How Many BTU's is Your Jesus?

A while back I was walking through Walgreen’s and saw one of those Jesus candles in the glass tube. I had never seen one before so I bought it.

They cost in the neighborhood of a dollar, and they have a picture of Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, or in the case of the one I'm looking at, a huge hand reaching up from the earth. A man with a glowing head stands on each finger, and a child in a white robe and glowing head stands on the thumb. On closer inspection, two of the men might be women. They have some pink in amongst their garb. It says Mano Poderosa on the bottom.

I've discovered that these candles do a surprisingly excellent job of heating my room. If I light one and leave my door closed it gets noticeably warmer than the living room. I may not bask in the light of the lord, but I have been known to rub my hands over a toasty glass of Jesus.

(Upon researching Mano Poderosa, I’ve discovered what I have here is a votive candle. In 2006 many congressmen and senators are going to be running for their seats. We need to get out and rock the votive.)

Preparations for a Date

1. Wash all the weird goo out of the car. What was the stuff on my shifter and where did it come from? One way or the other I'm glad it's gone.

2. Go to the car wash to get the outside as nice as the inside. I went to one of those quarter washes with the brush, the squirt gun, and the selector knob where the hoses are never quite long enough to let me aim just how I'd like. And who was the genius who decided to mount the scrub brush with the foam excreting side up? When I took it off the wall an extremely large chunk of foam went down my jacket sleeve and ended up in my arm pit. I'm glad I did it yesterday and not on the way to picking her up. The squirt gun was also pretty leaky, but maybe that's on purpose. All the water coming out the back ran down my arm and washed away the pit suds. Great system.

3. Vacuum the floor mats. For this I took my regular vacuum downstairs and set the floor mats out in the garage, running the vacuum over them as I would my apartment carpet. The whole time I was worried someone would come down and think I was nuts for vacuuming the garage floor.

My car is all set. The huge Toyota symbol in the front is dirt free, the Darwin, Shark, and Alien fish on my trunk gleam in the sunlight, my thank you sign is ready to be courteous to anyone who lets me merge, and my rearview monkey head is on the lookout for oncoming traffic. Beware the Camry, ladies. It's an unstoppable dating machine.

I Hate Dating

I'm sure that's been a title before, but it remains true.

The law school girl emailed and said she and her friends were going to an art opening at The Canvas Gallery tonight and that I should give her a call and let her know if I was coming, and if we could schedule some coffee time.

I chickened out of meeting her there. I tend to feel like I'm in over my head when I meet one person for the first time. If I have to meet a whole group I feel like someone's holding me under.

So I called, and it really went fine, but I'm still stressed out a full 2 hours later. The call lasted under 4 minutes and my brain was only functioning for maybe 30 seconds of that.

[Talking about going to coffee on Sunday.]
Her: So, how do you want to do this? Do you have a car? Do you want to pick me up?
Me: Uh, yeah. I have a car. I can pick you up. Do you want to email me your address?
Her: I could do that. I could also give it to you now too if you'd like.
Me: [Brain has totally shut down at this point.] Yeah, I think email is good.

Was I saying that it would be good for her to email me her address, or was I expressing my opinion that, in general, email is good?

Me: Where do you want to go for coffee?
Her: I haven't lived in the city that long. You should pick.
Me: How about starbucks?

This is San Francisco and there are roughly 1000000 coffee shops around. It's kind of embarrassing to pick starbucks.

And what time are we going to coffee? I guess the time didn't make the list as something I should figure out before a date.

I really am grateful that girls will slog through my interactions with them, unencumbered by thinking as they are. I literally stumble into relationships by accident. I can't keep my wits about me long enough to do it on purpose.

Weekly Pub Quiz Update

This week we came in 2nd, but due to lack of teams (there were only 6) we didn't win a gift certificate. Our name was "Is in third."

It was especially fun to hear our team name the first time. "And in first place with 9 points ... is in third."

