June 28th, 2007 Riley
So I just got a call about my new job from my staffing agency contact, and she was scared to leave my pay rate on my answering machine, instead just stating it would be the higher of the two numbers I had mentioned on her voice mail. My first thought was, “Why is she scared of leaving the pay rate on the answering machine?” It’s not like the pay rate is a child molester and the answering machine is a playground. Then, I realized that she probably didn’t want to leave it because she doesn’t know who I might live with. This led me to a general conclusion that I believe can benefit humanity entire:
Never live with anyone you cannot trust with your pay rate, your tax returns, or your children. If anyone in your household falls into one of these categories, change the locks when they are out. If they fall into all three, knife them in their sleep.
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June 22nd, 2007 Riley
Warning! This game is highly addictive: Dope Wars. If you think drugs will get a hold on you, wait until you try selling them. I was first exposed to this game while working a shitty job back when I thought that $8 an hour was a decent wage. Ah, youth. Anyway, I googled it the other day and, lo and behold, there it was. Dope Wars has changed since back in the day though. It has become more thrilling, more chilling, and considerably more amusing.
Here’s how it works:
You start out with $5000 that you borrowed from the loanshark. You also start out with two bitches. Your bitches serve several functions. They carry drugs, they carry guns, and, most importantly, they act as human shields. These are some dumb bitches! They’ll take a bullet for you. Building up your bitches is like building up an army.
First things first though, you’ve got to pay back the loanshark, and, of course, that loan earns interest fast, so the quicker you get the money back, the better. If you don’t get it back fast enough, you’re gonna get roughed up in a major way by the loanshark’s little baby sharks.
You earn money to pay back the loanshark, buy you some bitches, and acquire lots and lots of wealth by hopping from borough to borough, and all over Manhattan, buying drugs cheap and selling them for profit. Once you become educated in the average price range of the drugs, your money starts piling up in a way that makes you wonder if you should become a dealer for real. Earn enough money and you can start building your bitch army and equipping them with guns of multiple calibers. The bigger your bitch army and the better your guns, the better you’ll do in your face offs with the cops, and occasionally other players.
Dope Wars is completely and utterly tasteless, and a total fuckin’ blast. Don’t be such a prude and try a game, but, be advised, if you run into cheezwhiz in the Bronx, I won’t hesitate to blow your ass away.
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June 21st, 2007 Riley
I start a job on July 2nd, a job that, while not as bad as the jobs I’ve had in the past (at least I’m hoping), is still a job that will shape and define me for the next bit of my life, which is, I’m not going to lie here, somewhat devastating. Right now my focus has become singular and overwhelming, and it’s a disturbing motivation that I rarely feel the need to explore: money. Money. What a fucking waste.
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June 18th, 2007 Riley
I know that my great aunt is eighty-seven years old and spent her entire life in a po-dunk town with a po-dunk frame of mind, so I accept the fact that she is, for no better way to put it, a bigot. What bothers me is that she expects me to share in her bigoted world views, and feels the need to proclaim them to me. I want to be respectful, but she makes it really, really difficult. I end up incredibly angry the majority of the time when I get off the phone with her, because I have held my tongue and then feel as if I am condoning her bigotry.
The other day, it happened to be a conversation about a woman I went to high school with a lifetime ago. The conversation was tedious, first of all, because it was ten years ago and we weren’t the best of friends and I honestly don’t care what this woman is doing. It’s the purpose of these conversations with my aunt that always really drive me up the wall though. There is always something negative to report, and this one is always one of my favorites. Apparently, the woman I went to high school with is getting married and there is a rumor that it is to a, *GASP*, black man.
Well, sound the alarm and hold the fuckin’ presses. An interracial couple? What great strife this revelation has caused me! How will I ever go on? And the real kicker for me about this is that she knows that I am gay! How does she think I am going to react to the news of an interracial couple? With revulsion? I know that’s how she wants me to react.
History lesson: Interracial marriage was legalized in this slow-ass puritan society in 1967. Gay marriage is still an issue that won’t be resolved any time in the near future. So, let’s bring some focus here. I, not my friend from high school, am the abomination. I am the social deviant. If I had been in Salem three hundred years ago, I would have likely been convicted of witchcraft and burned at the stake (which would have been kind of cool actually).
“She’s old and set in her ways.” I try to think this to keep from getting angry with her, but it doesn’t always work. My main issue is that she feels the need to consistently whisper those thoughts in my ear, and she’s not the only old, set in her ways person who is doing it. While I have my will and I like to think it’s strong, there are a lot of people a lot more susceptible than me.
Ah, old people and The Bible, keeping the world intolerant since 1455.
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June 16th, 2007 Riley
You know all of those stories about the ugly, unpopular duckling who takes abuse during their awkward phase, but then turns into a social butterfly and becomes beloved? How a duckling turns into a butterfly, I’m not sure. Just try to ignore the biological impossibilities and go with the cliché-heavy analogy of it all. When exactly does all of this happen, I wonder, and why is the duckling suddenly so comfortable and assured and happy in his or her new skin?
