The Instant Rice Show

i had a wonderful friday night. i got to see a friend i haven’t seen in a while, watched the 40 year old virgin (sober, so i remember it this time), then i got to engage in drunken burnout. for those of you not familiar with it, burnout is a racing game where you’re encouraged to ram the other players off the track as much as possible. all the races are city streets, there’s heavy traffic (oncoming traffic or large vehicles will blow you up if you hit them), and the top speed is about 215mph and becomes extremely hard to see what’s happening at that point. i typically only play burnout on xbox live when my friend ecto is available. we like to verbally harass and insult people as badly as possible. this becomes easier when drunk. we’ve made several xbox live friends doing it, a few enemies, and a lot of laughs. my personal best was the man who threatened to hunt me down and cut my head off with his chainsaw. the other night, i think i made a 12 year old cry. he was one of those “i’m 17, i drive a mustang GT, i can buy beer when i want” liars (those are direct quotes from him). we called him out pretty bad when he didn’t know anything about cars in general and said he had a 6 speed transmission installed for $67,000 (because “his shit doesn’t come cheap”). i don’t think i went to bed until about 4:30 in the morning.

yesterday was fairly uneventful. i helped a former coworker shop for an interview shirt, ran a few errands, then sat around doing nothing. i had dinner at an awesome italian restaurant that does 1950s family style serving. if you order spaghetti, you don’t get a plate of spaghetti. you get an entire platter of it for everyone to eat. it was delicious. after dinner we went to rent some movies and decided to take a gamble on a title called “mr. jingles.”

remember the post where i explained why house of the dead was the worst movie i had ever seen? well, it’s been dethroned. we knew we were in for an experience when the opening credits started rolling (and by rolling i mean fading in, then fading out, then fading in, then fading out). they were clearly made in imovie and were accompanied by a song so clearly crappy-local-band-esque that it caused me to joke “music by the cameraman’s brother’s band” only to be proven right seconds later. we started throwing jokes around about how it was probably filmed on some vhs camera with the built-in mic in their friends’ houses with no tripod because they just gave it to the guy with the steadiest hands, where the actual movie would be some guy sitting in a room telling a story about mr. jingles, then there would be half an hour of end credits.

except for the guy telling a story instead of having actual acting, we were spot-on. every frame of that film was blurry (thanks to the vhs camcorder with no tripod), they filmed it all in their homes, the acting was god-awful, and about 20 minutes of the running time of the movie was credits. it was hilariously bad. they even threw a few sets of boobs in to try and save it, but they weren’t even very good boobs. passable, yes, but nothing really worth telling anyone about.

today’s topic of the day is weak. timco got me into the IMBC by making a thread about it on the hockeyzombie.com forums. i figured why not, i could use a year-long domain registration and a reason to write down what goes on in my head. that’s why i signed up, and that’s why i keep posting even though i bombed out.

it is a lousy day. it’s not that anything bad happened, but nothing particularly good has happened, either. the day is dragging by slowly, the weather sucks outside (i sit next to a window), and i’m really just bored. i haven’t gotten anything to take care of today that was challenging or even the slightest bit interesting. maybe i’m just brought down by the weather and being tired and bored. i’m feeling better just by thinking of the two or three nice moments in my morning. this is why i don’t use drugs, i’m too easily swayed.

tuttle brought in his son theo today. i think he’s shadowing. i got a help ticket this morning asking that i make a security badge for theo. i showed him how the badges work, what goes into making them, and why they’re important. he’s like 10 years old and he’s got a higher security clearance than me. he and tuttle senior have gotten through the “this is what i do during the day” phase and are now at the “ok, this is the stuff i do during the day to keep my sanity” phase. everyone who’s done any kind of shadowing or interning knows this stage. it’s where you learn the real secrets of how a business works, like which guy has a mini-fridge full of beer in his cubicle. theo came over just as i was coloring “make me pretty” matt. yesterday he was an emo kid, today he is an anime character.

i also got free lunch today from one of the insurance companies we work with. they’re touring the facility and decided to show gratitude for how many policies we’ve sold of theirs. free lunch kicks ass, even if it’s just a turkey sandwich that i had to make myself. this leftover pizza will live another few hours until dinner rolls around.

i just realized how lucky i am to have a job where i can keep waterguns in my desk, but that i still have to be careful with them because if the CEO sees them, he’ll come after me with his waterguns, and i hear he packs supersoakers. i also shouldn’t complain about having to dress nicely for the people who visit from the outside since otherwise i get to wear pretty much whatever i want.

