The Year is Coming!

What the hell happened to 2010? I remember 2010 like it was just the other day – drafting 100 unique New Year’s texts to everyone in my phone for disbursal come 2009’s midnight. The resulting cascade of responses to my texts did wonders in kicking off last year.

Now it’s 20!! and it’s time to figure out where I mucked up last year, what I can't learn from it, and by the way, who can I contact to get a drink in this damn place?

Don’t Get Short with Me!

After deciding I wanted to get a poem published, I went online to play the role of predator. On the hunt for a place to display my writing, I went to Craigslist to take advantage of somebody, because that’s what Craigslist was created for. I quickly found a community that not only liked my poem but paid to use it. Very nice, I thought, I should do this more often. I then proceeded to add nothing more to the realm of poetry for the rest of the year.

Instead, I kept a lazy eye on the “Writing gigs” part of Craigslist, and was able to land a stint making fun of Dead Celebrities and their ridiculous propensity to aggrandize their real estate needs and overshoot the idea of “want”. That landed me some more scratch/cashflow, bringing the year’s total to $200. I am hoping to multiply that tenfold in 20!!. I've already submitted a short story for a national competition that will equal that tenfold goal if it slips through the cracks into first place. Keep your panties crossed.

Soccer and Volleyball skills

I’ve got ‘em, and you can’t have ‘em. I set a goal with Zhang it! for our team of two to become the best sand volleyball doubles team in our county. While we definitely aren’t – we had a pretty paltry record in the men’s summer league – we are well respected on the circuit as up-and-coming, piss-and-vinegar types. When Zhang it! steps onto the court, the opponents feel slow and the sand shivers. When I step onto the court, Zhang it! feels slow, my thighs quiver, and the Sun hits the snooze button.

Zhang it!: Pre-game Volleyball Warmup

I play a lot of soccer on some very good teams. This is not necessarily because I play at an elite level, but because 6-pack (Michigan Mike) is an elite goalie and I am his +1. Because I am playing with good people against great people, I have gotten much better quite quickly and fancy myself a defensive presence. What that means is up to interpretation.

Act a Fool

I helped write and then acted in a short film that represented Cisco’s North Carolina campus in a company-wide film competition for my organization (Information Technology.) We created four versions, from vanilla to X-rated, and were able to borrow the campus film studio to record as if we were important. It was quite an experience to see myself onscreen when they showed the video to our campus, especially since afterword people came up to me squinting in what I took as both diss and approval. While I’m not yet the face of Cisco, I’m definitely some lesser glanced at body part.

“Your body is speaking Spanish to me”

I lackadaisically pursued body language knowledge this last year. I took a training course at work on Communication that had a section on non-verbals and I am reading a collection of words published by a former FBI body language expert. I’ve made prolonged eye contact with several people throughout the year, but the jury is still out on how badly I creeped them out. I’ve discovered the easiest way to instantly offend someone is to tell them they have the body language of a walking stick.

You know what you are? A Homowner

Being 6-pack’s +1 has escalated my emasculation to the point of no return. Granted, when buying a house with another male, questions are sure to arise. What are your intentions with this man? Where do you get off? Who’s your interior decorator? Here’s how we answered those questions: Our intentions are intentional, we would like to buy this pool and if the house comes with it… so be it. We get off most days between 5 and 6 PM Eastern, when we take the bus we get off whenever the bus driver isn’t looking, and when we engage in interstellar spaceflight we get off when the aliens tell us to get off. And our interior decoration is determined by Science with the undying support of our parent’s favorite jeans.

We made it through the entire house purchase process without any colorful commentary. Then, when we got a check from the old homeowners to fix a few small issues, they made the check out to 6-pack and wife: Wesley King. 2010 was the year of the homowner and the year my gender was tossed into a blender and Frappéd like my ankles when I wear stilettos. 

I will next be posting my goals for 20!!, one of which is to help others complete theirs, so holla at me if you want my support!

Peerless Pirouetting

If life is a storeroom of mixed nuts, then I am a cache you want to crack. If life is theory, impartially attributable to a Bang of virgin particles, then I am in charge of the Concept Ion. Any way you slice it, I come out on top.

