There’s nothing to say here. Just read.
7 Mar
breaking even
Yesterday was the first lucky day I’ve had in several years. Nothing lifts your spirits like a lucky day, I was euphoric. Notice, I said was. Today was an unlucky day.
It all started on Wednesday. I had been wanting some new shoes for awhile, mostly because I ruined my leather loafers in the snow and my sneakers were wore out. I put a lot of thought into this new pair of shoes over the last few weeks and even had my next THREE pairs of shoes planned out. I was on top of my shoe game. So Wednesday I went to the mall to pick up my new sneaks; black Chuck Taylor high-tops. I was a little uneasy about getting them at first but the more I wear them, the more I enjoy them.
Yesterday I spent an hour or so preparing for a pop-quiz I expected to have in my annoyingly difficult chemistry class. An hour of studying wasn’t enough and I felt unprepared for the quiz. Ten minutes into lecture the fire alarm goes off. A smile helplessly gleamed across my face. “This type of thing never happens to me!” I thought to myself. Everyone grabs their stuff and starts to head outside. With everyone thinking about a possible quiz no one dares to leave and stays to stick out the false alarm. Once outside, I realized that false alarm fires never last more than 15 minutes. I then began to calculate how much time we would have left in class and if it were enough to still take a quiz. There was plenty. The fire trucks come screaming around the corner at an alarming rate, and “I think wow, they are taking this serious. Maybe it’s a real fire.” It was. Then I recalculated the time and realized that there was now no way they could let us back inside in less than 30 minutes. I had dodged a quiz. Later, the professor tells us to have a good weekend and we are free to leave.
I couldn’t believe it. I was ecstatic, everyone was ecstatic. With my good fortune on my back, I headed over to the parking department to appeal a $40 ticket I had gotten the night before. I have an “A” parking pass and parked in a D spot. Before going inside, I prepared an argument, “Well Ms. parking dept. worker, according to the alphabet, A is higher than D; therefore my pass should have been valid. Yea yea, that’s good. Play the dumb card.” I strolled in confidently like I was walking into a strip club for business, not pleasure. After stating my argument, I filled out a two line form and was on my way. The parking ticket was cleared, my pathetic excuse had worked. My spirits were high, I was having a lucky day.
This morning I awoke at 10 am and laid in bed until 11. I opened my blinds and saw what a beautiful day it was. My brother said it was going to be 70 and sunny and he was going to go for a motorcycle ride. I was headed to the library for the day. Before leaving I decided to play some upbeat music on my computer; Jason Mraz and Julia Nunes. Happy tunes, indeed. I left my bathroom door open so I could sing along in the shower. I was literally dancing as I was brushing my teeth. I decided that this music would be great to listen to in my car, so I grabbed my phone and began downloading some music. At first, I got on itunes and was going to purchase the Jason Mraz and Julia Nunes albums for $10 each, but I thought “let’s see if they’re on Limewire.” They were. I stole them. I transferred them to my brand new phone and started playing them immediately through the phone’s speakers. I headed down to the garage. On the steps (inside my garage) leading from my house down about 2 feet to the garage floor, I sat down to put on my new Chuck Taylors. I have to tie my chucks, something I’m not used to doing because I usually just slip my shoes on. So I sat down and sat my phone on my lap. I didn’t sit it on the steps because I was afraid a piece of sand or the rough surface would scratch it. I put the left shoe on first. Tied. I brought my right leg up to put on the other shoe. As I did so, my cell phone slips off my lap and falls off, bounces off the step and hits the wall, falling into a 2 x 4 inch hole in the cinder block foundation of the garage. Let me explain this more clearly. To the right of the stairs is a dry-wall, wall that sits on top of a cinder block wall. The cinder blocks barely stick out, exposing a small hole that my beloved, beautiful new cell phone magically falls into. I know, epic fail.
