This blog explores the breadth and depth of just how truly horrible I am at being an adult.

Enjoy.

Monday, July 28, 2008

I'm no good at working.

Though the story of how I was hired and quit in one day this summer probably deserves its own post, I feel compelled to tell you that I am horrible at working.

I was hired to my new (second of the summer!) job at the end of June. Literally that night I came down with a fever that had me simultaneously hallucinating that a) I, taking it one step further than Matthew Broderick in 1983's WarGames, had instigated a global nuclear war which led to the apocalypse, and b) my bedroom walls were made of rainbow sherbet. Needless to say, I missed my first day of work. And my second.

Boy, was my boss unhappy. I thought I was gonna get fired before I'd even been to the office. Luckily I was able to have someone drop off some paperwork at my apartment so I could arrive at the office ahead of schedule on Day 3. So everything worked out.

And then less than a month  later I went on a family trip for a week up in Lake Tahoe.

Now I'm fucked. I have so much work to catch up with.

This was all a long way of saying that I'm gonna actually try to do more of what my job description says over the next few days and less of bragging about how hilariously juvenile my life is.

But the term of the job ends in three weeks anyway. Ain't I a stinker?


Tuesday, July 22, 2008

I don't know how to interact with children.

I'm spending this week up at Lake Tahoe with a lot of my extended family, who have all rented cabins within a few miles of one another.

Out of all my ten or so cousins, I am one of three without children. I'm also the youngest of the cousins, so when it comes to hanging out with people at these family gatherings, I find myself unpleasantly torn between hanging out with a forty year-old cousin who sells pharmaceuticals or his four year-old daughter who obsesses over cartoons I've never heard of.

The kids refer to me (I kid you not) as "the boy with the big orange beard." That's a confidence boost.

The other night over dinner in our backyard, one of the darling angels who calls me that said, "Hey! Hey! Hey! (She's a little hyper-active.) Hey! Hey! Do you know any jokes?! Do you know any jokes?!"

I said, "Sure. Knock, knock."

"Who's there?"

"Smell mop."

"Smell mop who."

Please say, "Smell mop who," aloud, because that's the punchline. Yell it aloud if you're in a confined space with other people. Please.

Well, these little girls that I told it to fucking loved it. Instantly. I guess my target comedic audience is people with one year of elementary school education.

My aunts, uncles, cousins, and sister were not so happy that I taught these little girls a bathroom humor joke. Even worse, the girls were screaming "Smell mop who!" at the tops of their lungs well past dessert time.

I don't know if the adults will let the kids hang out with the boy with the orange beard anymore.

Friday, July 18, 2008

I can't find a roommate.

Is it because of my Craig's List post?
...

Hi!

I'm a 22 year-old college grad about to start at law school! But don't worry about that; I'm not ready for my soul to whither just yet! And don't worry about me becoming an asshole in the next few years as I get closer to being an attorney; I'm already an asshole!
I've got a sweet two-bedroom that I need a roomie for!

Me:
Brown hair and patchy, reddish beard
Short
Pasty white skin
Vague resemblance to the Lucky Charms Leprechaun (so don't expect to see me wearing
too much green!)
I'm into whatever music other hip people are into, but if
too many people like them, I'll stop.
I also love watching really bad movies, listening to bad music, and reading tabloids but all with a sense of irony and superiority.
How about an out-of-context true story about me? Okay. Carlos Santana once drove over my sandwich in his Mercedes.


Don't worry! My eyes aren't really lasers!


You:
A girl (Don't worry- It's not cuz I want to get with you... I want get with your
friends)
But, still, you have to be single.
You must like NPR (You must be able to name the hosts of two of the following three shows:
Fresh Air, This American Life, and Car Talk)
You must not care that we are paying the same rent as one another, yet I get the one parking spot allotted to the apartment.
You must not watch bad movies, listen to bad music, or read tabloids without a sense of irony and superiority.

Oh, and I do heroin. No cats; I'm allergic!

Monday, July 14, 2008

I think poop is funny (Part the Second)



That's James. With what appears to be poop around his mouth. I don't think the photo was taken on the night in question, so, even though I don't have much faith in James' everyday hygiene, I'm pretty sure the photo would test negative for the presence of feces.

Whether it is poop or is not poop, I don't know, but I do know that this picture is pretty old, probably at least five years, from when we were in high school. James is something of an adult now, or at least more adultish than he was when he shat for cash outside an abandoned house. He's still in college, but he has a girlfriend who seems waaaaaaaaay too normal/cute for the man who once farted on MY then-new girlfriend back in high school. And I'd like to think he's grown out of that phase.

But when I met his girlfriend just a few weeks ago on James' birthday, I said, "Do you know about the time James pooped all over himself... sober?" Apparently, this had never come up between the two of them, even though they've been dating for two years now. I opted not to recount the story for her right then and there, and thought I'd let James explain himself and his self-shitting ways at his own discretion.

