A Homecoming Comparison (Virginia Tech vs. William and Mary)

Well I have recently had the pleasure of attending not only my homecoming this year, but that of my very sexy and great cook of a wife. And now that I have said that, I can probably get away with writing whatever I want for the rest of this blog, so!

I went to Virginia Tech, very fun very party school. What I liked about it was how, to a degree, rugged it was, people were just rough and tumble, you'd go out to the bar and see people kicked out for being belligerent, and then you'd go get belligerent and then someone would magically have a football that, and this was always the best part, glowed in the dark! and you would play till four in the morning and wake up in a ditch, and it was FUN and everyone was kinda that way.

But I had to establish how Tech was when I was there so I can now compare the homecoming.
Well well well, VA tech homecoming. I went down with my good buddy Shark, called thus because he eats most things in a single bite and doesn't like it when you hit him in the nose, and we rolled in at a reasonable hour looking for good times. The plan was to roll in at my bro's new house, hang until the rest of the crew got there, then party like it was 2003 all over again. Ahh yes, the days of such popular social hits such as "Some earlier season of American Idol I still didn't watch" or "A different Season of 24, which was still probably more bad ass than most things on TV today." And every ones favorite "Sierra Mist, I don't know where it went, but I remember when it was here".
So we roll into Tech and things began to go strange right away. We tried driving to my bros place using a GPS which actually took us over someones lawn to get there, I don't know why, I just think Gladice (yes that is the name of my GPS, cause she sounds like a cranky old B) is a cranky old B. Like that witty redundancy there?
So like I said, we roll in and things get unusual right off the bat, for starters my bro's place. That shit is haunted. There is like a super nice neighborhood next door, with children singing in the street and playing ball and general laughter all around, but in my bro's neighborhood you got ghosts. There have to be about 20 houses, all of them are all lights out, and no cars, no people, nothing. I think either A) this is where model homes come to die, or B) all the owners are old people who have died and no one has found out yet, but needless to say there will be a lot of Hearse traffic around the holiday season when people start calling their loved ones for that once a year hello.

But to continue, we hang out at the place watching TV and so on and then once everyone has rolled in we roll out to the bars. Now the bars at Tech used to be havens of crazy jolliness, like places you would imagine Santa might hang out during his college years. Oh yes, THAT kind of place. But now, all the bars were crowded as crap (understandable being Homecoming) but what was weird was they all had a Cover. BOO ..... THAT..... CRAP. I don't roll with covers and neither did the crew I was with, so when the first bar said moderate line to get in and 2$ cover we said, hell no suckas, and rolled to the next one. Thus it was a little strange that with this mindset we ended up at the bar with the longest line and the biggest cover. I just don't know. So we stand in line forever for this bar, just to get a single drink we call the Rail, but I am getting ahead of myself, first let me complain about the new generation at Tech. They suck. There that about sums it up. We have evolved, or as I like to call it stupivolved from classy chums who like to have house parties and a good game of tackle football to a group of ninny sissy weeny chumps with not one, neh not two, but for some F-all retarded reason 3 popped collars in one, who looks like they are sporting an automobile spoiler on their neck for one of the more jazzed up rice burners. So as I say, everyone there is no longer original and fun, they are all 1) Bleached Blond yuppies 2) Skinny in a creepy way not in a fun I get healthy meals and exercise way 3) They are all drunk but not fun drunk but that retarded let me tell you how great I am drunk than used to earn you wedgie in the good ol grade school days of yore, and 4) They'ze all dumb as shit. I thought our enrollment stats went up, but seeing these people depress me cause I think they honestly, boys and girls, stand in front of a mirror for an hour before going out, getting their hair just right, then as they exit their door they swill their Zima or Appletini or whatever the newday equivalent of weeny drinks it may be, before setting out the door to tell their chums how they are going to play tiddler wanks with all the ladies tonight who have no skill at choosing someone who can make it to the gym more than once a decade.
Such intense hostility, where does it come from guy? It comes from people being in my way because you are too busy being drunk at each other to let the line move.
On a lighter note I am glad to see that the Tech bouncers are still in top form as they tackled one of the yuppies and sat on him till the cops came. Bravo bouncers, you may be of all sizes and stature, but when it comes to sitting on people who are full of themselves there are none better.