After realizing what had just happened, and Will Ferrell’s voice playing in my head, “THAT JUST HAPPENED!” I began repeating WTF over and over again. I tried to stick my hand in the hole but it wouldn’t fit (That’s what he said). So I ran inside to get a pair of grill tongs, determined to get it out quickly. I stuck them in and realized I couldn’t see the phone and the tongs weren’t hitting the bottom of the hole. I grabbed a flashlight and shined it down. The hole went below the floor of the garage. It was 4 feet deep and I see my phone, face up playing that happy Jason Mraz tune. Fuck you Jason Mraz. You put my phone in a hole.
After realizing the tongs wouldn’t reach, I began to come to terms that my phone was gone, lost in a hole in my own garage. But a storm of determination swept over me and I got into my car and raced to the hardware store. I say raced because I was so pissed I did like 60 in a 30 all the way there. I found a saleswoman and asked her where I could get a big long stick and something grippy. She showed me the stick and some 3M sticky tape. I was much obliged. I purchased a stick and some tape. $9.53. Almost ten dollars for a fucking stick and tape. Pissed, I folded down my seat and stuck the 8′ long stick through my trunk and up through my back seat. The stick reached from the end of the trunk to my windshield. I got in and sped home. On the last intersection before my house, I hit the gas which caused my backseat to slam backwards, snapping my big long stick into two medium sized sitcks. FML. I got home grabbed the sticks and tape and spiked them on the floor. I rigged up a couple of sticky chop sticks and started playing “Operation” in the hole. The sticks were too wide and kept getting stuck between the wall and the cinder block, so I had to cut them, after breaking them twice, retaping them, and fashioning a flashlight to one, I was ready to go. Maneuvering the sticks was no easy task, but after taking one out and putting a bunch of sticky shit on just one stick I stuck it to the face of the phone and began to pick it up. “It’s working! It’s working! Omg, It’s almost to the top! Holy shit! YES!” When it was 3 inches from the top of the hole, I went to grab it with my right hand, but the stick moved slightly and sent a vibration down the shaft knocking the phone off and back down the hole. I screamed obscenities for a solid ten minutes. I then tried again, only to realize that the phone had now fallen under the floor impossible to reach. I screamed obscenities for a solid half hour.
I went inside and wrote a note to my brother saying to call the phone insurance company and order me a replacement phone. I threw my credit card on the counter. I tried to regain some composure and finally head to the library after being lost in a whirlwind of stupidity for nearly three hours. While driving I couldn’t help to think about karma and how my lucky day yesterday was so quickly offset by my unlucky day today. I began to analyze and calculate.
Getting my parking ticket cleared: +$40
Stealing music from the internet: +$20
Insurance deductible for losing my phone: -$50
Price for a big stick and some tape: -$10
This weekend, I broke even. But tonight, when I return home and pull my car into the garage, I will be haunted by Jason Mraz emanating from the depths of my house because my playlist was on repeat and my cell phone’s battery lasts about 3 days.
16 Jan
the snuggie: frodo got it right
My God, what a magical invention! If you don’t know what a Snuggie is, allow me to explain. It’s a blanket that you can wear like a robe. That’s it! So simple, yet so gratifying! Woopity-do you might say. I say, imagine lying in your dish chair watching I Love New York and your cell phone rings across the room. Without even hesitating you can now answer your mom’s call without losing body heat. I have to confess, out of all the times I’ve curled up in my sex chair, I mean dish chair, with my favorite blanket and bag of pop-secret, I never imagined that one day I could place the fluffy snack into my mouth without exposing my arm to my frigid sixty-seven degree living room. We keep it sixty-seven because my dad bitches about the high heating bill. I told him that a few extra bucks a month isn’t going to kill him. He told me to get a Snuggie. I thank him every day.
