This is most awesome show on tv

I am obsessed with this Japanese show where they take cute boys and dress them like cute girls. Yeah, yeah, I realize that every white chick you know has a crush on cute Japanese boys (me included), but you should check this out because it's brilliant. Besides, the Japanese boy in the green shirt is sooo cuuuutee! LOL! OMG!!!!

La la la la

Just sittin', drinking wine with Monkey and feeling fatigued from work. My friend Forest sent me this after I sent him the Shakira/Danzig video. It's pretty nice:

Ice Cream Thank You

A bunch of millionaire executives came to my office on Monday and gave my department ice cream. It was to thank us for all of the work we did on our last big project, which ended up costing something like $40 million dollars. Supposedly, it’s considered one of the most expensive projects ever in the IT industry.

Those ice cream parties tend to be half-hearted attempts at making people feel good about working 60+ hours a week. As a consultant, I’m shielded from a lot of those excessive demands, but it’s still difficult to work around people who are expected to just take it.

I’m beginning to realize that consulting wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Basically, I work in a super corporate environment, but I get treated better than the actual employees and can leave at 4. It’s sad, really, but there are a lot of business guys here who seem to like working so much that they get all excited about the shitty ice cream thank you. I don’t know about them, but I’d rather have the executive millionaires show me their gratitude by giving me a nice bonus rather than gross cafeteria ice cream with generic candy toppings.

Friday

Wednesday night, I went to the Joshua Tree to meet up with the Young Team. As usual, they were running late, so I was chilling with a drink, watching that sick Celtics win (Paul Peirce insane). Anyway, since the bar is a big rectangle I had to look at a far away TV above the heads of some couple across the bar. I’ve been watching a lot of Squidbillies and this clip kept running through my head, and I was LOLing by myself like an asshole, and the dude from the couple was shooting me dirty looks because I think he thought I was laughing at his douchey beard and wondering how he pulled a decent chick, which really means he wonders how he got her and is constantly insecure. I should just wear an “I Love Tanya” shirt with her picture and our blog address, so people know I’m taken, and I’d be getting the word out about this stupid site. Anyway, thanks for the laughs Squidbillies. I’m glad I didn’t get my delicate ass kicked.

The clip in question, demonstrative of my puerile sensibilities:

Tanya and I ate at Frank’s last night, for the second time this week, getting ready for our future roles as early-bird-special-eating oldass regulars (practically already there). We bought some wine and had a pretty solid YouTube session.

We stumbled across this. I’d never seen it before, but given the number of views it’s made the rounds and gone to bed. Still, if I ain’t seen it it’s new to me, like most of the things I post here.


We’re really into these two literal music videos, too.




Brendan Donnelly’s clothing web site went live. Amazing and solid. $35 bucks ain’t bad for these gems. Too bad, I’m a poorass. Remember me for Christmas, people.

Part III: More Early November Crap

Yours truly finally got another legit well-deserved day off on Veteran's Day. Monday night, Tanya and I watched that last Indiana Jones movie and went to bed early. The Indy movie was pretty mediocre, as most people know. No one wants to see oldass Indy and oldass Karen Allen and the douche from Transformers and Cate Blacnchett grabbing a paycheck. Those cheesy jungle scenes were on some Endor shit. I expected it to be worse. I mean, it still stayed true to the Indy formula by bending over the willing suspension of disbelief and often getting into some goofy antics. Plus, it threw in inter-dimensional aliens!

So, Tuesday, Tanya had to work, because Fidelity cares about money not war veterans. I guess there’s some bad shirt going on with the economy. I went home and did some laundry and watched Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. Marisa Tomei getting naked at 44 and looking good, cut by Philip Seymour Hoffman at his fattest. The first shot is of Hoffman giving it to Tomei Snoop Dogg style. Talk about setting a tone, lolz. Throw in some whiny Ethan Hawke and Albert Finney lumbering around as a monstrous old man, add enough dark plot twists to take it from crime melodrama to gothic territory and, bam, my laundry was done and I went to the gym, then Shaw’s, then met up with Tanya for dinner at Frank’s. I swear I was more tired from running around on my day off than I ever am from a work day, excepting really hungover work days. Being old sucks.

