I make a lot of choices in my life that may or may not be described as bizarre by less than death-defying or interesting people. My thought process has been the subject of ridicule to many. I’m comfortable with this.

I’ll use the example of transportation. Early last year I decided it was high time that I do something irrational and give my car away to charity. I’m not sorry for the decision by any means. I’m glad I could give the gift of an iffy clutch and temperamental seat warmers to another. I even left my mix CD in the reasonably decent stereo system. I think I was on a Buena Vista Social Club kick at that time. To the new owner of my vehicle: enjoy. Nothing screams “I roll hard” more than pulling up in a silver bitch of a car with pre-revolutionary Cuban guitar music blaring out the glass shard hole where a window used to be.

…someone threw a bowling ball through it. A dead cat was placed in there soon after. Later on someone wrote “Cheating Asshole” on the hood. At least I’m not the only one that makes bizarre decisions. Or I was the mistaken subject of some fucked up lovers’ quarrel.

After the car was gone, I learned a lot about the train, bus and trolley lines. Mostly how to get lost on them, but I eventually got the hang of it. I enjoy people-watching and you just don’t get the real human interaction by commuting each day alone. For instance, do you get to hear about the satellites that are watching our every move from a man that claims to be the former president of “Tigeria” in your car? Maybe you carpool with some nutty coworkers, so perhaps you have. I get schooled on CIA secrets just about every time I ride public transportation by former foreign leaders. What did YOU do today?

My favorite is the train. When I was a kid without a car (not by choice at this time), I used to get on the train and run off to Los Angeles for a day. My parents worked a lot, and this gave me a lot of forbidden freedom to abuse. They would more than likely crap their pants if they knew I was doing this, this is why I tell my parents that the internet gives you cancer and reading blogs causes sudden geriatric death. (So, I capitalize on their lack of technological understanding. We can keep this secret between you and I, lone reader.)

A few weeks ago, I was riding the bus to work. On this particular route, it’s not so much the bus riders that are wearing the tin foil hats. It’s more the bus drivers that cause me some concern. One, in particular. Our first encounter was when I stepped onto the bus and she told me how much she liked my cape. (I know this statement makes me sound like I belong on this bus to crazyville, but it’s actually a very fashionable cape. No “S” emblazoned on it or anything.) I took my seat near the man who still owns a boombox (for which, he’s my insta-hero) playing Bob Marley. I pretend not to listen to the conversation between a woman and her phone caller about their sex life and how she wishes he didn’t live with his parents and worked Wal-Mart. From the front of the bus came a much more fascinating conversation between the bus driver…and no one else. She mutters to herself “Well look at that. There goes the Pizza Hut.” (Note: there was no Pizza Hut in sight). “I bet the submarines were yellow when that happened. Pizza for breakfast…every morning…” she seems to recall wistfully.

Pizza for breakfast…every morning…indeed. There is a deep meaning I could attach to this; I try not to get too sociologically attached to the words of the bus driver, who almost immediately after dispensing this morsel of wisdom upon me, commenced to almost hump a Jeep Wrangler, prison-style, with the bus she was driving. I’ve face planted into the seat in front of me on more than one of my journeys with her. Maybe the lesson derived is that we shouldn’t have fantasies of pizza while caring for the safety of your passengers in public transit.

My other favorite is the guy that sounds like Antonio Banderas and looks like Danny Trejo. “Harrrborre anda Naval Cumplex…neggsta stop.” I honestly feel someone should play an ominous note on a Spanish guitar after he announces any stop on the route. I would ride the bus more often.

I drive a car now, I have a scooter and I just got a bike. But sometimes you just itch for the crazy that is public transport.

With that - go green.

Category: Go Green | 2 Comments »

I had a post I’ve been slowly writing over the past few weeks - a cute look at some recent adventures of mine. I’ve been too busy, as usual. “I’m too busy” - this perpetual excuse, leads me to more than a few regrets. Some worse than delayed publishing of my accounts of various mindless events and dick jokes. Unfortunately, it takes a circumstance like the death of a friend to suddenly unbusy yourself, and shake you awake.

A lot of people have former employers that they would rather kick in the nuts than hang out with. I don’t tend to burn many bridges and if I do despise a past boss, it’s because they were unquestionably evil. Not so with Mr. Kevin Starks. Kevin was my boss a few years back, before I changed careers out of sciences into the responsibility-void world of web.

On Friday, I found out that he had passed away. I haven’t been able to make any sense of it yet. Bear with me. It’s difficult to form a coherent tribute to someone when you’re still a bit shaken. But the last thing I want to do is delay this. This may be the thing to help me understand.

Most people would agree that a job interview is the last place you would go to find new pals. But I think we’ve established in our short time together that I’m not your average bear. My interview with Kevin was like having a beer with a friend I’ve known for years, minus the beer, and in an environment where I was supposed to be padding my then non-existent resume and boasting about my non-existent Powerpoint skills. I’d bet that anyone who met him got the same feeling of instant comfort. I got a job and new friend.

