happiness

This is an older story that I never published because I never had a means of conveying a vital aspect of the story til I got my webcam just recently...

One time while I was in the shower, I farted and it sounded exactly like Ray Romano in distress. This is how it went:

...I couldn't stop laughing at myself. I wish I could start every morning off like that because that went on to be the best day I'd had in recent memory.

code

a story my sister in law told me, very slightly enhanced for entertainment purposes:

My sister in law and brother took their 11 kids or whatever to this family fun thing with music and arts and crafts and games and Dora the Goddamn Explorer and all this shit. The event's biggest draw was a guy making balloon animals and there was a 45-minute line to get them, which my family patiently waited through. A while later, they placed the balloon animals on a nearby table, freeing their hands to make crafts. So they made macaroni pictures, puff balls with googly eyes, friendship bracelets, and whatever else...sparkly pictures with glitter and glue. Then they went back to the table to find that the balloon animals that they'd waited so long for were no longer there. The kids were upset and the parents were upset to see the kids upset. On the way to the parking lot, they spotted a mother and her kids, carrying a familiar looking set of balloon animals and upon closer inspection they confirmed that these were the same ones that they'd lost (Sandy drew faces on them with a marker). Sandy confronted their mother and the exchange went something like this:

Sandy: Excuse me, I think those balloons belong to my kids.
Mother: They were sitting on a table by the arts and crafts area unattended.
Sandy: Yes, we left them on that table while we were doing arts and crafts.
Mother: Well if they're left with nobody around and nobody watching them, they're fair game. That's the rule.

I'm not knocking this lady for getting defensive. It's what any human being would have done. It's the way her defensiveness manifested itself that I find so entertaining. Apparently, there's an unspoken rule about unattended balloon animals? Whatever. It's the first time I've ever heard of it. I guess it's kinda like the laundromat rule where if your basket is on top of a machine, that's like having "dibs" on it, even if it's not being used at the moment.

Human behavior is mostly pretty predictable. It's those variances within that predictable behavior that make up the spice of life.

misinterpretation

A text message conversation I just had with Peter...

Peter: Wats up wit all tese asian ohio st fans?
Sol: Well i think a lot of japanese people jump on the bandwagon because they mistake "buckeye" for "bukkake"
Peter: Wow - is that original? If so that's good material
Sol: Yeah i just thought of that. if they really were ohio state bukkake their fans would be the ones having a white out. I'm on fire.

Brutus Bukkake

reflection

If you haven't already heard, I'm leaving Cleveland at the beginning of December for the greener pastures of Atlanta so that I can aimlessly pursue happiness in whatever form I can find it. This past weekend in Birmingham was my last trade show as part of the FHI Heat team, which led me to do some reflecting on my time with the company. I realized that I've been too focused on the broader, more negative perspective that came from knowing that I've spent the last year and change in a situation and an industry that I strongly believe I have no future in. Despite all of that, the people I worked with and the ways in which I found brief moments of happiness made my day to day life not only bearable, but even enjoyable on most days. I spent the better part of my plane ride home making a list of the things that I'll miss when I leave. Here it is, in no particular order...

• the man cave
• Shirley's unwavering, steadfast, but hilarious negativity
• Ralph's spot-on impression of Shirley's unwavering, steadfast, but hilarious negativity
• Flashing Lights by Kanye West
  
• trying to trick Carl Massouh into thinking I'm gay
• Sherry talking my ear off about Devon
• "It's good."
• Jeff's proclivity for quickly turning a key word in a sentence that I just uttered into some unrelated but hilarious pun.
• the ride back to the hotel after trade show booth tear down is finished
  
• lunch meetings with Brian to discuss important fantasy football business
• keeping Michael Lee on his toes with gray areas of office conduct
• communal yumyums
• yumyums that someone else bought with their money
  
• trips to KeyBank, which I usually spent eating ice cream (Thanks, Debbie!)
  
• hearing Les laugh from the opposite side of the building
• disrupting other people's conference calls
• Melissa's soft-spoken way of charming me into doing her favors
  
• everyone's impersonations of everyone else
• the overwhelming sense of satisfaction, relief and unmitigated ecstasy I feel when I watch Tran do something computer-related that I used to have to do
  
• inappropriately making fun of Chinese people after hearing Paul spit Chinese on the phone with some Chinese Chinaman
• kicking the skidwrap soccer ball
  

morbidness

My mom called me the other day while she and my dad were putting their will together or making arrangements at the cemetery or something...

Mom: Sol, what's your phone number?
Sol: Nigga, YOU called ME, shouldn't you be able to figure this out? 216-###-####.
Mom: What's your address?
Sol: 6809..(blahblahblah)
Mom: Okay, thank you. Daddy and I are preparing to die.
Sol: Ohh... Had enough of this shit, huh?
Mom: What?
Sol: Nothing.

This is my favorite conversation with either my parents ever.

circumstances

Today I learned that Tryna Molina works in Pasadena, and it tickled me pink.

And before you ask, no it is not near the marina and she does not work with her BFF Gina.

specialization

I drove through at McDonald's, and it was one of those times where you pay at the first window and then pick up your food at the second. Not all the McDonald's employees are versatile enough to give you your change AND your food. Luckily, McDonald's managers are usually astute enough to recognize which employees can't and train them to specialize in one or the other.

But anyway, I stopped at the first window, handed over a credit card and got it back. Then I kept the car stopped in front of the window for two to three more seconds as I was putting the credit card back in my wallet. I guess the cashier mistook this delay as confusion on my part, because she said, "You pick up your food at the next window."

What I WANTED to say was, "I'm 27 years old. I know what the protocols for a drive-thru are." To my credit, rather than administering sass, I counted to ten and decided to just play dumb instead... "Oh, I gotta stop at ANOTHER window to get my food? Word? Okay."

What do I do or what is it about me that compels people to treat me like a retard?

distinction

My brothers' recent involvement with David Babaii for WildAid has sparked an unprecedented level of personal awareness for American popular culture in my father, which is my way of saying that he now knows who Kate Hudson is. The only other American actress he knows by name is Brooke Shields. It's evident, however, that his fascination with Kate Hudson is still in its earliest stages because he's still struggling to be able to distinguish her from other pretty white ladies. As we were waiting for breakfast this morning, we started flipping through issues of Cosmopolitan and Allure that were sitting on the table. He stopped on a photo of Drew Barrymore, pointed at it and turned the magazine so that it was facing me.

