misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

This whole coffee culture is starting to get a little old. I'm starting to despise these coffee-addicts i see everyday who can't get going without their "ol cup of joe". It is some pretentious bullshit when you start throwing in the Starbucks element. They are so cool ordering their medium iced lattes with non-fat milk and chai teas with soy milk ... it is worse than frat boys ordering kamikazee shots at bars .. I often stop off at the corner market in the mornings to get a gatorade or something, and I always have to stand in line while the three people in front of me custom order their fucking coffee. "Black coffee please with two sugars and a dash of milk, and leave the lid partly off so it can cool, please" Shut the fuck up! Order a coffee and go. You aren't ordering a damn wedding dress. Then they walk off cupping their coffee like it is the key to all happiness. I mean, I love beer, i LOVE it, and I still don't treat my beer like that. Each morning at work, someone will inevitably come into my cube and make some mention of how they need their capuccino or latte or else they are useless. As a man who has struggled in the mornings for the better part of a life, I have no respect for a man who has to rely on coffee to get him through a morning. Get to work and yawn for two hours like me. But don't sip your coffee in my ear all morning like you are eating some girl out. Then there are those who tell me how if they don't drink coffee in the mornings, they get a headache and their whole day is ruined. That sounds a whole hell of a lot like addiction to me. I have the same problem. Only mine happens at night. If I don't have at least one beer at night my head hurts and my whole next day is ruined. But that makes me an "alcoholic" whereas the coffee people are just coffee people. You really think drinking two big iced lattes a day is any better than drinking two beers a day? And please drop the whole patronizing order tone that most coffee drinkers use ... when i order a beer I say something like "A Sierra Nevada, Please" ... that is four words ... at Starbucks, I have to listen to this shit: "A venti mocha with soy milk and some non-fat whipped cream and go light on the chocolate" .. I can't even count how many words that is .. So next time you go to get your coffee, do us all a favor and just order "coffee" .. drop the sugars, milk, soys, creams, foams, ice, and everything else and drink coffee like it was supposed to be drunk. Without pretense, cool guy.

I'm not even exactly sure if I am still Catholic or not, but that said, the pope is killin' me these days. As the head of the religion I was born and raised with, and head of the biggest religion in the world, you gotta know when your time has come and gone. The guy has Parkinson's, alzheimers, polio, the flu, malaria, athlete's foot, and who knows what else. I mean, anytime you find it difficult to even lift your head and speak, how can you say mass to hundreds of thousands of people? Nobody can even hear what you're saying. That just doesn't make for a successful mass. I understand that you are the holiest of the holy, and I respect that, but don't you know when it is time to retire? Pass the torch? Or maybe become a ceremonial figure, like the queen. You can show up and sit there, but let someone else do what you no longer can. It is this sort of old school ceremonial thinking that strangles a religion like Catholicism. We get mocked by all non-Catholics for this sort of stuff. Everytime he says mass our image is getting hurt. Truth is, if I wasn't Catholic i'd be mocking it too. All the other old school shit ain't helping either. No women priests, no gay marriages (even though everyone knows 70% of priests are gay themselves), no masturbation (i've broken this one more than any other sin probably except for swearing) ... Now we got a pope who can't even make complete words when he speaks ... We could use a new PR firm .. This probably isn't the best blog to write on Ash Wednesday .. But I'm thinkin' my man Jesus agrees with me on this one .. As I'm sure all of my heathen readers do as well ..

I'd like to provide my readers with some data from a recent NY Times article about the differences between men and women.

"'We can't get anywhere denying that there are neurological and hormonal differences between males and females, because there clearly are,' said Virginia Valian, a psychology professor at Hunter College."

Ok, the point of all this isn't to knock girls, as some of you might think based on these quotes. It is simply to point out an invariable fact - men and women are different. Now, while this might seem like an obvious fact, the longer I trample on this little marble we call an earth, the more I see a movement towards ignoring the differences between genders. I don't think, in general, all women are any worse than all men at math or science -- Amanda was a math major that could whoop my ass in fractional mathematics and imaginary number equations -- but let's just face our brains are different. The very way we think - biologically - is different. And yes, a man's brain allows us to think more logically than a woman. Why is that such an insult? Why is it so bad when researchers reveal that biological wiring makes men better at things like math and science, while making women better at other very important tasks, like baking and ironing? I can't imagine a man ever cooking a better batch of brownies that I saw Sy bake up on a regular basis. And humanity needs brownies just as much as it needs math.

What angers me is how taboo it is to talk about differences between genders. Is it chauvanistic to suggest or research these differences? Isn't it these differences that create romance in the first place? I am more fascinated by females because they are so inherently different than me and other guys. Taj doesn't fascinate me in the same way. I know why he likes sports and video games and foot powder. There is nothing to explore. But why does a girl cry when I call her a bitch, instead of hit me, as Taj would? Fascinating business. And this fascination creates attraction between the sexes (in addition to big tits and vaginas, that is). Without these differences, there would be no love! So, it is good that women are worse drivers than men. If they were just as good there would be no marriage.

