It started at a party.
At first, I didn't want to go and Mike did. Then he didn't and I did. After all, it had only been four days since September 11th. No one wanted to move, breathe, leave their beds; why on Earth would anyone want to dance, drink, and yell at each other over loud music when there was so much sorrow in the world? What would be the point?
But as we got to the 12th, and the 13th, and so on the world took on a different feel. People were emerging from their flannel-sheet cocoons with a new mantra, "live now". The world could end at any time, we could be bombed into oblivion, our loved ones might be asked to fight and die abroad. "Live now"...go on and meet people, love life, let go of old fears and old grudges.
And so we decided to go.
And that's when I met you.
Later, we'd omit the part about the "party" being one of the frat variety, and how I met you and two of your friends by being flashed for beads. We spent the night on the dance floor, kissing and talking. Later, we lay in bed and whispered to each other, basking in the glow of the moment.
Alas, our first go-around was destined to fail. You were at school two hours away and I had enough on my plate with work, school, and a semblance of a social life. I only saw you twice in three months, communicating mostly through AIM and the phone. I broke off our then-short dalliance with a phone call right before winter break.
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We started talking again in March. You'd had a failed fling with a friend and I'd missed you. We talked about making an effort to see each other because there was a palpable attraction. I could feel it through the phone. We got back together at the end of that month.
Things were great for a while. The summer was tough, with you living down the Cape with your Nana and me living in Wakefield and working two jobs, but we made it work. Once school started, we were seeing each other all the time until winter finals. After that, I was doing my show and you were living your life. We barely saw each other; add to that the fact that we were still young and I was still stupid, and it equaled a break in April of 2003.
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I was shocked when you decided to come to my college graduation party. We couldn't keep our eyes off each other all night. Once everyone left the party and you stayed behind, I knew that this might be my chance to make things right. We talked, we kissed, we made up and made love, and all was right with the world. We could make this work.
The next year was incredible. I was home, finally close enough to see you on a regular basis. You were finishing up your senior year. That time was bliss; I'm not sure I was ever happier for a longer continuous stretch of time than I was for that year. We laughed, and played, and loved, and dreamed about the future. We even moved in together once your original plan fell through, assured by each other that it was you and me for the rest of our lives.
That would turn out to be a colossal mistake due to the fact that we had no money and you had no friends left up here. Salem was a nightmare. We were broke and we had no social lives to speak of. We fought constantly. We patched up the relationship over and over again. I think we were more scared of leaving each other because of the lease than of the relationship itself. I moved back home but we were too damaged by then; we kept it together until that July and then called it quits. We fooled around for a few months more, unable to let go, and then stopped talking in October.
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I can remember calling you in February of 2007. I was distraught; I'd had a little bit of a medical scare and I needed someone to talk to. You were the most comfortable person I could think of. At the time, I thought that was a compliment.
We started with talking. We moved on to dating. And then we slipped back into love as we had so many times before. And it was wonderful. I was convinced that this was it; you were The One. We had jobs, our own friends, shared confidence; it seemed like everything was falling into place.
March 23rd, 2008 is still the happiest night of my life, even if there has been a little bitterness injected into my memories since then. I asked you to marry me, and you said yes. You looked so beautiful that night. The stars were aligned, the night went as smoothly as I could have ever hoped, and by the time we fell asleep that night the world was ours for the taking, together at last.
Life was great after that. We were ecstatic, telling people left and right that were were engaged. We began making plans for a wedding date, for our children's names, for invitees to the reception.
Finally, my dream of becoming a family man with you was being realized.
And then you began pulling away.
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It started with your workload and school load during the summer. You were taking three classes, working two jobs, and suddenly the time spent together began to dwindle. We went from seeing each other four nights a week to three, to the weekends, to one day a weekend. You were stressed out, but you chose to spend your time off with your new friends. I understood why you thought the way you did: I'd always been and would be around; you wanted to make your own friends and keep them.
So we spent less time with each other. That was frustrating, but I dealt with it. Then you started pulling away further, making plans with your friends and family on the few days we both had free to see each other. You became emotionally distant. Our phone conversations became shorter and less lively. It seemed that you had time to talk and text to everyone except me.
You were attached at the ear and fingers to that goddamn phone. No matter where we were, it was a guarantee that there'd be no meaningful conversation as long as one of your friends was texting you. My family and friends noticed, too; every time you were out with us or over at the house they'd make comments to you about your obsession with your phone. People began pulling me aside and asking me if we were having problems.
I brushed off the criticism, even when the truth was staring me in the face. You were detached, distracted, uninterested. What I took for your desire to be more independent blinded me to what was really happening: you were giving up on our relationship because you stopped feeling the same way about me that I felt about you.
I struggled to keep us together and to understand you. You told me I was suffocating you. You lied to me about why you were feeling the way you were. I believed it because I had no choice. If someone can just fall out of love with someone else without provocation, what does that say about the other person? Can love ever be "forever" if it can be so quickly tossed away?
I had the creeping suspicion that there was someone else. Eventually that was confirmed by an outside source, someone to whom I will be forever indebted. Confronting you about it, I couldn't help but notice the total lack of emotion when you admitted to the elephant in the room. I don't know why I expected more crying or begging or explanation; I hadn't gotten anything real out of you in months.
This time, it was easier. I'd been dealing with a shell of my fiancee for the past few months; the woman I was dealing with now, I didn't even know. Breaking up with someone you don't know is easier than the alternative.
I don't know if you ever would have told me about the other person, but I wasn't willing to wait for you to figure it out.
So here I am now, trying to live my life without your helping hand; unable to converse with your family, to share in the joy of your new cousin, to be included in the love that you so willingly give to others.
I'm doing alright; I have the best family, friends, and co-workers a guy could ask for. I'm going to get back on my feet and try to remember how to start living as a single man again. My stomachaches have disappeared for the most part. I'm probably drinking a little more than I have in recent times, but that's because my amazing support system has sounded the alarm and tried their hardest to help me move on, and that means taking me out. Things will settle soon, and I'll be a better person for it.