"Is that Kate Hudson? That's Kate Hudson, right?" my dad asked.

"Nope. That's Drew Barrymore."

He continued flipping until he saw the next photo of a pretty white lady...

"THAT'S Kate Hudson, right?"

"No. Blake Lively."

By the way, I LOVE Gossip Girl. But I digress...

To my delight, the Find-Kate-Hudson-in-the-Women's-Fashion-Magazine game continued for about ten more minutes. Here's a list of celebrities that my dad thought were Kate Hudson:

• Drew Barrymore
• Blake Lively
• Britney Spears
• Scarlett Johansson
• Ashton Kutcher (No, that's not a joke.)
• Kiera Knightley
• Kate Hudson (The blind squirrel found a nut.)
• Rachel McAdams
• Charlize Theron
  

He could probably pick her out of a lineup of black males, but that's about it. This goes to show that all white people can look alike to a Korean guy as much as all Asian people can look alike to a white person.

service

This happened while I was playing Scrabble with Sarah, after I dropped "TI" on her for 11 points.

Sarah: Ti???
Solomon: Ti... A drink with jam and bread.

...Of course that got me thinking about Julie Andrews, which made me pop a raging boner. Don't play dumb. You've popped a boner playing Scrabble before too.

climax

I've decided that I'm going to get after that girl...

...but not before a litmus test.

I'm optimistic that she'll pass it, but I need to know for sure. If she does, no more games after that.

Denouement and catharsis to come...

rationalization

I was about 30 minutes early for dinner with my parents at a restaurant tonight, so I looked for a diversion and the only thing around was a drug store. Every trip to a drug store until today has strictly been out of necessity and has therefore been quick and brainless. I don't enter a drug store with the intent to "shop." Instead, I go in to "buy things." There's a difference.

When you're at a drug store in the interest of passing time, you really start to reach for things to find fascinating or useful. What caught my eye was the Schick Intuition Plus, a women's razor. What makes the Intuition a unique product is that the blade cartridge is embedded in a bar of moisturizer and the idea is that you wet it and then as you shave, it lathers and moisturizes without any extra effort on your part--a perfect product for someone as outstandingly lazy as I am.

...Or it WOULD be perfect if I were a pretty lady. Of course I am neither pretty nor a lady, so I told myself that it wasn't for me. Something about it was too alluring for me to just walk away from it, though, so I stood there staring at it and trying to come up with a reason to buy it. Finally it occurred to me that this would probably be awesome for shaving my head with. It's meant for a pretty lady with delicate skin, and my scalp, I think, is about as sensitive as skin gets. This would get the job done without the normal irritation that I experience while simultaneously making my dome smell like delicious milk and honey. Plus it was on sale for $9.99 and came with a sample of some skin moisturizing product that claims to smooth and soften underarms in five days. I was sold.

The head-shaving experience wasn't as great as I'd hoped. The built-in bar of soap proved to be problematic in a couple of ways. It was too bulky, so it felt clumsy and kept me from being able to get to the spots behind my ears. It also ran down my head and into my eyes and I haven't been able to stop crying since. Besides that, it just didn't cut the hairs as close to the scalp as a razor should, so I ended up having to go over the whole thing again with my Gillette Fusion Power (a MAN'S razor).

So the Schick Intuition Plus is NOT awesome for shaving my head with...a $10 lesson that I sincerely hope this blog entry will be effective in passing on to someone else. If even one person is thinking about buying it to use on his or her scalp and ends up not doing it because of what they've read here, then my time, effort, money, and irritated eyes and skin will not have been in vain.

lady

copied and pasted from Wikipedia:

In 2007, based on statistics from 18 dancers over 60 days, it was noted that female lap dancers earned the highest tips around the time of ovulation, during the most fertile period of their menstrual cycle, and the lowest tips during menstruation; the average difference in earning between these two times amounted to about $30 per hour.

...I don't know enough about lady issues to understand how this even makes sense. Would someone please enlighten me?

reversal

I really like that you guys are using my comments section as a chat room.

My trip to San Diego was great. My cousin's wedding was beautiful and I got to visit another major league ballpark. I also had a chance to catch up with Bryan during our long-awaited Lebowski-themed evening. We went to a liquor store to get the Kahlua we needed for our Caucasians (i.e. "White Russians" for those of you who haven't seen the movie) and I was wearing my blowjob face t-shirt, which the Mexican clerk noticed while we were checking out...

Mexican Clerk: (pointing at Solomon's shirt) That's you, isn't it?
Solomon: Yes, it is.
MC: It looks like you ate something sour.
S: Yeah, I guess it does, but that's not what was going on in this picture.
MC: Then what are you doing?
[a contemplative comes across Solomon's face as he tries to decide whether or not he is in the mood to explain his BJ face to a perfect stranger who doesn't speak English very well]
S: It's actually my blow job face.
MC: You do that?
S: No, I've never actually sucked a penis before, but if I did, this is what I think my face would look like. I guess this is sort of a conceptual art piece.
MC: Did he like it?
S: Uh...No, you don't understand, it's more of a theoretical idea.
MC: But did he like it?
S: Uh...I guess if you're talking about the theoretical guy that I fellated then...I don't know, I guess I hadn't really thought this through before.
MC: So, he like it, yeah?
S: Yeah.

filler

I really want to have recorded ten posts in one month and I'm just about out of time, but I don't actually have anything to say. It's just as well, I suppose. Most of my posts are pretty much the same...

This group of people is a bunch of idiots... Here's a story about something that never actually happened and some people that don't exist... I suck at hooking up with chicks... I hate my cushy life... rabblerabblerabble...

You know how it goes. Why don't you guys write my post for me...

enablement

A coworker just came up to me with her Blackberry and asked me if I would take the aftermarket protective cover off of it. It's a hard but flimsy (that's what she said) two-piece plastic cover that's as simple as snapping together and apart. Presumably, it was put on by her and when she brought it to me, it was already apart at the bottom, so the job was already half finished. She walked from one end of the building to the other to specifically ask me to do this, and in doing so, passed ten other coworkers, six of which I'd imagine would've been perfectly capable of also performing this simple task. But because I've become unofficially known as the resident computer guy, and this was the protective cover on her Blackberry, she went to the effort of coming to me, despite the fact that I've never seen this cover or this phone before. I examined it for a few seconds, then snapped the cover off and handed it back to her.

