Monkey Thoughts

It was a dark and stormy night -- scratch that.. It was rainy, kinda gray, and in the middle of rush hour traffic. As I sat through "stop and go and stop some more" traffic, something caught my eye. To my right was a Ford Explorer with a very distinctive personalized licensed plate. When I see a personalized plate, there's usually a few things that come to mind. For example, "Yeah, dream on buddy", "WTF is that supposed to mean?", "They can have THAT, but I was denied Monkee?", and the rare "So that's the person out of all the people in the state that scored that one...nice."
What happened this particular evening was more in the vein of the last two. You see, the license plate simply read "GOD".
I was speechless for a few seconds, then gave it a second look. Yup, that was "GOD". I'm not sure how someone was allowed to nab God, but good for them. That's when the jokes began to pop in my head.

"Oh. OH. So God drives a gas-guzzling SUV, hmm? "Always pictured him as more of a hybrid type-deity."

And then, "If that's God, who would HIS co-pilot be?"
That's when it happened.
The car in front of me was turning right onto a street, when his car just stopped moving. That meant that I had to make my car stop moving right away. My foot stomped on the gas, kicking in the ABS. But my car wasn't stopping, but rather skidding. A hybrid of words and yelps can out of my mouth as I tried to wrangle my car back into control. It finally stopped, but I couldn't tell if I had hit the other vehicle or not. As I pulled off the road behind the other driver, I realized that all of this happened right in front of a police officer. I was cursing my luck under my breath as I hopped out to check with the other driver. To my absolute shock, both cars were unscathed. Apparently my vehicle had merely grazed off the side of his car, leaving no damage. This was a warning shot, no doubt.
As we hopped back into our respective cars and drove away, me passing the officer who was still waiting to turn at the light, I had one fleeting thought:

"Okay, maybe it was wrong, but you still have to admit it was funny."

Well, don't we all?

The other day I experienced an event that dug up one of my most vivid memories of childhood. It wasn't an extremely happy memory, nor was it one of immense sadness. It was one of my early life lessons encompassing the following: there are plenty of letdowns in life, and most likely a few bastards at the root of those letdowns.
The setting was a Long John Silver's, close to Manmouth Caves, I believe. Eating out as a kid always seemed like an event. For starters, it didn't seem to happen a whole hell of a lot. Sure, there was the occasional milkshake, but most of my experience in a drive-thru as a child involved me in the backseat with my siblings while my parents ordered a cup of coffee, wondering why the hell we never got anything. When we did eat out, it was always at the actual restaurant, a custom that I have a difficult time subjecting myself to these days. (It's a germ thing.) And forget about whatever we wanted off the menu, it was whatever was cheapest, on sale, or what my parents had a coupon for. For the longest time, I thought Arby's Beef n' Cheddars were the absolute top of the line in fast food cause we were only allowed to get them when they were on sale.
So back to Long John Silver's. There I was, probably around 5 or 6 yrs old, waiting to get my kid's meal. I remember the lady at the counter telling me there were going to be "all kinds of good stuff" in my kid's meal. I couldn't wait. After we left the restaurant, meals in tow, there was a moment either in the car or back at the hotel where I opened the kid's meal box to discover what kinds of awesomeness would be instead.

The box was empty.

Not a cheap toy. Not a goddamn hushpuppie.

Completely empty. Devoid of "good stuff".

I was crushed. Someone could have told me right there and then that Santa Claus was made up too, and I would have just thought "That sounds about right." It wouldn't have been as bad if the kid's meal wasn't so built up beforehand. But this made it seem deliberate in my eyes, like I was intentionally set up to be disappointed. It was literally years before I could go to another Long John Silver's. (I'm not kidding, I hold grudges.)

Flash forward to last week. I'm at my eye doc's, getting some new glasses. The tech asked me if I wanted the transitional lenses this time. I decided, sure, why not? Then the tech says "They've really improved the transition lenses. They are so much better than before. You're going to love them."

In retrospect, that should have been my first sign.

