In Which I Become an Adult Part 4 of 1,456

     This past week something major happened. Yes, Fall Out Boy did announce they were reuniting, but I also got a new job. What makes this different than any other job I've gotten?

     It. Wasn't. Off. Craigslist.

     Ever since I moved to Chicago, I've gotten all gainful employment from the website where one can also buy a dishwasher, or post a missed connection for that girl you saw get a coffee four people in front of you in line at Starbucks.

     I should have known that this wasn't the best way to get a job as I have repeatedly gotten THE WURST jobs ever.

Example:

A. The recruiting job where I quit, was fired, and rehired in the same two-day span. This job also featured the day that the woman in sweatpants and a McDonald's hash brown in her hair tried to break into our office because she had been promised a job.

B. The job (blogged about previously) where I videotaped men in rabbit costumes riding on skateboards.

C. Banana Republic. In a word: SUCKED.

     The most recent job I had, however, I liked. There were weird things about it, like the gallons of urine that accrued on the floor of the bathroom because people refused to pee with the lights on. Or the two-hour meetings we would have and discuss...God knows what, but other than that it was good. Good coworkers, good boss, no customer service/human interaction.

But last month through a mutual friend I interviewed for a job as a grad admissions guy at a university in Chicago. It includes things like retirement benefits and a cubicle with a name plate.

     I realized what a sarcastic bitch I am when this week one of my coworkers at my present job said, “Tedd, we'll miss you.”

     My response: “I know. It was a tough decision. (beat) Really, that's not sarcastic. I'm sad.”

It's weird for me to be leaving a job and actually going to miss the day-to-day grind of the office. I'll miss things like answering the phone as my fake assistant, or calling my coworker and having conversations like:

“Hey, I have an important question.”

“Yeah.”

“What would you do for a Klondike bar?”

“Well, thats a really interesting question. I mean, I would do most things for a Klondike Bar.”

“I think you should also state whether this is is something you would do for love. I mean, I know you won't do that, for love – but seriously, who would?”

“Exactly. Sometimes people do crazy things for love and Klondike Bars. For instance they might wear really short shorts on a day when it's 40 degrees outside.”

“I thought that was just a bad fashion choice.”

“See, this is an important lesson. Before you judge someone for bizarre behavior, you perhaps should ask them if they are getting a Klondike Bar for it later.”

     I will also miss 15-minute discussions regarding the Real McCoy, City High, and other 90's groups on Fridays when we are all trying to avoid doing work. And yes, I did occasionally feel good about my job, like the time I helped a lady work toward her medical licensure because of a report. Or the time some [insert derogatory term for stupid man here] emailed me and said my report was wrong, to which I responded. “I'm right. Look at this website. Boom.” [Okay, maybe I'm paraphrasing.] Regardless, it was a good job and I will miss it.

      I'm not usually one to get retrospective about life, but I turned 28 this month, I got my Master's, and I'm going to have my name on a piece of brass(?) or whatever metal is used for nameplates. It's kind of weird to be moving on to a different phase of life where people might respect me, or at least stand at attention when I discuss my new job, that WAS NOT gotten off of Craigslist.

Sometimes I feel like that, and other times I dance in my apartment naked, but who wouldn't to this retro-style track?:

     Or sometimes I drink too much and smoke a cigarette and talk to homeless people outside of bars. There's a learning curve for life, I suppose. I'm getting better at adulthood, but I never want to perfect it. For now I'll make my venn diagram of things that I would do for love and things I would do for Klondike Bars. This could also be a good time to start writing a guide for your 20's for my nieces and nephews. We will, of course, start with life's most important lesson:

            Never judge anyone: you don't know what crazy acts people will do because it will      

            lead to the awarding of a Klondike Bar at some later point.

I Write a Fake Review of Zero Dark Thirty Because I Luh'd It and No One Else Does

     Kathryn Bigelow's brilliant film begins in absolute darkness. As the voices of first responders, 911 callers, and voicemails of those trapped in the Twin Towers echo over the black of the theater, it's not hard to feel the uncertainty, panic, and fear of this blank unknownness. For the film's two and one-half hour duration, the darkness doesn't dissipate, but swells as characters die, as interrogations commence, as terrorist leaders are captured and give the American operatives names, places, and lies that eventually guide them to Osama Bin Laden. Many consider the film, The Hurt Locker with a girl; the implication that Bigelow returns to the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and treads the same ground and gives no new meaning to the desolation and ache of America's first war of the 2000's. But to say that this film is a retread, an imitation of her own previous work, is to say that Shakespeare's Henrys and Richards were artistic redundancies.

     Far from the front lines of battle and the bomb squads of The Hurt Locker, Maya is plunged into the amorality of interrogation and intelligence. As she watches men waterboarded and tortured, she stands strong, and at other times crumples under the weight of her duty. In her office she receives the news that her friends are dead, of the bombings in London; in a meeting after work, the foreign wars break into the sphere of her daily life. She earns scars of combat and sees her own blood shed.

In all of her actions Maya is certain of one thing: the tip that she received from one prisoner is the key to Bin Laden. As her superior officers doubt her diligent following of her interrogation's one thread, Maya only grows more certain. When a clue finally breaks and she is able to pursue it, she takes what is perhaps the film's only moral stand on following her lead. In a film that begins in darkness and sees its third act submerged in a Pakistani night, Maya's certainty over the importance of her intelligence, stands as a luminous truth in desert of moral desolation.

     The shortsightedness of some to see this as a pro-torture film, denies the brilliance of its own exploration of darkness. From the film's introduction, to the torture, to the murder of innocent wives at its conclusion, Zero Dark Thirty explores certain horrors of the human condition. Certainty, in morality, in belief, is what drives the engines of war, of terror. As we stand in our right – the belief that the terrorists must die, the horror of 9/11 must not repeated – we enter the same darkness of our enemy, an enemy that in its moral certainty, its conviction, saw the United States as an affront to their God, their way of life. The night of the film's conclusion stands as an illuminating allegory of right, wrong, murder, and certainty. As blood is spilled, we celebrate the capture of America's Public Enemy Number One. But as a wife falls over the body of her dead husband, do we stand in the moral right: is this woman's life any different than the 3,000 taken on 9/11?