Tanya gave you the Surprise Day lowdown. I think the sleep balm is working. I’m also avoiding the caffeine still, so maybe that’s working, too.

I’m not feeling this season of Biggest Loser. What happened to the jovial hopeful fat people? I can see mean dour fat people anywhere.

Lastly, how could I write this terribly long post and not mention that November is National Novel Writing Month, a month in which more skeletal loosely autobiographical narratives are written than any other? It’s a good thing, though. Writing novels is hard. I know because I’ve failed at it several times. Doing the exercise this month teaches people discipline about writing, which is necessary for anyone who wants to write seriously. It’s just weird, though, how I know several people who aren’t really big readers and aren’t writers but throw down for the month. It’s not completely weird, given some of the egos. Last time I tried the exercise, I ended up with a skeleton of a novel that either needs some good research and depth added to really make it a novel, or some good research and some crap cut out to make it a solid long short story or novella. I also maybe want to turn it into a screenplay at some point, since that’s the medium I mostly work in now, in my spare time, when I’m not writing really long blog posts that will go mostly unread. It’s about a guy who mugs people at movie theaters, a gay guy who takes photographic portraits of urinals, and a bored depressed trust fund girl, and how their lives come together. Hey, want to pay me to write it? Get at me, we’ll talk. That’s likely to happen. But, seriously, I need to get back at that, maybe after I finish the screenplay I’ve been working on for awhile now. So, I hope a lot of people that do the exercise like what they write and keep working on it, or at least keep writing. And, if you get successful, hook a brother up. Nah, why would you do that? I suck.

Watch the whole thing!

Part II: Election Magic

Like most Massachusetts Democrats I was psyched for the election. I was registered in my old Brookline hood, so I voted out there, and saw it as a chance to get drunk early. I met a friend at the Avenue and downed several dollar drafts. Boy, had I missed those. Then, getting ready to celebrate, I stopped by Blanchard’s and picked up a bottle of South African mead. I met Tanya for a drink at Charlie’s, then we watched the results roll in at her place, sipping on mead. I managed to stay awake for McCain’s concession speech, but like my parents on New Year’s, I couldn’t stay awake for the big deal, not that it mattered since I caught that shit first thing when I got to work. I slept easily and happy, since we had a cool half-black Democrat going to the White House.

Of course, November 5th got a little annoying, with every single white person who voted acting like they got in a time machine and went back and single-handedly ended slavery. As usual, lame whites were ruining my high. Of course, voting for Obama was the most meaningful interaction many of these people ever had with a black person.

My brother turned 33 on the 6th. I’m glad he made it. On facebook, I saw some pics of him at a party. I thought it was a Halloween costume party and my brother was owning it with a spot-on Corey Haim. Turns out, it was just someone’s birthday party and he wasn’t dressed-up. Jokes!

Hells Yeah!


It's a mental block

Updates Part I: Happy Belated Halloween

Hey, y’all. I haven’t rapped at you in a minute, so I thought I’d bring you up to speed. After all, the end of October and early November were pretty exciting times. Halloween came and went. Then, America rejoiced as a cool black dude meted out a humiliating beating on an elderly war veteran nearly twice his age. And, through all these heady times, I was right there with you, drinking sometimes, hanging out with Tanya a lot, hating on people, and being a tired cranky old man, just like Jesus and the two sets of footprints in the sand, except when there was only one set, it was because I was at home watching Biggest Loser instead of hanging out with your dick ass. This season of Biggest Loser sucks, by the way. It’ll probably break this up into a few posts to catch up, so the first one will cover Halloween. I know some people would say the Halloween ship has sailed and it’s time to get current, but those people don’t all run blogs nobody reads.

So, Happy Belated Halloween.

