Tips for a Less Shitty New Year's Eve

New Year’s Eve.  Amateur night.  A night that results in more insanity, arrests, and unintentional babies than probably any other night of the year.  Every New Year’s Eve is pretty much the same.  It’s cold, you’re drunk, and at midnight, you are desperately looking towards the closest member of the opposite sex to plant a hurried, uncomfortable, and toothy kiss on to ring in the next batch of calendar sales.  Everyone thinks that their problems will magically get whisked away once January shows up, so the celebration of the end of anxiety is notoriously over the top.  Every time.  Of course, rational people know that their worries are simply buried under an avalanche of bean dip, carrot sticks, and alcohol. So we party the night away at house parties and dance clubs, finding some other similarly wasted person to belt out a boozy rendition of “Hollaback Girl” in the middle of the street. For one night, we forget our pain and suffering and get shitfaced amongst those who also want to get shitfaced. We take this opportunity to deal with the pricks that don’t go to our home bars but for once or twice a year and sneer at them with our townie friends. But it is all supposed to be fun.  Everywhere is crowded and everywhere is a pain in the ass. We like it though, because there will be stories and pictures and people singing pop songs after drinking away the ability to properly use words.

What I am proposing is a way to make your New Year’s Eve and following hangover not suck.  Certain precautions need to take place before going into the Eve, especially in regards to the following day’s likely mess of a life you are going to wake up to.  Everyone has a different plan.  Everyone has a different outcome.  What follows is a simple guideline to ensure that your life isn’t completely fucked on New Year’s Day.

1) Designate a Driver: Don’t be a moron.  If you need to drive somewhere and still get home that night, don’t drive yourself.  You know how much you are going to drink (a shit load) so you know that you should employ someone to not drink and cart your slurring ass around all night.  When I say employ, I mean you pay them for dealing with your drunken bullshit for several hours.  New Year’s Eve holds always has the highest number of DUI’s of any night of the year.  You don’t want to be one of the idiots that rings in the New Year in jail, do you? No. No you don’t.  So instead of driving around and getting arrested and having your father bail your crying face out of jail, get someone to drive you around. Most people know a person that doesn’t drink for whatever reason, so they would probably be the way to go.  Get a DD or get a DUI.  Your choice.

2) Find a House Party: Can’t get one of your asswipe alcoholic friends to drive you around? Fine, there is an alternative. HOUSE PARTY! Like those incredible Kid N Play movies from the early 90’s, house parties are always fun. At someone else’s house, you can drink your face off, be an obnoxious dickhole for a few hours, and pass the fuck out on their bathroom floor. If the party is good enough, you can even break shit without repercussion. All you have to do is bring the booze you plan on drinking and maybe something for the host. House parties are the way to go, really. If you can weasel your way into one, you are set for the night.  Extra bonus if the party is close enough to your house that you can stagger home when you are good and wasted. Better yet, go to one that is so far out of town that you have no choice but to stay there. Go to another state if you can, that way, you aren’t going anywhere.  Of course, you might have to help clean up in the morning, but you got to take the good with the bad, I suppose.  

3) Eat Something: You are going to be drunk. No doubt about that. So you might as well prepare for the worst. On the 30th and 31st, make sure you eat 3 square meals a day. By doing this you will have food in your stomach, thereby giving your body a chance to slow down the absorption of alcohol into your bloodstream. Of course, when you drink so much you vomit all of that food up, it won’t matter much, but you will be able to maintain for longer before getting too plastered for your own good.  Food is your friend, but you have to be able to determine what foods you should be eating. I’m here to help.  Stay away from fast food, as there is no nutritional content.  You want to have something like pasta and dippy hors d'oeuvres.. Heavy starchy food will sit like a brick in your stomach, eliminating the desire to cover it with the flood of beer and whatever else the night brings with it, at least for a while.  As your body digests the food, enough time will go by where you aren’t really going nuts yet.  So when everyone else is staggering around, you are still standing, like a boss.

4) Stick to One Drink: This is essentially impossible, but worth a shot.  If you are drinking beer, stick to beer.  If you are drinking whiskey, stick to whiskey.  Of course, this gets more and more challenging as the night goes along and you naturally want to change up to something else.  Don’t, if you can help it.  Now I know that you are going to be given a glass of the finest champagne for a midnight toast, thus the improbability of sticking to one drink for the night (unless you are Kanye West and can afford to drink the finest champagne for an entire night, and in that case, fuck you). Mixing different types of beverages will cause the body to react differently.  Really, sticking to one will do nothing more than lessen the misery of the following day. For most people, switching to a different kind of booze halfway through the night is the kiss of death.  For me, the choice is high quality beer.  You can feel like a fancy pants person by consuming an elitist beverage (“craft brewed ale” does sound pretentious after all) and not getting stupid wasted too early in the evening. The finest champagne blows this up, but it doesn’t have to.  

5) Water!: Every few drinks take a break with a glass of water.  This will help with the hangover the next day.  Seriously.  Most of what a hangover consists of is dehydration.  You see, alcohol saps your system of fluids (notice how you piss more when you drink? yeah, those are fluids, stupid) so the next day, after you have finished drinking, your body is parched.  Drinking water now and then throughout the night will make it so you won’t be so dehydrated in the morning. Unlike sticking to a single drink, this one is easy. If your asshole friends give you shit for the water, call them the next day and scream into the phone about how much more brutal their hangover is than yours.  

6) Don’t Be A Dick: This is pretty easy.  New Year’s Eve is a time for celebration, so don’t be a dick about it.  Hope springs eternal on this night, and your dickish attitude is doing nothing but bringing those around you down. I don’t give a shit if you are sober, or the DD or whatever, have a good time.  If you are going to be that antisocial dipshit peasant that you usually are, then stay the fuck home. Nobody wants to deal with Debbie Downer while celebrating the New Year, so take your shitty face and leave the party. Obnoxious dicks are just as bad.  Being too excited at midnight is equally as annoying as being the downer at midnight. I have fallen into that category a few times. Obnoxious dicks are more difficult to deal with because they, like the fruit fly, have very little concept of what is going on around them, so they bounce about their little world looking for something to land on. So keep calm and have fun, just don’t be a dick. Most of us are going to strutting our awesomeness around like a drunk peacock so don’t bring your dickishness around to ruin our good time.

