typical unattainable, uninteresting, underpaying jobs. same thing every sunday.

coming off of one of the top 10 most expensive 24 hour periods of my life, i again find myself searching the classifieds for salvation. newspaper, please save me from this spiraling, pit-of-piss job that i have. i need something new. something that pays. something that i can afford to eat with. something that doesn't suck.

but i don't wanna do inside sales. i don't wanna be a paralegal. i don't wanna be a trainee for your fortune 500 subsidiary. i don't wanna drive a tractor trailer, be a custodian, administrative assistant, RN, accountant, or a screw machine operator. dogcatcher. pinsetter. sheep shearer. button presser. broom pusher. keyboard clicker. roto-rooter-er. 3rd shift lever yanker. mouth breathin' burger flipper. to hell with all that. just what am i supposed to do, anyway?

i'm looking. there's just nothing to find.

the police academy can't come soon enough--if i get in. i had a dream the other night that i got a letter saying i didn't make it...and it ruined my morning.

i'm tired of being the ivy league grad who busts his ass for less and less money every week. i'm tired of driving a 15 year old pickup truck that needs repairs every other day. i'm tired of spending every dollar on necessities only to have nothing left for savings.

having bought 3/4 of all my christmas gifts, paid all my monthly bills, purchased upcoming wedding gifts, made the first grocery run in a month, got new pair of work boots, and bought & installed a new starter for my truck, i have managed to drop an ungodly amount of money in the last day or so. and most of it is on the credit card. yuck.

oh, look--there goes another high school grad with a better job and a new SUV. how ironic. hey--there goes that guy with the shitty attitude that works for me, who somehow manages to have more money than me. prick.

next time, i promise, something upbeat. if i can afford it.

tonight has been quiet.

i'm not sure exactly how it happened. maybe it was cuz mark wasn't online to talk to. or because i decided not to call so-n-so in texas. or because the fridge is empty. or my apartment is clean. or because i used selson blue instead of suave in the shower. or maybe....cuz i turned off the tv.

i always have the tv on. when i'm reading the paper. when i'm on the phone. when i'm eating. when i'm blogging. when i'm pooping. when i'm awake in general. sadly, my tv is my roommate, and i rely on it all too often for a social life. as soon as i turned it off, i instantly felt alone, and sought after another outlet. ah! the radio. hmmm....not the same, which is a good thing. the radio lacks that social aspect but you still get that nice background hum that a single dude living alone needs. the crazy thing is, the station it was set on was a station from my hometown, which i haven't been in for over a year and a half, which gives you a pretty good idea of how often i listen to the radio outside of my vehicle.

after turning off the tv, i immediately had the urge to blog. i have the urge to work on my college scrapbook, which i haven't touched in two or three months. i have the urge to call people. i have the urge to go buy groceries. i have the urge to drink hot tea. i have the urge to water my plants. i have the urge to pick up the bass and learn more than 2 notes. and the urge put pictures in frames, mix CDs, get an aquarium, hang out at a country bar, go pet a dog, climb a tree, cruise erie blvd, sit on my balcony, wear my cowboy hat and boots, do sit ups and push ups, milk a cow, email and call old friends, and fly to texas.

turn off your damn tv, Ben. the tv is evil. tv is the devil. die, devil, die.

ummm...at least until "queer eye" comes on. (one addiction at a time, please.)

after reading today's blog, consider yourself 18% stupider than you were before. it's late and i'm tired. quality suffers.



why is it i'm always ahead of the times? am i that cool? yes.

lite beer. i drank it before it was cool. i'd buy a keg of it for the frat and everyone would get pissed. but now, lite beer and low carbs are the rage.

top gun ray bans. i had em when i was in 7th grade. (that was like, '91.) they were prescription, no less. and now? everyone is wearing dollar store aviator sunglasses. and...umm...i am too. again.

long sleeved t-shirts. i had these damn things when they were sorely out of style. you know, a t-shirt with the bright colored sleeves and some ironed-on logo like "FORD RACING" or something. now i wish i still had them... maybe i do. somewhere.

vented hats. farmers wear 'em. and no one else. until now. if you have a vintage vented cap, you can wear it, and be cool. is the brim is flat? even better. just don't have a flat brim on your fitted baseball cap, DORK.

