Sycophantic Laughter

A Not So Good Draft Strategy

2016-08-03T13:34:00.000-04:00

As a sports fan I find sports analysis interesting, but not in an informative way. When I listen to sports analysis, even from the "experts," I can't help but think that all of it is absolute bullshit. Sports analysis is bullshit because it's all opinion and I can form my own opinion on sports things. I do enjoy some people's analysis, but really I just respect their opinion. I find it particularly amusing to listen to the analysts that over analyze the living crap out of sports. So in honor of over analyzing things that don't really matter, let's take a look at my horrible 2016 fantasy baseball draft, best summed up as a heaping pile of burning excrement. All the inside information on my genius strategy on building the worst offense in the league starts here.

First, here's a little background information on my fantasy sports career. I've participated in fantasy sports since 2005 according to Yahoo! Sports, meaning I began playing fantasy sports when I was in high school. However, I have not actively participated in any of the leagues I've been in. By that I mean that I hadn't participated in any live drafts until 2014 when some friends and I tried out a fantasy English Premier League. And in most of the leagues I participated in I lost interest at some point and completely checked out and didn't do anything including updating the roster. So this 2016 baseball season is only the second live draft I've done and I do plan on paying attention to my terrible team all the way to the bitter end of this dreadful campaign. Also, I'm not going through all 30 rounds of the draft because that would take to much time and effort for absolutely no reason because let's be honest here, no one cares. But, without further ado, here's round one!

1st Round

In the first round I had the 6th overall pick and it's really hard to screw up the first round. I saw Clayton Kershaw on the board and wasted no time in selecting the stud left-handed starter. I love Clayton Kershaw, he's one of my favorite people that I've never met. Not only is he one of the best pitchers today and probably all time, but he seems like a really great dude. I remember after the season he won the NL Cy Young award and NL MVP award he was asked how he was going to celebrate and he said he was going to have some friends over to play ping pong and Super Smash Brothers. He sounds just like my group of friends. Needless to say Kershaw was a fantastic pick, posting numbers to earn himself the number one overall spot on the fantasy point leaderboards all the way up until just before the All-Star break when he went on the DL with a back injury. He's been on the DL ever since. That's just bad luck, but nonetheless, my first round pick is a non-factor now.

I love Clayton Kershaw

Despite Kershaw landing on the DL, I don't regret the pick at all because he was performing exactly how I hoped he would putting up dazzling numbers including a ludicrous strikeout to walk ration. Here's a complete list of the first round picks:

1. Mike Trout
2. Bryce Harper
3. Paul Goldschmidt
4. Josh Donaldson
5. Andrew McCutchen
6. Clayton Kershaw
7. Nolan Arenado
8. Carlos Correa
9. Manny Machado
10. Giancarlo Stanton
11. Anthony Rizzo
12. Kris Bryant

Also worth noting, even though Kershaw hasn't pitched since June 26th, he's still ranked number 2 overall in fantasy rankings as of today, August 1st, 2016. That's how good a season he was having up until his back injury.

2nd Round

With the 17th overall pick I took Buster Posey, eligible for both catcher and first base. Posey has been relatively consistent this year, currently ranked 133rd overall in Yahoo! Fantasy sports. However, in retrospect I think I should have looked to get a slugger here. Posey is sitting at 12 homers on the season in the heart of a not so powerful Giant's offense. Players like Nelson Cruz and Ryan Braun (but I'm not a fan of him) were still available, but Posey's consistent performance is always a good thing to have, but I think in the future I should look for more pop in the first position player drafted. Round 2 results:

1. Max Scherzer
2. Miguel Cabrera
3. Jose Altuve
4. Edwin Encarnacion
5. Mookie Betts
6. Jose Abreu
7. Buster Posey
8. Jose Bautista
9. Dee Gordon
10. A.J Pollock
11. Jake Arrieta
12. Charlie Blackmon

3rd Round

With the 30th overall pick in the 3rd round I selected J.D. Martinez with the pop aspect of his game in mind. Martinez was having a pretty good season until he whacked his arm into the outfield wall tracking down a fly ball. At the time of the injury Martinez was hitting .286 with 12 homers, but he's been on the shelf for a long ass time now. So yeah, both my first and third round picks are on the shelf. Still just bad luck as far as my assessment goes.

1. Starling Marte

2. George Springer

3. Xander Bogaerts

4. Joey Votto

5. Madison Bumgarner

6. J.D. Martinez

7. Jose Fernandez

8. Jacob deGrom

9. Chris Sale

10. Ryan Braun

11. Nelson Cruz

12. Matt Harvey (talk about an unfortunate pick for the 2016 season for this guy!)

4th Round

Round four. I think I went off the rails here and made a bad pick. I took Miguel Sano with the 43rd overall pick. I picked Sano hoping for some more power, which Sano has displayed a bit with 15 homers currently, but 15 homers and a .241 average is not worth a fourth round selection. In the future I think I'll stick with taking more proven players with a good track record in the early rounds, make an attempt to get some reliable production. Nothing against Sano, but he doesn't have the track record to expect a certain type of production throughout the season. Not the wisest pick here in my hindsight estimation.

1. Zack Greinke

2. Prince Fielder

3. David Price

4. Carlos Gonzalez

5. Chris Davis

6. Corey Kluber

7. Miguel Sano

8. Adam Jones

9. Justin Upton

10. Yoenis Cespedes

11. Gerrit Cole

12. Kyle Schwarber

5th Round

Onto the 5th round and another injury! With the 54th overall pick I took Lorenzo Cain. Now I think Cain is a great fantasy player because he hits some homers, generally gets a good amount of hits, and he can steal bases. Lots of great fantasy tools! He's been kind of a streaky hitter this year going on some nice runs and then putting forward little offensive production for a stretch of games. Then he got hurt, too! He's back now, but only just recently back from the disabled list. For a decent amount of time My 1st, 3rd, and 5th round draft picks were all sitting on the bench/DL (because each player is only allowed to have two people on the distinguished DL slots otherwise they have to take up a spot on your bench/roster).

1. Felix Hernandez

2. Adrian Gonzalez

3. Todd Frazier

4. Carlos Gomez (another unfortunate draft pick)

5. Noah Syndergaard

6. Lorenzo Cain

7. Robinson Cano

8. Dallas Keuchel

9. Stephen Strasburg

10. Eric Hosmer

11. Jason Heyward

12. Brian Dozier

6th Round

I got really unlucky on this pick when I selected Sonny Gray to bolster my pitching. Gray has been a very good pitcher and the Athletics ace over the past few years. I saw this as a relatively safe bet pick, but holy crap has Sonny Gray had a dreadful season. I don't know if there's something wrong with the dude, but he's been getting hammered almost every single game to the point where I don't start him and always feel reluctant to do so. Gray currently has a 1.52 WHIP and 5.84 ERA which is unbelievably bad for a pitcher of his caliber. At this point I have very little hope that Gray will turn it around because I've been thinking that for months now. I also don't think I should blame myself for this pick because, honestly, who could have seen this dreadful season for Gray?

1. Matt Kemp

2. Jason Kipnis

3. Matt Carpenter

4. Chris Archer

5. Yasiel Puig

6. Carlos Carrasco

7. Sonny Gray

8. Kyle Seager

9. Michael Brantley

10. Adrian Beltre

11. Freddie Freeman

12. Troy Tulowitzki

7th Round

During the 7th round of the draft I went down to the subway station to pick my dad up and unsuccessfully attempted to monitor the draft from my mobile device. So Adam Wainwright was auto-drafted for me in this round. I don't think I would have selected Wainwright here and he had a really bad beginning to his season, but he's been pitching pretty well recently, including picking up a coveted complete game. He could be a very valuable piece for the rest of the season.

1. Johnny Cueto

2. Corey Seager

3. Jon Lester

4. Francisco Lindor

5. David Ortiz

6. Adam Wainwright

7. Jonathan Lucroy

8. Rougned Odor

9. Cole Hamels

10. Danny Salazar

11. Jacoby Ellsbury

12. Albert Pujols

8th Round

Missed this round, too and the computer made another selection I don't think I would have made: Kenley Jansen. Jansen has had a great season, so clearly the computer is a much better drafter than me. I probably would have selected some unproven clown or someone who would have gone on to get an injury.

1. Wade Davis

2. Hunter Pence

3. Craig Kimbrel

4. Tyson Ross

5. Anthony Rendon

6. David Peralta

7. Kenley Jansen

8. Mark Melancon

9. Trevor Rosenthal

10. Ian Kinsler

11. Hanley Ramirez

12. Michael Wacha

9th Round

And I'm back in time to make another ill pick in the form of Ben Revere. Revere has a .209 average during his play time this year! I made this pick in the hopes that Revere would get on base a lot, steal a decent amount of bases, and score a bunch of runs in a pretty good Nationals offense. He proved me right by doing close to jack shit! Another winner selection! I should have stayed out of the draft and let the computer make another selection.

1. Adam Eaton

2. Maikel Franco

3. Francisco Liriano

4. Aroldis Chapman

5. Gregory Polanco

6. Ben Revere

7. Ken Giles

8. Christian Yelich

9. Jeurys Familia

10. Zach Britton

11. Garrett Richards

12. Brett Gardner

10th Round

Here's another boneheaded decision. I went with Addison Russel here. What a bad pick. Russel has hit a good amount of homers for a second baseman and has driven in a bunch of runs because of how potent the Cubs offense has been this year. But he's extremely streaky. He'll go off for a short time, like two or three games, but then he'll hit like .150 for a week. I think this was a bad pick because again, this is a young unproven player with a very limited track record. In the future I think I'm going to alter my strategy and take these types of players much later on in the draft. Even ten rounds in I don't think taking Russel here is worth it.

1. Kole Calhoun

2. Evan Longoria

3. Ian Desmond (talk about a great pick)

4. Cody Allen

5. David Robertson

6. Shin-soo Choo

7. Addison Russel

8. Marcus Stroman

9. Carlos Martinez

10. Salvador Perez

11. Ben Zobrist

12. Jordan Zimmerman

11th Round

I selected shortstop Brandon Crawford in the 11th round with the 126th overall pick. Crawford was coming off a very good offensive year for a shortstop and I'm a fan of him, even though his great defense pays absolutely no dividends in this particular fantasy league. He's currently 315th in the fantasy leader boards, so maybe not the best pick here. Looking over this draft, I think I was drafting more like I was building a real baseball team as opposed to a fantasy baseball team which basically consists of picking stat generating monsters regardless of their other skills/short comings. Another dude I like a lot as a baseball player, but probably could have got someone of his caliber a bit later in the draft. But who knows!

1. Kendrys Morales

2. Hector Rondon

3. Alex Gordon

4. A.J. Ramos

5. Kolten Wong

6. Brandon Crawford
7. Masahiro Tanaka

8. Justin Verlander

9. Brandon Belt

10. Brian McCann

11. Michael Pineda

12. Russell Martin

12th Round

Now here was an ill yielding chance pick. Jorge Soler. Here's a guy I thought might have a breakout season with the Cubs and their very potent looking offense. Not only did Soler get injured and land on the DL, too, but he is having the opposite of a breakout season. The dude has 5 homers and is hitting .223, but I still have him on my team. Probably not worth it since the Soler has had practically no fantasy value. Definite fail pick based on the hopes of a breakout season for a player again without a track record.

1. Randal Grichuk

2. John Lackey

3. Raisel Iglesias

4. Joc Pederson

5. Jake Odorizzi

6. Lucas Duda

7. Jorge Soler

8. Steven Matz

9. Matt Holliday

10. Curtis Granderson

11. Travis d'Arnaud

12. James Shields

13th Round

We're off the rails again! Byung Ho Park! What in the hell was I thinking? I drafted Byung Ho Park here, yet another guy with no track record in the MLB and a guy who I dropped a while ago because he barely gets any hits. Sure he hits a decent amount of homers, but overall there's not much offensive production outside of the long balls. Not to mention that he's no longer even on the Twins because he got sent down to the minors. That's right, the Minnesota Twins sent him down to the minors. If that's not a bad sign, then I don't know what is. Absolutely dreadful pick. But wait, there's more, queue the 14th round!

1. Huston Street

2. Jonathan Papelbon

3. Dexter Fowler

4. Collin McHugh

5. Daniel Murphy

6. Byung Ho Park

7. Francisco Rodriguez

8. Stephen Piscotty

9. Billy Hamilton

10. Jay Bruce

11. Taijuan Walker

12. Trevor Story

14th Round

Look, another dud pick, this time with Shawn Tolleson! Tolleson was relatively good last year as the Rangers' closer and I thought it's good to have closers. To say Tolleson has been smacked around this year is an understatement. He's another player that I dropped quite some time ago and his ERA for my fantasy team was 10.13. Somehow he racked up 11 saves, but he was an overall hindrance to my team's pitching performance for many weeks. That's back to back draft picks that I dropped for bad performance. You could say I have the Midas touch for fantasy drafts.

1. Billy Burns

2. Elvis Andrus

3. Carlos Rodon

4. Yu Darvish

5. Michael Conforto

6. Khris Davis

7. Shawn Tolleson

8. Matt Duffy

9. Corey Dickerson

10. Shelby Miller

11. Glen Perkins

12. Dustin Pedroia

Okay, let's speed this up. Let's take a look at the rest of the draft quickly and you can draw your own conclusions about how bad a fantasy drafter I am, if you're even reading this far into something that has no bearing on anything.