7) Sleep: Congratulations, you made it home without making an embarrassing pit stop in jail. Now get some sleep. But before you do, take some aspirin.  You are going to be hungover the next morning, so try to lessen the effects of this by taking a preemptive strike against your headache.  Taking a few Aleve (or whatever, that’s what I use because that’s what I have) before going to bed will not only lessen the hangover, but it will get some water in your system and that will help (remember step 5?) The best thing you can do for yourself is having the ability to sleep it off.  Of course, sometimes you have a shitty job that makes you come in at 9AM and you are still young where you don’t understand moderation.  It’s New Year’s Eve, moderation isn’t in anyone’s game plan, so if you have a job where you have to be up in the morning, you are essentially fucked.  This happened to me...twice...in a row. I was working a retail job, and luckily on New Year’s Day, most people are sitting around watching football on the couch and not buying stuff, so it wasn’t a trying day emotionally, but it certainly did suck physically. So to make sure this doesn’t happen to you, take New Year’s Day off, just in case your asshole manager schedules you for that day. And if you can’t get it off, you are pretty much fucked unless you stay home, which you won’t do because you like fun.

So there it is.  Seven easy tips to make your holiday not suck.  Really what it comes down to is you need to prepare for the worst and then try to not let it get that far.  Everyone has fun on New Year’s Eve unless you are sick or an asshole (or both).  So be safe out there, people.  Have a good time.  Sing, dance, drink, and be merry with the people that you want to be around the most.  If you are in the position to choose what you want to do over the holiday, choose in a way that will limit the damage you can accrue.  The goal is fun without getting arrested.  And who knows, if you follow this list, you might get lucky, it is a night of craziness, after all. 

Pie

This is the time of year where everyone's stress is amplified. People stress about everything all year, but with the added bonus stress of buying something for someone you care about and having it not be terrible people can be a bit on edge. "I'm not done shopping, and there is only 3 days left!" "I'm running out of money and I need gas to get to places!" Or, in my case "BOTH!" are common refrains around this time.

In my family, Christmas Eve is a big deal. Everyone brings a dish and we eat and drink until someone explodes and we then schedule the funeral for New Year's Eve. It's a tradition.

I was assigned to bring an antipasto (look it up, you uncultured fools). Antipasto is a shockingly expensive thing to have to make if you don't already have 90% of the ingredients on hand. I have 0% of those. Well, that was until I went to Stop & Shop and dropped close to $90 on marinated bite sized vegetables, cured meat sticks, and fancy cheeses with 0 items specifically for myself.

My financial depression was going along splendidly and my general agitation was only at a simmer.

Then the check out girl had to open her fucking mouth.

The lane was empty, the light was on. The conveyor belt was moving, and the express only sign was down. This should have been easy. A Christmas miracle. But that's not my luck, is it. Nothing goes easily for me. It's never smooth sailing. It can't just be a transaction in a grocery store, can it.

Girl: "Hi! Do you have your Stop & Shop Card?"
Me: "No, sorry."
Girl: "No problem!"

She started scanning my stuff, and I watched the total go up and up. 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 97. The numbers were breaking my heart.

Girl: "You got a lot of cheese!"
Me: "Yea, I'm making something. Is it cool to swipe my card?"
Girl: "Sure! I like cheese."
Me: "Ok." At this point I was putting my stuff into as few bags as possible so I stopped caring about her idiotic conversation.
Girl: "I like cheese on pie! Ever had cheese on pie?!"
Me (suddenly appalled and paying attention): "What? Good God no. What?"
Girl: "Yea, it's old school! Like from the old times. You melt cheese on a piece of apple pie!"
Me: "What? No. That's...what? No!"
Girl: "You haven't had that? SO GOOD!"

Now, let me remind you that I have just spent nearly $100 on marinated stuff, including capers, artichoke hearts, and other things this poor soul can't pronounce. She's never seen half of the things I bagged, let alone even thought about what a caper is (other than a goofy heist from a cartoon).

Girl: "You have to use the good cheese, though. Not the plastic wrapped single cheeses."

This is a good sign. She isn't melting Kraft Singles on her pie, so that's not the worst thing, I guess. Still, what kind of trash puts cheese on pie? There is so much going on in my head at this moment. All the questions. Some of them revolving around her parents and their abilities to raise children. Some of them about cheese, specifically it's strange relationship with pie. What kind of pie? What the fuck?

Girl: "You know, the good cheese. Like from The Cracker Barrel!"
Me: "Excuse me?"

CRACKER BARREL?!?!?!?! Are you fucking serious? Nope. Done. At this point, myself and every 14 year old girl in the world are the same. We can't even.

This poor child has no idea. She needs to read a book or something. Or maybe just eat some cheese that doesn't come FROM THE FUCKING CRACKER BARREL!

Goddammit!

SD

I had a Dream

Listen. I know that nobody cares about what happens in anyone's dreams other than their own. Dreams are personal, esoteric, and nonsense. But I had one the other night that was so spectacularly strange that I had to share it. I hadn't been drinking, and I don't do drugs. All of this came right from whatever part of my brain makes up these things, and I have no excuse for it.

What you are about to read is 100% true, or as true as a dream can be because, you know, it's a fucking dream and they are about as logical as cartoon physics.

So read on at your own peril (it's pretty good, though, so I would read on if I were you).

Here it goes:

I was at work, in my little world, when some news came down. Apparently, a pack of bears was creating a swath of destruction coming from the north, heading into Southeastern Connecticut. The bears path was predicted to hit a coworkers house directly. We looked online, at the bear menace tracking page, to see the route these bears were taking, and sure enough, his family were right in the way. The pattern looked like a hurricane prediction graphic on the Weather Channel, but these were bears, so it was naturally thinner. He then got a phone call.

