Drunken Friday Night Post, Part II

Fuck, I love Fridays. They are by far the most the most liberating day of the week. And the most liberating thing to do on the most liberating day has so far involved liberating the contents of a bottle of Cranberry Finlandia.

Fridays are not liberating in the sense of a group of college kids singing "Baby Got Back" at karaoke night at the campus bar - no, they're liberating in the sense of a Pontiac Solstice commercial. Really liberating.

Don't ask me what any of this is supposed to mean. I'm a little too liberated.

According to tonight's itinerary, it's now time to play Metallica in Rock Band until my upstairs neighbor complains.

I Am The Worst Blogger On The Planet

I know, I know... I totally suck at updating this thing. But it's not just that I'm incredibly lazy (although I really, really am). No, instead I come before you tonight to tell you that I have found true love. Unfortunately, in my world true love is never a girl, it's usually just a video game.


I wish I could say that my life from the past two weeks has amounted to more than just a series of puzzles, monster battles, and fetch quests in a survival horror game, but sadly I cannot. A game called Obscure (and to a far lesser extent, its sequel Obscure: The Aftermath) has turned my life on its ear, and I'm still reeling. It has been a long time since I've gotten this involved in a game (such that I find myself playing it into the early hours of the morning, arriving at work incredibly late, and then spending a good portion of my day checking online walkthroughs to ensure that I've collected every last item in the areas that I've completed) but I am loving it. Who needs aspirations when you've got a Playstation?

Some might point out that Obscure is not considered a very good game by most standards. And others might even mention that it was released to somewhat mild reviews and poor sales. But! It is a horror survival game that is based on teen slasher flicks (surprisingly, the only one of the sort that I am aware of) and it is incredibly cheesy, making it my absolute favorite game of all time. Seriously, it is the best game ever.

I'm sure I'll be back to talk about this more later, but right now I'm running a little low on ammo and I need to strategize how to get out of the mess I've gotten myself into with a few genetically engineered killer plants...

I Am The Worst Jaywalker On The Planet

I am absolutely terrible at jaywalking. It falls under the category of one of the many "practical" skills that I never properly learned (there should have been a class offered in high school called "Life Skills For Morons", where I could have learned things that most people instinctively know, like how not to get hit by cars when crossing the street or how to pee in a urinal without getting your pants wet).

When crossing a street, I regularly have very close-calls with automobiles. Drivers are constantly pounding morse-code into their car horns telling me that I'm an idiot and/or that I am seconds away from getting a bumper to the spleen. Making matters worse is the fact that cars seem to be attracted to me like moths to a flame, and that the natural reaction most drivers have when seeing my sorry nerdy ass is to hit the gas. Typically when trying to jaywalk, I'll make it about a third of the way across the street before cars start veering towards me from all directions and my survival instincts kick in, resulting in a screaming mad dash back to the safety of the sidewalk (followed shortly by a slow defeated march to the nearest crosswalk).

Part of the problem is that I was hit by a car while walking home from school in the second grade, breaking my arm for the first time in what has been (if I do say so myself) a spectacular legacy of my limbs being broken. I haven't quite looked at oncoming traffic the same since, and hence my "survival of the fittest" approach to being a pedestrian.

But what can I say? I live dangerously.

The Post I Started To Write Last Night, But Then Went For Fajitas Instead

Because nerds like numbers, here are some statistics (these are a little gross, so be warned):

-Number of times I've woken up to a neighbor banging on my front door as a result of me having passed out on a Friday night with Appetite For Destruction playing loudly on repeat: 1

-Percentage of my sneezes that result in a bleeding nose: 5%

-Average ratio of cans of Coke that explode in my face when opened to cans of Coke that do not: 1:3

-Total number of people that are quieter than me, according to my coworker: 1

-Ratio of number of times that I was sick with the flu and farted a little bit of poop in my pyjamas to the number of times I really, really hoped that I hadn't just shit myself: 1:1

-Number of times that I've forgotten clothes overnight at a laundromat: 2

-Approximate percentage of my life that has been spent battling constipation or diarrhea: 15%

Non-Update

I was going to post a new update tonight, but then I decided to fuck it and went out for fajitas instead.