Winner of funniest name: "Jesus did it for the chicks." I have to give it to them, that's a great name.

I'm Scary

I tend to worry about things more than I need to. I worry that I'll appear creepy, overly dorky, or unhappy. (I think my default face looks unhappy.) When I write emails I worry what the recipient will think of them. Most of the time it turns out to be nothing.

But when I emailed the girl I googled, she immediately took down her posting and sent me a message back via the personals so I couldn't see her email address. In the message she told me:

"omg. that was actually a bit scary.
i didnt even realize anyone would do a search on my screen name via google.
that thing on my pix is to show that i am the one who took the pix..to prevent anyone stealing it and post it somewhere else (not that that'd ever happen) but i'd never imagined that by posting that pix as one of the profile pix, someone would actually do a search on me. i'll be very honest with you, either i'm too much of an internet naive or you just know how to use a search engine really well or what..but in short, that was a bit freaky -_-"

So now I feel really bad that I freaked her out. But it's not like I did some crazy google magic. I just typed one single word into google and all 6 matching links were hers. I'm neither a hacker nor stalker.

I'm hoping she isn't too freaked. She did include some other small talk and ended her email with, "have a nice night then." (The stuff inside the quotes there was a whole sentence all by itself at the bottom of the email.) But I don't think her word choice, lack of capitalization, and oddball emoticons bode well anyway.

On the bright side, I've probably solved my problem of having too many possibilities at once. I seem to be back to a comfortable one, and that one seems like she’s pretty cool. She likes Muse too, though she also likes Will Ferrell. I guess nobody’s perfect.

A Flurry Of Communication

Yesterday, as I also mentioned, a 24 year old law student who speaks for languages messaged me. I sent her a message via Yahoo, and she has just emailed me back. Now I've just emailed her back again. I think we're having a conversation.

Mere hours ago, yet another 4 language speaking girl sent me an Icebreaker. (That's the free message you can choose from a list of 6 or so.) So I sent her an email.

My first inclination is that this is all of a sudden going much too fast. I like to date one person at a time. I guess if NNM writes back I could set up something up along the lines of elimidate. Could get a show out of this somehow?

The other weirdness is that the Icebreaker girl put some identifying information on one of her pictures. The Yahoo staff is usually pretty good about booting anything that will let you find people outside their site, but they seem to have missed this one. Anyhow, with this information I managed to find her blog and some photo galleries. Now I've been able to look at a bazillion pictures of her as well as watching 2 short movies she made. (Not those kind of pictures or movies. Just vacation pictures and a movie of the beach. And I mean literally of the beach. She pans 360 degrees over the sand and then waves at her camera. It's kind of cute.) And now I'm feeling kind of creepy, but I've already sent her an email, so if she thinks I'm creepy too, she can just ignore me.

Luckily for women, I give up easily. I'm far to defeatist to be a stalker.

Night to Night

I woke up last night when my leg touched a wet spot on my bed. Had I wet the bed? Was my ceiling leaking? No, that doesn't make sense, there's a floor above me. I reached down to investigate and my hand came up back with a quarter. While I have no idea where the quarter might have come from, it's a much better to ponder that than it is to consider the possibility that I have become a 26 year old bed wetter.

In the morning I awoke to find that someone had emailed me on Yahoo Personals. She's 24 years old, speaks 4 languages, has leapt from a plane, and is not a transvestite. All checks in the good column. I wrote back explaining that I wasn't in a band anymore. What was I thinking?

My second stop of the day took me over Trinity Road where I saw a man in a plaid shirt and hiking boots who looked very much like Jesus.

On my way back to the depot I passed a semi on the back of which, written in dirt, was the following:

______________________________
|............................|
|............................|
|............................|
|............................|
|............................|
|............................|
|............................|
| <-El Passo....El Cruncho-> |
|............................|
|............................|
|............................|
|............................|
------------------------------
000,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,000
000========================000
000''''''''''''''''''''''''000

That is my ASCII drawing of a dirty truck.