     But Bigelow's film does not answer our questions. Posed in the darkness, these questions remain as free-floating and alive at the film's conclusion as at its beginning. Maya claims her light, her certainty, when she fights for her attack on Bin Laden's safe house, but as the film comes to a close and she stands in the light of an Afghani day, she lets tears fall down her face. She waits for the plane's bay doors to close, for the darkness to return. Zero Dark Thirty does not stake any moral ground, but it does illuminate truths about moral right, religious fervor, and the moral blackness that humanity confronts in all of its wars, whether in the Middle East or in the day-to-day grind of an intelligence office. Zero Dark Thirty is a time we all know, a time when we stand at the convergence of our beliefs and must weigh life against life and truth agains truth. Bigelow just had the courage to give this dark hour of our human experience a name.

The Flirt and The Tilapia

There was a fight over me this past weekend. True, one of the parties was a guy that might have been related to Christopher Walken, and the other was a sorority girl that had been drinking for the length of a workday (in the U.S., not France), but nonetheless – they both wanted a piece of the Tedd. I was left alone by my two friends who had both gone out for a smoke. I look up and all of a sudden I'm surrounded by these two peeps. At first I thought they had to be together because they were talking about me, to each other, as if I wasn't there.

Girl: “Isn't he cute.”

Guy: “Adorable.”

Girl: “I love blondes.”

Guy: “Honey, he's gay.”

I had to interject, “I'm very gay.”

Girl: “I know. I knew it.”

Guy: “I've always wanted to bone a blonde.” [One must love the subtlety of homosexual flirting.]

The whole thing wrapped up in twenty seconds when I told the guy I had a boyfriend. The girl, however, was still into me, so we went out on the dance floor. At 7 p.m. We looked real cool.

I don't get hit on a lot at bars. One person suggested that it was because I was, “too intimidating.” Further research suggests that it more likely due to the concentric rings of chin flab that started to accumulate around my jugular after I turned 25.

Most likely, however, is that it is the god of flirtation's merciful dealing with myself and anyone I happen to come into contact with. At first, I wouldn't engage, but would rather laugh obnoxiously and run away. This happened most pronouncedly when a man told me my hair was pretty. Flight is also the response to the times (read: one) that I was hit on by a guy who looked like he walked out of a magazine...that has...good looking men in it. At this point I had moved slightly beyond the possum laugh and play dead stage.

“Hey, you come out here often?”

“What? Often? What? Yeah, my friend...he's from LA...so we're here...like seeing things...and...he's from LA...so...”

The effect is probably incomplete without seeing the drool and nervous head tic that were happening as the conversation was occurring. Oddly enough the conversation didn't last long.

I have finally found my stride, though. It is ineffectual in rituals of courtship, however, it is also resolutely awkward and me.

Doesn't matter who you are at the bar, if you approach me and I don't know you, you will most likely be the butt of a terrible joke or a string of insults.

At one party I was introduced to a handsome man.

“This is John. He's an engineer.”

“Oh, wow,” I said. “That's pretty awesome you drive trains.”

Handsome man expression of judgment into a: “I don't drive trains. Do they even call those people engineers anymore?”

“I don't know...,” I said. “My friends from LA...and like...”

The joke wasn't funny, but three-beers Tedd thinks its a hoot. In general, no one else does.

This was also the case when I met a German. I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to my job stuff – not that I'm super in love with my job, but my line of work deals with such random stuff that when I have the chance to talk about my vast knowledge of international education, you better bet I do.

At a pretty sloppy party this German came up to me. Even if my friend didn't know him, you would know this guy is German. 6'1”, Aryan, muscled like the gestapo. So he comes up to me and starts talking to my friends. At the moment when it was least awkward, I inserted:

“Oh man, you're German. You must have taken the abitur.”

The abitur is the German national examination given after Grade 13. For German students, it's really important. For any other human being... It doesn't matter.

“Yeah,” he said.

Which I thought would conclude the conversation, however, soon all were joining in talking about Germany and education in general. I had lost interest the minute my esoteric knowledge was used in conversation, so I just sort of sat back and listened for a bit. Eventually, the conversation got around to the previous party we had been at to watch the Pride parade. I clutched my figurative pearls and said, “Gay Jew...” referring to the man at the previous party who was most likely neither gay nor Jewish, but looked awesome with a shirt off.

The German looks at me and says, “You know, I don't know. I don't really find Jewish men attractive.”

“Well,” I said before I could stop myself, “is anyone really surprised coming from a German?”

If you take any lesson away from this blog post, let it be that Nazi jokes still aren't funny to Germans. Don't joke about it. It's not even that he got upset, but that the whole crowd was looking at each other like, “Too soon?”

These all culminated to the most recent encounter with a guy at a bar. Before the story it's important to know of another man: The Tilapia. So named for a play on his last name, and his general personality, which resembled a fish flopping awkwardly on a shore.

The Tilapia is one of those people that is almost certainly living with an eccentric ex-sitcom writer. At the beginning of the day they go over his role and how throughout the day he can be as obnoxious and charicaturish as possible. The Tilapia did such things as bring books by ancient philosophers to the bar. He would sit by himself until another group of people came in, at which time he would approach them with the book held – cover out – and he would start saying things in that Harvard-Ivy accent that can be seen here:

He and the ex-citcom writer would come up with such phrases as, “That's the Times for you!” Referring, of course, to the newspaper. If you know me, I don't talk about current events or newspapers. The world is depressing. Let's talk about Taylor Swift. But The Tilapia had graduated from Harvard and wanted all to know he was better than you. He was also a man who had the whiteprivilegatude to be able to travel to eight countries in four weeks. And tell us all about it. “And that's Eurasians for you!”

Well, I was at a bar recently with my friends. In my old age I like to go out on Thursdays. I like to go out on Thursdays at 6, drink my fill, and leave before anyone else gets there.

