Who knew knowing was a crime?

First let's get the pupdates out of the way.

Allow me to introduce Kona and Mosey, two low-ground bots featuring the latest and greatest in hot-bark technology, wire-chew interoperability, and "hit the ground running" excrement exorcists. In fact, I'm fairly sure their favorite song is Deuces and their favorite snack would be a pinecone plugged into an electrical outlet.

Kona is a walking ball of brown energy. Mosey is a moseying sack of ambivalence, unsure about all things kinetic but damn sure that cuddling makes the world go 'round. By the way, they're sisters from different misters, chicks from different... dads. Well, you get what I mean.

Mosey: short for Moses or Mozambique

Kona: short for long in the tooth

Speaking of sisters, my sis moved down to join my house in our pursuit of all things future. We've bounced a few volleyballs around, breaking hearts and aspirations in the process. She has adopted the role of official dog trainer. The pups can now sit, lay down, moonwalk, and levitate.

My goal for this blog for this year is to "turn myself insight out." As my focus this year is brain health, I aim to add novelty to my life by never saying no (except to hugs) and pushing my learning to uncomfortable levels by deep-diving different topics every week. Currently myself and a roommate are learning about the female brain. We are making a presentation on the topic to our friends; you will either get a recording of the event or I will recount in words.

On that note, we have a new roommate from Michigan. He is someone else's childhood friend, but that doesn't mean we can't get along.

My employer may have recently made a huge mistake: my team has given me the go-ahead to create a blog that is 50% support information, 25% humor, and 25% untapped Wesley King thoughts. Talk about pushing my comfort levels to new lows... I don't know how long I can sustain the appearance of "societally well-adjusted employee" at work when I'm publishing articles encouraging the dismissal of all workers that have snakes as pets.

Deep Posits in Diver City

Reclyning, a recycled orphan stuck in “washed up” cycle, giving double the blood at triple the pleasure. Plasma, endemic to my veinity, drains into a machine from my left arm, while with my right I scroll through my phone looking at Oddly Enough, a news feed with strange stories from around the world. I’m still giggling (see My Experience Last Time), because giving blood puts me in a drugged state. I see a great story, it tickles me, so I call out to Zhang it!, “They discovered a new species of dinosaur in Croatia!” He responds, wondering if they called it a Zhangitasaurus. “Of course not,” I replied, with just the right tone of irk, “it’s a CarbamaRaptor!” Still giddy, but now all the nurses know. They eye me with a suspicion usually reserved for vegetarians selling lien pork; it’s like borrowing against the piggy bank…

I call Zhang it! the CarbamaRaptor because he is absolutely addicted to Irish Car Bombs, a type of alcoholic beverage. He drinks little else, even uses it with cereal. I am four hours from getting on a plane and ice is tiptoeing through my body; my blood is swirling and being dissected of red cells in a procedure known as Double Platelet donation. My head is still spinning and I am recovering from Decompression Sickness. It has been a rough day in Diver City:

I was on call, charting the chat lines with glossy confidence. Suddenly, my entire team is up and marching, shrinking into the distance. Over a shadowy shoulder, as an afterthought, I hear “Wes, meeting in building 5, ten minutes.” What what what what what can a man do, when on a call he can’t drop with a talker he can’t stop? I feel like a bucket with no mop, sliding up a mountain with no top. I become brusque with the custom here - not hearing the customer - and I am off the phone in just under ten minutes. I race to the right place, forgetting my laptop, rapturing their meeting in like a postscript apocalypse. Not only is there no seat for me, but the man who hired me, the man who decided to bring a Finance major to an IT company, is sitting in the corner with his daughter. Apparently it’s bring-your-precious to work day, and all I’m holding is the doorknob.

As I pull in a pilfered chair from a nearby cubicle, I notice that the man leading the meeting isn’t my manager; it’s his boss. The meeting picked up steam while I lost credibility, and soon the leader stood up, snapped shut his laptop, and was off. I started to stand up, but no one else moved. It was time for the Diver City townhall. Dr. Powerline, my “hiring manager,” takes over as the diving instructor. Keep in mind that at this point, I still have no idea what the meeting is about, and I am confused as to whether we are actually adjourned. Dr. P is quick to shock, “Wes, since you were late, why don’t you give us your definition of Inclusion and Diversity?”

No. I can’t do this. I shun situations like this. There is a reason that I always stand with my back to the wall; I can’t be stabbed in the back and I can’t be snuck up on. I wasn’t sure which this was, but I knew it was one of the two. My mind, my greatest curse, whispers to me, Tell him you’ve always thought Diversity is the city where divers are born. I will absolutely not do that. I am not dumb, neither dim nor uneducated, but whatever I am has shrunk into a conch shell and conked out for the afternoon. Say it. Say Diver City is a great place to be a kid. Diver City is where Greg Lugayness was born. Instead, I say the following, verbatim: “I think inclusion is being part of a team. Like, knowing you are on a team and that everyone has your back. Or, you have their back. Knowing you can count on someone else… And diversity – well, for example, I went to school at Michigan. We have 13% Chinese people.” I should have said Diver City.

