There are days and there are days. I honestly can’t think of any other way to describe the… awkward things that happened today beside that cryptic phrase. It all seemed normal enough, I was sitting at work playing some Colin Mcrae on the psp and talking to my supervisor about various bs when I got a message from my roomie The Smith. Now, before I go on, I have to tell you that these last few weeks we’ve been taking in part time roommates to help with some expenses and we’ve actually pulled in some decent money by letting people stay for between a night and a month. Well, yesterday one of the nice people that rented one of the rooms and who I barely ever saw left and we got in a new guy. Now, I’ve barely even met the people that have been staying here because of conflicting schedule, but I did see this guy on his first night. He had parked his truck where I usually leave my car, and blocked off both my spot and a good part of the driveway with his vehicle. I didn’t really mind because we have plenty of curb, but when I walked by his truck I looked in the open door and couldn’t help but see how absolutely trashed the thing was. Besides looking like it had been salvaged from a barren desert wasteland after having been abandoned for several years, the passenger’s side seat was completely broken. And I’m not talking about a missing headrest, the entire back rest had been ripped off and was wedged into the dash to make sure that it didn’t come flying at the driver with every hard turn.

I’ve seen some beaten up cars being driven by alright people though, so it didn’t bother me too much. Even when I met the guy and saw that he kinda looked like an aging skater/hippie I wasn’t worried. Then today at work I received a message from the Smith telling me that our new roommate… shit in his room and all over the bathroom.

No, that’s not a punch line to a Dane Cook joke; it’s something that our crazy fucking roommate did. And it’s not like his room was very far away from the bathroom, he just decided for some reason that the floor was as good as anywhere else. I can see him now when they confronted him today, “What? It’s like you people never shit in your room before.” I’ve told this to a few people at my work today, and every single one of them has given me the same slack jawed, eyes popped open like the doctor just snapped the rubber glove on look. I mean, what can you say to that really?

The guy is moving his stuff out and I just have to wonder if it’s just my personal luck with roommates that has brought this odd man to us. Then again I suppose that if you let enough people stay with you, eventually you’re going to get one that craps on your floor.
…..

Anybody know somebody who’s housebroken and needs a place to stay?

Here it is, another weekend. This week flew by at unreasonable speeds and now I’ve been unceremoniously dumped into my days off with no idea what to do. Not helping at all is the workout I just did which has left me feeling like a damp noodle. I think I might have pushed it a bit too hard for right now my body feels like a bowl of jello in an earthquake whenever I try and move any of my appendages. It was a very kick ass week overall though, since I was able to fulfill one of my goals that I set months ago, and finally attained perfection at my job when I got my list of faults down to zero, something that nobody else in my position was ever able to do. I paraded that in front of my boss, waiting to hear what kind of smart ass comment he would make, but even he had to give me props, begrudging as they were. Of course he kept the list I had printed out so that he might use it against me at some point in the future, but I knew that would happen. Haha, he always keeps things interesting.

And even better than silencing my boss for a precious few minutes was this morning when I checked the paper and saw that Panic at the Disco was coming to the Hark Rock as headliners. Tickets go on sale tomorrow and I will be there at the box office to buy mine because every other show they’ve played at sold out pretty much first day. I don’t want a repeat of the last Fall Out Boy show where I spent the night before the concert looking online and gasping at the ticket prices on eBay. 150 for two tickets? Gaaaaahhh!! This time maybe I’ll get lucky and get my chance to gouge last minute shoppers for a pair of golden tickets. It’s still the beginning section of the concert gauntlet, but so far I’ve had good luck and have only been to one show that I didn’t enjoy. I saw Alkaline Trio a couple of weeks back and even though they were fantastic, it was just my luck that this was a vintage concert where they played from their first 3 albums which I didn’t like at all instead of the last two cd’s that I loved. I had a feeling it wasn’t going to go well when they told the crowd that they were going to play their whole first album. At the end I caught 4 or so of their newer songs towards the end but 15 minutes of fun in a two hour span wasn’t such a good ratio of enjoyment to torture. All of that was erased a few days later though when the Smith and I went to go see Children of Bodom, who absolutely tore up the House of Blues in the best metal concert that I’ve ever seen. It was incredibly intense music that made me jump into a power stance THE LIKES OF WHICH HAVE NEVER BEEN SEEN. It was some good times for all involved, but as great as that was, it doesn’t stand up to how much I’m anticipating some Panic.

So now, I’m looking over my checklist and everything seems to be fine. Now if we could just fix this weather that can’t make up its mind. Yesterday I walked out of work and thought to myself what a peaceful and breezeless night it was, which apparently Mother Nature took offence to. By the time I got into my car I was starring in my very own Japanese porn: Wind of the Ass Raping volume 2. Hey, I’m just asking for some consistency here.