Enough with the custom puns and homespun cussing - let’s talk about sects. Last Friday night, I found myself part of a collection of “high society” individuals about to partake in the age-old tradition of getting the hell up out of your seat and making a scene at an upscale Japanese hibachi grill. The event was Chris Lethal’s birthday. 6-pack and I arrived late, having struggled to find the place; it being hidden in the basement of a sprawling mall in Raleigh. Within minutes of being seated, I had puddled my seat. The gentle giant seated next to me had already bear-hugged me, told me he was a fireman who owned two construction companies, and told the waiter to order saki-bombs for the whole restaurant. The waiter pulled the clueless card, Big Bear pulled a fat wad of cash from his wallet, and I pulled my hamstring.

Here’s how: after the manager of the restaurant finally convinced Big Bear not to finance a small liquor war, the entire staff came out of the kitchen with balloons and did a little clappy-dance around Chris Lethal. The “high society” crew started getting high off helium, and before long a bouncy little orange balloon flirted around my shoulders and floated into the kitchen, which was right behind me. I dashed heavy, like a bad chef, and slipped on the floor with my no-sole arch-crushing clown shoes. The floor was soaked, probably with the failed remnants of broken saki promises, and my feet shot in separate directions. I had pulled my hamstring playing flag football the Sunday before, and my shaky-maky-matrix moves on the kitchen floor weren’t helping the situation. I snagged the balloon an instant before it hit the floor, and limped by a waiter holding a knife to his chest, him scared of the crazy American in clown shoes.

We spent the rest of the night behind the velvet ropes of a VIP section of a club in downtown Raleigh. Once, Chris Lethal’s brother got kicked out for trying to help a drunken beast escape the cave, but he impressively snuck back in through a window in the kitchen. My only interaction with the group all night was when someone asked Big Bear what time his girlfriend got off. I immediately said “She gets off when he gets home.” Everyone who heard snapped their head in my direction, but only one person understood. He did a slow, lethargic drunken blink, and said “You’re funny. You’re really funny.” This was the same man who had to be escorted out by Chris’ brother.

6-pack and I shared a bed that night at the Lethal household. Sometime during the night, we lost our comforter to Chris’ girlfriend, Gabby, who stole it during a sleep stroll.

A director visited my team at work this week from San Jose, and since I don’t really have a role on the team yet, I watched as everyone else impressed him with presentations. That morning, I had decided to wear a nice but stuffy workshirt, and the temperature was twenty degrees warmer than I predicted by 11 AM. When I got up from taking calls, I realized that the back of my shirt was soaked. I whistled out to my Dodge Caravan, the baby-making caravan, and changed my shirt. Unbeknownst to me, as I was standing in the parking lot shirtless and picking from the fine selection of shirts I keep in my trunk, the director rolled up and walked toward our building. When we finally met with him, after lunch, I was greeted by him as “the guy I saw changing in the parking lot.” If that isn’t hot, or sweaty, I don’t know what is. Sometimes I bite my right wrist when I’m nervous. During the presentations, I’m pretty sure he saw me biting my wrist. As soon as the last slide was finished, I sprinted down the hall and left work. Oh, how I continue to impress the higher-ups.

A lady called in to work and told me her computer had a virus; possibly, a terrorist virus. This was exciting news to me and I thought I might get some exposure to homeland security, possibly land a side job in terrorist virus research. I asked the lady what kind of terrorist sent her the file. She said “I got the file from a co-worker from India. They told me it was a video clip of some Disney movie. It says ‘Wall-E’ on it, but I’m sure it is a terrorist file.” I started to get very animated. It was genius – a massive computer virus crouched inside the shadow of pre-teen storytelling. She finally divulged that the main reason she was afraid of the video was that it was a .wmd file. Curious, I had her send it to me. Turned out to be a video clip of Wall-E, in .wmv (windows media video) format. I thoroughly enjoyed the clip. Or, rather, I emptied the clip, and nothing was killed but a few minutes of my time.