Dr. Powerline visibly regretted hiring me, then went on to give an awesome presentation about diversity at our company and how to foster ideas from dissimilar cultures and backgrounds to make a difference in the marketplace. I went on to fish a knife out of my pocket, and continually jammed it into the nearest socket in an attempt to destroy what my parents should have never created, me.

So, it was with great relief that I reclined on an uncomfortable cot with a needle hovering over my left side like a shard of some tasty spacechip. I watched it slip into something more comfortable - my arm -and laughed at the nurse. A concerned look only made me laugh harder, and she asked if I was on laughing gas. “I’m a diver,” I said. She asked no more questions.

Zhang it! had to leave early, because they missed his vein, hitting ivory. This caused quite the commotion; no one likes an angry CarbamaRaptor. The nurses escorted him out with oatmeal raisin reasons. Wisconsin and I sat the table, content in our colossal loss of blood, eating Oreos and sipping apple juice. We discussed death and cars, and the death of cars. I had only just taken my car into the shop, the judgment being that it had weak bones; the frame was about to snap. Afterward, I took a shot of milk to commemorate its loss, and to care for my own brittleness. The repairman asked what I was going to do with the beast. It took me less that a second to reply, “I think I am going to take it out to the woods and shoot it.” He thought this quite intriguing – the personification (and slaughter) of transportation – and walked back into his shop, howling about it with his mateys.

Wisconsin and I then jetted to the airport, walked the plank to our departure, and were off to visit Michigan: home to millions of people and the birthplace of Gracelessness. But I heard she had a French father and a British mother; you can’t help where someone is born.

...I was on my bike

A little illumination on alumni’s: they are intensely serious about how important it is that you recognize the superiority you share with them over all others, acknowledge that superiority publicly, and wholeheartedly accept that this alone is the only prerequisite for friendship in the adult business world. Last week, I made the mistake of walking into a restaurant with my Ross School of Business shirt on. Before I had even found my seat, an excited “agent” vaulted from his booth and shook one of my hands with both of his. “I went there ten years ago,” is how the conversation started, and “If you ever need anything, anything…” is how it ended. The man was so cleancut and obviously in charge of his faculty(ies) that I was almost tempted to say “No” when if he asked if I had a State Farm insurance agent. The truth is that, yes, I do have an agent, and I can’t believe I almost cheated on Doug Heins, CLU CEF CFA CAT (and many other three letter C-words.)

Jake and Kent left in what amounted to be the perfect storm. After stirring up controversy by convincing one of the other New Hire’s managers that they were interns (while playing volleyball), they rode a torpedo of my shame out of town. The only proof of their presence: two empty glasses in the sink and a snack pit that Jake left… I had to eat my way out.

The weekend snuck up like a charred turtle from a black canyon, totally not taking me by surprise. My friend Rachel got a job in Raleigh, and this so shocked me into a smile that I forgot to allude to it with an alliteration. Or did I?

On Friday night, Zhang it! and I went over to bid adieu to Luke, one of the One-years that has officially reset his job clock to zero by moving back to Wisconsin. Throw in one more since then, Andy, and that makes three gone in the last month. Zhang it! got attacked by a praying mantis, I made fast friends with another small dog. Before we headed home, we both grabbed some delicious baked goods that Luke was given by a baker that crashed into his car. Apparent reparations for damage and the tastiest from of blackmail.

Saturday, my soon-to-be housemate Chris Lethal invited me to test out my new mountain bike with him. This did not mean that I was to drag my bike up to his bed and wait for him to fetch the chain lube from the garage. The actual activities to be attempted were much more Rated X. Xtreme mountain biking, I found out, involves very tight helmets that may or may not allow you to draw breath, depending on the scale of crime you are about to commit, and serious altitude adjustments. For several hours, I watered the earth with the first derivative of my respiratory system, using my body’s largest organ as a fire hose. Chris and I talked the entire time, covering topics from the aspirations of our best friends to the apparent disconnect between the privatization of health care and the ideals of the voting (non-voting) minority (minorities). By this, I mean we shared back stories and tried, as most do, to place ourselves within that idealized version of our pasts. It always sounds much better when you are allowed to be the editor of not only your history but those of everyone who has ever been in your life.