today’s topic of the day asks if i think we’re alone in the universe. i’m pretty sure we’re not. this video describes it best.

what are the odds that we’re the only speck of dirt in the universe with life on it?

by request from my sister, here is the epic tale of cloudy cloud calculator. it’s not a work of fiction and not exaggerated in any way. everything in this entry is the truth to the best of my memory.

in the spring of 2003, a friend of a friend of a friend in a town not terribly far from where i live went to a used record store to browse for some new tunes. he found a copy of one of the clash’s albums and bought it. he got into his car, opened the case, and inside was a light blue CD with no labeling on it whatsoever. he threw it in the cd player and it was clearly not the clash. he kept listening out of curiosity. he got in an accident on the way home, but wasn’t hurt. he told a few friends about the weird cd he got by mistake at the record store and made some copies for people. the first guy to get a copy listened to it at home, and within the hour, he broke his arm. copies were given to two friends of mine. one fell down the stairs the afternoon he received it. the other friend put it in his computer. in the middle of playing, his computer shut off. the motherboard was completely fried, but before the system went down, his media player connected with the CDDB to reveal the album they had found:

cloudy cloud calculator by takako minekawa.

this was during my senior year. i had visited my friends one weekend and they told me about this horrible cd while we were driving around. it wasn’t like these were horrible dreadful stories, but this was an album that seemed to carry a lot of bad luck. we made a lot of jokes about it, and something they had noticed was that the bad things stopped happening when you made a copy for someone. it’s like the lite-flavored audio equivalent to the ring. i told them to keep it away from me because although i didn’t think this cd was actually cursed, i didn’t feel like taking the risk.

three weeks later, i was digging in my bag for something at school and i saw it. a CD-R labeled with blue marker. “cloudy cloud calculator.” regardless of the fact that i was in class, i called up one of the friends who told me about the cd. the one who was in the back seat of my car where my bag was when i was hearing about the audio atrocity.

“you fucker. i fucking hate you.”
“hahahahaha, you found my present! good luck, skippy!”

since it was already too late, i figured i’d throw it in my computer in class and listen to what was so weird about it. it was some of the weirdest music i’d ever heard (it’s japanese, i know, i shouldn’t be surprised) and it was weird to the point where i had classmates come over and listen to it. three of them asked me to make them copies that afternoon. i got home safely and figured i had broken the curse since it had been several hours since i listened to the cursed japanese noisefest. copies were made, distributed to classmates, and i went on like normal. more requests were made by other classmates until pretty much every other person in my program had their own copy.

one of them fell off a stack of pressure treated lumber and got filled with splinters. his entire torso was covered in swollen red marks. another classmate’s girlfriend broke up with him out of nowhere (this may not be related to the CCC curse). the guy i sit next to in math fell asleep at the wheel and wrapped his car around a telephone pole. he got away with a sprained wrist and a bruised forehead. of all these misfortunes, nothing bad had happened to me.

fast forward to about 2 years ago (fast forward to the past. sounds like a back to the future tv series). i was telling this same story to some other friends of mine one evening while i was driving around. one of them, kurt, said he was interested in hearing the cd sometime. i kept it in my car, just in case i had to make a copy and i don’t know what would happen if i ever got rid of it. we threw it in my cd player and drove around, laughing at the ridiculous sounds and having a good time just enjoying the evening. at some point we had to go back to kurt’s house and wait for his dad to get home before we could leave again. we sat around and smoked cigarettes and kept the cd going. kurt’s dad got back and we were finally ready to leave. that’s when it happened.

i was backing my car out of the driveway like i had done so many hundreds of times before (i used to drive kurt to school) and BAM! glass everywhere, huge dent in the back of my car. kurt’s dad parked his car in the same spot there had always been a car every time i picked kurt up to go anywhere, but this time, i backed right into it. there wasn’t any serious damage, but all the same, that’s how cloudy cloud calculator gets you. nothing deadly, but just enough to let you know it’s there. all the copies i made for my classmates kept me safe. it was listening to it again after the years passed that put it back on me. i made a copy for kurt and he made a copy for his ex-girlfriend. since then, neither of us have listened to it. i still have my copy in my car, so i know exactly where it is, just in case.