And so we've come full circle - from a national tragedy to an emotional one; a story about a man and a woman who were so deeply in love that they couldn't see inevitability when it was staring them in the face.
I don't bear ill will towards you. I'm sad about what has happened but I know you had your reasons. I'm sure that someday you'll figure yourself out, meet someone, and be happy. Maybe you're already on your way there.
Maybe you'll realize in six months that you've made a huge mistake. I won't be there for you if that happens. I can't afford to be.
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So now I lay this story to rest. A story that spanned seven years of our lives, full of passion, tears, laughter, family, broken promises, and love. A story whose time has come and gone.
We'll learn from this experience and become stronger people. We just have to make sure we don't gloss over the time we spent together. Thank you for the wildest, most passionate, most emotionally-immersing seven years I've ever lived. Here's hoping the next seven have a better ending...for you and for me.
Cheers.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Monday, September 15, 2008
Are you FUCKING kidding me?
Let me set the scene for you:
People can't afford to pay their mortgages. Or their oil bills.
A financial institution that's been around for 158 FUCKING YEARS suddenly goes bankrupt. Another one went the way of the dinosaur last month. Yet a third is bought by Bank of America to keep it from following suit.
Inflation has gone way up while the relative growth of salaries has gone way down in the past eight years.
Everyone who doesn't make six figures is feeling the pinch, no matter who they are or what they do.
The former Federal Reserve chair, a man revered by economists and financial minds, stated this week that the current economy is "the worst [he's] ever seen".
And one candidate is so FUCKING OUT-OF-TOUCH WITH REALITY that he said today (the same day that Lehman goes belly-up, Merrill Lynch gets bought out to keep it afloat, and the market drops 500 points - the most since 9/11) that our economy is "fundamentally strong."
You want my reason why this delusional, quasi-senile, double-talking, soul-selling, vile shell of a man shouldn't be our president?
That video says it all. THAT'S my fucking reason.
If you want to sum up a man who gave up his integrity nearly a decade ago in order to get to where he is today, that video is all you need.
Here; I'll post it again in case you missed it.
This man should not be our president. This man keeps lying and distorting the truth to pander to the dumbest among us. The man knows that there are enough moonshine-swilling hillbillies, enough close-minded bigots, enough brainwashed tripe-swallowing cretins to get him into office as long as he keeps throwing 9/11 in our faces.
It makes me fucking SICK.
Those who tout his tax breaks won't see the vast majority of them. They won't. The average American WON'T SEE THEM. Period. Voodoo economics, the "trickle-down effect"...it's all bullshit that the GOP spoon-feeds the mouth-breathers among us and they gobble it up like candy.
Listen, you decrepit, senile old man: I get it. You want to calm peoples' fears so that they'll vote for you. You don't want to throw Dubya under the bus because it will make you look bad. But let's face the goddamn facts: PEOPLE ARE SCARED.
People don't need smoke blown up their asses; they need solutions. They need to know that you understand their plight and that you're here to help. What they DON'T need is for you to look like fucking IGNORANT in front of millions of people. Admit that the economy sucks; admit that it needs to be fixed; admit that you're going to do your best to do the job right. DON'T patronize people.
Seriously, I hope you lose in a landslide.
Fuck you, John McCain.
I'm Andy Boncoddo and I approve this message. Asshats.
People can't afford to pay their mortgages. Or their oil bills.
A financial institution that's been around for 158 FUCKING YEARS suddenly goes bankrupt. Another one went the way of the dinosaur last month. Yet a third is bought by Bank of America to keep it from following suit.
Inflation has gone way up while the relative growth of salaries has gone way down in the past eight years.
Everyone who doesn't make six figures is feeling the pinch, no matter who they are or what they do.
The former Federal Reserve chair, a man revered by economists and financial minds, stated this week that the current economy is "the worst [he's] ever seen".
And one candidate is so FUCKING OUT-OF-TOUCH WITH REALITY that he said today (the same day that Lehman goes belly-up, Merrill Lynch gets bought out to keep it afloat, and the market drops 500 points - the most since 9/11) that our economy is "fundamentally strong."
You want my reason why this delusional, quasi-senile, double-talking, soul-selling, vile shell of a man shouldn't be our president?
That video says it all. THAT'S my fucking reason.
If you want to sum up a man who gave up his integrity nearly a decade ago in order to get to where he is today, that video is all you need.
Here; I'll post it again in case you missed it.
This man should not be our president. This man keeps lying and distorting the truth to pander to the dumbest among us. The man knows that there are enough moonshine-swilling hillbillies, enough close-minded bigots, enough brainwashed tripe-swallowing cretins to get him into office as long as he keeps throwing 9/11 in our faces.
It makes me fucking SICK.
Those who tout his tax breaks won't see the vast majority of them. They won't. The average American WON'T SEE THEM. Period. Voodoo economics, the "trickle-down effect"...it's all bullshit that the GOP spoon-feeds the mouth-breathers among us and they gobble it up like candy.
Listen, you decrepit, senile old man: I get it. You want to calm peoples' fears so that they'll vote for you. You don't want to throw Dubya under the bus because it will make you look bad. But let's face the goddamn facts: PEOPLE ARE SCARED.
People don't need smoke blown up their asses; they need solutions. They need to know that you understand their plight and that you're here to help. What they DON'T need is for you to look like fucking IGNORANT in front of millions of people. Admit that the economy sucks; admit that it needs to be fixed; admit that you're going to do your best to do the job right. DON'T patronize people.
Seriously, I hope you lose in a landslide.
Fuck you, John McCain.
I'm Andy Boncoddo and I approve this message. Asshats.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Palin don't preach; you're in trouble deep.
I was planning on going to bed tonight. I wanted to write about McCain's surprising (and incredibly cynical) pick of Sarah Palin to be his VP choice tomorrow, or perhaps Friday. Hell, it's 12:30am and I should be in bed.