15th Round: Josh Harrison (good player, but not necessarily a good fantasy player)

16th Round: Jason Hammel (so far so good with Hammel, he's having a very good season at the back end of the Cub's rotation)

17th Round: Chris Colabello (had a great year last season, got suspended for PED use early in the year and I dropped him! definitely another dud pick)

18th Round: Dellin Betances (he's the Yankees' closer now after the trades of Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman. Also he strikes out a whole bunch of people, so I'd consider this a decent pick)

19th Round: Francisco Cervelli (no power, he's gone cold, not looking like a good fantasy pick)

20th Round: Roberto Osuna (this was a great pick! Osuna is the Blue Jays' closer and he's pretty damn good!)

Seems appropriate about now, especially the football part

Right, this has gone on far too long and is much too silly. Enough of this nonsense. I set out on this path in an effort to show how terribly I drafted for fantasy baseball 2016, but what we got was this crap. Hopefully you didn't waste your time reading this garbage. Have a nice day!

Some Movies Make Me Sad for All the Wrong Reasons

2016-08-01T19:05:00.000-04:00

Every once in a while I watch some news stories on the television. Practically every time I see a news story someone else is watching t.v. and has the news on, I don't seek out the news, but this past week I saw a brief story on one of the California news channels about a church offering people lessons on how to use handguns. I would link to any information regarding this story, but my lazy Google searches have returned no evidence of this story, so you'll have to take my word for it or just dismiss this as something stupid from my demented mind. The choice is yours. I saw this story and thought about the advertisement I see all over the place for the new Jason Bourne movie that just came out. I'm aware that the newest Bourne movie isn't getting many favorable reviews early on and I haven't seen it, but I think I know what the next Bourne movie should be about. I'll lay it out for you right here. See Jason Bourne as you've never seen him before in religious garb. This summer Jason is all in for the church in Bourne Again.

Comedy!

Alright, I digress from that idea which I will not describe with any adjectives. What I would like to discuss with myself here are movies, an entertainment medium that I very much enjoy, and a sad trend in the goal of movies. The movies I like best consist of an interesting story with a character or characters that the viewer actually gives a damn about. Now there are differences in what makes a good movie that are completely depending on the genre of movie. What makes a good comedy is completely different from what makes a good horror movie and what makes a good drama is completely different from what makes a good sci-fi adventure, etc. Also I'd like to take the time to acknowledge that I am fully aware that I'm a moron before I delve further into this, but I am sad that some movie makers have foregone making movies with good stories in an effort to push an agenda or pander to a certain group of people, or appeal to the largest amount of people. I've become a fan of Bret Easton Ellis' podcast recently and I particularly find his thoughts on movie making today interesting, especially when he touches on how ideology is trumping aesthetics a lot now. I know nobody cares what I think because I'm a nobody, but just because a movie is about a real life issue of importance doesn't mean that the movie is good. I feel like if a movie is about slavery you are expected to like it regardless of how good it is or else you're a racist. If the movie is about an empowered female lead and you don't like the movie, then you're a sexist. How about making a good movie?

Adventure!

Personally I'd like to see all the pandering and agenda pushing go away. I watch movies for entertainment. Sometimes I want to go on an adventure, sometimes I want to laugh until my eyes tear up, sometimes I want to get a scare that makes it hard to sleep at night, and sometimes I want to have whatever kind of an experience dramas engender, a dramatic experience I guess. I want buzz surrounding a movie because of the interesting story it's going to tell, but now a lot of the big headlines about movies have to do with social issues and to me social issues and entertainment do not go together. For example, I recently saw a report about the new Star Trek movie before it came out about how one of the characters is gay. All I could think about was why in the hell does that matter? I don't see characters in movies and instantly think I wonder if that guy wants to make out with the female character or take it in the ass. Especially in a movie like Star Trek where I can't imagine how a character's sexual orientation could matter. Then at the end of last week I read the intro to an article about a new Rocketeer movie. I remember watching that movie as a little kid and enjoying it so I was thinking "oh cool, there's going to be a new Rocketeer movie!" I only made it through one paragraph that said the new Rocketeer is going to be an African-American woman before I stopped reading. Again, why does that matter? Why is that the highlight of a new Rocketeer movie? I feel like whoever is making this movie is expecting praise just because of who is playing the lead role. The safety net has already been cast, if you don't like the movie, then you are a sexist and a racist. But obviously you can't have an opinion on a movie that hasn't come out yet.

Horror!

An important thing to take into account here, too is my age. I'm in the mid-twenties, twenty-six to be exact, so my overall scope is limited. I can't comment on the movies trends from decades ago, I'm merely reacting to what's going on now, but I believe this is a recent trend that has grown stronger over the past decade or so. The new Ghostbusters movie fits into this agenda pushing trend. I haven't seen it and I don't plan to because after seeing the trailers it simply didn't look like a movie I'd want to see. For one I wouldn't call myself a Ghostbusters fan, I've seen the first one which is good, but I never thought it was one of the best movies I'd seen or a personal favorite. Another reason I won't go see it is because of how Sony Pictures treated the people online for disliking the trailer and expressing negative opinions. Of course it's not a good thing to post hurtful comments, but remember this is the internet we're speaking about and as BanditIncorporated said, you can't out troll the internet trolls. Plus those people should be the target audience for a Ghostbusters movie. Lastly, I won't go watch this movie because from the reviews I've listened to the humor is not the humor of the first Ghostbusters movie and there is no horror element like the first Ghostbusters movie. Those two things are really what made the first Ghostbusters movie the popular movie it is. From what I have garnered from reviews is that Ghostbusters 2016 is a forgettable story centered around a whole bunch of dumb people with a whole lot of CGI. Simply, it's not a movie I'm interested in watching. I also get the impression that some of the people who like Ghostbusters 2016 like it because the men in the movie are stupid and the main characters are female and there's a part in the movie where the Ghostbusters shoot a ghost in the balls region. I hope my impression is wrong because it saddens me if people like a movie for those reasons.

Action!

I also believe that the newest Star Wars movie titled The Force Awakens is part of the we have to please certain people trend. This is a movie I have seen and if you've read my previous post, then you know I don't like it. In short, I didn't like The Force Awakens because I thought the story was weak and rushed along with lots of character issues for both old and new characters. I'm just a nobody, dumbass, but I could come up with some more interesting ideas for episode seven than what was in The Force Awakens which was more like a remake of the original Star Wars movies but a little different. Enough with these reboots and remakes of good movies of the past with new spins and bring back new ideas with fresh plot lines and characters.

Satire!

On an unrelated note, I've started a new blog dedicated to dumb short stories that cook inside my demented mind. I give you Absurdly Twisted Shorts! Follow the link if you'd like to read my dumb crap. Just made my first published post the other day and I might add some artwork to it which will most likely be very bad, but artwork nonetheless.

Drama!

Well, that's all I've got for now. Have a wonderful day!

Sci-Fi!

Something Amiss

2016-07-13T14:42:00.000-04:00

For the better part of the past twelve months I've been attempting to make sense of a world that makes no sense. I left the job I had for over two years because I was incredibly unhappy. I left the region of the country I'd spent the past 15 years of my life in because the climate is hell to me. I have a bachelors degree in business from a legitimate university. I thought I could leave a place I dislike and find a decent job, but all I've found is disappointment and failure. Not enough experience, long gap of unemployment, no advanced certification or degree, all reasons no one will hire me. After over one hundred job applications and many interviews culminating at best in an email about going in a different direction, and at worst no response whatsoever, I find myself losing interest in the search, wondering why I even bother, and not understanding.

The only conclusion I draw is quite simple: I don't fit in. And honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way.

How Good is The Force Awakens?

2016-06-29T18:11:00.000-04:00

Let's attack the highly debated Star Wars franchise on the offensive. The Force Awakens is my least favorite installment in the Star Wars movie franchise. Star Wars popular opinion states that the original trilogy is good, but go ahead and talk crap about Return of the Jedi, and the prequels exist as an utter load of garbage. Now I do agree that the original trilogy is the best, headlined by The Empire Strikes back, a gloriously good movie, but I don't hate on Return of the Jedi and I don't think The Force Awakens is good, much less better than the prequels. Having watched and read many reviews and takes on The Force Awakens over the last few months I've noticed the first point of discussion I'd like to tackle: a plethora of people annoyed that people didn't like the prequels because they weren't anything like the original trilogy and now people don't like The Force Awakens because it's too much like the original trilogy. I don't believe that's the issue here and in order to come to that conclusion we need to look at what the prequels represent and what the new trilogy of Star Wars movies represent.

Since the prequels tell George Lucas' Star Wars story from the beginning, I'd like to look at that trilogy first. Essentially the prequels represent the rise of the Dark Side threat in the galaxy through Darth Sidius (Senator Palpatine) and Darth Vader, and the dismantling of the Jedi, the protectors of the galaxy. Now by no means is this well done in the prequels, however, if you take the story's concepts, then it fits into the original trilogy just fine. I don't believe anyone has any qualms over the overarching story of Darth Sidius seducing Anakin Skywalker to the Dark Side while rising to power politically. The issue with the prequels is in the execution. All three prequel installments have major issues that deserve all the criticism they receive and no, the prequels are nothing like the original trilogy, but I don't think they were intended to. The prequels show how Palpatine rose to power and turned Anakin Skywalker into his apprentice. Episodes four through six tell the story of the return of the Jedi to protect the galaxy once again by vanquishing the Empire and it's Dark Side gifted leaders. Two trilogies telling two different stories are not going to have the exact same arcs with the same elements and same tone/feel. All the bad that people bring up about the prequels, in my experience, have to do with execution, not so much the overarching story. I do agree that in comparison to the original trilogy, the prequels are not good movies, but I would argue that the problem with the prequels lies in the execution of the story telling.

In comparison to the prequels, the new Star Wars trilogy, now in the hands of corporate giant Disney, is much more abstract because complete freedom exists in the direction of the story. After the original trilogy came out, labeled as episode four through six, it makes sense that episodes one through three would show how the Star Wars universe got to episode four as previously discussed. Then at the end of Return of the Jedi, the conclusion of the original trilogy (episode six), the Jedi assisted the rebels in overthrowing the Empire and it's quest to rule the galaxy by taking down the overseeing leader Darth Sidius and his apprentice Darth Vader. Return of the Jedi ends on a happy note with Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbaka, Lando, etc. surviving the war in space, land, and on spaceship and everyone rejoices with parties galore! From a moviegoers perspective all is well in the Star Wars galaxy, good guys win. If anyone wants to continue the Star Wars saga from that point forward there's a lot of freedom. Now we can finally get into The Force Awakens.

The Force Awakens is titled Star Wars Episode VII and takes place about 30 years after the events of Return of the Jedi with all our heroes from the previous trilogy still breathing. Calling this movie episode seven means that it is a continuation of the first six movies, but I take issue here because The Force Awakens doesn't tell a new story. The problem is not that The Force Awakens is too much like the original trilogy, the problem is that it is the original trilogy, most specifically Episode IV: A New Hope. I know that a countless number of people have pointed out the plot similarities between the original trilogy and The Force Awakens, but it's an issue that cannot be ignored. In terms of style and feel, I don't think the original trilogy and The Force Awakens have much in common at all, all the commonalities lie in the plot which is the reason people criticize the movie. The Force Awakens is more a remake of A New Hope than a continuation of the saga. I will not go over all the similarities in the plot, there are plenty of videos on YouTube on that subject, I just wanted to point out that The Force Awakens suffers from borrowing too much from the original trilogy and telling the same story we've already experienced. We'll have to wait for the rest of the trilogy to come out before passing final judgement on the overarching story, but I take issue with that direction: no one knows what Luke Skywalker is up to, the lead villain Kylo Ren already suffered defeat at the hand of the protagonist, and is the New Order just another name for the Empire? What was the point of the movie? What is The Force Awakens about? The plot and story of The Force Awakens did not peak my interest in a what's going to happen next way. After the Episode IV: A New Hope we knew that Luke's father was a Jedi and Ben Kenobi had been a mentor to Anakin Skywalker. We knew that Ben Kenobi told Luke that Darth Vader had murdered Anakin and at the end of the movie Vader takes down Kenobi. We knew that the Empire had been set back by the destruction of the Death Star at the hands of the rebels, but the Empire had not been destroyed. Luke tells Ben Kenobi that he wants to follow in his father's footsteps and become a Jedi Knight. We know that going forward we'll see Luke's path of struggle to Jedi Knighthood and the rebels' uphill battles to stop the Empire for good. There's a general sense of what's going to happen in the next installments. As for the prequels, we knew Episode II would be a continuation of the Anakin Skywalker story as well as Palpatine's rise and his attempts to dismantle the Jedi. The story of The Force Awakens leaves so many unanswered questions that it's hard to draw any conclusions about where the story is going. Since The Force Awakens tells an extremely similar story to A New Hope, I'm guessing the rest of the new Disney Star Wars trilogy will be about the rebels/Jedi going against the power of the New Order who want to conquer the galaxy and the next installment will probably be called something like Star Wars Episode VIII: The New Order Retaliates.

After walking out of the theater at the end of The Force Awakens, I remember thinking quite hard about what I thought of the movie. At first my reaction was that it was just alright, but I felt disingenuous even giving it an alright. The Force Awakens, at it's core, is a very hollow film that really meant nothing at all to me. The story was very familiar and I couldn't find a reason to care about anything that had happened. The movie felt like a nonstop roller coaster ride rushing from scene to scene without any reason to stop and think about what happened or how it made me feel, never mind giving any explanation for what had happened. The Force Awakens relies on references to the original trilogy and characters from the original trilogy to plow through an uninspired story. I think The Force Awakens suffers from lack of an original, well thought out story poorly developed new characters. I found the new characters rushed into the plot and contradictory to established personalities/skills at times, but these are stories for another time (see what I did there).I wanted to establish my view on The Force Awakens on a macro level before getting into the precise details of why I'm not a fan of the film. Also stumbled across a great article about what The Force Awakens is about, if you're interested and have some time to spare click here to read it! In conclusion, I think The Force Awakens is a below average movie and, as previously stated, my least favorite Star Wars movie. I'm also fully aware that I'm a moron so no need to take any of this seriously. If I ever get around to blogging some more about Star Wars, I'm thinking of writing about the moments in The Force Awakens that took me out of the movie in a "what the hell?" kind of way and an exploration of the characters new and old. Thanks for reading!