All in all it was a good weekend, not as drinky as I would have expected from Tech though for all my memories of it there. And oddly more expensive too. So what did I learn from my weekend at Tech? More expensive, more crowded, less old school, more pretty boy, and less drinky than it used to be. It made me feel old, like yelling at people for being on my lawn cause everyone there was so vastly, and when I say vastly I am talking Grand Canyon meets the Hulk vastly, immature. Yea, that vast. At least when we were immature there we were responsible enough to let the bouncers sit on us without complaining.

I do have to say the highlight of that weekend was when Shark, plastered beyond plastered, and back at the abode with us, decided he wanted something to eat. So 10 pot banging minutes later we turn to see him sitting on a stool in the corner eating pasta. Now I should describe what we ACTUALLY saw. We saw him eating pasta with a spoon, and the pasta was sticking straight out. That's right kids, he forgot to cook it. Upon inspection of the kitchen after he fell asleep from his crunchy delight yielded that not had he tried and given up on a waffle in the toaster and that the pasta uncooked, he had managed to find a ye old' bottle of pasta sauce from the back of the fridge to flavor it. Ye old. Think about that. Lets try it like this Ye Mold. Yep, and ew. Poor guy, quite the V-Tech trooper.

Good weekend all round though, much rejoicing with old friends.

But now, the William and Mary comparison. Now I have visited there before and knew it to be a small place. 2 bars of any note that I could see, and frankly not a lot of nightlife that I saw when I was last there, but I was willing to give it a shot.
I think the best way to describe my time there was on reflection. We arrived, got dressed up and began our progressive. That's right, we tried to do a progressive in the hotel (A progressive is where you go room to room and do a different drink in each = McWastey Land) which fell through when we all just kept drinking in the first room. And went out. But lo and behold there were so many alumni that getting into one of the two bars (the good one with actual beer) was nigh impossible. So we went to bar number 2. I should mention at this point that we got the hotel within walking distance, neh, stumbling distance, neh, pulling yourself along on a big wheels distance from the bar. So we went to bar 2 and began to drink. Now, I can't really recall what happened next but I woke up the next morning and began to piece the parts together. We drank at bar 2, which was basically a pizza parlor. I recall buying me and my friends a pitcher, and it was cheap. And well we all know what happened next then. We all bought a pitcher so we could all revel in how cheap it was, and some of us had to try it twice. Well we then began the stumble around the neighborhoods and ended up at ye-old Wawa. Now this is where I really have to take my hat off to William and Mary. We ended up, drunk, at a Wawa. If that doesn't say college experience then I don't know what does. So we got more inebriated, and back to the hotel, where more inebriated, and then, and this has to be my favorite part of the night. Back to the Wawa again.
That is about all I could piece together from people's stories the next day. And what a next day it was. I recall sitting in a chair out in the rain for most of it, cause I just wanted to sit my hung over self there. But good times all around. Very much so.

So, in comparison, William and Mary, much to my surprise, as the unfavored participant came back to fulfill my hopes and dreams of a homecoming experience. So bravo William and Mary for keeping the good times rolling and not having a whole bunch of weenies at your school, or at least for hiding them while I was there. And Tech, you need to get back to old time spirit of drinking a whole lot and rolling in the mud.

But all in all, great weekends the both of them, and I look forward to my out of college sobriety. *Sob*

PS. Drink responsibly or not at all, and I find joy in the fact that spellcheck had absolutely Zero suggestions when I spellchecked Stupivolved.

PPS. After thinking about it I remembered my truly favorite part about William and Mary homecoming. While inebriated I drew a Frenchman Face on my hand at the bar. I gave him drinks, put him in many photos and introduced him to my friends. I was able to walk around with a Frenchman face drawn on my hand acting as his translator the ENTIRE NIGHT and no one was surprised. Bravo William and Mary, bravo.