I couldn't hear the other end, but he was trying to reassure his wife that she and their three children would be okay, and he would do everything in his power to keep them safe, even though he couldn't actually leave work to go save them. He's clearly got his priorities correct.

"What can I do?"
"I don't know, man, try Amazon, they have everything. They must have bear repellent," I said.
"Good idea," he said to me.

He then goes to Amazon.com and places an order.

"I'm getting a sex doll and a Terminator."
"Why?"

Apparently, the common cure for bear attacks is to get a sex doll and a Terminator and mate them. The resulting Sex Terminator will then be deployed to seduce the bears away from the house in jeopardy and leave the tenants in safety. So he went on Amazon.com and got his sex doll and Terminator.

Seconds later, a drone arrived with two large boxes. One contained a sex doll, and the other, of course, a Terminator. He then put them in a closet to do their business.






Then I woke up. I know, I know. Shitty place to wake up, but isn't that the way dreams go. I went to bed that night at 10:30ish. I woke up from this masterpiece of mental agility at 12:42. I know this because I looked at my clock hoping it was my alarm, set for 5:40, that broke me free of the crazy. Alas, it was not, but I did spend the next 3 hours trying to figure out what in the good fuck just happened in my head.

I didn't get a lot of sleep that night, but the sleep I did get has been with me for days.

SD

Today, a War has been Waged

In the fading light of day, during a fresh and warm Autumn, a transgression beyond reproach has been committed. A noble chariot, created by Japanese and American artisans, and ridden by a modest worker, was accused by the Parking Ambassador of an illicit parking placement. The Ambassador was mistaken, however, he still placed the notice of incredulous merit upon the windshield of the worker's chariot with disregard to logic, rules, and basic decency.

The worker, upon receipt of the notice, was infuriated. He saw the fine. $25 for a sin that was never committed. A small sum of money, but the modest worker was a man of modest means, and that $25 was normally reserved for trips to the local tavern for imbibing fine ales with friends, or towards the procurement of fine fare to consume with a member of the opposite sex he fancies. No longer with those funds be used for the small pleasures of life. Instead, they will go to the fine levied upon him, imposed by a self righteous Ambassador of Parking with no regard for the rightness of a parking job.

With fire in his eyes, profanity at his lips, and a steering wheel in his hands gripped so tightly his veins near burst with the pulsing rage of scorn, he scanned the violation notice. Teeth clenched, he looked for an out. Something to free him from this poisonous act.

ALAS! On the reverse side of the ticket were instructions for fighting the fine! Apart from feigning rage and simply putting up the $25 within a fortnight of the violation, he would stand by his feeling of slight by marching to city hall, to the Office of the Treasurer, and formally contest the summons. Within 48 hours, of course. He must then fill out some forms, put in a formal complaint, and wait for a hearing.

So within two days, the worker will go to the Castle of Treasury, and he will file the complaint. And in his head, he will be waging a war. As he goes there, he wants the skies to turn black with hate and violence. He wants the citizens to quake with his every step, knowing their lives are but a favor he allows them. He wants women to beg for mercy on the lives of their men, and children to peek out from behind their mothers with terrified curiosity.

This is what he wants. He will fight, the violation, and the Parking Ambassador will see the error of his ways. The injustice of this day will not be unnoticed, and the worker will have his revenge. The worker is a kind and honest man, and he will remind the evil Parking Ambassador that moving a chariot from one area to another, a quarter mile away, counts as not parking in the same spot for more than 2 hours. The Parking Ambassador will rue the day. RUE THE DAY he came against a noble working man.

Until next time, dear reader,
SD

I walked a Quarter of a Mile.

Well, tonight ended with some of that good shit this town is famous for. As I walked home from the bar, seeking a bag of snack from the shady convenience store, safely and soundly I might add (mom), I cam across several small outbursts that were noteworthy.

(Before this starts, I must disclaim that I was not ever a part of the beginnings of these chats, just a witness. Also, small groups of people congregate at very random places along the street. It's weird.)

These are the gems:

First group-
Biker 1: Yeah, man I do cocaine.
Biker 2: Yeah, but enough to do that?
Biker 1: Fuck you, man! I don't bleed THAT much!

Holy shit! How much cocaine are these guys doing? How much blood is happening when these two are cocaining? Is that what they call it? Cocaining? I've never partook.

Second group (about 40 feet from the first)-
Urban Youth: What? Nah, bitch! I'm grown as FUCK!
Urban Woman: You ain't grown enough to wipe yo' own ass
Urban Youth: I'm so grown I came out yo momma!
Second Urban Woman: You stupid!
Urban Youth: You weak!
Urban Woman: I'm so much more grown than you, I'ma get in this car and tit feed my baby.

This was the fastest call and response I have ever heard. Listen to "Tramp" by Otis Redding with Carla Thomas. That back and forth was a 2nd Grade class play compared to this.

Third Group (about 100 yards away from the Murder Mart)
White Dude: I mean, sure, I'd fuck her, but those nig bitches are RIGHT!
2nd White Dude: Yea, bro. No color, no flavor.
Me: Jesus Christ.

I sped up. I can't even with this.

Fourth FUCKING GROUP! (Outside the store)

At this point in my life, all I want is some goddamned Wheat Thins and a Gatorade (pronounced Ga-TOUR-a-day because I'm a fancy man) and this night couldn't end fast enough. There were about 15 people congregated around the door. The conversation was spewing this way and that, from hither to yon, encompassing so many words and topics my mind and ears are both trying to understand.

For the record, I had on an old UCONN Athletics hoodie. A standard sweatshirt with a hood, frontal pocket, and drawstrings to cinch the hood tightly in the case of something dumb happening. It has the old logo on it, with the smiling Samoyed, not the aggressive dick Husky jerk that they UCONN sports now.

Me (wading through the youths): Excuse me...pardon...I just...'Scuse me...COME ON!
Random Girl (to me): Hello, I like your sweater!
Random Dude: Bitch! That's a hoodie. This ain't Christmas, and that ain't. No. Fuckin' SWEATER!