Last night was interesting. Browsing Special K's fabulous myspace page led me to yet another now infamous, "friend's test", the unholy gauntlet of personal questions that brings ridicule to those who cannot remember their buddy’s favorite color or biggest high school crush. Sadly enough I actually scored better than his sister despite not having talked to the Special one for the last couple of weeks. Afterwards Jason was asking me why in the hell people kept on putting up these quizzes, and I told him that I had no idea but if he made one up I would ace it for sure with my old test taking skills from the days of old. Of course being Jason, he proceeded to make the most convoluted, nearly impossible set of questions that he could possibly think of and place this on the mountaintop of friendship, where I was expected to traverse if I was to prove my worth as a true p.l.p. to him. I struggled through the quiz and ended up scoring a fairly respectable 60, then I went and made a counter to his malicious test. I packed my own personal, “Hardest test ever” with some brutal questions to throw him off. Now I submit to the midnight socie- I mean to you, the pair of hardest tests ever to see if you can scale that mountain alongside us. I have no idea why I’m speaking in such grandiose terms, it must be because I’ve been reading a book by a British author for the last few days and his eloquence is starting to rub off on me. Or maybe not.

Jason’s hard ass test

http://www.quizyourfriends.com/yourquiz.php?quizname=060326233102-856515&

My hard ass test

http://www.quizyourfriends.com/yourquiz.php?quizname=060327002019-685892&     

Bwahahaha- sorry, I try and sneak my evil laughs in wherever I can, though I know that this isn’t a particularly devious situation.

Oh man, I can’t wait for tomorrow. For weeks now my boss has held a massive collection of energy drinks hostage in his office, telling me that he needs them for “sampling purposes”, but never actually using them. So every morning I’ve been going into his office and staring sadly at the amazing bounty that is just sitting there, waiting to be consumed by my ever parched throat. Tonight he called me up wanting me to hook his friend up with all kinds of psp stuff, and in return I extracted a promise from him to let me take as many of the drinks as I would like. If that happens to be all of them I’m sure that he won’t mind, there’s plenty more where that came from, (though for research purposes I need to find out exactly where this plenty more is located). Yeah, I’m not going to deny that I’m still an energy drink addict. I’m just an unusually strong willed one. I’ve limited my energy drink inhalation per day from 3 to 4 a few months back to 3 or 4 a week now. I crave them nonstop but after hearing the stories of developed narcolepsy from these tasty beverages, I’ve backed off. It’s a test of willpower every day though when I walk into the stock rooms and see an entire cooler of Red Bulls sitting there cold and ready, inches from my face, invading my mind with intense images of increased alertness and sugary sweetness.

It would be so, so very nice if I could just go to work tomorrow and sip my drinks in peace, but I go to the workplace with the sense of dread that accompanies the knowledge that Smelly Guy will be there waiting for me.

The Smelly Guy Saga

The whole history between me and the smelly guy goes back to my earliest days at the Mirage. He was actually the person who trained me on my second day on the job, showing me the ins and outs of… filling a minibar. It was a boring day so basically I got to spend a good chunk of it conversing with him. On the very first day I met him, I remember clearly walking past the general area that he stood in and catching a whiff of stank. And not just, “a little bit of smell after a hard day at work” stank, but a, “guy hiking in the woods with no shower for two days” kind of stank. I didn’t go back to investigate the scene, but I figured that it couldn’t have been him because it was only 9:00 in the morning. The next day when he trained me my fears were confirmed in the most awful way imaginable when we were stocking up. He reached over me to get something and I came face to face with the stench of hades. It was as if somebody stuck a balloon that contained the odors of 17 fat men into my nose and popped it. Dazed, I staggered back and tried to reorient myself. It was my second day and I’m generally polite, so I told myself that he probably rushed out without slapping the deodorant on as I’ve done once or twice in the past and didn’t give it a second thought. Haha, I still remember the day when I was in such a rush that I grabbed my mom’s stick of Secret and rubbed it on quickly. I kept on smelling something flowery but had no idea where it could be coming from. As the day progressed it just got worse and worse until I realized with a grimace that I was in fact the flowery smell that pervaded the hallways. No real harm done but it felt awkward as hell. I’m honestly not sure how it feels to know that Secret was strong enough for me.

So anyways, by the time a couple of weeks rolled around I finally realized that he was truly just a smelly guy who told me personally that he really doesn’t have any friends at all.  I feel bad for the guy because he’s not a bad person, just smelly and worst of all, boring. I made the mistake of being nice and friendly to him in my first few days and now he traps me and tells me every uninteresting detail of his life in torturous 40 minute long conversations. He’s another Wilson’s Dude, the original Vortex of Boredom. Any topic that he talks about, no matter how interesting it might be, is sucked dry completely of any entertainment value and what’s left is the equivalent of a lecture from your high school algebra teacher. And of course, as I’m sure it’s been scientifically proven in the past, any person who is as frightfully boring as this has no ability at all to discern subtle movements of their tortured victims who are trying to tell them without being rude that their ears are close to bleeding. I made possibly the most flagrant move to show him the other day that I was bored as hell listening to him when I picked up the book I had been reading when he came in and turned away from him while reading it. I listened, hoping for silence and the dude was still droning on behind me!