Job Hunting is Stupid

Okay, this brain, fried. Fried like a lonely egg on a lonely grill on a lonely stove in the middle of a lonely area of New Mexico. Where does it plug in you ask? It doesn't matter! It's New Mexico! It's hot enough to warm the lonely stove with the lonely blah blah blah you get the idea. Brain, not so functiony. Any why? Because applying to jobs, searching for jobs, and standing on your head for an hour all have something in common. They are hard, and it makes you feel stupid.

I am baffled, however, how I managed to get such a craptastic job coming out of undergrad. When I came out of undergrad I applied to, and keep in mind that this is the memory in my head, weather this happened or not I am not sure, a plethora of jobs with a resume' gleaming with awesomeness. But try as I might, there were so few nice jobs, and I was so downhearted at the time for the lack of jobs to test my might. There were only jobs like Linoleum Tester, and Drywall Construction, and Plumber. And which one did I settle for? Yes Settle, like some sort of butt ugly prom date who later turns out to be a man dressed up like a woman dressed up like a man dressed up like a women cause it was cold outside and they thought it best to dress in layers?? That's right, drywall construction. Or as I like to call it, Super Hell. Oh, yes, your good ol' Catholics had it right enough with the whole hell idea where people who sin and all those fun things go to learn their lessons, but they would jump for joy if they new about Super Hell.

Super Hell is where you go when you need money and want to work towards a bigger paycheck tomorrow, but will settle for anything because you lacked the foresight to locate yourself not in the middle of no-good-jobs-man-land like good ol MD. But I'm sure people out there love the ol' MD so I shall say nothing more on the matter other than, you should die, die for your sins, your sins being liking that hole of a state, you know the one, the one where happiness goes to Die. But I digress, working for a job because you need money is foolish, and I was foolish and it was bad. But where was I going with this... ah yea, my memory says that there were no good jobs, but as I apply now I see job after job that seems to be of an amazing quality, with science and technology and veritable jumping jacks of thoughtful challenges, and I wonder why I didn't see these before, and why I didn't get a job doing one of these things. Then I looked up my old engineering resume out of nostalgia and found out why.

My old resume, the golden gem that I remembered it being was littered with such wonderful engineering experience qualifiers such as, "Worked at the Library", a legitimate work reference even though it might lie on the outskirts, "Lifeguard" not what I might call the top reference for an engineering field, but look on the positive side, it puts a trained professional in the area should someone someone try to drown in the toilet or should everyone in the office spontaneously try to make for a large body of water, but I think my favorite qualifier, the one that on that resume said "I am your man, I am the person who will bring the qualities you need to your front door and hammer it down so don't be directly on the other side but close enough to still go 'Wow I want to give you a job, by the way you owe us one door you man among men' " was the graceful reference of "Worked for my Parents". Now I don't know how hard I must have hit my head, or perhaps the air was thinner back then and I was suffering from some sort of oxygen deficiency, but I do not think that putting that job reference was on my list of wise choices.

But alas, and I say alas, I got that one job, hated it, moved on to get a totally unrelated job doing accounting, enjoyed the people and the complete lack of effort it took, moved on to get paid in a continually downward spiral of compensation as the world's bitch for a while out in LA (again loving the people but not having to try too hard), and then to now where I am looking for work once again. The problem now being that I have experience in no one place. I think the only work references I could add to broaden my work base further would be a brief stint in the clergy and work as a professional dog walker (I do love puppies! and yes I can say that cause they are awesome and if you think otherwise you need to go back to the pawn shop where you traded in your soul for a box of cracker jacks with the decoder ring prize). So I am finding it strange to decide what to do for work and am looking for a mythical position as a movie maker for a engineering franchise. I'm thinking Myth Busters would have me click my heels but only if I could be the guy with the beard, but pending that the search is ongoing.

