Tuesday, August 19, 2008

It would only be funny if the Count on Sesame Street did it.

I hate it when people giving a short, humorous response decide to point out how many words their answer is.

Girl 1: Tony called eight times last night and left five voicemail messages. He’s getting so annoying.
Girl 2: Two words: restraining order.

Somehow, that format is supposed to make it funnier. As if counting increases comedy.

That must be why accountants are soooooooo hilarious.

If you really want to be original, start using it for longer responses.

Girl 1: I’ve been having trouble going to bed lately. For the life of me, I can’t seem to fall asleep.
Girl 2: Thirteen words: Drink some warm milk mixed with a nice blend of Nyquil and vodka.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Address distress.

I ordered a couple of things recently, and after checking the online tracking last night, I discovered UPS had just delivered it. Unfortunately, it listed them delivering it to someone else’s address.

I called UPS to see what had happened, and it seems they couldn’t locate my address. I guess they had forgotten where I had lived since they had last delivered a package to me two weeks ago. After using some detective work that I can only assume was composed of closing their eyes and randomly pointing at a map they determined that my real address was 1 Oakbrook Mall.

“McCash” must sound alot like “Macy’s”.

Eventually they wised up and concluded I really lived on 95th Street in Hinsdale. Not quite 75th Street in Burr Ridge. Sure, it may have been one town off and 20 streets over, but a least it was a better guess than the mall. And that’s where they decided to leave my package.

Now some guy in Hinsdale is wearing my Flight of the Conchords t-shirt and drinking coffee from my Flight of the Conchords mug.

I’m just glad the customer service lady at the other end of the line was nice about it. She said they’d try to get the actual package back somehow, but if they weren’t able to, they’d contact HBO.com and reorder the items for me. All I had to do was give her my order information including a detailed listing of the items I had purchased.

You have to feel sorry for the guy this happens to who placed an order from Adultsexstore.com.

UPS: Could you check the invoice and tell me the item number for the first item?
Customer: Sure. It’s 4611245
UPS: Thanks. And could you give me a short description for the item?
Customer: Um, it’s a DVD.
UPS: Do you know the title?
Customer: Uh...yeah. It’s called...um...Fisting Firemen 5.
UPS: Oh. Okay. And the second item number?
Customer: 2201954
UPS: And the description?
Customer: A...uh...a long rubber object?
UPS: Could you give a more detailed description?
Customer: Believe me, that’s all the description you want.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

To pee or not to pee.

Disaster was narrowly averted this morning when I tried to pee at a urinal for over 10 minutes and nothing came out. You would think this would be a bad thing, as I did at the time, but only later did I realize I was actually dreaming and it was a pretty good thing that nothing came out.

I probably should have figured out it was a dream earlier, though. Taking a piss in your old high school restroom while having a conversation with Sylvester Stallone doesn’t usually happen in real life.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Car-nivore.

I ran over a turtle.

It was a couple of days ago, and a big storm had passed through that morning, leaving branches and other landscape debris scattered across the roads. A fun little obstacle course if you don’t mind getting good use out of your steering wheel. As I drove down Plainfield, I noticed a huge rock right in the middle of the street. I wondered how the storm could have managed to blow a rock that big into the road when I noticed that the rock had a head. By then, it was too late. Under my car it went.

Luckily for the little guy, I swerved enough to have it go between my tires instead of under them.

I stopped my car to go pick him up so some semi wouldn’t smear it all over its mud flaps, but the guy in the car behind me got out before I did and helped the turtle get to the other side.

A happy ending for little Leonardo. I wish it could have gone as well for the other creatures I’ve driven over in my days.

The most recent victim was an itty bitty sparrow. I was turning off a road to head onto the highway when the bird flew down and landed right in front of me in the middle of the on-ramp. I pulled the same maneuver I did for the turtle and made sure to steer so it went between my tires. Unfortunately, it didn’t fare as well for the bird. As you know, when cars are heading towards them, they tend to fly up. And as I drove over him, he flew up - right into the underside of my car. I continued down the exit to see from my rear-view mirror his little body rolling across the pavement. The most depressing cartwheels ever.