As I was birthed into the shitty snack shop all I could think about was the origin of that conversation. Finally, I was at my destination, the Murder Mart. The Stab & Go. The worst shop in America. This place is so crappy I'm shocked they are still around. They've been shut down by police so many times they use chalk outlines to separate isles when they remodel. I grab my snacks. I'm stunned at this point. I've heard so much, seen so many things. I just want to pay for my sports drink and crackers. HOW FUCKING HARD CAN THIS BE?

Well.....

Three Hispanic men were speaking in Spanish ( I think, I took 7 years of French (thanks for that idea, mom)). They were drunk. They were trying to figure out how to buy 8 dollars worth of Hostess Cupcakes. These men are better at junk food than me. They are also better at fooling a cashier. One of them was trying on convenience store hats. Yea, this place sells hats.

Man1: How much is hat?
Cashier: 8 dollar!
Man2: How much we got here?
Cashier: 7 dollar!
Man1: I waaaaaaaaaant this. Take money!
Cashier: ONLY 3 DOLLAR!
Man1: Give it back.
Man3 then grabbed the hat off the head of the second dude. Only to have it snatched back and reapplied by Man2: YO! FUCK!

Then they left! They left three bucks for $16 worth of goods! HOW!?! How does this happen? What the hell? I spent $6 on snacks and sports drink. Fuck this.

I then waded through the crowd that liked my hoodie and scampered home. Because I had seen and heard too much. My poor brains.

It's been an hour. I still can't handle it.

SD

Parking Lot Madness

I will never understand some people. I understand most of the things people do, in general. Hell, I have done some inexplicable things in my day, so I think I can wrap my head around even the most asinine actions of the random citizen.

There are some things, however, that just baffle me.

Today, as I was pulling into my parking lot, an office supply delivery truck pulled in ahead of me. Not a big deal, guy has a job to do, who am I to get in his way. As I was turning in, I noticed some people loitering in the middle of the lot. One had a baby stroller with no baby in it.

Why no baby? Because that's where the 30 pack of Keystone Light was resting, of course. The child that once was occupying the stroller was uncomfortably being held by an uncomfortably dirty man who's shorts were uncomfortably out of season.

Anyway, this group was just standing there, in the middle of the lot, smoking and swearing, being the type of general parking lot denizens who don't actually own cars but lean against them anyway. I did not like the look of these people.

As the delivery truck pulled up to them, it came to a stop. I pulled in behind it and stopped, thereby shielding myself from whatever was happening with the vagrants in the lot. The truck did not pull forward in a timely manner. No one got out of its way. This is a box truck with a bunch of stuff in it waiting to be delivered to someone. Someone who needs copy paper. Someone in desperate need of some toner. And these assholes just stood there.

Then came the honk from the horn of the truck. As it should have. Then I hear some random yelling sounds and the bad beer stroller nosing its way to the side away from the truck. Slowly. The people were giving the delivery driver a ration of shit for trying to do his job! The driver pulled forward, I followed, and we both parked. He went about his job and I went into my building. All the while I could hear the street folk yelling at the driver.

What could they ever have to yell about? Are they jealous that he has a job and they don't? Did they not want to upset their resting swill baby, who was quietly at home in a stroller?

I don't get it. I don't understand why you wouldn't get out of the way of a delivery truck. I don't care how many of you there are, your little pack of filth will get run over by a truck. Your crappy beers will be smashed and given to the Sewer Gods. Your actual child will be harmed. YOU ARE STANDING IN THE WAY OF A GODDAMNED TRUCK!

Don't give it any shit, just get out of the way and continue trying to figure out where to get cheap drugs on the side of the lot like a normal human disappointment. Some people just can't be bothered. I guess that's what makes the same species seem like they have evolved on different planes. I think about not dying at the hands of a truck filled with pens. Others don't seem to care.

I'd like to think I'm just better at being a person than some people. I'd also liketo live in a world where I don't have to think that.

SD

More Than One Item can Go in a Bag.

I had to stop at Walgreen's on my way home from work so I could get some shampoo, which I was previously out of. Picking out the proper bottle wasn't a big deal, and neither was grabbing that frozen burrito. The burrito was purchased with the thought that I might be getting drunk later and when that happens, I tend to enjoy a late night snack.

So I take my burrito and shampoo up to the counter and the lady begins to ring me out. She scans the shampoo and puts it in a bag. She scans the burrito and puts it in a separate bag. 2 things, 2 bags. "One bag is fine," I said to her.

"But you have shampoo," she responded.
"So?"
"It might leak."
"I don't think so, one bag should be fine," I said as I placed the burrito in the shampoo bag.
"Well," she sighed deeply, "Okay."

What the fuck did she think was going to happen? The lids on shampoo bottles are sealed well at this point in history, and it would take a pretty serious burrito to put enough pressure on it to cause the contents of said bottle to blast out of the top. This is not a serious burrito.

It's not like I bought shampoo and a selection of loose knives. A frozen burrito isn't pointy enough to puncture the hull of a shampoo bottle. I'm not putting the shampoo into a bag with my machete and driving through the jungle. The shampoo was in literally no danger of being compromised during the 90 second drive from Walgreen's to my apartment.

Even if something would to happen to the bottle and it exploded, leaked, or was otherwise compromised, the burrito was in a sealed package of its own. A sealed package of plastic that I could cleanse of the rogue shampoo would something catastrophic happen to the bottle.

Why two bags? What is the purpose of this? Nobody respects grocery bag efficiency. At Stop & Shop, you can put more than just a loaf of bread in a bag, right? This is bullshit.

Although I do respect the potential for danger held in the hands of a late night burrito, I think people are too dumb to bag things in stores. Shampoo and a frozen burrito are not ideologically opposed to each other, as they are not sentient and have NO IDEOLOGY WHATSOEVER! There is no conflict here. I don't think there will be some sort of race war between hair care products and microwavable snacks any time soon, and especially not in the bag I brought home this afternoon.