Additionally I might add that this blog came about because I am tired of job searching and more importantly of government applications where I find that not only do I have to expand my (now tight and sleek) resume to a behemoth including everything I've done, thought, or thought about doing for the past 29 years (yes this includes incubation time and the more single minded thoughts I had as a sperm). And then on top of my now multiple page resume I have to pretend I am applying to college all over again by answering a plethora of questions that basically all say the same thing.
"How are you good at and how would you apply and what experience do you have with visual aids in a graphic nature?"
and
"How are you really awesome at, but not too awesome at, and how would you apply CLEVERLY as compared to uncleverly which we say is a word now, and what experience do you have with GRAPHIC aids in a VISUAL nature, oh yes, we switched it on you."
"How does us switching that on you make you feel? Does it make you feel happy, sad, quiet, loud, likebetrayingthegovernmentandsellingallitssecrets, blue, green, or like a balloon?"

Crafty bastards and their crafty questions intended to piss me off and give away my true intentions!

Concluded!

Sayings I Have Come to Know and Cherish, and a few new ones.

Alrighty, this is going to be a feel good blog. Much like a feel good movie where nothing really important happens and all the characters either get the girl or their cumupence by the end of the flick.

I like sayings. But not dumb ones. My new saying of the month, as a friend described to me:

"Dick in a Jar"
This is one of the most potentially insulting sayings and I LOVE it. Defentition: You know how there was alwayse that girl and that guy, maybe you were the guy, who knows? But she wasn't into him but he was into her like Woa. And she would never "like him like that" because they had such a good friendship, and they were best friends weren't they? That's what she says all the time. And so yea, it would be okay with him if they were just friends and oh by the way make sure you put some preservative in that jar with my dick thank you very much I might like to use it again one day, and oh yes, she says I will take good care of this, but coincidentally do you have the time to help me put up some shelves and other manly duties while ignor you and talk to basically any other guy in a flirtatious way but you?
Dick in a Jar. Classic. The poor guy who's into a girl who isn't into him and so settles for being "good friends". Such a good saying, and I am amazed I hadn't heard it before. One can just imagine it on a shelf somewhere, and then quickly forget that image because it is borderline creepy from the other side of the border. To all the Dick's in a Jar out there I say, find a jar opener! Preferably one who is nice, fairly attractive and has a good grip....you know,.... to open the jar.

Next on the list is my ALL TIME favorite saying.
East Shit and Die.
There is no other saying that says it all. When you hate someone, or have been slighted to such a great degree that you with only the ultimate in recourse. Eat Shit and Die. You can tell people to go to hell where they will then have to suffer tourtures of the soul yada yada but is it good enough? F- You. Just words really, and if anything you're telling them to go have a great time. Definitely not good enough. But Eat Shit and Die, well..... It says it all. Not only do you want them to die, enough said there, that you want them to part from this mortal coil because they for one reason or another suck too much to hang onto it, but you want them to part ways in the worst way possible. You want them, not only to Die, but you want them to die from Shit Consumption. You want them to Die, Eating Shit. So good, so good, like candy for the soul. I just can't get over how good this saying is, it could be dealt out almost like this: "Sir, you suck on such a tremendous level that I want you dead, not only do I want you dead, I want you to eat Feces, yes sir, Feces, and then through the suffering enabled by that Fecal Consumption then leave this world, I don't mind if you choke on the shit, or merely suffer from it's potency, as long as the shit, in your mouth, makes you die. Eat Shit and Die. mmmm, my soul loves candy.

Now for one of the stupid ones that could have a lot of potential.
When Life Gives You Lemons. Traditionally this has ended in "Make Lemonade" which is about as idiotic as you can get cause not only is it silly as a metaphor, if you are in fact handed lemons, you then have to turn around to make lemonade on top of that, and that is just wrong. And besides, for Lemonade you need sugar and water. It doesn't say "When life gives you lemons, sugar and water make lemonade" though if it did I would have to say "F- the Lemons and Sugar and drown yourself. But as I said, there have been variations: Brak from the Space Ghost show stated that you should then blast the lemons to bits with laser canons. The resoundingly awesum movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall has one of its characters claim "F- the Lemons, lets go surfing." Useful except for the lack of ocean for some of us. So what would be the greatest responce to someone who comes up to you out of the blue and says "When Life Gives You Lemons...." and awaits your responce in an effort to determine your outlook on life? I say, punch them in the neck. Cause A) you're wasting my time B) who are you and why are you yelling metaphors at me and C) Lemons suck, I take them off my iced tea and out of my glasses of water cause until they make a seedless lemon I keep getting seeds in my drink and that pisses me off, so I say when life gives you lemons throw them at the lemon provider, I don't care if it is his job, and he's just trying to scrape by a living distributing lemons, take that lemon guy and metaphorically speaking I think this works too.

