personal.

Mission Accomplished

Earlimart Get!

Review forthcoming.

Thank you, Record Time!

Birthday Girl

Happy First Birthday, Natalie!

Sunday Funnies

This may take a moment to load, but just simma.

Don't quit your day job

I am pretty sure that one of the strange, foreign cleaning ladies at my work is a prostitute.  I'm like 99% positive.

That may seem a little harsh, but consider the evidence:
Exhibit A:  I went down to the mail room last week and overheard her having a conversation with a coworker of mine.  This particular coworker is willing to have sex with just about any and everyone, and it's honestly a wonder he has kept his job when he has openly asked female friends of mine "When are we gonna do it?"  I don't know exactly what the conversation was about, but I did hear the following statement escape from the cleaning lady's mouth in her untraceable foreign accent - "Ohhh, honey, you couldn't handle me.  I'm too expensive."

OK, said I.  Perhaps she just means she is high maintenance, but it's a funny quote nonetheless.  When I told a friend about it, this was the response, "Oh, you mean our Bulgarian hookers/strippers?"  Does everybody know about this and I don't know about this?  Nah, couldn't be.  It must have been a sarcastic joke.

Exhibit B:  She wears the lowest cut shirts anyone can possibly wear without their boobs falling out.  It's like she wants to put them on display for everyone to sample.

Exhibit C:  Today she went about her job wearing a pair of Pink brand sweatpants.  I'm sure you're familiar with these pants that say "PINK" across the ass in big letters.  The innuendo is about as transparent as saran wrap.  This particular pair actually said "Lifeguard Love Pink", which I'm not sure is proper English, but perhaps they were knockoffs from whatever country she is from.  Regardless, this is probably not something a woman that has to be at least in her mid-40s should be wearing, and especially not at her respectable job. 

If she really is a prostitute, she can wear Pink, Juicy, or Apple Bottom pants all she wants.  In an office, not really that appropriate.  There is a difference between dressing sexy and dressing like you're for sale.  Perhaps she works at the establishment below on nights.

And the Grammy goes to...

"Tell me how my ass taste"? Really? I'm not sure that sounds as cool as Shaq thinks it does.

Also, rhyming a word with the same word is not actually a rhyme.  "Think about that.  It ain't about that."  That's not a rhyme - that's repeating the same words.  It's pretty obvious why his rap career failed.

letting go

There they sat, looking out the windshield at the closest thing to a view as can be found in a busy city.  The trees provided shade from the cascading sunlight as they watched birds splash in the stone birdbath on the lawn at the edge of the quiet parking lot.  It was their own special place, seemingly miles away from the streets occupied by gas guzzling cars and their angry drivers speeding over bumpy, eroding roads.  It was a place where they'd held numerous conversations; talks about friendship, marriage, religion, politics, sex, and countless jokes that caused them to gasp for air.  It was beautiful.

He knew this would be the last time they ate their lunch together in this spot.  In less than a week, she would be gone.  He thought of all the time he'd spent judging her, assuming that she, pretty as she was, would never stoop to speaking to someone as uncool as himself.  She's the cheerleader type, he thought.  She would never be friends with me.

Yet there they sat in their secret spot, enjoying each other's company and a simple lunch of chicken nuggets from Wendy's.  It no longer worried him that she was moving away.  It only bothered him that they had wasted so much time - two years without so much as a word. 

He thought back to the first time they spoke.  They bonded over music, as was common for him.  He quickly realized he had been wrong all along and did everything he could to make amends.  They began trading e-mails back and forth every day, learning everything there was to know about each other.  They discussed everything that couldn't be discussed over company computers on their lunch hours.

He thought of how much he would miss these moments, sitting here in her SUV, talking and laughing.  He thought of how much he would miss coming into an e-mail from her every morning, without fail, with a different funny name for him.  Spud, Tater Tot, Spidey, and of course, Shrek, the faithful compatriot to her self-proclaimed Donkey - the name that stuck.  As cheesy as it sounds, nothing could be more accurate.  At the beginning of the movie Shrek doesn't like Donkey, but by the end they're the best of friends.

He thought of the one and only time they spent time together outside of work and how he wished he hadn't so foolishly judged her now that they would never have another opportunity to do so. 

For all the things he thought of that might have made him sad, he took solace in the fact that though it might be years until they saw each other again, if ever, she would only be a phone call away.  He had given up worrying about the friendship they'd built in the short span of eight months dissolving, and he was done regretting what he had or hadn't done.  He was just glad that they were friends and it was time to focus on the future - the next stage of their friendship.

Less than a week later, she left for St. Louis with her loving husband, but he still knows she's only a phone call away whenever he wants to share good news, needs someone to turn to, has a funny story to tell, or just wants to chat about nothing in particular.  Sure, he could spend his time regretting the fact that they could have become friends sooner, but he'd rather focus on the fact that they're friends now and there is no distance between them that can or ever will change that.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

There is a man at my work who smells like Little Caesar's crazy bread.  He doesn't have any at his desk or anything (it's 9 AM - who could eat that stuff that early, not to mention the fact that the stores aren't open yet), he just smells like it.  He sits right by one of our office printers too, so every time I pick something up I have to smell him... which is not something anyone should ever have to say.  Gross.

