Cocktail Confessions

I have a coworker that within my department that one could guess as to be as old to have partaken in the Bolshevik Revolution himself.  And his eastern block habits, attitudes, and mindset do much to perpetuate the the coldwar stereotype McCarthy espoused decades ago.  I’ll call him the Mad Russian from here on out.

You take the man out of Moscow, but you can’t take Moscow out of the man.

For the most part, he’s a pretty decent guy.  Generally friendly in his tight-lipped, grumpy, vodka-swilling, can’t teach a dog new trick type of way.  He was born and raised in Moscow and moved to the states in 1991, though it appears both his english and grammar are only more recent arrivals having taken some time to hole up in an Ian Flemming film festival somewhere during transit.

One of my pet peeves, and probably because I hear it 20 times a day is instead of saying “Excuse, can you repeat that?” -or- “I didn’t hear you.” -or- “What did you say?” it’s just a gruff “What you say?”

“What you say?”  “What you say?”  “What you say?” 

I’d think by now, with 17 years under you belt, you’d get it right.  Maybe I’m being a little picky.  We all have quirks, myself included.

It’s always fun to listen to him on the phone with other employees….that is if he answers the phone.  I guess that’s another pet peeve of mine.  Being part of a Help Desk situation, there are a pool of us who all have the ability to pick up the Help Desk line when the extension rings, however, no matter how busy everyone else is we are all supposed to take turn and pick up.  Not my kissing komrade.  It’s beneath him.  And if you are unlucky enough to get him on the phone in a rare moment of lucidity, he has the ability to go all Marxist on you and make you feel you called an east-Indian outsourced phone tech named ‘Michael’.

My other favorite obsevations of him:

• Tom Leykis is his spiritual guru, especially when it comes to women and how they should be treated.
• He doesn’t always like to wash his hand after using the restroom.
• He likes to argue with the boss, play ignorant, and ignore direct orders in such a way that management doesn’t know how to react to his borderline psychosis.
• He likes to make sure that his nose hair matches the length of his ear canal hair.
• Fashion dictates his waistline is indeed creeping northward, as his belt buckle is soon to invade his belly button much like Hitler invaded Poland.
• Using the rear view and side mirror while backing up is for pussies as the multiple dings in his bumper can attest.  I love driving with him to lunch, it’s always an adventure, and it’s always the other guys fault.
• His ability to walking-in in the morning and leaving in the afternoon without ever saying “Hello” or “Goodbye” to anyone in the room.  That is way to much effort.
• He dislikes the concept of ‘booofays’, (as we say ‘buffets’), as he says he cannot stop eating.
• ‘Tipping’ is for the rich in his opinion.
• …..as is fashion and style.
• Ignoring documented procedure is the norm.  Writing down what you did for others and inputing requested model numbers, serial numbers, software versions, etc…is also for pussies.  In Russia, just be happy it turns on I guess.

So the place I call my place of employment has decided to reward those fellow employee’s who can barely speak the language of the land a monetary prize for their lack of assimilating all these years.

All I can say is that I laughed and shook my head at the double standards and blatant cultural hypocrisy I must succumb to everyday and then I got a little ticked the more I began to think about it.

So let me get this straight: 

You move here, may have even been here for years and work side by side with me and decide despite the fact that living in America is far better than your native country and have never bothered with learning the English language.

So you’re either lazy, don’t give a crap, used to freebies from our government or make that dumb ass argument that that you don’t want to lose your culture…..but you don’t want to learn the language?

Then instead of paying for English classes or learning on your own, the company decides to pay for your classes and then on top of that, decides to reward you with a $250 incentive upon completion of (get this) ‘MOST’ of the classes.  That’s right…you don’t even have to show up to every class….good effort is all that is required.

What kind of backwards bullshit is that?

So if I decided to learn Japanese or a refresher in Spanish, will my company pay not only for the classes but give me $250 for showing up to most of them?  No?  Why not? 

Oh…..because I’m Caucasian…that’s why.  I’m not eligible for freebies and the like because I actually speak the language that is required here.  Okay…that’s fair.

Damn this country is ass backwards.

“Tango Alpha Charlie One Niner, can you repeat please?  Over.”

“Yeah…zzzt….this is Tango-A..zzzt…-arlie One Nine….we’ve been taking some…shit.[BOOM]..flack. We need you to clear…zzzt…a path for an inbound hot landing.”

“Can you divert to Echelon base One-Niner?”

“Negative–Negative…..zzzt…fuel line compromised…leaking hydraulics”

“Okay One Niner.  Calm down.  We’re looking for alternatives now…..”