Ugh, I’m nice to the guy and now he thinks that I’m his best friend. Now I know how girls who work retail and are polite to guys who immediately think that the girls must be attracted to them feel.

I’m thinking about going to step two and dropping a stick of deodorant in his box, hoping that he’ll use it and fix at least one problem, because the only thing worse than being bored out of your mind is having to breathe into your shirt at the same time.

And even though I usually abhor boring IM conversations being put into blogs, I have to share this one with everybody. Enjoy.

horizon slash: man I blame aloha kitchen and those crafty flipinos

SweetWhiteNinja0: hahahaha

SweetWhiteNinja0: I don't know if that excuse holds up too well my friend

horizon slash: when they put 2.99 chicken bowls don't they know students will go there

horizon slash: man they are conveninently right near my work

horizon slash: thats neglience

SweetWhiteNinja0: hehehe

SweetWhiteNinja0: to get the chicken bowls they should have an electrified fence that you have to pole vault over

SweetWhiteNinja0: and failure means certain death

horizon slash: hehe sounds like a sho kosugi movie

horizon slash: bowl of death

SweetWhiteNinja0: hahahaha

horizon slash: dude it works

horizon slash: he's a trapped POW

horizon slash: starving to death

horizon slash: and he sees a chicken bowl on the other side

horizon slash: he says fuck it! to the world and attempts to get it despite the hundreds of ninja guards and exploding suicide dogs

horizon slash: not to mention the flamethrower wielding cheorkee indians accompanied by nuclear powered sasquatches

SweetWhiteNinja0: holy shit man that was awesome

horizon slash: lol

SweetWhiteNinja0: That's so going in my blog

horizon slash: oh god nooooo!!!

Oh man, it feels so good! I’m not sure if there is any better feeling than being able to humble my boss and his large trap. Now don’t get me wrong, I think he’s a good boss and an overall cool guy to be around, but he’s incredibly sarcastic and always trying to start crap with everybody he’s around. Haha, it’s all in good fun but it felt good to shut him up for a minute this morning. I was relaxing in my office soon after arriving at work, about to play some Grand Theft Auto, when he called me up and told me that he was meeting some people from Bartech, (the people who make the bas that I work on) and I needed to let them in while he was on his way up. They were coming in to do an analysis of our operating procedures that would end with them drawing up a plan to improve our overall profitability. I entertained them for a few minutes until he came up and started the meeting with him. The main analyst was from Bartech France, and had one of those accents that are so thick that it makes you wonder if you’ve lost your grasp on the English language, because you know he’s speaking properly but you just can’t quite understand the words that are coming out of his mouth. Over the course of a few minutes I fell into his rhythmic speaking and began to understand him clearly, and listened while he counted off the three basics of business that he believed to be essential to our success. He said, “The three things we concentrate on are maintenance, because if our systems don’t function properly we cannot trust that our charges and profits are accurate, service to the guest through proper refilling and adequate pricing as well as visibility of the system, and front desk, making sure that they are applying the charges to guests and not letting people get away with free product. First, on the maintenance side, we are extremely impressed with the way you are handling our systems. As we have seen from reports, your fault percentage is the lowest we have ever seen. And for a system running off of the old coaxial networks, that is extremely impressive. We have seen hotels running 300 systems that have more offline bars than you, and there are over 3000 in this hotel.”

SCORE!!!

Hahaha, the look on my manager’s face turned momentarily dark because he knew that I wasn’t going to let that one go. He kept the smile plastered on, but I smiled wide, threw up my arms, and said “thank you” to everybody in the room. The Bartech people just laughed at the crazy American trying to look like Rocky with his hands raised as if the heavyweight belt was magically transported into his hands, but I saw my boss working his brain heavily trying to find some way to deflate me from this momentary victory. After they left and I was walking down the hallway with my manager, I finally let it out and did some good natured and long awaited gloating. “So, less than 1% fault rating huh? I think I remember them saying that they were extremely impressed. It seems like you’ve got an all star tech on your team.”

His response? “Yeah, you’re just lucky that they caught you on a good week. If it was a normal week they would have been as unimpressed as I am every day with your performance. Lucky bitch.”

Ohboy, I should have expected as much. Haha, He was smiling after he said that though, so I know that he felt a tinge of pride for me. Or maybe it was just gas like he said it was when I suggested the pride thing. Ah, after dealing with the infamous Bobby for so long it’s cool to have a boss that I can talk and laugh with. There’s nothing quite like wasting an hour of your work time watching The Price is Right with your boss and getting paid for it. I remember that day well because I told him that with his vast network of friends who steal from trucks and sell their wares on the streets, he could be the next contestant on “The Ghetto the Price is Right”. It would be just like the normal version, but instead of retail price, the contestants would try to decipher the prices of name brand products that were bought on the street from those shady guys in the all white unmarked van.

“Yeah Bob, I know a guy on the corner of Third and MLK who can get that Whirlpool washer and dryer set for four fitty. He can also get you a PSP with no serial for a hundred if you interested. Just give me the cash and I’ll get you the goods later. Now when do I get to spin that big wheel?”