A lot of people love Halloween: pagans, creative people, chicks who like to dress like sluts and dudes who like to see chicks dressed like sluts. The slut costume gets old and unoriginal really fast. Still, it has its merits. It’s easy to identify and you basically know what you’re getting, except for the fact that you think the chick will slay in the sack and she probably ends up sucking, because she only dressed as a slut because all her friends did, because they all think that’s what Halloween is all about, no longer getting candy, but getting drunk and looking like a hooker and smashing into some overcrowded bar or club and doing the walk of shame in a cheap nurse costume.

I think I’ve done dinner theater or some other odd job the past several Halloweens, or I just stayed in not caring, too lazy to figure out a costume. Once, I went to a party, no costume, and saw a girl dressed as Carmen Sandiego, the red hat and red trench coat, etc. I liked the fact that she was bucking the slut costume trend. Plus, she was cute and obviously old enough to think of being Carmen Sandiego. I was pretty drunk and we made out at the party. We went out a week or so later and I found out she was chubby, and she lived with her parents, and worked at a bank, and I never saw her again. I probably could have made out with an albino dressed as a cat at the party. The point is: going for the girl who shows a little creativity is cool, but figure out what you’re getting into. Didn’t matter to me. I just wanted to get drunk that night and I did. Also, there’s nothing wrong with a pretty chubby girl, per se, although I’m not a fan of bankers who live with mom and dad. Still, kids, remember there are only a certain number of years where you can wake up with a cheap slutty police officer costume next to the bed, and a cheap slut in the sack. Thank God, I have Tanya and don’t have to worry about all that.

Anyway, Tanya loves Halloween, and wanted me to get out of doing a show, but I couldn’t get out of it and needed the money. The upshot was Tanya ended up doing the show. She needed money, too. She had to play the part of the French Maid, so she got to dress up anyway. I did a button-down shirt, dress pants, dress shoes, and a blazer, which is a costume for my jeans-and-T-shirt-and-sneakers ass. After the show, we spent our hard-won cash on drinks at 6B, which was totally empty except for a few anti-Halloween sad sacks. So, it was awesome. I was tired and slammed down five or six beers in an hour and then ended Halloween by dressing as the Guy Who Couldn’t Perform Sexually. Decent. There’s some trick or treat joke in there somewhere, but I’m not sussing it out right now, especially since it’s almost the middle of November.

Awesome Beyonce costume! Work it girl!

Surprise Day!

Yesterday was Surprise Day!

Skaht got me a coaster featuring cats selling lemonade. The coaster is made out of a recycled bath tile. I got Skaht the Badger Sleep Balm since he has been having trouble sleeping lately.

Working for the man - Part 1

I have had a ‘real’ job for about 10 years now. However, it has taken me almost 10 years to become fully used to the idea of working 9-5. In fact, I’d say that this whole desk job situation hasn’t become fully realized until the past two years or so. For some reason, I always felt like working an adult job would be a temporary phase – like going to college. I waited patiently for the time when something would happen and I’d wake up and be on to my next thing, whatever that was. Unfortunately, we all know that unless one is already wealthy, money has to be made somehow. Sadly, that’s where the 9-5 job comes in.

When I finished college and got my first corporate job, I was actually working right down the street from where I am working now in South Boston. I tend to think of that time a lot, since I can still see the building I worked at on my way to my current office in the World Trade Center. It’s a big, brown, depressing building that houses a few different businesses. The Harpoon Brewery is there in addition to some fish packing place. BTE, Inc. (or whatever it’s called now since they were bought out some time ago) is sandwiched right between. That’s where I worked.

This was a time when, like most early 20-somethings, I tended to thrive on late nights out and no sleep. How I actually pulled myself out of bed in the morning and got myself in the office is a big mystery to me now. For the first two or three months that I worked there, I didn’t have a place to live, so I couch surfed at my friend’s place, waiting for one of the extra rooms to open up. No one had a regular day job in the house, so I had to deal with people up at all hours and no privacy. I actually kept my clothes in an old boarded up fireplace since I didn’t have any closet space to call my own. People would come in while I was asleep on an air mattress on the floor and watch movies sometimes. Obviously, this wasn’t a good situation for a working professional – but I made the best of it.