“Roger Command.”

“One Niner, we think we found a safe landing zone. Please hold. Over.”

“Holding…but….zzzz…or long!!”

“Head bearing 130, 2 clicks south of your position.  You should see a black…I repeat…African American… teenage girl with no shame.  Proceed to land on her head and await emergency crews.”

“Okay Command…We see her hea…zzzztt…[BOOM] now.  We’re taking her in and gonna land this bird.  Over”

“Roger TAC One Niner….God speed!”

I humbly submit to you the picture on the left and ask that you take a moment of your time to actually put into words a cohesive sentence on what the hell you are looking at.

If you are anything like me, you’re probably staring at this picture trying to comprehend a tagline that actually does this justice.  It’s both absurd and intriguing to me at the same time.

I seriously wonder about the person who actually thought this up in their head, and then began to visualize that it indeed could be done. 

Then this same person decides to speak to a willing girlfriend who in turn not only agrees that this is actually a ‘ghetto-tastic’ idea, but then volunteers to have pictures taken of it.

Baby-daddy must be proud.

I wonder if given enough hair to work with, if they could have made a striking rendition of the U.S.S. Nimitz air craft carrier, or at least a complimentary air support vehicle.  It’d even be more awesome if they could work in a seperate battery operated motor running off of a few AA cells and actually get it to spin.

Folks….you just can’t make this shit up sometimes…

YPSILANTI, Mich. — Police said an Ypsilanti man is accused of stabbing his mother with a fork and hitting another woman over the head with a frozen chicken.

Frederick McKaney, 40, was arraigned in a Jackson courtroom on Thursday on two felony assault charges, one count of assault and battery and one count of resisting an officer.

“He stabbed his mother in the back of the neck when she refused to give him money, and then, an hour later, he attacked a neighbor woman with a chicken,” Jackson County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Mark Blumer told the Ann Arbor news.

Police said McKaney went to his mother’s house and demanded money. When she refused, he stabbed her and took off on his bicycle, police said.

A short time later, he encountered two other women talking on the sidewalk on Woodbridge Street.

The woman said he said something nasty to them and hit one of them over the head with 10 pounds of frozen chicken.

The woman went to the hospital and got stitches in her head.

McKaney’s mother suffered minor injuries from the stabbing.

I’m a little amped up today.  Maybe it’s because Hillary is finally bowing out of the presidential race.  Normally that would make me a little giddy, but after these last few months digesting the media love fest on Obama (which I still don’t get), I can’t beleive I’m actually sorry to see her go.  I would have liked them to slug it out a bit longer, as I am sure Bill was as well.  I wonder how many young fare-maidens he’s like to address personally when out stumping for his wife?  I can imagine him at Spring Break, doing a beer bong and judging a wet t-shirt contest.  He’s probably more bummed secretly than she is, but I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of Hillary.

I went to the grocery store this morning and decied to buy my department a bunch of sodas and ice-teas to bring in and stock our little fridge.  With the weather starting to warm up, it won’t be long before it hits the 90’s and close 100’s.  I decide to purchase an Xbox magazine in which the box boy asks if I have GTA IV.  I tell him yes, just started playing it, and then the checker says “Oh, my son has it too…He really likes it.”

“How old is your son?” I inquire….she didn’t look that old.

“13.”

“13?  You let him play GTA IV at 13?”

“Well he plays all the games.  Is that bad?” she look as me now puzzled.

“Well, it’s rated M for a reason.  The content is pretty extreme.  It’s ultra violent, a lot of swearing, deals with prostitution, sex, drugs, crime, strip clubs…”  She seriously looked at me as if I were talking a foreign language or this is the first time she is hearing this.  No wonder we have a society of youth that rebel against authority.  No way my parents would let me have that game at that age. Oh well.  What are you gonna do.

As she finishes up my order, she then asks me if I wish to make a donatin to breast cancer research.  I politely say ‘No’ and I explain I give to numerous charities as it is, namely animal based ones.  The truth is, and it’s not to toot my own horn, but I do give monthly to the ASPCA, a seperate senior dog hospice in which I sponser 2 dogs now, I’m always gining money to humane shelters, etc.  Enough so, that even my tax man made a comment last time when I produced receipts.  Anyway, after I decline donating a dollar (as if a dollar is gonna do anything…they’d be lucky if $.10 actually made it to research), her demeanor towards me shifted quite dramatically.  I got the stink-eye…..big time.  That was it, her smile turned to a scowl and I thought I was lucky to get out while I could.  Perhaps she knows someone personally affected or hasn’t been denied before….but seriously…to give me a guilt trip.  I wanted to say “Well, you could have give the $59.99 + tax you paid for an x-rated game for your 13 your old son to cancer research instead, but I guess it’s more important for him to beat down crack head prostitues after simulated lap dances in a virtual world…..”  Oh, what a hypocrite I am.