This particular night, my friends and I were the only ones in a bar drinking cheap beer before more fun people showed up. This super-fit guy walked in and sat at the bar. He was still sweaty from working out and had on a sleeveless shirt. Before I knew that he was good friends with the bartender, I was pretty sure he was just a giant douchebag. Aside from the sleeveless shirt, the most damning evidence of which was the giant 3^rd edition of Chemistry that he put on the bar. Like HUGE, textbook Chemistry object. The kind my friends kept in its plastic in college.

As soon as the book was set on the bar, I had massive flashbacks to the Tilapia.

“Oh, why yes I'm reading Aristophanes! That's the ancient Greeks for you!”

I was about three beers deep at this point (as stated before, Tedd's critical mass) so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to make a joke that no one would even remotely understand, the purpose of making only to be able to tell my other friends about later.

The guy orders a drink and I turn to him.

“Conversation piece?” I ask pointing to the 17-lb book on the bar.

It is also important to point out that I wasn't saying this in a flirty way. I was saying in in the 65-year-old-Parisian-prostitute-who-smokes-3-packs-a-day way. It was not inviting.

“Oh,” he says, “no, I'm a TA. I was reading up for my class tomorrow.”

This was a valid excuse, and once I found out he was best friends with the bartender, I was going to give him a pass. Douchebag status was lifted. Why you would bring a Chemistry book to the gym is beyond me. I can barely run on the treadmill without falling off, much less focus on...whatever the heck you study in Chemistry. We talked for a bit after this, but after the funny joke to myself, I was done with it.

It's a good thing that I'm off the market. My favorite bar currently is one on the north side of Chicago that has DILF night. Two of my friends like to go, so we hang out and just drink a couple beers. The great thing about DILF night is that no one is even remotely interested in talking to me. A skinny kid who looks 20 and can't grow facial hair isn't really in high demand.

Which is fine with me. If someone did strike up a conversation it would inevitably turn into a slew of insults, the culmination of which would be me talking about how I know this guy in LA.

The Bathroom Follies

It’s been a while since a blog update was necessary. Not that it’s necessary now, but my 1.5 fans (we have lost half of Mr. Fluffer's support due to apnia related illness) *, have waited long enough. And they will probably have to wait longer for something that’s actually any good.

*To decode this, see previous blog posts

The Bathroom Follies:
Remember in elementary school when, inevitably there was the story of the kid who pooped on the floor, or peed his pants? In my case it was the Tale of the Vomit Chain in first grade, when we were all lined up for bathroom use in the hallway and one of my friends threw up in the line. This, of course, turned into three other kids all throwing up, one after the other, in sequence, down the hallway. Poor Mrs. G, had a lot of work to do that day.

The point is (if there is one) that stories of bathroom horror are generally relegated to elementary school, when seeing a surprise poopie on the floor is still socially acceptable.

Not so! My bathroom at work is one of the largest chamber of horrors in the city of Chicago. While it isn’t clear exactly who the culprit is, for there might be multiple, there is always some kind of surprise when you slip in the key and enter the 19th floor potty.

Horror #1: The floor around the urinal. Don’t ask me how it’s possible, but the floor around the one urinal in our floor’s bathroom is inevitably covered with… The stuff that should go in the urinal. Every. Single. Day. No matter what time – 8 am or 5 pm – there is some size of puddle under the porcelain receptacle. True, sometimes it is tiny and almost unnoticeable, but sometimes – this is disgusting, I apologize if the one and one-half of you reading this are squeamish – there is standing liquid under the urinal. Standing. Like measurable with a centimeter ruler. 

The most horrifying instance of this was one day about a month ago when my coworker came back into the office. 

“Just got done cleaning the bathroom! No puddle!” (Yes, the puddle is that famous among male coworkers.)

Seeing this as a golden (no pun intended) opportunity to relieve myself without getting my shoes wet, I rushed into the bathroom, when OH! To my horror… Somehow… In three minutes, a standing puddle of liquid had formed. WHY?! How?! The man we think is responsible for this is maybe 4’10” tall, 100 years old, and shuffles so slowly his bathroom breaks have to take 40 minutes a piece. How did he beat me?

Some hypotheses going around the office suggest it is the work of some sort of ghost, ala Moaning Myrtle from Harry Potter. Pissing Pete is not looked upon fondly.

Horror #2: I don’t bathe at work. I don’t take care of any personal hygiene efforts, except going to the restroom, and washing my hands afterward. Why then, great bearded man down the hall, do you feel the need to shave and trim your GIANT UGLY beard in the public restroom.

Yes, this man hacks and slashes at his face bush in the restroom. This is gross.

Even grosser is that he doesn’t. clean. It. Up. 

Some mornings I’ll go into the bathroom and the entire counter and sink will be littered with hair – as if some tiny piñata full of baby gremlins has been smashed and all their hair blasted all over the bathroom. 

You’re busy, bearded guy. Fine. But why can’t you clean up after yourself? Why must you make the rest of us wade through a hirsute forest when we wash our hands in the morning?

Horror #3: I think of myself as a good citizen of earth. When it doesn’t require any additional effort. 

This means that when I leave the bathroom, I turn off the lights. It saves energy, and it doesn’t make sense to have them on all the time.

One of the people on my floor took this to another level. I entered the bathroom the other day and it was in complete darkness. Thinking no one was in there…obviously… I flipped on the light. This illuminated the fact that there were a pair of orthopedic shoes under the stall.

“You ruined the mood!” an old voice cackled from behind the stall door.

“Ha.ha.ha.” Tedd awkwardly laughs as he backs out the door.

Although creepy, this scene also explains some of Horror #1. If everyone is peeing in the dark… No wonder we can’t hit the bulls eye.

Another Story about Hair (Or Lackthereof):
I have face warts. Yup, like warts on my face. At this point, I’m hoping that they have all gone away, but one can never be sure. The dermatologist suggested that my habit of making out with frogs cease, however, I don’t think this is a possibility. 

My dermatologist also suggested I stop shaving until they cleared up. I don’t know if you know this about me, but somehow I am a man with almost no secondary sex characteristics. My voice is a tenor trapped between 14-year old boy and Olympic female shot putter, and I can’t grow facial hair. My chest hair looks like gnats landed on my chest in a weird crop circle pattern. It’s not cool, or sexy, and doesn’t even offer the possibility of growing an ironic moustache. But all this is secondary to the fact that I have WARTS ON MY FACE.