It's not that I'm not happy to help, but in retrospect, I feel like doing this favor for her only helped to encourage this type of behavior moving forward. And it's the same with every time I burn a CD for somebody, save a file as a different file format, or determine the cause of a PC "not working" is the fact that it's not turned on, because apparently nobody knows how to do any of those things either. Not to seem like Nick Burns--Your Company's Computer Guy, but are these simple things or am I nuts?

maturity

edited for length:

Soromon: i was on the airport train that takes you to the baggage claim and i saw this girl. she must've been about 10 years old. and she was pole dancing on the train like a stripper.

teenyc24: did you give her a dollar?
Soromon: i offered to buy her toys if she'd come home with me.

teenyc24: am i going to see you on dateline?

...If the transaction doesn't involve cash, then it's not prostitution, right?

At the risk of sounding cliche, kids are growing up way too quickly. When I said she was dancing like a stripper, I wasn't exaggerating. She was gripping the pole with her butt cheeks to control her position on the pole as she twirled around it upside down. She was even licking it at the same time. How could this have happened? I like to think it's computer technology's fault, and not the parents'. Maybe this 10 year old downloaded Showgirls to her iPod. Maybe her local strip clubs friended her on myspace as part of a recruitment campaign.

function

m1ke kim: what do you do at work?

Soromon: i sit in front of my computer, listening to sports talk radio

Soromon: and then when someone comes by, i make microsoft excel or outlook the active window

Work has felt like more and more of a grind lately. Is the grass greener when you have a stake in the company or is considering going into business for myself a mistake? Aside from my desire to get out from under my brothers and get out there and see what I'm made of, I'm really starting to question whether or not this is the right thing to do. What if working a job in which I have no emotional investment but for which I'm well-compensated is as good as it gets?

Happy birthday, Dave, Esther and Jamie. Love you all.

veil

m1ke kim: do you like obama?

Soromon: i don't particularly like or dislike him

Soromon: i don't know enough about either candidate to form any sort of reasoned opinion

m1ke kim: i think obama is a douche

Soromon: enough to go to the effort of voting so you can vote against him?

m1ke kim: probably not

m1ke kim: he seemed really gimmicky

Soromon: which is a euphemism for really "black"

It isn't what he meant, but I'm just really in love with the idea of using the word "gimmicky" as a synonym for "black" when it comes to politicians. It's sleeper-mean...a little bit like calling uninspired art "derivative."

faith

the bottom of the qualifying results board for this week's NASCAR Nationwide Series event:

No victory in Jesus this week, I guess. Maybe you needed to pray harder or have more faith in Jesus and enter the car in the Cup series. That's why Morgan Shepherd will never be the champion that George Thampy is...

TWUST IN JESUS! HONOW YO' PAWENTS!

betrayal

I went camping with some buddies this past weekend and woke up with a condom in my butt, and I haven't been shitting right ever since. Isn't that awful? Earlier in the night, I was like, "Why did you guys bring all this wine on a camping trip? That's weird." I feel like such a chump now. I guess you never know who your REAL friends are until you've gone camping with them.

grievance

The following is a replication of an actual flier that I found posted in the elevator of my apartment building. Who knew old people could be so hateful?

MAKE A COMPLAINT ABOUT APARTMENT 1164

Were you also disturbed by the loud noise of skanky neighbors Saturday night?
(until 5:00 a.m. Sunday when the police were called)????
If so, feel free to submit a complaint to the Property Manager in the leasing center or by phone at 440-###-####! Although I could not tell if the most prominently heard annoying voice was male or female (it was weirdly unisex)
I do know that they live in apartment 1164!!!
These people are rude, disruptive, and have no respect for anybody else in this community (they literally began screaming after I heard another tenant yell for them to "shut up!" They have absolutely NO CLASS, and need to learn how to act like respectable people - at least for the sake of our elderly neighbors.
A police complaint was already made, but lets also work together to get them evicted and
send them back to the trailer park that they came from!
Also, for future reference, Mayfield Heights Police Department is great about responding to complaints - they come out immediately and SHUT THEM UP!!!!
Feel free to help keep our community quiet by calling the non-emergency police line at 440-###-#### to report noise complaints!

frustration

Did you hear that the Cleveland Indians website is going to be taken down?

...They can't put three Ws together.

Come on.

evolution

So, there's this girl that I'm into recently... A few nights ago, she and I went out for a walk and took a breather near a kiosk that sells perfume. We sat on a bench facing toward the stand, she lit a cigarette and started ranting about her favorite perfume, which, due to its limited and now ceased run, is increasingly difficult to get. With a hint of hopelessness in her tone, she expressed doubt that this perfume stand had what she wanted, but after she finished her cigarette, we went over for a look anyway, and they did have it--two bottles of it, in fact. She bought them both without hesitation, then skipped away from the stand with possibly the biggest smile I've ever seen on anyone's face.

By the way, the perfume makes her smell awesome--like a REALLY fancy hooker. I mean REALLY fancy. Like fancier than Heidi Fleiss caliber, if that's possible. But I digress...

My moments of happiness are pretty much always superficial if not completely phony, but the shear happiness that she was beaming in that moment made me genuinely happy for the first time in longer than I can remember. What you need to understand about me to understand my point here, is that in my heart of hearts, I'm a self-centered asshole who has never co-opted another person's happiness (or any other emotion) for my own.

...But I did for her, in this particular moment, and it was real. That has to mean something. Truthfully, though, I don't know what that is. I guess the easiest conclusion to draw would be that maybe this is a very special girl. Maybe I'm undergoing some sort of personal transformation. Maybe it's a combination both of those things. Maybe it's something altogether different. I'm in unfamiliar territory, which is to say that I have no understanding of my emotions because I've been an empty shell for so long. And so while it was a happy moment, in an odd way, it was also a chilling one for me.

It gets more fucked up though...

I guess the experience must have jarred something loose in my head. After we parted ways, I went to my room and turned on SportsCenter just in time to see highlights of a game that the Indians had lost earlier that day. They lost in the same fashion that they've been losing all season, which has led to increasing frustration for me over the last few months. On any other night, I would've just dropped an F bomb and moved on. But instead, on this night, I cried. I cried like a big dumb homo.

