Join the National Guard!
-100% Tuition Assistance!
-$20,000 Student Loan Repayment!
-Up to $10,000 Enlistment Bonus!
-AND GET A FREE T-SHIRT AND DVD!!!
The Dunkin’ Donuts across the street from the store has notoriously bad service. They are frequently understaffed, and those who do show up to work are either crazy or incompetent. Witness “Gacy”, who earned his nickname because the crazy driving-a-scooter-into-work bastard frequently has quite violent arguments with himself and paces behind his cash register on the gas station side of the store like a caged jungle cat.
So it was to my great surprise when I saw him exit the store on my first day back from my two days off with a flower lai around his neck. I was like, “what’s crazy Gacy up to now?”
Apparently this weekend was “Customer Appreciation” weekend though. This is gigantic joke, since the service there is probably the worst you’ll ever find anywhere. That and they had a Hawaiian party theme going on (what does that have to do with customer appreciation?). I guess what happened was that their District Manager showed up for a visit, so they wanted to show that they weren’t the tremendous fuck-ups all of Manchester knows them to be.
The best part about this though was that they had one of the staff dressed up in a giant coffee cup outfit with a grass skirt on, waving at people driving down 7A. This is all happening not 20-30 yards away from the store. I had to look away from the window, because every time I looked out I started giggling uncontrollably. What really got me was when people stopped to talk to it. Oh man, I lost it.
When I was little people used to think I was retarded because I spoke slowly. Life not without its irony, it’s only when I speak quickly that I sound retarded.
Do I look like a Kyle to you? Because I was walking through Williamstown last night after a movie and a car full of girls drove by. One of them stuck her whole body out the window and shouted “Hey Kyle.” Just assuming that someone was walking right behind me I kept walking. I could tell she was looking right at me though, and again she shouted “hey Kyle,” a little upset this time. I didn’t know what to do at that point. I’m not Kyle. Do I wave though? What if I wave and then she realizes I’m not Kyle. Then I look silly.
As the car rounded the corner (even though all the girls in the car seemed to know Kyle, the car did not slow down at all, in fact might have even sped up) the same girl shouted, “I’ll call you later, Kyle!”
Boy, that Kyle is going to get a weird phone call.
Yeah, I know I said that I’d fill you in on my birthday details yesterday. Yeah, so I lied. I was out all day. So shoot me. I’ll get to it. If anything the suspense is making me more interesting than anything that’s actually happened to me.
Now that was a birthday that was better than the last couple lonely, depressing ones I’ve had. It began with my acquiring of a brand new cell phone and ended with my being pulled over by a Vermont State Trooper. It’s too late for details now, but I have tomorrow off so I promise I’ll share.
My new number is (518) 396-9599, by the way. Give me a call. There’s got to be some good reason I got it, right?
OK, here is my gift from me to you for today, my pretties. If you can get the chance, go and see this amazing movie out now called Me and You and Everyone We Know, directed by Miranda July. You’ll all thank me later. Trust me.
I can’t believe how long I’ve kept up this thing. I haven’t kept with anything this long. There must be something about this. There is something my brain isn’t telling me. I know it.
Tomorrow I become another year older. I guess at 24 you are not quite “old” yet. You’re still younger twenties. It’s crazy that I didn’t have a driver’s license until I was 22. I won’t even tell you when I first had sex. I used to be so scared of driving. I didn’t want to drive. Why do I need to drive? Now love driving. Especially at night on country roads when no one else is out. I love my car. That Mazda3 is so sexy. The thing drives like a dream.
OK, yesterday I got three books: 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, Roger Ebert’s The Great Movies and Once Upon a Time in Italy: The Westerns of Sergio Leone. That’s right folks, the madness is only beginning. 1,001 especially is the coolest book ever. I’ll never not know what to watch again!
The 40 Year Old Virgin is fantastic. See it. NOW.
Just one more day of work until two days off. WOOO
My mom asked me earlier tonight what I wanted for my birthday. I was seriously at a loss for words. “Money” was the answer I came up with. I mean, when you buy everything you want anyway, what’s the point in spending even MORE money? Why not just help me pay my credit card bill. Buy me snow tires. Now there is a present.
Hey Bard friends: Did you get the new Bardian yet? Like me, did you flip open to the pages on Blithewood and count the number of places you had gotten wasted there? What, that was just me? Oh damn. Seriously though, Blithewood’s the shit.
So excellent, excellent news in Bose Land. Finally we have a new hire. Finally, a light at the end of the tunnel. And I really like him too. He graduated from Marist a little before I did Bard. Super nice guy. Intellegent, well mannered. Well mannered. What the fuck is that? I sound 80 years old. Anyway, he seems very much like my kind of people. Hopefully I’ve got a new friend at work. I’m especially glad he decided to work with us after our other prospective candidate Tami turned us down.
He’s looking for work while his wife goes to Bennington College to get her Masters in teaching. I met (fuck, I’m totally blanking on her name now, even though I KNOW I know it. Fuck! I hate my brain sometimes) her today and we talked as John filled out the gigantic mountain of paperwork a new hire has to go through. I also liked her immediately. Very cute, smart, nice. Another good sign was that she knew immediately that I had gone to Bard. I had mentioned it to John when he came in the first time, but she’d never met or talked to me before and yet brought it up within the first minute of meeting me with no prompting from anyone. That impressed me.