(Side note: Once they had cleared up I brought this up with my mother. “Oh,” she said, “they really were warts. I thought they…were….you know…from other things.” … No Mom, I don’t have the Herp.)

At the beginning of my facial hair adventure, I was actually kind of excited. I hadn’t even attempted to grow stuff on my mouth since college because…welll….it doesn’t work. But for some reason, I was sure that this time I would have awesome, sexy, stubble hair… I don’t know why. I really don’t know.

So for six months I had to deal with this awful mess on my face. At no point was it even remotely attractive. For evidence, simply see my previous Facebook profile picture. Yes, in thumbnail form I look like a normal, fun twentysomething, but click on it to get it full size, and you’ll see a sparse forest of red, black, and blond hair that looks like I attacked a package of fuzzy Oreos and came out the loser. 

I could tell my true friends during this period by their reactions to the mess. My favorite was when someone was like, “it looks good!” No, dirty liar. It doesn’t. In no definition ever written for the word “good” would my facial-hair disaster apply. True friends would simply ask, “When are you getting rid of that?”

Ironically, at a certain point during this period I did get hit on more at bars. My favorite instance was seeing an old coworker who said, “Tedd, you look good.”

“Thanks,’ I replied.

“No. Like really good. Really. Good.”

What? 

Some suggested the rush of attention was that I no longer looked like I was sneaking into bars with my brother’s ID. With a rat’s nest of facial hair even I, apparently, could pass off as someone in their mid-twenties.

This story does have a happy ending, however. After six grueling months, I returned to the dermatologist wart free. 

“How’d it go?” she asked.

“I blame you for all the insults I have had during the past six months. Have you seen this facial hair?”

“It looks good!” she cried.

My dermatologist is not a true friend.

Another Underage Story:
Two of my friends from Chicago recently got married. We all drove out to the Chicago suburbs to celebrate the happy occasion. If ya’ll remember I’m gross, and slowly approaching X-tra Gross January 14th of 2013 (if the Mayans and their calendar of destruction don’t ruin it all for us). Most of my friends at this wedding were younger than me by 1-2 years or so.

After the wedding I went to the bar with one of my friends, who graduated from college a year ago, she’s 23. She walked up, ordered a drink from the open bar, and waited to the side.

I walk up.

“Son, how old are you?”
“27!” I shriek.
“Yeah, sure,” the guy says getting my rum and Coke.
“No, seriously!” I pulled out my ID and showed it to him. 
The guy just laughed and shook his head. “Okay, have fun.”

I was actually kind of pissed off. It’s kind of flattering being asked how old you are, to be honest, but this was an open bar at a wedding. No one should have been getting carded, especially if they look college-ish. Maybe that’s just me, but the next time I went up to a second bartender.

He looked me up and down. 

“ID?” he says.

WHAT?! Both of you? 

This will be glorious in my 30s, but right now being carded with your 23 year-old friends is kind of embarrassing. I’m supposed to be old and mature! Wise! My nephew turned 12 this year and I’m terrified of his oncoming puberty. The day he grows a beard, Uncle Tedd will throw on sackcloth and weep. 

The Combo:
Cheesie’s is this restaurant in Chicago that serves grilled cheese sandwiches. They are pretty good.

The other day my coworkers and I went in there before a Cubs game to get some grub and were met by a disheveled (read: high) twentysomething behind the counter. I was the first one ready to order, so I step up to the counter. 

“Hey.” Guy says.
I’ve been overspending recently, so my plan was to get the cheapest sandwich (4.50) and make it a COMBO (+3). 

Tedd, why did you capitalize Combo? And how did you know such a deal was available at Cheesie’s? 

Well, interrogative friend, I knew because the word COMBO is written in all caps, three feet high, right behind the cash register. My eyes are getting bad and I could still see the GIANT writing on the wall (DC reference! “Say My Name”!).

“Hey, I’ll have the Regular with the COMBO.”
“Regular…what?”
“I want it with the COMBO.”
“Yeah, man. Cool.”

*We stare at each other.”

“The combo – the fries and the drink,” I say.
“Oh fries and drink! Awesome man!” *sound of waaaayyyy to many buttons being hit* “Cool. You’re total is 12.50.”

I know tax in Chicago is high, but 4.50+3+astrotax should NOT = 11.50

The thing is… I had no desire to talk to this guy anymore. His eyes were blazed up and I had a feeling a manager was going to have to come out – refunds issued – general chaos ensuing should I ask for the actual combo. So I spent the extra three bucks.

And it wasn’t that good. Will I go back to Cheesie’s? Probably not. I definitely will not be ordering anything written in three foot high lettering on the wall.

That wraps it up, I think. Disappointed, interrogative friend?

Good.

The New Annual Gaga Spectacular*

* Most of this was written like 100 years ago… Deal with it.

Wow, so it's been a bit since I've written something really enlightening to post on the old bloggerino. Really the only reason that I've taken back to blogging is due to the fact that my #2 fan (#2 of 2), Mr. Fluffer was diagnosed with Feline Sleep Apnea, and I promised I would promote its cause on the web. If you feel in the giving mood please immediately leave this website and go to kittycantsleep.orgweb and donate some monies to the phat cat himself.

How to Make a Gaga

My friends are all crazy, which is why we get on so well. For the past year I have hosted parties monthly in an effort to promote fun, Biebs and debauchery. Just recently two of my friends suggested that we start doing a Gaga themed drink in order to prepare for the release her album Born This Way (Please listen to Scheiβe). We started in March with the 
"Paparazzi":

Ingredients:
Goldschlager
Pink Lemonade
Sprinkles

Paprazzi's are pretty eh. They actually taste a lot like Big Red Gum (Sidefact: Tedd hates gum and has never, nor will ever, chew a piece.) It should be noted, however that the point of a Gaga is not to taste good. A Gaga should reflect its namesake and be both pleasurable and revolting – with some panache. 