I don’t mean to disrespect my elders and shit on their attempt at deluding the young, but come on, seriously. I get the whole “things may be bad for you now, but they will change” moral, but I am just not going to accept the glossing over of the middle. Fables are not the Bible. Main characters can’t just disappear partway through and reappear years later with no explanation.
I want to read the part of the story about the duckling’s therapy. I want to know the dialogue that occurred as the duckling worked through its little duckling issues. Then, later, when the duckling became its swan self, I want to know why exactly the duckling was all relaxed and cool. Where was the fucking neurosis?
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June 15th, 2007 Riley
As previously mentioned, we are currently poor. It happens. One way of trying to combat this state of sluggish economic well-being is to write articles for online sources for very little cash. I recently submitted an article to one of these sources and it was rejected due to a line being “inappropriately flippant”.
Let’s review.
flip·pant
–adjective
1. frivolously disrespectful, shallow, or lacking in seriousness; characterized by levity
Yes, yes, that’s me in a nutshell.
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June 14th, 2007 Riley
Every time I punch the wall lately, the wall punches back. The other day, I was gazing longingly at the Louisville Slugger I keep at my bedside to ward off intruders and fast-pitch softballs, and thinking how much I wanted to do some damage to the cheap furnishings I put together myself. Then I thought about the wall hitting back and figured if the bat did that too, I would likely end up with a concussion.
I have always felt bad for the people who have to go into the emergency room and tell the doctors that they like fell out of the harness that hangs from the ceiling in their bedroom or tumbled off their roof when they were spying on the MILF next door in the shower, but I imagine getting clocked by an unmanned baseball bat would be met with the same kind of horror-struck stare.
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June 12th, 2007 Riley
The Quote: “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples, then you and I will still each have an apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”
So simple and yet so freaking awesome. Any material possession that we can acquire in this world, and don’t get me wrong, there are things that I want, depreciates instantly upon purchase. Except for real estate, but that’s only because this country is getting truly out of control with inflation. But clothing, media, electronics, and all of those other household-type things become worth less the moment they pass through our hands. And we will likely get bored with them too, and then they are worth nothing to us either.
This quote encompasses a lot of what creativity is about for me. You make something from nothingness and it instantaneously has infinite worth. The more that is created, the more worth the world has overall. When people share ideas and creations, everyone gets richer.
But day-to-day life is mostly about acquiring, not creating. And most people are more concerned with investing than inventing. Some may grow in wealth, but they remain part of a human race that is continually growing poorer in substance. It requires too much effort to fashion precious metal, so we mass-produce fool’s gold and we all tarnish.
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June 10th, 2007 Riley
When money is tight and you need a naturally fun upper, there is nothing like a little t-ball soccer.
Ingredients: One tennis ball, two people, a linoleum or hardwood floor, and a gaggle of miscellaneous household items to mark goals. Our shitty apartment just happens to have doorways in the kitchen that are directly across from each other, but we still use our miscellaneous household items (a jug of vinegar here, a bottle of oil there) to block off pathways, so we don’t end up with a tennis ball behind the refrigerator or something.
Directions: Like soccer with a team of one. You must try to kick the tennis ball through the opponent’s goal (doorway) while defending your own goal (doorway) at the same time.
Health benefits: For an activity that takes place in an eight by four room, you can work up quite a sweat if you’re enthusiastic.
Possible dangers: If you are too enthusiastic though, you could send the ball anywhere, including the stovetop if you play in the kitchen. I wouldn’t recommend playing while cooking. I’d also advise removing breakables from the immediate area.
Outcome: A general feeling of euphoric giddiness, and a tally mark in either the win or loss column. So far I have been assured both the euphoria and the defeat.
Regulations still being considered: Should there be a handicap? I don’t want to be a sore loser, but is it possible that maybe, just maybe, Shawna’s gargantuan feet are giving her the tiniest bit of an advantage in t-ball soccer? I mean, all she has to do it turn her feet to the sides and her size elevens go practically from door frame to door frame.
Posted in Life Lessons, Ultimate Guilty Pleasures | 4 Comments »
June 9th, 2007 Riley
You know you’re in trouble when it’s 12:47 in the a.m. and you are sitting up laughing together about the fact that your car insurance was cancelled without notification and you’ve spent the day driving around without it, you get new car insurance at double the price of the old one, you have twice as much money going out monthly as is coming into your household, and nobody wants to dismantle your bed.
My nephew, Noah, he does this thing that’s kind of hard to explain, but basically looks like a ninety-year-old mute man trying to show his extreme confusion over a situation. It’s like a half shrug, half beats the fuck out of me expression, and it really fits the mood right now. I wish he were here to do it for me.
Posted in Life Lessons | 2 Comments »