But fuck that; I'm pissed and disgusted and I'm going to do this now.
McCain's pick of Palin, a first term governor from that hotly-contested and vitally important swing state of Alaska (with it's whopping 3 electoral votes having gone to the Republican party for years), is a pick that should be insulting to members of the GOP and women everywhere. Here is a woman who was picked because she's a frisky outsider, a down-to-her-bones conservative who is anti-abortion, anti-gun control, and pro-Big Oil. Oh, she'll tell you how she's stood up to special interest groups, oil companies, and terrorists as the governor of Alaska over the past 22 months, but really, who the fuck is she kidding?
How did you stand up to terror when neither you nor the leader of the Alaskan National Guard have any say whatsoever as to when or where Alaskan troops are deployed? How did you stand up to Congress with the "Bridge to Nowhere" after your state had already pocketed the money budgeted for the project? If it stopped going to the bridge then where did it go? She's so eager to drill for oil in Alaska, but who the fuck do you think is going to be doing the actual drilling? Or the building of the pipelines? Or the refining of the oil? OIL COMPANIES, YOU DUMB FUCK.
Here's what we know about Palin: she's preached abstinence-only education for Alaskan public schools for the past two years. She's rejected sex-ed and handing out condoms in schools. She and her husband were active in the Alaskan Independence Party which, among other ideals, believed that Alaska should secede from the Union. That's right, the Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States of America once belonged to a political party whose main objective was to have Alaska BREAK OFF FROM THE UNITED STATES and become its own country.
But the best part about Palin? The fact that while she's out and about in East Buttfuck, Alaska warning parents and their children about the evils of sex without actually teaching those people how to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies and STDs, her daughter is actively getting knocked up by some redneck high school hockey player in the back of his pickup truck. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried. And now the Republicans and evangelicals are actually spinning this garbage to make it look like a GOOD thing, going so far as to APPLAUD this 17 year-old for keeping the baby and marrying the father. Are you fucking kidding me? The Republican party is trying to tell people that they only want to teach teenagers that it is not ok to have sex before marriage under any circumstances, but in case they get knocked up at the young age of NOT ABLE TO CONSENT that their best bet (and the only morally right option) is to keep the baby and marry the father? As if a 17 year-old is mature enough to decide that the person they're sleeping with and getting knocked up by is the right person for them with whom to spend the rest of their lives. Does that sound reasonable? You're fucking right it doesn't.
So Palin was really picked because McCain needed someone youthful behind him. He needed someone to take away Obama's votes from disenchanted Hillary supporters. He needed someone who would call forth the extreme right, a group that has wavered on McCain over the last eight years no matter how hard he has tried to reinvent himself to please them. But Hillary supporters aren't going to vote for her; just because she has a vagina doesn't make her the "woman's choice". Her views differ fundamentally from Clinton's; they are from different backgrounds; Clinton has experience on a national and international level.
Palin is a gimmicky pick that negates any possible ground McCain had to stand on when it came to Obama's inexperience. The amount of spinning the GOP has done to make Palin look like a legit choice for the 2nd highest office in the country is making the lamp post outside my window dizzy. I can't imagine that any sane person would actually trust the country to a person with no real experience if something were to happen to McCain, a man who has had melanoma four times and who would be 73 years old at the time of his theoretical inauguration. It's crazy, but then again so are Southerners. And residents of the Midwest. Fuck.
Now I know what you may be saying: Biden is from Delaware and they only have 3 electoral votes. Why are you being such a prick just because Palin is from a who-gives-a-flying-fuck state? Two reasons: first, fuck you; don't interrupt me again. Second, because Biden carries a reputation with him; a reputation of foreign policy experience, of fighting for women who are victims of violence, of leading the way in his home state for fostering new energies to be produced and researched. People know who Joe Biden is; they know what they're getting when they vote for him.
What are you getting with Palin? A woman who was mayor of a town with less people than I lived with in the Central section of UMass, and still managed to leave it with a $27,000,000 deficit when she became governor. A woman who became governor of a state whose entire population is a mere 70,000 people less than the number living in the CITY OF BOSTON. A woman who demands that only abstinence be taught in classrooms but can't even teach that same lesson to her own daughter. A woman who fired Alaska's public safety commissioner because he wouldn't fire her sister's ex-husband after a bitter divorce and custody battle, which the ex won. A woman who still believes that God told Bush to wage the War on Terror.
Hypocrisy, crony-ism, mismanagement of funds, religious zeal...wow, she IS the ideal GOP candidate. But she was also a terrible choice for McCain to make, especially when his first priority should have been to pick someone with economic, environmental, and civil rights experience...all are areas in which John McCain is severely lacking in the experience department. Those hoping that Palin will "learn on the job" are deluding themselves. America isn't Burger King; you can't do fries before you've mopped floors. You can't learn on the fly because no one will take you seriously. Even Palin says that whoever takes office needs to be prepared for anything:
"My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of 'personal discovery.' This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer." - Sarah Palin, September 3, 2008
Well said, Governor Palin. Those without experience in the areas of national and international affairs, as well as the workings of Washington politics, should not be running for a job that entails that exact experience.
"The American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of 'personal discovery'."
Those are her words; will she heed them?
But fuck that; I'm pissed and disgusted and I'm going to do this now.
McCain's pick of Palin, a first term governor from that hotly-contested and vitally important swing state of Alaska (with it's whopping 3 electoral votes having gone to the Republican party for years), is a pick that should be insulting to members of the GOP and women everywhere. Here is a woman who was picked because she's a frisky outsider, a down-to-her-bones conservative who is anti-abortion, anti-gun control, and pro-Big Oil. Oh, she'll tell you how she's stood up to special interest groups, oil companies, and terrorists as the governor of Alaska over the past 22 months, but really, who the fuck is she kidding?