sorry again, everyone. real life happened. it was good real life though, not someone dying real life. thursday night i decided would be “adult night” and not in the pornographic sense. i paid bills, did some cleaning, returned some calls, scheduled some appointments, and generally did a lot of the other things we have to do when we go from being teenagers to being real adults. friday was an extremely frustrating day for not only myself, but rush, my work-related other half. days like friday made me appreciate the open gym we have here, because it’s better to take your frustrations out on a punching bag than the person who caused your frustrations in the first place. i got to teach rush how to throw punches.

friday night i went out to dinner with my parents after trying to schedule a visit to someone i haven’t seen in years that recently had his entire spine adjusted. i showed them guitar hero, they enjoyed it (who has played guitar hero and didn’t enjoy it? nobody, that’s who.), and we had a general nice family visit. saturday was completely packed for me. i had to sign the paperwork for the juggernaut that morning, had a dentist appointment (i also needed an oil change, and since i go to sears dental, they also have a full automotive service department. two tasks with one trip, awwwww yeah), had two tech support visits to make, and then it was off to indiana for the evening to visit crun.

visiting crun was awesome as always. there was drinking, there was hockey, there were video games, and a drunken swedish guy made the greatest pizza order i’ve ever heard. to the best of my memory, this is how it went:

“hello, dominoes? yeah, what can i get for twenty-six bucks? we got a bunch of dudes, twenty-six bucks, and we’re all hungry for pizza.”
“say we’re drunk! say we’re drunk!” (someone on the stairs)
“…and we’re drunk.”
“yeah!!!!!” (everyone)
“so the 555 deal? can i get 4 5s? we might be able to get 5 5s, but i don’t know with the… tax… and the… tax. i dunno, let me get 4 5s. maybe 5? alright, we’re going for 4.” (at this point guy on the stairs holds up five fingers and points to them) “…we got 5.”

maybe you had to be there, but it was awesome. sunday morning filled with inside jokes and bouncing a ball off our heads to amuse crun’s spawn, who just happens to be the most adorable child in the world. i joked about taking her home with me, but said i wouldn’t because i didn’t have a car seat and that would be unsafe.

after i got back in town, i hung out with friends of mine from michigan that are getting married in three weeks. we had dinner and went bowling and played eucher. yesterday i worked a normal day, napped with the juggernaut when i got home (i slept on the couch, he slept on my face), then watched several episodes of heroes, which i’m now addicted to.

work today has been going well. i’ve been accomplishing things, but i’m not overly busy. i also have a plant now (it was a trade. there’s a guy here with tons of plants in his cube. he saw i made my ID card to have robots on it. he wanted a custom ID card, so he got one in exchange for a plant.) which i am naming rupert, my pessimist’s mug came in, and i’ve got a beaded taxi cab seat cover on my desk chair. i’ve reached a point where i enjoy my cube. i’ve also blown up a picture of matt and put it in a transparency sheet. it says “make me pretty” and i draw on it with my dry erase markers. today, matt’s picture is a pirate.

today’s topic of the day is about concerts. the first concert i ever went to was my freshman year. it was chevelle, dope, static-x, and powerman 5000. i liked the show and had a good time, but in retrospect it was probably the most boring concert i’ve ever been to. my favorite concert ever would have to be when i saw zwan. yeah, whatever, shut up and stop laughing. i can feel your insults through the internet. in my defense, the smashing pumpkins broke up before i ever had a chance to see them, and they’ve been my favorite band since i was 9 years old. at the end of the concert, billy corgan walked along the front of the stage shaking hands. i was screaming like a teenage girl and jumped up and grabbed his shoe. he reached down and shook my hand. i screamed that he was my favorite since i was 9 and he smiled. the weird thing about billy corgan besides him being angsty and a horrible singer (i still love you, billum) is that he has very tiny feet, but HUGE hands. it’s astounding that his extremities are that lopsided.

today i’m excited because my tea came in the mail. it’s some fancy stuff that comes with this amazing 2-serving tea pot. you put tea leaves/powder in it, dump the hot water in, then when enough time has passed, you place the pot right on top of your mug. the bottom has a valve that opens when you press the bottom (it has legs on the outside so it doesn’t dump tea everywhere when you put it on the counter) and there’s a filter in the bottom that keeps the leaves from pouring out into your cup and jamming the valve. it’s very fancy, but if you stumble a bit and shake it around, the valve starts to leak and your reflex is to hold the bottom to keep it from dripping on the floor.

and that is why my hand is red.

