misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

Every morning for the past several months, Jill's first act upon arising is to turn on a morning TV show. I think she usually picks the same one, but as I am unable to determine the differences between any of them, the specific morning show in question is irrelevant. I think it has Al Roker and Matt Lauer, if that helps. In any event, I hate morning shows, and always have, so each morning, when I hear the discord of the insipid segments echoing throughout our apartment, i bury myself under pillows in an attempt to shield myself from the horror.

This morning, however, the show was thankfully still on by the time I sat down at the computer to check work mail. If it hadn't been playing, I wouldn't have gotten a key clue into determining why people are such neurotic wrecks these days. The were playing day five of a segment entitled, "Ten Hidden House Dangers". Today's featured danger? Pool Drains. They can suck with an unequalled force, pinning your sweet, innocent, cartoon-watching child to the bottom of the pool, drowning them. Same for the bathtub. Luckily, they provided steps to preventing this sort of mishap, saving your baby from an unexpected and ignominious death. Tomorrow, they are going to profile the #4 top house danger you should worry about.

Awesome. Just what I was hoping for. Thousands of moms even more paranoid and annoying than they already are.

Another feature that was to follow was entitled, "What's in Your Bottled Water?" I saved myself from that one by taking a shower, in shower water which, I'm sure The Today Show wouldn't hesitate to tell me was filled with micro-organisms that could eat off my skin if the conditions were right. Later, they were going to tell you exactly why you should lose those extra five pounds, but only after your local news brought you a leading story about a possible terrorist attack on NYC.

Well, shit. I can't believe the source of our nation's ills was staring me in the face for so long. The ubiquitous American morning show! By the time the average American is putting on his tie, or finishing her orange juice, they've been bombarded with about 18 stories of terror meant to burrow into their mind on the drive to work. By the time they've sat down at their desk, they're so worked up their body is fighting to keep a panic attack at bay. Hence the huge amount of anti-anxiety drugs prescribed on a weekly basis.

Today's culture is trying to keep natural selection at bay. When I was a child, and I went swimming, I managed to avoid pool drain deaths. And that was without the help of The Today Show or my mom. I instinctively knew, hey, that's a pool drain, and i'm not going to stick my face in it until I die. Make no mistake, there were kids who died tragic deaths when I was young, and I'm guessing that The Today Show wouldn't have changed that. As kids, we knew, walking in front of cars going 100 mph was a bad idea, and drinking a bottle of iodine was an equally bad idea. Past that, who cares if i drank from the water hose? Or swam in a creek? If i didn't make it into adulthood, someone that was either luckier or smarter than me did, so the world was essentially working as planned.

What these shows have managed to do is make everyone so paranoid of everything, nobody can ever let down their guard. If The Today Show existed 100,000 years ago, caveman would be warned daily about "The Ten Things about Sabre-Tooth Tigers You Need To Know!" They'd walk around constantly afraid they'd get attacked by a mammoth, or step on a parasite that'd eat their organs, or die from a huge comet. Some fear to always keep them in a state of panic, raising stress and adrenaline levels.

Today, even when we go on vacation, we are worried about the water, the creatures in the beautiful ocean, undercooked food, robberies, traffic accidents .. Which is why there are five-star resorts in Sri Lanka - to make us feel safe, because outside the walls "reality" exists. And reality is dangerous. Vacations are all very stressful. We need to return ASAP so we can get back to the comfortable and protected bubble of our own home.

Jill doesn't know it yet, but morning shows are hereby banned from our house. Instead, we'll play a daily game of Russian Roulette before finishing our eggs and toast and heading off to work, where we will proceed to drink lots of bottle water and hang out next to pool drains with unnaturally strong pulls.