How did you stand up to terror when neither you nor the leader of the Alaskan National Guard have any say whatsoever as to when or where Alaskan troops are deployed? How did you stand up to Congress with the "Bridge to Nowhere" after your state had already pocketed the money budgeted for the project? If it stopped going to the bridge then where did it go? She's so eager to drill for oil in Alaska, but who the fuck do you think is going to be doing the actual drilling? Or the building of the pipelines? Or the refining of the oil? OIL COMPANIES, YOU DUMB FUCK.
Here's what we know about Palin: she's preached abstinence-only education for Alaskan public schools for the past two years. She's rejected sex-ed and handing out condoms in schools. She and her husband were active in the Alaskan Independence Party which, among other ideals, believed that Alaska should secede from the Union. That's right, the Republican nominee for Vice President of the United States of America once belonged to a political party whose main objective was to have Alaska BREAK OFF FROM THE UNITED STATES and become its own country.
But the best part about Palin? The fact that while she's out and about in East Buttfuck, Alaska warning parents and their children about the evils of sex without actually teaching those people how to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies and STDs, her daughter is actively getting knocked up by some redneck high school hockey player in the back of his pickup truck. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried. And now the Republicans and evangelicals are actually spinning this garbage to make it look like a GOOD thing, going so far as to APPLAUD this 17 year-old for keeping the baby and marrying the father. Are you fucking kidding me? The Republican party is trying to tell people that they only want to teach teenagers that it is not ok to have sex before marriage under any circumstances, but in case they get knocked up at the young age of NOT ABLE TO CONSENT that their best bet (and the only morally right option) is to keep the baby and marry the father? As if a 17 year-old is mature enough to decide that the person they're sleeping with and getting knocked up by is the right person for them with whom to spend the rest of their lives. Does that sound reasonable? You're fucking right it doesn't.
So Palin was really picked because McCain needed someone youthful behind him. He needed someone to take away Obama's votes from disenchanted Hillary supporters. He needed someone who would call forth the extreme right, a group that has wavered on McCain over the last eight years no matter how hard he has tried to reinvent himself to please them. But Hillary supporters aren't going to vote for her; just because she has a vagina doesn't make her the "woman's choice". Her views differ fundamentally from Clinton's; they are from different backgrounds; Clinton has experience on a national and international level.
Palin is a gimmicky pick that negates any possible ground McCain had to stand on when it came to Obama's inexperience. The amount of spinning the GOP has done to make Palin look like a legit choice for the 2nd highest office in the country is making the lamp post outside my window dizzy. I can't imagine that any sane person would actually trust the country to a person with no real experience if something were to happen to McCain, a man who has had melanoma four times and who would be 73 years old at the time of his theoretical inauguration. It's crazy, but then again so are Southerners. And residents of the Midwest. Fuck.
Now I know what you may be saying: Biden is from Delaware and they only have 3 electoral votes. Why are you being such a prick just because Palin is from a who-gives-a-flying-fuck state? Two reasons: first, fuck you; don't interrupt me again. Second, because Biden carries a reputation with him; a reputation of foreign policy experience, of fighting for women who are victims of violence, of leading the way in his home state for fostering new energies to be produced and researched. People know who Joe Biden is; they know what they're getting when they vote for him.
What are you getting with Palin? A woman who was mayor of a town with less people than I lived with in the Central section of UMass, and still managed to leave it with a $27,000,000 deficit when she became governor. A woman who became governor of a state whose entire population is a mere 70,000 people less than the number living in the CITY OF BOSTON. A woman who demands that only abstinence be taught in classrooms but can't even teach that same lesson to her own daughter. A woman who fired Alaska's public safety commissioner because he wouldn't fire her sister's ex-husband after a bitter divorce and custody battle, which the ex won. A woman who still believes that God told Bush to wage the War on Terror.
Hypocrisy, crony-ism, mismanagement of funds, religious zeal...wow, she IS the ideal GOP candidate. But she was also a terrible choice for McCain to make, especially when his first priority should have been to pick someone with economic, environmental, and civil rights experience...all are areas in which John McCain is severely lacking in the experience department. Those hoping that Palin will "learn on the job" are deluding themselves. America isn't Burger King; you can't do fries before you've mopped floors. You can't learn on the fly because no one will take you seriously. Even Palin says that whoever takes office needs to be prepared for anything:
"My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of 'personal discovery.' This world of threats and dangers is not just a community, and it doesn't just need an organizer." - Sarah Palin, September 3, 2008
Well said, Governor Palin. Those without experience in the areas of national and international affairs, as well as the workings of Washington politics, should not be running for a job that entails that exact experience.
"The American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of 'personal discovery'."
Those are her words; will she heed them?
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Waiting on a bitch with change...
I make decisions quickly. I like to think that my brain quickly processes the information given to it and can rationalize the move I should make before it's too late. For instance, I study patterns of driving when I'm on the road so that I can effectively switch lanes in order to get somewhere faster and not be stuck behind some slow asshole who has deluded himself/herself into thinking that no one will notice a change in their driving if they text their best friend, change the radio station, and apply makeup at the same time.
I also hate when what I end up deciding ends up being wrong based on variables I did not foresee. First, variables are unfair and are generally douchebags. Secondly, I hate being wrong as a general rule.
So you can imagine my absolute frustration while shopping for vinegar, Gatorade, and distilled water (you know, for my sixth-grade science fair entry) at my friendly neighborhood Shaw's the other night (which, by the way, is the smaller, trailer park bastard-child of the two legitimate Shaw's supermarkets in Saugus and Stoneham) when I decided to forgo the line with 3 people in it and opt instead for the line with one lady buying only two greeting cards and a pack of gum...and it ended up being the craziest five minutes of my life.
The Shaw's in Wakefield (artist's rendering).
Why, you ask? Andy, how could it have taken you five minutes to buy four items behind a lady only buying three items? Were you inadvertently rendered blind and stupefied by the image of Oprah on the tabloid rag your eyes grazed? Did you attempt to converse with the cashier in Arabic, only to have her douse you with a fire extinguisher before shoving a stake through your heart? Maybe the medication Robin Williams gave you finally wore off?