today’s topic of the day is “it’s your turn to choose a restaurant. where are we going?”

we’re going to “dan kwasny’s ‘i don’t give a shit’s” and it’s the greatest restaurant ever. anyone familiar with dick’s last resort has a general idea of what DKIDGAS is all about. you can do whatever you want. you want your food? get up and order it, asshole. our staff is only paid minimum wage and you’re not worth it. you want condiments? they come in a bucket. we’re not pouring the 55 gallon drum of ketchup into smaller dispensers, you’re the one that wants ketchup, you come and get it. you get a bowl and we point at the drum. fill it up, bitch. if you think your server is doing a shitty job? your server doesn’t give a shit. why not throw something at them? they’ll throw stuff back because you’re being an asshole and your side of coleslaw isn’t that important. anyone who complains that they’re covered in food gets the firehose. why? because we don’t give a shit, and neither does dan kwasny. verbal abuse is constant, everyone is unfriendly, you’ll probably get punched, and if you’re that much of a pain in the ass you get locked in time-out and you can go without dinner. maybe you’ll reconsider your whining strategy when you’re in a glass box on an elevated stage. dan kwasny’s “i don’t give a shit”s is the best restaurant ever.

today was dull and i got a few things stacked on me at work that were a pain (still trying to work out a license key for some software that cost the company a lot of money) and we had the call logging system crash on us for the third time in two days, but at least they think they’ve resolved the issue with that now. i finally get to stop calling random selections from 30 pages (in very fine print) of phone numbers to make sure the phone system isn’t completely hosed.

the exciting thing about today was the guitar hero party hosted by my fellow helpdesk analyst, steve. if i haven’t shared it before (i may have, i forget) our network security guy is also named steve. when they hired me as a help desk technician, i became the second steve. two weeks later, the other steve was hired into the helpdesk position. we now have 3 steves, 2 chrises, matt, and tom. tom sits in an office away from the rest of IT, the other helpdesk steve (steve rush, also called steve 3 or rush) sits in a separate row, and the main row of IT employees has the following arrangement: chris b, me (steve 2, steve t, or “goose”), matt, steve t (yes, there are two steve t’s), and chris a. go over that faster using just first names. chris, steve, matt, steve, chris. it’s bad enough we have 3 names between 5 people, but the order is the same regardless of which end you start from.

anyway, i got sidetracked. guitar hero party at rush’s place tonight. rush’s girlfriend, his friend jay, myself, cabbage, and one of the new hires from finance, eric, were there. we invited eric along because he’s a pretty cool person and expressed interest in guitar hero before, and he also hasn’t gone on any outside activities with coworkers. he sits in a corner with another lady with the same job. they’re over there by themselves, and he has nothing in common with anyone else in his department. he is now one of “the friends” and well worthy of the title. there was pizza, there was beer, there was a lot of smack talk, and i’ll try and upload the video we got of cabbage playing tonight. it’s hilarious in itself, but it’s even funnier to realize it’s how he always plays guitar hero. i get mocked enough because i sway to the rhythm when i play and i’m severely handicapped if i play sitting down, but cabbage dances. full body movements, jumping up and down, twisting the guitar around to the music, fully rocking-the-fuck-out dancing. one of my favorite parts of the evening was that cabbage didn’t think he would be able to make it at first and thus we would have only one guitar, but i went out and found a copy. i can stop bribing my friend with pirated movies to let me keep borrowing his copy “just a little longer.”

enough with my unintentional list of reasons i don’t have a girlfriend already. onto the topic of the day, which i have no experience with!

i have never bought or sold anything on ebay. i tried once. i signed up with paypal and started getting my checking account information registered to make online purchases easier for myself. the only problem was i couldn’t find my checkbook, so i couldn’t get the routing number for my account. i figured when i found my checks, i would finish the account activation. by the time i eventually found them, my paypal account had been blacklisted for having incomplete information for so long. i wrote emails, i called their customer service, but what i was told was there was nothing they could do because my account was permanently locked. i went higher up the chain, and still, nothing i could do. i offered to send a voided check, proof of identification, all kinds of things, but no matter what, they would do nothing. that’s why to this day i have no paypal account, and probably never will. i’ll probably end up switching banks in a few months when i move and i might try again, but this time, i’ll know what to do. assuming they haven’t blacklisted my name as well.