What's happening to me?

intellect

I realized something watching NASCAR this past weekend. The cars never run well. They run "good." For such a science-geeky sport, where a piece of tape on the chassis can make the difference between a car that runs "good" and one that doesn't, these guys come off alarmingly dull.

Then later, I went to one of those nude webcam sites. If you've never tried one before, it's dirty and fucked up and awesome. It's basically e-prostitution. You can pay these girls a few dollars per minute and they'll do whatever you ask and stick anything in any orifice in front of their webcam. You're really only limited by the tautness of the orifice, the size of the object, and your imagination. But I ended up paying this girl like $30 to do a sudoku puzzle nude. I even had her hold the finished puzzle up to her webcam so that I could check her work, and it looked correct. Apparently this girl can blow your mind too. Get it?

Isn't it amazing? Things that, on the surface, seem like they ought to appeal to smart people, like NASCAR, are just another part of a grand-scale intellectual wasteland, that also includes college and corporate America, while the girl who makes a living by professionally blowing out her pussy can do more to stimulate your mind.

scare

As I was shaving my nipples this morning, I thought I felt a lump. Is it possible for men to get breast cancer?

addendum

I've come up with some more rules for wishing upon an iceberg (see "benevolence" from May 11, 2008)...

• The wish only has a chance of coming true if it is a selfless one--I wished for a shetland pony and didn't get it because I wanted it for myself. On the other hand, all the mothers I know reported having a wonderful Mothers Day.
• The deadline for a wish to come true comes when you drop your next iceberg. And you can't wish for the same thing you wished for last time--that's a cop out. If you really want it that badly, it probably didn't come true because deep down you know it's a selfish wish.
• The only time a selfish wish is a valid one is if the iceberg is also an ace. An ace, for those of you who might not know, is a dump where you wipe your ass, but the paper is perfectly clean.

wax

Look... It's not even a debatable issue. The Karate Kid is a great movie, but The Karate Kid II is better, and I'll tell you why.

The improvement in Daniel's karate over the course of the first movie is huge, but it's like transitioning from a pee wee football player to a JV stud. Perfection of the crane technique is an important milestone in his development as a fighter, but if there's anything that the last scene of The Karate Kid II taught us, it's that the crane technique is a flawed maneuver with vulnerabilities. "No can defense" my ass... How did Toguchi defend it? "Hey look at that, I caught your leg." Not to discount what he accomplished in The Karate Kid, but the point is that anybody with an ounce of athletic ability and/or determination could have done it. I liken Daniel's progress in the second movie to going from division 1 college player to an NFL player. To the untrained eye, the leap in skill isn't as drastic, but it's a much more difficult leap to make because it's more cerebral in nature. He also learns the drum technique--a more versatile move (it can be used for both offense and defense), and, consequently, a tougher one to perfect. There's a lot to be said for the way that he learned about the virtues of the drum technique as an offensive weapon because he realizes it in the middle of the fight--his fighting was more dynamic because he improvised in the heat of the moment to make it work for him on his first try. And don't even get me started on the fact that he broke through the six sheets of ice with those spaghetti arms after that bigger, tougher black guy couldn't even get through three.

Not only is Daniel's karate at a higher level in The Karate Kid II, but his competition is too. The Cobra Kais drew their strength from their numbers, and Daniel quickly exposes their fraudulence at the All-Valley Karate Tournament, proving that at the end of the day, they're a bunch of pussies individually. Toguchi and his guys, on the other hand, rolled only three deep where there were five Cobra Kais. Sato is also a much more formidable opponent than John Kreese. They both have craziness working for them, but Sato had the same sensei as Mr. Miyagi. Enough said. And don't forget about the fact that Kreese and Lawrence are white, but Sato and Toguchi are Asian and have karate in their blood.

The primary conflict is more compelling in the second movie. In the first, he's not fighting for anything except respect. Mr. Miyagi said himself that Daniel didn't even really need to win to do that. Just to "make good fight" would have been sufficient. There was so much more on the line in the second movie. The Cobra Kais just wanted to bust Daniel's balls over some bitch that just ended up leaving him for some UCLA football-playing cunt, but Toguchi wanted to actually kill him. It wasn't about a girl. It was about life and death and HONOR. He was fighting for the preservation of his own life (not to mention Kumiko's) AND Mr. Miyagi's honor in a fight that he literally couldn't run away from (because Toguchi made him drop the bridge into the water).

All right, haters... Have at it with the comments.

proposition

After work today, I stopped by the wig shop to see what my parents were up to. As I approached my mom, I could immediately sense from the look on her face that something was on her mind. We exchanged pleasantries and then she began telling me about her awesome new Lexus GS350, using phrases like "sporty" and "young people's car" and telling me how much I would love it. Even though I have no interest in cars, I played along, feigning enthusiasm mixed with jealousy. Of course she ate that shit up because I'm an unbelievable actor.

Then came the turn...

She told me that I need to find a wife that meets the following criteria (in my mom's words and in this order):

1. Korean
2. beautiful
3. smart
4. have some special talent

She didn't give me any parameters pertaining to the nature of this "special talent" or any concrete examples, but for those of you who aren't familiar with Korean culture, this requirement is not as open to interpretation as you might think. "Have some special talent" to Koreans means "has been classically trained in a musical instrument that is played in a symphony or orchestra."

...If I land a wife who meets these four standards to my mother's satisfaction, she has offered to give me a Lexus GS350.

Naturally, my first question was, "Are you going to give me the one that you're driving now or are you going to get me a brand new one?"

All right, ladies, now before you start laughing at my mom, let's give this some serious thought because my mom was serious when she made this offer, so it's only fair that we give it at least as much consideration as she did.

Answer the following questions:

1. Do you meet the four criteria listed above, or can you at least fake it?
2. Would you like to share ownership of a Lexus GS350 with me at no financial cost to you?
3. Would you like reap the financial benefits to be had from marriage and cohabitation (i.e. lower taxes, shared expenses)?
4. Are your parents pressing you to find a nice Korean boy to marry and do you want to get them off your back?
5. Are you willing to be in a loveless marriage (and keep up the appearance of a happy, loving marriage) for these things, at least until my parents die?