Take the Judas:
Champagne
Sweet Tea Vodka
Sprinkles

Judas's are absolutely disgusting. Even the diehards among my friends had trouble downing this bad boy. In terms of drink it was the least successful in actually wanting to drink it; in terms of reflecting the Gaga "Judas" namesake, it was our most successful endeavor yet. That song is a sonic trainwreck.

Our last Gaga outing's Gagas actually tasted delicious. I give you:

The Fame:
A shot of Mango Rum

The Fame Monster:
A shot of Mango Rum bombed into a beer that on average costs less than $.45 a can.

The Rum of course is delicious, but I wasn't expecting Fame Monsters to taste as if they were taken from the flask of Dionysius himself. That being said, the Mango Rum that we used to make the drinks were on clearance and Binny's (probably for causing blindness in lab rats) and is most likely out of production. But, never fear, next time my friends and I get together we will be making Paper Gangsters. Our hope is to one day reach apotheosis with drink that is worth to bear the name of "Alejandro."

.000034% of the Population Will Find This Funny

I don't know how I found my new job. I guess I have worked for a freelance "entrepreneur" and folded clothes for the Nana (may she rest in peace) over the past year; but this new job takes the proverbial cake.

It's actually pretty great. What I do* is evaluate credentials. "Oh my" says the polite person in the back of the room. Whatever is that?

Well, what happens is that someone from say…Nigeria…is coming to the U.S. and wants to go to a Le Cordon Bleu school and learn how to make Au Gratin potatoes. Well let's say this person (Call him Mario) Mario needs to have proof that he graduated high school in order to get in to Le Cordon Bleu. What is he going to do?! Who is going to look at his West 
African Examinations Council Senior School Certificate and verify that he is, in fact a high school graduate?!

*tension filled silence*

It's me!! Me!! I will look at his scores and give him a GPA and a US equivalency! Kneel before my awesome power!!

Yeah, it's…uhh…not super exciting. Which is why my coworkers and I try to squeeze as much fun out of this as possible. Most of the time we just clack away at keyboards and give equivalencies and convert Eastern European Hours into standard U.S. Carnegie Units. (Yes, I am throwing in jargon to make myself feel as if I know something.)

To entertain ourselves, my coworkers and I have taken on a number of stupid activities around the office. We recently moved to a nicer office on a higher floor of the building, so we now have work stations right next to each other. Being now five feet away from my coworker instead of three, of course, necessitates us having phones in order to call each other. But rather than just calling each other we also felt the need to create imaginary assistants who will answer our phones.

My coworker's assistant is named after the Thai University Chulalongkorn (US equivalency: Chula Longkorn.) She is also very wittily adept at answering the phone: "This is Chula." Other assistants include Banga and Manga, the Lore twins. They’re sassy and since this blog entry was started have been relieved of their duties. By far the sassiest of our secretaries is Patrice Lamumba, whose namesake is the People’s Friendship University of the USSR. Yes… That is really the name of the school: The Patrice Lamumba People’s Friendship University. In order to get in you have to pass a bubbly test and a trust test. Everyone at this university runs for class president.

My assistant up until a few months ago was Jawaharlaharlharlharlharlhar (shortened to Jawa due to the limited number of hours in a day). He is lovingly named after Jawaharlal Nehru University of Technology, a university that is really hard to stay, which necessitates adding extra harlahalrhalar’s to the end. Jawa has also since been replaced due to poor performance by Cheauaughueaz (pronounced Chez) Le Coq, a sassy Frenchman who works 24 hours a week (we had to talk him into the extra 4 to make it a full French work week).

If you thought any of that was funny: Congratulations! You might be a credential evaluator!

*This next part will be extremely boring. If you have something better to do please do so now. Don't forget to visit kittycantsleep.orgweb on your way away from this site (In truth if Mr. Fluffers suffered from feline insomnia the description of my job would be the cure he would be looking for).

That Time My Car got “Stolen”

I kind of hate Chicago. Much of this anger, however, comes form the fact that I own an automobile in the city. When city officials see cars driving around the city they don’t just see cars or the genius of modern engineering, they see big bags of $$$$$. This would explain why their street cleaning schedule basically looks like a math problem from Calculus III.

“Okay… so I’m parked in Section 6-17 of Quadrant A in the Purple Sphere of Coordinate XYF. That means… street cleaning will be done roughly at X, where X = 5(xyz!)(6y+7*!).”
By the time you figure out when your street is cleaned your car has been impounded and a bunch of city officials who look like Rumpelstiltskin are dancing around its crushed car corpse.

Well, the other week my roommate borrowed my car. I got home and he mentioned he’d parked close to our apartment on the way to the train. This was great because I had left a pair of shoes in there, so I planned to stop by the car, grab my shoes and then go to work.

Simple.

We get out to the street and see that the entire street that my roommate moved my car to is devoid of motor vehicles. Not a one left. I had figured something like this would happen since… This is the third time I’ve been ticketed or had my car towed for really no reason at all. My roommate runs to where my car used to be and notices that there was indeed a sign mentioning that there would be utility work that week; the sign was roughly the size of a post-it note and strapped to a pole, just below eye-level, but it was there and declared that cars left in that space would be moved starting that Monday.

I told my roommate that it’d be great if he could see where my car was taken. He agreed he should look into it, so I sent him the 411 number and all my vehicle info.

The next night I come in and I ask him where the car is.

“Uhh… They can’t find it,” he says.
“Wait… What?”

My roommate had called 411 and gotten one of those lovely city worker ladies who love to scream. So he asked where the car was. She said she didn’t have it. He asked if she knew where it could be. She said it wasn’t her problem. He asked who he should call. She said it wasn’t her problem. He asked again if there was anything he could do. She said it wasn’t her problem. He said it was utility work and he knew it was towed. She said it wasn’t her problem. So after much more of this, the lady screamed it wasn’t her problem and it should be reported as stolen.

I get home and my roommate shrugs. I look online and there is no record of my car being moved. 

So… I have to call the cops.

I get on the phone and the cop lady is a real treat.