I picked up the new glasses today and put them on once I got back to work. Upon leaving for the day, I stepped outside into the bright sun. And waited. And waited. And realized, it was pretty freaking bright still. I took off the glasses and looked at the lenses. The supposedly awesome and ridiculously expensive transition lenses failed to actually transition. This crashed my poor code monkey mind as I realized this wasn't something I could de-bug. And then it dawned on me that I had once again been set up to expect awesome only to get a steaming pile of nothing. The only difference is, I actually like my eye doc so I won't be holding a grudge this time around. My doc's office staff will be greeted in the morning with a lovely rambling message and will hopefully call me to straighten this out. I think I may demand some hushpuppies too, just for therapeutic reasons.

Subject: Thievery
Message:
Hi [name removed]!
[Name removed] tells me that I should let you know of some shenanigans that went down. I had 2 microwave meals in the freezer last week. They were there Friday before I went home sick. Today, they seemed to have vanished. I am understandably annoyed. As in, I can't promise I won't pelt frozen apple blossoms* at the offender. In fact, I'm drafting plans for a trebuchet right now.
I've attached an image to further detail my feelings.
Thank you.

Attached image:

*A pastry-type food, often stored in the breakroom freezer.

I came across someone today after a complicated stream of consciousness. Essentially, I was thinking about writing and thinking about how the issue with writing for me is the fear of coming off like a pompous ass. A specific pompous ass. This thought prompted me to google said pompous ass; unfortunately, I could only remember the name of his shitty entry in an internet film contest from almost ten years ago. Maybe ten..not sure. Regardless, with some creative googling I found the ass, who I'll call Baldy Spanks (because I lack wit, but NOT immaturity). Turns out Baldy Spanks had a plethora of blogs attributed to him, which didn't surprise me the bit. Then I thought "Surely a megalomaniac such as Baldy Spanks has a Twitter account." You see, if goddamn Oprah has an account, I'm pretty sure everyone and their mom does. And if my mom gets one, I'm leaving. No offense to my mom, but I have principles to stand by. (These don't require any sort of protest on my part, so they don't fall under the "needs passion" guidelines.)
I find Baldy Spanks on Twitter--no surprise there-- and browse over his posts. I find the last few posts going on about how he's gonna do some "crazy ranting". OMG! Epic! Crazy ranting! LOOKOUT! The build-up was too much...I HAD to click on the link of said crazy ranting. I skimmed the intro post to see it was described as more *gasp* ranting! And it promised to be oh-so random. Oh, and it was "rated" NC-17. Now to me, NC-17 holds the promise that I'm going to get to see a lot of t & a and perhaps a couple of dicks sans penetration. Was that over the line? Shoot. let me do that again... Now to me, NC-17 holds the promise that I'm going to get to see a lot of toast & apricots and perhaps a couple of [censored] sans [censored]. I'm not entirely sure how this would happen on an audio podcast, but I remained ready to be wowed. Show me your toast!
I'm not entirely sure if I need to state that listening to Baldy Spanks drained a little bit of my soul out with it, but it did. And since when did throwing out the word "fuck" cause something to be NC-17 anyway, cause that's all it was. I listened to him bemoan modern culture and trash new media and proclaim that certain folks be arrested for essentially insulting his pseudo-indie wanna-be edgy tastes in media. It was kinda like listening to someone desperately trying to be the Everyman's Quentin Tarantino and failing miserably. Sad thing was, it wasn't that his ideals were so out there, but his delivery was so goddamn dramatic in a "Aaah! Fuck the world! I'm the hip! You suck! Eat it!" sort of way, followed up with a self-promotional type "Look at me! I'm the hip! I told everyone they suck and they can eat it! I'm raw! And edgy!" manner.
I decided to check out what Baldy Spanks recommended in terms as cutting edge stuff, and it was...well...there are no words really...but I saw a cartoonish wang, so it must be cutting edge right? (/sarcasm)
In other words...Baldy Spanks has not really changed much in the past whatever years. I find that sort of consistency rather comforting, in an odd sort of way.

I will leave you with this parting thought..one uttered perhaps every time Baldy Spanks was trying to convey his true emotion: "It's like....fuuuck."

(I know, I am indeedy a pompous ass. Ah well.)

I have felt for some time an overwhelming need to censor myself. I'm not sure why..maybe I'm trying to be tactful or keep from making waves.
But I have to think that the people who really know me outside of a computer screen would know when I was making the jokes, so why the hell would I worry?
That being said, I have wanted to make this crack for a while...and if you don't understand, you probably aren't meant to.
Ahem...I'm going to learn how to shop from Whole Foods, but I need sponsorship and donations to do so.