No, easily-amused readership; I was fooled by a simple bag. A plain old knit bag which I mistook for a run-of-the-mill "old lady" purse which I presumed to be filled to the brim with pictures of grandchildren, Werther's Originals, and holy water for shooing those damn devil-teens off her lawn. A bag that was in reality filled with a shoebox-sized Tupperware container overflowing with every coin-like currency denomination known to man...except for a single goddamn quarter. Not one.
So now I'm sitting behind a lady who is counting out $5.04 in nickels, dimes, and *shudder* pennies. At about the $2.55 mark she decides that instead of counting the coins herself, she would just toss handfuls of change onto the still-moving conveyor belt (which only kept moving because this goddamn Social Security sinkhole continued to move her change-box down the belt until the sensor was unblocked, starting the motor again) and have the cashier count it.
So why didn't I just move into another line, you ask? First of all, shut the fuck up; don't interrupt my story again or I swear to CHRIST I will cut you. Second, in the time it took for me to truly grasp the situation I was watching unfold (my brain was threatening to fold in on itself like a collapsing star) two of the remaining cashiers on registers had left to go on break and the lone free cashier had come over to fish change out of the conveyor belt, which was eating the loose coins every time the belt moved.
Andy's head exploded, waiting in the Shaw's liiiiiiiine, in a shopping supernova...
So, to recap the scene in front of me:
1) lady paying for cards and gum completely with non-quarter change
2) two cashiers frantically digging said change out of the hold at the end of the conveyor belt
3) unassuming, mid-twenties male hanging from the ceiling of Shaw's by a noose fashioned by every remaining National Inquirer in the checkout area
Finally (finally!), once the change had been collected, my Gatorade had evaporated while still in the bottle, and the Snickers bars had become sentient I was able to pay for my items. With cash. Treasury-approved, mint-printed, can-get-ruined-in-the-wash-if-not-careful, honest-to-In-God-We-Trust paper money. Hallelujah! Holy shit!
Where's the Tylenol?
So that was it; my harrowing escape through a river of Shaw's-filled shit. It's my firm belief that the end of the world is coming, for the stupids are breeding and I fear their multiplication may never slow. Just do me a favor: buy your canned goods and batteries at Stop & Shop.
Good night, everyone.
I also hate when what I end up deciding ends up being wrong based on variables I did not foresee. First, variables are unfair and are generally douchebags. Secondly, I hate being wrong as a general rule.
So you can imagine my absolute frustration while shopping for vinegar, Gatorade, and distilled water (you know, for my sixth-grade science fair entry) at my friendly neighborhood Shaw's the other night (which, by the way, is the smaller, trailer park bastard-child of the two legitimate Shaw's supermarkets in Saugus and Stoneham) when I decided to forgo the line with 3 people in it and opt instead for the line with one lady buying only two greeting cards and a pack of gum...and it ended up being the craziest five minutes of my life.
The Shaw's in Wakefield (artist's rendering).
Why, you ask? Andy, how could it have taken you five minutes to buy four items behind a lady only buying three items? Were you inadvertently rendered blind and stupefied by the image of Oprah on the tabloid rag your eyes grazed? Did you attempt to converse with the cashier in Arabic, only to have her douse you with a fire extinguisher before shoving a stake through your heart? Maybe the medication Robin Williams gave you finally wore off?
No, easily-amused readership; I was fooled by a simple bag. A plain old knit bag which I mistook for a run-of-the-mill "old lady" purse which I presumed to be filled to the brim with pictures of grandchildren, Werther's Originals, and holy water for shooing those damn devil-teens off her lawn. A bag that was in reality filled with a shoebox-sized Tupperware container overflowing with every coin-like currency denomination known to man...except for a single goddamn quarter. Not one.
So now I'm sitting behind a lady who is counting out $5.04 in nickels, dimes, and *shudder* pennies. At about the $2.55 mark she decides that instead of counting the coins herself, she would just toss handfuls of change onto the still-moving conveyor belt (which only kept moving because this goddamn Social Security sinkhole continued to move her change-box down the belt until the sensor was unblocked, starting the motor again) and have the cashier count it.
So why didn't I just move into another line, you ask? First of all, shut the fuck up; don't interrupt my story again or I swear to CHRIST I will cut you. Second, in the time it took for me to truly grasp the situation I was watching unfold (my brain was threatening to fold in on itself like a collapsing star) two of the remaining cashiers on registers had left to go on break and the lone free cashier had come over to fish change out of the conveyor belt, which was eating the loose coins every time the belt moved.
Andy's head exploded, waiting in the Shaw's liiiiiiiine, in a shopping supernova...
So, to recap the scene in front of me:
1) lady paying for cards and gum completely with non-quarter change
2) two cashiers frantically digging said change out of the hold at the end of the conveyor belt
3) unassuming, mid-twenties male hanging from the ceiling of Shaw's by a noose fashioned by every remaining National Inquirer in the checkout area
Finally (finally!), once the change had been collected, my Gatorade had evaporated while still in the bottle, and the Snickers bars had become sentient I was able to pay for my items. With cash. Treasury-approved, mint-printed, can-get-ruined-in-the-wash-if-not-careful, honest-to-In-God-We-Trust paper money. Hallelujah! Holy shit!
Where's the Tylenol?
So that was it; my harrowing escape through a river of Shaw's-filled shit. It's my firm belief that the end of the world is coming, for the stupids are breeding and I fear their multiplication may never slow. Just do me a favor: buy your canned goods and batteries at Stop & Shop.
Good night, everyone.
Monday, August 11, 2008
I can't relate and that's a problem that I'm feeling...
My mind is all over the place so bear with me. Or bare yourself...with me. Or something.