As a side note, I'm gonna puke if i sit through one more talk with the women at my agency bitching about how the business world is an old man's club, and how women can't get a break, only to have them go to their desk and baby talk to their 2-year old kid on speaker phone for three hours. Let's face it, having kids is a career killer. It changes priorities. I can sit here until 11 PM every night cause all I have to go home to is a naked russian dude. If i had a kid waiting for me at home, i couldn't be here till 11. So I have an inherent advantage in the business world. I'll never be pregnant. And I'll never have to be a mom. So, it is likely that I will excel further than moms that I am in direct competition with. I might not be smarter or more talented, but I have the ability to work harder. My priority is work, not some chubby little kid named "Marley" who is so cool cause he learned how to say "booboo" today.

This fragmented blog should end now.

I have a date tonight for Valentine's Day.

It is a girl i've known for about ten years. She has beautiful brown hair the color of a field of barley, and the brownest eyes ever, like a barrel full of aged hops. She can be a little cold, but if you hang out with her for awhile, she warms up.

Her name is Sierra.

Sierra Nevada.

Happy Valentine's Day to all you married people.

The art of conversation has totally evaporated from our culture. In the past, before the days of tvs, ipods, and internet pornography (which i have no problem with, for the record) I imagine people had to rely on each other more to create entertainment for themselves. Part of this entertainment would be holding an interesting conversation with some other human .. share a moment, communicate the human experience, learn a new perspective. That ideal has been blown to shit in modern times.

This past friday, I went out with three people from work for dinner. For about the five thousandth time in the past month, I sat there and watched what was supposed to be a "conversation" dissipate into "storytelling". The difference? In order to have a conversation, you must have people in a room willing to listen to whoever it is who is talking. And listening seems to be a skill possessed by about eight people in the world. Just about every conversation i've found myself in recently (particularly when they involve a high number of girls) involves one person telling an inane story about themselves, while the other people wait impatiently for their opportunity to interrupt the other person so they too can begin talking about themselves. Like fucking dogs fighting over a steak. No questions are asked, no listening is done, nothing is learned. I sit there watching this all as if I am watching some cranked up version of Real World, unable to follow what the hell is going on. Any topic lasts about thirty seconds before someone takes it and changes it to something else. The worse part is how it always devolves into stories about the person in question. As example:

ME:"So what movies do you guys think is going to win Best Picture this year?"

GIRL 1: "My boyfriend loves movies! It was so funny, one time we went to a movie, and we ate popcorn together, and it was so great!"

GIRL 2: "My dad can make the best popcorn! When i was like 8 years old, my aunt came over and --"

MAN 1: (interrupting) "My aunt was the craziest woman .. her name was Minnie which is funny because actually she was pretty big"

At this point, I truly don't know what has happened. I don't even know what the topic is anymore. And worse of all, I could give a shit about GIRL 1's boyfriend, GIRL 2's father, or GUY 1's aunt. How can they really think anyone gives a shit? To be nice, I try to ask questions about MAN 1's Aunt Minnie, but before he can answer, GIRL 2 has interrupted again to start talking about a dog she once had. The worst part is I could care less about any of this self-absorbed shit, especially a dog you had, but I feign interest and listen anyway, to at least salvage whatever conversation can be had. I think I am the only person able to ask a questions in a twelve-block radius of NYC. There is only one conclusion to be drawn for this: Humanity is inherently self-absorbed and people don't give a shit about anyone but themselves.

While discussing this with Age, who we all know to be perhaps the best listener in North America, we came up with a system of converstational rules that should dictate (kenta, no jokes) all conversations had from this day on.

1. Shareable Topics -- Topics of conversation must include a situation or element of which all people involved in the conversation can observe and comment upon. As example, if four people are gathered outside watching Haley's Comet, Haley's Comet becomes a viable topic of discussion, because all people are involved in the same observation and can pitch in equally.

2. Sports -- Everyone should be allowed to talk about sports, UNLESS it is a story about their own sports experiences. Nobody cares you once scored the winning hockey goal for your high school team. But everybody cares if Vince Carter is the best dunker in NBA history. For the ladies, though, we will expand this topic to include Pop Culture of any sort, i.e. who you think is going to win Survivor this year and why, is Beyonce a talented singer, and if Clariol is a good shampoo.

3. Shit , Age, there is a third, and it is good, which one is it?

4. Unanswerable topics -- This could also be considered matters of philosophy. Any question that REQUIRES debate as an inherent quality of the question should be included here. As example, the whole what happens when you die, will earth ever be hit by a huge asteroid, if workmonkey is a better Empire Earth player than dragonhair, is religion ruining our world or improving it, etc. There is a number of questions here ... I will also include those conversation books that ask questions like "If you could invite three people to dinner, who would you invite and why" or , my more favorite version "If you could have sex with one person at work on the conference table, who would it be and why?"

Okay .. this blog is my only opportunity to talk uninterrupted these days, so add your inane comments so we can debate those next.