Beware the Resume Police

2016-04-01T19:16:00.000-04:00

Every person and every generation has different burdens to trudge through. Now I don't claim to know what the world, or more specifically the United States, was like before my time, but I do have observations on today's USA. I'm 26 years old, I've graduated from college with a bachelor's degree, I worked for three years, and now I'm unemployed with issues finding a new job. Now, I did leave my last job intentionally because I did not like the job and I don't believe in compromising my own sanity for a job. All it takes is one bad day. I left the job at the end of May of 2015, right around ten months ago. Since then I've been looking for a position that fits me better, which I'm still on the hunt for. Just last week I had a conversation with a job recruiter about why I left my last job and what I'm looking for now. She asked me about my interest in accounts payable, which I have no interest in doing long term because honestly I feel like that kind of job is far below my intellect and I don't see any useful career path in accounts payable. Where do you go from there? In my estimation, the recruiter's tone changed when I told her that accounts payable isn't really what I want to do with my life. Her tone went from friendly to low key attacking me about how I've been out of work for almost a year and how I need to get something on my resume or else I'll never work again or something. I have a problem with this. I understand the importance of work experience, but I have a problem with my personal situation. I easily could have avoided this long gap of employment by not leaving my previous job, but staying in that position for another year doing the same exact things I had been doing for almost two years doesn't have much value to me except on a resume. Albert Einstein did say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This quote sums up how I felt about the job I had. Should I keep going to this job every week, doing the same work that drives me crazy and keep expecting the situation to improve? I waited for two years to see if the job would change for the better and the job didn't get better and from conversations with my boss it wasn't going to get any better any time soon. When I gave notice of my departure, my boss told me he didn't blame me for leaving.

So what does this all mean? Well, I think some archaic "rules" exist in our country, for example the gap in employment on my resume. A resume shows potential employers the qualifications of potential job candidates. The resume says "hey hiring person, this is what I've done for work and this is where I went to college." Why does it matter if I haven't had a professional job for ten months? I haven't forgotten everything I've learned or done at my previous jobs. To me, the gap in employment serves only as another device companies can use to say "no, we don't want to interview you." Looking at the interaction I had with the recruiter last week, I don't believe she gives a damn about me and how hard getting a job might be for me if I've been unemployed for a full year. I think she only cares because her job would be more difficult if she was trying to "sell me" to a potential employer. I do want to work and I don't want to make it hard for someone like this recruiter to help me find a job. My issue lies in how I got here. If I thought the best job I could obtain after college was paying bills, then I probably wouldn't have gone to college. I do believe an economic issue exists for Generation Y/Millennials with the increase in college attendees and graduates.

Sure, lots of people who go to college get great jobs and set down a very good career path. However, let us not forget about the people who, despite earning college degrees, don't find a great job right out of the gate. Unless you're a genius, someone like Bill Gates who doesn't need college to find success, the United States and I believe many other countries have adopted the ideology of college, an extended learning experience intended to foster a more intelligent work force. Here's the problem, earning a bachelor's degree now does not guarantee the same advantage it did even a generation ago. An increasing number of people with bachelor's degrees means more "qualified" candidates for positions deemed only for college degree holders. The types of jobs that have been presented to me over the past few months I believe are below my intellect, meaning I'm getting undervalued, and I think many more are in similar position. How do we as a country combat that? Go to grad school! I wonder if years from now graduate school will be the norm. Four years of undergrad, then one to four years of graduate school, and then you might be able to get a job paying bills! I mean, I know about synergy and vertical integration, what else do I really need to know?

One of the jobs pitched to me by a recruiter a couple weeks ago paid $35,000 annually. That's more than $10,000 per year less than what my previous job paid. Not to mention that the cost of living where I am now is generally higher than where I was living. I'm dumbfounded that one year of college costs more than many annual salaries of entry level jobs out there. Granted I did go to a private college, but the idea remains absurd to me. The aforementioned recruiter that began low key attacking me about getting something on my resume before a full year of unemployment asked me what I wanted to do. After the conversation ended, I kept thinking about that question. What do I want to do? Well, I know I don't want to pay bills or call people about money owed for the rest of my life. The real answer is I don't know. Really all I know right now is what I don't want to do because I've been there. I quit my job because I didn't like it and I realize not everyone can understand that or afford to take that type of action. But, given my position, I can leave my job and not end up on the street, for now at least. So you damn know I took that opportunity, not risk, but opportunity. Yes, there is risk in leaving a full time job at a stable company, but I also possess the freedom to explore other opportunities that have the very real potential to be better than what I was doing. And always remember, freedom is only a possibility if you're able to say no. I have said no to potential jobs over the past year because I'm holding out for something better. I don't see any value in going from one job I don't like to another job I won't like. Then the resume police would get on my case for job hopping, another resume sin to go along with employment gaps. What a load of shit.

Well, only time will tell if I'm doing the right thing or if I'm a huge moron. I'm not ruling out the moron part yet, but I'm definitely going to try to find the right job/lifestyle for me. I will not settle for a $35k per year job just yet. Lastly, if you've never read The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, please do, that story gets my full endorsement.

Unemployment: How I Pass Time

2016-02-29T19:38:00.001-05:00

Two weeks ago I was sitting in a forty degree house in Massachusetts and today I find myself sitting in the warm climate of Southern California. I spent two and a half months in Southern California at the end of last summer, now I'm back and I still have no idea what I'm doing. This past weekend my Dad and I were out on leisurely drive. While waiting for a stoplight to permit us advancement down the street, I peered out the widow to the street corner where I saw some dude. In typical big city fashion this dude was standing at the street corner begging for money, rather standard. What caught my eye was the sign this guy had propped up next to him, which read "Need Money for Weed Please." I love the brutal honesty. No bullshitting, just straight up I need money so I can purchase some marijuana. I would be willing to bet that a lot of the dudes begging for money most likely use any money donated to them for drugs and/or alcohol, but this was the first time I've seen someone openly ask for weed money via a handwritten sign. I think this dude should get extra credit points for honesty.

Now when I was in California last summer, while walking down the street, some other dude was walking down the street in the opposite direction coming toward me. Clearly this man was deranged, he was talking to himself some kind of gibberish. When we got to the point where we were passing each other, he looked over to me and said "like this ugly faced mother f**ker." I don't know how many people this disturbed guy calls an ugly faced mother f**ker a day, but I'll take it as a compliment and pretend he doesn't call people that all that often. Not to mention the guy in downtown LA who told me he was known as Batman and has been roaming the streets of LA for 27 years, longer than I've been alive at this point. There are a lot of strange people in big cities.

This is my second stint in LA within the last six months. The first stint ended with little progress and not much to speak about. Just some general disappointment and anger that I believe I wrote about months ago. This stint has picked up where the last one left off, so far useless with not much indication that I'm going to make anything of it. However, I don't want to discuss any of this east coast, west coast crap right now, I think I've done plenty of that over the past year. Specifically, I want to focus on what I do to not go insane during unemployment. I mentioned in my last post that I had to leave my last job to preserve my mental sanity and happiness. I was in a bad spot mentally a year ago driven by the hate for my job and supplemented by the insanely horrible winter the northeast had in 2014/2015. Since leaving that job, going on a whole bunch of interviews, working at a temp job for a month, and still not having a full time job about ten months later, I've managed to keep myself happy by tapping into the things that things I enjoy.

Let's begin with comedy. I love comedy. Without work, I spend countless hours each day listening to stand up routines and watching comedians on YouTube. I enjoy the work of comedians such as Dave Chappelle, George Carlin, Rodney Dangerfield, Stephen Wright, Jim Breur, Dan Cummins, and Daniel Tosh. However, currently my two favorite comedians to listen to are Bill Burr and Anthony Jeselnik. I listen to these two guys almost daily right now, their stand up routines, podcasts, roasts, anything they're involved in and damn they are hilarious. If I had to pick a spokesman for men, without a doubt I would pick Bill Burr. I like Bill Burr because he speaks the truth about everyday topics with a major shade of comedy. I think Bill is quite smart, even though he often says he doesn't read or research anything, but his observations are spot on.

Anthony Jeselnik is my favorite, though. I love that he tells offensive jokes and doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks. He enjoys when people get offended by his jokes and the he's an intelligent guy. I'm a huge fan of how he ended his show, The Jeselnik Offensive, by telling viewers to go read a book. And I love how he shits on people who don't read and aren't familiar with well know literary and historical facts in his stand up routines. If you think Anthony Jeselnik is funny, then you understand my sense of humor perfectly.

Another thing I do is play video games and I finally have a reason/understanding why. I'm reading a book titled Reality is Broken, check this out if you like playing games or if you just want to read something interesting about today's culture, which explains why people enjoy playing games. My short abbreviated synopsis type thing about the first couple chapters of Reality is Broken argues that people play games because the everyday grind of life is not satisfying for people. Many people have jobs that don't have clear cut end goals or a feedback system that shows progress toward your goal. Games, whether video games, mobile games, card games, board games, etc. all have clear cut objectives, a goal to accomplish, and indications on your progress in accomplishing the objective. That's why I play video games. I enjoy both single player games and online multiplayer games because I feel like I'm working toward a defined end goal and I can actually track my progress. Games are fun and allow us to continuously accomplish objectives unlike everyday life.

Check this book out!

Mention of Reality is Broken brings me to books, the final thing getting me through this strange time in life. At the beginning of the new year I decided I want to always have something to read. Once I finish a book, I want to begin another. I don't have a specific number of books I want to read in a given year, but I want to constantly read with no gaps. Right now I'm simultaneously reading Watchmen, 1984, and Reality is Broken. I'm going to finish Watchmen very soon, I'm at the later stages of the story, then I'll bring more focus back to Reality is Broken. Reality is Broken is more of an academic book, still great though, but I need to read something with a story which Watchmen and 1984 sufficiently provide. If you haven't read either of those titles, please check them out, both equal very good so far.

Back in high school, and even college, I didn't appreciate the power of literature. Now that I'm discovering how interesting books are and how much knowledge you can gain from them, I strongly encourage everyone to go pick up a book and give reading a chance. So there you have it, my recipe for enjoying myself: comedy, games, and reading. I'd like to leave you with this:

Unemployment: What Happens Next? Who Cares?

2016-02-25T19:07:00.001-05:00

Many months have passed since I held a full time job creating an abundance of free time. Free time dedicated to finding new work, but more importantly, free time to reflect. The past tells the story of a young man following the path created and manufactured by the generations of people before him. Go to school, go to college, earn a degree, obtain a job. Simple in design, yet complex in completion. What happens when the path ends in failure? Does blame fall on the individual or the system?

I left my last full time position because of the dreadful nature of the work. I knew every day I didn't quit meant at least two more weeks of misery. Eventually I snapped and gave notice of departure with no further plan. Call me shortsighted, stupid, whatever adjective you'd like, but I'd rather not torture myself given the choice to willingly stop the abuse. I didn't dedicate four years to college to take verbal abuse over the phone daily. Even without income for months, I'm happier now than under previous dreadful employment.

Hours spent scouring job postings and sending out resumes yielding less than desirable results leaves me wondering how did I get here? The largest issue lies in the actual work. I cannot find any work pertaining to my degree or work experience that I find marginally interesting. Apparently issue two involves my work experience. Job interviews I thought went well returned negative results with the hiring party choosing another candidate with more experience. The work experience monster and I met before..... just after graduation when my professional job experience rounded up to zero. Meeting the work experience monster again makes me feel like the past 3 years of my life spent working equals worthless.

One job interview stands out above the rest. While speaking with the CFO, which stands for certified f**king ordure in this special case, I got THE QUESTION: why did you leave your last job? I told him why. We spoke about the answer a bit, but he kept going back to that question: why did you leave your last job? This CFO, famous in my memory for at least a bit longer, asked me if looking back at that decision now, would I have made a different decision because of the job market and how long I'd been unemployed, if the decision was shortsighted. I looked him in the eye and told him I'd make the same decision again given the knowledge I have now. Needless to say, the job was offered to another candidate. Fine by me, I couldn't work for someone who presumes to know a thing about me after less than an hour of speaking with me. Maybe the person they did hire will shoot the place up one day, but who cares, they had good work experience and no long gaps of unemployment.

Unfortunately, telling the whole truth in interviews remains a non-option. Tales of unhappiness and feeling undervalued won't land a job. Before I quit, I hated myself every day I didn't quit. I hated commuting to work knowing my final destination was torture for next eight or nine hours. In the beginning I ate lunch at work, but in time I had to leave because the place made me sick. I broke two telephone receivers out of rage from the constant nagging and verbal abuse I received from customers. Also note that I have never worked in customer service or at a help desk, my function has always been in accounting, and at this particular job that meant dealing with any type of money issue a customer for the multi-million dollar company could have.

Do I need a career change? Do I need more schooling? Should I settle for a less than ideal job? Am I so damn strange that I don't fit into "system of life" instilled in our modern world? I don't know the answer to any of these questions. I don't need to know the answer to any of these questions. If I'm happy, that's all I care about. Right now, definitely not happy. Life feels constricted and contrived. Do this, then do this so you can have this and do that. The older I get the more I believe George Carlin:

I highly doubt the discovery of the meaning of life, hell, the movie Prometheus remains highly debatable, but I want to go through life laughing. I've been unemployed for several months and endured a whole bunch of rejection, I find all of it hilarious despite remaining in a constant state of predicament. Ultimately my contribution to society and the world equals meaningless. I want to spend time with friends, play games, and laugh at offensive jokes, that's my happiness equation. Friends+ games + offensive jokes = happiness. My send off message to everyone, lighten the f**k up, damn it.