well, i’m doing really well with not smoking. i’m not even on the patch right now and the only craving i’ve had was built around a very stressful situation. there’s a story behind both. firstly, the reason i’m not wearing the nicotine patches and the reason i haven’t posted all weekend are the same. my dreams went from being wacky and strange to the worst kind of bad dream. not the kind of bad dream where you wake up in a sweat and feel uneasy for 20 minutes and fall back asleep. the kind of bad dream where you wake up from it and feel like shit the entire day. the dreams where the worst parts of your past and thrown right back at you and you end up reliving them. imagine that, but then make it even darker. ending with getting shot darker.

anyway, i had dreams like that throughout the weekend and they pretty much destroyed my motivation to do anything at all. saturday i decided to try and find a new bed, but i didn’t have the $400 or so required, so i got a shitty walmart futon. i spent two hours building it, it barely fits in my tiny bedroom, and when i collapsed on it after building it, the middle folded right in. it’s a piece of shit, but it’s better than what i was sleeping on. that night i went out drinking at a bar down the street that i’ve never been to before. it was just the right volume, size, and atmosphere that it was perfect. they also have the bowling game we like so much. that was really the highlight of my weekend.

sunday was spent at a business lunch that turned into an 8 hour event. there’s some e-commerce stuff i’m getting involved in and it’s very motivational poster driven. i’ve been to a few meetings/events now and it’s something i’ll get involved in because hey, why not. i don’t know if it’ll work out if i don’t try it. i asked dan if he was interested in hearing anything about it since he has regular amounts of free time and doesn’t make much. he didn’t even care to hear about it, which lead me to some other really depressing realizations, making my weekend an even deeper hole in productivity. i’d really like to go into it, which i have a right to do, but i’m not going to go on and on about my concerns and worries about my best friend. i don’t know if he or any of my other close friends read this, but i’ll end up sounding like his dad and i know that’ll piss him off. out of respect for him, i’ll just leave it at “i’m concerned about him.”

as for the evening’s stressful situation, saying i don’t like confrontations with friends is an extremely mild way of putting it. with strangers, i have very few hesitations and hangups about launching into a tirade on them. but with friends, it always feels like a personal attack, even if it isn’t. lately there have been situations here where i come home to find the apartment unlocked. dan and caitlin have been sharing dan’s set of keys for a long time since caitlin never had her own set. i don’t want my stuff to get walked off with and i also felt that since she’s been living here for so long, she should pay some rent. not an equally divided amount since she shares a room with dan, but $100 or so. i was really stressed out about bringing this up because “can you make a copy of your keys so we don’t have to leave the door unlocked” and “i’d like it if you could chip in a little bit of money towards rent” coming from a friend too often sounds like “i’m going to beat the shit out of you if i come home to something missing” and “you owe me money or i’m kicking your ass out” and with a way more asshole overtone to it. i don’t like that. especially when i have something to bring up to someone that i know is prone to taking things harder than they’re intended.

i lucked out, though. the reaction was “yeah, that’s fine. we’ll get copies of the keys made tomorrow.”

onto the topic of the day: what content management system do i use and why?

i’m obviously a fan of wordpress. it was easy to set up, easy to modify, didn’t cost me a dime, the documentation was incredible, and i’ve had no problems keeping track of what i write. i can completely revamp my entire site in minutes and adding or removing modifications is really simple. i also enjoy the comment moderation. if i approve someone, they can comment all they want and i don’t have to moderate new comments from the same users. i can also keep spammers out just as easily. i also learned a bit about php by setting up this site through wordpress.

i haven’t played guitar hero much the last few days. on sunday i stepped up to hard difficulty, did a few songs, then didn’t play again until yesterday. i tried to continue on hard. conveniently, the songs i got to but didn’t play are too difficult for me to pass. it also doesn’t help that i could barely do hard, then stopped playing. i decided to practice by getting 5 stars on every song in medium (then i unlock the viking guitar. ooh, fancy!) and i only have one remaining.

freebird.

there’s a good chance i could pass it tonight, but i’m really tired. whatever the song before freebird was (i think it was by megadeth, i don’t remember) started to look blurry to me and i was having difficulty focusing. i did some practice on some sections of freebird and called it a night. tomorrow after work, i tackle it.