If you answered "yes" to these questions, please contact me.

Think about it...

fashion

New for Summer '08!

pastime

Still Fresh

• encased meat products
• replacing the words "home team" with "Cubbies"
• ethnic cuisine
• generic spicy music playing when Hispanic guys walk up to the plate
• rhythmic clapping with the guy who beats the war drum at Progressive Field in clutch situations
• calling guys on your team "pussy-arm fag fuck" when they screw up (add "chili-shitting" if the player is Hispanic)
• designated driver registration for a free nonalcoholic beverage
• ballparks that have shit to do other than watch baseball
• Bob Wickman pump-up intro video
• $30 parking
• Asdrubal Cabrera's pearl necklace
• sell-out crowds
• Wrigley rooftops
• FOBs at the ball game
• the stainless steel standing counter behind the Mezzanine at Progressive Field
• the disappointment on people's faces at the moment that they realize that their guy only had warning track power
• pretty girls wearing skimpy fan gear
• fat chicks wearing skimpy fan gear

Getting Tired

• chicks with bad skin wearing skimpy fan gear
• hot dog race
• Which hat is the baseball under?
• Yankee hate (unless it's directed at A-Rod)
• all-you-can-eat seats
• scalpers who ask you if you have tickets and actually mean it
• bums who chill outside the ballpark with signs that say "Hungry. Please help. Go [team name]!"
• fireworks during day games

Played

• guys playing on the name "Fukudome" when jeering the Cubs' opponents, then thinking they're clever
• tainted draft beer
• Kids Fun Day at Progressive Field
• Kiss-cam
• Flex-cam
• showing up in time for the first pitch
• staying til the end of the game
• *CLAP CLAP CLAPCLAPCLAP CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP...CLAPCLAP*
• guys who show up to the game wearing Browns gear then get into a fight with guys who show up to the game wearing Steelers gear
• guys who show up to the game wearing Buckeyes gear then get into a fight with guys who show up to the game wearing Michigan gear
• Hang On Sloopy at the Indians game
• the wave
• everything about Yankee Stadium
• "Let's go [two-syllable team or player name], let's go! *CLAP CLAP*"
• kids being allowed at baseball games
• throwing back the home run ball hit by someone on the other team
• Grady's Ladies

cleanliness

Today, I looked at my taint in the mirror and it doesn't look NEARLY as clean as I think it should. Apparently scrubbing it isn't enough, so I'm implementing a new cleansing regimen:

• rinse
• scrub with exfoliating body scrub and scrubber or loofah 2 minutes
• boil 12 minutes
• scrub with Ajax and Brillo pad (or steel wool) 3 minutes
• rinse
• apply 1/2 oz. bleach using sponge and let sit 20 minutes
• rinse
• vacuum
• air dry
• apply 1/2 oz. aloe vera

benevolence

I don't think I've told the five of you who read my blog about this yet, but my new thing is taking massive dumps that pile up and peek out above the water line and then making a wish on the tip as I flush it down. I call these "icebergs". This morning I dropped only my second iceberg since I first had the idea to do this a few months ago, and I wished for everyone's mom to have a wonderful Mothers Day.

The first time, I wished for a shetland pony.

antiquity

While driving on the highway this afternoon, somebody in a van with curtains covering its windows cut me off, coming very close to putting me into a wall, a la Kyle Busch. Stuff like that never makes me angry as much as it makes me scared, and today's incident was especially precarious because we'd both been going about 70 in pretty heavy traffic. ...So thinking about how close I was to dying got me in a rare, paranoid state of mind that stewed for the rest of the afternoon... After work, Jamie invited me to go to a psychic with her, and since I'd spent the better day putting off work to think about my mortality, I thought, "Why not?" I guess I hoped that I'd find out I SHOULD'VE died, thus giving me the right to claim that I'd cheated death, which I've never done before. ...That's my idea of excitement. Not the cheating of death itself, but the prospect of being able to truthfully claim that I've done so.

So we went to this psychic around the corner and down the street from the office. Even though it's in a reasonably safe neighborhood and it's perfectly legal to pay money to have your fortune told, for some reason you have to ring a bell and be let in, like it's some sort of underground gambling establishment, or a speakeasy in the 20s, or one of those places where you can get a special "massage" from an illegal Korean immigrant "masseuse". The lady gave us a run down of the services available and I decided I wanted a tarot card reading for $20. ...Because for $5, a palm reading either can't be that reliable or will only tell me so much, and $30 for a tarot and psychic reading is just plain ludicrous. As she began leading me behind some curtains into what I assume is the "reading room" I asked if she took credit cards, and of course she didn't. ...What is this, '02? Who doesn't take credit cards these days? Even tollbooths take them. So the psychic, Jamie and I started talking about ATMs and what we were going to do, and I said, "Let's just start going toward the ATM and figure out what we want to do." The psychic, worried that she was about to lose business, said, "You're going to come back, right?" and we were like, "Of course we're coming back."

...But I'm pretty sure it didn't take a psychic's intuition to tell her that we wouldn't.

So that was my first near encounter with pseudoscience. Tomorrow I'm going to visit a holistic medicine store and pretend to think about buying something.

responsibility

I have an impeccable track record of making good choices when I'm drunk, and here's a perfect example of it...

I was driving home drunk in the middle of the night when I got a flat tire. Instead of trying to change it myself like an asshole, I called AAA and had them change it for me. Then, still drunk, I finished driving home.

...That's sound judgment.

I'm in the middle of watching M Butterfly and I have a raging boner. I wonder how this movie will end...

impulse

Apologies in advance... Whenever I'm out of town, invariably, I write a self-loathing blog entry, probably about how I suck with girls. I don't know why this happens, and I'm sorry. If you're sick of my shit, please accept my apology and read no further.

What happens when tension arises between your impulse to do the wrong thing and your higher level functioning that leads to sound, reasoned judgment? For me, impulse loses... Every time... Even when the cutest girl ever and alcohol are involved... And I come off like a fucking doodie hole because of it.

Oh well. I'm off company time now, and have nearly five days in New York to compensate for all the times when I didn't indulge my impulses.

The probability of me somehow ending up dead by Sunday is slim, but it's also as far from impossible as it's ever been. If I do die, please tell my family that I love them. ...Oh, and would someone please remove the porn from between my mattresses before they get to it?

