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.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
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
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
Monday, January 21, 2008
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.
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.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
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.
...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.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
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?
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?
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
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.
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.
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