Tonight I played at an open mic where I performed Sao Paulo Rain, by Tom McRae, Question, by Old 97s, and a mix of the first verse of Karma Police, by Radiohead, and with the music the same, A Day in the Life, by the Beatles. It went pretty well.

That last paragraph was a little boring, but I had to get back to tonight, otherwise the title wouldn’t make any sense.

Captain Pot

Today I went to a trailer park in the middle of nowhere. As I entered the trailer, it was obvious that these people were heavy smokers. The air was almost chewy, and it smelled like the a place where cigarettes go to die. I replaced the pump because they complained that the old one turned off from time to time. They also complained that something smelled like it was burning.

I have an excellent sense of smell, but I don't know how anyone could smell anything in that trailer. I thought about saying, "yeah, I think that's your house you smell."

I was sure I was back in the city when, a few blocks from my house, I saw a guy get off the bus wearing a huge, rainbow flag/cape adorned with a gigantic marijuana leaf. His lower half was covered by bright red hammer-pants, and on his head he wore an enormous, white wig. I got the feeling that these clothes were his everyday-wear.

It reminds me of the tale of the hick mouse and the crazy mouse.

Make It Stop

Piranha Man is listening to a Karen Carpenter album. Specifically one which includes "On Top of the World." And he's loudly singing along. I'm worried this might be one of the days when he puts on music and leaves.

This wouldn't bother me if I was a normal young adult and I was doing stuff on this, a Friday night. Instead I'm forced to endure Piranha Man musical "taste", I've posted 3 times on my blog, I'm doing laundry, and I'm painfully aware that the only girl I've emailed on Yahoo Personals (the cost of which was $20) has now not logged in for a month.

Seriously though, he has the vocal talent of a tube sock. I've never met a worse singer.

It's time to put my clothes in the dryer.

Gomez Eats People

Last night I went to see Mike Doughty open for Gomez with my roommate. Yep, I've written that correctly. I paid $25 to see an opening act. Though, in my defense, I thought I would like Gomez more. (To clarify, I went with my roommate to see Doughty. Doughty didn't open with my roommate.)

I have a number of problems with Gomez. First off, they have 3 lead singers. The make or break reason I like most bands is their lead singer. I'm super picky and having 3 lead singers either increases the chance that I'll like one, or decreases that chance that I'll like the whole band. Depends on how you look at it. Either way, I think if they would stick with their middle guy I'd like them better.

Gomez is also too jammy. (Jamy?) They jam too much. They don't jam to the extent that Dave Mathews Band, or to take it to an extreme, Phish jams, but they have excessive musical interludes all the same.

Last, and perhaps most disturbingly, the band seems to absorb the audience. After Doughty played we went back to have him sign some stuff. Then we hung out in back of the Fillmore until Gomez took the stage. We stood in the back of the crowd the entire time they played, but as the concert progressed the back of the crowd got closer and closer to the stage. I didn't notice anyone leaving, so I can only assume that Gomez was eating the audience. Or perhaps they were converting people into musical interludes, which efficiently explains 2 things.

In conclusion, Mike Doughty rocks.

Revised Theory

On Thursday I was doing Medicare checks and visited a paraplegic 30 something lady. She said she'd had 2 holes in her mattress over the last year, and because she couldn't find our phone number, she took it upon herself to call a waterbed company and get them fixed. I have to respect that because a) calling a waterbed company is just a really good idea, and b) I didn't have to go all the way to Cloverdale on a weekend. I gave her our phone number in case she has further problems, but I'm thinking of asking the waterbed company how they fixed our mattress.

Here's my new theory: All paraplegics like to have their apartments at 4000 degrees, and all the male ones are shirtless.