I didn't need this crap today. I really didn't.

SD

I Hate My Favorite Football Team.

Every week, from the beginning of September through the beginning of January, I live and die with my favorite football team. Everything they do takes a toll on my mind, body, and soul. When they succeed, I am in a fog of elation that could have me smiling at a wake. When they lose, I am in a well of despair that makes a wake look like petting zoo.

I am obsessive. I read blogs about them. I look at more statistics than anyone rightfully should. I pour over each moment of gameplay with the intensity of someone who ACTUALLY works for the team, rather than someone who dreams of scrounging their way into working for the team. I yell and scream at my television as if the players, coaches, and front office staff can hear me, even though they might be thousands of mile away. I plead with them to stop being terrible, and I celebrate with them when they, for a brief moment stop being terrible.

I stay up late to watch them in primetime, even though I know that I have to be up absurdly early for work in the morning. I don't care. That's what being a fan means. It's being so passionate about something that you have literally no vested interest that people think you might be crazy and not caring about their negativity. Being a sports fan is illogical. It's an attribute that has no basis in reason, but it's something shared by tens of millions across the globe. Not just football, mind you, but all sports. The sports industry brings in money by the tanker. Sports is the one thing that will always turn a profit, because no matter how bad an economy might be, people will scrimp and save in order to spend money on their favorite sports team.

Being a sports fan means feeling so strongly about something intangible that you stop what you are doing to pay fast attention to it. At the end of the day, all sports is, for most people, is a hobby. It's something that you attach yourself to for entertainment in your down time. It's something that you can talk about with coworkers that is interesting but not work. It's something that you can try to relax with, but can't because you are so intensely interested that you obsess over the minutiae.

Sports invites envy. Those young people are doing things that you injure yourself thinking about. They have gotten to a point where what they are doing is impossibly hard, but they make it look childishly easy. Sure, I can throw a football, swing a baseball bat, kick a soccer ball, dribble a basketball. I can ice skate a little, and when I had healthy knees, I could run a bit. It seems so easy to watch these professionals do it that you think you can do it yourself. And when they mess up, you don't understand how. "I CAN MAKE THAT THROW, YOU MORON!" "HOW DID YOU DROP THAT, ASSHOLE? YOU ARE A JOKE AND A SCRUB!"

I always think that, if I had made some different decisions, I could have been an elite athlete. This is wrong on every level. If I had made some different decisions, I could have known an elite athlete, and that's about it. So when the players on my favorite football team fuck up, which they do frequently, because the team isn't that good, I think, for some stupid reason, that I could have succeeded. I wouldn't stand a chance. But I don't care. I have to watch them. I have to see if they redeem themselves.

Sports is a battle. Watching sports is akin to the people who would go watch the battles in old school wars from a safe place atop a hill. I sit on that hill every week and watch my favorite battalion of uniformed gladiators go to war with the favorite battalion of another man. I root for my side to be victorious. When they do, they gain something, and by proxy I do as well. I am obsessed with this feeling. I can't get enough of it.

I can't stop it either. Football fandom is my heroin. I know that it's unhealthy to be this way, but I can't stop it. I am a junkie and I know it. I don't care. I know that what I do on Sundays isn't the most productive thing to do on a day off, and I know that I sit on a couch and stare at a television for 10 straight hours, which has to do a number on my eyes. I don't care.

My hatred for my football team stems from the fact that I have loved them. I have been loyal to them for 34 years, and every week from September to January, they have been there for me. They have taken me away from my life, given me an outlet from the things that get me down. I can focus on them, devote myself to them, and immerse myself in the game. They don't know me, and I am only one of millions of fans worldwide. I don't care.

They cause me stress. They make me scream until I am hoarse. They make me eat my feelings, and drink away my other feelings. They make me say things I don't believe. They turn me into a maniac. And I still don't care. They are my drug. They make me hate myself for giving this much of a damn about something out of my control. They make me superstitious. They make me irrational. They make me forget all the things that I know to be true and I turn into a raving lunatic of conspiratorial nonsense and raving madness.

And I don't care.

I hate the New York Giants. But I love them so so so much. And I don't care.

SD

Donuts!

While waiting in the lobby of the 6th floor in one of the towers I was assigned to today, something magical happened. A man showed up, out of the ether, with a very large clear plastic storage box.

Full of donuts.

A little history about me, before I proceed. I am a slave to donuts. They are my biggest food related weakness. I got fat because of donuts. And pizza. And beer. And a slothful lifestyle. And probably several other things, but donuts are really high on the list of fattening agents I indulged in without mercy or trepidation. I love donuts. If you want to convince me to do something terrible, a box of donuts is a really strong way to open that door.

So when this crate of donuts, full to the brim of delicious and serendipitous joy, entered my life, the pain went away. The pain and frustration of the Giants fucking up an easy win and causing me to sleep angrily wormed its way into my morning, and talking about it with coworkers only hastened my inner sports turmoil to a simmering, under the surface rage, that could have exploded.

But then donuts.

Then this trough of glazed, frosted, filled, and sprinkled goodness found its way to a counter close to me! I looked at it longingly. I feared that they were special donuts that I didn't have a high enough clearance for. I started to salivate like a dog. The wonderful person, this khaki clad angel man, said,"Hey, if you guys want some donuts, help yourselves."

I rejoiced inside. My brain became a Mardi Gras parade of joyous rapture! I GET DONUTS! I tried to keep it together. "Thanks, man," I said, keeping my shit together. Coolly, or as coolly as a donut fiend can, I strode over to the box. It was so full. It was so full of donuts that I couldn't believe it. All kinds of donuts! Glazed, frosted, filled, sprinkled, some combination of those traits. And I get to devour as many of them as I can fit into my donut starved food hole.

My coworker opened the box first, I was holding on to my dignity with all the strength I could muster, so I forced myself to not sprint over there and attack it like the Tasmanian Devil. I wanted to lay siege upon the donut treasure chest with the force of 1000 armies. So I went second.