Ironically, he sits right by a larger employee who has proclaimed that crazy bread is his favorite food.  I wonder if he stares at him hungrily and envisions a large packet of greasy, buttery bread like in cartoons where hungry characters see others as roast turkeys.

I fully expect to come in one day to find the larger employee contentedly picking his teeth with the bones of his cannibalized (former) coworker.  I'd like to say I'll miss Crazy Bread Man, but truth be told he works in another program on the opposite side of the room and I don't even know his name.  I only know that he smells of crazy bread and is doomed to an awful fate as a result.

Let's put a smile on that face

And here we...
GO!

Set my mind in motion

I have made it abundantly clear that I would love to be a writer.  The very nature of many of my blog posts, which are told as stories (sometimes even from different perspectives), should make it obvious.  The fact that I keep three separate blogs (though one hasn't been updated in over two months) for different types of writing is another telling fact.

Of course, I don't want to write music and movie reviews for a living.  They're fun to be sure, but not at all where I feel free to be as creative as I'm capable of.  I'm of the opinion that when you begin to do something you love as a job instead of as a hobby, it loses much of its luster.  While the same could be said of fictional writings, I feel the creative freedom afforded to someone writing a story they've come up with, as opposed to merely reviewing an already-existing work, helps keep it fresh.  Writers are free to branch out and explore new territory with each new book or short story.

Over the years I've started literally hundreds of projects, but have never finished any of them.  Some have never gotten past the outline form, and some have reached a small percentage of completion, but none of them have ever been finished.  I'll usually get burned out, or I'll get too many new ideas that rob me of my motivation to work on an older one. 

Recently while writing, I had a thought: Why not look for a partner?  It just so happens that I have a friend who is an excellent writer herself, though she doesn't like to give herself enough credit for it, and during the process of writing this particular story, she became the basis for one of the book's main characters.  As a result, I extended the invitation to her to assist me in finishing this project.  After all, who better to help flesh out a character than the person it's based on in the first place?  Not only that, but it would help prevent me from getting burned out and, indeed, keep me motivated and inspired to see what she may add to the story - allowing me to feed off her ideas.

It remains to be seen whether or not she will take me up on the offer as her schedule is quite busy, but in the meantime I figured I'd give everyone reading a little taste of what that story will be.  Here are a few of the opening paragraphs of my newest project, Rocket.

The Misadventures of Chris: Episode 1 - "The Preview Window"

If my friend Chris is great at one thing, it's telling stories.  Over the course of nine years, I've heard and been privy to some incredibly funny moments.  Unfortunately, Chris' memory is worse than a goldfish's and I am often the one to remind him of things that he experienced in his own life, which in turn makes it amusing for him all over again.  I'm not kidding either.  I probably remember more of his life than he does.  I have no doubt that I'll have to remind him exactly how his wedding went down in a few years.

With his consent, I will periodically be sharing some of these great moments with you for your own amusement, beginning with one of my favorites from the Best Buy era - "The Preview Window."

My first three years at Best Buy were spent in the warehouse, unloading numerous forty foot trailers filled with the products that you, the consumer, purchase.  I'm sure none of you ever think about how the product gets into the store, which is precisely why we warehouse folk were looked upon as grunts even within the store.  We're the ones who busted our asses until two in the morning, unloading trucks in Michigan heat and humidity in a warehouse with no air conditioning so that you can buy your quality electronic goods.

Unfortunately, every so often things happened on these trucks.  Things that might have included, but certainly weren't limited to, boxes collapsing, sending a ceiling-high stack of merchandise toppling on top of a hapless employee, or someone's foot being run over with a pallet jack loaded with furniture (that would be MY foot, for the record).  When things like this happened, the natural response was usually to punch and/or kick the nearest box until the pain went away.  The next time you go to Best Buy to purchase an expensive product, you might want to keep this in mind.  Warehouse folk are an angry, underappreciated bunch and we didn't treat the product with care.  We were just concerned about getting the hell out of there because those of us who weren't lazy salesfloor employees had to be back at work the next morning at 6 AM.

At the time Chris worked as the supervisor in the video department.  It was his job to lie about... er... "sell" TVs, DVD players, tell you about non-existent benefits of the Performance Service Plan ("Yeah, if you throw the TV down a flight of stairs into a pool of water, we'll replace it for you,"), and explain to gullible customers why the $90 cables were way better than the $10 ones. 

One afternoon, Chris was helping an older woman purchase a television set.  After bringing it down from the racks high above, Chris noticed a gaping hole in the front of the box - no doubt a result of an angry, semi-injured employee during the unloading of a truck.  Quick-thinker he is, Chris whipped out his trusty box-cutter and did his best to make the hole look symmetrical, then brought it to the patiently waiting customer.

When the lady looked at the box, she exclaimed "Oh, there's a hole in the box!"  Knowing we didn't have another of that same model in stock and unwilling to lose his sale, Chris quickly countered with, "No, that's not a hole - that's a preview window.  That's a new feature so you can look inside the box and make sure that everything is OK."  He actually invited the woman to look inside the box, which she did.  Pleased that there was nothing wrong (which, in all fairness, there wasn't), she still purchased the TV and the service plan.

That is an example of Chrisery at its finest.  For the uninitiated, "Chrisery" is the term I've coined for his underhanded exploits... and there will be much more Chrisery to come.  For now I leave you to mull over the Preview Window and the fact that this is one of my best friends, ladies and gentlemen.