><br />Let me let you in on a little fact that everyone should be aware of, checking accounts are far easier to defraud than credit or debit cards. When completing transactions online, a security code of some kind is usually required to use plastic. Most cards also have a dollar limit that is used to prevent fraudulent charges.<br /><br />A growing trend online is the ‘electronic check’. It allows use of a checking account by using the routing number and account number, easily found on a check. It will allow you to spend up to the dollar amount in your checking account, and has very little security involved.<br /><br />“I really don’t feel safe about giving a complete stranger a check, sorry… (You’re done here, go home!)”<br /><br />“Well, can you at least let me borrow a lighter?”<br /><br />“What? (What!?)”<br /><br />“I just wanna smoke a cigarette before I go home.”<br /><br />“Let me see if I can find one… (Wait outside!)”<br /><br />I shut the door and proceeded to rifle through my apartment, looking for a lighter that I knew didn’t exist, knowing that if I found one and sent her on her way, I would be sitting on my couch again, experiencing sweet television bliss.<br /><br />About ten minutes later, she knocked on the door again.<br /><br />“Let me just borrow your stove for a second…”<br /><br />“No, I don’t want my place smelling like cigarettes… (What the hell is your problem?!)”<br /><br />“Oh, come on, it will only take a sec!”<br /><br />“I’m sorry, I can’t help you, have a good evening… (Go home!)”<br /><br />I closed the door and sat down again, now thoroughly in a mood. I turned and looked at the clock.<br /><br />7:30<br /><br />I missed half of the show, Lex was bleeding, and I had no idea what happened. My evening at home was effectively ruined.<br /><br />If someone knocks on your door, and you are busy, for God’s sake, don’t beat around the bush, just do what my dad does. Tell them what you need to tell them without any subtext.<br /><br />“I don’t want any.”<br /></span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14118000.post-1137183117298828322006-01-13T13:11:00.000-07:002007-05-04T06:34:23.447-07:00Safety Boy and the Cancer Club<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Some of my fondest memories of college were from my freshman engineering class. It was one of the most difficult classes I have ever attended, and my professor was a real hard-liner, but he still managed to keep it enjoyable.<br /><br />The mainstay of the class was group work. Our department was not only trying to teach us how to be engineers, but how the engineering environment works in the real world. From day one, we were told that the heart and soul of a project is the design team working on it. The team, and therefore the design, was only as strong as the weakest link.<br /><br />For a design team to work effectively every member of the team must trust each other implicitly to complete their tasks on time, and to complete them well. Deadlines were non-negotiable, and the team members have the option to essentially vote another member out if they feel that one person isn’t pulling their weight.<br /><br />As design team leader, it was my duty to find my team member’s strengths and weaknesses and delegate duties accordingly. The five of us tried different roles within the group, but after one project together, it became rather evident.<br /><br />Abrams was one of the most socially inept people I have ever met. Don’t get me wrong, he was a nice guy, and smart as a whip, but he was definitely the square peg in the round hole. I have never met anyone with the number of eccentricities that he had. He used to listen to Marine marching songs to go to sleep. He was, quite literally the most sheltered, fearful person I have ever met, refusing to do anything that could be deemed remotely bad for him. He had no idea how to decompress, no tobacco, no alcohol, nothing remotely close to anything fun.<br /><br />He also had a way of saying the most odd things in the world to us.<br /><br />“You know Jake, you should always eat your French fries before your burger. They have more surface area and cool the fastest!”<br /><br />Joe had to be without a doubt the most intelligent skater I have ever met. We were going to become roommates until he decided to transfer to ASU. He was the type of guy that could be laid back and intellectual, fitting in pretty much wherever he went. He knew when to party and knew when to get his work done.