The only other animal I’ve hit was a raccoon. My first kill. I was blazing down the highway one night at 70mph. He ran out of nowhere. No chance to do the between-the-tires thing for him. Right under the Goodyears.

So far, I’ve driven over a reptile, a bird and a mammal. It seems my driving is making it’s way through the entire animal kingdom. I just need to hit an amphibian and a fish and I’ll have myself a full set.

Maybe I should try some beach driving sometime. I’ve always been a completist, after all.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Sunday the unday.

For a guy who can’t wait for the weekend to roll around, I sure do hate Sundays.

It’s not really even a day for me. It’s merely the limbo between Saturday and Monday in which absolutely nothing happens. Its sole purpose seems to be to recuperate from staying up so late the night before and to dread having to go to work the next morning, resulting in total and utter laziness.

Here’s today so far:

1:00pm: Woke up. This was after initially waking at 7am, 9am and noon to realize I had no reason to stay conscious. Once no longer able to pass out, I would remain in bed for another half hour just lying there staring at the ceiling and other random objects around my room.

1:30pm: Managed to get the TV remote off my desk and watched lame 70’s reruns including M.A.S.H. and Battlestar Galactica for three hours straight simply because they happened to be the least-horrible shows on at the time. It’s really all you can do when you have no cable or an initiative to stick something in the DVD player. Not until The Greatest American Hero came up did I finally get bored enough to whip out a Futurama DVD.

5:00pm: Had a bountiful breakfast/lunch/dinner composed entirely of potato chips dipped in jelly. Having no leftovers or desire to cook something can make you eat some very strange things.

5:30pm: Got too hot sitting around in the t-shirt and underwear I slept in, so I stripped down naked, all while chatting online with various unsuspecting friends. (Sorry, Tina.)

6:00pm: Since already naked, decided to go ahead and take a shower.

Right now: After realizing I have no clean clothes, I’m once again sitting around naked and chatting with various unsuspecting friends (Sorry, Bushie) until the stuff I just stuck in the laundry is clean and dry enough to wear again.

I guess all Sunday is really good for other than doing nothing is wearing nothing.

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Not gonna write Drew a love song.

Did you know there’s a song about me?

I discovered it one day when I was scanning through the radio after getting tired of listening to my regular station play Guitar Hero songs all day long. It isn’t really my usual genre of music, but it’s still nice to have my name mentioned in a song. I now have the honor of joining a select lyrical few including Lola, Delilah, Luka and Jude.

I just wish it wasn’t such a depressing tune. A song about a girl pining over me who can never have me? Who wants to be remembered that way? I don’t want to be the reason for any girl’s teardrops on her guitar.

I’d rather be the reason for her sweatdrops.

I should just go back to the way I usually get my name in songs – inserting it manually. Whenever a song feels the need to use “you” in its lyrics, I simply replace it with a rhyming “Drew.”

It works the best when I’m in the car with other people. I make sure to start singing along with the song, and as soon as the “you” comes up, I blast in with a “Drew.” Do it enough times around them, and every time they hear that song later, they subconsciously insert the “Drew” themselves.

Gotta love rebranding. It has totally ruined The Reason by Hoobastank for all of my friends.

I’ve found out a reason for me
To change who I used to be
A reason to start over new
and the reason is Drew.

Saturday, May 31, 2008

What awkward sounds like.

One of my coworkers is deaf, but he’s also the biggest fanboy geek you’ll ever meet. From time to time, he IM’s me news and clips for upcoming comic movies. Last week, when the new international trailer for the Hulk movie came out, he was the first to send me the link. I gave it a view and told him what I thought.

Me: that’s pretty neat
Me: they even have a clip of the music from the 70’s show at the end!
Him: yeah...i didn’t exactly notice that

I hate when my forgetfulness makes me look an even bigger asshole than usual.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Opposites detract.

I was walking back from lunch with Adrian, one of my coworkers, when we passed an ad for Virgin Atlantic along the sidewalk. Across the top in bold white letters over a background of red and purple, it read, “Leave disgruntled. Arrive gruntled.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” Adrian remarked. “I don’t think ‘gruntled’ really sounds that much better than ‘disgruntled’.”

“Yeah, sometimes trying to opposite-ify a word just doesn’t work,” I replied. “It might as well have read, ‘Leave pissed-off. Arrive pissed-on.’”