After a late afternoon of Halo with Karrrl, Ben, and S.S. Kimu, I got ready to host some guests. Luke and Andy came up with a few of their friends to explore Chapel Hill. While everyone else ordered and consequently consumed late-night burritos, I sat in the booth and judged, quite heavily. I was not hungry, but I was tired from the bike ride, so I was not completely aware of my saying out loud “What is that girl wearing? Are those polyester pants? Uggggggly…” I was embarrassed naught, but it was the second time that night that my wide-mouth ass had spoken itself into a corner.

Michigan Mike (hence forth referred to as 6-pack), Zhang it!, And-I were seeking sustenance. While at a stop light, waiting for the Go light, I realized we were in an area of Chapel Hill where I had recently witnessed a very gross approximation of a misdemeanor. “I saw an old lady take relief by that tree yesterday,” I said with conviction, pointing left to the spot where said event took place. Zhang it!, ever the antagonist, noticed that not only had a car of girls just pulled up next to us, but they had heard what I said, or at least he assumed they had, and screamed “Wes, I can’t believe you just said that in front of those girls!”

The driver of the car turned on me – who was fidgeting in the passenger seat of Andy’s vehicle - like a hinge turns on a doorjamb, trapping me in the aforementioned corner. “What did you say?” The question was posed in such a way as to reveal her incredulousness, my disgracefulness, and our momentary sharing of a space in which an offal crime had recently taken place. This is me talking: “I said, ‘I saw a lady take a shit by that tree yesterday’.” As her jaw dropped, revealing nothing but the shadows of words I would never hear, I added, as if it would make a difference, “I was on my bike.”

Over dinner, we discussed the improbability that I will ever assimilate into the human race, and I promised that the night would turn out wonderfully. No one took my word for it. Not even me.

I convinced Wisconsin to come back to Michigan with me. While that statement may sound impossible, remember that a state is only a governmentally derived concept, and it isn’t impossible for one concept to insert itself inside another (see conception). We will be flying into Detroit on Wednesday, September 2^nd, and will be driving back with 6-pack on Labor Day. My lack of transportation and the fact that it is Welcome Week means I will probably be in Ann Arbor for that weekend. Might make it over to East Lansing. Speaking of MSU, I have convinced a family member who will be attending this fall to write a guest blogpost about the closing weeks of summer, and how the impending doom known as higher education surely taints the sunset of a season. It will be Wisconsin’s first time in Ann Arbor, so I am hoping to show him all of the nice parts, and none of what lies hidden in every city – proof of entropy: of both the universe and the human verse.

I will put off talking about the egging for one more post. Next time I will also cover Man U. and his stance on shiny cars and how this relates to my wanting badly to pay child support. I will leave you with a few awkward moments from the phone calls I have been taking.

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Myself: let me know if you have any more issues relating to this

Client: will do. thanks much for the really quick action!

Myself: umm …?

__________________________________________________

I finished helping a lady connect to the corporate network from home. Right before she hung up, I blurted, “Good luck with all your connection today. See ya… I mean… talk to you soon?” Click.

__________________________________________________

Client: “What keys do I put my fingers on to type?”

Dislocation Bonus

It may not be the nature of all vacations, but it has surely been a recurring motif in mine since I started college; I get less sleep and have much more to do during a weekend home than at any other time in my life. I try to fit 20 hours of activity into 18 hour days, ending up quite stretched and useless, and we all know I haven’t been stretched in awhile. In that sense, and in many others, to be sure, I had a great vacation. If I can be granted a grey area – the ability not to put all my eggs into an enthusiasm basket if you will – I posit that travelling surely made me and my swiftly orbiting personal universe a site for sore eyes. With only 24 hours in a given day, sometimes you just have to catch (and release) a few red eyes.

My flight out of Raleigh occurred during a mini-monsoon on a Wednesday afternoon and by the time the plane took the sky, my first book was already half consumed like the first few chapters of an Italian meatball sub. I was held against my will in Cleveland, Ohio for a short layover, but managed to escape with naught but a dry mouth from a stale blueberry muffin. Throughout Wednesday, I spent a lot of time on personal reflection; I glanced intensely at every reflective surface I passed, trying to decide if I liked my new glasses. I knew my obsession had to stop when the stewardess knocked on the bathroom door to make sure I was still alive, with me having been in the bathroom staring into the toilet water for the better part of the flight.

There were many wonderful people traipsing through the Grand Rapids airport late on that Wednesday night, but only two mattered to me. They both happen to share my eye color, last name, and a genetic predisposition to dismiss the unsatisfactory parts of living in favor of idea or phrase that stimulates at least “two separate conceptual subnetworks” of the brain. The ride home was one typical to such topically specific conversations and not unlike thousands that have happened and will happen to those that think they aren’t like their parents but are actually imperfect amalgams of them. You know you are a special visitor when your dad calls shotgun for you, not against you.