<br /><br />Olaf was in his late twenties. He was a Russian born immigrant, moving to the US with his wife to get his degree in structural engineering. He spoke English with a Russian accent, as a second language, but he still seemed to know it better than a lot of people I have talked to. He would always bring the six-packs of Budweiser to the study sessions.<br /><br />Steve was the dumbest engineering student I have ever met, ultimately, our weakest link. He was the type of guy that looked nearly catatonic when you asked him a question that didn’t involve chicks or beer. He showed up to more than one of our design meetings wreaking of pot, with his bloodshot eyes glazed over and barely open, making an appearance because he knew that if he didn’t, I would force a vote to kick him off the team.<br /><br />During our first project, our professor handed us the task of coming up with a name for our design group. I pulled together an impromptu meeting.<br /><br />“Alright guys, we need a name.”<br /><br />“How about Semper Fidelis?” Abrams piped in.<br /><br />“Dude, you aren’t even a Marine!”<br /><br />“I got it dude, Bushwackers!” Apparently Steve wasn’t aware that I was actually looking for good ideas.<br /><br />“In a word, no.”<br /><br />A light flickered over my head.<br /><br />“Well considering all of us party, smoke and drink except for Abrams here, who refuses to leave his dorm without an umbrella if there is even a slight chance of rain, I’ve got a name that would fit us perfectly.”<br /><br />Abrams looked at me with eyes that I have seen before. It was the I-know-I’m-not-going-to-like-what-you-have-to-say-but-I-want-to-hear-it-anyway look. He was wincing as if he was watching a train wreck.<br /><br />“Ok, Jake, what is it?”<br /><br />“Safety Boy and the Cancer Club!”<br /><br />I got the reaction that I was looking for, laughter. Well everyone but Abrams laughed, he was a guy that never liked jokes at his expense.<br /><br />“You’re an ass Jake!”<br /><br />“Let’s put it to a vote, all in favor of Safety Boy and the Cancer Club say ‘aye!’”<br /><br />A resounding ‘Aye’ came from the group, all except you-know-who responded.<br /><br />“Sorry brother, the vote stands!”<br /><br />We spent the next 3 weeks in class and in study sessions without much of an incident. But as our group progress report presentations and demonstrations came up, I saw Abrams get more and more angry every time I repeated the group name in front of the class. It was as if he was building up explosive energy, ready to burst.<br />He caught up with me after class one day, fed up and ready to strike.<br /><br />“Jake, we need to talk about the group name, man!’<br /><br />“What’s wrong with it?” I looked at him with a furrow of worry on my forehead, feigning concern.<br /><br />“I don’t want to be referred to as ‘Safety Boy’ anymore!”<br /><br />“Alright kid, here’s the deal… A few of us are going to a party Friday night, if you can prove to us that you can relax and socialize without getting in a tizzy, I’ll put up a vote to have the name changed…”<br /><br />“What’s the catch?” Anyone who knew me more than 15 minutes knew that there was a catch.<br /><br />“If you can’t prove to us that you can unwind, even for a couple hours, we keep the name and you never bring it up again, deal?”<br /><br />We shook hands, sealing the deal. I was one hundred percent certain that this was the last I would ever hear about changing the name.<br /><br />The party that Friday night just so happened to be an engineering meet-and-greet of sorts. The only people invited were from the college of engineering and mines. The first impression that most outsiders get would be wrong. You would assume that this group of intelligent young men and women would be some of the most clean cut, sophisticated, well behaved students in a university.<br /><br />This happens to be the most ill conceived preconception that I have ever heard.<br /><br />In truth, I have never seen a bigger group of alcoholics, smokers, potheads, cokeheads, caffeine addicts and tweakers in my life. And if you think about the life of an average engineering student, it makes perfect sense.<br /><br />To graduate with the proper amount of credits in four years, an engineering major must carry an average of 16 credit hours a semester. Most of these students work part to full time, trying to pay for classes, housing, food, and the like. Add on the fact that the classes that they take consist mostly of high-end math, physics, and chemistry, and you have a 18-22 year old ready to explode.<br /><br />My personal formula was caffeine during the day and night to stay awake for class and studying, cigarettes between classes, and beer and cigarettes Friday and Saturday nights to relax. Everyone I knew, regardless of major, had some sort of way to cope with the stress load school put on us. Non-smokers became smokers, non-drinkers became drinkers, and the ones that didn’t find a way became volatile, such as Abrams.