AMC/Jeep. okay, i can't take credit for this one, but i drive one. remember the AMC eagle? the four wheel drive car? sure you do. and now everything is four wheel drive. for example, the Audi All Road is the 21st century eagle--sorta. and of course, there's the jeep scrambler--a mini pickup from the 80's before mini pickups were cool. and now? scramblers are rare and expensive. and cool. i think so, anyway.

i keep hoping to see myself on blogger's "blogs of note". still not there. but they MUST be reading me, cuz now they're talking about jobs finding out about blogs, which i wrote about yesterday. and they wrote about the onion article on moms finding blogs, right after i wrote about mom reading my blog. but then again, maybe they're reading tony instead.

in the news: the average net worth of a family at the poverty level is $10,300. really. how is this measured? does this include the value of their children sold as slaves? i'm well above the poverty level, and i sure as hell don't have that kind of net worth. all i have is credit card bills, old beat-ass furniture, a refurbished 3+ year old computer, some shirts from JC Penney, and random condiments in the fridge. the half jar of prego sauce is the most expensive thing i own.

speaking of things i own, my red truck went to the shop today. and as with all animals, children, and old cars, they mysteriously get better before they go to the doctor. the truck's been skipping & sputtering at low throttle, and today it's better. the guy at the shop said he felt it skip but he didn't know what it was, and since it's a 20 year old truck (actually it's only 15, pal) i should just live with it til it gets worse, cuz the diagnostic work is sixty bucks and hour. thanks. i know, i know--you just don't wanna work on it. so i settled for an oil change. the battery's also near death, but since they charge 10 bucks to change it, i figured i'd do that myself. my nice new interstate battery is prolly worth more than the rest of the vehicle. *sigh*

that is all. back to listless, solitary channel surfing.

allright. got some ideas from other people's blogs.

tony mentions work finding out about blogs compared to mom finding out about blogs. freaking gee whiz, if my job found out about my blog, i'd be toast. would that be a bad thing? i don't know. my blog keeps popping up in people's google searches. all i need is one of my bosses clicking away online and stumbling onto my crap. whoo hoo, what a field day that would be. oh well, what the hell do i care? perhaps i should care, however, if the troopers stumble on while doing my background check. hmmm.

and then....i'm sorta in the same situation as kristin. there's this barber shop i've been going to now for about a year and a half. it's got like 8 barbers. a real guy's place. if you want highlights and shit, then go to the salon. if you want a shitty-and-uneven-we-can't-cut-mens-hair-even-though-we-say-we-can-type haircut, go to supercuts. if you want a real man's haircut that doesn't suck, you go to this place i go to. and i've been getting haircuts from the same guy--let's call him innievay (pig latin translator)--since i've been going there. he does a great job. that's why i have him do it. BUT...one day i went in there, and innievay was on vacation. crap. so i go to the guy next to him. let's call him anthonyway. cuz that's his real name. the guy cuts my hair like a champ and it is the best damn haircut i've ever had. even better, it lasted for a freaking month instead of 2-3 weeks. but now you know the problem--if i want these same great haircuts, i have to break up my relationship with innievay and go to anthonyway, which, as i mentioned, is THE CHAIR RIGHT NEXT TO INNIEVAY. how can i do that? that's like breaking up with your girlfriend and dating her sister. or her mom. you just don't do that. but i can't wait for innievay to go on vacation all the time. i can't stalk innievay and sneak in when he's on lunch. what do i do? i mean, a good haircut comes first. i let anthonyway in on this dilemma and he said he'd be my backup for when innievay's gone and stuff. i'm getting a haircut tomorrow. i wonder when innievay's going on lunch break? hmmm.... man, this makes me feel like such a cold, dirty bastard.

i haven't blogged in 5 days. thats a long time. guess i haven't had any stories to tell lately. hmmm....it'll have to wait til the world gives me an idea. more soon, i promise.