Ever So Briefly

There was a big traffic jam in Santa Rosa today because people felt uncomfortable driving over toilet paper. There were 50 or 60 toilet paper rolls strewn across 101S, and people were slowing to the equivalent of a tiptoe over them. I'm not sure if the good people of Santa Rosa have had that much experience with toilet paper. It isn't sharp. It won't hurt your tires.

Because I'm sure everyone is wondering, we came in 4th tonight at Pub Quiz. We were "Samoans Moved Our Piano." Shane's Dentist kicked our ass. Damn Shane and his dentist.

I May Be a Lesbian

Consider the evidence:

-I know what a sconce is.
-I don't like sports.
-I like women.
-I can't grow sideburns.

And here's the clincher: I spent Saturday morning in bed, eating a half container of cookie dough ice cream, and reading a Janet Evanovich book.

Janet Evanovich started out writing, and may still write, romance novels. Now, that isn't the kind of book I was reading. I was reading book 10 of her Stephanie Plum series about a plucky, if hapless, female, bounty hunter who is torn between her love of 2 men. The books are funny and fast paced, and they even involve some guns and violence. But given the context of the situation, I couldn't help feeling a little like a woman. Perhaps like a woman on her period.

In my defense, I'd probably be considered butch.

Side notes:
-I've still not had any opportunities to thank anyone with my car.
-I finally emailed the girl on Yahoo Personals with no neck muscles. Did I explain her? Anyway, if you can't get Yahoo Personals to come up it's because I'm using up all their bandwidth by constantly refreshing to see if she has checked her messages yet.
-Today I saw a guy who works for the Forest Service named N. Woods.
-Today I tried to schedule an appointment to deliver a mattress for Friday. He said, "No, Tuesdays and Fridays are when I have my bowel movements."

How To Make Burritos

I started the process by going to Trader Joes, where the ratio of attractive shoppers to unattractive shoppers is oddly high. It's not like they don't sell things that are bad for you. The person in front of me in line was buying an entire red basket full of cookies.

Next stop was Safeway where, oddly enough, both girls in my line were also attractive, and happened to both be wearing cowboy boots. Though the booted girl behind me ended up leaving due to the mind numbing slowness of the first guy in line.

After all his items were scanned, he told the cashier he wanted some cigarettes. Evidentially he didn't know what brand he wanted, because he stared at the cigarette case for literally 2 minutes, finally choosing a brand. Then putting them back and choosing another brand. After successfully procuring his cigies, he ambled back over to the counter to pay his $11.83 total by slowly doling $11 in ones on to the conveyer belt. After the cashier picked up the little pile of money he pointed out that he still needed 83 cents. The man sighed a heavy sigh and counted out 83 cents in pennies, nickels, and dimes. But mostly pennies and nickels.

The man behind him, allegedly talking to himself, said, "dear lord I have never waited in line so long."

The man behind both of them was me, and I was looking at the girl in the cowboy boots who was busy being offended by the man who was vocally experiencing the longest wait of his life.

On to the burritos:

-Add one package of ground beef to frying pan*. Set the temperature on the burner such that it doesn't burn the beef, but still lets you try to clean the fridge for a while. (4)
-Empty the fridge of a half a can of heavily bearded round things, a plastic bag of slime (with stem), and a 2 year old bottle of alfredo sauce.
-Hope newly cleaned fridge will stop infusing my milk and the Brita with "fridge tang." (I was hoping to tell a difference, but I have a cold so my normally Cate like sense of smell has gone AWOL.)
-Turn up the heat to cook the beef faster. (7)
-Add 1 can of refried beans and the rest of the salsa.
-Mix it all around while trying to avoid getting too much ground beef all over the stovetop with a motion that can best be described as gooshing.
-Clean all the ground beef off the stovetop.
-Add concoction to tortilla shells and cold ingredients including cheese and, most importantly, black olives.
-Serve with milk and watch the Family Guy.

And that's how you make my apartment famous burritos. (As apposed to world famous. I don't think anyone else has ever eaten my burritos.)