One Man, Two Masterpieces

2016-02-03T17:34:00.001-05:00

Over the past few months, an excessively large amount of free time has provided me the opportunity to explore one of my personal favorite expressions of art: movies. More specifically, I watched two insanely well made and entertaining movies directed by Ridley Scott, Alien and Blade Runner. These two movies are absolutely amazing and on my list of all time favorites (that has never been compiled). I find that movies today and recent history don't have the same kind of magic that Alien and Blade Runner have, making me feel kind of like an old curmudgeon claiming that "they don't make movies like they used to." But in all honesty, I feel that the style of movie portrayed in these two Ridley Scott classics is a lost art. Unfortunately I don't think I'll ever see another movie like Alien ever again. What I am going to do here, is break down what, in my opinion, made Blade Runner and Alien so damn good. If you haven't seen these movies, I would suggest reading no further than here because some of the things I write about will probably ruin certain things that should be experienced when watching the movie for the first time (spoiler-esque stuff).

Let's begin with Alien, a near perfect horror movie, at least in my estimation. First thing I want to say, I love this movie. What I really enjoy about Alien, and Blade Runner, derives from the era these movies were made, 1970s and 1980s respectively. With low tech special effects at their disposal and no CGI, these movies focused on creating a good, solid story that makes you think, and in Alien's case, does a masterful job at creating tension. Let's take a step back, though, and begin with the trailer for Alien.

Fantastic is the word that comes to mind when I watch the Alien trailer. No words are uttered, none of the plot is given away, but the trailer leaves the viewer with a sense of intrigue, a wonder of what the heck is going on. Many trailers today give away far too much of the plot or show too many of the funny parts. Most importantly, the Alien trailer doesn't show any glimpse of the Alien. The sense of wonder and cause for fear only revealed in the actual movie. I wasn't alive when Alien came out in theaters, but I wish I could have had the experience of seeing this movie for the first time on the big screen with no idea what the movie was about. The title Alien itself is fantastic. Working as a noun or adjective, the word "alien" has a double meaning as the title for the movie. The title coupled with an outstanding trailer make practically a perfect marketing tool, and I didn't even mention the insanely good tag line "In space no one can hear you scream." But I digress, let us look at what makes the movie so good.

The plot of Alien is incredibly simplistic: a crew of seven people aboard a commercial towing vessel (the Nostromo) are waken prematurely out of hyper-sleep when the ship detects a distress beacon on a foreign planet. The crew investigates, one is member, Kane, is attacked by a facehugging thing, brought back on the ship. An extraterrestrial being bursts from his chest and terror ensues. The plot is simple and easy to follow. I would also like to note how there are only seven people on the Nostromo which allows the story to build personalities around the characters. It gives us a reason to give a crap about what's going on. I personally love Parker, played by Yaphet Kotto. In the opening scenes up until the incident, each character's personality is built, how they speak, how they react, sense of humor, those types of things.

C'mon man, the food ain't that bad

Good stories, whether movies, books, short stories, whatever, allow you to connect with the characters, make you give a damn about them. Then the next fantastic aspect following the initial character development is the tension building. When the crew finds the downed ship on LV-426, there's this steady decent into darkness, where you're wondering when the heck is something going to happen. Even as Kane peers at the mysterious looking eggs, the subsequent facehugger was something no one had ever seen before and goes straight for Kane's face. Remember, too, that this movie came out in 1979 and no creature shots had been revealed. I think that's incredibly awesome!

From the time the Nostromo crew sets down on LV-426 the tension continues to mount until the movie comes to an end, where only Ripley and Jonesy the cat make it out alive. One by one the alien takes out the crew. There are no overlong action sequences or battles, just overpowering extraterrestrial rape? Why bring up rape? Well, the only thing more terrifying than getting raped, is getting raped by a clown. And the only thing that might be more terrifying than getting raped by a clown might be getting raped by the xenomorph in Alien. Discussions of Alien have covered practically all aspects of the movie including what the alien does to its pray. In Alien, you never see the violence, you have no idea what in the hell it's doing to the victim. Then you also notice that the bodies are never left behind. What is happening to these people? The concept that the alien in a way rapes it's victim adds to the terror created in the movie. Even if you go back to the facehugger, what does it do? It jumps on the victim's face and puts it's proboscis-like tube down their throat while wrapping it's tail around the neck. That is damn horrifying!

There's also this sweet deleted scene that indicates the alien isn't killing its prey:

I'd like to think that this scene was not included in the final cut of the film for pacing reasons. The movie does have wonderful pacing and it probably just didn't fit. However, I choose to believe that what's seen in this scene is what is happening to the alien's victims. Ripley just doesn't discover the cocoons that the alien has been creating. Again, this just adds to the terror in the movie, these people are attacked by the alien, who the hell knows what the alien does to them, and then it cocoons them. Then you add in that this foreign creature cannot be killed, the android even calling it the "perfect organism." That's horror done right.

Now let's switch gears to the other Ridley Scott classic, Blade Runner. This movie is straight up science fiction gold. This movie, like Alien relied on something outside of giant action scenes and crazy special effects that didn't exist when the movie was made. Blade Runner relies on a great story to build a memorable movie. Set in future Los Angeles, blade runners are hunting down a group of replicants, the Nexus-6, who have gone rogue and come back to earth to find their creator. Replicants are androids, and the Nexus-6 are a particularly advanced model. Please stop reading and go watch Blade Runner if you haven't seen it. Without going through the entire plot to this movie, what makes it great is the realizations of both the Nexus-6 replicants and blade runner Deckard, played by Harrison Ford.

Once you've seen the whole movie and taken some time to think about it, you realize that the Nexus-6 replicants want the answers to the same questions we humans have. The Nexus-6 seek out their creator and want to know why they were created, why the are here, and how long will they live. While this movie is made much better, I believe Ridley Scott was attempting to tell this story from the human perspective in Prometheus. You get all these questions raised by a mechanical race created by man and at the same time there is this kind of strange thing going on in the background making you wonder if Deckard, the blade runner tasked with hunting down these replicants, is actually a replicant himself. The movie makes you think beyond the events of the movie. I'd now like to end this post the same way that Blade Runner ends:

Impending Doom

2015-10-16T14:51:00.000-04:00

Damn it, damn it, damn it, I'm heading back to the northeast next Saturday (10/24/15). I can't find decent work in the LA area and by decent I mean anything that I'd want to do. And everything is so damn expensive that if I have to take some shit job I don't know if it would be viable to do it in such an expensive place. I've spent the last year or so of my life preparing to get out of the shit hole that is the northeast only to head back there after just 2 months right in time for the shitstorm that is winter.

The thing that's difficult for me is that I absolutely hate the weather in New England, but all my friends are there. I hate the fall, winter, and spring. I could give a shit about the changing seasons, I want warm sunshine. It's so depressing knowing that once I get back it won't be nice until next June, and that's not even guaranteed. I remember a June a few years back where it rained almost every single day and was overall very, very shitty. I would imagine the horrid weather is why, in my opinion, New England is filled with miserable f**ks. I mean, that's what I feel like when I'm there. I know most of the country hates LA, but at least there's a good variety of stuff to do here besides going to bars and shoveling snow.

At some point this past April I'd had enough and rage quit my job (which I was not happy at) and left for LA a few months later. Since I've been out here the weather has been nothing short of amazingly nice and it has even precipitated for a few brief instances. I just can't find a decent job and what is really frustrating is I know I'm going to have that problem once I get back to Massachusetts. My job experience is not very good and I've only been working for 3 years, so I don't really have all that much experience any way, not to mention that I haven't worked since June. My main concern is going back home, getting another shit job, and continue the unhappiness. I haven't been satisfied with anything that has happened since I graduated college. I haven't liked either of the two jobs I've had and the weather from October until June makes me want to inflict pain on myself so I can be distracted from awfully depressing it is.

I've had some people ask me if something in particular happened that made me want to leave, like a bad experience or something. You know what the answer to that is? Yes, something has happened, and it's been mounting over the years, I hate New England, Why is that so hard to understand? Sure some things have happened in life that I don't particularly like, but those things fade with time. You know what's not going to go away? The shitty weather, that's permanent. I think it's dumb to have regrets in life because you can't go back and change anything, but if I were to change one thing in my life, I would have gone somewhere nice to go to college. That way I could have made connections somewhere nice and hopefully obtained work somewhere nice. I don't know what I'm going to do when I get back home. My worst nightmare is to sentence myself to more fall/winter/springs in New England. I also have experience to go off here. I have lived and worked in Massachusetts and I hated it, that's what pushed me to come to LA. Now that I'm going back to Massachusetts, what's going to be different?

Prediction time. I predict that about two hours after landing at Logan in Boston I'll regret going back. Here's the true dilemma, though. What really sucks is that I have (had? I don't know what the hell I'm doing) to chose between to shitty things. This isn't a win/win situation. I either have to live in a place I hate and have a bunch of great, already established friends to do stuff with, or I live in a place that I like and have no established friends to do stuff with. Both have potential to cause unhappiness and over the past few weeks I've been attempting to decide which would be more miserable. I still don't have an answer. All I know is that I was not happy doing what I was doing. I can't even begin to describe how unhappy I've been over the past few years. I feel that over the past 4 years I've been becoming slightly more bitter with each passing month. I just don't think that going back to the same situation I was immensely unhappy with is going to solve any problems. I really like Southern California, it's an interesting place with a lot of variety. I like outdoor things, like running, biking, and playing sports. These types of things are greatly hindered in New England by the cold weather. I think the main thing that killed my excursion to California was simply location. I'm not a huge fan of large cities, in the sense that everything is super dense, there are lots of homeless people always begging for money, and bad traffic. I would rather live on the outskirts of a large city and work either in the city or also on the outskirts. I have had very limited transportation available to me and LA's public transportation can only get you so far. Not to mention the horrid experience I had dealing with a temporary employment agency out here.

The bad experience I had with the temp agency was all one particular dude's fault, this guy single-handedly tanked most of my hope of finding some kind of work to test what living and working in Southern California would be like. I think part of the problem was that I wasn't specific enough with what I was looking for, but this guy just called me up and told me to show up at a job without consulting me about the position before hand. He did this to me twice. The first time he sent me to what looked like a sweatshop, I don't know for sure because I was only there for 3 or 4 hours one day. After that day the employer wanted to cancel the arrangement which was fine by me. Then a few days later I was once again called by this guy and told to report to another job, again without providing me any details on what the position entailed or what company it was for. I told him I didn't want to commit to this job because I was working on another lead I had garnered on my own, but he told me I had to show up because he already told the client I was coming. It would be unprofessional to change anything now. Well, what do you call promising my arrival at the job without ever consulting me? I knew absolutely nothing until they called me. I would categorize that in the "unprofessional" family.

This whole situation culminated with me leaving this job after 3 weeks because it isn't what I wanted to be doing or with a company that I had any interest in working for. This could have been avoided by communicating with me before telling me to show up there, so I don't feel bad at all for leaving and at this point I was done working with this agency. I was going to try to do it on my own. However this agency has multiple branches and another of the branches that had no knowledge of what transpired over the last few weeks contacted me about another position. I received a voicemail about something that might "fit me." My first reaction was that I wasn't even going to call them back and I think that's exactly what I should have done. Instead I called them back and drove another nail into my hopes of finding a job I wanted. I agreed to a phone interview and did some research on the company. Again, it was something I'm not terribly interested in. So I went through the phone interview, not interested, hoping they wouldn't select me, but planning to reject if they did. A few hours later I got a call from the temp agency and they told me their client wanted me to start tomorrow, in this moment of shock and after a pause I said I'd go. That was a huge mistake. I got the confirmation email, looked at it briefly and then broke into a massive fit of rage that involved me yelling and swearing at myself while pounding repeatedly on my thigh. I decided to eat lunch and think about it. I didn't want to go, so I responded to the email and told them couldn't commit because I was waiting back for the final word from an interview I had the previous week. This is true, I was waiting to hear back on a job I actually wanted. After sending the email I decided to shut everything down, I didn't respond to any phone calls, voicemails, text messages, or emails from the agency. I was done, still angry and fed up with this agency.

The next week I heard back on the job I put everything on hold for. It took them 15 days to tell me they didn't choose to pursue my candidacy for the role any further. So here I was with no work and no leads. I had been applying to other jobs while waiting to hear back and continued to apply for jobs. So far the only one I've heard back from is the one that eventually decided not to go with me. I have learned that I'm really good at obtaining jobs I have no interest in. So there's that.

Now the best solution I've come up with is going back to Massachusetts and let the misery fester! I hated living there before, so I'm going to go do that again, how logical! Living there is like having an abusive partner. I don't know why people stay with abusive partners, much like I don't know why I'm going back to Massachusetts.

I consider the end of the baseball season until the beginning of the next baseball season the dark ages because I absolutely hate that time. I guess I may as well couple the dark ages with the shit-tastic place that is New England to make the perfect shitstorm.

The Near Future, It's Uncertain

2015-09-30T17:39:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago I had an interview for a job that I believe would do me some positive things for my "career," or whatever I should call it at this point. As of now, 8:40 p.m. on the fourteenth day since that interview, the phone has been silent, the email has been receiving messages, just not from the interviewing company. So what's next? I have no idea, but I'd really like to know if I'm still a potential candidate for the job or not. I'll be realistic, they don't want to hire me, which taking a realistic approach again, I can't really blame them for. Let's take a brief look at my so-called career so far. After college, I spent 8 months basically paying bills, then for the next 2 and a quarter years I basically called people and told them the owed money to the company I worked for. What great experience!

