Three Day Weekend, Bitches!

Yes. Three glorious days without work! Two spent camping, one spent at opening day at Miller Park. All three filled with food, booze, fun and sex. Maybe not in that order.

So while the normal world is at work on Monday, Stormy & I will be eating beer brats, drinking beer and watching the Brewers beat up on the Pirates.

CAN I GET A HELL YEAH?!

Hell yeah.

Saturday will be spent hiking in the woods, working on my nature photography skillzz, cooking over an open fire and balling in the great outdoors.

Sunday...more of the same...unless it rains, like it's supposed to. In that case we'll be on the couch, naked, watching movies and..um...doing other things. Like each other.

Hell yeah.

I love me some weekend.


M. PotPie

Strange Goings-On

Not long ago I posted about seeing a ghost (well, a ghost hand, anyway) in my apartment. I have since been trying to repeat this phenomenon with no success. But last night I discovered something else I can't explain, so if there are any experts in this partcicular field out there, maybe you can help me.

So here it is:

Last night I'm laying in bed listening to the radio (the same one the ghost turned off), waiting for the ghost hand to appear. The ghost is still absent, so I decide to channel-surf the old-fashioned way on the AM dial to find something interesting to listen to.

That's when I stumble upon a hockey game. Now, I don't like hockey. I have no interest in it. But something made me stop and listen to this game. It was the Dallas Stars vs. the Anaheim Ducks. I figured it for a national broadcast...but it didn't sound national. It sounded local. And it was. I was picking up an AM station from Dallas, Texas.

I live in Waupun, Wisconsin, which according to Mapquest is 1058.44 miles away. I highly doubt that their transmitter is that strong.

I decide to keep surfing. Who knows, maybe I can pick up other stations from other states?

Here's the list of cities I found stations from (and I'd like to point out that I could hear them clearly, with almost no static):

Dallas. Nashville. New Orleans. Indianapolis. Chicago. St. Louis. Somewhere in Iowa. Atlanta.
Cleveland.

By the way, the radio I'm using is a simple Sony DreamMachine clock radio. I paid less than $20 bucks for it at Target. As far as I remember, the manual that came with it never mentioned a Ghost in the (Dream)Machine....


M. PotPie

The Real On-Star

The following is an actual conversation between On-Star and a subscriber:

On-Star: Hello, this is On-Star, is this an emergency?

Subscriber: I don't know Helen, I pushed the button, now what?

On-Star: Hello? Sir?

Subscriber: Who's there?!

On-Star: This is On-Star sir, are you in need of assistance?

Subscriber: Who? A monster? What the hell is happening?

On-Star: Sir, you have pushed the button to contact ON-STAR, do you need help?

Subscriber: Help? Yes, we need help, can you help us?

On-Star: I'm here to help you in any way I can. What is the nature of your trouble?

Subscriber: My wife has to go!

On-Star: Go? Go where?

Subscriber: To the bathroom, where do you think?!

On-Star: Sir, is this an emergency, do you need my assistance, or an ambulance?

Subscriber: I don't know...is this an emergency Helen? She says no, she might be able to hold it but would like to go before we get to dinner. We're going to our son's house to meet his new girlfriend and my wife doesn't want to wet herself, but we don't want to be any trouble.

On-Star: (silence)

Subscriber: So can you help us?

On-Star: Sir, I don't understand what you want. Do you need directions to a bathroom?

Subscriber: Directions? What do you think, she's never used a toilet before?! She's a sixty-six year old woman, I think by now she knows how to move her bowels! Don't you dear?

On-Star: Sir...I'm going to have to terminate this phone call if I can't help you in some way.

Subscriber: So help me already!

On-Star: I would like nothing more than to help you. But you have to explain to me how I can do that.

Subscriber: You can help me by not being such a wisenheimer and answer my question!

On-Star: What is your question sir?

Subscriber: Never mind! We're here. I hope this new girl can cook. The last one was some sort of mutant in the kitchen, I can tell you! Couldn't toast a bagel, that one!

On-Star: Thank you for calling On-Star sir, we're always here to help.


M. PotPie

Enough of This Existential Bullshit

I wrote the title of this post prior to being called into my bosses office to hear some sad news. Ted's wife has cancer and probably has two months to live. (Ted is a loan officer here, along with me). Needless to say, Ted won't be here for the forseeable future. Were I him there's no way I would leave my wife's side.

There is another loan officer, Toni, who is absent as well for undisclosed reasons.

This leaves yours truly as the only loan officer. So I get every application, every phone call and every member that walks through the door. It's been like this since Tuesday.

So things have been busy.

Certainly I'm not happy about the current situation, but it's nothing I can't handle effectively with some help from my co-workers outside the loan department.

But that's not what this post is about. It's about my reaction to the news that Ted's wife is dying.

I thought "Oh, great. I'm screwed now."

I'm screwed? Really?

Horrible. I'm ashamed of myself. I could not possibly have had a more selfish reaction.
The man's wife is dying and I'm only concerned about how it will effect me.

I have to go now.

m. potpie

I have a question that troubles me. Well, it's troubled me for a long time, but I don't think I've ever really put it into print. It's a common question I'm sure, not one which makes me unique, but it's an important one nonetheless (which may be the epitome of irony). Or maybe it's not.