I didn't expect the Olympics to be this entertaining. That's probably the sixth or seventh time I've ever said that. Every time the Olympics come around I assume I won't care about how some burly woman from Uruguay won the gold medal in some sport that I didn't even know was a sport. I usually end up being wrong.
I watch obsessively; not only do I root for the Americans but I watch contests between countries that I either a) didn't know existed; or b) didn't care existed, with such fervor that you'd think I was competing. I want Michael Phelps to win eight golds, the Redeem Team to dunk over Pau Gasol over and over again, and use the wonderful magic of DVR to watch and re-watch the womens' gymnastics events without violating my parole. Do I feel bad that the Games are being played in a cesspool of a country known for its cheap labor, pollution woes, and atrocities against humanity? Absolutely. Will I watch all sixteen glorious days and then go back to pretending China doesn't exist? You betcha.
America, Fuck Yeah!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes I think I know too much.
Not that I honestly believe that I have vast, nearly unquantifiable amounts of information in my head; I think it's more along the lines of having an almost superhuman sense of context. I find myself tuning people out halfway through their stories/sentences, already knowing how they're going to end. There's just something about context, cause-and-effect, and body language that I just "get". I should preface that it's not that I consciously do this most of the time.
This has been both bad and good for me. It's good in the fact that I can dive into my own mind and play around while someone is talking and I'll still know what they've said afterwards; not because I was listening but because I've gathered from the way they're standing, talking, sighing, etc what the gist of the story is and what my reaction should be. It's good because I can listen to someone talk and know what to say to them in order to solve their problem, or at least cheer them up a bit.
The bad thing about all this is that I'm pretty sure that this ability had led to the near-complete draining of my empathy. I wouldn't call the feeling "depression" per se, nor would I say that the feeling is extreme enough for people to consider me a sociopath; for the most part, unless I really am invested in the outcome or if you're a very important part of my life, I just don't care. I'm not trying to be mean about it; in fact, sometimes it's a sad feeling. Someone could be pouring their hearts out or telling me the funniest story they've ever heard and I could really not care less.
I'm not sure what the reasoning behind it is, or why I have such a heightened sense of what people are feeling and thinking. What I do know is that I have a hard time relating to most people. To me, their problems aren't hard to fix or deal with because I've already decided what I would do in their situation to cope or fix it by the time they've finished talking. How am I supposed to be sympathetic when I've already figured out how I would deal with it?
Does it sound as crazy while you read it as it does to me while I'm typing it? It sounds crazy but it makes perfect sense to me. It explains why I tend to become everyone's therapist; by the end of the tale(s) I've become so removed emotionally from the outcome that my advice tends to be blunt and incontrovertible.
I don't want you to get the impression that I don't care about anything or anyone; of course I do. I have loved ones just like everyone else. I have passions that make me feel such great joy that I want to cry sometimes. I can feel for family and friends. I'll donate time and money to causes I care deeply about. I could just care less about most things.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What brought this on tonight were the actions of an asshole on my morning train. I was sitting in a seat with my iPod on; I was doing the crossword at the time. When the album playing finally ended (Matchbox Twenty's Mad Season...from a time when they didn't suck) my ears picked up the words of the man sitting next to me. He was a black man, about 30 years old, and he was talking softly enough for the closest of us to hear. He was talking about how all of us around him sit on the train and read their papers, listen to their iPods, talk to each other about work while we "tune out the sorrow of the people who don't look like you; who suffer while you drink your coffee and live your lives." He mock-yawned in our directions to imitate out uncaring natures for those less-fortunate than the people he knows.
I was honestly too pissed to answer him. That, and I didn't want to get stabbed (and I'm not saying that because he was black; he was muttering to himself on a train full of people and being hostile). The nerve of this guy to babble on and on like an asshole about how uncaring I am because I'm minding my own business on the way to work while he lectures us "uneducated folk" on the train is hysterical. I just wanted to knock him the fuck out and start screaming at him. What the fuck is he doing to help? Is he doing non-profit scolding on the train for Amnesty International? Who the fuck is he to tell me what I care about? He doesn't even know me! he's doing the same thing I'm doing: sitting on a train, heading somewhere. He wasn't serving soup to homeless people on the train. He wasn't volunteering at the Special Olympics. He wasn't tutoring at-risk youth. I've done all that stuff with no regard for how it looks to other people; who is this asshole to judge me?
Obviously, I feel very strongly that people who have no idea what they're talking about should just shut the fuck up.
I'm talking to you two fuckfaces in particular.
Unfortunately, we're all headed for a real-life Idiocracy where the dumbest and most ignorant among us will soon have the largest voice, volume-wise. I hope to blow my brains out before that day comes.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...well, someone ready my pistol because we're heading towards the End of Days at warp speed.
I know this may seem like a backpedal from a previous post, but there is something that's been bothering the FUCK out of me for a week now: Veggie Monster.
What's Veggie Monster? Good question. If you've ever watched Sesame Street then you probably already know who he is. You may know him by his slave name, Cookie Monster.
Also the 2nd gunman on the grassy knoll.
Apparently, the idea of a lovable puppet that couldn't get enough cookies was a diabolical plot solely responsible for the rise in childhood obesity (see: mini-marshmallows) and just had to be stopped. I mean, it would just be too hard to regulate a child's weight using conventional methods such as exercise, eating right, proper education, and appropriate television and video game restriction. Instead, let's neuter a beloved and iconic children's television character and make him a shell of himself.
What's next? Does he sing "V is for Veggie"? Is Oscar just "misunderstood"? Does Telly go to AA?
How is this "thing" NOT a drunk?
I know I've said before that there's only so much parents can do, that there are just too many voices reaching kids' ears these days, yada yada yada. However, a child's weight and level of activity is something of which a parent or guardian has direct control. A guardian feeds their child in most cases; a guardian monitors their level of exercise. In other words, the only reason to blame for a child's utter fatassery is the adult who takes care of him or her. Success in bludgeoning PBS long enough to begin the pussification of the last bastion of educational television does not make you a good parent; it makes you a complete asshat.