Honestly, I feel like my intellect has been insulted since joining the world that exists after education. Now I'll be the first to admit that I'm a dumb shit, but what I've been doing is mind numbing and down right insulting. That is why I left my two previous jobs and why I am search of something that doesn't make me want to physically harm myself every day because of how stupid it is. So at this point I've been out in Southern California for about a month and a half, it's almost October and the weather is great, but I have some issues. The first issue was the unpleasant experience I had with a temp agency that I have since cut ties with and the lack of success I've had applying to jobs on my own. It's looking increasingly like I might need to work another shitty job for a while, hopefully one that at least has valuable experience, but now the question is where do I want to do that?

I love the weather in Southern California, but now I'm beginning to doubt the decision to move out here, at least at this time. California might be too far away from New England, where I for the most part grew up, for me right now. The largest problem I have with the distance is actually the time zone differential. A three hour difference from the east coast is rather large and even with the awesome technology at our disposal, that can't reduce the time difference in these two regions. Having said that, I do not want to go back to living in the northeast. Going back to live in the northeast is low on my personally made option list. However, I would consider going back east except to a central/southern state, somewhere like North or South Carolina. I don't know how feasible that is right now. For me, the locations of California and New England are very unfortunate. I hate the cold and snow, but I also don't like the pacific time zone. I feel like the pacific time zone is behind the rest of the country and it makes it rather difficult to stay in touch with my friends the way I'd like, but damn the weather out here is nice. It still feels like the middle of summer and it's September 30th!

On a positive note, I have discovered a talent of mine! I have found that I am good at getting job offers for jobs I don't want. A lot of the displeasure I mentioned with the temp agency had to do with the assignments they were giving to me. This is partly my fault because I could have been more specific on what I was looking for. However, I can't do anything when the agency calls me up and tells me to report to a job without consulting me, telling me what the job is, or giving me any information at all. And according to them, I have to go because it would be unprofessional for me not to show up because they already told the client I would be there... without consulting me. That doesn't sit well with me and it pissed me off to the point that our relationship had to be severed.

Well, I've got some thinking to do! I've left the northeast and gone to Southern California, but I still have no idea what I'm doing with my life. Hooray for indecision!

New Things in a New Place

2015-08-25T00:16:00.000-04:00

Ten days ago, August 14th of 2015, the day I finally made the move to Southern California. Feels like I've been bitching about the weather in the northeast for an eternity and talked about moving to California for about as long. How long this experiment will last, I know not. I might be here for a month, I might be here for years, there are a lot of factors at work. Now I've only been here for ten days, but I've already been called an ugly faced MFer by a presumably homeless man, seen a guy getting a blow job in his car, and met some dude on the street who said he was known as Batman and he's been prowling the streets of LA for twenty-seven years. That's longer than I've been alive. But let's talk about the guy who was getting a blowjob.

This morning I was on the way to my first assignment job thingy. Assignment job thingy is my way of describing my work life right now. I'm using a temp agency to find work since I was too stupid in college to secure myself a good job upon graduation. So I was in one of the many LA public buses minding my own business en route to the industrial sector of the city (not my choice). While stopped at a red light, I glanced out the window to my left and couldn't help but notice what was going on in the car stopped along side the bus. This guy was straight chilling in the driver seat while the woman in the passenger seat was bent over giving him a quickie in the car. At first I did a double take because I've heard of this, but this was my first time seeing it take place. So naturally I stared. Not really, though. I only glanced over a few times in an effort to not be creepy. Then the light changed and the bus started moving before the car, but when the car caught up I could see she was still down there as they took a left at the next intersection. Now I have no idea what that guy does for a living and I have no idea who the woman was next to him, but this guy was getting his dick sucked on a Monday morning in one of the biggest cities in the US. This guy must be doing something right. What an inspirational sighting.

Then I got to the assignment job thingy, sat around for four hours and did basically nothing, then happily found out later that this particular company didn't want to extend my temporary work assignment there because I didn't speak Spanish. This was news to my ears because this job was honestly embarrassingly below my intellect, not that I'm smart, but this job was painfully boring and required no thought. However, I received this news a few hours too late. I have some moments of extreme anger and the continuous search to find a good job has driven me mad many times. Today was one of those days that it got the best of me. In a fit of rage, I punched my knee with my right fist, which I've done many times, but this time I had the unfortunate bad luck of hitting my knee right on the cap which has bruised the bottom of my right hand. I don't think I broke anything and will continue to hope that it is just swollen. I wish I hadn't done that, but I just get so damn angry sometimes.

Well, I have new assignment job thingy to interview for tomorrow and I'm happy to an actual interview. The thing I went to today was one of those suspect no interview deals. Anyways, I'm in LA and attempting to look for a way to make a living. Until next time...

The Decision

2015-05-20T15:29:00.000-04:00

With a mixture of unhappiness and rage, I finally went through with something I've been considering doing for quite some time. On April 24th of the year 2015, I gave notice at work that I would be leaving and quit my job. Some will consider me crazy for quitting my job without having a new job lined up and would probably really think I'm mad if they found out I have also declined two potential job opportunities, one which is only about ten minutes from where I live. I'll get into the declined job opportunities later, but first let me do my best to describe what I've been going through for the past two plus years.

The best way I can describe the place I've worked since the beginning of 2013, I'd describe it as a horrible place that creates tortured souls. From the exterior it's a growing company in a growing industry, but what can't be seen is how terribly bad things are internally. To the best of my knowledge, I don't know anyone who is truly happy there, but at the same time it does sound illogical to leave a company trending upward. What it came down to for me was quite simple, the painstaking daily responsibilities handed to me far outweighed the nonexistent positives of the role. I found myself hating every waking moment and hating myself for every day I let go by that I didn't quit. By the 24th of April, I met my breaking point, I just couldn't take it any more and finally quit. I knew it was getting really bad that week because I had only been to work three days that week and I was still insanely angry about everything that was my job.

My anger and disgust boiled over to the point where I didn't care what the company was, how much it was growing, or about anything, just that I knew it was time for me to leave before something bad happened. My job isn't worth my mental sanity. Now you're probably wondering what was so terrible about my job, so a good place to begin is my personality. I'm not one to verbally fight with people, in fact I hate it and I get frustrated very easily when I'm personally hung out to dry. My role with this soul torturing company evolved into primarily collections. Basically I've been spending the last two years telling people that they owe us money from obscenely long times ago, some dating back as much as two years. Then of course there's no way this can be right and I, let me repeat that, I am responsible for the mess. I can only take so much of that before I want to break my phone and everything else at my desk. I'm sure the people who sat in the cubicles near me must have thought I was crazy from all the swearing under my breath and whatever other things I did while I was being tortured daily on the phone. Oh and did I mention that I was the only person to deal with any issue that involved money? Cue 100% of phone calls that had to do with invoicing, account balances, payments, I need someone to yell at, coming to me and me alone. I stopped answering my phone on incoming calls because let's be serious, I don't give a shit about these people's problems. I was basically a secretary for myself. Sometimes when I'd get back to my desk after lunch, I'd have 10 missed calls. I don't think I should have 10 calls in a week, never mind an hour. Basically my role evolved into a collections/customer service job. If I wanted to answer customer phone calls, I would have interviewed for a customer service role.

I figured as time went on things would get better, but a year and a half later and it's the same shit. My position was a newly created role, and to put it kindly, what the company has found it needs is not at all what I want to do. Frankly the job sucks and has been the worst experience of my short life. I won't ever be able to look back fondly on my time there, it has been marred by the years of horrible experiences my anger.I'm so full of hate toward that place that you could call me Anakin Skywalker. Another way to describe the job is an abusive relationship. The benefits of the job are the salary, but man does it beat the shit out of you on a daily basis. Why do I keep going back when all it does is abuse me?

The best way for me to relate/rationalize things is in baseball terms. To sum everything up, I feel like 2008 Manny Ramirez. I'm disgruntled and I'm ready to force a move away from the Boston area. I've taken the next step and left my job so now all that's left is to see where I end up. Hint: Manny went to Los Angeles, that sounds nice.

When Can I Move South?

2015-04-21T16:21:00.001-04:00

Well, another few months has passed and I'm still confused as hell about what I want to do with my life. Yesterday I went for a job interview in New York City and today I had another interview about ten minutes away from where I currently live. I came out of the NYC interview feeling much better about how the whole interview went. Both companies are good, but there was something that didn't quite sit well with me after the second, closer to home interview. Unfortunately for me, I'm still finding the same issue with every job that I've currently had any type of interview for, they're all in the northeast. I don't know whose d*ck I have to suck, but I really just want to get the hell out of the northeast and its horrible weather. I'm approaching the point where I'll look for a job at a convenience store somewhere in the south, where its warm, and there's no snow, and you can't really tell when the seasons change. You know, somewhere nice.

I'll look on the bright side of this, at least I got to miss two consecutive days of work. I also called out one day last week to go for another interview, which makes me wonder if my boss is catching on at all. I called out of work in my first two years with the company, and now I've called out for a morning and two consecutive days in the past week. That's two and a half days that I haven't had to deal with any of the aggravations and crap that occur at work daily. Regardless of what happens from here, it was nice to have a little adventure into NYC, a place I hadn't been since my sister was looking at NYU back around 2004 or 2005. Of course it was raining, though. It's like a reminder that NYC is still in the northeast and subject to the same garbage weather that New England is. I didn't have any time to go exploring while in NYC, but I saw a whole lot of taxis and heard a whole lot of honking.

Now I can't crap on the city of New York, I don't know much of anything about it, all I know is that the winters are still harsh, it still gets really cold there and it's less than ideal from a weather standpoint. I've also been saying for years that New York is a place I never wanted to live, along with Fitchburg and a whole bunch of other places. So the saga continues. I'm just hoping to have everything not necessarily figured out, but to have made some kind of a move before next winter comes around, because if there is one thing I know, I don't want to be here for another winter. I've been living in the northeast for the past fifteen years, and looking at the past 3 years since college graduation, I'd say this isn't really working for me. I can't say that I've been all that happy since I graduated. I've had two jobs, neither of which have satisfied me in their own unique ways, and I absolutely hate the weather.

Did I mention that I don't like the weather in the northeast? Anyway, I've given the northeast a fair chance, I'd say, but I'm ready to at least give another place a chance. I don't see why I shouldn't relocate either, it's not like I have anything tying me down here. I've said it once and I'll say it again, the only thing I'd miss about this place is my friends. At the same time, though, I don't see my friends that often as it is because of the different paths our lives have gone down since the completion of college. Times change and I think a major change would do me good at this point. I'm looking for a change to nicer scenery (meaning nicer weather), it's simply not working for me in the northeast and I'm ready to leave.

Give me the Crowbar, not the Monkey Wrench

2015-01-17T09:01:00.000-05:00

Now that I'm a quarter of a century old, I decided this is a good time to figure out what the hell I'm doing with my life. Up to this point I've been lollygagging along with very limited direction. Everything has been very standard: graduate high school, graduate college, obtain a job, move out of my parents house. That brings me to where I am today: a 25 year old operating in a peon position at a multi-million dollar company. Now for the last year and a half I've been either slowly or rapidly (I can't really tell right now) growing more unhappy each day. This all stems from one area of my job that I don't like at all.

What I've been seriously contemplating since sometime in July (of 2014) is moving to Southern California. This are of the country is very appealing to me because of the phenomenal weather, plus I've been out there before and it's definitely a place I could get used to. I think now is the time to do this since my Dad is currently out there on work and my Mom is going to join him at some point in 2015 (I think). What a great opportunity this is to have some help getting settled in to a new place. I've already squandered a few opportunities to move my life out west, such as the $17,000 annual scholarship I was offered by a college in Southern California to run track. At that time I wasn't ready to make such a move because I didn't want to part with my friends and I thought I had a good thing going with a girl from back home. Looking back I wish I had applied heavily to schools in Southern California and chose to attend one. That's all in the past and now I'm ready to go. I hate the weather in the northeast and I'm not attached to the region or any of it's cities one bit. The only thing I'd miss are my friends, but I don't see most of them that often anyway, but mostly I'm such a weirdo that I don't fit in with the typical crowd. I don't really enjoy drinking alcohol, I go out with my friends more as a function of being a friend and I want to support the happiness and well being of my friends because I do care about them. I'm kind of a loner/family guy and I'm ok with that.

Recently a monkey wrench or two have been thrown into my very loose hope to leave this dreadful (my opinion, I realize that some people really like it in the northeast) area. I'm just saying there's a reason Dante wrote about harsh cold in the layers of hell. For one, I feel like there's actually a conscious effort occurring at work to make my job suck less. One day last week I'm pretty sure some of my coworkers thought I was having a mental breakdown or something. I wasn't, it was actually just a normal day, I was just expressing my displeasure a hell of a lot more than usual. My friend at work told me some people were asking if I was ok and later on that day my boss asked me the same thing. Then the following day the VP had me come to her office and pretty much asked me the same thing as everyone else. I've shared ways to improve the problem that we face in my department and I truly believe that there will be an effort to make things better. However, I think part of me doesn't want this to get fixed because it would make leaving the company easier. As I stated before, my work happiness has been on a decline for quite some time now, dating back to October of 2013. I still remember the day it started. It was game one of the ALDS between the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays. It was the day I first heard The One Man Thrill Ride on WEEI. In short it's been a while since I was truly comfortable at work.