as far as my non-smoking progress goes, i’m minutes away from being 3 days without any tobacco. these nicotine patches work wonders, and i think they’re actually helping me sleep better. i’ve also only had 3 pieces of gum all day. last night’s dream wasn’t that weird, and was actually pretty boring. there was a radio announcement that a party was being held in some dirt field next to a highway overpass for a browns game. i went and i was the only one there, and i had a browns jacket on and everything. i sat on a rock and drank beer. this was probably the most fucked up part of the entire evening of dreams, as i don’t own a browns jacket, nor do i give a damn about professional (or amateur) sports (wii sports is fun though). there was also a part of the dream where i was in a parking lot, then a warehouse, and a lady i work with (the one who played at the bar last friday) asked me to fix a problem she was having with her back. it was basically this large U shaped growth on her back and i had to hold a hair dryer to it and melt it away. it was a lot like wax and it left a U shaped divit in her back, as if someone tried to brand her with an oversized horseshoe.

onto the topic of the day: three things i want to do before i die. but first, let me point out that all these topics regarding death have been posed by amy, who is making a garbage bag dress. if i didn’t know any better (and really, i don’t), i’d say she was one morbid fashion queen (if the body is already covered in garbage bags, disposal is that much easier!).

the first thing i want to do before i die is go to other countries on other continents. i’ve been to canada several times, which is really just like ohio, but more polite and with fewer asshole drivers and shittier currency (also, anyone that pulls over to the side of the road turns their blinker on, not their hazards). i don’t want to say “travel the world” because that sounds cliche and suggests being your typical slack-jawed tourist. screw that. i want to climb rooftops and meet people i only know via the internet and learn how to insult people’s mothers in foreign languages. i want to jump on a bar and yell “alright, listen up. i’m from america. i’m here for 3 more days and there are about 100 women in here. that gives each of you about 45 minutes to bang me, so get in line.” from what i hear from my e-homies in europe, i actually stand a really good chance of success with that.

the next thing i want to do before i die is get involved romantically with a celebrity (sandra bullock, are you reading this?) and end up riding their coattails into the limelight, just like kevin federline did. think of all the celebrity magazines and tv shows and all their fashion specials about the best and worst dressed at whatever bullshit awards ceremony. to hell with being best dressed, i want to hold the world record for worst dressed at every single celebrity event i attend. i’m talking an unbreakable record. i’d show up to something wearing fuzzy blue slippers, a tuxedo with the sleeves ripped off, shoulder pads with spikes, and a cowboy hat. a week later, i’m at something else wearing just a pair of boxer shorts with my entire body painted up in leopard spots. i’ll give that bitch jillian barbery something to talk about when i have her face on a t-shirt with “annoying whore” spray painted over it. it would look great with my full-length fur coat.

the last thing i want to do before i die? reproduce. a lot. i’m not talking about 7 or 8 kids, i’m talking about taking women to fertility clinics, seeing how many of my spawn are born successfully (6 to 8 per batch works out great), then moving on to another city and doing the same thing. i could also go on a cross-country tour to donate to every sperm bank in america, then double back and get them all again, all while causing women to have entire litters of my offspring through the entire journey. the only problem i’ve run into with really changing things in the world is that i’m only one person. however, if i managed to father a thousdand children in a few years, look out, future. the people who run the world today are spawning the people who will run the world tomorrow. i’ve got a pretty good chance of being a part of it by having an entire city population’s worth of kids out there. i think that’s one of the few situations in which society would become significantly better and significantly worse at the same time. formal attire as we know it would disappear, political parties would be ripped apart, and corporate america would be reduced to a bunch of smart-ass know-it-alls laughing at idiot consumers publicly instead of privately. at the same time though, serious crime would drop (corrupt asshole cops for the greater good), frivolous lawsuits would be virtually non-existent (”ok, so you spilled coffee on yourself, and now you’re suing the restaurant that served it to you for personal damages? you’re a fucking idiot, i sentence you to 10 years for wasting my fucking time and fining you whatever the cost of your prison stay is going to cost taxpayers.”), and all these hate groups rallying and screaming about racial purity or that god hates fags or that god is killing soldiers would quickly find themselves in the center of a public stoning. unalienable rights be damned, morons like that need to stop breeding so the kickass people like me have a chance of saving the world with our combined sperm and ovaries.

i suppose a big problem with having that many children so dispersed is that inbreeding is bound to happen, but i wouldn’t blame them. because hell, i’d fuck me.

monday night when i went for my nicotine patches, i hit a snag. walmart keeps them locked up in a glass case like most stores do, but nobody working at the time had the key for it. this stressed me out pretty badly, just knowing i wouldn’t be able to get any nicotine. i knew if i bought another pack of cigarettes, i wouldn’t end up trying to use nicotine patches. that made tuesday morning really fun. i don’t think i’ve fired off that many expletives in the last three months. people were pissing me off way more easily than usual.