On an unrelated note, if I ever hear Flashing Lights by Kanye West again, it'll be too soon.

misdirection

Lately, I have this awful habit of laughing out loud at people (and not WITH them).

I had a conversation Lexar customer service, and was immediately able to tell that it had been outsourced to India. We kept asking each other to repeat what we had said, which was a little annoying, but we eventually got the issue resolved. At the end of the call, he said, "Thank you again for calling Lexar. If you have any further questions or concerns, you can reach me at this phone number. And again, my name is Marshall." I guffawed (Mrs. Black said that word would show up on the SAT and it didn't... What a cunt.) heartily and wanted to call him out on his shit and ask what his real name was... Like his BIRTH name, not his slave name that the man gave him.

The other instance was a bit more sleeper, before it hit me like a ton of bricks. I was at the checkout counter at Microcenter. I looked downward at the merchandise as she told me the total price, then handed her my credit card. I continued inspecting what I was buying until she requested to see my drivers license. For those of you who may not have seen my license picture, I'm making a prototypical Sol-face ---> :D ...I looked up at her as she began making some lame joke about it, and that's when I noticed her snaggletooth sticking out like a boner in boxers and LOLed. I think she thought it was because of her lame joke, but I was actually LOLing at her crazy snaggletooth. Maybe she knew. I laughed a little too hard for it to be at a joke of such low caliber.

statistics

Solomon's Trip to New York: By the Numbers

1: number of penises I inadvertently touched that weren't mine
2: number of subway tunnel rats seen
3: number of distinct colors of turds that I dropped in one sitting
4: number of gay hobos I've seen making out in the middle of the street (note: This was two pairs of gay hobos, not four gay hobos engaging in a quadruple kiss.)
5: slices of New York style pizza I've consumed
6: number of times I had my ass grabbed or smacked by a drunken bachelorette party
10: estimated square footage covered by puke from this dude I saw spewing projectile vomit all over the street
15: minutes I spent carefully manicuring my pubic hair with a razor at a Korean bathhouse in full view of a bunch of naked dudes

...You don't realize until you break it down, just how different New York is from Cleveland.

fraternity

I drove my brother from the car dealership to the office today. It's about a five minute drive, so we had time for a little chat.

Ever since I grew into intellectual maturity (read: Ever since I grew too big for my brother to practice professional wrestling moves on), though, the dialogue between my brother and me has been awkward and embarrassing at best. Which is why even a five minute chat can seem excruciating. He hasn't given me any indication that he realizes it too, but he must know. It's just that it's too awkward for us to bring up in conversation.

And yet he still admirably endures our shared shame to try to be a good brother.

...He opens by asking how my car is holding up, which has become his standard opening line on me. I think about 50% of the total conversation I've had with him over the past three years have been on this very subject, and that's a VERY conservative estimate.

"Oh, yeah, the car's awesome." Yaddayaddayadda... Then after about 20 seconds of inane car talk, he smoothly (read: abruptly) transitions into my social life and love life with, "So how's your social life and love life?"

On second thought, maybe the car isn't so awesome--It just can't seem to get us back to the office fast enough.

Normally I wouldn't bother telling him anything that he could draw any conclusions from because I'm not comfortable letting him in. So I'll just lie instead, telling him that nothing's happened. But today I appreciate his effort and decide to throw him a rare bone...

"Well, I went on a few dates with a couple of girls recently, but I don't know... I guess I'm just not really into either of them."

He then proceeds into a big brother lecture about how it's unhealthy that I haven't been on any dates recently, and that I need to put myself out there and start looking. I guess he didn't hear me.

prerequisites

The Official Sol's Friendship Prerequisite Required Movie Viewing List

1. Ghost World
2. The Big Lebowski
3. Almost Famous
4. Office Space
5. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
6. Serendipity
7. Amelie
8. Lost In Translation
9. Napoleon Dynamite
10. Juno

truth

Did you ever notice that when Balki and Larry did the dance of joy, the words to the supplementary song are "die die die die diedie die diediedie"? That's not joyful at all. It's hard to believe that this detail escaped me for so many years before Perfect Strangers was released on DVD. I think I had perceived it as "da da da da dada da dadada" before then, which is why I'm only now bringing it up. This kinda fucks up my universe, but I guess that's the type of unadulterated truth you risk subjecting yourself to in exchange for enjoying digitally remastered audio.

We just got more domestic help in the house. She's not the greatest cook. Which is just as well, I suppose, because she only cooks enough food for about two people anyway. And even if we got around those problems, there's still the one of her being Chinese, and if you didn't already know, Chinese people eat some crazy crap. It's completely retarded, and by "retarded" I mean "Down syndromed," NOT that she "can do ANYTHING." Sue, if you're reading this, please move back into the house.

redundancy

I was at a cafeteria. Standing next to the napkins and plastic flatware was a container of "tomato ketchup."

Is there any other kind of ketchup?

That was a very Seinfeldian moment for me... What's the deal with that?

The times, they sure are a-changin'... Last night, I spent the better part of an hour on the phone with Microsoft Indian technical support diagnosing my Xbox 360 and arranging to have it shipped out for service. (Sorry, DK, no Xbox Live dates for a little while. Apparently, even my Xbox needs time and treatment in order to recover from your shame from when you ran away from my challenge like a gutless punk.) They told me that the video card needs to be fixed or replaced. The VIDEO CARD. Back when console games didn't require discrete graphics cards, it used to be that "technical support" entailed blowing on the contacts in the system and/or cartridge. High level tech support guys like Dan and Peter taught me high level tech support troubleshooting techniques like jamming a second cartridge in above the first, blowing under the removable panel underneath the system, and the "edge-snap" trick. These remedies were used in REALLY desperate situations, but you never had to ship things to the manufacturer.

I think I must be going through some sort of weird quarter life crisis. I'm finding myself pining after simpler times a lot lately. Life really seemed to move slowly back when I played Nintendo, read Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, watched Animaniacs, and didn't worry about the things that I worry about now.

correlation

I watched the Cavaliers play the Hawks after the trade show ended on Saturday, and it was amazing how distinctively Southern an experience that Atlanta was able to make something as upper-middle class as an NBA game. The pregame and halftime entertainment was a step show performed by a bunch of little kids and the national anthem was performed by a children's choir with a children's drum line. I wouldn't say that any of the kids were rhythmically challenged, but they were still little kids, and the quality of the performances was what you would have expected from them.