And here is what my crazy brain has been plotting ever since I first met John. I’m sick, I know. Here is the plan: First, become good friends with John. This isn’t really a problem, since I already like him and everyone at Bose instantly becomes good friends anyway. Part B comes a little later. Using my new connections I get him to get his wife to hook me up with her new single college friends. Finally Ben meets women his own age. Finally I can stop being pathetic talking crap in every stupid post I write.
Goddamnit I wish I could remember her name. This is really pissing me off. I made a point of memorizing it, and did know it after she left. My brain has never met a name it didn’t want to instantly forget, unfortunately.
This of course makes my whole plot thing sound that much more creepy, doesn’t it? Yeah, that’s me: CREEPY.
OK, so I finally get two days off this week. You’d think I’d be happy. But I’m not. You know why? Because I’m still working 42.5 hours this week. Two weeks ago when Jeremy had two days off he worked 40 hours. Last week John worked 40 hours. Me, I’m still working overtime, even though it’s the week of my birthday. Ugh.
My sister leaves for college today. The last three days I’ve been trying to see 40 Year Old Virgin with her, but she’s failed me every night. I should have just gone on my own, because now that I’m working overtime every day I don’t really have a lot of time to get home, eat, and then get back out on the road to go to the movies again.
One of my friends recently posted on a topic that I had been meaning to write about for a while now, but have just been too lazy to actually do. That topic: How personal should one’s blog really be?
As anyone who reads my blog can probably tell, I don’t hold much back. (Which makes my narcissistic, self-absorbed ass wonder if I didn’t at least partially inspire Sara’s post.) I don’t necessarily believe that everyone should unload all of their dirty laundry out on the very public internet, but it sure does make for a much more interesting read.
I kind of have my own philosophy when it comes to how I post. A blog, I suppose is a diary, yes, but a diary just anyone can read. I really don’t understand blocked posts. I mean, if you don’t want anyone to read it put that thought or feeling in a real diary. Posting a private thought to the internet is a little counter productive, don’t you think?
I almost see my blog as a long, long, very long novel. Sometimes it’s very interesting. Sometimes it’s kinda boring. But I think what makes it interesting is that you never know when those interesting bits might come. It’s just like life, which I guess makes sense, because it IS your life. Today I’m interested in how many different breakfast cereals I’ve eaten in my life. Tomorrow I have a life changing event to talk about.
Right now there seems to be a real interest in reality (however real or fake it may be) in this country. Reality TV is everywhere and extremely popular. In increasing numbers people are actually going to the movies to see documentaries instead of summer blockbusters. People are more interested in the runaway bride than in how many men died in Iraq.
Why is this? I think we’re all tired of the Hollywood cliché. We want to be surprised. We want to be shocked. But most of all we want the unexpected to happen, because the anticipation of the unexpected makes it all so much more exciting when it actually happens.
Let me give you an example. One of the greatest things I’ve ever experience (I’m actually not joking) was watching a man drive out of the Dunkin Donuts parking lot with a coffee on the roof of his car. He didn’t realize he didn’t have his coffee. Jeremy and I watching expected to see it just slide off the roof and explode. That is until we noticed that his sunroof was open. Then things became more interesting.
What happened next was truly astounding. Not only did the coffee fall into the car, but it flipped as it fell one complete rotation. And then he caught it. With one hand! While he was driving! He didn’t miss a beat even though he seemed just as surprised, if not more so, than we were.
I like reading a journal where the equivalent of someone catching a coffee while driving away can happen. Why? Because it’s real. You can’t fake real life. It just isn’t as interesting.
C’est Non Un Blog is a blog about me. Warts and all. The mundane and the interesting all rolled up into a big ball. There are a few ground rules. As much as this may surprise some people, I do try to avoid posting anything that may hurt someone else. I may like to hang my life out there for everyone to see, but not everyone is like that. There are exceptions. If you do something that has a major impact on my life and don’t talk to me about it, well, I’m going to post it. What else can I do? It’s my life. I want to share it. I do things I’m not proud of all the time and have to live those actions down. Why should anyone else be different?
That last paragraph makes it sound like my life is usually interesting, which unfortunately is a gag. It’s usually anything but. I like to see a sense of purpose out there though. You never know what you’ll find. It is good to post as much as you can, exciting or not, because then your readers (because let’s be honest, who else are you doing this for?) can take your life’s journey with you and be just as surprised when something great happens.
Likewise I welcome back feedback. One of the great things about having your life in a public forum is that others have the opportunity to change a direction in your life. Something big or small can make a tremendous impact. I see myself as very zen, bending to whatever new influence comes. Maybe that’s why I’m not worried about something personal I may post here. Because the me of today isn’t the me of yesterday or the me of tomorrow, so I’m not really that worried about mistakes I have made. Better to learn from them than sweep them away.
And hell, people do read this, so I must be doing something right.
C'est Non Un Blog 