Instrumental in making Cookie Monster suck.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry for going all Andy Rooney on you tonight. I really did have a great weekend but I'm just tired from 300 miles of driving and continued feats of stupidity from my underlings at work. I love life and I love the people in it; it's the rest of you fuckers I can't stand.
Good night!
I didn't expect the Olympics to be this entertaining. That's probably the sixth or seventh time I've ever said that. Every time the Olympics come around I assume I won't care about how some burly woman from Uruguay won the gold medal in some sport that I didn't even know was a sport. I usually end up being wrong.
I watch obsessively; not only do I root for the Americans but I watch contests between countries that I either a) didn't know existed; or b) didn't care existed, with such fervor that you'd think I was competing. I want Michael Phelps to win eight golds, the Redeem Team to dunk over Pau Gasol over and over again, and use the wonderful magic of DVR to watch and re-watch the womens' gymnastics events without violating my parole. Do I feel bad that the Games are being played in a cesspool of a country known for its cheap labor, pollution woes, and atrocities against humanity? Absolutely. Will I watch all sixteen glorious days and then go back to pretending China doesn't exist? You betcha.
America, Fuck Yeah!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes I think I know too much.
Not that I honestly believe that I have vast, nearly unquantifiable amounts of information in my head; I think it's more along the lines of having an almost superhuman sense of context. I find myself tuning people out halfway through their stories/sentences, already knowing how they're going to end. There's just something about context, cause-and-effect, and body language that I just "get". I should preface that it's not that I consciously do this most of the time.
This has been both bad and good for me. It's good in the fact that I can dive into my own mind and play around while someone is talking and I'll still know what they've said afterwards; not because I was listening but because I've gathered from the way they're standing, talking, sighing, etc what the gist of the story is and what my reaction should be. It's good because I can listen to someone talk and know what to say to them in order to solve their problem, or at least cheer them up a bit.
The bad thing about all this is that I'm pretty sure that this ability had led to the near-complete draining of my empathy. I wouldn't call the feeling "depression" per se, nor would I say that the feeling is extreme enough for people to consider me a sociopath; for the most part, unless I really am invested in the outcome or if you're a very important part of my life, I just don't care. I'm not trying to be mean about it; in fact, sometimes it's a sad feeling. Someone could be pouring their hearts out or telling me the funniest story they've ever heard and I could really not care less.
I'm not sure what the reasoning behind it is, or why I have such a heightened sense of what people are feeling and thinking. What I do know is that I have a hard time relating to most people. To me, their problems aren't hard to fix or deal with because I've already decided what I would do in their situation to cope or fix it by the time they've finished talking. How am I supposed to be sympathetic when I've already figured out how I would deal with it?
Does it sound as crazy while you read it as it does to me while I'm typing it? It sounds crazy but it makes perfect sense to me. It explains why I tend to become everyone's therapist; by the end of the tale(s) I've become so removed emotionally from the outcome that my advice tends to be blunt and incontrovertible.
I don't want you to get the impression that I don't care about anything or anyone; of course I do. I have loved ones just like everyone else. I have passions that make me feel such great joy that I want to cry sometimes. I can feel for family and friends. I'll donate time and money to causes I care deeply about. I could just care less about most things.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What brought this on tonight were the actions of an asshole on my morning train. I was sitting in a seat with my iPod on; I was doing the crossword at the time. When the album playing finally ended (Matchbox Twenty's Mad Season...from a time when they didn't suck) my ears picked up the words of the man sitting next to me. He was a black man, about 30 years old, and he was talking softly enough for the closest of us to hear. He was talking about how all of us around him sit on the train and read their papers, listen to their iPods, talk to each other about work while we "tune out the sorrow of the people who don't look like you; who suffer while you drink your coffee and live your lives." He mock-yawned in our directions to imitate out uncaring natures for those less-fortunate than the people he knows.
I was honestly too pissed to answer him. That, and I didn't want to get stabbed (and I'm not saying that because he was black; he was muttering to himself on a train full of people and being hostile). The nerve of this guy to babble on and on like an asshole about how uncaring I am because I'm minding my own business on the way to work while he lectures us "uneducated folk" on the train is hysterical. I just wanted to knock him the fuck out and start screaming at him. What the fuck is he doing to help? Is he doing non-profit scolding on the train for Amnesty International? Who the fuck is he to tell me what I care about? He doesn't even know me! he's doing the same thing I'm doing: sitting on a train, heading somewhere. He wasn't serving soup to homeless people on the train. He wasn't volunteering at the Special Olympics. He wasn't tutoring at-risk youth. I've done all that stuff with no regard for how it looks to other people; who is this asshole to judge me?
Obviously, I feel very strongly that people who have no idea what they're talking about should just shut the fuck up.
I'm talking to you two fuckfaces in particular.
Unfortunately, we're all headed for a real-life Idiocracy where the dumbest and most ignorant among us will soon have the largest voice, volume-wise. I hope to blow my brains out before that day comes.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
...well, someone ready my pistol because we're heading towards the End of Days at warp speed.
I know this may seem like a backpedal from a previous post, but there is something that's been bothering the FUCK out of me for a week now: Veggie Monster.
What's Veggie Monster? Good question. If you've ever watched Sesame Street then you probably already know who he is. You may know him by his slave name, Cookie Monster.
Also the 2nd gunman on the grassy knoll.
Apparently, the idea of a lovable puppet that couldn't get enough cookies was a diabolical plot solely responsible for the rise in childhood obesity (see: mini-marshmallows) and just had to be stopped. I mean, it would just be too hard to regulate a child's weight using conventional methods such as exercise, eating right, proper education, and appropriate television and video game restriction. Instead, let's neuter a beloved and iconic children's television character and make him a shell of himself.
What's next? Does he sing "V is for Veggie"? Is Oscar just "misunderstood"? Does Telly go to AA?
How is this "thing" NOT a drunk?