<br /><br />There were 6 of us that rode together to the party that night; Abrams, Joe, Steve, Olaf, Danny (Joe’s roommate) and myself. Danny drove us; he was just as curious as the rest of us how Abrams would act outside of his element.<br /><br />We gathered just outside of the house and I gave the kid a little pep talk.<br /><br />“Kid, all you have to do is relax, have some fun, drink a beer or two and meet some new people.”<br /><br />“Ok…” Shy and timid, Abrams looked like we were throwing him into a lion’s cage.<br /><br />“Have at it brother!”<br /><br />I patted him on the back and sent him in the house to mingle. Truth be told, I wanted nothing more for him than to relax and have some fun, but deep down, I knew it wasn’t going to happen.<br /><br />The rest of us stood outside on the front porch of the house, observing the no smoking (cigarettes) policy the homeowner had posted on the front door. As we killed our smokes and put odds on whether or not Abrams was actually going to follow through with this deal we had, some kid tapped me on the shoulder.<br /><br />“I’m looking for Jake.”<br /><br />“I’m Jake.” Having never seen the boy before in my life, I looked at him rather puzzled. He returned the look.<br /><br />“You’re Jake Diaz?”<br /><br />“Yes sir…” I said, still a little puzzled, but interested in what he was wanting from me.<br /><br />Before I could get out a ‘What do you need, kid?’ he slaps a five dollar bill in my hand and walks into the house.<br /><br />Confused, but not wanting to look a gift five-bucks in the mouth, I let him go in and continue the conversation I was having with my friends. Ten seconds later, I get another tap on the shoulder. I turn around to find a girl looking at me.<br /><br />“Jake? Jake Diaz?”<br /><br />“Yeah, wha-” I am now more confused than ever.<br /><br />She slaps another five bucks in my hand and walks into the house, not saying another word.<br /><br />I turn around scratch my head, and try to remember who these people were and why I decided to loan them five bucks each. Before I could continue my conversation, I hear my name.<br /><br />“Jake!”<br /><br />I turn around to find a rather tall, lanky, pale white kid in my view. He hands me a five and asks me a question.<br /><br />“Alright braw, where are the cups?”<br /><br />“What in the hell are you talking about kid?”<br /><br />I happen to glance around him to find seven more people waiting behind him with money in their hands.<br /><br />“You’re Jake Diaz, right?”<br /><br />“You wanna see an ID?”<br /><br />“This is your place, right?”<br /><br />“No, dude, I live on campus…”<br /><br />He grabbed the bill he just gave me from my hand and headed inside, calling out ‘Jake!’ The line became his entourage, and followed him inside. Another kid tapped on my shoulder.<br /><br />“What the hell do you w-, oh sorry Paulie.”<br /><br />Paul was a mechanical engineering major who lived in my dorm. As it turns out, it just so happens that the owner of the house is one Jake Diaz, a chemical engineering junior, who was charging five dollars a head for cups.<br /><br />I was a cocky, brash kid, but I knew better to think I could get away with pretending to be the owner of the house we were at. I knew that eventually someone who actually knew this other Jake would call me on it, and I was probably going to have my ass kicked.<br /><br />Ten bucks still isn’t bad, all things considered.<br /><br />I finally walked into the house, gave ‘Jake’ my (his) five bucks for my cup, and took a quick walk around the house. The living room consisted of three couches, a television set, and a Nintendo 64 with Madden ’98 running, and everyone around cheering the four competitors on. The garage was a makeshift dance floor, complete with a disco ball, strobe lights, a rather costly sound system, and a few couches. There was a three-inch cloud of pot smoke hovering near the ceiling, and Abrams was sitting in the corner, cup in hand, all alone.<br /><br />He looked how I would imagine Jane Goodall did when she was first trying to fit in with the chimps.<br /><br />“Dude, are you gonna mingle or not- what the hell are you drinking?”<br /><br />I happened to glance in his cup to find an odd red substance shaking around from the music in the room.<br /><br />“It’s clamato, it’s the only thing they had that wasn’t water or booze.”<br /><br />“Man, get up, get a drink and chill out!”