*This is as specific as I can get. I try to buy a package which is bigger than tiny and smaller than family size.

Biggest Dork Ever!

I thought I just got 4 new state quarters, but when I checked my spreadsheet, it turned out that I already had 2 of them.

No Overarching Theme

Today I saw a guy walking along the side of the freeway. I was going south, and he was on the shoulder walking north and wearing one of those huge, puffy jackets which are so popular with the urban youth of today. Over his right forearm he carried a pink beach towel. I passed several exits and saw no broken-down cars.

At a facility in Vallejo, while waiting for a patient to be moved, I heard the following over the paging system: "Amanda Hugandkiss line 1. Amanda Hugandkiss line 1." No, really. In the book Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk, the main character has a theory that facilities page fake people as codes to the nurses. Maybe Amanda Hugandkiss line 1 means a patient is trying to escape near Nursing Station 1.

Last night's pub quiz name: Don't Touch My Mustache. We placed 3rd again, and San Francisco Bay Hooker #1 won best name. I personally liked We Don't Know Without James and Coolaid Obesity Epidemic. Coolaid placed first though, thereby taking themselves out of the running for best name.

Some commonly used phrases drive me nuts. For instance, someone on the radio today used the phrase "like the fox guarding the hen house" in reference to a lackadaisical third party testing professional baseball players for steroid use. First off, the drug testing agents aren't planning on eating the baseball players. The players have the power there. If he really wanted to use hens and foxes, he should have said it's like a hen guarding the fox house. My other problem is with the usage of carrot and stick. As a for instance, someone might say that "the economic aid is the carrot and the threat of invasion is the stick." No. The point of the stick is to get the carrot out in front of the donkey you're sitting on. You aren't holding out the carrot with one hand and whacking the donkey with the other. Am I wrong here?

I started out my week with 4 irritating, persistent customers: "Wookiee", "Call me at 2 or 10 or 4 and watch me not be there", "Medicare don't pay for shit! You figure out who's payin' and call me back", and "Why haven't you guys come to pick up the mattress/We have an answering machine?" I've taken care of two of them, and the other two have stopped returning phone calls. Suits me fine. Unfortunately "I have an imaginary problem with my mattress" has called again. Luckily (for me, not him) he had the runs today and put off our appointment until Wednesday.

I really want go get some Chicken Madera at the Cheesecake Factory. Who's with me?*

*I just want to point out that sentence about Chicken Madera has nothing to do with the previous sentence mentioning the runs.

The Reign of the Magic Nickels…

Is over. Either that or they don't work in loading zones. One way or the other, I had to buy a candy bar to get change in front of the Wookiee's house this morning when his caregiver was out doing laundry, AGAIN.

He's not really a Wookiee. He is actually a regular guy with a tiny apartment.

Since I'm going to have to find a new apartment in the coming months, I've been taking noticed of the living arrangements of others. I go into huge houses in Calistoga where the patient's name is both on my order form and on the cases of wine from his vineyard. I also go into places where the street address is followed by ", space 149." As in, my trailer sits in space 149 in Hidden Acres Trailer Villa.

Going into numerous trailer parks (where it seems that much of Santa Rosa, Petaluma, Rohnert Park, and Napa goes to die), I've started comparing trailers to my apartment, and my future apartment.

Trailers have heat. My apartment has a gas fireplace attached to our thermostat. The fireplace has a plaque under the fake logs which reads "not for heating. Ornamental use only."

Trailers listed for rent are $300 a month or so less than studio apartments.

Doublewides are generally much nicer than my apartment in their furnishings, carpeting, and facilities.

Trailer parks often have pools. (This one is mostly just an odd observation. I don't generally take my shirt off, and swimming with a shirt on seems lame. (Not to go too deep into the parenthetical, but this is why I have a year-round farmer tan.))