Monday, April 28, 2008

Vocabulate.

The building I work in is relatively tall, so to keep employees entertained for the dozens of seconds it takes to get to their floors, each elevator has a little LCD screen installed that cycles through various news stories and random facts. One of the regular items displayed is the word of the day, which defines a different unusual word for our amusement. In most cases, they’re interesting little tidbits like “farctate” or “ultracrepidarian,” but today I stepped into the elevator to find today’s word to be:

Containerize – to place in a container.

Apparently, the guy who chose today’s word has the vocabulary level of a second grader who just discovered suffixes.

Tomorrow’s word: Vehicleness – the state of being a vehicle.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Good thing Macs don’t come with polygraph widgets.

I am an asshole.

I’m sure most of you are already aware of that, but apparently Matthew forgot.

I was getting tired of working, as I often do at work, so I figured I might as well chat up Matt on AIM. But instead of one of my usual openers like, “hey stinkface,” or, “what’s up monkeybutt,” I decided to go a different route:

Me: Good day to you, sir.
Me: How are you this afternoon?
Matthew: angry
Me: I am sorry. Did I make you mad?
Matthew: no
Me: That is good to hear.
Me: So why are you angry?

Finally, Matt realized something was amiss. Punctuation? Capitalization? Everyone knows Drew is too lazy for such things while instant messaging. And since when has an uncaring bastard like me ever cared how Matt feels?

Matthew: why the f are you formal
Matthew: the f
Matthew: f f f!
Matthew: it’s creepy
Matthew: like you’re a sixty year old man that wants to get into my pants or something

It was something I could work with. He’d laid the suggestion that I might be someone else. And a pervert to boot! So I decided to seal the deal and type something I’ve sworn to never type in my life.

Me: LOL

It was time to lay the foundation of my new identity. Who in my office could have access to my computer and be a 60-year-old pervert?

Me: How did you know that I am really Andrew’s boss pretending to be him on his computer?
Matthew: what in the world?
Matthew: you’re andrews boss?
Matthew: cool!
Matthew: hello!
Matthew: hire me
Matthew: hire me please
Matthew: i need a job

Perfect. Matt’s immense desire for employment had distracted him from the possibility that it could be me being a total dick. I decided to work it further.

Me: Do you have a portfolio?
Matthew: haha
Matthew: http://www.andrews.edu/~parkm/Portfolio.htm
Matthew: i’ll work on it

I clicked the link and began a quick view, but not before pressing the pervert angle Matt suggested earlier.

Me: Let me know when it is finished.
Me: Then maybe I can hire you and get my 60-year-old self in your pants.
Matthew: cool
Matthew: i’m all about climbing the ladder via sleeping the boss
Matthew: just messing

Right about then Matt realized he really had no idea who he was talking to. 60-year-old office workers rarely ask to get into strangers slacks.

Matthew: andrew
Matthew: no?
Matthew: andrew’s boss?
Matthew: i’m scared

I felt a buzzing in my pants. (Don’t worry. It wasn’t because I was turned on by the situation.) My phone was going off. It was Matt.

I walked to a conference room and answered my phone with a relaxed hello. Slightly panicked, Matt asked me where I was. I quickly thought up a lie and told him I’m taking a break downstairs in the building’s shopping levels. He asked me about my boss and if he ever used my computer. I stuck with the description that was set up in the AIM conversation and said we sometimes got on each other’s computers to get files from time to time. He let me know that he was chatting with my boss before letting me go to continue my shopping spree.

I hung up and ran back to my computer to see it ding with a new message.

Matthew: oh my goodness
Matthew: you really are andrew’s boss
Matthew: give andrew a fat raise
Matthew: so he can buy me toys

I decided to make my boss a bastard as well as a degenerate.

Me: I wish I could give him a fat raise.
Me: But all the money goes to me.
Matthew: didn’t your mom tell you to share?
Matthew: share the wealth, the saying goes
Matthew: it’ll make you happier
Matthew: and inadvertently me as well

All the while, I was still looking through Matthew’s portfolio. I scrolled down the page and noticed a listing for Matt’s yearbook that I helped out with a little bit the year after I graduated. I got an evil idea.

