Have a Ball!

I had a very interesting experience last night.

While returning home from some friends’ after the Super Bowl, I needed to stop for fuel. It was incredibly snowy and generally chilly and moist outside. As I fueled, I kept seeing signs of water everywhere: snowfall, water dripping off the truck, the sound of cars driving over wet pavement, etc. In no time, the thoughts of water became unbearable, and I realized that I needed to urinate with a fury. I was not amused. It was cold out, and I wanted to get home.

Regardless, I didn’t think that I could make it, so I asked the gas station attendent for the key to the restroom.

Me: Say, do you have the key to the restroom?
He: Sure, just do me a favor?
Me: (Sensing some inappropriate request for oral sex or candy was on its way from the attendant) Uhhh, what do you need?
He: When you’re done, please shut the light off.
Me: (laughing, at my paranoia) Okay, sure.

I “did my bathroom thing”, felt relieved, and returned the key.

Me: Here’s your key. Thanks for letting me use it.
He: No problem. And thanks for remembering to turn the light off!
Me: No problem. Glad that I could help.

While leaving the store, it dawned on me. “How did the attendant know that, in fact, I had extinguished the light before leaving the restroom? Did he watch me through a camera? If so, did he see me peeing?”

So many paranoid thoughts… so little time!

I thought about it some more, and then realized that I didn’t care. In reality, it was a nice compliment to know that someone had taken the time to look at my balls.

Date a la Carte

Despite the fact that my confidence (when it comes to dating) has greatly improved, I’m still not recovered from the sudden breakup with P or the parting of ways with A. I’ve felt the need to, well, do something fun for a change. Or maybe I’ve decided to do something completely dumb and irrational, which is fun in and of itself. And I plan to share all of the details with you!

Now, I’ve come across this facinating — yet horrible — thing called 8-Minute Dating. The premise is that you meet up with your “dates” for 8 minutes a piece, and on the day after, you summarize your findings in the form of getting their contact information. Harmless interactions, and in my estimation? Completely useless and shallow interactions… that will leave me with plenty of stories to tell you!

Tiger Beat Meet Techout

I’ve been helping some friends interview candidates for a job at their shop. Now, at a former company, I used to tech interview people like crazy. It was fun, mostly. And people would harass me that I was interviewing the candidates “too hard”.

“Yeah, right”, I’d say to myself, “the pounding that I’d withstood during the course of my own interviews with said company was merely a precursor to ‘Dueling Banjos’.”

I’ve softened, tho. I guarantee it. Now, when I interview a candidate, I don’t like to be so aggressive. I don’t like to be outfoxed, which should never happen, but I like to have a rapport. After seeing some documentaries about 1980’s pop artists on VH-1 yesterday, I realized that my technical interviews are beginning to sound like a pop star interview in “Tiger Beat”. From today on forth, I must focus. But read the following interview. You may agree!

Me: So, “name”, do you want me to call you name?
Name: Sure “name”, or “suave”, or “l’il shave” is what I normally go by.
Me: That’s cool. So, could you tell me about the things that you like to do in the workplace, and the tasks that you prefer not to do?
Name: My turn-on’s are “UNIX” and “not Windows”, I’d say. My turn-offs are “Windows”, wearing shoes to work, monogamy, and conservative politics, I’d say.
Me: And would you say that you’re big on Solaris?
Name: No, not really. It’s more about Linux for me, Red Hat specifically. It’s so cool! The last release was the best one yet!
Me: Any plans for the future?
Name: I’m just trying to get by and be as happy as I can.

Hi, reader. My name is Nate. I’m an increasingly cynical, 31-year old Asian/Caucasian male. I’m a below-average dresser. I’m Indian, kind of, which makes my looks un-exotic for my gender. My nickname is currently “Ozzy”. My favorite type of food is Indian, and my pets’ names are Emerson and Max. My favorite moment in high school was being crowned homecoming king, and I’d also call that a Turn-On. My true Turn-Ons are nudity, voyeurism, crass language, insulting my dates and taunting your parents. My Turn-Offs are people who are bossy, rainy days, and running out of clean underwear.

When you Parrot All to Give the Very Best…

I saw the parrot girl just 30 minutes ago.

I always seem to bump into her when I’m in need of that “kick” with regards to short stories and humor.

Parrot girl fun fact: I learned that she’s dating a guy who repairs elevators for a living. She has an MBA, I think, or just wears a suit really well. She complains about his manners to her woman friends. I have decent manners when necessary, but I don’t repair elevators. What does that tell you about Miss Parrot Top, hmm? Let fuzzy logic lead you the way.

Today, I had the privilege of overhearing a conversation where she spoke of her skirt hiking up to her shoulders while she rode the commuter train into work. I almost blurted out, “that’s a real hot and sexy story, parrot girl!”, but decided against it. In fact, it appears that Miss Bin Parrot had something of a sugar low, and slumped down in the chair until the conductor rescued her.

Of course, this was probably all bullshit, since 2 weeks ago the same (spoken of) conductor refused to help her when she was nearly assaulted by two ex-cons.

I just had an interesting Instant Message about Miss Parrot.
Me: I just saw the parrot girl.
L: Oh yeah?
Me: Yeah, she told me…
L: You’re still hot for her.
Me: I guess that I’d bang her.
L: She’d probably have her parrot in the picture.

*shudder*

Let Us Disservice You!