“Hello, sir.”
“I’d like to report a stolen vehicle.”
“Okay. When did it go missing?”
“Two days ago.”
“Two days ago?!”
“Yes, it was in a city tow zone, so I thought it had just been moved.”
“Two. Days ago?!”
(Note city workers uncanny ability to repeat everything as if saying something 100 times changes its meaning every time.)
“Yeah, I didn’t –”
“You’re telling me your car has been missing for two days?!”

It was wonderful. So I explained everything and then the lady gave me an incident number and said that I should report it to my insurance company.

So there I was with my car that had obviously been moved by the city to a place that they had forgotten and now the police were on their way to go look for it.

It, of course, was found the next morning right where they had moved all the other cars. 

One more incident like that and I’m driving my car into the Mother Truckin’ Lake.

Kralik’s Wave

In August I went with my friends to Florida for a little mini-vacay. We got to go to Harry Potter World and stay at my friend’s parent’s condo for three days: Awesome.

Our last day at the beach we had gone out despite the fact that a hurricane had just happened. The day before we had stayed out of the water because it looked like stepping one foot into the waves would have crushed you like a cheap peanut (not a fancy peanut, to specify the difference). Well, the waves were much calmer, so we swam out with our fun noodles and rafts to hang out.

Everything was going hunky dory, then all of a sudden… It got real. A huge wave from out of nowhere knocked the crap out of us. One friend and I were on the outside of the wave, so we didn’t have that rough of a time. The others, however, got knocked around ruhly ruhly bad. One friend looked over and saw only one of my other friend’s legs flipped over her head flying toward shore before she was knocked off her fun noodle and joined her crashing toward shore.

It was pretty scary. All of us were running out of the water panting because another huge wave was coming. We were all laughing when all of a sudden we saw one of our friends, Kralik (of the above sub-heading fame) crawling out of the water. We all thought he was joking around until we realized the gasping and agonized crawling that was occurring wasn’t part of his audition for the community theater’s performance of Cats (going for the coveted spot of Drowned Cat #11). We ran over and helped him get out of the water.

Within a few minutes some mom was running toward us yelling about how she had called an ambulance. We asked Kralik how he was doing and he said he didn’t feel that well, so we thought we’d just wait for the ambulance in case he had any back or chest injuries.

We waited.
And waited.
And waited.

After about twenty minutes some lifeguard stumbled over and started talking. He was like 45 and looked like he had spent the last fifteen years of his life stoned.

“Yeah, man, the ambulance should totally get here, dudes. Totally, man. Dudes. It should get here.”

Another twenty minutes rolled by and no ambulance. My one friend and I ran off the beach and headed to the parking lot to see if they were driving around or something. We heard the sirens and ran to the entrance of the condo. They were just driving around aimlessly. They pull up to us and are like,

“You guys call an ambulance?” As if they delivered pizzas instead of saved lives.
“Yeah,” I said, “our friend’s over there at the far end of the complex. There’s beach access down there.”

The passenger nods and says something to the driver. They literally drive four feet. Stop. And the driver gets out and runs into the closest building. He is gone for a few minutes then runs back and sits in the ambulance.

“I guess the beach access is down here,” he says pointing the spot I had pointed to fifteen seconds earlier. The driver leans over and points to the end of the complex. “Your friends down there,” he says as if he has figured it out finally.

The whole time I would have loved to see what my face looked like, because I’m pretty sure it was saying: “You guys are complete. And. Total. Idiots.”

They finally pull up to the beach, get Kralik and take him to the hospital. He is feeling okay, and after that was discovered, the whole incident became really funny. My favorite part was the description my one friend gave of seeing my one friend’s legs appear from the inside of the wave.

Also important to note is that one of my friends had opted to stay in the room and nap while the rest of us were at the beach. I had gone upstairs to tell her about the incident, which went something like this:

“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“Uhhh. You should know everyone is okay, BUT Kralik got knocked out by a wave and is being taken to the hospital.”
“WHAT?! Is he okay.”
“Yes… That’s why I prefaced it with everyone’s okay.”

They given Kralik drugs at the hospital, which knocked him out at about 8 p.m. that night, so the rest of us sat around and talked about how great it was that he had been plowed over by a giant wave, almost died BUT didn’t.

Somehow or other this concept turned into an idea for a romance novel which featured Kralik as a lothario who traveled to beaches all over the world carried by this rogue wave that appeared and disappeared for no apparent reason. Think Quantum Leap only with sexier people and a wave instead of a weird light shiny thingy.

We also all were cast in the movie version of the book version of Kralik’s Wave. Heidi Klum, Julia Roberts, and Ryan Reynolds were all cast in respective roles (obviously due to my all of my friends and I’s resemblances to A list movie stars). Kralik, of course, could be played by no one else but Kralik. No one could perform getting bashed by a giant wave but the guy who was bashed by a giant wave.

The blurb on the back of the book would look something like this:

“Exhilarating… The most… book… reading… Fish.” – Stephen King
“Kralik’s Wave is a book like most books are books: it’s a book.” – William Shakespeare
Somewhere in the world there is a beach resort; a beach resort that is swept by sands of despair and melancholy. This beach town is on the verge of collapse when a tall, dark, rippling stranger is brought on shore by the waves of a hurricane. Through his bravery and daring the small town of Seacoasttownport is transformed by the healing power of love and sexiness. Strap on your sandals, run out to the beach and prepare for the rising beauty of Kralik’s Wave… (whisper voice) Kralik’s Wave.

10% of all profits from the book will go to kittycantsleep.orgweb.

Minaj Month

In case you’re not one of the ten people who read my Facebook, then you should know that this month is Nicki Minaj Awareness Month. Just like Kitty Sleep Apnia, Minaj Awareness is a cause I have taken up because I’m better than everyone else. I support things and help people.

I recently was at a party and was disappointed that out of 10 people only 4 people laughed at a Superbass joke that I made. Four. Whether it was because the joke wasn’t funny doesn’t matter, most people didn’t know who Nick Minaj is. Or, as my one friend calls her, “The Black Gaga” (I’m pretty sure that’s offensive, which is why it’s quoted and accredited to my friend rather than myself.) Either way she drops phat beats and is awesome. There are still five days left of the month. Go out, grab a copy of her hit LP “Pink Friday” and drop that Boom-ba-doom-doom Boom-ba-doom-doom Bass.