Silence!

As sort of a strange karmic follow-up to yesterday's post, somebody mentioned to me in passing today that I am the second quietest person that they they've ever met. And I don't care who any of these other people are that I was being compared to - I'm pretty sure that this is true. Because people have been telling me that sort of thing my whole life.

But then later on I started to wonder... second quietest? Who's the first quietest? Is it somebody in a coma? A mute? I wish I'd asked what their problem is, because now this is really going to drive me nuts.

Antipersonal Skills

I had the strangest thing happen to me at work last week. I was pulled aside by a middle-aged coworker to have a "quick chat", whereby she proceeded to point out that I have weak interpersonal skills and that she thought I had a tendency to make conversations with others somewhat awkward (as if I didn't already know that). Her criticisms revolved largely around three points:
1. That I mumble when I talk,
2. That I have an off-putting habit of correcting the grammar of others,
3. That I often don't pick up on cues in conversation very well, and in particular that I have trouble identifying when a conversation is over.

Now regardless of the fact that everything she was saying is 100% true, I was not at all prepared for somebody to actually approach me about this and was rather taken aback by the whole situation. And so when faced with the paradox of having a conversation about how awkward I make conversations, I did the only thing that came naturally: I made it awkward. After she had finished her shtick and was looking at me expectantly, I proceeded to mumble something about how I thought she wears too much makeup. And about how using breath mints every now and then never killed anybody. She gave a disappointed little sigh, looked at me as if to say "I am wasting my time with this sad fucker", thanked me for our little chat, and then waddled off to wherever she had come from.

WTF?

Tumbler

I took the craziest spill on my way home from work tonight. It was epic. It all went down on an escalator, and despite the fact that my feet were firmly planted on the steps and my hand was tightly clutching the railing when I boarded, I somehow reached the bottom sprawled out on all fours, having narrowly avoided bringing a gaggle of very surprised middle-aged women along with me for the ride. I've now got bruises on my legs (and ego) that are similar in size and orientation to a series of Caribbean islands.

Honestly, my life is like a perpetual episode of America's Funniest Home Videos - a never-ending series of 30 second clips that involve me repeatedly falling down or getting hit in the head in excruciatingly predictable ways. It's funny to a certain point, but after a while I find myself wishing I could change the channel to an MTV reality show where I make it to second base.

Facebook Farewell

I quitted Facebook over the weekend. You know, when I see the word 'quitted', I instantly think of the word 'shitted'. I shitted Facebook over the weekend.

Okay, let's try this again... I left Facebook over the weekend. I removed all my "friends", deleted the posts on my wall and my profile picture, and then deactivated my account. The entire process took an embarassingly brief amount of time to complete - mainly because I only had a handful of "friends" and a whopping grand total of 2 posts on my wall.

If anybody were to ask why I shutdown my Facebook account, I'd probably spew some CIA data-mining conspiracy bullshit, but the reality is that the social networking revolution hasn't really done much for me (apart from allowing me to stay current with the vacation photos of former coworkers that I hardly know but who were too polite not to add me). And then when I realized that I could start saying "I shitted Facebook", it was a done deal.

So long, Web 2.0!

Drunken Friday Night Post

It's Friday night, and I'm both dripping wet and sloppy drunk. Wet because my kitchen faucet exploded earlier, and drunk because that bottle of Stolichnaya wasn't going to drink itself.

(Apart from the whole kitchen faucet soaker incident) tonight has been totally awesome. I just finished watching the new episode of Battlestar Gallactica, and now I'm listening to Iron Maiden and celebrating every few words that I type by pumping my fists in the air and emitting a resounding Yeah! from my lower abdomen. I think my neighbor upstairs is pounding on his floor in a sophisticated attempt at articulating that he would be grateful if I were to
shut the fuck up, but it’s too loud to hear him and I'm too drunk to care. Yeah!

The remainder of the night is going to play out in one of two ways: either I play Guitar Hero until I pass out in front of the TV, or I watch movies until I pass out in front of the computer.

Thank God It’s Friday.

Perspectives

You say over-priced yoga gear; I say cute girls that are big fans of Ohm's Law and who aren't afraid to show it!