Since my arrival in NH, I’ve noticed 2 things: silence and snow. The silence is the good part. I mean, I don’t hear barking dogs. My neighbors and I have plenty of breathing room between us. Ira came over for several days before Christmas, and we drummed and rocked without bothering a soul. Unfortunately, we do get exponentially more snow here than we did in MA. Hell, Natick used to get an assload of snow, but NH makes that pale in comparison.

The solution? Buy a snowblower. I ended up buying one on 12/30/2002, since after returning home to over 2′ of snow, it was near impossible to get around without one. I purchased a “top of the line” Craftsman 9hp/29″ snowblower, and the driveway was cleared in no time!

I lathered, rinsed, and repeated this snowblowing act with each subsequent snowfall (2), and on snowfall #3, I encountered an interesting plot twist: the powerdrive would no longer engage. Now, I’m a large man. I can push, lift, pull, wrestle most things that are my weight (250) or around that. Unluckily for me, snowblower Rip (Rip is my nickname for the snowblower now) weighs 200 pounds, and refuses to take kindly to being pushed uphill. Fucker.

So, having just bought the snowblower 3 weeks ago, I called Sears customer service. This really sucked.

Me: Hi, I just bought this snowblower from you, and the powerdrive won’t engage. It won’t engage in forward gear anymore.
Sears: Well, do you need a service call?
Me: Uh, yes.
Sears: The earliest we have is 1/23.
Me: But this is 1/10.
Sears: Sorry sir, but it’s the earliest time that we have.
Me: Well, do you have anyone I can talk to, so that I can get some pointers as to what might be going on with the snowblower? I don’t mind performing the repairs myself.
Sears: Sorry, we don’t have any support like that.
Me: Ordinarily, I wouldn’t make a big deal about the late nature of the service call, but I just bought the snowblower two weeks ago. I’ve been operating it per the instructions in the manual. It should NOT be broken. Therefore, I need to get this fixed ASAP. We have no shortage of snowfall here in NH.
Sears: Sir, I’m not sure if there’s anything that we can do about this. Maybe you can drop the snowblower off at one of our service centers?
Me: OK. Well, can they fix it today?
Sears: If you drop it off at one of our service centers, they can ship it out to one of our repair shops for you.
Me: How long will that take?
Sears: 7-10 business days.

Making a long story short, I escalated my call to Consumer Affairs, such that they relented, and had a service person come out “between 7:30am and noon” on 1/13. They actually arrived at 1:30pm, and didn’t finish their work as they needed to order a part. As of this very moment, the service technician is “running late” (in another 7:30am-noon window), and doesn’t expect to be here until 2pm at the earliest. Funny, I’m supposed to be arriving at work at 2pm today.

Oh, he just called. I can leave the snowblower and part outside, and he’ll repair it still.

So, suffice it to say that this whole thing has sucked, due to the counterproductivity of it all. Aside from that, I really hope that it gets fixed this time. Dealing with a bureaucracy like Sears is a real shot to the balls.

My suggestion to you is that you don’t buy products from Sears. Really, this is the same company who tried to sell me a “consolidated” service plan for my 2 products that I own (from Sears) even after I explained that I wasn’t going to spend another cent until the snowblower got fixed.

What a pisser. Arggh! 9/10 times, I buy good stuff that lasts for 5-10 years (depending on what it is). On the 10th time? It’s very painful.

Atonal Deaf

Traffic in Boston bit the big one yesterday. Actually, it’s been gnarled all week, but yesterday was particularly bad, since it took me nearly 2 hours to pass through a mile-long stretch of a major highway. ‘Twas an accident somewheres, I guess.

It’s weird. I can sit around home playing with my iBook or watching TV for countless hours on a day where I’ve determined I don’t want to do anything, but when it comes to being trapped in non-moving traffic, I wig out. First, I slouch in my seat and try to get comfortable, and eventually, I get so mad that I’m left with only my ability to make a stone face.

Yesterday, however, I was tiring of my stone face, so I decided to explore the other radio stations in the Boston market. The first couple of stations were public radio, as I’d expected. And then I hit one that caught my attention.

“Why is this music so atonal?”, I said to myself.
“Oh, maybe it’s my own music.”, I continued.
“Nope, there’s no CD in the player right now.”, I noticed.
“Must be college radio.”

Sure enough, it was some kind of independent alt.rock station. Whether college-related or not was unclear. But whomever’s song it was (on this station) involved a singer who was sure carrying on.

“Ieeeee, knoooow, youuuuuuu, MEEEEE!”, or such, was being chorused — way off key — and far too many times by this singer. And underneath that was a series of note/chord progressions that could only be appreciated by someone who was anticipating the repayment of $40K worth of student loans in less than four years!

I laughed, at first, remembering the undying love and affection that I used to have for college rock / indie rock / whatever, and how this music had intentionally gone out of is way to ensure that it never found a spot on any list that ClearChannel would shove down the throats of commercial rock radio stations. Kudos for that! But the simple fact is that this song, and all of the others that I listened to while sitting in my car, sucked, failing a better way to put it.

The thing that bothered me more about the atonal nature of the music, and the piss-poor singing, had to be the knowledge that this band had taken the time to design their music to be this annoying. Some musicians practice their craft and make remarkable music that many people enjoy, and groups like this have apparently decided to practice a craft that has the appeal of a starving artists’ bazaar.

Do I want this Picasso, or do I want this picture of “Row Boat and Boat House Aside Dark Sea”? Well, only of them costs $20.