Unfortunately, when all is said and done, trailers are in trailer parks. I imagine it's very hard to take a girl home to a trailer unless she has a mullet, and mullets are so very unattractive.

Magic Nickels and the Grunts of the Invalid

Twice in the past week I've pulled up to a parking meter, and worried about change. You see, I have quarter-driven laundry facilities, so I need to conserve as many quarters as possible. But nickels and dimes only give you 3 and 6 minutes respectively, so there is always an internal battle between not getting a ticket and having clean underwear.

Both times during this past 7 days when I've found myself confronted with a parking meter, I've started by putting in a nickel, and both times I've done this it has given me 40 minutes. Both times I've sat and waited to see if the 40 meant seconds instead. Nope. 40 minutes. I just happen to carry magic nickels.

One of these parking miracles happened while I was trying to deliver a mattress in the city. I had tried to make an appointment the afternoon before, but when I called the guy all I got was Wookiee noises. Without any way of getting my message across, I showed up at his apartment this morning. (They had specified that it was ok to deliver between 7:30am and 11am.) I called on the box in front of the building and I got more Wookiee. And the door didn't open. So I called on my cell phone, and the line was busy. Finally I made it into the building when some other residents left and knocked on his door, only to get TV noise and very quite Wookiee noises. Hospice assures me somebody will let me in tomorrow at 8:15am.

3 words of advice for that guy: Fire your caregiver. (That used to be 4 words of advice until spell check informed me that caregiver was one word.)

(Interesting (or not) side note to this post: I had no idea that Wookiee was spelled like that. But StarWars.com set me straight. Hurrah for the internet.)

The Problem with Thank You

It seems that the thank you sign is not as useful as it could be.

First of all, there are far more irritating and stupid maneuvers happening on the road everyday than there are random acts of kindness. Also, while the "you're an ass" sign would be great, I would need one facing each direction. I find that most people decide they need to be retarded in front or to the side of me.

While driving around this weekend, nobody did anything nice for me. At least not anything that would put them behind me. One person did let me go at a stop sign, but then headed through the intersection to my right.

I guess the thank you sign will be solely for the purpose of thanking people for letting me in front of them on the freeway. Who needs an all purpose sign anyway?

Though it did occur to me that if my sign had read "thanks a lot" then it could be used sarcastically as well. If someone didn't let me merge, and I muscled my way in, "thanks a lot" would be just about perfect. Oooh, or even better: A 2 part sign. The top half would say "thanks" and the bottom would say "ass." I could thank someone, call them an ass, or sarcastically say, "thanks, ass."

If my fear of getting shot wasn't so pervasive, I think I'd have another project for myself this weekend.

Thank You

When someone lets me merge in front of them, I used to wave to transmit my message of thanks. No longer. It's the year 2005, and Thank You Technology needed improvement.

My picture taking ability needs some improvement too. But none the less, here's my new rear window, light up, thank you sign.

This is the button enclosure I made out of a cayenne pepper container:


When you press said button, this is what you see in my rear window:


I have officially pimped my ride.

People in the Rearview Mirror May Be Less Attractive Than They Appear
(Observations on a Thursday)

I drive around all day looking at people. People in cars, people in hospitals, people on the street, and since I'm a guy, many of those people are girls, and a lot of that looking is actually gawking. Since I spend a lot of time on the road I tend to notice girls in my side view mirror and then look at them when they pass me. This can be surprisingly dicey and disappointing.

As girls get closer they can go from thin to large, young to old, and in the worst scenarios, they can become dudes. (Where did the hot girl in the blue Accord go, and where did the fat bearded dude in the blue Accord come from?) When becoming physically unattractive doesn't work, some girls take more serious measures.

There was one girl who seemed promising as she approached on my left. As she drew up next to me I was happy to see that she was indeed attractive, at which point she started digging in her nose. I didn't know fingers went in that far. She either had a booger vendetta or the inside of her skull itched. It was hard to tell which.

Cars have windows. We can all see each other.

