Thursday, February 18, 2010

Floating Holidays

I bet responsible people budget their floating holidays to correspond with family gatherings such as Christmas or Thanksgiving. That's fucking dumb. Why the hell would you add an extra day by the fire watching the Macy's parade when you can take it right away and go to Aspen? Responsible people probably budget their vacation time as well or even worse let it roll over to the next year. Anytime I hear someone say, "Oh I can't go on this trip, I can't take the time off work." Or the people that go on vacations but still check their work email? Are you fucking kidding me? WHo cares how the market performed today or if the McNally deal went through or not. You are on a beach with a cocktail. You should be thinking "too close for missles, I'm switching to guns" and befriend the tiki bar server and take tequilla shots with him.

The only thing I think about when I get back from a vacation, is my next vacation. In fact sometimes I talk about my next vacation on my current vacation. I fucking scribble that shit all over the place at my desk, talk about it all day, it reminds me that if I can survive until said date I will be free. In the span of Q1 2010 I will have been on 3 major vacations, and several other getaways. I use a mixture of unpaid vacation time, sick days, and #floating holidays to do this. It helps that I don't have to pay for housing in the Bahamas, Vegas and Aspen, but someone who makes less than a salaried manager at Sonic shouldn't live this sort of lifestyle.

Quick side rant, people that call in sick when they are sick are idiots. You should come in when you are sick and do absolutely nothing. One of two things will happen, you will be sent home and NOT docked a sick day or you will just sit there and do nothing, no one will expect you to do anything if you are obviously sick. Sick days are for hangovers and unapproved vacations (cough cough I'm sick..."Peanuts, get your peanuts.") Yes Sick days are great for Day Games. End Rant.

I think I'm nearing some sort of hypothesis, quick interjection...when I write this blog I never have any idea what direction I'm going to take it...I just Go. AT some point I find a rational (or irrational) though and I just follow it. Right, well then, I think what I am trying to say is...nothing could ever make me a slave to my job. If I was on the beach and I checked my work email and found out something terrible...I would still be on the beach, why would you check your work email? If something bad is in there and you don't look at it...you'll never know. It's kind of like why I never check the mail at home, it's probably just bills, I feel like if I don't acknowledge them, they will just go away or something.

Jet-setting every weekend in the winter is great, and while it may not be the most fiscally responsible decision, I'm living in the now. I might plan a spring break for late March after this blog post, because when I'm 40, I'm not going to look back on the time that I was 23 and made 50 cold calls on a Monday morning in March. I'm going to remember tearing Ajax to shreds and then getting shattered at Erick's with some ski bums. In fact when I am 40 I will probably have a wife, kids, never get laid and my only vacations will be annual trips to Disney World...now is the time for the irresponsible bender paid for by money I don't have using the vacation time I haven't accrued. Don't think...just do.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Blowing off steam

I feel like a total douche...I only posted once this week, and it was just a link to some other really great article. I had just a miserable week...like literally one for the ages. I got yelled at by every single one of my managers at work for something every day...I was in traffic for a record 24 hours this week due to an impromptu snowstorm...and oh ya, the Colts lost the fucking superbowl.

A bad week in college was getting kicked out of a bar before 2 am, back to back whiskey dick episodes, or an 8 am interview on a Friday...that was it. Now I deal with that shit like twice daily...its called life. So what do you do when the world turns its back on you? (you turn your back on the world hakuna motata?)

No, you drive down to St. Louis to get fucking shit-housed for 2 days to forget about how much your present life sucks. For 48 hours I will make hurricane jokes about the real mardi gras because I now have a lifelong grudge against New Orleans, and because of some age old tradition, I will throw plastic beaded necklaces at drunken 17 year olds and get a free peep show to some high quality live action lolita porn (too much? maybe who cares.)

I've been jet setting a lot lately and my actions are spiraling quite out of control, my friends are in the early workings of staging an intervention. (Oh the irony the kid behind me just put on Joe Walsh's Life's been good to me so far) on that note if my current actions leave me unable to talk due to substance induced strokes when I'm 60 but I can still shred the guitar like the Eagles' axe-man, well, I'll chalk life up as a success.

Mardi Gras is a holiday that was turned into a booze juiced party ebcause it falls in the middle of winter...depressing. Maybe this mini-bender will spark some life back into a once vibrant and joyful individual...or maybe my vices will get the best of me this weekend and I'll come back with some great war stories but just a little bit more emotionally hollow...

...or maybe I'll find the girl of my dreams and by her a Vermont Teddy Bear for Valentine's day...stay tuned my friends.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

The Anti-bro

Read this article...have a good laugh...and then write a condescending comment calling this kid a fag.
http://www.dailygamecock.com/viewpoints/egotistical-hedonistic-misogynistic-males-need-to-bro-out-1.1115291?firstComment=0

Friday, February 5, 2010

Into the wild

I have become so disgusted with the hipocrisy and the self-absorbed nature of these ignorant and narrowminded egocentric Americans that I have decided to selflessly take upon myself an act of moral cleansing by burning all of my possessions and going into the wilderness to find meaning in life...

Fuck that. I represent literally everything that is wrong with America. Not only do I spend money that I don't have to keep up my socialite status, the only 2 things I ever consider when making a decision is the direct impact it will have on me and the perception others have of me...and I am largely devoid of emotion.

That said, I am going north of the border today to some mythical location called the Wisconsin Dells. While I am going to stay in a luxurious cabin on a cul de sac near a resort, I like to think that it is adventurous. I've always wanted to take a shotgun and a case of beer out into the woods and just start shooting shit, but I think that I will treat this trip as if I were going to a lake house...except there is snow on the ground, and no lake...and no boat. I am mandating that the girls still remain in swimsuits the entire time.

