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?