And then my turn at the gates of donut Nirvana arose, and I took my prize. I grabbed a donut, chocolate glazed, and while I held it, I eyed it like the apex predator I am. And I attacked. I took a very large bite. And I took another. And as I ate, I realized.

These are day old donuts. Rejected donuts, in a clear crate for whatever sucker would dare defile themselves with less than perfect confections. I am that sucker. I didn't give a single fuck. I was in a donut fueled bliss. I understood that I was eating the breakfast treat version of the residents of the Island of Misfit Toys, and I stopped caring as soon as those donuts entered my eye line.

They were there for the rest of the day. By the time I left, about 4 hours later, I had eaten 5 donuts. I am only moderately ashamed of this. But the reason I am ashamed is not for the reasons you might think. I am ashamed that I was not able to eat MORE! I wanted to do nothing but bury my face in that donut trough like a piggy. But I couldn't. And my wasteful ways are shameful.

Maybe there will be more tomorrow! Maybe I can get another donut fix! Probably not, but the thought of it is enough for now.

SD

Lurking Guy is Lurking

Part of my job is to go out to the offices of EB and replace existing computers with newer, smaller models. Each one is customized to each individual user so they don't lose the work they have already done and continue to do things I am vastly unqualified for. This is all fine and dandy, and usually, nothing weird happens.

Until today. I was in an office of engineers, who were doing, I don't know, engineering, on something I didn't recognize. I find the person whose computer was due to be replaced and had him save and close out of what he was doing, shut his machine down, and chill out of a few minutes while I did my thing. Not a problem. This is all standard procedure and literally every other time I have done this, nothing has gotten weird.

So I was doing my thing, unplugging cords and plugging new cords into cord holes and I feel something strange, something unusual. I look up and there is a younger guy watching me. "How's it going?" I ask cordially (well, cordially for me anyway).

Nothing. Just standing there, looking. He was wearing tinted glasses, the kind that adjust to the ambient light in the space you are in. They were oddly dark for an office, but it was bright, so I guess that is okay. But I couldn't see his eyes, even though I was convinced they were trained directly at me. It was...unnerving.

He then started to walk away. Slowly. "Yeeeeaaaahhh," I thought to myself. So I went back to work. As I finished up and found the owner of the desk again, I noticed this guy in a corner, watching my every move. "Huh," I said. Out loud. The guy who's computer I just switched thought I was talking to him, that there was some sort of problem. I assured him it was nothing and had him log back into the system. Everything worked fine.

I went on to the next guy, a few desks over. It seems that the people who get new computers, and all of them will eventually, are drawn randomly from a deck of cards. I think whoever schedules the work tried to get as many in the same general vicinity as possible, but it rarely works out well for us in the field.

Anyway, onto the next guy. Creepy sunglasses man strolled past slowly and softly, and by the angle of his face, watching me. I began to wonder if this guy was an engineer or something way weirder. I started to second guess what I was doing, I was getting freaked out a little. This guy was just quietly watching me work, like he had never seen someone do this before so he needed to capture every single angle with his mind camera.

I was no longer amused. Each PC I replaced was met with more lurking, more watching. It took a lot of effort to not start fucking with him or asking him for advice on random things, like the best way to clean a hat, or the tastiest food for goldfish.

Luckily for me, and him, too, I guess, I was able to move on to another, less lurky, office. But for the rest of my day I was a little creeped out.

In his defense, it was around lunchtime and he might have just been a hungry cannibal.

I'm good eatin'!

SD

Starting Over

I've come to a crossroads. After going through an August that was dominated by disappointment and various other bullshits, I have decided it is time to get it together. Everything. I need to restart my life. I need to start thinking about larger things and work to make those things come to fruition.

I have a job now. It isn't much, and I can barely pay my bills, but it's something. I essentially open boxes all day. I work for a company that does all the IT contracting at EB. I'm on the team that is replacing all the computers there, something that happens every four years or so. There are a lot of computers there, something like 8000 of them. So there is work to be done. It's entry level work, but like I said, it's something.

However, the money isn't good. It doesn't allow me to live the lifestyle that I want to live. I don't need to be extravagant or toss money around, but some modicum of comfort would be nice. I would like to have a little more security in my day to day life. So I am going to look for a second job. Something small that will provide me with an extra few hundred bucks a month to mitigate the weeks where I am more strapped than others. My crazy knee surgery was expensive, and paying it off little by little is terrible, so having some extra money coming in will help me greatly.

I want some stability in my personal life as well. I don't really discuss my personal life with anyone, because it's personal and I don't think that it's anyone's business. At the end of the day, I don't think anyone really gives that much of a shit about what's going on with my relationships other than those who are in them, so I won't bog down this post with words that most people don't care about. Either way, I want some sort of normalcy there. I need to start looking towards the future. I'm 34 years old and have very little to show for it.

I've skated along for too long just getting by. I need to stop doing nothing. I've done nothing of importance or influence in my time on this planet. I have no legacy. I have nothing to be proud of, really. I have a Bachelor's Degree, which I don't use, so I can't really say that those years have led to anything noteworthy. I haven't been able to use that knowledge, not yet anyway. Not for lack of trying, mind you, it's just that any time that I have tried to get a job or do anything that involves my education, I have been shot down.

Getting rejected that much is demoralizing. It's difficult to handle the constant stream of "No" that I have. I think part of the problem is that I get frustrated and start to give up. Not entirely, I just shield myself from the rejection by doing things that are mindless and small. I want to do something bigger, be part of a bigger life. Unfortunately, I am a little lost on how to go about fixing this problem. I guess I can just continue to put myself out there and hope something sticks?

I guess what this is all about is my need to start anew. I have to hit the refresh button and go into the remaining days of my life, however many there are, with a new energy and outlook. I need to stop dwelling on the things that have gone wrong and start looking for ways to balance them with things that go right.

How do I do all this? Beats the Hell out of me, but it's something I am going to have to do. If I don't, and continue on this lazy, useless road, I will turn into a lazy useless person. I don't want to be useless anymore. I've had enough of this crap.