The next day saw me trying on my wedding suit and fishing for compliments. When I walked out of the dressing room into the tuxedo store with my legs spread out far enough that I could easily have touched the floor with my knees, the lady asked me what was wrong. “I think the pants are too big.” She rolled her doe eyes like a pre-dawn baker and immediately cinched what needed cinching. I asked if I looked good and she was smart enough to pretend to be too busy to answer. I ate the rest of my questions for lunch, but saved some room for the rehearsal dinner for my cousin Kyle’s wedding. Prior to eating, I was taught how to stand in front of a piece of tape so that during a time of high emotion I would appear to be invisible and any brides in the area would take on an angelic glow. I was told this skill would come into use during the actual wedding.

During dinner I witnessed my cousin Kelly make the perfect face of disgust when the man sharing our table got one entire loaf of pre-salad bread to himself. The dinner was great, the company was entertaining, and the wedding party was just getting started. Jake (not a member of the wedding party, never think it), Kelly, and I caught up later for a late night dune climb. Later, on the beach, we found a barely living ferret buried in the sand. His head was just above high tide, and droplets of water were hanging from his eyelids; the saltless teardrops of the damned. After pulling him out, we found his body shaved from the neck down and covered in paper mache. Makes puppy mills look like prep schools.

Saw Funny People with Jake and Kent on Friday, and then went downtown Grand Haven for the ever glorious “beer tent.” A people populated parking lot handing tickets to people in return for beverage. The crowd consisted of those trying to appear older and those wishing they were are young as those trying to appear to be a bit younger than those wishing. I can’t tell you how many times Tyler Westerberg said “A toast! To the King family!” but it was probably ten. I ran into two ladies I met once at U of M and walked up to them, saying, “My memory tells me that one of you took a lot of Spanish classes and that one of you has a birthday on March 17^th.” This extremely creepy statement was taken in all the right ways, and they were quite impressed because I was right on both accounts. Turns out one of them is looking for a job in Raleigh. We live in a small world, and my brain is even smaller than that cliché.

The night was the same as any other, but I happened to stay up longer than usual, so it seemed like a “late” night. To make sure I didn’t miss breakfast in the morning with one of my best friends, I borrowed a phone charger and fell asleep with the phone on my chest so that I would be sure to wake up at the ungodly hour of eight o’clock. I jumped up sleeping in the morning, electrified by cellular vibrations in more ways than one, and didn’t wake up until I showered. It wasn’t until I got back to my room that I noticed that harbinger of bad news… the blinking red “You’ve got a text message!” light on my phone. I wouldn’t be seeing my friend. I lay back in bed and sank figuratively lower than the moisture from my towel. Like I said, red eyes aren’t exclusive to “late” nights or flights and my vacations are never relaxed.

Mark, a new acquaintance and the bride’s little brother, made for an entertaining wedding prep. He didn’t show up for pictures before the wedding because he had gone out surfing. When Someone finally tracked him down at the beach, he couldn’t button his shirt or vest straight. If people were snakes, I’m sure several people would have hissed at him for his indiscretion. In his defense, the waves were reportedly more epic than The Odyssey.

I showed off my tape standing skills during the ceremony, and drew no attention away from the beauty of the church- and state-sanctioned union. The wedding went off without a hitch (HAHA ha). Afterword, when we were supposed to be taking wedding party pictures, Mark was nowhere to be found. The aforementioned Someone found him at home, changed out of his tux. He was dragged back and we commenced to take some beautiful but time-constrained pictures. The reception was situated firmly within the borders of a rare northern hurricane, but the rain did not deter celebration or inebriation. Trevor, the groom’s brother and my closest cousin (in age only), gave a rousting and roasty toast, and then the prancing began. Dancing with so many people of the same last name should never be as fun as it was; but it was, especially considering that there was one person there who had gained the last name only hours earlier, and legally too. I also secured the age-old symbol of eternal bachelorhood, the garter.

My younger friend Ben, whom I had been unable to cross courses with throughout the weekend, asked if I would like to grab an early breakfast with him before I hit the road. He asked this, and I agreed, late on Saturday night while under the influence of drink. Despite my trepidations about another potential early morning equitable in fun to a baby boiling, I agreed. Despite Ben’s last words to me being “Pick me up at 8 AM at slip 9 on Chinook pier,” I agreed. As I pulled up to slip 9 in the morning, I called Ben. A phone call, however, promises little, only that two phones will temporarily acknowledge one another. It does not promise anything about human behavior. Ben didn’t pick up. At 8:20 AM, as I was about to pull away, I tried one last time by texting Ben “My yacht is bigger than yours.” A bleary-eyed and aspiring dentist named Benjamin emerged from an expensive looking yacht. He let me buy him breakfast.

And then, I was on the road again. You will hear about this very soon…