If you don’t find the Snuggie worth the two easy payments of $19.95, then I don’t think you are fully grasping the versatility of the garment. Not only can you stay warm while cranking out that W131 paper, but you can get double the use by going as Father Time for Halloween. Furthermore, you have a legitimate offer to that cute girl in psych class. You might say to her, “Hey what’s up? I just got my Snuggie yesterday in the mail, I thought you might want to come over and watch House with me while we wear our Snuggies. You can be my Snuggie-buddy.” She would respond, “Oh, but I don’t have a Snuggie.” No worries, because being the suave, prepared Snuggie owner you are, you purchased two. Yes sir, four easy payments of $19.95. And just like that, you have yourself a Snuggie buddy, never to watch House again alone. Maybe after the show, you can even cut out another hole and act out your favorite Lord of the Rings fantasy. Yea, I went there.
Hell, if you grow so fond of your Snuggie, you may even want to throw a Snuggie party. You can invite all of your Snuggie buddies over and huddle around a space heater drinking hot chocolate. As a pick-up line, you’d say, “more whipped cream…babe?” And as an added bonus – now when you throw up on yourself, it’s a quick and easy one-garment wash. Use the “delicates” cycle though, you gotta keep that Snuggie looking new and fresh to impress the ladies! No girl wants a guy in a ratty-ass Snuggie! No really, I asked around. They said were appalled at even the question of a ratty-ass Snuggie. And if you just can’t find enough reasons to buy yourself a Snuggie, add this next reason to the list and I’m sure you’ll be asking me for the 1-800 number; because now you have the ultimate excuse when you began your explanation to your guy friends the day after, “dude, I couldn’t tell! I mean, she just looked so good in that Snuggie!”
Oh, and I bought one for my dog too. He loves it.
15 Jan
i am nerd
You know what I like to do? I like to type in google to other search engines just to show them that google is a superior search engine. I hope that when they compile the top searches on their website that google comes out number one. What a slap in the face that would be. I’m talking to you Live Search; man you suck.
9 Dec
grand theft love
Originally Posted: Fri, 3 Oct 20:04 EDT
To the girl who stole my bike as a gesture of flirtation – m4w
Date: 2008-10-03, 8:04PM EDT
“Oh hey,” you’d say as I walked up. “I was just stealing your bike.”
“What the fuck?” I’d say.
“I feel terrible,” you’d say. And then you’d say something cute to move things along, like “Can I make it up to you with coffee?”
I totally understand where you were coming from–we all have a hard time starting a conversation with the person we have a crush on. Your plan was actually really good and clever and I am just so so bummed that we missed each other. I can imagine how awful you felt–it’s midnight in East Williamsburg and you’re standing there holding 3-foot-long garden clippers and feeling very, very conspicuous. There’s a busted chain pooled at your feet and a beautiful old white Italian racing bike with blue highlights and red handlebar tape leaning up against a stop sign, and I’m nowhere in sight. You’re starting to wonder whether I’m ever going to show up. Maybe I’ve gone to Arizona for the weekend or something.
Then you realize, with a sense of dread that grows and grows the longer you wait, that you can’t just leave the bike there and abandon the whole plan–the chain is well and truly cut, so the bike isn’t secure anymore and it would be all too easy for some complete and total fucking asshole to walk away with it and make maybe $150 selling my most beloved possession and possibly greatest and most trusted friend so far in New York. If this were to happen, if this hypothetical asshole were to walk away with my bike, which I just spent my first month here searching for and then carefully patching up and tuning, then where would all my love for this bike go? It would simply vanish. The bike would be reduced to an object of monetary value and I would be reduced to a guy who has to find a new bike. There would be measurably less love in the world, and the hypothetical asshole who had stolen my bike would therefore be a destroyer of love. A Love Destroyer.
You, of course, could not allow this to happen. The destruction of love is antithetical to your core mission in life, which is to create love, more love, for me. So you decided to take the bike for safe-keeping. THANK YOU. I cannot express how grateful I am and how eager to finally to have our long-awaited conversation, which might honestly be a little awkward now but will be well worth it. I’ve been pretty lonely in my first month in New York and kind of missing my ex-girlfriend and frankly I’m just really flattered that you’ve taken an interest in me.
I can’t wait to meet you. And to get my bike back.
- Location: East Williamsburg
- it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests
12 Sep







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