I've been receiving some recent complaints by my few readers that my blogs are too long. How many people told Leo Tolstoy was too verbose? Or James Joyce that he rambled? Or David Foster Wallace that he used way too many obscure words? But then, nobody reads those guys, do they? They read Entertainment Weekly and NY Post and other publications that break up the world into cliche, 3-sentence-long generalizations. In any event, as I have few readers, and they have spoken, I'll write my blogs like all the other shitty blog writers out there, so you can get back to your busy lives. Here is a short blog about this past weekend's trip to East Greenwich, Rhode Island that I really hope gives you a feel for the time I spent there:

Rhode Island was cool. The weather was nice. I had a lot of fun. The beach club was crazy! LOL! The food was so tasty! But I ate way too much! LOL! I'll definately go back. Coffee milk was interesting. Good, but also bad. Swimming is fun. My friends are all so great. Luv ya guys! TOOL! (Time of our lives. LOL!)

Hope this was short enough.

Due to the intense rainstorm at dawn, nearly all subways were shut down this morning. Other than the transit strike a year-and-a-half ago, i've never seen anything like it. At least with the transit strike, there was warning. Today, millions of us got up and had no way at all of getting to work. For me, that wasn't an issue, as getting to work in a timely fashion is never really on my top list of things to do. But for all the responsible, working-people-types, it was major chaos. Imagine if a whole suburb woke up one morning to find every single car in town was gone. Very similar. People literally wandering around the streets, dazed, briefcase in hand, unable to grasp how to react to a change in their routine. It was as if day had dawned and suddenly the sky was red, and trees had turned into large octupuses. It would evoke a similar reaction. My reaction? To prop up my feet, play some sharkrunners, and enjoy the morning. Then stumble into work to write this short blog.

Just wanted to recap my last weekend! HA! It was pretty sweet. Jill and I went to some dinners, and had some wine. You know Jill loves wine! HA! Just kidding, love ya babe! Then we went to a movie, that one with Matt Damon! It was totally cool, we really liked it, but we DIDN'T like the ticket prices! HA! LOL! But as always the weekend ends way to quickly : ( Hope all is well with you guys, but how can I doubt it! HA! You guys LOVE to party hard always! Just kidding, guys. You know I'm LYTTEOT * Lovin You Till The End Of Time .. HA!

Work is a bummer : (

Here's another short, but powerful, one for you:

Two days ago my neighbor called me at work to tell me Stephen was confused, bleeding, and trying to get into our apartment (our apartment is one below his). He smeared blood all over our door and the wall around our door. Who knows what the hell he left on the door handle. Probably the vagina juice of some fat hooker, smudged remnants of the black death, and a microscopic maggot farm. I wouldn't be surprised to find out he was actually the one responsible for leaving pigeon shit on my patio when I lived in San Francisco.

He was gone by the time I got home.

What would I have done anyway? Kicked the shit out of a 60-year-old drunk? I wouldn't have wanted to touch him (besides, how embarrassing would it be if he ended up kicking the shit out of me, and Jill had to jump in to save my feeble ass).

So, there's nothing I can do, nothing my landlord can do, nothing the county will do, and nothing life will do. So, until I move, I have to accept that when I come home at night diseased blood will be all over my door.

I'm not afraid to admit when the day comes when someone tells me he's died, I'll be relieved. For him as much as for anyone. It's the only way I'll keep blood off the door to my home until I move. But even more importantly, other than Fosters, its probably the only escape he has from the crushing prison of his misery.

The whole "I'm from California and New York has NO good Mexican food" thing gets a little fucking old. It is just like when I lived in California, and every New Yorker busted out the "I'm from New York and California has NO good pizza or bagels". Gross generalizations like this always tend to be untrue, and this one is no different (the only generalization i've found to be true over the past years is this: On any given day during the week, you can be sure Adrian won't be covered in his own filth and vomit, drunk off his ass). The other part I hate about it is the snobbery connected to it. Like somehow the fact that you are from California means anything at all, other than you've eaten both good and bad Mexican food in your lifetime. You aren't suddenly some food expert cause you grew up in Laguna Nigel, like 20 million other Americans.

California has tens of thousands of Mexican food joints. Some suck shit, some are amazing. Everyone knows I'm from San Diego (this isn't some badge of knowledge, cause San Diego sucks, it is just for reference). Is every burrito there good? No, not at all. Is every pizza there awful? No. Lee has described what goes into the perfect burrito, so I'll not do a recap. (One point he didn't bring up is the price. In San Diego, you'd pay $2.95 for a carne asada burrito. Here? I've been places, total shitholes, where burritos will run you $10).

