Random Fears...

Lately, fellow bloggers have been telling me to blog something. When I say "tell" I actually mean yelling at me (you know who you are). I usually write about things that happen to me, but nothing interesting has happened to me...well nothing that I am allowed to write about legally anyway (again you know who you are). So I thought I would flip on the ol' TV for some inspiration and caught a little bit of Dr. Phil or some other guy who was trying to help people with their problems. The shows subject was about irrational fears. That got the wheels-a-turnin' so I thought I would list a few of mine. Just to show everyone that I a human... kind of.

1) Spiders... give me the willies every time I see them

2) When I was in high school, my drivers education teacher told me a story once. He use to be a C.H.P. officer ( That's California Highway Patrol or Chippies to you non-Californians) and was at a hospital filling out a report, when in comes a guy to the emergency room with his finger in his nostril to the knuckle. He stared in amazement as this unfortunate man was wheeled past him. My teacher asked the paramedic what had happened. The paramedic replied, failing to keep a straight face and laughter out of his voice, that the man with his finger in his nose was picking his nose and failed to see the car stop in front of him. So now I am scared to death every time I feel an itch inside my nose while driving.

3) The Boogie Man

4) Door-to-door sales people. I hate being rude to them so I always hear them out. I guess I am more annoyed with them than fearful.

5) did I mention Spiders?

6) The dead eyes of porcelain dolls or even worse... Faceless porcelain dolls. My aunt had a faceless porcelain doll on her television set and I swear even though it didn't have eyes, it was staring at me.

7) Being thought of as a liar.

8) Drinking expired milk.

9) Carnival folk or "carnies"... Small hands. Smell like cabbage.

These are some of the irrational fears that I must deal with everyday. Fear is one of those weird emotions that can drive people to shut themselves inside their homes for 50 years. I was watching a cartoon with my niece called Astrix and The Vikings (great movie by the way). At the very end Astrix asks his village wise man Get-a-fix what use does fear have. Get-a-fix replies that fear is were courage comes from. For true courage is overcoming your fears. Never thought I would find a nugget of wisdom like that in a cartoon. By the way, if you are a Carney and are offended by my last item on the list. I am truly sorry about that. I thought it would be funny to include. If you have any complaints please contact:

Somebody who gives a crap or New Line Cinema for letting that one into Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery. New Line Cinema will most likely refer you back to that first guy.

Thanks for the Vent Session...

Spot the D-Bag!!!

I went out to dinner in Downtown Salt Lake to a little pizza shop with a killer chicken sandwich. While staring out the window, I started to play a game I would always play in college while at the beach that we called "Spot the Douche-Bag." The rules are simple. Spot a likely candidate, come up with an imaginary reason why he/she is a D-bag, and see if you can get the most.

For example, I spotted a guy with a winter coat, bleach blond hair w/ a corporate hair cut, an Abercrombie and Fitch t-shirt, New "old" jeans from the GAP, flip-flops, a computer bag, and a bluetooth head set. I imagine that this guy is an unemployed screen writer. He has no talent, but hangs out at the local Starbucks pretending he does. He is writing his screenplay while sipping Italian coffee and also makes damn sure everyone knows he is writing a screenplay. He name drops celebrities that he has served coffee to during the Sundance Film Festival and drones on about character archetypes in boring French films and firmly believes that Mel Gibson should play the lead role in his action/comedy. After all that explanation, do you know how I know he is a D-Bag? He is wearing flip-flops in the middle of winter...

Another guy I saw was wearing a green vest/jacket thing, with a scruffy looking knit cap and a chin strap beard. A half inebriated look on his face and a smirk as if he knew something funny that nobody else knew. I imagine him as a 25 year old bag boy at the local supermarket who steals cartons of cigarettes from the receiving dock and sells them to local kids. He also hits on the "cougars" that frequent the store and tries to regale them with tales of other conquests and his knowledge of classic rock. When his job is done he rides his skateboard home to his mom's basement and smokes a bowl of the chronic while repeating rap lyrics in an attempt to gain some street "cred" with his fellow suburbanites. You know how I know he is a D-Bag? You guessed it... chin strap beard!!!

That is pretty much the rules of the game. There are at least two at your job right now. Find them and enjoy picturing their lives. If you feel bad, tell yourself you are not judging them. You are picturing them in the most likely situation they could be in with the outfit they wear. Just like a police officers uniform denotes a policeman, so does a D-bag outfit.

Thanks for the obscure and random Vent Session...

Warmer Climate...PLEASE...*sob*

This blogs a short one but I know you will feel my pain. Just spent an awesome weekend in Las Vegas. Weather was warm, casinos were a sad spectacle of human boredom, security was eyeballing me wondering if they could take me (they can't by the way), and the food was... meh. Who goes to Vegas without going to a buffet anyway?

I had lots of fun. Sang some good music, hung out with friends, even watched a minor league hockey game and saw a fight!!! The weekend temps there were in the low to mid 50's the whole time, but, alas, it was time to return home to the frozen tundra which is SLC. We were sitting at Jack In The Box getting ready to hit the road and out of curiosity, I jumped on my good buddy's iphone to check the weather...

Salt Lake City Las Vegas


...Salt Lake City will have a low of ONE DEGREE on Christmas Eve! Whose idea was that? Could be worse... Could be in... Who am I kidding? I wish we had sun!!!

The Hook-Up Magnet!!!

Long ago God paired up everything into twos and sent them on a cruise. Thousands of years later most of my friends have taken on the responsibility to do the same for me. I don't know if it is because of the Christmas season and the thought of me being single gets the hook-up mojo going in my "homegirlz," or that I am oblivious to everything and girls are throwing themselves at me. Probably not the latter...

