Tag: Personal

FUNdraising

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The thing is Cory, you caught me on the wrong day.  I’m not a huge fan of Christmas.  And I know that statement makes you want to say “bah humbug” and lightly squeeze my shoulder in a jovial, salesy way, but please save it.  I don’t mean it like that.  I’m not anti merriment or goodwill – I like taking off work to spend time with my family and justifying my over consumption of sweets just as much as the next guy – but I hate crowds, gaudy inflatable Santas, Mariah Carrey Christmas albums that refuse to die, and our perceived obligation as a culture to buy each other shit to prove our affection. 

I was at Fashion Valley begrudgingly participating in this most trying of seasons (which, if I may uncharacteristically side with the religious right for a second, I would be perfectly happy having Jesus be the “ONLY reason for”), when you came my way.

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The Office Handbook: A Guide for the Reluctant Corporate Employee – Chapter 3

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Introduction
Chapter 1: Combating Office Awkwardness
Chapter 2: The Fundamentals of Office Real Estate

Chapter 3: Tools of Forced Social Interaction – Mastering the 15 Second Conversation
You’re leaving the office down a narrow back stairwell, but this alternative to an awkward elevator encounter doesn’t go as planned.  Suddenly, another employee comes bounding down the stairs from the floor above you and you find yourself caught in a classic piggy back stair walk.  Do you continue down at the same pace, pretending your new companion isn’t a mere two steps behind you?  Do you slow down and hope they pass, risking an awkward shoulder to shoulder, synchronized descent?  You have 15 seconds of stairs to go; what do you say?

You’ve gone into the kitchen to fill your enormous water bottle and Nick, the sales guy whose open office door you pass three times a day on the way to the bathroom (?) enters.  Or maybe it’s Rod, the dev guy you email on a weekly basis but have never formally met (?) who walks in.  You seem to be blocking the vending machine where he gets his 3:00 daily fix of Blazin Hot Cheetos and your bottle is filling painfully slow.  Nick/Rod shuffles awkwardly, you smile apologetically.  15 seconds of pouring remains; what do you say?

Fig. 3.1. - It takes less than 15 seconds to say something completely regrettable.

 

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I Might Lose You

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A rainbow sweater AND a bowl cut?! I never had a chance, Mom.

When I complain about my issues with orientation, I am usually talking about one of two things.  The first, which I have already used this blog to discuss at length, I only partially attribute to my mother, who adorned me in liberal amounts of plaid as a child.  The second is one hundred percent her fault, as my complete lack of directional aptitude is a genetic gift that like my prematurely graying hair, clearly came from her.   

My mother, bless her heart, still gets confused picking me up from the airport located twenty minutes from my childhood home.  She used to create mnemonic devices to remember how to get from downtown Hayward to places our family drove several times a year:          

“We turn on B street, Marea, because we want to BE at the cabin!  C street because we’re going to the Little Theater to SEE a play!”          

My mom once flew into Arizona and rented a car to watch me play rugby, and finding her hotel and the pitch without incident remains one of her proudest life accomplishments.  She still talks nostalgically about Phoenix’s large, well-lit signage.       

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Michael Flatley, Lucky the Leprechaun and Other Things of Questionable Irish Descent

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As a student of Urban Studies (a major I damn near completed) at UCSD, I was introduced to the concept of “tourist bubbles”: urban spaces designed to give visitors an “authentic” regional experience while keeping them comfortably separate from the yucky parts of a city that might compel them to reach less frequently into their fashionable money belts.  A vacation in a tourist bubble is like a Small World-type theme park ride; tourists are transported on a track by the city’s most impressive landmarks and dancing stereotypes of its citizens, circumventing anything that may expose the interworkings of the ride, such as poverty, urban decay or actual residents.

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My New Diet

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Shitty pop songs are like simple carbs.  You know they’re not good for you, but when you get in the habit of consuming them on a regular basis, it’s kinda hard to stop.  They’re a mindless burst of pleasure, a shot of energy to your bloodstream that often doesn’t even last the duration of the jam. Sometimes you’ve had so much that you’re no longer even enjoying them as they enter your system, but you still can’t stop shoving them in an uncontrollable manner into your mouth and ears. 

