San Francisco and Why I'm Still Alive

The long weekend afforded me the opportunity to take Lindsey to see what is most definitely my favorite spot in the entire world - San Francisco. I love the atmosphere, the people, even the uncharacteristic and unpredictable weather. Sharing the experience of running from a half-crazed homeless vagrant is something that I will remember forever. It was a great weekend that ended far too quickly.

I am now back in my cell wasting away the hours pretending like I do real 'work.' I realized today that even the people I work for don't expect much from me other than a few hours of Excel data entry and some chauffeuring. This job could probably kill me and it is likely doing permanent and detrimental damage to my mind. I do, however, now have a drive... a motivator that I did not have before. I must get out of the Midwest and move to the west coast, to California. I will do everything in my power to find a job or school out there that will take me after graduation. I miss it already and it's the only thing really keeping me going. Otherwise all I have to look at is my large credit card debt and this sucktacular job that drains me day in and day out.

Out west there is the calling of $2 Fat Tire drafts.... Mmmmmmm....

Why I'm dying little by little each and every day...

Every morning I somehow manage to wake myself up enough to drive an hour and fifteen minutes to Indianapolis where I then sit for 9 hours pretending like I do "real" work. After an internal battle with myself every day about what is an appropriate time to leave (I think taking off as early as 2pm should still count as a full day), I then drive another hour and fifteen minutes home. Once home I generally sit and veg for a couple of hours before I pass out and sleep until I have to go through the whole routine again.

I could probably handle this schedule if it weren't for a couple issues. It is most difficult to cope with the fact that I am doing absolutely nothing with my life during the 9 hours that I'm at work. Even if I was doing something for this company I still wouldn't be doing anything meaningful. We make gas stations - who can find a passion for this? I'm no civil, but I can at least understand a certain attraction to designing a bridge or a skyscraper. But a fucking gas station? The hardest decision is where to put the condoms... the bathroom or out by the potato chips? What's even worse is that there is a standard for this stuff anyway. My group doesn't even do design work, they pass it off to other people (and they get paid less). No, instead we project manage - make sure all the work gets done on time. FUCKING BLOW ME. How is this supposed to keep me awake when all I got was 5 hours of sleep and had to drive over an hour to get here and you make me sit on my ass in my cubicle and NOT play freecell or use photoshop.

Along the same lines is how I feel so different than the people I work with. Somehow they manage to come in every day and treat their job like its the most important task on the planet. Somehow if they don't get gas station XXX done then the pope will send all the good people to hell and Bush will find a way to get a third term in office. How are these people in such good spirits and what's wrong with me that I have no appreciation for this job?

To answer this question I have started to re-read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. If anyone else has read this then you know why. This book makes you feel like there is something important and special to be done that no one else can understand unless they realize how feeble and simple they are. I want to design and to create, to dream, but not about gas stations and not about pipelines. I can't sell out to some company for a paycheck if I'm not doing something amazing that I can be proud of. A heap of shit that leaks pollutants into the ground while making fat rich men fatter and richer is not my idea of a dream. I really want to quit...

And I swear to god that if they take my stapler I'm going to burn the fucking building down.

Getting in Trouble - Part II

Not only did I have to go throw the IT lady chastising me for installing "illegal" software, but I also got called into my boss's office this morning. I thought something weird was up when I got a phone call from him since his office is literally 10 feet away and the effort it takes to get up and come over here is less than the amount required to yell "whip em out" at the local high school cheerleading squad.

I walk into his office, sit down, and he closes the door. Now I'm thinking I'm either going to get all Michael Jackson'd by this guy or he's gonna yell at me for messing with the computers. Thankfully, he didn't pull out a rhinestone glove and some lube, but he did tell me that it was a huge error in judgment on my part for trying to install illegal software on my computer. While I did install Freecell, I never actually played it, but he made this the center of his attack. He asked if I had enough work to do (I have plenty). Then he told me that if I were a full time employee I would likely be getting fired, but since I'm just a co-op it can be overlooked. I don't understand this logic, but I won't argue with it. I need the money and can't really afford to get ousted, even if I don't like the job all that much.