i made it through most of the day semi-ok. all day long i kept swapping between eating sunflower seeds and chewing gum. if i wasn’t chewing on something, i got out of hand pretty quickly. for lunch i ended up eating two chicken sandwiches, a quesadilla, and a large order of popcorn chicken, then went right back to the sunflower seeds. by 3:30 that afternoon, i was breathing hard, shaking badly, and sweating. my boss told me to take half an hour off to go get nicotine patches. within minutes of applying the patch, i felt a horrible itching. it itched so bad, but it itched so good. by the time i got back to work, i could hold my hand steady.

i’m on day two now and i’m still chewing gum constantly, but not as badly as yesterday, with one exception this evening. i went and filed my taxes, which has always been one of the biggest pains in the ass on the planet (the government can see all of my information anyway, why don’t they just process my W2s and let me enter my deductions?) and after hitting several snags and angry moments, i had chewed a piece of gum to a point where it was so brittle, i had to pull it out of my mouth in pieces. it wouldn’t even stick to itself anymore. i decided to unwind a bit and play some guitar hero, but i couldn’t hit a single note and i just got more frustrated. i decided it would be best to leave the apartment before i put the controller through the tv.

i opted to go to the compusa where i used to work. i spent a few hours harassing coworkers, prevented them from doing anything productive (i didn’t need to be there for that to happen), and watched several internet videos with them, like “will it blend?” this was a good relief from other points in my day, like writing a full-length post from work that got lost when the server couldn’t be contacted, and when hitting the back button revealed that IE7 doesn’t retain form information. we also had no time to play tribes today and i had a hell of a time waking up this morning.

a few people told me nicotine patches give you some pretty crazy dreams, but i didn’t believe them. it was probably the longest dream of my life, and all of it was spent in a large department store that had a coffee house section (complete with dim lighting and scene kids) and escalators that went up, then ran horizontal, then up again. there were also several floors, each one huge, and i ended up losing my coat, which contained my car keys and prevented me from going anywhere. some other guy and i eventually found it in a bathroom that got locked up for repairs and cleaning, so we had to break in. on the way out of the store, some guy decided he wanted my phone and froze me and put me in their caveman fashion exhibit (because i look homeless chic i guess). i eventually thawed out, so he turned me into a lady squirrel, whereupon i was sexually molested by the juggernaut. if having a dream where you change species and gender to be raped by your cat isn’t fucked up, i don’t know what is.

today’s topic of the day regards what i want done with my remains when i die, and this is something i’ve had the answer to for years.

assuming i don’t end up in the bodyworlds exhibit, i want to be cremated and have my ashes distributed to several very stealthy people. they will dump my remains into vats in soft drink factories, large batches of concrete, milk vats at dairy farms, asphalt trucks, wax, sand that’s used for glass, silicon (the metal, not the implant juice), and any other large containers of useful liquids or colloids. photographs and videos will be made by my secret agents to prove what they’ve done, but won’t be released until several years after my death. at this point, people will realize that i’m in their cell phones, their soft drinks, their beer, their milk, their pudding, their roads, the crayons their children color them pictures with, their sidewalks, their cars, and just about every other product imaginable. i’m hoping for mass chaos or hysteria.

i’ve been a pack a day smoker for the last two years. before that, i was on and off since i was 10 years old. lately, i’ve had a nagging cough. in conjunction with the health risks, plus how i don’t like being completely out of breath after 30 seconds of jogging, and the advice of my friend cabbage, i’ll be going out later this evening to the 24 hour walmart and buying nicotine patches (after i finish this pack of cigarettes). i was always skeptical of them and shied away from the cost ($40 for a two week supply) but i did the math in my head really quick and i’m already spending about $40 a week on cigarettes anyway, so at the very least, these should last me twice as long (and if they only help me for a week, i’m no deeper in the hole than before, but at least i tried). the advice i was given was that the patches almost completely relieve the cravings for cigarettes. people who start chewing gum as a means to quit smoking fail, but chewing gum while using nicotine patches works pretty well. they’ve worked flawlessly for cabbage so far and he’s been smoking almost as long as me. good luck to me i guess.