Talk about irony. My mom starts reading my blog. Now everyone's moms are reading everyone's blogs. (the onion article.) that is whack. are moms out to get us all??? actually, i think i'm pretty safe. no drug use, casual sex, or general misconduct. i'm a good boy. mom even thinks i'm a good writer. how do i know? cuz mommy said so, thats why!



perhaps i should consider a new line of work. this one looks good. better than what i'm currently doing, anyway.

more about work. today i found out that the GM's told my supervisor to write up a warning slip for me because i didn't take a lunch break one day over two weeks ago. the reasoning is, there is no excuse to not take a lunch break, and it is state law. okay, fine. you got me there. let's ignore the fact that this is normal operating procedure, since we are short staffed on managment. if we were so busy that i couldn't take a break, i was doing it out of necessity and for the good of the company. the only other reason would be that there just wasn't anyone there to cover my break, since there are only three managers to cover over 100 hours during the week, and many times there's only one of us there. skipping breaks, or adding in breaks that we never took to timecards is commonplace. how many breaks have i punched myself out for and worked through? who knows. a lot. also ironic is that of us three managers, i'm the stickler for taking breaks and having correct timecards. but for some reason, the GMs decided to search thru thousands of employee timecards and found one of mine? hmmm. i wonder if this has anything to do with them finding out i am going for the trooper job and them wanting me demoted for it. hmmm. they've fired and demoted people at other shops for stupid little stuff like this before. the GM told my super, "we're not out to get Ben", but what other reason would they do that for? now they have a written warning slip for me, which is all they need to fire or demote me. (my record with this company was spotless until now.) okay general managers, if you want to fuck me, THEN FUCK ME ALREADY. don't pansy-ass around. yes, i just said the f-word twice. yes, that's the first time i've said the f-word in my blog. yes, mom is gonna read the f-word. twice. she'll understand. she might just be saying it herself.

it's official. mom's reading my blog. gotta watchit, i guess.



my life is like a Ben Stiller movie.