It's time to start over.

SD

Above Ground Pools are Stupid

It's Summer now. Right in the damn middle of it. Days are hot and long, the sun scorches your weak translucent flesh, and people keep eating hot dogs. To combat the oppressive heat and humidity, many take to the water. Beaches are okay if you like the constant annoyance of sand and screaming children, and in-ground pools are great. Above ground pools, however, are fucking bullshit and need to stop.

First of all, they are all shaped the same. There is no difference from one to the next. They are all round, the only challenge to the above ground pool buyer is the diameter of pool to get. This is dumb. There should be choices in pool shape. Also, for something that is supposed to be round, there are an awful lot of corners involved. All the parts to make one (YOU HAVE TO MAKE YOUR OWN GODDAMN POOL? BULLSHIT!) are straight, so it isn't a circle, its some moderately round travesty that just sucks.

You can't do anything in an above ground pool. I guess that's not true, you can float around listlessly if you are alone in the pool. You can't dive into it, lest you brain yourself on the bottom, or skip across like a flat stone and brain yourself on one of the metal poles on the other side. The only thing you can do, if there are more than one idiot in this thing, is war with the rest of the pool users (pooligans?). You can really only use pool toys to wail on each other until boredom happens and you get out. You can try to make a whirlpool, but you need like 6 people and since no one runs in water the same speed, that leads to war as well. God knows that Fatty McHotdogs won't hustle as much as that 13 year old Olympian in the neighborhood, so they'll get pissed, the whirlpool will die and a sad aquatic battle with break out.

They're gross. These giant yard buckets have no filters, so the water just stays there. The water, which is probably from a hose, never gets a good cleaning, like would happen in a normal, in-ground, pool. God knows there is pee in there. If you are alone in a pool, the chances you are going to pee are about 50/50. The probability of someone pissing in your white trash bathtub increases with every person that goes in. If there are over 5 people in that festering puddle, it's nearly guaranteed that there is also piss in it. Disgusting.

So if you want cleaner water, you have to take your pool apart and let it flow like a tidal wave of awful into your yard, creating some piss stained white trash bog in your lawn. So now your lawn is fucked up. And you have to re-fill your bad investment with a hose. Then treat it with chemicals to try to make yourself think that this abomination is actually fun. Those chemicals just killed your lawn. All the work you do to keep your shitty lawn a little less shitty had now been demolished because you can't spend real money to get a real pool. And you have to do this again at the end of the season. "Whelp, it's Labor Day, time to drain the enormous plastic pail of sadness we used twice" And then what? Break it down and put it away? Fuck that, let's leave it there throughout the colder weather, it'll be fine! The beating winter will give it won't wear down the structural integrity of the skeleton or thin plastic walls, noooo.

Get a real pool, loser. Get a pool with a sidewalk around it that you don't need a ladder to escape from. Get a pool that doesn't have a ring of dead pointy grass surrounding it where you have to dodge pain and poop mines left by some mongrel dog to get to a towel. Get a pool that has a diving board and a deep end. Get a pool that goes in the ground, because they are great. Above ground pools are bullshit and dumb.

Except kiddie pools shaped like turtles. Those things are awesome.

SD

Come On, Stop & Shop

I'm going to tell you a story. It has no hero, no story arcs, nor any character development, but every single word of it is true.

Today did not begin as a normal day. It should have, and in theory it did, but my job had me come in an hour early, for some unknown reason, to do the same stuff I was going to do anyway. I have a basic morons warehouse job. I get a packet of orders, put the products listed into boxes, and ship them to the rich dicks who bought them. Sometimes, they go to far away lands, like Australia, Fiji, or Wichita (seriously). Sometimes, they go to Pawcatuck. Seriously. Some wealthy knucklehead would rather spend the money to have something shipped to him from Waterford, then drive the 20 minutes to get it himself. It must be really nice to be so rich you can afford to be slothful and aloof.

Either way, I had to go in an hour early today. Again, I don't know why. Nobody tells me these things, most of the time I think they forget I exist. My job is more physically demanding that I thought it would be going into it. I work up a lather of sweat early in my day and maintain it, for the most part, until I get home. So I was sweating for 9 1/2 hours today, which does not make for a very happy me. I'm not that into sweating where it seems like a good idea for me to do it for the champions portion of my waking hours. So by the end of my day I was tired and unhappy.

But I still had more to do.

Every day, we drones of the warehouse get a measly 30 minutes lunch break where we can unwind just long enough to have to go back to work. I bring my lunch. I would rather get up 15 minutes earlier to make it than stress out about leaving the premises, finding food, and eating it within that short time span. Sue me, I like to relax a little. This morning marked the last of my luncheon preparation options, meaning I had to go to the grocery store when I got out of work to get more stuff to make sandwiches with. Not to mention the fact that I had to get sundry items for any other eating options I would like to embark upon any time soon. So I had to stop at the supermarket on my way home from work.

I've done this before. It's not that big of a deal. Everyone goes grocery shopping, we have to in order to survive. Unless we eat like college freshmen, in which case, have fun with your IBS and gross gut and butt problems, because I try to eat like an adult (late night snacking does not apply). Honestly, grocery shopping is NOT that big of a deal. Most of the time.

It began well, this trip to the Stop & Shop in Waterford. I go here because 1) it's on my way home and 2) the Shop Rite in New London is the epitome of human misery where every soul walking though that dump looks and acts like they just came from a wake. It's terrible in there and nobody should be forced to enter it's crusty walls. I got a good parking spot. I got my meat and cheese and tomatoes and a few other things without issue.

Then I went into the condiment isle. That's when things took a turn. As I pushed my cart up the row of mustards, dressings, and ketchups to the shelves holding the mayonnaise, I saw a man. He was tall, maybe 6 inches taller than I. Middle aged with the appropriate stomach paunch and  grey-white balding pattern of a man in his 50s. He had the "I don't give a fuck" grey sweatshirt and black track pants normally worn by someone who is there not on their own volition, but due to an emergency at home in which, apparently, mayonnaise was the only cure. He had his reading glasses poised at the tip of his nose, held in place by gravity in the front and Croakies in the back. For the uninitiated, Croakies are those elastic things that slide over the ends of the glasses arms so they don't slide off. My parents got them for me when I played sports as a child.