Regardless, I'm now sitting at my non-photoshop, non-freecell computer, but I did get my earlier problem fixed so that I can look at CAD drawings. That's almost as good, right? RIGHT?

Getting in Trouble

A couple of weeks ago I used some tricks (thank you, Mr. McNasty) that let me get administrative access to my work computer. This let me install cool stuff like iPod Rip, Adobe Photoshop, AIM, FreeCell, and a few other programs that I wouldn't normally get to use here at work. Today I went to install this program that I actually do need for work, but it's only available online through our online product catalog (it's retarded). For whatever reason it refused to work with my computer so I called our help desk to get the problem resolved.

Now, my computer has been a little janky ever since it first got set up. I haven't had access to network drives, certain parts of my group's file systems, and none of my settings ever get saved. Generally, this doesn't matter, but it's a little annoying. But most importantly, it's been doing this for 3 weeks now and nothing that I had done to my computer affected its retarded behavior.

Well, the IT lady that came to fix my computer today noticed that I had a few programs installed that she hadn't personally authorized. So she turns around and looks at me. She goes "how'd these get installed?" And I smiled because I knew I was caught. But then I told her how cool I was for wiping out the administrative passwords and getting in so I could set a background picture and listen to music instead of being forced to do nothing all day. She tells me how that's against "company policy" and that she has to re-image my computer because I messed it all up.

I hope she chokes on her own menstrual blood.

Books That Suck

As some of you may know, I rather enjoy reading... for pleasure. No, not just browsing through the latest Playboy or looking at Monhaut's copy of Stuff, but actually sitting down and flipping through the pages of some interesting story about absurd characters and crazy plots. Usually this is a rewarding experience - I get to expand my mind and look smart because I can read. Lately, though, I have been picking probably the worst books in existence to read. Last winter I read Sahara by Clive Custler. The book SUCKED, but it was turned into a movie (which didn't suck). The book lacked any amount of character development and had the most insane and jumbled plot I've ever seen. BUT, it made for an excellent movie, which is what I'm guessing the author had in mind since the book had no other redeeming qualities.

Similarly, the book I'm reading now, Digital Fortress by Dan Brown (author of The DaVinci Code), SUCKS. The character development didn't happen, the story is extremely movie-esque, and I don't even care what happens because it's been set up so poorly. This would be a good one for TBS to pick up as a "network original feature." Little else could really come from it, and I assume that The DaVinci Code is probably just as bad. What makes this worse is that people tout these books like they're genius when really they just blow. Maybe I should go read the Bible... at least then I'd get to think about killing and rape and multiple wives and stuff.

Darth Vader Has Messy Poop

To stay awake on the morning commute I will usually either bring a bottle of cold, refreshing water, or stop off at Starbucks for some wake-me-up latte. If I go the water route, I'll hit up the super sexy mocha machine in our breakroom when I get to work. After I down all these fluids my super small bladder gets full and makes me run to the bathroom. This allows for a total of about half an hour that I don't actually have to be sitting in my office working. This morning was no exception, except that usually the bathroom is void of people when I go in there.

An empty bathroom is a pleasant thing. You can start unzipping as soon as you walk in the door, fart, or adjust your package in the mirror without upsetting anyone else. You can pick your nose, stand 5 feet back from the urinal and sing... and no one will make fun of you later to other co-workers. BUT when you walk into the bathroom and either see someone at the sink, standing in front of the urinal, or behind a locked stall door you know that you have to be quiet as a mouse so as to not disturb the others' bathroom experience.