 Jason Derulo, really?  Are they STILL playing this terrible song?, you wonder, as your hand, guided by some force outside of your conscious control, reaches toward the volume like it’s the bowl of chips on the coffee table. 

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To All Organizations Playing a Role in my Overall Flight Experience:

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Rugby practice started this month and you know what that means! Soon my teammates and I will be taking bi-monthly flights on Southwest – the Greyhound of the sky!  The American equivalent of traveling in the back of a crowded truck with live chickens! – to glamorous destinations all around the country. Our sightseeing highlights will include grass fields miles from the city center and if we’re lucky, hotels boasting an hourly rate and Super Wal-Mart accessibility. We couldn’t take these fabulous vacations without you! Boy do we appreciate all you do! That said, our entire hypothetical retirement fund and mortgage does go directly into your pockets, so we’d be ever so grateful if you made a few minor changes to help make our travel experience as pleasurable as possible.

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A Debbie Downer Blog about Prop 8

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I was going to try to stay away from the topic of sexual orientation for a while so as not to alienate my hordes of straight readers, but I am sitting in a coffee shop in the San Diego gayborhood watching a happy crowd of triumphant homos, and as is the case with my gayness itself, I simply can’t help myself.  This impromptu pride parade is in celebration of today’s court decision to overturn Prop 8, a measure that reaffirmed the proper definition of marriage for these pesky California queers back in 2008.  From what I can remember, the definition goes something like, “Marriage, queers, is between a man and a woman, even if they are considerably less compatible and attractive than you and your same-sex partner. ”

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Gay and at the…Part II

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Gays are fascinating, mysterious creatures.  As a result, it can be difficult to view a gay and all of his (Or her?  Sometimes it’s so hard to tell!) extremely intriguing behaviors outside the context of his (her) sexual orientation.  For example, if you were to meet a well-dressed gay man named Neil, you probably wouldn’t think, “My, that individual Neil sure has an eye for fashion.”  Most likely you would think, “My, flaming homos such as Neil are so very stylish.”  You can’t help it.  It’s how our brains are wired.  

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Famous Writer Dies Tragically When Private Jet Crashes Near Fabulous Vacation Home; World Mourns

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Marea Blue, famous writer, began her ascent to literary greatness with a series of fictional works of which she was also the illustrator.  The daughter of a high school teacher, she had an unlimited supply of dittos available to her as a medium and would labor for hours on drawings with Spanish homework printed in faded purple on their opposite side.  Her trademark images were of torso-less humans with long legs that seemed to grow directly from the underside of their heads.  Most biographers consider this a subtle statement on the importance of the brain (logic) over heart (emotion), but less reputable writers from gay-interest magazines have also attributed this to Blue’s self-proclaimed status as a “leg man”. 

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The Office Handbook: A Guide for the Reluctant Corporate Employee – Chapter 2

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Introduction
Chapter 1: Combating Office Awkwardness

Chapter 2: The Fundamentals of Office Real Estate
To the untrained eye, every cubicle in a corporate office is identical. Three walls the color of dirty gym socks, mostly unused drawers stuffed with shit from the last twelve inhabitants, migraine-inducing florescent lights, the nicest desk chair and computer monitor you’ve managed to scavenge vulture-like from other recently abandoned cubicles; each is custom designed in the spirit of The Giver to dim memories of color, natural daylight, creativity, joy and other such luxuries that may cause you to wonder about the world outside of the community between the hours of 9 and 5. You may hang up pictures of your baby and/or puppy, important looking documents marked with highlighter, comic strips about sad cartoon characters who also work in a cubicle, or, if you’re an Active employee, the bibs from every 5K you’ve ever “competed” in, but most would agree that even these sad suggestions of personality are not enough to distinguish one cube from the other three that share its dingy walls. Cubicles, with their drab sameness, in their tidy little rows, appear to be the great equalizer, the Levittown of the work world.

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