Never in my years working with him did I ever see him truly angry. He never yelled at me. If there ever was a problem, he would talk to me like an adult, always stood up for me, and he never undermined me. So many work environments I’ve been in have been about being quicker on the draw to see others fail. Sink or swim, they say. Kevin knew what a lot of supposed superiors didn’t. Helping someone up if they fall gets you better results than having a screaming match, a water cooler shit-talking session with other coworkers, or in worse cases - the dreaded silent treatment.

I learned from him that treating people with respect instead of immediately writing them off makes the light inside them brighter, and their true brilliance more apparent. I add my own somewhat cynical twist to it…there are those times when the light never shows. But at least you didn’t miss an opportunity.

Kevin worked a lot to help people with disabilities. A topic I rarely touch, is the fact that I myself am considered disabled in the eyes of whoever makes these sorts of condemning decisions. Kevin nor I considered my inability to speak fluently a disability. I’ve had some struggles with the problem, in childhood and especially - any time I am seeking employment. Job searches are never easy for me, as I rarely get past a phone interview. It took me years to finally see that this “disability” was actually a small, yet bitch of a blessing. People with no patience, tolerance or understanding are sifted out of my life almost immediately.

After a few years, I received the internship opportunity of my dreams. Kevin understood. He treated me like a daughter and he watched over me. I was leaving the coop, and I’ll just say, rules were bent a bit to make sure I’d be okay for a few months. It meant a lot to a kid who was about to take a 100% pay cut.

After I left there were massive lay-offs. Kevin didn’t escape the fourth or fifth round of these. The laid-offed and the quitters formed a little club. We met up every few months to catch up, drink, and talk shit about our former place of business. The last time we all planned to convene, I blew it off to work. I’ll regret that forever. Not that any of us knew we would be saying goodbye.

I know, sole reader - that you didn’t know Kevin. I can’t even begin to introduce such an incredible person to you, but I can just tell you how he affected me. Maybe, with hope, you know someone like this. Work, and life in general will often keep you from keeping in touch with the great people of your past and present. I would love to say that I will never let this happen again, but realistically, life happens. I love my job, and it does take over my life. But I am going to do my damnedest to avoid this sinking feeling that I could have had one more conversation, one more round, one more anything with my friend.

As for the afterlife, the words of an atheist seldom mean anything to the bereaved. I don’t know what comes next, but I can go on and on about what did happen. And that was - this is one person who helped form the sometimes complicated, sometimes difficult, but definitely stronger person that I am now.

My wish for you - is that you have and hold people who make you strong, and that you’re a better person for having known them. I truly believe that this is the perfect way to honor them - being who you are, with all the things they have given you.

Edit: After the memorial - At the service they read a poem, often mistakenly attributed to Mother Teresa. It’s called “Anyway”:

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered; Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and your God; It was never between you and them anyway.

Donate to Kevin’s Cause:
San Diego Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities

Category: Personal | 2 Comments »

There are a lot of cool ways to die out there. If I had my choice, I’d like to die battling a lion. Polar bear, shark, 2 polar bears forming the shape of a shark…it doesn’t matter the beast. I would just like a little flare of pride before I go forth into Valhalla.

There’s also a lot of very humiliating ways to die. Being found sitting on the couch in your wife’s skivvies, one hand in a jar of jelly, the other on the remote that was controlling the volume of “The Blue Lagoon”, but is now on pause, on this image:

…could be bad.

Another humiliating way to die could be via the wrath of a small, but squirrely scooter rider. Think on it for a second. This person has enough balls to ride a scooter in public. Driving around in a giant, over-sized truck requires nuts roughly the size of pistachios.

Remember this when you cause damage to someone’s scooter and you don’t have the balls to take responsibility for it. Kiss that proud and awesome death goodbye. Think of your family. When people ask them how you died, they will more than likely say “butt cancer”.

Fortunately for you, trashing my scooter will not cause your demise. I’m finding myself in a very calm and merciful state lately. Even after I was pretty sure I found the culprit. But the next scooter driver you mess with will be an unstoppable, bloodthirsty, vengeful madman, rest assured.

Add this to your list of people not to fuck with.

On a completely unrelated subject; if you own a black Kia Sportage in San Diego, your nuts called. Said they felt they would be more befitting on a hamster, and are tired of being laughed at by your bedroom companions.

Speaking of blatant irresponsibility, I was watching the news the other day and heard about the woman who gave birth to octuplets. The headline was “Mother of Octuplets Breaks Her Silence”. I was wondering what really needed to be said about this that would render anyone interested in her broken silence. What new, baffling information could this woman provide to us other than “Damn, this sucks” or “Giving birth to octuplets certainly made my body unappealing in every way imaginable”. I watched the story, because I was bored. People have done worse things when they were bored; like, say, consciously deciding to have an absurd amount of children while single and broke. This is where I now understood (then puked in horror) why this story was so newsworthy. She purposely had 6 embryos implanted via in vitro (2 of them split, which is really a moot point). Are you ready to have your face blown off by her brilliant rationale of this decision? She was lonely. (Also note that she also had 6 other children, which are being cared for by her mother, who hates her, obviously.) That’s 14 children, for you math whizzes out there. 14 utterly screwed children.