I know I've said before that there's only so much parents can do, that there are just too many voices reaching kids' ears these days, yada yada yada. However, a child's weight and level of activity is something of which a parent or guardian has direct control. A guardian feeds their child in most cases; a guardian monitors their level of exercise. In other words, the only reason to blame for a child's utter fatassery is the adult who takes care of him or her. Success in bludgeoning PBS long enough to begin the pussification of the last bastion of educational television does not make you a good parent; it makes you a complete asshat.
Instrumental in making Cookie Monster suck.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sorry for going all Andy Rooney on you tonight. I really did have a great weekend but I'm just tired from 300 miles of driving and continued feats of stupidity from my underlings at work. I love life and I love the people in it; it's the rest of you fuckers I can't stand.
Good night!
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
A boat? A boat! Just keep swimming...
Sometimes (most times) I can't control my brain. On an average evening you're likely to find me after work sitting in a room by myself, staring at an object (tv, computer monitor, Real Doll) without paying attention to it, and there is no way in the world you're snapping me out of it. If you see the Boncoddus Distractus in its natural habitat, DO NOT try and snap him out of it; most likely the result will be a blank stare, mumbling, and a slightly perturbed Andy wondering why you derailed his completely insane train of thought.
Some say it's ADD; others like to think it's a fear of dealing with reality. I like to think that my mind is so advanced that it plays games with itself to stay sharp. Yeah, that's it.
I don't really know why I do it, but my mind is always working, finding connections between two or more seemingly unrelated ideas and making them fit as though they were peanut butter and jelly, or Elvis and Costello (what?). This usually leads to me making comments or jokes in which one equally-crazy person with borderline personality disorder laughs hysterically while five others reach for the nearest emergency button on their touch tone phones. Or slowly spin the numbers on a rotary phone while loudly fake-laughing so that I don't hear the clicking.
"HAHAHAHA, that's so funny Andy! HAHAHAHA!"
::click click click::
"Uh, what's that sound?"
"HAHAHA, I'm just laughing so hard at your joke, I have no idea what that clicking sound you're hearing is over at 100 WEST WYOMING STREET IN MELROSE, MASSACHUSETTS! HAHAHA!"
I think I like the fact that not everyone gets my humor. I'm pretty sure that a good amount of what makes me funny is cultivated in my coma-like state; trying to explain that to someone would be like trying to explain what that noise is coming from my trunk. (Really, it's nothing. Move along.) I'm also pretty sure that if I only associated myself with people like me that our day (not days, DAY) together would go something like this:
1) Stare off into space for hours
2) Make each other laugh uncontrollably
3) Die of said laughter
4) Be the focus of a funeral no one attends, since everyone I hang out with would also be dead from said laughter
That being said, the one day of uncontrollable laughter might be worth it.
Or not.
So, the ADD/coma/connect-the-dots-in-my-head playtime is why I rarely nap; why I seem to zone out at times; why I'm convinced that I'm the smartest mofo you know, whether you get the joke or not. My mind is just always at work. In the end, I guess I could care less if you get the joke; it's less about you getting it and more about cracking myself up/seeing if the connections I've made make any sense to me.
Also, in addition to explaining one of my many dysfunctions, I'm trying to break the record for most semi-colons used in a single blog post. Someday I will have the largest quantity of semi-colons per capita in Blogfrica! Kneel before Zod!
I'm cutting this short here because, ironically, I'm beginning to zone out a bit. Prepare yourselves for a joke in three hours' time concerning 3-ring notebooks, cell phone bills, Chapstick, air quality, and the Foo Fighters. It'll be killer, I promise.
Good night, folks.
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
Some say it's ADD; others like to think it's a fear of dealing with reality. I like to think that my mind is so advanced that it plays games with itself to stay sharp. Yeah, that's it.
I don't really know why I do it, but my mind is always working, finding connections between two or more seemingly unrelated ideas and making them fit as though they were peanut butter and jelly, or Elvis and Costello (what?). This usually leads to me making comments or jokes in which one equally-crazy person with borderline personality disorder laughs hysterically while five others reach for the nearest emergency button on their touch tone phones. Or slowly spin the numbers on a rotary phone while loudly fake-laughing so that I don't hear the clicking.
"HAHAHAHA, that's so funny Andy! HAHAHAHA!"
::click click click::
"Uh, what's that sound?"
"HAHAHA, I'm just laughing so hard at your joke, I have no idea what that clicking sound you're hearing is over at 100 WEST WYOMING STREET IN MELROSE, MASSACHUSETTS! HAHAHA!"
I think I like the fact that not everyone gets my humor. I'm pretty sure that a good amount of what makes me funny is cultivated in my coma-like state; trying to explain that to someone would be like trying to explain what that noise is coming from my trunk. (Really, it's nothing. Move along.) I'm also pretty sure that if I only associated myself with people like me that our day (not days, DAY) together would go something like this:
1) Stare off into space for hours
2) Make each other laugh uncontrollably
3) Die of said laughter
4) Be the focus of a funeral no one attends, since everyone I hang out with would also be dead from said laughter
That being said, the one day of uncontrollable laughter might be worth it.
Or not.
So, the ADD/coma/connect-the-dots-in-my-head playtime is why I rarely nap; why I seem to zone out at times; why I'm convinced that I'm the smartest mofo you know, whether you get the joke or not. My mind is just always at work. In the end, I guess I could care less if you get the joke; it's less about you getting it and more about cracking myself up/seeing if the connections I've made make any sense to me.
Also, in addition to explaining one of my many dysfunctions, I'm trying to break the record for most semi-colons used in a single blog post. Someday I will have the largest quantity of semi-colons per capita in Blogfrica! Kneel before Zod!
I'm cutting this short here because, ironically, I'm beginning to zone out a bit. Prepare yourselves for a joke in three hours' time concerning 3-ring notebooks, cell phone bills, Chapstick, air quality, and the Foo Fighters. It'll be killer, I promise.
Good night, folks.
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