Is ANYTHING really important? Does anything really matter in the grand scheme of things?

Yes, this is a very broad question. But my personal non-belief in any sort of afterlife (which is also odd, considering my ghost experience, a topic which we'll revisit at some point) makes actual living...well...pointless.

I long ago decided that if life itself is essentially pointless than the only thing worth living for is happiness. I decided to devote my life to doing things that bring me joy and pleasure. In essence, I decided to become the ultimate hedonist.

It's not going very well. Well, on some fronts it is. I eat what I want (and thankfully have a good metabolism) I drink what I want, I say what I want, I see who I want and I generally ignore most social mores. I don't give a good-god-damn about anyone's opinion of me (but I do want you to like me) and hope you don't care about my opinions of you.

And yet....I think in some respects I'm miserable. I blame it on my job, on the fact that I have to work at all, and this is entirely my fault. Let's face it, without work I have no money and without money I have nowhere to live, nothing to eat, etc... etc... etc... ad nauseum.

But because I get no joy from working, and I spend more time here than anywhere else, my quality of life is in the shitter.

(Please understand I'm taking full responsibility for this. My hope is that if I read this over enough I'll actually do something about it.)

My question to you is this:

Have any of you gone through this and successfully changed your life? And are you still happy?

(I'm starting that book tonight, Chicken. I'll let you know how it goes.)

I tell myself this will take some time, and to take baby-steps, but I'm impatient.


M. PotPie

Failed Story Ideas

Almost all of the stories I write start out as a single sentence that pops into my mind from the ether. I can be doing anything (working, hiking, playing video games, having sex) when this happens. I stop what I'm doing (or slow down, if it's sex) and my eyes lose focus. Then the sentence comes. It speaks in it's own voice. I try to write them down. So today I give you a list of sentences that never became a story.

"Carla was a whore. She was also an alien."

"As my blood circled the drain, I marveled at the symmetry of the whorls, and wondered if it would be the same below the equator."

"The coffee was spiked..but I knew that before I drank it."

"She felt soft and loose, like warm jelly, and I shuddered as I thrust into her."

"Just by looking at him you could tell something was wrong, that something was left out when he was created."

"Do you think I like hurting you? Do you think it gives me pleasure? Well, maybe in a dark way it does, but you still need education. I do this for you, not to you."

"If you defy me, I will defile you."

"In that way I had always admired my mother. Like a succubus steals life from the living, my mother had stolen my father from god."

"His eyebrows seemed independent of his forehead, like a living thing unto themselves, two caterpillars that met over his eyes and mated over his nose."

So there you have them. Enjoy.


M. PotPie

Hamlet & Me

"To be or not to be, --that is the question:--Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to sufferThe slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them?"

While Hamlet was speaking of suicide here, I am not. But I am speaking of a different kind of death; the death of a relationship.

I have a girlfriend (stupid word, but there it is). I love this woman. She's one of the few people I've met in my life that can keep up with me in every capacity (and passes me in plenty). I would have children with this woman. But there's a problem.

She reads my blog. She reads the comments I leave on yours. She believes my comments to be overtly sexual in nature, overly flirtatious and says "we both know where this will lead." She wants to know why I leave "comments like that" and wonders if I do it "to feed my male ego". Last night it was made very clear that she does not trust me and does not believe I have any honor. My comments hurt her and she is very angry that I refuse to stop and am not willing to make any concessions.

I feel I've done nothing wrong, have done nothing to hurt her, and therefore don't need to make any concessions or adjust my behavior.

And now I'm at a loss. I'm in danger of losing her..and may have already done so. But I can't live without trust. I am nothing if I am not trustworthy and honorable. I have never cheated. Ever. I was with the same woman for eleven years, most of them in a fairly sexless marriage, and I never strayed, even though my needs weren't being met in the bedroom. I had plenty of opportunities, and even the desire, but I had made my commitment and I honored it.

I will admit that I am flirtatious by nature. I like women. I prefer their company to men. But I am not lecherous, not a predator and have never pushed the issue when the answer is no. I've slept with less than a dozen women in my life. I'm picky like that.

I am tired of defending myself. Stormy, if you read this you have a choice to make. I didn't sleep last night at all. I cried for a good deal of it. I went over and over the things that were said, tried to listen to them as an outsider, tried to distance myself from the hurt, pain and mistrust I felt. Maybe my ego is too big, maybe my brain doesn't work, but I can't see that I've done any wrong. These folks I blog with and converse with on-line are no more than friends. I enjoy reading their blogs and leaving comments. Some of the comments are flirtatious, but that's as far as it goes. I hope you can understand that.

I leave you with one more quote from Hamlet:

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so".

We have nothing without trust.


M. PotPie

Do you believe in ghosts?

I do. I saw one in my apartment Sunday night.

Please allow me to preface this story by saying I wasn't drinking or smoking anything. I hadn't eaten any food that had gone bad, hadn't licked any toads or eaten any peyote buttons. I was on the straight and narrow.

Not that this is a good thing, but it is what it is.