in other recent developments, i’ve decided i need to get rid of all the clothing i no longer wear. some of it’s stuff that doesn’t fit, some things are riddled with holes, some i outgrew mentally (a shirt that says “i dress this way to bother you” is a much more desperate cry for attention than i care to make), and some of the things i own are just butt ugly and i don’t know why i got them in the first place. i’ve decided that each day after work, i’ll pick out 5 things that i could watch get lit on fire and not care about. this procedure will continue until i can no longer find items i would burn. five items doesn’t sound like much, but over the course of 2 weeks, that’s like 70 different pieces of clothing. this works out well because 1, i’m lazy and lack the attention span to sort through all of my clothing in an evening and 2, i lack the attention span to keep up with this routine for more than two weeks (i only lasted 6 days in the IMBC, remember?).

taxes are due this week. i was frantically trying to locate my W2s from the school i worked at, but couldn’t find them anywhere. i was going to call the school tomorrow and ask them to print off a copy to give to my boss, who works a second job at a computer shop a few blocks from my mom’s job so he could give it to her, so she could bring it home, and i could drive 15 minutes to pick it up and score free dinner, too. lo and behold, i found my W2s. my tax return should be much bigger this year ($26,000 in taxable income plus $24,500 i spent on school plus not being anyone’s dependent in 2006. that’s $1500 to support myself for an entire year.) and i’ll likely be using it to purchase more work appropriate clothing (i can wear jeans and t-shirts, but my pants with holes in the knees aren’t acceptable and i’m sure my “if i can build a computer, i can make you cum” t-shirt wouldn’t fly with HR) and a new bed. i’ve had the same twin bed for 7 or 8 years now, my feet hang off the end of it, and it probably isn’t meant to support the weight of a grown adult, let alone two (yes, i’m a sinner, just like the juggernaut) which has resulted in collapsed and unbuckled springs. if i sleep on the wrong side of it, my back is in horrible pain all the next day and there’s a good possibility i’ll end up getting dumped on the floor from where the box spring is sagging.

now, onto the topic of the day: my thoughts on the afterlife!

although i’m a legally ordained minister, i’m not a religious person. i’d have to define myself as an agnostic, because i’m not quite an atheist. i don’t believe in any higher power, but it’s not that i don’t believe, either. i think there’s a good possibility that there’s something and i know from experience that there’s more than just the physical things in the world (yes, i’m talking about ghost encounters. if you ever saw a piano playing random notes by itself in a friend’s house, then heard the footsteps running away from it when you made a noise, you’d probably believe in ghosts, too.) but nothing has ever been significant enough to convert me to a belief system. if there’s anything supernatural i do believe in, it’s that your conscience lingers. maybe you’re self-aware, maybe you aren’t. i think some people aren’t able to mentally let go, so they just wander around and “haunt” things, even though they don’t mean to. kinda like in the sixth sense where the people don’t know they’re dead. i think others are able to understand and accept that they’ve died or are going to die and can move on. maybe they just fade away, maybe they hang around for a little bit, and maybe they go into their own thoughts of an afterlife and the entire experience of life after death is unique to whatever they believed it to be.

if it weren’t for the few occasions of “ghosts” that i witnessed (i use quotes because maybe there weren’t ghosts and i’m just nuts, as i’m sure some people will accuse me of) i’d probably be a full-on atheist. the other major event that makes me realize there are things beyond the physical was when my grandpa died. i was 13 and i woke up on my own one sunday morning (which was paranormal in itself, i’d sleep in until 2 in the afternoon given the chance), sat up completely awake, and i knew he died that night. he had been in the hospital battling diabetes for a year or two and showed no signs of improvement, but didn’t show signs of deteriorating, either. i just woke up and knew he was dead. i left my room, saw my sister in the hallway, and she said he was dead. i asked if our parents had said anything to her or if there was a phone call or a note or anything and she said no, she just knew.

i don’t have any idea or even a remote guess of what’s going to happen after i die. i figure that if there’s some divine power guiding things, whenever i die, i’ll find out. otherwise, if there’s a divine power, it’s not my place to know, or at least not yet. and if there’s nothing out there? well, maybe i’ll just fall asleep forever.

i want to take a moment now to thank the people who have been reading. i enjoy the supportive comments and it’s good to know i’m not just amusing myself with all of this. special thanks go out to amy for the awesome metal artwork, my sister for heckling me, and oliver for letting me know at least i’m someone’s favorite. oh, and hank? this one goes out to you.

(and your mom, of course)