Another totally unrelated observation / stereotype: Paraplegics don't wear shirts and like their apartments to be roughly the temperature of the sun. I don't know why that is, but I've been to 3 paraplegic households, and all were 5,000,000 degrees and no one was wearing a shirt. They had pants (all except one guy who, on my second visit, was "wearing" a towel), but no shirts. Wearing shirts might make it possible to set the thermostat to a level below stifle.

News of the Evening

Somebody stole my bike seat. I guess that means that I'm going to sell my bike. I'm thinking $20 because:
-The shifters don't work well
-The brakes squeak and don't really stop (or even significantly slow) the bike
-The wheels are off balance
-The tires go flat
-The seat is gone

Good things about the bike:
-Good "project bike"
-Customizable seat (buy whatever seat you like)
-Comes with 2 bike locks
-Chromoly frame

The pain caused by the theft of my bike seat was considerably lessened by the fact that I've only ridden my bike once in 3 years, and also by the fact that my seat had 2 holes in it. Those holes sucked up water like nobody's business, and then when sat upon, excreted said water efficiency all over the sitter's ass.

I discovered the seat theft on the way to pub quiz where we came in 3rd thereby beating our nemesis, Shane's Dentist. This week our team name was Neil Diamond is a Girl's Best Friend, which was probably a little long to win best team name. We won that honor last time with the name Shane's Gingivitis.

If anyone can suggest some good pub quiz team names, I'd be happy to put them in the running next Wednesday.

Nude Underhead

You can all stop holding your collective breath. The wait is over and the results are in: I still can't grow a goatee.

There are 3 problems as I see it:
1) The whiskers I do have grow too far apart. A very fat chin louse could stroll amongst them and not brush against a single one.
2) My whiskers grow straight out. I'm sure that's how they are supposed to grow, but if they grew out and then sideways, or lay down or something, they would cover a lot more surface area. Not to get too mathy, but my chin looked like it was all covered in hair when viewed perpendicularly to the direction of whisker growth. When the viewing angle was parallel to the whisker direction, it looked hair free.
3) A good third of my chin hairs are blond. When nobody is growing close enough to their neighbor to begin with, being blond and invisible doesn’t help hide my chin skin.

Alas, my chin stays nude and my legs stay encased in hair pants.

And now, facial hair haikus:

Hairs burst from my chin
Only to survey my face
And decide to suck

The lonely whisker
Wonders why other whiskers
Will not grow close by

Sneaky blond chin hair
Knows he is invisible
Plans to spy on girls

Plight of the Modern Worker

For several months now we've been down a person at work. We used to have somebody who did nothing but clean mattresses and pumps. He did a good job, and since we deal in mattresses that are run by pumps, he did an important job as well.

As it happened, he managed to get sick a lot. Corporate policy says that if you get sick waaay beyond your allotted sick days, you get fired. He did. As a result, my boss comes in at 5am everyday to clean mattresses before doing the rest of his responsibilities. He leaves at 5pm. Even with 12 hour days and me helping out when I can, we still just barely keep up.

So we were all very happy when the new guy started today. The new guys stated goal on his application: "To some day be as helpful to as many people as possible." Helpful is good.

So I took him to one of the facilities we go to on a regular basis. I explained some things and we did a pickup, during which he hit his head on one of the hospital TVs next to all the beds. After the pickup we went back to the depot and we went to lunch. Me to subway, and he to home. I came back, he didn't. He explained to my boss on the phone that when he hit his head on the little TV, he knew the job wasn't for him.

He lasted 3.5 hours. It's not the most exciting job ever, but seriously, 3.5 hours? I HATED working at metal shop guy's shop, but I lasted 3 days.

The facility we went to was a rehabilitation facility. He didn't even have to see any dead people. Wuss.

Does anyone know of anyone who is drug free, has a good driving record, and wants to drive around some and clean mattresses some? Anyone? Hello?