And of course: Glass Half Full. This has alwayse been amusing to me cause as the saying goes Glass Half Full /Glass Half Empty and it is meant to determine if you are an optimist or a pessimist, and, this is the part I love, everyone has at some point tried to consider how to say something about the glass just being half there, saying neither the optimistic thing, nor the pessimistic thing, which amuses me cause why would you want to be some sort of neutral individual saying things along the lines of "maybe" when asked if you like something like cheese. Maybe? It's chesse! Of course you like it and if you don't you're just dead and a stake through the heart. But why do people never want to definitivly be one or the other I shall never know, but people do like to try and fill thier steriotype, making a mental note to speak about glasses half full when seen believing that this in some fashion will mold them into an optimistic person instead of the creepily self wary person they actually are, and not to dismiss the fact that if the glass is only half there and you don't know about the other half, who the hell has been drinking out of your glass? That is just uncalled for.

Fin.



When Life Gives you Lemons - Dumb, mabye better ones
Glass Half Full - Dumb, mabye better

What to do, what to say, and movers will cause my untimely death.

Well I have an interest in maintaining this blog, if for no other reason than it is like some sort of online surly diary, the kind you might find shoved between the matress and the box springs of a teenage girl who has just found out that life "isn't all it is cracked up to be" or that "pretty people get it better" or that "there won't be a knight in shining armor because horseback riding is no longer 'cool' so you'd at best you could hold out for a dude with clanky underwear coming down the block to make all your dreams come true" and yes it required quotations because someone out there has said it if only in thier head.

So, in an effort to decide what topics would conduct the source of this "diary" seeing as I am currently no longer in the bright and sunny LA, I shall try to recount the lessons I have learned in life coupled with day to day learnings that come accross my plate. So, lesson 1:
Moving.

Is a bitch.

And will stay a bitch till you die, and then a little after cause you still have to pay people to MOVE YOUR DEAD ASS. How sad is that, that you, in death, owe someone money, for throwing your dead ass in a hole. And so I begin this justification of movers sucking thusly.

When I first moved out to LA I got, what is the term, prostituted, no no... call girled?.... no no no... absolutely f-ing whored, that is it! Bent over and pounded like a tetherball. Speaking of tetherball, whatever happened to that? I loved that game! Exept when you played against someone that would just hit it ass high *CHEAT* and spin in faster than you could hit *CHEAT* and just be taller than you *CHEATING TO THE CORE*. Some kid prolly got tethered to the pole and the parents of the world banned the game. So sad. But yes, pounded like a tetherball.
I had gotten movers that quited me 1200$ for the east to west move. And they said how much it should weigh based on the items I owned and that if it was over, it would be a small amount per pound. 50 cents. And we budgeted for 3500lbs. So I'm thinking we are good. Oh no.

Rule 1: Get a QUOTE that is LOCKED IN. One that is not able to be adjusted. This will most likely require someone to come in and count your stuff but this is worth it, otherwise you will get tetherballed.

So they came in, packed my stuff, then gave me the ol' head shake and the little clucking noise you make by putting your tounge behind your teeth. And they said that according to the estimated size, the new weight (without weighing) should put my amount due at $7000. F THAT! But they could cut me a deal, and work something out before it reached the weight area so that I could avoid paying so much.
Needless to say HOSED. Ended up paying 5k. That's right, nearly a 400% markup.

Rule 2: Alwayse use someone someone else has used before you so you know the tricks.

I had never moved, for all I know the movers are supposed to come in, bang up your stuff, speak only a language I hear when ordering tacos and then overcharge my ass into oblivious leaving me not only penniless but unable to respond as the HAVE ALL MY STUFF.

I have only one term for this. It starts in F- and ends in -ingstupidashell.