Speaking of games, the game company Harmonix is sponsering a Rock Band championship night at South Coast Plaze towards the end of the month here at South Coast Plaza.  The funny thing is, I didn’t know about it…but my neighbor knows I play it and I have a mock band, so he cut out the newspaper article and walked it down to my house and suggested I enter or go see it.  You know what….I may just go and witness this thing (not enter).  I can imagine all these virtual air-guitar bands…suppsoedly the best of the best from regional tournaments are going to meet this night for teh championship.  Now, how do I convince my wife that this is date night for us?  I’m sure she’ll thrown a drum stcik at me.

First and foremost , I have a rant.  As a person usually filled with doom and gloom, it isn’t hard for me to find something to flame on.  Today, it’s these annoying mid-life crisis ass-hats who believe that certain laws don’t apply to them because they drive slick cars.

Today as I was pulling into the ever shrinking parking lots that seem to be passing as acceptable today despite larger and larger SUV’s, and one ASS-HAT decides that the waiting for an open parking spot like the rest of us average Joes is somehow beneath him.  So he decides his gleaming and polished 2008 tricked-out black Corvette is better suited for a handicapped space even though he is not.  Perhaps he was mentally handicapped?  No license plate denoting his deficiency.  No placard.  No sticker.  He just parks and gets out to walk into the local ‘Juice It Up’ establishment on his cell phone no less.   I don’t know why, but this just pisses me off to no end.  These middle-aged guys who because they drive an expensive sports car despite the size of their penis, feel somehow entitled to park wherever they want, whenever, as long as it suits them….laws and common courtesy be damned. 

Anyway, I’m totally asleep today and craving something sweet with a little kick to it.  Work is a little slow and boring this afternoon, so I decide a trip to the local Starbucks for an Mocha Mint Frappacino is in order.  OMG, I can’t beleive it’s $4.30 for a ‘medium’ (grande, for you coffee house snobs).  $4.30 for a cup of shaved ice, mocha powder, and mint chocolate chips!!  Seriously, what has to be the markup on this thing? 1000%?  A few blended chocolate chips, sugary chocolate powder, and ice. 

The thing that always irks me about these drinks, and I think I’d learn my lesson by now after drinking dozens of them, is that no matter how well they attempt to ’blend’ them, I always seem to have the hardest time actually drinking them through any damn straw.  I always seem to get an errant sized chocolate chip or piece of ice that lodges itself in my straw which no amount of suction will actually accomplish me getting a copious amount inside of my mouth.  I’m always having to work at it much harder than any sane person should actually have to.  I always end up having to blow it backwards, or use the straw as a shovel, or bang the cup like a monkey on crack to loosen a drink so I can get a swallow.  The hassle and work involved of actually getting some chocolaty-mint goodness is just not worth it.  Ice cream would actually be more satisfying…and much cheaper.

Speaking of Starbucks, why is Iced-coffee more expensive than a regular cup of coffee?  If I order a medium cup of coffee in the morning, it costs me $1.85, but if I come back in the afternoon, and now want that same coffee over ice, it magically increases to $2.30 for a medium over the course of a few hours.  Why?  Theoretically, there is less actual ‘coffee’ because of the ice it is poured over than a regular cup of coffee and the price jumps by almost 25%?  Why?  Because it’s in a plastic cup instead of a paper cup?  Is the ice made from pure Himalayan ice flown in from a charter plane?  Starbucks has actually figured out a way to charge you more money….for less product….and we’re stupid enough to pay for it.

Okay, so that title may be a little cheezy, but I thought it was clever. 

So who knew that this Wii-Fit thingy would be a popular as the console itself, and already since it’s announcement it has generated so much buzz that Nintendo already had to adjust the release date in North America (from 5/19 to 5/21), and most stores including Amazon.com are already sold out of pre-sale items and are scarmbling tp find more suppliers.

You’d think Nintendo would have learned their lesson from the success that was the original release of the Wii console — the fact that demand continues to outpace supply almost two years after its initial debut.  Knowing that most Americans have short attention spans (like myself) and are generally out of shape (like myself), we’d all act like lemmings to get our hands on these and you’d think they’d ramp up production ahead of time.  But no, their conservative gamble is most likely cost them some initial sales, but it will cause a certain level of demand that will ensure the Wii-Fit will command top dollar for some time to come.