What I feel like at work

What's so bad about my job? Well, it all stems around one problem that has been plaguing my department since I've been there. The 1,000 plus unread email I have and countless voice mails I haven't listened to are a big factor, too. I don't think this was intentional, but basically any customer issue that has to do with accounting/finance gets funneled to me. The problem here is that it's absolutely ridiculous for one person to manage this for a multi-million dollar company. Especially when that's not really my job either, I have other shit to do. I've developed a new policy for answering my phone: I always answer if one of my coworkers is calling, but if it's an outside number I don't answer it unless I'm not in the middle of something, which is never. Currently my voice mail inbox is full with messages I haven't heard. I'd probably need to allocate an entire day or week to sort just the voice mail out. So... f*ck that, I'm not customer service.

Anyways, I'm getting a bit of topic here. I'm not very happy with my current employment situation, but the simple effort to make things less miserable certainly make me at least a little reluctant to leave. However, when I think about it, I should do what makes me happy and that always has me leaning toward making a change. At least we live in a wonderful world of technology today and I take full advantage of this by looking at the job market on a daily basis while I'm at work. Going to work to look for a job, it's a thing of beauty.

The other side of the work conundrum is finding a job across the country. If I want to move to Southern California, I kind of need a job. I've sent my resume to a few job postings in California and haven't heard a thing. It could be that they don't like me as a candidate or it could be that the hiring people are thinking what in the heck is this guy from way out east doing applying to this job? Although, if I made up my mind and decided, screw all this, I'm moving, and just quit my job and picked a date to pack up my shit and move to the other coast I could always use an agency to help me find a job. I did that here and I landed myself a job.

Excuse me while I pry away at this problem

Friends are the biggest road block in my master plan to move. I have a few very good friends that I've had some great times with, times I won't forget anytime soon. I'm such a weirdo, though, that I don't exactly fit the mold of a person my age. Most people my age have one common interest: drinking alcohol. Sure I have an alcoholic beverage every now and then, but there's no consistency and I could easily give it up in an instant. I'm just not interested. It's the way I'm wired or something. For most of my life I've been what I'll refer to as an athlete, though not a very good one. I really miss running track and playing baseball and soccer. On many occasions I've seriously considered returning to competing in track, but the problem is the lack of facilities and time to properly train. It would be a dream come true to earn a living by playing a sport, but that has pretty much passed me by. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that I'd rather use my spare time to train and better myself physically than go out drinking. It's only fitting that my best friend shares this same passion for bettering himself physically. We used to workout together for some time until I moved out of our hometown earlier in 2014. Not many people share this type of passion because let's face it, it's hard to stay in good physical shape. I workout on my own now, for the most part. Let's not get too far off the point here. Despite the friends I've garnered in my time in the northeast, I don't really see them all that often and again we live in this wonderful age of technology. As long as there is an effort made, you can stay in touch with relative ease.

The people I've discussed a potential relocation the most with are my parents. I'm not sure if my Dad is for or against me moving, but my Mom seems to really understand that I'm not particularly happy with where I'm at. I would love to live somewhere winter doesn't really exist, except as the name of a certain time of year. I want to live in a place where I can go outside in shorts and a t-shirt and be comfortably warm almost year round. This is all simply a personal preference of mine. Southern California is not for everyone, but I believe it's a place for someone like me. All I ask is for people to see this from my point of view when considering the decision that racks my brain daily. I envision making this move solo. Most of my friends don't want to leave the area we currently live in, and that's fine, that's their preference. I think it would be easier to make this move on my own. The exception I would make is if I had a girlfriend who shared the passion to move with me. My sister basically did this when she decided to move across the country and she's been happy ever since! Maybe I should take a page from her book and just buy a plane ticket and then tell everyone. I guess I'd have to quit my job, too, but my sister decided all on her own that she was moving and I respect that decision. She knew what she wanted to do and stuck with it. Granted she was moving to go live with her boyfriend, but she did what she thought was best for her. That's what I want to do with myself. I don't like those "where do you see yourself in five years?" questions, but when I think about that now, I just think that I don't want to be here.

You know what the funny thing is? Despite all the desire I show about wanting to move, I'll probably still be living in the northeast in five years and working at the same job. I'll admit, I would find that a bit funny myself. If my uncertainty about what I'm doing with my life was hate, I'd be the number one Sith Lord. Honestly, I have no idea what's going on. Currently everyday is like the last one, same shit different day. Am the only one who would love to go live elsewhere not only for my desire of better weather, but also for different culture? Maybe it's because of how I grew up. As a young child my family and I were some kind of nomads. We didn't live in any one particular place for an extended amount of time. Two or three years in one place, then two or three years in another place which included a stint in Brazil. At the time I didn't really notice the difference in cultures, I was too young. But looking back at those days in Brazil, it was quite the experience. There was a period of time, probably an entire year, that I almost never wore shoes. I was a little second grader running around with my sister outside in the sun barefoot taking in the nature that surrounded us. I feel like I've spent long enough in the northeast and I'm ready for change.

Misdirection

2014-09-29T22:41:00.000-04:00

Every day I when I wake up my first thought is "f*ck." Then I lay in my bad for a few minutes and think "f*ck." Why are my my first thoughts this wonderful obscenity? Well, I've about had it with my job at this point and to make matters worse from a personal standpoint, the damn weather is beginning to change for the worse. I f*cking hate the winter and its cold weather and shitty snow. That's beside the point, for now at least. Over the past year I've become increasingly unhappy with my job and all the shit that doesn't work, most of which I'm beginning to think will never work correctly. I think my boss summed it up best when he said that we were the funnel for all the bad things. He couldn't be more correct

Part of my problem is that I don't really know what I want to do. Eventually I would like to find a new job, but I'm almost certain I do not want to live in the area I currently live. As a young, stupid adult, I think I'd like to experience living in a new place with what I consider nice weather. Also, who the heck is Derek Jeter?

I often do this thing where I like to change the subject of what I'm writing about with little warning. So how lame is it that Netflix has delayed the release of season 2 of Arrow until October (was originally scheduled to be released in September)? Now they're forcing me to watch it on streams that might be frowned upon, but honestly, what am I supposed to do?

Stephen Amell, he's so hot right now. If you haven't watched Arrow yet, the picture above should give you plenty of reason to... whether you're a girl or a guy. In honor of Stephen Amell and the return of Arrow, I'm considering watching the premiere without my shirt. I feel that would only be fitting and encourage you to do the same, again, whether you're a girl or a guy. And of course you're welcome to come watch it with me... without your shirt of course.

Speaking of shirts, one of my favorite posts of all time is about loose-leaf books, go look it up if you haven't seen this email I got from some dude on eBay. The week I was on vacation to the very beautiful Hilton Head, South Carolina, I received a strange email, this time at work and not to my personal email. I'm contemplating posting that email here, but I'm not sure how appropriate that is, but then again I don't really give a shit. It's bad when I would be happy if I was fired from my job. So, here it is:

While I was reading this, I was wondering which grade this person dropped out of school (feel free to offer your best guess) because they do not know how to form a complete sentence. The lack of punctuation and run on sentences is down right appalling. My brain hurt attempting to read this utter piece of garbage. Needless to say, these people hate me, along with a whole bunch of out other customers because I'm apparently responsible for managing the finances for every single customer of a multi-million dollar company. That's ok, though, if they don't want to speak to me that's fine. They can just go speak to nobody. Of course I haven't responded, but if I did, I think the only appropriate response would be "what?"

Well, my bed time is rapidly approaching so I'll abruptly end right about... here?

What the Hell have I seen?

2014-07-10T21:12:00.001-04:00

This past Tuesday I watched the great debacle that was the World Cup semifinal between Brazil and Germany, a game in which the Germans absolutely butt-plunged Brazil by an outrageous score of 7-1. I'm a Brazil fan since the Brazilian nation team is the team of my childhood, the first team I ever followed beginning with the 1998 World Cup. And of course, my favorite athlete, Ronald, R9, Il Fenomeno, was a major component of that '98 team. While I agree without hesitation that Brazil's squad is nothing compared to what it 15 to 20 years ago, I still did not expect the ridiculous shellacking in this 2014 World Cup semifinal in Brazil! This might be the strangest game I've ever seen and it was sloppy as shit. And in my opinion, despite the score, Germany did not look all that good.

However, the most ridiculous thing about this game did not actually occur in the game. What I'm utterly flabbergasted about is the resulting Miroslav Klose's man of the match card in Fifa 14's Ultimate Team.

Please take a good hard look at the Klose card. 90 pace and 94 dribbling and 99 heading! What is this guy, Superman? Even Rooney has never been that overrated. I think I could smoke Klose in a foot race. Hell he was never fast enough at any point in his career to warrant that pace. And 94 dribbling? Pair that with the 90 pace and this guy is like Messi with an unstoppable header. As shocked as I was with the 7-1 mauling of Brazil, this man of the match card shocked me more.

I had Klose in Ultimate Team on Fifa 13 and he was either an 82 or 83 overall, which also shows how obscene his jump in quality is. I don't care if he's now the all time leading World Cup goal scorer now, that rating is completely ridiculous. If Klose is a 90 overall given what he's accomplished, then Messi should a 167 overall because of all the goals he's put past helpless goalies over the past few years.

Going back to real life, let us look ahead to the final between Argentina and Germany. The two semifinals leading up to this final have really deflated my interest in the tournament this year. Mostly the Germany and Brazil game accounted for the decimation of my interest, and this doesn't stem from Brazil losing the game. Germany has an extremely talented team so I knew that they were entirely capable of beating this installment of Brazil. It's just the way that the game played out, it's like the game was some ill fantasy. After the Germans scored a few scrappy, crappy goals the game turned into one big shit storm that saw the Germans score ugly goal after ugly goal. Kroos' goal and much later on Schurrle's goal were nice, but the rest were scrappy crappy from what I remember. Please forgive me if I am mistaken, but regardless, the game was complete shit.

Judging from the articles online and the user comments on them, it looks like a great deal of people wanted Brazil to lose. So good for them, they got what they wanted. What I don't understand is that these people were calling Brazil thugs and stuff like that for playing rough. I don't get that because in my estimation Columbia played just as dirty. And I'm not saying that just because that ass clown Zuniga almost paralyzed Neymar. I'll give Zuniga a little credit though, he didn't bite Neymar because he knew that would get him a suspension. Cracking vertebra, well, that's ok with Fifa. Luis Suarez, please take note. And f**k James Rodriguez. Or as I'm going to refer to that guy, Hummus Rodriguez. F**k him. I've never heard of the guy before this World Cup and the attention around him has already pissed me off, so f**k him.

I'm not done yet, f**k Hummus Rodriguez. I almost hope that someone breaks his leg, but that might be too harsh. I don't know what it is, but that guy kind of pisses me off, but I'll digress... for now. But seriously, f**k him.

Anyways, back to the final between Argentina and Germany. I can't decide who to root for, so I'm not going to waste my time trying to think of reasons to vote for one or the other. What I can do for sure is enjoy the misery of whichever of these two teams loses and I guess I can make that worth my while. With that I bid you a good night. Until next time...

Super Bowl Thoughts

2014-02-07T23:01:00.003-05:00

Like most of the Super Bowl viewing audience, I was disappointed by the Super Bowl this year. That part where the Broncos scored one touchdown really put a damper on what was otherwise a terrific game. I would have been elated if the Seattle Seahawks won the game 60-0, but I guess I'll take the 43-7 walloping they rained down on Peyton Manning and company. Couldn't the Seahawks at least have reached 50 points? Is that too much to ask?

I'm not a typical sports fan when it comes to the definition of a "good" game, or race, or whatever kind of competition you're watching. Personally, I think it's unfair to call last weekend's Super Bowl game bad or boring, or whatever other negative adjective you'd like to use to describe it. Why, Toninho, why shouldn't we be upset the championship game of our beloved National Football League was a blowout? Well, I don't think it's right to call a game of athletic competition bad just because one team pounds the other. If one team is decisively better than another on a given day, then the score should reflect that. Athletic competition should not exist to entertain the masses, though it might in some cases. Not every game or race is going to be close, and just because the championship game is one of those does not make it "bad." If the game had ended 2-0 with no scoring after the safety on the first play of the game, it must have been "good," right? Because it was a close game, right? No, that's just f*cking stupid.

From my point of view, if you are on the team that is dominating a game, there is no reason to let up. While I was just a mediocre track runner, if I was way ahead in a race I would never slow down, I always wanted to beat my competition by the biggest margin that I could muster. Never once did I think of slowing down to make it a closer race, that's against everything that is athletic competition.

I'm cut from a different cloth, I love blowouts. I don't mind close, intense games, but I love blowouts, especially if I'm rooting for one team in particular. I love looking at a team that has the life sucked out of them and then seeing their dejected fans in the stands. It's amazing. Domination is king for me as far as athletics are concerned. There can definitely be "bad" games, but a blowout is not the definition of a bad game and just because a game is close does not mean that it's good.

I really am bummed out that Denver scored, I was pulling hard for that shutout. Also, Denver only scored because of a lame penalty called on an unsuccessful third down play. I'm sure most people will disagree with me, but that's fine. I'm only saying that I can enjoy a sporting event that is lopsided and in many instances I prefer it, especially when I want a particular team to win.

The Super Bowl was very entertaining and I had a great time watching it. I miss the 2007 season when the Patriots were constantly shitting on people and everyone was accusing them of running up the score. If the opposing defenses could stop them, they wouldn't have lost by so much. It's not their fault if the other teams couldn't stop them. I enjoyed listening to those ass clowns complain about the Patriots going for it on fourth down when they already had an insurmountable lead. Wouldn't it be more automatic to kick a field goal? If the Patriots beat up on a team they're running up the score, but if Peyton manning beats up on a team, he's a national hero. It's just plain f*cking stupid and another reason why it sucks that the Broncos scored.