People are constantly trying to fix me up with girls from work, church, their relatives, and so forth. My neighbor has been trying to persuade me to go out with this girl at the post office for about a year. It's to the point where the mother of the girl is bugging my neighbor to just bring me to the house to take her out. The only thing that I really know about this girl is that she is very tall, somewhere along the lines of 6'2" . I am 6'6" ( depending on what shoes I have on) so the height is not really a problem. My brother made the comment that we could breed "super athletes". So the question is how do I get from here to having superhero children? I am really uncomfortable around new people and never know what to say. So I try to get to know a girl before I go out with her.

A friend of mine from California hit me up on Facebook the other day. She was raving about a girl she met at a dance in Huntington Beach and how we would be perfect for each other. I was then firmly instructed to call her promptly or she would revoke my "man card". I can imagine how I would sound during the phone conversation with the mystery girl:

"Hello?"

"Hi I'm Jr."

... Long awkward silence...

"Okay. It was nice talking to you..."

I'm not much of a phone conversation guy (ask my friends), but I will party 'till the crack of 9:30 PM because that's how I roll. I must have a big target on my forehead with flashing lights that says "Single. Please fix me up!" But, keep trying folks, I'll find a winner in there sooner or later. Hopefully sooner...

Thanks for the Vent Session...

Hole In My Soul...

So I went out with a girl the other night to see Paranormal Activity. I had seen it the week before and thought it was kind of weak. The girl I went with has a big problem with scary movies and made me enter into a verbal "contract of conduct" before she would even consider seeing the movie. I was not to make any noises or sudden moves that would intensify the scary scenes. I was not to mention that was once ghostly activity within her house (another blog for another time...) and I was NOT to make fun of her thereafter about the screams that would ensue. I agreed to the stipulations, but being the sensitive guy that I am gave her some chances to back out.

There is hardly any gore in the movie so she figured it wouldn't be too bad but she was also vary aware of the actions of people around us. There was a group of women behind us who got up and left 15 minutes into the movie... she considered leaving. The first loud noise... she considered leaving. Ouija Board scene... she considered leaving. Most of the movie was spent with her cutting off the circulation in my arm because of her death grip, meanwhile, I am dosing off during the movie. Probably would have fallen asleep if it wasn't for a certain someone trembling next to me. Don't get me wrong, this girl is one of the toughest women I know, but this movie rocked her to the core. She actually went so far as to scream during the movie. And of course I did give her ample opportunity to get out of going before hand.

She was soooooo mad at me about "MAKING" her see Paranormal Activity. She even went as far as accusing me of having no soul. No soul? Ouch right? I said to myself, "Self, you have as much soul as James Brown," but still felt bad about her reaction. Wanting to make her at ease about how much the movie disturbed her I took her out to eat. She did later admit, in between bites of an Apple Bees Blondie, that I must have been an evil genius to be able to manipulate her so masterfully. First of all, it does say in my profile that I'm an genius of the evil kind and secondly, I'm not saying that I manipulated her, but a persons actions can be predicted... if you know what buttons to push.

She had also purchased a brand new bed during the day and I almost ruined the first night in the new bed for her. So I stayed over until 3am to make sure that she was soothed. But hey, at least I got her to sit in my lap during the movie...

Thanks For the Vent Session...

Why am I awake?

So I have to start work at 6:30 am, but why did my body decides to wake up at 1:15 am? I hate the fact that I am awake right now at 3:53 am... so I decided to complain about it on the Inter-web. I think part of the reason I am awake is because I had a dream about layoffs. My job lost 50 guys yesterday and I wasn't among the lucky few, or unlucky depending on how you view waking up at the crack of dawn. So now I must wave goodbye to any chance of weekends off for the next little while, but at least they pay me overtime for it.

I still feel bad for the guys who were let go. I overheard management say it was trimming the fat, but it seems needlessly cruel to refer to somebody as unwanted weight (man... I'm hungry). Me and my partner at work are on loan to another company to help out with their equipment testing so that makes us immune to the layoff axe, but sooner or later some company suck up is gonna take my place. It might be survivors guilt that keeps me up at night, but it could also be because I fell asleep at 6:30 pm the night before and didn't eat dinner... I am gonna make a chicken pita.

Thanks for the mini Vent Session... by the way... clowns... scary...

Show em your GRRRRR face...

I went out to eat with some friends a few days ago. Being Polynesians, we naturally start making fun of each other. One of the girls started to tell a story about me and made a growling sound as she pretended to lift some heavy object in the story. We all laughed, but that got the ol' wheels turning... do I make that sound unconsciously? I started to travel back into my memory and realized that other people make the growl when they describe me lifting things also. I hope that I'm not walking around all day making the sounds of distant thunder to innocent bystanders. The last thing I need is an old lady keeling over because she thought a bear mauling was eminent. I'm already big and scary looking. I don't need people to think that I am a wild animal in heat too. It makes me wonder what other things I do subconsciously as well...

Do I do the things that drive me crazy? Do I slurp my noodles, or chew with my mouth open? Do I say things like supposibly instead of supposedly? Do I constantly raise my eyebrows when I speak to people like Shaq does or pronounce the word cross with a "T" at the end? These are just a few things on a long list of things that I might do.

Now I feel self-conscious about the things I do. I bite my lip when I pick up salt shakers, pencils, the morning paper, and the car keys. Sure you would expect some kind of audible vocalization when lifting heavy things, but why take the chance. There is another side of me that wants to embrace the snarl, a more primal and wild side of my brain. In this spirit, I would like to try other bestial articulations. Maybe a howl as my boss greets me in the morning, or a gruff bark to the neighbors. I'm even willing to try a ...meow. Maybe not.

Thanks for the Vent Session...