where do i begin. yesterday, i couldn't get anything to go my way. my day was pathetically, ironically, and incessantly going wrong. once again, i spent a better part of the day parts-hunting for the red truck, including the 200 mile round trip lafargeville and back to syracuse. i went to advance auto, which, for some reason, i keep going back to even though they perpetually give me the wrong freaking parts. this time, i returned a heater hose and got a bunch of other crap. after having my sale interrupted by 20 other customers and phone calls (as usual at advance auto) they tallied my total. since i'm broke, i whipped out the credit card. de-NIED. what the *&%$#??? i since i had taken all other credit cards out of my wallet, i had to drive all the way back to my apartment, thru the sketchy part of town around the junk cars on the street and past the leering stares of the downtrodden getto-dwellers for a total of THREE TIMES to get another card. i grabbed two, just in case, and a smart thing too, cuz the first one i tried using was....in-VALID. what the @#&%$??? turns out my payment is 1.3 days late on the first, so it's "off" til they receive payment, and the other, they closed the account due to lack of use. how convenient! THEN i was off to another parts store to return another part and had to deal with this freaking yutz that couldn't understand how they'd given me the wrong part. anyway, then i was off to lafargeville.
it was a cold-ass ride. near record lows. like 20's and 30's low. not bad by a northern new yorker's standards, but bad enuff for early november, especially in a soft top jeep with no heater. you'd think after three grand of motor work, the heater would put out, but no. 0.00 BTU's of heat. just cold air. i dicked with the heater and thought i had it fixed, and also put a piece of cardboard infront of the radiator. no difference. i could remove the radiator and connect the two hoses together and this thing would still not get hot. frigging prehistoric cold-blooded freak of the automotive world. upon inspection, the heater hoses were ice cold, meaning the heater core is probly plugged. NEXT, i brought the parts (including heater parts--neither vehicle has heat) to tom (the guy working on the truck) and when we opened one of the boxes, we discovered the knucklehead counter guy at advance gave me the wrong brake caliper. apparently to him, the "right side" means "drivers side." GODDAMMIT! after nearly $1000 in repairs, most of which is going on credit, i'm really wondering if i should just sell this truck and start over. but i've frickin fixed everything that CAN be fixed! what could POSSIBLY go wrong now?? (famous last words, no doubt.)
i checked out heaters at walmart--the kind that plug into the cigarette lighter. for 30 bucks, i could buy one that could warm up one hand at a time, or i could just stick my hand under my ass for free. but wait! i have a 110 volt, 7 amp, 750 watt power converter in my truck. so i bought a little household heater. just as i was about to plug it in while idling in the parking lot, i....ran out of gas! mercifully, not out on the road. the one thing i'm prepared for! (i have a gallon jug of gas in the back, cuz my gas gauge doesn't work.) so THEN i limped to the gas station and dropped $35 bucks for gas--NOW i'm ready to hit the road back to syracuse. i gleefully plugged in my new heater and listened to it scream in agony and begin to stink like hot motor because it apparently draws more power than the converter puts out. so no heat. great. apparently they lied when they wrote on the box that it only draws 600 watts. maybe you have to convert it to chinese watts, since that's where it was probly made.
then i went to mcdonalds. substituted hot chocolate for the soda. it was too hot, so i put it in front of the heater vent to cool it off. but not before i burned my tongue.
i thought i was the coldest person on the road until i this guy on a harley came up behind me on the highway. i felt bad for him for about 2 seconds, as i moved over to let him pass, and then instantly wished his balls would freeze off as he dodged me and another car to pass me on the right while giving me a dirty look. prick. can't wait half a second for me to move, so he nearly makes me run his ass over. then while downtown some jackass honked at me while i was waiting to turn. then i came up on a car parked right on the edge of an intersection. i wanted to give it a bumper-nudge into the intersection so a passing 18-wheeler could t-bone the shit out of it. but i didn't.
i also figured out why i'm so poor. the 6-month-old pay program at work has jacked me out of about 6 grand that i woulda had, as each check gets smaller and smaller. dirty bastards.



finally, one good note: the lunar eclipse was a great show. i haven't seen one in many years. it really gives perspective in regards to the solar system and the moon's orbit and all that. very cool for the science dorks out there, like me.

anyone seen the discovery show, Dirty Jobs? very funny show. too bad discovery doesnt even have it on their website, or i'd link it. it's on fridays at 10. (yeah, i know, you're home on friday nights like me.) ever wonder what they do with fish remnants? know what it's like to tromp thru several feet of bat shit? or did you know that EVERY baseball used by EVERY major league team for the last 50-some years is rubbed with some kind of backwoods bayou mud that is collected by this redneck guy down south? you didn't know that, and now you do. watch the show.

i have gotten 0.00 emails in the last two days. neither has mark. it's gotta be a conspiracy. someone's eating all the emails.

nightmares.

mine aren't the typical kind. i don't dream about aliens, monsters, and murderers. what do i dream about? the other night i dreamt that i was back in my last semester of college. the semester was more than halfway over. between classes, i faintly remembered that i had been taking two classes at the beginning of the semester... and i'd totally forgot about them until now!!!! and i need every credit hour to graduate!!!! did i really have these classes?? have i really missed weeks and weeks of classes?? am i dreaming?? where's my schedule??? back at the frat house! do i even have a copy of my schedule??? i gotta get home to check the schedule!!!!!! i can't flunk out of cornell for the stupidest of stupid reasons! no! this isn't happening!!?!!?

yes, that is my nightmare. hellish, i know. screwed me up for half the morning.

i refuse to shave today, for it is my first real day off in 12 days. hooray for me.
i'm headed to the junkyard today. need parts to help resurrect the red pickup. the scrambler will be going into hibernation soon.
in case you're wondering, i am not a depends nor herbal essences user (see below.)