The End
Whew. That was a big waste of all our time. I’ll try to write more than every seven months, but no promises. My life is supes dull lately… but hopefully a coming Kralik Wave will change all that.

The Devastatingly Catastrophic Wrath of God Apocalyptic Death to All Car Accident

Christmas Eve in the Midwest wasn’t pleasant. I drove home from Chicago and had numerous warning calls from my mother about the coming “weather.” I really didn’t think too much about it and sailed from Chicago to Pontiac, where I stopped and got a wonderful XXL Chalupa. I drove out of the restaurant and got on the Interstate and it was like a drove through a curtain of snow. About a half mile down the road from where I merged there was snow everywhere and the roads were slick as snot. What followed was a three hour excursion from Pontiac to Bloomington, which featured a lot of singing of Glee “Teenage Dream” punctuated with screaming at cars who thought it appropriate to drive 15 miles an hour between two lanes of traffic when it wasn’t even that slick.

My mom had asked me to pick up my Grandma, so I exited at Bloomington and headed toward Pekin. The roads just kept getting worse and the driver’s got exponentially more so. “Oh my Gawd! A snowflake! I’m going to pump my breaks and swerve between lanes of traffic!” Don’t get me wrong, the roads were snowy and getting worse, but… At times it looked like I was driving behind cars that were avoiding the rolling logs that almost kill the people on the freeway in Final Destination 2 (or maybe 3 or 4… You know what? It could have been 5.) 

I brave the storm and arrive at my G-Ma’s place, and by this time it actually is bad. The snow is piling up and it is actually appropriate to be driving twenty miles an hour. Well, I saddle up my G-Ma and then hop in my car and start the excruciatingly long trip to Springfield. By the time we get to Interstate 55 again from Pekin I have been in the car for 6 hours on a 3 hour trip and we have like another 45 minute trip to get to the Sherman exit. By this time we are all driving 15 and the snow is shooting up like blow in Whitney Houston’s sitting room. My grandma and I are keeping spirits up, generally exchanging riveting dialogue about the snow:

“Wow, it sure is snowing.”
“It is!”
Then later:
“Look at all this snow!”
“I’m glad I’m not driving.”
Then:
“Wow. The road is sure snowy!”

By the time we get to the Sherman exit, Tedd has his hands on the wheel, his knuckles are white and he is trying not to hate everything about Christmas, driving and the 7.5 hours he has been in the car. 

My Grams and I get off the exit for my parents place and I literally am driving down the ramp at 5 miles an hour. Remember I have been driving through blinding snow for about 3 hours, have come like 160 miles and have had no problem. We are five minutes from my parents and the nightmare is about to end.

Well… About three-fourths of the way down the ramp my car begins to go into a slow skid. It drifts off the road and Tedd, in his extremely composed manner, overcompensates like crazy. The resulting reaction causes the car to gently turn around and slowly slide off the road. The speed of this could roughly have been at two miles an hour.

So the car spins and slowly plops into a ditch. When all is said and done we are about eight feet from the road in a really small ditch. My Grams is not happy. 

I have no idea what to do.

So Tedd hops out of the car and tries to push. I tried to rock the car back and forth and get it unstuck. At one point a Dad with four high school boys jumped out and tried to push me out. It was all to no avail.

After being in the ditch for about forty minutes, a cop drives by and pulls over.

“You stuck?”
“Nope just hangin out in a ditch for Christmas Eve. Family tradition!”
“Yup.”
“Well, you won’t get out tonight. Tow trucks are all busy.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to tie a ribbon around your car to mark it, so everyone knows you’re safe.”

So the cop gets out this cartoonishly long piece of ribbon and awkwardly threads it through my windows, my doors and my entire car. No sooner has he finished this excruciating process than a tow truck rolls up.

“You need help?”
“Yup.”

This led to Tedd awkwardly unthreading the huge ribbon from his cars, doors and throughout his car. In the end the tow truck pulled me out and there was much rejoicing. We get home and all laugh about it. “What an experience!” “Phew! We’re lucky!” “You won’t forget this Christmas Eve!” Etc.

The next day I get a call from my brother:

“Hey Tedd, I heard about the accident. You guys okay. I heard you almost rolled the car over.”
“Wait…what?”

The story seemed to grow and grow in extremity. Recently my mom said that my Grandma had been talking about “the wreck”:

“You know I have nightmares. What if the thing would have rolled over! I feel like we’re lucky the car didn’t catch on fire!”

…Wait…What?

My Grandma images the car (in onomatopoeia) as:

BAM! CRUK! BOOOOOM! SHAPPAPAPA! BOOOOOM! CRUNCH! WAKA WAKA!

Whereas… In onomatopoeic reality it was more like:

Woooo wooooo wup. ………..slup.

No more than five miles an hour.

I worry about the next time I see her.

“You know I feel like we’re lucky the T-Rex and Robo-Droids didn’t fire their space lasers. And imagine if we had rolled into the volcano!”

Wait….what?

Et tu, Nana?

So I got fired from Banana Republic.

*Holds for laughter*

Of course in typical Tedd fashion it couldn’t have been for actually doing something wrong or really make any sense at all.

The whole thing started when I got a new job for a company downtown Chicago. It was a weird series of events that led me getting it, but it was full-time, full benefits, amazingness.

So I put in my two weeks notice at the Nana.

About a week later I was wondering what was going to happen with my exit interview. About that time my boss grabbed me and said that I was needed in the Manager’s Office. Thinking it was for my exit interview, I was shocked to enter the office and find a burly Latino guy and some man that I had never seen before sitting at the desk.

“Have a seat.”

So I sit down and the guy immediately starts questioning my moral character. “Do you think stealing is okay?” “Why would someone steal?” “What should happen to someone that steals from the store?” I gave honest answers because I had no idea that they were talking about me stealing stuff.

Well it gets down to the final couple questions and the guys like: “Have you ever stolen?”

