I am enjoying the new job and the downtown scene. Within a block of the office there are five coffee shops, four sandwich joints, a Chipotle, a flower vendor, a blind bum that likes to sing Isley Brothers tunes and the always lively 16th Street Mall. The mall is usually teaming with business executives connected to their ear piece cell phones like Lobot, statuesque women in six inch heels walking with mean swaggers, homeless panhandlers and disheveled, mentally ill crazies that yell and carry signs. The latter are by far the most entertaining. Yesterday a wild-eyed maniac sporting a wig that looked like a dumpster diving reward was walking down the mall with a sign that read "GESUS LOVES U." He nearly got ran over by a shuttle bus as he was thrusting said sign into the faces of a nice looking gentleman and his two younger daughters who were participating in Bring Your Child To Work Day. This morning as I was looping around the building to the parking garage, a filthy drug addict was flashing a two-way sign on the corner which read "HILLARY IS FIDEL" on one side and "JFK SHOT MARILYN" on the other. It was comforting to learn that even homeless drug addicts hate Hillary.

Labels: 16th street mall, career, denver, downtown

As I stare down the barrel of my new gig, I wax poetically at St. Mark's Uptown, two beers into the evening, going over existing projects with my soon-to-be former boss:

You killed the pants-free dream for me. I don't think it was intentional, but then again, my ex-girlfriend's observation of my inability to display emotion wasn't expressed to break us up but it broke us up nonetheless. Looming over me everyday was the "option" to throw my laptop in my bag and patronize some outdoor cafe with free WiFi and a young barista with firm breasts to serve me hot caffeinated drinks. Actual times I exercised this "option": zero. Looming over me everyday was the "option" to delegate work to competent contractors while I enjoyed an afternoon skiing down a powder filled slope or taking a lazy nap on the grass at a local park. Actual times I attempted to delegate work to contractors only to have the project blow up in my face and spend late nights correcting mistakes only amateurs make: too numerous to count. I spent my tenure working sixty hours weeks and cursing at my brand new iMac while my cute wife made muffins and brought me beers in the hopes I would cease yelling, "You filthy bitch!" at poorly coded sites. I was haunted by phone calls from clients whose projects were fucked before I came along and will stay fucked long after I am gone. Lesson learned. I need a place where I can leave incompetent contractors, pissed off clients with unrealistic deadlines and an apathetic boss. That place is called "the office" and not "home."

Labels: career, pants-free

Today a lone gunman killed 33 people (including his best shot, himself) and injured 28 at Virginia Tech, making it the second worse school-related mass murder in US history. Number one on the list is still the 1927 Bath School Disaster, followed by the 1999 Columbine Massacre and finally the 1966 Whitman Tower Shootings at the University of Texas. Being a veteran of the Columbine Massacre media frenzy (the shooting was less than 20 miles from my house) here is a list of things you can expect to happen in the next year:

• Local news media will interview individuals that had no involvement in the event save that they were enrolled at the school at the time said event occurred. Most normal family and friends close to the victims will grieve in private rather than talk to guys like Geraldo.
• Comparisons will run rampant between similar school shooting tragedies. Most news agencies will lead in tonight's broadcast with, "Only four days away from the eighth anniversary of the Columbine Massacre..."
• An analytical breakdown of the killer's lifestyle habits including what video games he played, what music he listened to, what books he read, what movies he watched and how disturbing his writing was on his Blog/MySpace page. Armchair psychologists will then diagnose the killer with a host of disorders that would have indicated he was going to commit mass murder sometime in the near future.
• The authorities will be blamed for not responding fast enough or for covering something up.
• Proposed knee-jerk gun control legislation will be drafted/enacted to prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again.
• A fabricated religious subplot will unfold and parents will exploit their dead children by writing books about them (like this and this).
• Virginia residents will be able to commemorate the tragedy by registering their State's own "Respect Life" license plates (like this). Fellow drivers will then be able to relive the horrific event everyday during rush hour traffic.

Labels: columbine, death, mass murder

Kurt Vonnegut died late last in Manhattan. He was 84. He is one of my favorite writers and I know the world will miss him. He witnessed the firebombing of Dresden firsthand and based parts of his most famous work Slaughterhouse-Five on the experience. He wrote many books, but in my opinion, A Man Without A Country was one of his best. He ends the book with this fitting poem:

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.

I'm sure Kurt is up in heaven now.

Labels: books, death

The working from home experiment officially ends on April 24 as I have accepted an Art Director position for a consulting firm in downtown Denver for a ridiculous amount of money. I learned many things during the home office endeavor:

• When not physically interacting with society on a regular basis I will not change my shorts until I squat down to pick something up and smell the essence of my own ass.
• When not physically interacting with society on a regular basis I will not shower until I squat down to pick something up and smell the essence of my own ass.
• When Divorce Court is on I will not turn it off. Preach on, Judge Toler. Preach on.
• There are times in life when porn is your enemy.
• I do not hate society as much as once initially thought.
• Conference calls are just as worthless as face to face meetings.
• Clients cannot tell when you are calling them from the bathroom.
• Clients cannot tell when you are surfing your RSS feeds instead of taking notes.
• Clients will not take you seriously if your "team" consists of anyone from India or the Philippines.
• Total hours (per week) put in at an office job during a normal work week: 42. Total hours (per week) put in at a home office job during a normal work week: 55.
• Working from home is a lot like bedding a really hot girl and then finding out that she is a lousy lay; at first you cannot believe its happening to you and then you realize its just a means to an end.

Labels: career, pants-free

During the height of my binge drinking days I could drain things down my gullet that would curl the stomach of a goat; straight whiskey, Irish Car Bombs, Natty Light and tequilas that do not even deserved to be named. I was blessed/cursed with an abnormally high metabolism and a steel stomach that allowed me to absorb alcohol faster than your average frat boy. Enter this past Saturday. The wife and I watched some Roller Derby with Jake and crew downing numerous tall boys of PBR in the process. I came home to spend a good clip on the toilet cursing the PBR and saddened that my once iron constitution is now broken.

Labels: drinking, jake, tomfoolery, wife

These past few weeks the wife and I have been up to our tits in UHauls, moving boxes, giant tupperware containers and throngs of able-bodied help throwing our furniture around for the promise of free food and liquor (including one tattooed freakshow who has visited the new crib twice since moving day but has yet to bring over any housewarming scotch). Amidst the chaos we only lost one small mirror that the wife purchased on clearance at Marshalls. While the wife was conveniently out of town I spent the past few days unpacking, trimming juniper bushes, raking leaves, committing genocide on the ant colony in the mud room, configuring the entertainment center and setting up my office. My Dad gave me a bevy of tools; rakes, shovels, hedge clippers, an extension cord, a pruner, a hatchet, a lawnmower and a gas trimmer that came with the spoken caveat, "Don't tell your mother I gave it to you. I just bought it last summer." A housewarming party will be imminent. Bring scotch.

Labels: jake, l-i-v-i-n, moving, the greens, wife