But that brings me back to the actual self-shitting. When we last left our protagonist, he was covered in poop, literally head to toe in poop.

And we, his "friends," had a moral, philosophical, epistemological (IDK what that means) dilemma; what does one do with a dude coated in shit?

Our idea? Coin-op car wash. Just think about it a second and realize how startlingly reasonable we were to think that up. But there was a problem... the car wash was across town.

We got him in the car, the trunk of Sean's Explorer. This is where storytelling becomes difficult. I don't know how to describe just how god-awful James smelled. To say it was the worst thing I have ever smelled would be to do his poop-stench an injustice. If God had created a tenth plague to send down upon Egypt, it would have been the smell in the Explorer that night. Yahweh took it easy on the Pharaoh by holding back on the hippie poop.

It was bad.

The five us not covered in human waste had to act like dogs on a Sunday drive and stick our heads out the car window as we rode into downtown San Rafael. There were only four seats by windows in the car. The fifth man, the one sitting bitch in the backseat, had to climb over me and stretch out his body so he could get some fresh air. The smell was so bad that if one had been exposed to it for too long, he would've passed out. And then, like some sort of fecal smelling salt, he would've immediately been awoken by the very same thing that knocked me out.

As we hit the first stop light, I noticed something strange or, rather, someone noticed something strange about us. A young lady in the car next to the Explorer looked at us, perplexed. Here were five young guys craning their necks, trying to leave as little of their own body in their car as possible. I could see she was trying to formulate some question for us, but I cut her off at the pass.

"My friend pooped all over himself," I said. That's all that could be said.

And we drove on.

The Canal is the name of a notoriously dangerous part of San Rafael, a notoriously safe city. It's home to a large number of undocumented immigrants, gangs, prostitutes, and (fortunately, for the purposes of this story) the aforementioned car wash. Keep in mind that it is now long after sundown on a weekend night.

My gang of whiter-than-whiteboys rolled up to the ghetto car wash, aware that we were in the midst of a shit-filled night we would not soon forget, giddy like Catholic schoolgirls (well, we were mid-puberty Catholic schoolboys, so I guess we weren't that far off).

We stepped out of the Explorer. filled the coin slots up with our loose change, and readied the hoses. "Step up, James. It's time."

"Dude, I don't know. I-- I'm wearing all my clothes," he protested.

"Your clothes are covered in shit, man! Take 'em off!"

He acquiesced to our air-tight logic and stripped to his ratty boxer shorts. You haven't forgotten that we're in the middle of the ghetto late at night, have you?

Everybody took a turn, and we hosed the shit off of him. We hosed the shit out of him. Just like when washing a car, we first used soapy water. There is no pressure setting for 'human flesh' on the dial, and James expressed his displeasure instantly.

"Ah! Fuck! Fuck! It fuckin' hurts!" That didn't stop us. "Ah! Get it out of my ass! Don't aim it up my ass!" You know that only egged us on, especially combined with the fact that he scampered around like a little girl as he said this all.

I don't know when this next part began, whether it started right when the washing did or midway through or what, but at some point, a small crowd began to congregate not too far away.

There was a bowling alley across the street that had a bar in that catered mostly to the immigrant community of the surrounding neighborhood. It began to trickle out a few spectators. They cheered us on, literally hooting and hollering like Romans at the Coloseum; they wanted to see a naked crazy gringo get tortured by some other crazy gringos. And they got what they wanted.

Because then I used the giant foaming brush, the toothbrush of the gods. I feel bad about this part, because I was the one that personally did it, and I ended up scratching up James skin pretty bad with it. He bled a little. Hey, but at least I got all of his poop off him, right? And, always being an attention whore, I had to please my audience right?

When the wash was over, James was understandably upset. He was cold, wet, scratched up, and humiliated. But he did have eight dollars coming his way for all his troubles right?

As he angrily climbed into the car, he said, "Dudes, gimme my fucking money."

"Sorry," someone responded. "We spent it all cleaning you off."

Friday, July 11, 2008

I'm excited it's Free Slurpee Day

What says 'obviously should not be allowed to live by myself' more than the fact that I can't wait to get out of work and get a free cup of semi-frozen sugar-water?

Every July 11th (7/11, get it?), 7-Eleven gives out free Slurpees. Be there, or be square. Or, rather, be there or be a responsible adult.

More to come on James' poop escapade soon.

Monday, July 7, 2008

I fart in my cubicle

I work for an unnamed, fairly-important government office in Oakland. I am working in a cubicle for the first time in my life. I just got to work about fifteen minutes ago. I sat down and farted. Then a fairly-important person in this fairly-important office walked in to introduce himself to the new guy. It smelled heavily of farts.