This morning when I walked into the bathroom I was faced with the very ominous locked stall door. The way the bathroom is set up I had no idea who was behind said door, but I had a pretty good idea from his mannerisms. While I was standing waiting to unleash into the urinal, I noticed that the guy behind door #1 was breathing rather heavily. No, not quite... he was heaving as if his lungs couldn't suck up enough oxygen to sustain life. He was breathing for at least 2 other people while they suffocated from his poop stench. It sounded like Darth Vader was fighting the worst constipation pains ever suffered by anything human, robot, or jedi. But then, after all the straining, I heard the sweet relief that could only be felt by someone that had just unloaded 10 lbs of excess weight. It sounded, however, like he was sneezing all 10 lbs out of his ass. It went "pfffzzzzz plop plop... pfffszzzzzzz!" I started to giggle, which apparently threw him off because the heavy Darth Vader breathing started again. I could tell his whole game was thrown off just by me being in there. He wanted to poop loud and unrestrained, but the aforementioned 'noise' rules applied. His intergalactic shit was louder than hell and could probably be heard down the hallway.

So I stayed in there for an extra couple of minutes, adjusting my pants and shirt, smoothing out my hair, and playing with myself a little. The smell finally hit me and made me leave, but at least I did so with the satisfaction that I ruined someone's morning. I should have left the water running so he wouldn't have known if I'd left or not.

More Anal Adventures

Yesterday we got a pool for the Taj. A gigantic, blue kiddy pool, complete with 5 foot ladder and filter pump. This thing is big enough to bathe an elephant and will likely be used for such a purpose sometime this summer. I have never seen a more elegant piece in any Hautian backyard and I think we are better people because of it.

We bought the pool off of one of my roommate's bosses for $30 (retails for $160 at sam's club... deal of the century). When I got home yesterday it felt like Christmas morning... for like a poor black kid... like I was finally going to get presents from my crackwhore mom and my drunkass dad (who doesn't even think I'm his) is going to pay attention to me for once this year. I was so excited that I literally started jumping up and down trying to get everyone going so we could put the thing together. Of course we had to do this while drinking beer.

Alcohol is a funny thing. It usually empowers you and makes your mind work overtime trying to come up with creative ways to solve difficult problems. For us, the problem was filling our super huge pool with water. We have a low-flow hose that's good enough to wash out our puke bucket, but little else. Our neighbors, however, have a nice, new hose with great water pressure. A quick hop over the fence and a dart around the house to unhook the hose and she was cranking out a constant stream into our love lagoon... er, pool. It was still obviously going to take HOURS before it was full, so we left the pool to play with our friends at the bars.

After getting pissed at one bar for not having free food we found ourselves at another. These four girls walked in, apparently celebrating someone's birthday or something... who cares, really. Well, I turned around to them and waited for eye contact. As soon as I had it I blurted out "girls, we have a poooool!" They looked at me, got scared, and sat on the opposite side of the bar. So I did what any obviously shot down guy would do, I bought them Jager shots and told them that if they did them off of each other's stomachs I would let them clean up in my pool. Apparently just having a pool isn't enough to get girls to do something. I either should have told them it was a hot tub or slapped them in the face with my penis.

I was drunk, they were uninterested, we left. Once home I remembered that I had to return the hose to the neighbor's so they wouldn't find out that we had stolen roughly 8,000 gallons of water from them. I had been jumping over the fence between our houses earlier and assumed that I could do it again. I didn't remember from Health class that drinking severely impairs cognitive, motor, and reasoning skills. It also makes you a clumsy dumbfuck. So while trying to balance on the incredibly unstable chainlink fence, my foot slipped and I went falling ass first onto the painful shards of twisted and rusty metal shooting straight up. I fell, tumbled, and landed in the neighbor's yard. I lied there assuming that I was lying in a pool of blood from my ass and my thigh. I would have just gone to sleep right there (it was about that time in the drunk cycle), but the encouraging shouts from my roommates got me up and on to replacing the hose.