Lake house weekends are always legendary as the highlight is usually getting outrageously drunk with people you have been friends with for 10 years+ playing very intense card games, violent tubing battles and usually some accidental/intentional nudity of some sort, but I digress...

The Wisconsin Dells must be the tackiest place on Earth...In the middle of nowhere some idiot had the great idea to put a wax museum, a haunted house and a big ass indoor water park. Along with strip clubs and casinos this place is just begging for a group of bored twenty somethings to come burn it to the ground, and I will be happy to oblige. On the 3 hour car ride up I am going to be live-tweeting the effects on "Purple drank" (cough syrup, vodka, grape soda, xanax) on my pals...I shall obstain, because I don't want to pull a Brittany Murphy...I'd much rather pull a Janis Joplin...some day there will be consequences for the decisions that I'm making now...but fuck it they'll probably have cures for everything and free liver replacements in like 2 or 3 years anyway...replace every 30,000 blackouts.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Spring Break 2010

It sounds ridiculous right? I graduated college less than a year ago...it's over no more Spring Breaks. That couldn't be more false! If I had knocked up my high school sweetheart back in '04 and was now taking my family to Disney World for a week in March no one would frown on that (except for the unprotected sex at 17, the high school pregnancy, the fact that ruined that poor girls life and made her live at home with her mom raising your child while you went to college and joined a frat.) But, who says you need an unfortunate excuse to take a week off from the real world and go to the beach and rage. Not me.

The concept of Spring Break was probably invented by some thirty year old Bro who hated his job, the Chicago weather and thought if he took his wife and kid to Florida for a week they would get off his case for a few months. What a hero, he basically imposed his will on society making it mandatory for every school to take an arbitrary week off just before it gets nice in the midwest, and made society accept high school and college kids storming quiet beach towns in the south and destroying them upon arrival.

His legacy is not lost on me, I intend to honor him by doing exactly that. Ok, by this point I would hope I have you sold on the early 20's March vacation. Now if it tragically happens to coincide with college spring break would you immediately villianize me? I should hope not! I'll take it a step further, much like a trip down to the homeland I may just crash on a buddy's couch, I mean, hotel room floor. If you're going to do something you might as well do it right.

I never took a domestic Spring Break when I was of age. Mainly because I enjoy spending my parents money like it's water and I love shoving my exotic travels down the throats of those less fortunate than I.

*Sidebar: There are a lot of categories of people that I can't stand. But I think right at the top of my list is people that go on Spring Break. I understand if you are in 4th grade and daddy got some of his overtime shifts pulled and he has to take you to King's Island for a day instead of taking you to a coast or a mountain for a week...but those high school and college morons who just go home and "relax" or "save money" make me want to vomit. I mean COME ON...either you don't have friends or you don't have a soul. A proper Spring Break can be done for $300. (Although its much more fun when you spend $2000) End sidebar.

I always wondered what it would be like to rage in Key West or Daytona as a 21 year old. Obviously throughout high school and early college I knocked out the mainstays of Siesta Key, Panama City, Ft. Meyers, Miami, to name a few. But I really wonder how badass it is going to be to rip it for a week with my college buddies and 2,000 chicks who are impressed by any dude that buys them more than 1 vodka red bull.

Creepy, eh, a little. Peter Pan Syndrome at its worst? Probably. Is it going to be a legendary trip for the ages? Oh ya. Maybe I'll fly, maybe I'll roadtrip, (sometimes these car rides make great memories.) Regardless of what I end up doing, I hope I have inspired you to do the same.

Monday, February 1, 2010

Let's do dinner and drinks

Such a popular text, tweet or facebook status update: The infamous dinner and drinks. Now while I usually have no problem with a same-sex rendevous at an establishment that boasts both delicious entrees and heavily garnished cocktails, the phrase dinner and drinks drives me to insanity.

I don't know if people offer these arbitrary encounters out of an obligatory sense of losing touch or they want people to think that they are sophisticated because "going for dinner and drinks" is such a mature thing to do. I mean why not catch a revival of "South Pacific" at a community theatre while you're at it. I suppose this dinner and drinks idea just stands against anything I could ever be in favor of. It implies polite conversation at a trendy spot, ordering an expensive meal, becoming lightly buzzed and then awkwardly fumbling over the check when your waitress assumes you are a gay couple out for a night on the town and fails to split it. (An assumption that would have never been made in the 1950's) So there you are with someone who you aren't great friends with enduring an awkward stand-off for who will pick up the bill. You cave, of course, and now you are $100 lighter in the pocket, sober and you don't even get to take your date home and relieve some aggression.

Perhaps I am being a bit cynical, but I view the entire concept of "let's grab dinner and drinks" as laughable. Look how adult we are, but we are also fun because we can go out and casually drink...on a work night whooooooaaaaa.

I am not however opposed to going out to eat and getting serious on the consumption...listen to how I tell pretty much the exact same scenario but with a different attitude, I go from sounding like a prissy C-muscle to a straight up bro.
"Hey you want to go to Uncle Julio's and see how long it takes for us to get kicked out?" I am still implying that I would like to go on a man-date to a food establishment, but instead of trying to convince people I'm so adult by using the catchphrase "dinner and drinks" I basically asked if my partner in crime would like to accompany on a bit of midweek binge drinking at an establishment that just so happens to serve tacos.

So next time one of you is considering asking me whether or not I would like to accompany you to get something to eat, just ask with a little bit of integrity and I will be more than happy to oblige you.