As much as I have my favorite type of burrito, every place in California has a different style, which is why I was highly amused when Jill and I got dinner last night at a restaurant called "Original California Taqueria". What does that mean? What part of California? At what point in time? The original point? That's like saying "Original East Coast Soup" or "Traditional Midwestern Cafe". Even better, down below restaurant name, it read "LA Style". I still have no idea what that meant. Having been to LA a number of times, it is difficult for me to define a style that their 90,000 restaurants had in common.

So, all this rambling is just to spite your fuckers who claims my blogs are too long. To that I say: I'll get to the point so you can continue to masturbate over thoughts of work, tv and all the other important elements that fill your very interesting day (the funny thing about people who complain about my blog-length are people who never read my blog anyway, like Neal and Slaven, both of whom are the important people with important days described above. I do forgive Neal, however, has he does need a lot of time in the day to read fashion articles in GQ, leading to his gay-dominated wardrobe)

The surprise for me was that Original California Taqueria served a damn good burrito. To people from California quick to spit superiority claims, they could find things wrong. The burrito was too big, for one, meaning it couldn't be eaten with your hands. There weren't pinto beans, only black or refried. But enough. For $5.95, the chicken was shredded and seasoned perfectly, the tortilla was fresh and grilled, the salsa had the perfect kick of heat, the Pacifico Beer and lime that came with it was cheap as you could hope for. There's a good chance three years in New York has faded my tastes, and this place would be a dime a dozen in California, but for the twenty minutes I was enjoying that burrito last night, I might of well been in the Mission District in San Francisco. The only thing missing was a couple of guys ass-fucking in the table next to me, while eating slices of bland California-style pizza.

Ahhhh ... It feels fucking great to be needlessly long again with my blogs. Fantastico!

Last Monday, Jill I and returned home to find a quarter-sized poo-like substance on our bathroom rug. When we left for work that morning, neither of us can remember poo on our rug. Even though I am not much in the mornings, I'd like to think I'd notice:

a) If poo already existed on the bathroom rug OR
b) If I poo'd on the rug

Jill's first instinct was to blame Stephen, who she thought may have entered our bathroom during the day and smeared poo on the rug. Upon thinking it over even more, her instinct went towards me, due to the large number of poos I take on a given day (I poo more in one day than you probably poo in a week. Active digestion system. Out of my control). I took offense at her charges. I am a clean freak, and somewhat retentive when it comes to my anus, and thus there is simply no way in which I would accidentally place poo upon the rug. I mean, the only thing I could possibly imagine is have some trace amounts left over on my hands, but I wash my hands diligently after defecation. And besides, if I did have poo residue, it'd be on my hands, not my feet. I have never wiped my ass with my feet. The other surprising point is that the poo was a good distance away from the toilet, so it isn't like some spontaneously generated poo ball shot out of the toilet in a mad dash for freedom. It was just there.

My theory turned to an animal. Perhaps a very large roach could shit that much, or some bird that entered through the shaft-window in our bathroom. Regardless, after scrubbing it clean with Fantastik! cleaning spray, the poo ball left my rug, as well as my mind.

Last night, near sleep, Jill storms into the bedroom and demands to know how a very similarly-sized poo nugget made it upon her white bathroom towel. Investigation revealed her story was accurate. Somehow a poo ball made it upon her white towel.

While I had accepted that perhaps a random poo accident had happened in our bathroom on one occasion, there is NO WAY it occurred twice in one week. After pooing, I scrub my hands for thirty seconds. No way a poo ball that big remains. There has to be another explanation. The thing is, it looks like poo, and feels like poo, but doesn't smell like poo. I have now accepted the theory that either:

a) We are haunted by a ghost with a poo problem.
b) This isn't poo, but some other dirt element, most likely from the shower.

I like my first thought best. All these years, people thought ghosts said "Boo!" I think we've misunderstood all these years. The ghost said "Poo!". All they want is for us to build a chain of ghost toilets so they can empty their ghost anuses of poo balls. Either that, or my poos are alive, and fleeing the confines of my toilet trying to go out into the world, sadly only making it as far as Jill's white towels.