I said no.

Then he likes. “No, really.”

And I was like: “No.”

Then I thought about it for a minute and had an “AHA!” moment.

About two weeks earlier I had been buying Christmas gifts. This was this weird loophole where if I opened a Banana Republic Card, used my student discount and got the additional 15% off sale merchandise I would save like 65% off of stuff already on sale. So I took advantage of it. While I was in line someone who works at the store asked if I would buy something for her. I said sure because the only reason that I could get in trouble is if I abuse my company discount and not a customer discount. The person who asked me to get the coat was also more important than I was at the store, so I didn’t imagine she would ask me to do anything not on the level. So I buy the coat and it literally saved her 15-20 bucks.

This was evidently store theft.

So I remember the story as I’m sitting there and bald mall cop is interrogating me. I say:

“Yeah, I did buy something for someone the other day, but I didn’t use my employee discount.”

The guy shakes his head but looks surprised because he didn’t expect me to actually to tell the truth. What he said next was… so... amazing:

“Thanks for being honest. Now you have a chance here. Not many people are given this chance. See some people choose to go in fast forward. Some pause. Some people go in rewind. Some people never get past play. So you can choose to go in fast forward or make this easy and go in rewind.”

I almost laughed out loud. I say: “So… You just want me to tell you what happened?”

And he’s like, “Yeah. From the beginning.”

So I tell him the story and then he proceeds to make comments about the event like, “Why would you think stealing was okay?” “Do you steal from other places?” “Did you steal other things?” Really class stuff.

At the conclusion of me going in rewind, play, fast forward, frame by frame, he hands me a sheet of paper and goes “Fill this out to the truth of what happened.”

So I go, “So I just write, ‘I bought a coat for someone using a credit card discount?’”

He goes “No.” He then proceeded to dictate an entire page of text which included things like, “I abused my discount, a discount reserved only for myself, and shared it with another person” and other lengthy, legalese text.

After I finished this part he takes the paper and goes, “I’m going to discuss this with an HR person.”

He leaves the room, and the huge Latino guy who was also in there, but said nothing, continued to sit in stony silence and watch me.

He comes back and goes: “After contemplation we have decided it’s best if we terminate your employment. Please hand in your name badge. You’ll be paid for the rest of the day.”

So I turn in my name badge (They forgot to ask for my security access card and fitting room key… Both a bit more important than a name badge) and awkwardly leave the store.

Thus, the end of my illustrious career in customer service/mid-level retail/fruit named clothing brands.

The best of the story is actually what my friend brought to my attention later. She goes, “Wait. So they fired you over twenty bucks and then paid you eighty bucks for the rest of your work day?”

Yup.

The Nana is dead. Long live Nana (in rewind, fast forward, of course)

One Diamond NO ONE WANTS

I had the great pleasure of seeing the Swedish pop sensation Robyn this past week. Yes, she is the singer of junior high fame who sang “Show Me Love.”

Well, evidently she’s not dead and actually makes really awesome dance music, so a bunch of my friends and I went to her concert.

Robyn was AMAZING. But as we all know, I don’t write about things that are good or fun or interesting or insightful.

Only trainwrecks.

So her opening act…

Well, the first band was called “Natalia Killz!” It was this pretty British chick and these fierce dancers. The best part about her 20 minute performance was the fact that she played two songs the entire time.

She opened with half a song and then started saying weird stuff about how love kills. She loved to make a fake gun with her finger and pretend to shoot everyone in the audience… Okay, whatever. That’s why I don’t really care for the British. So she played a song called “Love Suicide” – yeah, girls got issues…

But after her second song, she goes, “This is my first single…”

She then proceeds to play the song she opened with…again… My friend turns to me and goes, “I’ve heard this before.”

To which, I responded. “Yeah. Five seconds ago.”

But overall it was actually a pretty good performance, albeit repetitive.

The next guy, though…

Oh. My.

The.

Next.

Guy.

It’s a one man band called “The Diamond Rings.” Never in my entire life have I been so uncomfortable at a live show of any kind. He opened by coming out in a purple mask and rolling around on the stage. His singing voice is this really deep baritone, but then when he welcomed us all to the show he literally sounded like a fifteen year old girl. Trust me. I know what it’s like to be a man and talk like a fifteen year old girl.

He then proceeds to pretend to play fake instruments and “dance.” Oh. My. His dancing was just THE WORST. The intensity of his failing more accurately falls under the category of drowning instead of dancing.

So about two VERY similar sounding songs in everyone starts chanting “Rob-in! Rob-in! Rob-in!”

The guy gets really moody and is like “She’ll be out in…49 minutes.”

Everyone let out a collective groan.

Everyone that is, except for one awkward man in a flannel shirt standing next to me, who for some reason found this wildly entertaining.

“Stop trying to ruin it for us that are trying to have a good time!”

The girl next to flannel guy was awesome and wearing a power suit. Her response was: “Dude, I’m actually enjoying him being an awkward mess. It is VERY entertaining.”

This guy gets huffy and continues to awkward dance.

The BEST, though, was the man who had an iphone and put up a banner that read “Shoot me in the Head…Please!” and held it up for all of us to see.

Yes… That’s how we all felt.

Evangelical Fierce

The last stupid story I have is from church the other week. I’ve been awful about going the past few months and in the interim we acquired a new worship band. They seemed really great until the end of the service.

Until that point most of the songs had been sung by the lead male singer, but at the end of the service a woman stepped up and started singing. She has a lovely voice. Also terrifying.

We get to the middle of the song and she starts clapping. A few people clap… Which wasn’t good enough.

“I CAN’T DO THIS MYSELF!”

If her head had spun around and he she had sprayed green vomit on the congregation, it would have fit her tone. Terr.If.ying.

So everyone starts nervously clapping and when we think her greed for clapping has been satiated it starts to die out.

She KNEW.

She immediately puts on a fierce Mom face and claps her hand really hard. She didn’t even have to say anything. Everyone immediately started clapping out of guilt.

Now that’s how to use God Guilt. And I’m not even Catholic.

So that was the rewind, play, fast forward, main menu screen recap. Fur shure.