I'm not going to come out and say anything explicitly about black people and the stereotypes associated with them, but the audience was probably 70% black, and it was going off, cheering for these kids. This was like the kind of cheering you hear when the t-shirt cannon comes out, and the crowd goes nuts, basically whoring themselves out by feigning enthusiasm for a chance at a free t-shirt.

Speaking of that, I had the privilege of witnessing that kind of prideless, greed-induced enthusiasm at the trade show today. The FHI Heat booth has a stage, on which shows and demonstrations are performed, and we were tossing out free t-shirts and hair clips--items that cost us less than $2 apiece. What is it about free shit that turns people into complete prostitutes? This crowd was probably composed of the same people I saw at college who would go to ANY club recruitment meeting if the flier for it advertised free pizza.

expectations

misnomer

Last night I saw There Will Be Blood. Here's an excerpt of the review I gave Donna today, which I thought was funny...

Solomon: there wasn't much blood though, so the title was a bit misleading...
Solomon: it's like a 2.5 hour movie and almost the whole time there's no blood...just oil.

Solomon: and i'm sitting there thinking, "wtf, i was promised blood. where's the blood?"

Solomon: and i had to keep calming myself down by saying, "relax, sol. there will be blood."

self

Some of the people who read this blog are new friends who don't know me that well, so here are a few Solomon fun facts...

• I love technology, but have been known to keep it real from time to time by watching a movie from my VHS collection of 50+. My favorite movie of all time is Ghost World, but my favorite one from my VHS collection is Problem Child. John Ritter, as you may have heard, is sex on a stick. ...Or he used to be before he died.
  
• I have a budding interest in NASCAR ever since attending my first race last March at Atlanta Motor Speedway. My favorite driver is Juan Pablo Montoya (#42 Havoline Dodge) because he's the closest thing to a person of Asian descent in the Cup Series (which is to say that he's not white), so I feel like I can identify with him.
  
• I have a cleaner taint and doodie hole than you and everyone you know. I spend several minutes a day in the shower, scrubbing those areas with antibacterial body wash and a bath sponge that is separate from the one I use on the rest of my body.
• My favorite color is yellow. My second favorite color is brown, which, incidentally, is the same color as my taint sponge, which used to be bright white.
• The first alcoholic beverage I ever consumed was a glass of red wine on my 21st birthday. Last weekend, I downed eight shots of tequila (that I can remember) in about 30 minutes to make up for all the drinking that I didn't do in the first 20 years of my life.
• In 1998, I was the state internet-surfing gold medalist. Today, I am still a high-level internet user and can quickly find any type of porn that exists, no matter how niche.
  

burst

I liked this song way better when I thought it was an original by that pasty kid who was all over the internet with his bomb.com dancing skills.


A coworker quit this past week with no notice and without having given any indication (at least not to me) that she'd been unhappy at her job. This normally wouldn't be a big deal to me except that she was basically in the same position that I am. Neither of us was particularly inclined toward the beauty industry, the jobs just sort of fell into our laps, and our responsibilities were largely similar. The only difference is that she was the beneficiary of favoritism and I was the beneficiary of nepotism.

...That last sentence might seem like a poor attempt at a joke (and it is), but truthfully, that's where the problem lies. She had no family ties and therefore had no qualms about just picking up and leaving. I can't do that. It's like a bad relationship (or so I hear) that you just smile and nod through, but on the inside, you can't wait for something better to come along so you can get out. I've already been told that they want me to be the new in-house IT guy after the new software is implemented. At this stage, we haven't even technically made the decision of which software package to buy. Once we do, it'll be three to four months to get it up and running. Figure another year to really learn it and get it all down and then another six to eight months to hire and train my replacement. So right off the bat, I'm stuck in this for at least two more years.

regret

I'm at a trade show in Long Beach and a coworker told this joke to a handful of other coworkers and me:

What's the opposite of Christopher Reeve?

Christopher Walken.

I smiled and gently chuckled (which I think is the appropriate response to a joke of that caliber) while the rest of the group was silent, and one dumb ass was like, "I don't get it."

I let out a deep, intentionally audible sigh, like the kind I used to let out in college when students would incessantly disrupt lecture to ask dumb questions or articulate their less than insightful thoughts in hopes of catching the professor's attention and earning brownie points.

Every day, small signs like this make it more and more apparent that the people around me and the job that I'm in prevent me from realizing my potential and that I have too much talent that's going to waste. But it's my own fault for not doing anything to improve my position in life.

shock

Christine and I are working on a task involving going through a list of store locations by state. She is working in alphabetical order and I'm working in reverse alphabetical order...

Solomon: i'm finishing up north carolina
Solomon: where are you?
Solomon: and heath ledger is dead.
Christine: WHAT?
Christine: are you KIDDING?
Solomon: no, i'm really on north carolina

desensitization

I've gotten into a bad habit of overusing the word "cunt." Here's a transcript of a generic, fabricated, but very possible moment in my life...

someone: Yeah, so he made an inconsequential error.
Sol: God, what a stupid cunt.
someone: Jeez.
Sol: What?

Look... It's not that I actually harbor malice or wish any ill will upon anyone or anything like that. It's just that somewhere along the line, words like "dick," "douchebag" and "fuckhead" ceased to be effective in expressing my sentiments. Then I had to make something up, and came up with "cockmonger," which was okay for a while until I decided that it feels contrived and, consequently, a little tacky. Then, for a while, "cunt" was doing the job until I got to the point where I am now, using it 20-30 times a day. Now, when I say "God, what a stupid cunt," all that means is, "That's silly of him/her." Similarly, when I use it in other contexts, it doesn't really mean anything. It's kind of like "umm" or "uhh" but in the form of a noun...

"Oops, I spilled my water."
"Nice one, you stupid cunt."

"Who else is going to be at the party?"
"Joe."
"Oh, that cunt?"

"Thanks for doing me that favor. I really appreciate it."
"All right, cunt."

Lighten up.

game

My brother's friend is in town with his wife and kids, and it's a big social gathering because Mike and Sue brought Samantha and Jonathan over. Jakin is on our watch too, probably because his sick brother is at home and presumably contagious, so that's...seven kids in the house today. I know that sounds bad, but five months in this joint have turned me into a pro at neglecting the kids in my life.