at my job's awards banquet last night: "and the central NY shop of the year goes to...(us)!" (we all go nucking futs. all wrongs are forgiven.) "oh wait, i'm sorry. sorry. the shop of the year goes to (a different shop). sorry about that, guys. congratulations, (them)!" (all forgiveness immediately re-friggin-voked.) you've got to be fff-freaking kidding me. some of our guys were halfway to the podium already.
ah, runners up. second best is almost as good. at least our location got a bunch of other cool awards. none for me personally, but i expected none. i did however win one of the raffle items--a big-ass foster's beer umbrella (for a patio table.) i don't know what the hell to do with it, but i like it anyway. we had it out on the dance floor and one of the guys did a well-recieved pole dance on it. if only we'd had a camera, you'd be seeing jay in all his glory now.

since my cash flow approximately equals my earnings, i've been avoiding buying groceries for a couple weeks now. but at this point, i have just enough TP for one more job, so i finally broke down and went to wegmans, the grocery store that has everything. everything you need and a lot of shit you'll never need. everything but: golden griddle syrup, crowley's yogurt, eggo mini waffles that aren't freezerburnt, and pumpkin pie that ain't half baked. and i swear to gawd they re-arrange the toiletries/bathroom stuff section EVERY FREAKIN DAY. you think you know where to find the right guard sport stick and then it's not there anymore. it's over where the depends used to be. no, wait--i'm thinking of the hairspray. that used to be in next to the band-aids. shit, no... wait... lysterine... herbal essences... IN THE CHEESE SECTION?? what the hell.
so i had to go to P&C to get the last odds & ends. good old P&C. they may be going out of business, but at least they have golden griddle syrup.

apparently the balmy southern climate of Syracuse, NY is the perfect place for black and pinkish-red crap to grow in my tub, sink and toilet (or as my dad calls it, the "terlit".) this is opposed to NNY, where you can't hardly get dandelions to grow before winter. i've never seen red stuff grow anywhere before. the dow scrubbing bubbles only knock it down for a week or so. i'm waiting for the yellow slime molds to start oozing out of the tub next.

i guess i just don't understand how the internet works. according to my blogger stats, someone found my blog while doing a yahoo search for "jeep wrangler oil change walk thru". okay, there are about a batrillion websites out there, give or take a couple, right? and some dude trying to figure out how to change his oil ends up on my site? how does my crap have any relavance to that? i've mentioned "jeep", "oil change", and "wrangler" but...whatever. i just don't get it. isn't there something else out there that could possibly be more helpful to this dude (or chick) trying to change their oil? not that i mind someone finding my site...that's the whole point of the thing.

as you can see, things have been quite confusing in the last 24 hours. at least tony wrote me back--i emailed him a thanks-for-the-link email. tony rocks.

mark: i have bruce springsteen's hits CD. don't waste more money on itunes.
and surge sucked. sorry. it was good the first time we tried it, like in 1996 or whenever, but now i'll take a mountain dew over that stuff any day.

As for those details i promised...in a nutshell: i am possibly getting demoted from senior to assistant because they found out i was job searching. if that happens, i can't afford to stay here (not to mention i would be doing the same job for shitloads less, and i have a few ounces of pride left, so i ain't doing that.) so i'll be out of there and looking elsewhere, probably home. cheaper there. kinda what i wanted, but it's not on my terms or timeline.

that being said, i'm gonna close that book for a while. i gotta come up with some happier stuff to keep you guys interested. hmmm...

I got linked by TONY! that's like being linked by bill gates. groovy super cool. tony's blog is the blog of blogs and if you know blogs, you should already be reading it.

i have concluded, as of this morning, that i actually have an identifiable 6 pack. with just a tad of padding around the bellybutton. sweet. i'm in the best shape of my life. now if i just had someone to show it to.... : )



believe it or not, the world's largest six pack is not in my shirt, but here.

AND NOW...nothing. what a crap day. more details later. in the meantime, check this out. my pledge brother Kary, from 1998. Gasoline + pumpkins + Fall Creek Gorge + Alpha Zeta pledges = one humorously creepy photo. enjoy. happy halloween.