I miss these days

The Ideal Super Bowl - Volume 2

2014-02-02T11:53:00.000-05:00

Last year I proved what a sick f*ck I am while describing what I would like to see happen in the Super Bowl between the San Francisco 49ers and the Baltimore Ravens. I am very happy to announce that regardless of what happens this year in the Super Bowl, that ass-turd Colin Kaepernick and that detestable shit-f*ck Jim Harbaugh will not host the trophy and declare themselves "world champions" of the United States' National Football League. Without beating around the bush, I declare that I would like to see the Seattle Seahawks humiliate the Denver Broncos. I don't want that goober Peyton Manning winning another Super Bowl. Further more, I hope that Richard Sherman has a monster game just to piss off all the recent people that are hating on him for what is an early leader for my favorite moment in sports for 2014.

I wish more players did interviews like the one Sherman did after the NFC Championship game. All the people who didn't like it can go pound sand. That's the pure emotion that Sherman was feeling and he gets fined for it. What a bunch of bullshit. I hope Sherman gets multiple interceptions and throws up the choke sign to Manning just like he did to Kaepernick. Then next week we can listen to a bunch of analysts, experts, and talk show host bitch about it. If they don't like this kind of stuff, they shouldn't even watch the games. If they think that's wrong, I wonder what they think of all the shit talking going on during the game.

Ideally I want to see a huge blizzard hit the Super Bowl this year just because the Super Bowl is being played outside for the first time that I can remember in my insignificant existence. I have beef with the National Football League so it would bring me much joy if anything that could go wrong did go wrong at the big event.

The blocked out word is "nerd"

So the stage is set with a little bit of bad weather. On the Broncos first drive Manning drops back and throws one of his signature wobbly-duck passes down field which is picked off by Sherman. Peyton Manning looks on dumb founded and wonders why his gloves didn't help him throw a better pass so he tugs on them. Seahawks score and never looks back. Manning throws another pick and some people start talking about spy-gate. This Super Bowl match up does not lend itself nearly as well to making a ridiculous story as last year. Basically I want to see a bad game from Manning and a great game from Sherman resulting in a Seahawks victory. I don't really give a shit about how it happens.

Of course now that Super Bowl Sunday is here, it has to be abnormally warm, so I guess there won't be a blizzard like I hoped. Not only would the blizzard have been great for the game, it also would have been amazing if Bruno Mars had to play the halftime show in shitty, freezing weather. I would have found this immensely satisfying because I don't like halftime shows, especially Super Bowl halftime shows. Super Bowl halftime shows are way too long and are horrible. If I wanted to see a concert I would have tuned into a concert or bought tickets to a concert. I'm watching the Super Bowl for the game, which brings up another point. I don't like it when people say they only watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. Again, if you want to watch commercials that's fine, but you can do that whenever the hell you want. Just turn on your t.v. anytime and you can watch commercials. You'll see the same shit as when you're watching the Super Bowl.

I'm done for now, I need to get this piece of crap posted before the Super Bowl actually happens.

Living for Recorded Messages

2014-01-14T21:49:00.001-05:00

Well, I completely forgot to recognize the anniversary of this blog last November sometime shortly after Thanksgiving. That was high on the blog priority list, but let's be serious, this blog isn't of much importance considering how riveting my life is. You know what I did today? Well, whether you want to hear about it or not, here it is. Today I went to work, where I've been getting raped by phone calls for the past three months roughly. I haven't had an ass-pounding like this since I entered the work force. When I got back from lunch today I had either 6 or 7 voice mails. My first thought was "well this sucks big fat balls." I guess I better listen to them. So in a methodically genius fashion I began listening to a message, figuring out how I could help the message leaver, and then giving them a call back. I did this for 4 or 5 messages. I'm sitting there thinking, "yeah, I'm making a good dent in this shit." Then I look back at the total messages I have.... there are 8. How the shit did that happen? Apparently while I was listening and responding to the other 4 or 5 messages I received like 5 or 6 more.

That adequately sums up my job right now. I have all these people who all want things from me and they all want it right now.One guy even called me "ineffective." The same guy also never responded to the email I sent him roughly one month ago. My coworkers who work in the cubicles near me must think I'm psycho by now because there is no way in hell they don't hear me swearing under my breath all the time. I'm just one day closer to walking into work with a shotgun. That last part was sarcasm.

At this point my life has become one predictable cycle. I get up and go to work for the majority of the week (5 days for those who wonder), come home and go to the gym and then end the night by chilling out and playing video games/other leisurely activity, then watch Netflix and go to bed. The weekends mostly consist of going hanging out with my friends on one or two of the days/nights and more of me chilling and wishing that the weekend lasted a little longer. What I really need is an enema. That was some more sarcasm.

Remember when the world was supposed to end more than a year ago? I guess that didn't happen.There's always next year. Can you imagine if there was an apocalypse and the world actually ended? Movies have been made about huge natural disasters where some group of people go on a ridiculous journey to save the world. It's good for entertainment, but I can't help but think that a real apocalypse would be too much for any thing on earth to handle. I'd like to think that if the world was coming to an end... actually I don't care to think about that, but some days you just can't get rid of a bomb. And sometimes the bomb looks like a garbage disposal... because it is big bomb. I digress. At this point I'm going to make no effort, as usual, to segue into the next topic: football and the National Football League.

There's something about the National Football League. I don't like it, but I watch it. The league itself bothers me, and to further make fun of it, I will always refer to it as the National Football League, not the NFL. The main reason I don't like the National Football League is because it is so far up its own ass. The league thinks its the greatest thing ever, when in reality the hype is not justified for the product on the field. Football players are basically glorified gladiators of the modern time. Also, I have a hard time taking a league seriously where the majority of the players are thugs/criminals and dead beat dads. I have no problem if a person is a football fan or if a person's favorite sport is football. That's just fine, but I don't like that football and the National Football League is made out to be the pinnacle of all things in existence. The game itself is dumb. Again, there's something about it though because I still watch it despite all my complaints. Why do I say the game itself is dumb? Well, I believe that it's overly complicated for no good reason. In fact, I can't even do my bitching self justice about this right now. I'm going to have to plan this one out a bit, and by plan out, I mean that I'm going to scribble some things down in no particular fashion and put together one disjointed blog post about it in the future. That means we could see this next week or we could see it in five years. I just don't know. One more thing before I close the door on this topic for now, there is what appears to be homosexual action on every play in the National Football League.

This is clearly not homosexual

I wish I had more time to regale you with my bull shit, but it's just about bed time. Catch you later!

Finally Finished, As in the Post is Finally Finished

2013-11-22T23:01:00.000-05:00

Last weekend I was watching Baseball Tonight before the Sunday Night Baseball game on ESPN. One of the analysts on Baseball Tonight is former pitcher Mark Mulder. He was decently nasty back in his glory days when he was part of the three-headed monster that was the Oakland Athletics' starting rotation. While I was looking at his name, I couldn't help but think what if his last name wasn't Mulder, but Murder. Mark Murder. That would be a hell of a name. Imagine if your team had to face Barry Zito, Tim Hudson, and then the dagger, Mark Murder.

I've also been around long enough to realize that there are almost an infinite number of ways that you can categorize people. I think birthdays are an interesting way to put people into different categories. In terms of what type of birthday person you are, there are only two distinct categories, or at least only two that are worthy of mention. You are either one of those people that feels the need to let other people know that it is your birthday, or you don't feel this need.

What's in my glove?

If you're like me, then you could really care less about the actual day you were born when it comes around each year. After this year, I would be perfectly content not having another birthday ever again and staying at the same age for the rest of time. While that is unlikely to happen, I can still think about it. But not everyone is so apathetic like me. I find it amusing when people have to let you know it's their birthday. When people tell me, I don't really know what to say except "happy birthday." I'm not going to tell them that we are blessed that they were put on this earth however many years ago. It's nice to celebrate milestones in life with friends, but I could give a rat's ass if anyone else knew it was birthday. I'd absolutely wish Mark Murder a most happy birthday though.

I find it funny when you ask someone how they're doing and they tell you it's their birthday. People who want you to know it's their birthday are generally people who like attention. Having everyone wish you a happy birthday is a good way to generate attention. Another way to generate attention is to walk into work with a shotgun. Generating attention has become a huge part of life for people around my age. With all the different forms of social networking it feels like all most people do now a days is try to get attention. I wonder if anyone has been wished a happy birthday on every social networking site in existence. I'd count it even if these wishes weren't all on the same birthday. For instance, say you had a MySpace back in the day and were wished a happy birthday on it, but you no longer have one, but you had a happy birthday wished on some other social networking platform. I'd be very interested to know if anyone has accomplished that feat.

In my own classic fashion, I'll pick up penning this post more than 2 months after I started it. I'm not going to bother to read what I had previously written in September, I wouldn't want to attempt to make a cohesive piece here. I also don't really give a rats ass to be honest. Who knows what I was rambling on about, something about Mark Murder, which is a sweet name, and birthdays. I would also like to point out that I found out some dirt on one of my former friends last weekend, but that's all I'm going to say about that. I just wanted to make note of it in somewhere to serve as a reminder when I happen to come back to this post and read somewhere in the future.

If you remember my series of posts about the things that one of my college roommates said, that means you've read my blog before. If you haven't seen this series, I suggest checking it out, it will only waste a few moments of your life. Why, you may ask am I bringing this up? Well, I was thinking of reviving this series with a new segment about the conversations I overhear from two of my coworkers who have cubicles next to mine. To put it simply, it sounds like Access Hollywood mixed with stories about lame experiences with guys and how to deal with relationships, in a very poor fashion if you ask me. I'm still contemplating this, but all of the lines would essentially boil down to "I'm dying," "I can't breathe," "is this real life,"she's so crazy," etc. It's quite repetitive and they don't give me much material to work with. Who knows, though, might come to fruition, but probably not.

I've fallen out of rhythm with posts lately, I have no idea if I'll get back into blogging on a more consistent basis. Regardless, 2013 has been a really good year. That's probably part of the reason I haven't been on Blogger as much. I'm sure I'll find something to write on here. To be fair, last year I had tons of time to think about random things at work and was able to generate list after list of things I wanted to write about. I just need to get some topics going and I can start churning out some garbage just like in the summer of 2011! Also, the weather is going to start really sucking big fat ass holes soon, so that should automatically lend more time to me writing incessantly about nonsense. I've noticed that I haven't really been writing about much of anything since I placed my fingers at the keyboard to finish this post. I'd like to think that I would be really good at performing filibusters in blog form. I can keep going on about nothing in particular with the best of them. Or at least I think, I can't actually say that I read many blogs, but I would guess that they have way more of a sense of direction, but a whole lot less awesomeness.

Well, I'm done for now. I don't know what's next for this blog, but don't expect anything innovative. Catch you later.

Do You Know the Ice Cream Man?

2013-09-01T16:00:00.002-04:00

What a great time of year we have upon us. European soccer leagues have started up and the baseball season is coming down to the wire. I'm really glad NBC got the rights to the English Premier League, now I only have to stream La Liga and the Serie A, but mostly La Liga. At this time I find myself sitting in my parents' living room, watching baseball, and blogging. This makes me contemplate, but not answer, the question "how did I get here?" The events of my life have all led me to this point, but that's not what I'm interested in discussing at this particular moment. Recently I've been thinking about the ice cream man. If my memory serves me somewhat accurately, I don't remember the ice cream man coming into my neighborhood during my time in middle school and all the way through the high school years. All of sudden, I find myself hearing the classic ice cream truck music quite frequently in my neighborhood. That got me thinking about the ice cream truck, the driver, and the ice cream dealing via truck business in general.

Now that I've gone through college and multiple business classes, I realize that there must be a method of some sort that goes into deciding an ice cream truck's route. The first thing that I would like to know about the ice cream truck business is who the hell is the owner? I wouldn't peg the people driving the trucks to be the owners, but who knows. That's kind of beside the point, though. Do ice cream truckers or whoever is in charge go through intense neighborhood analysis to pinpoint where they have the best chances of selling the most ice cream? And if so, what does this analysis consist of? Do they study school enrollment data to find which neighborhoods have the most kids that tend to buy ice cream from the ice cream truck with their parents' money?

I found this when I searched for "ice cream man"

Another method could be taking surveys of people, children included, in neighborhoods with questions like "on a scale of 1-11, how likely would you be to purchase ice cream from the ice cream man?" I would think they would do that without portraying the ice cream man shown above. That would just be bad marketing material, unless you thought the children were really fu*ked up or something. When you think about it, there's got to be some type of plan. Everything that we use has some type of plan behind it, no matter how strange it seems. Everything also must be manufactured and people must work in those manufacturing plants. Chase has mentioned to me that there have to be people that work in a dildo factory. He's absolutely correct. People own dildos, dildos must be produced, people must work in a dildo factory. It's quite sound logic.

Another thing that has been on my mind lately is pop stars. Pop stars have been on my mind against my will because of where I sit at work. My cubicle happens to be placed near two young ladies who, in my humble opinion, love pop news and gossip. I hear about all sorts of stuff that I could give less than a shit about, like Kanye West's new baby and how inappropriately Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus act. While I might dislike these people, and that's why I like the movie God, Bless America, it's not completely their fault. I blame the population of our country as well as the award shows/big television channels. I don't care what Justin Bieber, Kanye West, or Miley Cyrus is doing, has done, or will do. If everyone felt that way, then no one would know what they're doing and they wouldn't be such a distraction. Unfortunately, America not only loves war, but the people of our country also love celebrities. It's hard to tell which infatuation is worse sometimes. Miley Cyrus twerkin' it at whatever award show was on last weekend will always cause more stir and reaction than if she was a nice, young, respectable woman. I know it's backwards, but it's true. Who wants to talk about what a nice person someone is when we can be appalled at how a young woman performs a disturbing "dance" while scantily clad? However, I have to say the photo that surfaced of Will Smith's family from the event is great!