<br /><br />The next few hours slowly became a blur to the four of us that were drinking. I distinctly remember yelling at Joe for the catch that his Jerry Rice didn’t catch from my Steve Young to lose the game of Madden we were playing at the last minute.<br /><br />There was dancing involved, unfortunately. I wound up dancing with three or four different girls, but when they are engineering majors, it’s a major crapshoot.<br /><br />My buddy used to have a theory about women: brains + beauty + sanity = k, k was a universal constant.<br /><br />After the debacle that was my ‘dancing’, I turned around in the garage to find Abrams sitting in the same spot I left him in almost three hours earlier.<br /><br />I huddled the troops, save Abrams, for a meeting.<br /><br />“Guys, guys… what are we gonna do about Abrams?”<br /><br />“We should smoke him out, dude! I’m sure he would relax then!”<br /><br />“Steve you friggin’ moron, we are not going to get him stoned!” I knew that he would never resist the temptation to do it again once it let him out of his shell.<br /><br />“I got it yo! See that girl over there?”<br /><br />Danny turned and pointed to a below average looking girl standing in the corner, slightly tipsy, all alone. I looked at him in disbelief.<br /><br />“You wouldn’t! You don’t have the balls!”<br /><br />Sure enough, Danny did have the balls. He walked over, grabbed her attention, and informed her that Abrams thought that she was hot, but he was too shy to tell her. At this point, we would try anything to get him into the game and having some fun.<br /><br />She walked over and took a seat right next to him. I have to hand it to her, I could tell that she was trying to start up a conversation, but he was resisting with all of his might. Four of us decided to go into the back yard to have a cigarette.<br /><br />What transpired shortly afterwards was most likely one of the dumbest things I have ever done.<br /><br />Standing outside, smoking cigars was a group of three or four guys. They soon finished their cigars and in a bout of alcohol induced bravado, decided to put them out on their tongues. What followed I can only explain as a bout of alcohol induced stupidity.<br /><br />I grabbed my friends’ attention, took the cigarette out of my mouth, and uttered infamous words that every drunken male has uttered at one point in their lives.<br /><br />“Oh yeah? Watch this!”<br /><br />I inverted my left arm, pointing my palm skyward, and proceeded to rub out my cigarette in my wrist. Suddenly confused, due to the fact that the cigarette wasn’t going out, I pushed and twisted it further and further into my flesh, making the smell worsen, and digging the hole even deeper.<br /><br />Apparently in my drunken stupor, I didn’t realize that the reason the cigars went out almost instantly on the tongue was because they were wet. Unfortunately, my wrist was as dry as a bone, and now had a 3/8-inch deep, cigarette sized hole in it.<br /><br />After the flesh-searing incident, I was ready to go. All of us save Danny our DD and Abrams had a nice little buzz going on. Which would explain why the cauterized wound in my left arm hadn’t yet begun to hurt.<br /><br />“Joe, you wanna go find Danny Abrams so we can get outta here?”<br /><br />“Sure, Jake.”<br /><br />Joe and Danny come out ten minutes later fairly panicked.<br /><br />“Dude, he went home!” Joe stated with a shaky voice.<br /><br />“What the hell do you mean he went home? You mean he took off with someone else?”<br /><br />Danny looked at me as seriously as anyone has before and said something I never thought I would hear.<br /><br />“He walked home.”<br /><br />Now, if this was an on-campus party or a just-off-campus party, I wouldn’t be worried. He may have been a little rough around the edges, but he would walk a little while without getting himself hurt. It just so happens that this particular party was a seven-miles-away-from-campus party.<br /><br />The five of us spent the next two hours traveling the route he would have most likely taken. We went back and forth, back and forth, three or four times, until we finally gave up.<br /><br />The next afternoon I was awoken by a phone call and some of the worst pain I had ever experienced. Abrams had called to apologize for his actions the night before, and said that he would stick to the end of his deal, allowing the name. Stating emphatically that he never wanted to party with us again, he was ok being ‘Safety Boy.’<br /><br />Some people just don’t be the round peg in the round hole, no matter how hard they try.</span>Jakehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08697951431221867493noreply@blogger.com0