I know I had to have the Wii itself even after a year of its debut, and it took me months to locate one, and I spent way too much money on it….for something I rarely play now as my Xbox 360 has crushed my lonely Wii.  The problem with the Wii is the sub-par amount of actually good and fun titles.  This console is proving to be the best-friend of ’shovel-ware’ (software titles that are rushed to market and end up playing and stinking like shit).  For every game that may actually wow critics enough to give it a 8-9-10 or 4 out of 5 stars, there are 8 games right behind it that should never have been released.

But I digress.

I’m looking forward to getting the Wii-Fit myself, and hopefully this will spurn my wife into exercising a bit more as well.  I used to be in really good shape.  I used to body build and for a period of time I was an imposing figure, (so says my friends, family, and even Dr.) but I tore my rotator cuff just over two years ago and had two reconstructive shoulder surgeries since then.  This began my downward spiral.  Where as at my peak I weighed 215 lbs, 33″ waist, and bench pressed 320+ lbs, at 38 years of age I am now a 36″ waist, 235 lbs, and lucky if I can bench press 225 lbs on a good day.  Days at the gym decreased from 4-5 times a week, to a paltry 1-2 times every 2 weeks!  Yowza!

I’m more interested in having a beer, or a piece of chocolate now than I am salads or doing another rep.  Thank God I have a dog to walk, lest I even weigh more.  Seriously, I think walking my dog almost daily is the only exercise I get anymore.  I still do watch (to a certain extent) what I eat.  I don’t junk food all that often, and making a choice to eat more chicken and fish now.  And I try to avoid too much candy and fried foods, and I rarely drink soda.  But I know I can stand to lose some weight.  How do I know?  Well today, I was carrying a monitor (30 lbs?) up three flights of staors since the elevator was broken, and I actually felt out of breath once I got there.  Someone was talking to me and I noticed how hard I was breathing while talking….that wasn’t me 2 years ago, and I only gained 20 lbs!!

My wife is really bad when it comes to exercise willpower as well.  She means well, but generally loses steam after 3-4 weeks of any diet/exercise regime.  It’s too bad too since she does get initial results, and then just gives up, just to gain back everything she just lost.  Yo-Yo personified.

This past Tuesday night it was one of my neighbors birthdays.

My friend John and I had just been out prior having a nice ‘bachelor’ dinner of buffalo wings and beer and stumbled out of the joint roughly around 8pm.  My neighbor, her husband and child were driving by in their car and honked their horn, rolled down the window and chatted with us a few minutes. 

John and I learned that they had just had a family dinner, but were headed home to watch American Idle, but no plans.  We expressed our birthday wishes and saw them on their way.

I turned to John and said, “Hey, let’s go get soem gourmet ice cream and bring it over as a birthday gesture.”  This was met with approval so jJohn and I walked into the neighborhood Cold Stone Creamery and got a 1/2 gallon of Birthday Cake Batter ice cream mixed with chocolate chips and graham crackers.  If you never had this before, it’s like liquid ecstacy and at $14.99 a 1/2 gallon!! you know it’s gonna be damn good.

We rushed back to my house in my car, and were literally only 15 minutes behind my neighbors when we last spoke on the street.

With ice cream bag in hand and multiple spoons we walked the 3 houses down to their place and knocked on the door.  John and I were actually pretty excited, not only to have ice cream, but to share with our friends a casual impromptu party and be on our way shortly thereafter.

Well, the husband, ‘Chip’ answers the door and says Sallie is upstairs changing getting ready to watch American Idol.  We held out the ice cream bag and said we brought it over for Sallie’s birthday.  Chip opened the screen door took the bag from us and politely thanked us…….but didn’t invite us in.  I could tell John was anticipating a completely different response as was I.  We mulled around awkwardly for a few seconds, hoping Chip would understand that we just brought over gourmet, $15 dollar ice cream with multiple spoons, but it just never dawned on him.  After thanking us yet again and asking his young daughter Madison to take the bag to the kitchen, Chip told us to have a good night and closed the door.

!!!!

John and I stood there dumbfounded as we watched our dreams of icy cold sweet goodness go down the drain in front of our eyes.  Our aspirations of sharing this creamy gold with our freinds was snuffed out before we could really even react.  It was totally a sitcom moment, and deflated, John and I sauntered back to my house, tail between our legs, dejected and sad.

“What the hell just happened?”, I asked.

“He really isn’t good at picking up hints”. John concluded.

Well, not to be spoil sports I wouldn’t dream on knocking on their door requesting we get a taste and making an already awkward situation worse.  I’ll really give Chip a hard time the next few times I see him.