Hey, this will sell!

I could be horribly wrong, but I would say that society shapes celebrities into crazy people. Kind of similar to the way that Gotham City and Batman shaped some poor, lonely souls into villains. No one should be surprised when a child star becomes a demented human being anymore. We should be surprised when they become a respectable person. Yes, what people like Miley Cyrus did at the award show is stupid, but we can't deny that millions of people don't love to talk about it. That's the way it is, and in all certainty the way it will stay.

Gong back to the question about how did I get here, I'm actually more concerned about where I will go from here. What has happened has happened and there's no changing that now. But where we go is entirely up to us. I'm very close to or at the point where I'm ready to move out of my parents house. I have a good job and I have the ability to live on my own now, but there's one problem: I don't want to live alone. When I move out, I don't want to get a place just for myself. I want to live with some friends, but right now I don't have any friends to get a place with. So for the meantime I'll continue living with my parents and in all likelihood continue to stunt my social growth. If you ask me where I see myself in five years, my answer would be alive. If you asked me to describe myself in one word, that one word would be undefined. If you wanted to know where my life is taking me, I'd say to the future. Basically I have no idea what's going on or what's going to happen, and to honest, I don't think I would want it any other way.

Remember when I was discussing the ice cream man? That was a few paragraphs ago, but those guys are probably doing some intense research right now. You know with the ice cream selling season coming to an end, they need to find out which neighborhoods to roam next year. Can I also point out that I saw a great commercial for Diablo 3 today? The narrator of the commercial told me to grab some friends and go to hell. That made me laugh. I also recently found out that I was completely wrong about the writers of the show Heroes. After watching all the seasons of Heroes on Netflix, I was disappointed to find that the show had been canceled without the story getting wrapped up. Watching the show, I had thought that the writers had a story in mind with an endgame and eventually the show would reach this final conclusion and the show would come to an end. I thought when the series got canceled that the writers weren't allowed to finish their story, but upon doing some research (research consisted of some Google searches) that the writers were just making the whole thing up as they went along. No wonder the first season was so much better than all that followed. Of course this would mean that all the online sources I read were correct, but they're probably at least a little accurate. Regardless, I can kind of see why the show got canceled now. Those clowns probably didn't know where the hell they wanted the story to go and it was just living off how amazingly good the first season was.

I also can't decide what's more annoying, writing the opening of a blog post, or the closing of the blog post. I'm about ready to end this post, but I don't quite know how. A lot of that has to do with how disjointed my posts are. They always consist of random things that don't really have any business being together. So I guess this is as good a way as any to end it. I should really come up with my own sign off, maybe next time...

It's Not All Bad

2013-07-31T21:11:00.001-04:00

Now that the new job feeling has worn off, life has gone back to what it has been for the last few years: a seemingly endless attempt to find things to do with people who never seem to have the time to do anything. Seriously, though, I can't find people to do much of anything except have a few drinks on the weekends. It's really lame. I've just gotten used to telling myself, "f*ck it, I'll just go fist myself then." Short story short, I'm really bored most of the time. My coworkers often ask me if I did anything fun over the weekend. Well, if fisting myself is fun, then I have a blast every weekend! But, hey, it's not all bad. I'm going to see Dave Chappelle perform live in September!!! Talk about things I never thought I'd get the chance to do! Going to a comedy festival headlined by Chappelle and Flight of the Conchords is most definitely going to be a great time! Can't wait for that date!

I've also been thinking about that sleazeball from the other temp agency and that text he sent me. Now that it has been more than 3 months, I can honestly say that I made the right decision. This time he can go fist himself. Enough about that, I think I'm going to start covering current events of my choice. Such as what happened in this video below:

When I first saw this video on the news I didn't really register how hilarious it was. Then while I was driving into work that morning and I heard the sound clip again and thought about it... well let's just say this made my day. I can't believe that there are people out there who claim this offends them. What a bunch of garbage. This is just straight up funny. If I was Asian and I had the exact same personality, I would laugh. Moreover, I wonder how the guy who submitted this to news reacted when they actually put it on live television. If it was me, I don't think I would be able to stop hysterically laughing for several moments. Aren't there people who screen this stuff? I'm glad it got through, though. It certainly put a smile on my face for the day, and that alone makes it worth it in my eyes. Go ahead and insert another Asian joke now. Regarding eyes, just in case you didn't quite get it.

See, it's not all that bad. There are things to smile about in life, including, but not limited to harmless things that "offend" people. And going to see Dave Chappelle! I really did think Chappelle would be on the list of things I would unfortunately never see, along with seeing Rage Against the Machine in concert, seeing George Carlin perform stand-up, and watching R9, Il Fenomeno play soccer live.

Well, I have nothing left. I could sit here and bitch about shit for paragraph after paragraph, hour after hour, but I don't feel like it right now. Keeping this one short, going to see Chappelle soon!

10 Minute Post

2013-07-02T22:11:00.003-04:00

Usually I spend hour upon hour writing a blog post, as evidenced by the large number of absolute pieces of garbage displayed on this blog. Tonight, however, I'm going to see what I can slap together in ten minutes or so. At this point you should be expecting a real piece of shit! I haven't even remotely thought about what I am going to write about either. With that said, I'll let the words flow straight from the top of my dome, but not as I rock, rock, rock the microphone.

I wouldn't have blamed you if you thought microphone was going to be the last word in this post, but I would think you a bit retarded since you can clearly see that there is more content right below that word. I don't even know if I should spend time looking for pictures, which can sometimes be time consuming, but f*ck it, of course I'm going to look for pictures. I'll also add that this will probably be longer than ten minutes, but I'm not going to change the title because I'm a stubborn f*ck sometimes. Take right now for instance. Please commend me for going two paragraphs now and still not really saying anything.

Currently I'm working on my patience. I was hoping by now someone would have stumbled upon my blog thus propelling me to stardom and a random life full of doing who knows what. I didn't seriously think any one would discover me here, but you never know what's going to happen. You know how quickly things can change. At this point it has been about seven minutes since I started the post, and I can confirm that it will most definitely be more than ten minutes, but I will also confirm again that I will not change the title. Maybe I'll make this post ridiculously long and people will look at it, not read it, and think "holy shit, this guy wrote all this garbage in ten minutes? That Toninho is a real piece of shit!" I'm going to look for a picture now, be right back.

Ten minutes have already elapsed, but I'll continue using my free time to do this. I should really make a post about all the things I could be doing instead of writing a post. Maybe that would help me have a life or something, but that's a pondering for another time. You know, I got in a solid three paragraphs in ten minutes, that's not bad. I wonder how much time I've spent blogging in comparison to the amount of time I spent writing papers for school in my whole career as a student? I plan on overtaking the student paper writing mark with continued writing for this blog. It's good to have goals, and this is one that I won't know if I achieve or not, so I'll always be working toward it. Sound like a solid plan to me.

I realized something this weekend, well, actually I have been noticing for the past few years that it is getting harder and harder to find people to do things. I almost completely fail at making plans, but that doesn't stop me from continuing to try only to get the same negative responses or no response at all. Could be in a worse place though. I remember a year ago I was not very happy at all. That was when I was unemployed and I didn't have much to do. I felt like a waste of space, but luckily things have gone in my favor over the course of the year. Now I'm a cog in the great work machine of the United States of America. Last summer was not so much fun getting rejection after rejection for jobs, but I did my time and now I have an adult job! At least I think I do.

I think I mentioned this before, but my only complaint now is that I'm getting bored. Most of my friends are busy or busy ignoring me, and life has settled into one giant routine. I'll just go fist myself for now. And would you look at the time. Seems I'm out of time thanks to the aforementioned routine. I'll still go fist myself, though.

Where Am I Now?

2013-06-26T21:54:00.000-04:00

Well, I'd say it's about time for an update on life. In particular, my life, especially since that's the only one I really have a qualified knowledge on. I'm now 23 years old and still alive. That's about it, I'll catch up with you next time here on Sycophantic Laughter. Feel free to stop reading at this point because it's probably not going to get any more interesting for you. I've been out of college for over a year now and I've been working full time since July 17th of the year two-thousand and twelve. I still live at home and I'm below average social status. I live one day to the next and most days seem like the last. Mix that in with a little bit of nothing and you've basically found the recipe for my life.

Apparently I still look young, I was asked last Friday if I was still in high school and one of my coworkers said she had shoes older than me. My youngness is only accentuated when I shave, getting rid of that facial hair makes me look a week or two younger. I haven't committed a felony, but I have been given a twenty dollar speeding ticket. I don't do drugs and I drink more alcohol than I did in college. I eat vegetables but I'm not fond of tomatoes. Potatoes are better than sweet potatoes and I like pop music but I dislike pop culture.

I still work out, but my days as an athlete are most likely numbered. I usually don't remember dreams, but at least I'm not getting chased by giant rats anymore. I don't have a girlfriend, but that seems to be a what lots of people are interested in. My love for the game of soccer has regrown exponentially since sophomore year of college; I'm super excited to see Jose Mourinho back in Premier League next year, right where he wants to be! I really like comedy and many things in life have become one overlapping giant joke to me. I tend to belittle anything I accomplish, but it's all in good humor.

Now I'm going to take a step back and reflect more on one of the things I've said about myself. Often when I see someone I haven't seen for a long time or I'm getting acquainted to new people, such as new coworkers, I'm asked if I have a girlfriend. I don't, but I don't blame any females I've met. Trust me, I probably wouldn't want to date anyone that would want to date a guy like me. I don't know what that means, but it sounds interesting. I also stole that idea from Woody Allen who said he wouldn't want to belong to a club who had a member like him. The same coworker that told me she had shoes older than me asked if I had a girlfriend because she has some daughters she said she would introduce me to. I thought that comment was really funny. Even earlier today when one of our interns came in, she introduced me and said I was available. But if I really wanted that kind of help, I'd just tweet at Kim from the band Matt & Kim. Apparently this is the time of life when people kind of expect you to be involved in some kind of relationship. I'm below average social status, though, so I wouldn't expect anything different from myself. I've given up on a few girls that have given up on me. I'm not keeping my options open or any bullshit like that. It simply hasn't worked out yet. As I see it, I don't know what I'm missing, and they don't know what they're missing, so I'd say it's even.

Kim is a wild woman

And now for something completely different. Can I first point out that I can no longer watch any news broadcast anymore without thinking about Monty Python? The news really is a bunch of randomly put together stories of varying severity and interest that can only be transitioned from one to another with the phrase "and now for something completely different." In this case, the completely different thing is planning a trip to Brazil next summer to go see some of the World Cup! I'm looking to make it happen, so I'll wish myself good luck because no one else should give a damn!

Polypeptide Isn't a Toothpaste

2013-06-25T21:14:00.001-04:00

When I first pulled up the "enter your shit blog here" screen, I had no idea how I was going to start. Then I went to Goal.com, a website I check usually on a daily basis. One of the headline articles right now is "Italian Police Raid 18 Serie A Clubs." I find this quite comical because at this point I bank on there being some type of scandal after each season in the Serie A. Normally I would bet on a match-fixing scandal, but this one is about money laundering. The article points out that 18 first division teams are being investigated. There are 20 teams in the first division. I've said enough. It's too bad, really. When I was first getting into soccer in the late 90s, the Italian Serie A was my favorite league. This was mainly because Ronaldo, R9, was playing for Inter at the time. But the league used to be very good back then. It has kind of gone to shit since then. Oh well, I won't lose any sleep over it, and I'll continue banking on a scandal each summer. I'd even bet on it if I were a betting man.

Anyways, a word which is my favorite transition since I don't usually have a coherent blog structure, I can't believe it has been over eleven months since I've been working full time now. By sometime in mid July I'll have been working for an entire year. I think I've mentioned this before, but everything seems backwards to me.When I was young and had all the time in the world to do anything I didn't have money or mode of transportation. Now that I'm older and have money I barely have any time to do anything. Of course this is probably true for most people, but it really sucks. I want to go places and enjoy different cultures. That's what I'd like to do. And I think I will, once I have some vacation time built up. That way I'll have something to look forward to!

It's going to suck! And Ibra isn't in it anymore.

You know what I've noticed? As I've gotten older, I can't really say there are any people that I hate. All the things that have happened in my life have culminated to make me a bit apathetic. I could take it or leave it in most cases. I'm still fascinated by other personalities, too. There are some people who are just straight up bitches. It's not even their fault, it's just the way they are. Their tone is bitchy, they're always complaining, and they make it sound like everything is so much of a damn inconvenience on them. This kind of personality used to bother me, but I don't really give a shit any more. I don't even give a shit when angry customers are yelling at me on the phone at work. I understand where they're coming from and most of the time I can do very little to alleviate their frustration, so f*ck it, let them yell at me. When I was younger I used to get out of control when I got angry at things, but I've calmed down considerably. Only a few of my very good, closest friends have seen me get truly angry, and at those times I used to break things, put holes in my wall, and sometimes hurt myself. I've since patched all the holes in my wall and I haven't made another one since! Mostly because I don't give a shit anymore.

I'll admit I'm beginning to get a little restless, most days tend to feel relatively the same. I think I know what Trent Reznor meant when he penned the song "Everyday is Exactly the Same," for his band, Nine Inch Nails. I know there's more out there, I just need to do my time to make it to that point. Just like I did my time at a temporary job before getting a real one. Random interjection, I found out how much money the company I work for paid the temporary agency I used to work for to obtain my services. However, I will not disclose the amount here, but I know!

Well, it's about that time again. Time for me to cease this limited nonsense. Maybe I'll spark the motivation to write a longer post sometime, but that time is not now.