Me: I’m looking at your portfolio right now.
Me: Didn’t Andrew do that Yearbook?
Matthew: it was eons ago
Matthew: he was the editor for other years before
Matthew: that yearbook he designed
Matthew: and girl named rebecca and i were co-editors that year
Me: He said he did it all himself.
Me: He must have lied on his resume.
Matthew: he didn’t
Me: I’m going to have to review his resume to check.
Matthew: no he’s truthful
Matthew: you have to trust your employees
Me: I’m sure you’re just covering for him.
Matthew: check it
Matthew: then give him a fat raise
Me: We need to do a pay cut to some employees.
Matthew: oh no
Me: Maybe this will give me an excuse to do it to him.
Matthew: that’s sad
Me: Thanks for the info.
Matthew: oh lord
Me: Don’t worry, I won’t tell him it was you who told me.
Matthew: you’re a scary boss
Matthew: so covert
Matthew: and sneaky
Matthew: pretending to be your employees
Me: I think Andrew is back.
Matthew: ahhh!
Me: Don’t tell him I was talking to you.

I logged off. I thought I’d stay offline for awhile to let Matt sweat. After five minutes or so, I signed back on. Matt’s message window popped up instantly.

Matthew: andrew!
Matthew: andrew andrew andrew
Matthew: are you a smoker now or something?
Matthew: who goes on breaks like that?
Me: have such great sales in the stores today!
Me: cause of leapday
Matthew: check your gmail

I logged into gmail to see Matt had sent me a copy of his whole conversation with my fake boss.

Me: i can’t read all that
Me: give me a summary
Me: drew’s a busy boy
Matthew: uhm
Matthew: pretty much i asked him for a job
Me: ooh, did he say yes?
Matthew: then he asked for a portfolio
Matthew: so i had this dinky site
Matthew: and i had the yearbook picture
Matthew: here | now
Matthew: it doesn’t say i designed it
Matthew: only that i was co-editor
Matthew: but then he was like
Matthew: andrew said he did it all by himself
Matthew: and i was like
Matthew: yeah
Matthew: for his yearbooks
Matthew: that yearbook was a girl named rebecca and mines
Matthew: except he designed it
Matthew: and then he was like
Matthew: we need to do pay cuts
Matthew: i bet andrew lied on his resume or something
Matthew: i was scared
Matthew: am scared
Me: shit
Matthew: he’s not
Matthew: going to
Matthew: your porfolio has your yearbooks
Me: i might have mentioned that one, i’m not sure
Matthew: i’m scared
Matthew: and kind of disgusted
Matthew: your boss is freaky
Matthew: and nearly 60
Matthew: and wants to be you
Matthew: and wants to get in my pants
Matthew: he told me not to tell you
Me: damn it, my boss is in his office with his door closed
Me: with the blinds shut
Matthew: he’s masturbating
Matthew: to our conversation
Matthew: he wants me
Me: or trying to figure out how much to dock my pay
Matthew: no
Matthew: i told him twice to give you a raise
Matthew: and he said no
Matthew: he gets all the money
Matthew: and his workers get cuts
Matthew: you should knock
Matthew: and go make a peace offering
Me: hold on, he opened his door
Matthew: uh-oh
Matthew: i’m freaking out
Matthew: call me later

I logged off and laughed maniacally to myself. Pathological liars must have the most fun.

On the way home, I had nearly forgotten about the day’s fabrication until I received a text message on my phone.

Matthew: Are you done with work yet? I’m scared…

I got off the train from work and called up Matt.

I had it all planned out. I got in a fight with my boss. I tried to explain the lapse in my resume, but he would hear none of it. After an hour of heated exchange, he fired me.

I was all ready to make Matt suffer, but I couldn’t do it. After hearing Matthew’s pitiful little voice on the end of the line, I fessed up. I guess I just didn’t have the blackness in my heart that I thought I did.

Luckily, Matt doesn’t hate me or wish me dead a thousand times over. This is really good for me, since it means he’ll still talk to me, leaving him wide open to more lies and deception on my part.

Maybe next time I can convince him that I’m dead.

But then again, after what I put him through, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind that at all.