F- that.  I know John wanted ice cream, and so did I….so I did what any other sane person would do.  I drove back to the store, ordered a pint of exactly what I ordered before and brought it back so both John and I could have our ice cream….and it was damn good.

It took a few days for me to recover from that last post as I needed to reconfirm my sanity before I began again.

I suppose you could consider this two part post a type of therapy, a purging if you will, of letting out the tension and angst that dwells within me over what was supposed to a simple ‘game night’.

So I left off at game number 2, ‘Scene It’ which went over as well as psycho-therapy drugs at a Scientology conclave.

Everyone decided to take a brief ’smoke break’, yet again…I have a suspicion that they were actually all secretly comparing the color of their teeth, a game in which I was not allowed to participate in as I have better things do with my fidgety hands and spare $7 that to see who can get cancer the quickest.

Up next was ‘RockBand’ on Xbox 360.  Now we’re talking!  This is a game I could get into as long as I can play either lead or bass guitar.  I’ll even do drums on ‘easy’ or attempt to sing if need be, but things are starting to look up…

And down again they go.

The main guitar is broken.  As many of Rock Band’s initial shipments of guitars went, the strum bar is broken on the down stroke.  Only the ‘upstroke’ strumming works, which makes it difficult.  The second guitar had a faulty ’tilt’ mechanism within and a bad ‘blue’ fret button.  Great…both guitars aren’t functioning properly.  Next is our singer, who wants to participate…but doesn’t.  All the songs, despite the words scrolling across the screen, proved to be too hard for her and thus she ‘only’ wanted to sing like 3 songs out of the 40+ that were available.  Okay…so lets play “Should I stay, or should I go” again…and again…and again.  And let’s turn the volume down on the mic, so we don’t embarrass ourselves and so no one can hear.  Another disaster that was abandoned mercifully after 30 minutes.

Good God…what the heck is wrong with these people?  There are 10 adults here who can’t play a game that requires a 5th grade level attention span.  My wife can tell I am getting frustrated and silently whispers to me that I need to ‘reign it in’, that it is supposed to be ‘game night and fun.’

Really?  That is the object?  To have fun and play games?  Well….I would have fun if we actually played an actual game, and followed actual rules, and everyone had basic comprehension skills, and crap wasn’t broken, or we need to take nicotine breaks every 10 minutes.  I am clearly not built for this.

Next up was the pinnacle of the night….Trivia Pursuit.  Crap….I hate trivia pursuit.  Reluctantly I agree and we begin to play.  Then I noticed something 15 minutes into the game….that the two owners of said game (a married couple) were winning hands down as they new the answers to the most ridiculous of questions.  The rest of us I don’t think got one question correct as the questions were meant for Mensa members.  After 20 minutes of this, I actually said something…”Why are the two owners of the game seemingly getting the all the answers correct when the rest of us have our thumbs up our collective asses?”  They feigned ignorance, but it was too suspicious for me.  I bowed out.  I declared I had lost interest and in an effort to speed this agonizing trouncing up, I folded like a cheap lawn chair.  I think I was the catalyst, because soon after, there was no left playing except the husband and wife…who then lost interest as well, figuring it was not fun beating each other since they appeared to already know the answers.

By this time, four hours after we arrived, I was more ready than ever to go home.  Nice people.  Nice idea.  But in my mind a complete and utter waste of time.  Oh you may think I’m an old sour puss, that I can’t hang in a social environment with friends of my wife.  Yeah, on the surface I may even tend to agree with you as well…..but this was a poorly planned evening with ridiculous games, short attention spans, too much booze, and clearly not enough tobacco for the masses.

I signaled to my wife I wanted to leave and she told me after she finished her drink.  Oh, that drink that she’s been nursing for the last 45 minutes that she hasn’t taken one sip of?  Great, at this rate this evening will never end.   I sat back on the couch and was biding my time in silence.  The topic being discussedin the kitchen with great enthusiasm and interest that seemed to be a round table panel better suited for ‘The View’?……Car washing.

Yes…..car washing.  The subtle weather indicators, techniques, soaps, and optimal conditions for washing cars.  I kid you not.  It is now 11:15 pm, and I am listening to grown adults discussing the intricacies of proper car washing in-between inebriated slurs.

Finally, after everyone else began to leave at 11:30, my wife submitted and decided we could now go…she didn’t even come close to finishing her drink.  So there it is, almost 6 painful hours of the most inane game night I ever attended.  I’d so rather be home by myself at this point.  My wife was clearly upset that I was ‘bored to tears’ and I’m sure I won’t be invited again in the future….Fine by me.