Fast forward to this morning and I remember that I have to put the hose back (I can't remember ANYTHING about what I do when I'm drunk so I completely forgot that I had already taken care of it last night). So I get up and go to the bathroom for my morning poop. I sit down and 'OW' eeps out of my mouth. I think it's an ass pimple but upon inspection its really a 2 foot welt going from the middle of my right ass cheek to my thigh. Looking in the mirror all I can see is red and scratch marks. JESUS. I go back to my room and see that theres a big spot on my sheets where I was bleeding all night. JESUS. Then I remember what happened and that I lost one of my sandals. So instead of going back out to put the hose away I had to go sandal hunting. It was under someone's car, thank you flashlight and Scruff McGruff investigating techniques.

Now I'm sitting here in my office leaning to one side of the chair because it hurts to sit on the welt. I told the girl at Starbucks this morning my story and I think she was shocked that I was saying 'ass' in her store. I guess it's not the Starbucks way.

Sex and The Office

Just curious... but has anyone done it? I'm gonna need to see some hands, people.

Atomic Poop

So I'm really not sure what's wrong with me, but I know it's something bad. No, it's worse than bad, it's goddamn awful. There is little doubt in my mind that I have contracted some mutated strain of killer Central African mosquito virus. It's like West Nile for my colon. The symptoms, however, are far worse than any ordinary fever.

I first noticed something was wrong last night when my ass kept itching. Not my ass cheeks, mind you, rather the magnificent brown hole, itself, kept grabbing my attention. It was like something was trying to tickle me from the inside out... of my ass. Being a man, I chose to ignore the urge to rub my sore little asshole... no, no amount of pain or torture could get me to peruse down in those nether-regions. That's what I thought, anyway.

This morning I woke up with the same sort of itching... just dying for me to scratch... to stink up my hand. Once again, my manhood came through for me and I chose to go running instead. What I didn't know was the trap that my body had laid out for me in the middle of my run. I was going along, pissed off that it was 5am and I was the only person awake that wasn't drunk and running from the cops. I was running past one of the many abandoned houses in Terre Haute when what can only be described as pure horror descended upon my body. My entire stomach and intestines seemed to twist inside of me. With each little jog of my body I was literally playing with my own fate. At any moment the up-and-down motion of my run could set me off to explode straight into my pants. There was a quivering and I immediately stopped.

I stood there, roughly half a mile from home, wondering what to do. I had two options - run like hell, tempting fate the entire way, or find a conveniently placed bush with which I could expunge the black sludge that was trying to trickle out of my ass. Fearing that it would land on the back of my legs and smell for the rest of the day, I chose plan A. I darted off in the direction of home... up a hill, down the street... over the broken pieces of sidewalk and past the friendly hobo that lives at the church's 24 hour prayer door where he hands out hand jobs like pieces of candy on Halloween. No time for that today, Mr. Hobo... I've got an emergency. I actually contemplated defecating in his house, but realized that I didn't need a dirty homeless guy and God pissed at me.

I could see the house getting closer, only half a block away. I darted over a semi-shrub that lives in the sidewalk and ran through a crater next to the abandoned house. Around the fence and up our porch steps. Here I had to slow down and use every bit of energy to keep those puppies clenched. How would I explain to our neighbors upstairs the large and foul smelling pile of crap that appeared next to their door? Actually, it would be pretty funny to poop in their mailbox and watch them reach down to get the mail and instead come back with a handful of Ryan poop... but I digress...

So I did the "I gotta shit" waddle into the house, half breathless and mostly sweaty. I waddled my ass straight to the toilet with just enough time to get my pants down half way... (I'm pretty sure that had they not been draw string basketball shorts I would have pooped myself. And while I am not a novice in the pooping oneself area, it still would have sucked.... balls)

What exploded from my ass was a greater victory than the US over the Japanese at Hiroshima. It was for me a more glorious event and probably would have killed just as many Asians. I could feel my muscles relaxing and my breathing slowed. Then I had to deal with the ungodly awful smell, but anything was better than pooping on myself with runny, black poo goo.

comments? anyone?