Then they drop it off in LA. And as it turned out, my stuff has switched trucks several times.

RULE 3: Make sure they use the same damned truck, cause if they don't someone somewhere won't give a damn about using your box of family hierlooms as a seat while their fat ass takes a lunchbreak.

So we get our stuff, and shit is broken. And when I say broken, I don't mean a few broken glasses (though there were, very nice wedding glasses. Only glasses broken too. I swear they check for the most important looking box before playing kick the can with my stuff), I mean I had a desk BROKEN IN HALF. And for some reason they didn't seem to have a problem with delivering TWO HALVES OF A DESK to me. TWO HALVES. How in the hell??? TWO HALVES. I have no other words to express myself. My mental dictionary is failing me. TWO .... HALVES. My property is not to be treated like some sort of sandwich to be divied up for ease of eating at a later date! Nor are those items to which I am attached like a lego castle to be broken down and remade for my own amusement.

And so we filed for insurance. My insurance company denied me because it falls oh so pleasantly between all the cracks. The closest they could get was vandalism, but that didn't work cause I paid them. So, what do we learn? Don't pay! Like that wouldn't bite me in the ass.
Then the movers insurance did not pay out either. We filed all the paperwork and we get a notice back saying "Please supply a professional assesment and estimate for all repairs to broken items to recieve further effort on our part." How much to fix? TWO HALVES. And I would love to see what god among men could fix a shattered glass. "Well I could glue some of it together and it would leak just a little."
Stab everyone in the face!

So that is still underway. Then.... and this is the fun part. We moved BACK.

Well this time around it wasn't so bad. For starters A) I wasn't sick. That made it hell the first time around cause everyone was a little fuzzy and a hell of a lot more annoying. And B) the wife was around. I frankly suck at making decisions and she is the bossy one. She's the one who does the whole *snap snap* "No you didn't just say that about my momma" who would have saved us a boatload the first time around unlike me who was so easily persuaded by broken english describing how I magically owe 400% of the bill.
But like I said, she got us the movers Mayflower. And they were pretty good. They came in, (only two of them, black dude and mexican dude, I think they strive for diversity) and worked diligently, albeit slow, and we were good to go for 3K, fixed rate this time, no surprises.
Then we crossed the US (this will be another entry) and much fun was had.
And when we arrived we tried calling to see where they were, and was that the biggest pain in the ass. No one knew where anyone was or anything and from what I had gathered our movers were off having the time of thier lives galavanting across Texas. And, and theis is alwayse fun, the movers are supposed to call 24hrs in advance. So we try out damnest to be ready for them. And the one minute we are away, who shows up on our doorstep unnanounced? Jesus, F-er came out of nowhere, blessing left and right and leaves before we get back. Alwyase happens that way. Then the movers showed up while we were out, and it was a pain. So we rush back, get our stuff, and all in all it wasn't so bad except the fat guy who takes his lunches on our fragile boxes was apparently on that truck as well, but luckily we packed better this time.
SIDE NOTE ADVICE: Costco has this wonderful movers package of boxes that is ideal for any move, except you have to be consumed by retardation to use it. The boxes are honestly made out of recycled toilet paper with about the same strength as something that has not only touched ass but suffered the whole sewage system of the greater Manhattan area. DON'T BUY THIS. Uhaul has a similar package that is ok, we ended up getting our boxes there cause they have this bangin "Give a box get a box" recycle moving boxes section of thier store, much like that whole give a penny take a penny thing where everyone just takes all the pennies. And what did we do? We took all the boxes. And my pocketbook was happy.

But all in all, squished boxes and everything, this move was much better. The black guy and white guy (again the equal diversity employment) who dropped our stuff off were very polite and, yes this may sound a little racist, SPOKE ENGLISH. I didn't even get an english guy dropping the first load off in LA, he was French! Really? You crossed the ocean and left France to seek your fortune in America and you became a Mover?

But anyway, stuff is here, in-tact so far, trip was nice, all in place except employment but I figure I could alwayse whore myself out seeing as I've gotten such practice with this moving situation.

And away I go!