Okay, now I feel better.

Over the course of the last several years, I've come to a very abrupt conclusion about my life: I lack passion. I'm not talking about passion in the "do the sexy times" sense, but rather that sort of passion that gets one all riled up to do something. In my younger years, I would get overly-passionate over just about any cause and I would not stand down from my opinion. I remember my teen years, when I was beyond irked over the use of a Native American mascot for my high school's sports teams. I'd get pissed off and grumble and refuse to participate in pep rallies and voice my feelings to anyone nearby. It's not that I feel using Native Americans as sports mascots is a great thing these days, I just don't feel so worked up about it to protest. As I got older, I was ready to protest any sort of injustice. Beyond that, my temper got a little more fiery and it was pretty likely that I would come to blows if necessary to defend my beliefs. (Okay, even beyond beliefs..if I were pissed off enough.) These days...don't really see the point. I'll take verbal jabs when necessary, but that fieriness is all but gone. Part of it is that I just don't have that attention span to really care that much. But I think another part is just good ol' fashioned jadedness.
Growing up in the 90s, it seemed like we were part of a generation that was really going to make changes. CLEARLY the older people just didn't "get it". We blamed them for the ills of the planet and were determined to fix things. And yet, almost 20 years later, shit is still broken, metaphorically speaking. Major companies are just now bragging about going green when the rest of use were pushing Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. AIDS is still being spread around and teens still haven't figured out the safe sex mantra. Corporations and people alike seem greedier than ever while the structures of the economy seem to be crumbling. These are people MY age who bought cars and houses they couldn't afford and lusted for more material items. What the fuck happened? How did we go from trying to change things to perpetuating the problem? We've become self-centered douchebags and are helping feed the egos of countless more generations of self-centered douchebags.
True, I am probably glossing over the larger issues at the center of this mess we now find ourselves in. I suppose my disillusionment is something of a beast at this point. I don't mean to imply that I don't feel strongly about certain issues; I just lack the desire to really pursue these issues beyond holding that belief. What would the point be?

I had started this year with the best intentions. Although I'm not one for New Year's resolutions that are rarely kept, I wanted to give myself a list of goals for 2009. Not stuff like "I will not eat cake", but something with more meaning; something that would ultimately work towards fulfillment on a higher level than my pants size. (There's a joke in there, I'm almost positive of that.) So that was my first approach to the New Year- a list! I maybe spent a whole 2 minutes pondering over said list until I inevitably got distracted by some shiny object and all motivation I had was swept away in the mental hurricane in my head. Sure, I've had those random two seconds here and there where I think I should really get around to this damn list already, but it has yet to happen. So now, in April, I am forced to rethink my strategy and find some new approach. I've decided to instead make a list of the things I do manage to accomplish this year, so on December 31 when I'm pondering where the year went, I can look back and say "hey, I kicked some ass this year!". I'm almost positive that this method will allow me to end the year on a high note, regardless of the current economic situation and whatever else happens. Of course, this new plan is not without its own cons: I still need to actually write stuff down in order to keep track. In essence, I'm setting myself up for failure.
Well, I thought it sounded like a good plan at least.

Enjoy this short.

I'll be completely honest here; I'm not entirely sure how normal people manage. By normal, I mean people who maintain sort-of extracurricular activities beyond work while balancing a family life. I keep my schedule to a bare minimum and I barely find the time to handle that load. Get up, get the kids up, get ready for work, take the kid to daycare, get to work, get home, dinner, clean up, get the kid to bed, time for the other kid to go to bed, exercise, get to bed. And yet there are people that toss in book clubs and parties and girls night out and sports clubs and scout meetings...how the hell do they do it? Seriously? I have two kids' soccer teams looming out in the horizon and already my brain is spinning trying to think how I will manage to keep things toppling down on me. I will admit that time management has never, ever been my strong point - after all, it's been HOW LONG since I last posted? But I just don't see where to squeeze out more time, except by perhaps eliminating some hours of sleep. Clearly I missed some sort of super-multitasking 101 course or something.
I guess I should just suck it up and stop whining. I'm just awed that people are capable of running like machines and DON'T go completely insane. I can't help it...I like having scheduled xbox time to kill off a few hundred zombies. It's training, you see. Training for the inevitable. Oh yes...