At roughly 10pm central time I decided that sleeping was a better option than staying awake. Oscar was already sleeping, there was nothing worth watching on tv and I didn't feel like playing video games, so to bed I went.

If you're worried about my dental hygiene, don't. I brushed. I pooped, too, if you must know.

So there I am in bed, listening to the radio. All of the lights are off, Oscar is snoring, I'm laying on my back hoping the storms outside don't develop into a tornado; that's when I feel the tickle. A mental tickle, telling me something isn't right. I turn my head to the left and see it, floating in the doorway: A hand. Just a hand...a spectral, misty white hand, and it's moving towards me.

I was not scared. Not even a little. I was merely curious and watched as the hand approached, moving slowly closer. It reached my clock-radio, which was still on, the announcer talking about the tornado warnings, violent storms and wind alert.

The hand reached the radio, touched it, and it turned off. Then the hand was gone.

I lay there for a while, digesting what had just happened, wondering if I had fallen asleep quickly and had just dreamed the whole thing. But I was awake, there was no doubt about it. I'm not sure what it was, or who, but there are two things I am sure of:

1) The ghost (or whatever it was) really hated the radio station I was listening to.
2) Oscar cannot protect me from the undead. He didn't even wake up.

I'm more worried about the second part. I can always change the station, but I'll need help against a vampire.


M. PotPie

Spam!

I have a game I play with myself. No, not that one, so get your mind out of the gutter. My game goes like this:

Wait a month before emptying out the spam folder from my e-mail account and laugh at the best subject lines. Today I'll share the top five with you, in no particular order:

1) How many times girls dumped you because of your small dick?
2) You are a business man and have no time for a long sexual stimulation.
3) Once you turned 21 you have to put up with.
4) Hey baby, might want to check this out.
5) Ming Jewls, Brag About Your Louis Vuitton bag!

All these e-mails beg the question: Do people actually open these? The fact that there are so fucking many of them would seem to imply yes. People do. But who?

Haiku Saturday

A turd in the bowl
A steaming pile of feces
Saturday at work

Oh boy! Next Friday
St. Patricks Day comes again!
Peeing green is cool!

I sit at my desk
Wishing I could be elsewhere
Maybe not prison

My hand is sticky.
Do you think you can guess why?
You're probably right.

Were I President
I would attack Canada
And steal their health care.

Were I President
I would make sure everyone
Had a pet monkey.

Were I President
I would make it illegal
Not to smoke ganja

Were I President
I would legalize all drugs
And ban religion.

I Hate My Job

I need a new job. A new career, let's say. I'm tired of the loan officer bit, tired of the financial institution bit..but also tired of making changes. I haven't even been here for two years (although I've been in this industry for about five) and I'm ready to move on.

But what the hell would I do? I have no college degree, no specialized skills...and I'm going to be thirty-seven this year. While thirty-seven is nowhere near old (and truthfully I still feel like I'm twelve most of the time), is it a bit too late to start from scratch? The dreamer in me says no, while the pragmatist says yes. The responsiblility gene says "stay the course, build up your 401k, plan for the future". The Wild Hare gene says "Fuck that other gene! Follow your heart and your balls!"

I long for a fresh start in a new place. This job provides no challenge, allows for no real creativity and is slowly killing me. This is evidenced by my surfing the net all day while ignoring loan applications.

So what would I do? Well, I'd prefer something active and creative, something that lets me get outside and use my imagination.

The perfect job for me? Photojournalism. Nature photography. Very National Geographic.

I guess the question now is...how do I make this happen?

Have I ever mentioned that I love baseball? Well I do. If I had to choose one activity for the rest of my life, it would be baseball. Not sex, not drinking, not smoking weed, not watching movies... I would play baseball. Or watch it (live..baseball on tv kind of sucks). Or listen to it.

I'm such a geek that I even keep score at home while I watch it. I can't recite stats & records and all that shit, but I love the game.

Even after the strikes, the drugs, ridiculous salaries, after all that nonsense, I still love the damn game.

So now you know where I stand. That being said....

I could care less about this Baseball Classic thing. Really, who cares? I just can't get excited about it. I didn't care about Olympic baseball and I don't care about this.

Is it that I have no pride in the country? I think that's part of it. Perhaps it's also a result of this country being so powerful for so long now that we simply assume we're the best at everything...and hell, we invented the game after all. Do I care if we beat Mexico or South Africa? Not at all. Will I care if they beat us? Maybe a little, but not that much.

So bring on April 2nd. Opening day. Then we can talk baseball for real.

Monkeys and Bronchitis

They do not mix. No sir. I had never had bronchitis before, or strep. I had the pukey-flu once before, when I was eleven. I've had colds, sure, and some bad ones, but this was something completely different.

I did not like it. Sure, I got a week off work, but I had a fever ranging anywhere between 100 to 103, the worst sore throat of my life, a nasty cough that brought up interesting colored bits of phlegm (or sputum, if you prefer) and body aches. Oh, the aches. Awful.

But the worst part?

I couldn't drink. Shit! Apparently fevers, alcohol and antibiotics don't mix. Who knew? Oh, and my throat was too sore to smoke any grass. Just awful.