Thankfully, my job at BTE was a relatively brainless administrative type job, so I didn’t really have to think that much and I could coast through the day. It was insanely boring there, and I rarely had anything to do. I pretty much sat in a back room, surfing the internet and trying to make myself look busy. I worked for the Director of Marketing. He mostly gave me reports and business proposals that I had to type up. The rough drafts would be coddled together from old proposal clippings and marked up with highlighters and red pens. They were very infantile looking, like some kindergartener had made me a story that I was supposed to decode and put into adult language. That’s pretty much all I did, maybe three times a week.

Since typing up proposals took me about an hour or so each, I was left with lots of free time on my hands. I became very adept at escaping the office unnoticed and I often took long walks around the pier. There are some strange buildings out here and lots of weird abandoned fish shacks, which I always promised myself I would photograph one day. One time, I illegally gained entry into the design center (a huge factory type building that contains interior design showcases for licensed buyers.) Walking around inside was like being part of another world. “Look at all the people who actually have cool jobs” I would say to myself as I looked at all the eccentric designers dashing about. It made me pretty depressed.

I’m not sure what my real hours were supposed to be, but I never worked more than 4 hours a day. After a two hour lunch, I’d go back to my cubicle and stare at the monitor. Maybe type up a story or email or letter or something. At around 4:30 – maybe 4 – I’d escape again, running across the parking lot and down the long street that I would have to walk in order to catch the shuttle bus from the WTC to South Station. I’d run like crazy, although most people at my office probably never noticed when I left. The walk was about 10 minutes to the shuttle and then the shuttle would take 10 minutes to South Station where I would run down to the T. The T ride took 15-20 minutes from South Station to Central Square, where I lived.

All in all, it wasn’t an awful gig, especially since I had a ton of free time and pretty much did whatever I wanted. However, I was sad a lot. I wondered how I would get used to having to work Monday through Friday, 5 days a week. I wondered how people seemed to do it so effortlessly. Do they actually like working? It wasn’t that I was particularly lazy or anything, it was just that I was expected to play a part of society that I didn’t necessarily agree with. I was in a corporate environment, with people spewing business talk all day and being around that seemed to deeply affect my soul. I always felt like I was playing some huge part in a play. Look at me, I totally agree with you about status reports and marketing and customers and products. Yeah, I do…really.

Going from being a full-time college student to a full-time professional was tough. My loss of freedom during the weekdays really got to me in a big way. I’d look at all the students in Boston and long to be a part of their world again. I toyed with the idea of graduate school and taking outlandish international jobs so I wouldn’t have to type or take dictation or pretend to care about meetings and business proposals anymore. Wouldn’t it be great if I went to art school? Or, how about the Peace Corps? I dwelled on all of these questions and inwardly, I started to fall apart. I had no idea how I would be able to handle real life. I did know, however, that I needed to work and I needed to make money. Eventually, I thought, I’d figure out how to make money and not work. I still think that will happen sometimes.

As the year dragged on, it was apparent that BTE was going to be acquired by another company. I didn’t know much about how these things progressed, so I didn’t really care. I did start to care, though when there was talk about changing the office décor and putting all the Admins in the front of the office so we could greet clients. This really set me off. If I was moved to the front of the office, that would mean no more cubicle walls, no more privacy – people would see me constantly and I wouldn’t be able to sneak out. Worse yet, I’d have to talk to people and be cheery and accountable and answer phones.

I was complacent about finding a new job up until this point, but now it was urgent that I find something else. Luckily for me, it was the ‘dot-com boom’ and jobs were plentiful. Even higher paying technology jobs were open to people who didn’t have the background (me.) So, I hit up Monster.com during work hours, applied to one Marketing Coordinator job at a software company, got called into an interview and got the job all within a week. That’s how this French/Anthropology major ended up in technology..where I still am today. I’ll write part two soon.