I’m not saying that loneliness doesn’t drive most of us to some very low depths. Maybe you went home with the local watering hole’s closing time queen once or twice. Maybe you listened to “All by Myself” on repeat a few nights in a row. You can always seek comfort in the fact that you didn’t have companions grown for you in a lab, only to find out later that you have ruined their lives because of your lonely whim, ending up lonely anyways because your children read your news story and decide to have themselves emancipated. Not a court in the world would blame them. I myself hope it’s only a matter of time before CPS steps in.

So, in part to build a tradition of lists on this site, I give you:

Things you can do to alleviate loneliness without resorting to having 8 children:

• » Normally I do not condone listening to country music, but hell, that is what it’s there for.
• » Stalk someone.
• » Get a puppy.
• » Go out and look for the individual who ruined your new scooter.
• » Write a blog post about people ruining your new scooter.
• » Drown your sorrows in alcohol like the rest of us do.
• » Take some goddamn responsibility in your life.
• » Take care of the children you do have without pawning them off on your parents when you decide they aren’t curing your loneliness and self loathing.

I am, by no stretch of the imagination, standing on any sort of soap box. I’m sure it’s hard to believe, but I have made some pretty awful decisions in life. None that have resulted in the birth of 14 children, but awful nonetheless. This is why I favor the theory of evolution. I hold on to the hope that eventually everyone remaining will be able to learn from their mistakes. The people that say “I have 6 children and I’m still lonely, 8 more outta do the trick” will eventually be sifted out, along with the news stations that reward the “any publicity is good publicity” stance. If your thought process goes only as far as - ‘I may have caused this mess, but I’ll be damned if I am going to pay for it’ - enjoy your life at the bottom of the food chain.

I’m off to find me some polar bears.

Category: Awful Parenting, The Scooter | 1 Comment »

“Are vampires real and do they have some kind of special powers? I read twilight and the others. do vampires really exist? do they have different powers? is there any i can get to know?”

Anonymous

To start off with, take a second to note the subtle differences between “Twilight” and a fact-filled encyclopedia.

Vampires do not exist, no matter how much the cashier at the local Cinnabon with terrible makeup, who carries a Nightmare Before Christmas lunchbox will try to tell you otherwise.

I see you possibly going down the path to awfulness, so I hope you pay attention. No matter how romantic and sexy books or films make vampirism out to be, you will not turn into one, and the people who claim they have, are smelly and annoying and nobody likes them. They will claim to like drinking blood, but are really only:

• a.) transmitting diseases
• b.) hating their parents
• c.) transmitting diseases

They do not need it to live, and if anyone ever did consume the amount of blood squirting forth from a human jugular vein, they would vomit uncontrollably, not to mention the constipation.

My dark love...be still my dark heart of darkening darkness.

If you intend to site more fictional tales, such as Vlad the Impaler’s vampirism, I assure you that 15th century princes had better things to do than play vampire baseball (seriously…?), squabble with drama club werewolves, and focus on their dickish, pouty, overly intense pickups of outcast high school girls.

Moving on. Even away from the subject of “vampire baseball” which I can’t even begin to explain was more painful than watching actual baseball.

Drinking blood certainly leads to:

• 1.) HIV/AIDS/Hepatitis A, B, C, D, E, F, G
• 2.) Writing bad poetry in a Denny’s with all your “non-conformist” friends at 3:00am.
• 3.) Looking terrible.

A generation of goths surged with Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, and Twilight is about to do the same thing with a new generation. Understand that these are fictional stories, to entertain. Edward Cullen is not going to come out of the shadows and whisk you away to leprechaun land. If he does, I hope you have a good can of mace or a taser at the ready.

Edward Cullen's Reality Doppelganger

I dated a goth once. Yeah. I’ll admit it. You know what I got out of it? Proficiency at feigning interest and a hatred of “pleather”.

Here are some other things you can do besides focusing your energy on finding vampires:

• » Make a list of reasons you are better than a goth/vampire. I’ll start you off - “Number 1: I am not a tool.”
• » Read books with higher intellectual value than “Twilight”. Like, “The Runaway Bunny”. I promise, it will make you just as depressed. I still cry about it. Go, bunny…go…if you must.
• » Get some sun. Blinding the first person to see you naked could be deemed uncool.
• » Give your mom a hug.
• » Get a girlfriend/boyfriend and don’t annoy the crap out of her/him.
• » Wear pastels.

If my accounts have failed and you go goth anyways, you will grow out of it in a few years, with any hope and continue leading a normal and unobnoxious life.

Hope I helped.

Category: Ask Nomatophobic | No Comments »