...This is especially true since the lock on my bedroom door got fixed. So I started the day locked in my room, beating off and watching King of the Hill on DVD. ...Not at the same time. I like King of the Hill, but not THAT much.

Eventually I had to emerge from hiding to get food and an Xbox fix, so I waited 'til everyone was out to lunch. They got back and about five minutes later, when the kids and forced social interaction had become more than I cared to deal with. I offered to take Jakin to the movies, which was awesome because Jakin requires the least maintenance of any of the kids. These guys thought I was doing them a favor, but really I was just trying to get out of the house with as little work and responsibility as possible. They're so naive. Joe even gave me $40 to pay for the tickets and concessions. Of course, I made no mention of the fact that I was taking Jakin to the dollar theater.

That took us to about 7:30... Dinner time. Jakin bailed me out again though. He said he wanted to go home, so I drove him there. On the way back, figured that as long as I was out, I'd stop by Micro Center to do a little eye shopping. ...and Toys R Us. ...oh, and Circuit City, Bed Bath and Beyond, CVS, Target. It was also important to swing by US Bank and check the branch hours, because I don't have an account there, nor do I plan on opening one, but it's nice just to know for future reference. You never know when that type of information will come in handy.

I got home, scraped up some of the leftovers for dinner and then quickly proceeded back to my room, where I locked myself up again. That brings us to the present. They're still up and about, but I absolutely HAD to get back here so that I could blog about how I managed to avoid the kids all day.

culpability

A friend recently got me hooked on a webcam show/blog called KARAOKE WITH JENNIFER. If you've never seen or heard of this, it's a show where a mentally retarded girl who goes by the handle "JENNSTARR" sings in front of her webcam to an audience of literally tens, tuning in from all over the world via the internet.

The first time you tune in, you see this girl's physical appearance and see a total charity case. She's a rotund girl (which is generous, relative to Ryan's description: "amorphous blob") with an oxygen tube running across the middle of her face to her nose, ostensibly for some medical condition. Completely abandoning any sense of shame that she may or may not have, she blasts her favorite pop songs which are soon rendered utterly inaudible when she starts belting out the lyrics, off-key and with brutish retard strength.

I've watched for three days now and have yet to experience the disappointment of the show not being on. I'm pretty sure she does this all day long, stopping occasionally to "pee in a pee bucket" as Rachel put it to me.

Sometimes a person can just be too smart for the room. The more I watch the show, the more I think that that's the case with KARAOKE WITH JENNIFER. That is to say that I'm about 90% certain that she's not actually retarded, and that she's just fucking with the lot of us who watch her. She talks wike a wittle baby, but speaks far more eloquently than any retard I've ever met, and for that matter, more eloquently than about 50% of my friends and family. She also has seems to have diverse tastes in music, or at least way more diverse than I'd give the average drum-beat-jungle-monkey-music-listening retard credit for. Granted, I haven't interacted with that many retarded people (and when I say that, I mean genuinely retarded, not retarded like, "Oh you're such a fucking retard" retarded), but I'm pretty sure that there are none that are as high-functioning as Jennifer that also speak like a low to mid functioning retard.

If you've read this far, you're probably thinking that I'm an asshole by now, for making fun, to which I would respond, "Oh yeah? Well you're a retard." In all seriousness, though, who's the bigger asshole: me for watching and laughing at the retard or her for leading me on and eliciting that reaction, as well as eliciting the more visceral, human-interest type of reaction out of viewers who think that she is a source of inspiration?

loser

The thought that's perpetually nagged me for the last few months is that my social ineptitude may have gotten to the point where it's beyond repair. I keep trying to tell myself that I'll pull through it and regain my confidence soon, but every social situation I find myself in ends up more uncomfortable and awkward than the last.

So how do I go about trying to fix this? Practice. I try to treat every social function I attend as practice. I tell myself to throw caution to the wind and commit to attempt to strike up a conversation with no fewer than X people. And maybe being so cognizant is what's ultimately making the dialogues increasingly unnatural and uncomfortable, but at least I'm trying to take an active role in making this better.

So this past weekend, Dongdong invited me to a suite at Madison Square Garden to take in a Knicks game with old friends (from my days at Michigan) and new friends. Surely, this would be a perfect opportunity to just cut loose and experiment in the art of conversation under consequence-free circumstances--14 people whom I either have never met or was only loosely acquainted with a long time ago, and all of whom I will likely not see again.

The problem was that one of them was the cutest girl ever. Now, even when my social anxiety wasn't quite so debilitating, beautiful women were always a stumbling block, and they'll continue to be. So instead of actively seeking out interaction, I spent the majority of the time being awestruck by this girl while pretending to be interested in an NBA game (yeah, right) or playing with my camera. And I ESPECIALLY avoided interaction with the cutie... When it came time for me to choose a seat, there were only a few options in one row. Here's what the seating arrangement looked like:

[aisle] [seat 1: some dude] [seat 2: cute girl] [seat 3: vacant] [seat 4: vacant] [seat 5: vacant] [seat 6: vacant] [wall]

Guess which seat I took. Yep. Seat 6! Who's the big winner? Sol, that's who. And note that there was a wall next to it, not an aisle from which I could've accessed the seat. That means that I literally had to step over the cute girl so that I could get to the seat farthest away from her. "Yeah, pardon me, cute girl. Can I get by? I really want to watch this game sitting next to my two buds: the wall and nobody."

But it doesn't end there. After a few minutes, she said, "Why are you sitting all the way over there? Do I smell?" or some retarded (albeit well-intentioned) shit along those lines. So, she was even big-hearted enough to take my social retardation and turn it around to give me an opening. I don't know what I said. I was too focused on the fact that I BMed in my underpants to think about what was coming out of my mouth. But I THINK I made retarded idle chit chat for 16-19 seconds before I bailed on the situation altogether and retreated to the bathroom, which I did NOT have to use. It doesn't matter what I said though. The point is that I had every opportunity to talk to her and I totally froze because I'm a big, dumb homo.

...You can't spell "loser" without "Sol."

So, the weekend, despite the fact that it was like a little vacation, was largely regrettable (apart from the fact that I hung out with M), not only because I sucked, but the same night, I got wasted and paid the price for the better part of today.