While examining the jars and squirt bottles of mayo, and while I am strolling comfortably towards him, this man lets out a groan. "Uuuuuuurrrgggggghhhhhh." He then began to spread his sport sandal clad feet apart. Slowly and simultaneously bending forward at the waist, ass creeping closer to the rows of relish behind him. Feet farther and farther apart. Ass dangerously close to blocking the other line of oncoming traffic. He reaches out for a jar. I am now standing there foolishly watching this scene from my future unfold. He reads the jar. He is exactly where I need to be. "Shit," I think to myself, "How is this going to work out?" He puts the first jar back with a pained grunt. His feet must be 2 yards apart at this point and his protruding posterior has now become a barrier for everyone in the isle. He reaches for another jar, and reads it, puts it back, completely oblivious to the traffic backing up on either side. I decide to make a rash decision. I abandon my cart and acquire my target squeeze bottle of mayo. I move in, closer than I ever wanted to be to this tragedy. He shoots me a look of disdain as I grab my selection before he was done. I shoot him a third of a grin, wheel around and go back to my cart. I turn around and get the good Hell out of the condiment isle.

Off to bread with me! HOLY SHIT THE BREAD ISLE SMELLS TERRIBLE! DID SOMEONE CRAP THEMSELVES WHILE EXAMINING BAGELS? Usually the bread section smells of cinnamon raisin bread, which is weird, but comforting and warm. Not like turds. Today it smelled like turds. WHY DOES IT SMELL LIKE TURDS?! I get my bread and get the good fuck out of there. I turn the corner to pasta. HOLY SHIT THE PASTA ISLE SMELLS TERRIBLE! DID SOMEONE CRAP THEMSELVES WHILE EXAMINING SPAGHETTI? I'm concerned. What happened here to make two rows of a supermarket reek of poop? No sense.

Until I turn the corner and see a gaggle of crust punk kids looking at...something? I don't know what they were getting, but it sure wasn't deodorant. There might as well have been a Pigpen style cloud of nasty stink engulfing them. Seriously punks are the worst smelling subculture out there. Take a shower, assholes, you make people hate you more by being filthy.

UGH.

Enough already. ENOUGH! I get the rest of my stuff, including deodorant, without much consternation, moving quickly in order to get out of there and go fucking home.

Now, Stop & Shop has two checkout options, the automated, shame-free checkout where you do it yourself, and the traditional option where some grumpy kid making minimum wage scans your shit and puts it in a bag. I forgot my Stop & Shop card, and the shame-free checkout won't give you the same discounts that the traditional way does where the clerk scans their card for you. I went with the traditional method of checking out. There was an isle with one guy buying some apples. PERFECT! This will be easy!

WRONG! This man, with a beginners mullet, was having a, we'll say, difficult time. His English was broken, Spanish being his primary language. No one was there to help him in his native tongue. This fact did not help things move swiftly. He wanted $8 worth of apples. That's literally all he wanted. Why he wasn't in the express lane will live as a mystery for generations, but still. $8 worth of apples. I did not by apples, but, I now know that 6 1/4 lbs of apples costs about $18, so we are looking at about $3/lb.

If this is starting to sound like a question from the math section of the SATs, that's because it might be, and it was in my head. This guy didn't understand that he could weigh the damn apples before he brought them to the register, do a little math in his head (math: also not a primary language for him, nor me, but even I can figure this one out), and get the proper amount of apples for his purposes. He was also trying to pay with something I didn't recognize. It was paper, like a check. He signed it, like a check. He gave it to the cashier, like a check. It was not a check. It had way too many boxes to fill out on it to be a check. It looked like a tax form there were so many boxes. It was crazy.

He filled out this form and handed it over, like I said. There was more than $8 worth of apples to be purchase, but he only wanted to spend that particular, and peculiar, amount on the apples. This was becoming a problem. This was also taking far too long.

There was a woman queued up behind me with twice as full a cart as I had. She was getting antsy. She asked the person running the (empty) check out line if she could go to that line. She couldn't. Not allowed. More than 12 items. Maybe more than 112 items (that cart was bursting). She asked someone else if they could open a new lane. The employee noticed the question, and walked off, never to be seen again. I shrugged at the woman behind me.

I was fucked. My stuff was piled on the conveyor belt waiting to be checked though and someone blocking me in. This is grocery store purgatory. The nightmare in front of my now had three people (THREE!) attending to it, none of which was getting anywhere to solve the case of $8 Worth Of Apples. I have been in this goddamned line for at least 15 minutes now, waiting quietly and being patient. I thought about cows. I thought about how docile they are and how they don't get pissed while waiting. Then I thought about how cows don't have to wait for anything. They eat, get milked, sometimes birth baby cows. Really, how much does a cow actually have to do? Nothing.

This is what has become of my life now, I thought. I have resigned myself to waiting in a line with my frozen goods melting on a conveyor belt, thereby ruining their integrity. I am here now, and this is where I am going to die. Eventually, Mr. $8 Worth Of Apples, along with 3 far more patient people than I, got their shit figured out and started to reweigh the apples. Taking one apple out of the bag at a time, they eventually got to the requisite weight, about 2 1/2 lb altogether. This could have all been avoided if this fucking moron just used one of the dozen scales available in the damn produce section.

Jesus Christ. Finally, after an hour of being inside the fluorescent Hell of Stop & Shop, I was able to check out. $119 later, I was finally able to get out of there and go home.

And have a beer while putting my goods away, finishing it while sitting on the toilet, mercifully able to relax for the first time since 7am, 13 hours prior.

Now I am on my second dose of Boddington's Pub Ale of the night, getting all of this off of my mind and chest, ready to at last move forward to some other disaster of daily adult life.

Still, all of this tumult was worth it to not have to go to Shop Rite.

SD