I Need To Move To England

If this article is even remotely accurate (which it probably is since it’s written by a female and not a male with an inflated opinion of himself) I need to move to England. At one point in the article it says that for an American male searching for a mate in England it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. This is apparently due to the ineptitude of English men in the art of courtship and dating. (Of course David Beckham seems to have done all right having snagged Posh Spice). While we American males can be pretty inept at those ourselves, apparently the English guys have us beat hands down. That settles it. I’m moving to England. I’ve always dug British women. The accent rocks and they can appreciate men who play soccer I mean football (real football). Plain and simple. Now I just need to find a cheap plane ticket to London. Or maybe some company runs an English mail order bride service. Nah, that costs money. Something I have in very short supply right now. Oh well. For all you British ladies out there, my name is Daryl and I live in Memphis. Please look me up if you’re ever through here. Northwest/KLM has direct flights between here and London everyday. Looking forward to meeting you.

Barely Treading Water

The Tsunami has hit. (The first one at least) Disgruntled employee (Me) wearing long sleeves and khakis + broken ac + angry callers with stupid problems = a very bad day. A very hot, sweaty, bad day. Is it 5 o’clock yet? I wanna go home.

Cool Quote

Just found a very cool quote on another blog. “I don’t live in a fantasy world… but I’m working on it….” That is so true. I think this is the motto I’ve been subconsciously living by for years.

Random Blogchalk Stuff. Please Ignore (except the search engines whom this is for)

Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United States, Memphis, Lincoln on the Green, Daryl, Male, 21-25!

Run For Your Life. A Tsunami’s Coming!!!!

UGH!!! I’m so not looking foward to the next couple of weeks. Make that couple of months. A severe money shortage has already begun to over take my bank account. (I can hear the crickets chirping and the dust swirling in the breeze inside the empty space that is my bank account already.) I may or may not have a job. And if I keep my current job in the short term, I get to endure what can only be termed as ‘All Hell Breaking Loose’. Working for a school district in the summer definately has it’s perks. No kids means no teachers which means no administrators which means no computer users which means almost no work for me. Which is no skin off my back because I get paid whether the end-users are here or not. But come August 5 (when the teachers come back) and to a greater extent August 12 (when the kids come back) my collegues and I will be up to our eyeballs in the utter chaos that is the Memphis City School District at the beginning of a school year. I was the naive new kid on the block last year at this time. I considered my self a veteran having worked in a high stress call center environment for almost two years. Needless to say, I was ill prepared for what lay ahead. We got ran over. Literally smashed down, stretched out and flattened like what happens in cartoons. Or at least it felt that way. Well the same thing is going to happen this year only it’s going to be worse. Since I lived in Japan for several years I liken this impending situation to a term that originated there. I feel like I’m standing on a beach waiting for a giant Tsunami to hit. Sort of like a scene from the 1998 Morgan Freeman disaster movie, Deep Impact. I can see the terrible thing coming and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it. There’s no place to run. No place to hide. It’s not a good feeling. Last year I didn’t know what to expect. This year I do but there’s still nothing I can do about it. I guess I’ll just have to hold my breath and try to ride it out. But alas I don’t have the best lungs in the world so that might not last very long. (j/k sort of)

I suppose I could jump ship but a) that seems nearly impossible since my job prospects are drier than the Sahara and b) I don’t want to leave my co-workers in a lurch. My loyalty to my contracting company, IBM, and Memphis City Schools is pretty much shot and out the window. But I am still loyal to my co-workers. They’re my war buddies. We’ve been in the trenches together. We’ve fought wars together. We’ve even served multiple tours of duty together. (The majority of us worked together at various times at an ill-fated place called Stream. But that’s a hellacious story for another time.) It just wouldn’t be right to leave them during this our busiest time of the year even if the opportunity presents itself. Making them take on my workload in addition to their own would be almost unbearable. Considering the fragile working relationship we have with our employer(s) right now I think they (at least a couple of them) would snap. I know I’m close to snapping. Everybody else is too. Now if we all found other jobs and left at the same time I could do it. That would be cool. (Forgive my scenical attitude but I’m just past the point of being fed up with all of this.) We’d be doing a kind of ‘Stickin’ It To The Man’ type of thing. I can see it now. We all present our notice on the same day and on the last day we all leave notes in our cubes saying “See what happens when you treat your employees like crap? Have a nice life.” That would rock. We’ve discussed this amongst ourselves. An oppressed employee revolt. The Kirk Franklin song “Do You Wanna Revolution? Whoop!! Whoop!!” can be our theme song. Yeah. {Switching to Cryptic Announcers voice} “This revolution will not be televised.” I can dig it!!

As icing on the cake we found out today that our official axing has been put off until November. And there was great rejoicing…. NOT!!! All this means is we get to be strung along and screwed over for an extra month with the same pay (with no raises in sight), the same working conditions, no job security, and ….. the list goes on and on. I’m rambling. I need to go clear my head. Read, relax, chill. I’m gone. Peace.

Smoking…. Why?

Consider the following an Open Letter to Smokers everywhere:

Dear Smokers,

Why do people smoke (Or why do YOU smoke)? This is a question I’ve been asking since I was a little kid. Why do people intentionally screw up their lungs? I was born with messed up lungs. I have asthma. It’s no fun. Why would somebody purposefully inflict that damage upon themselves? I don’t understand. Perhaps somebody can explain this to me. Any smokers out there care to give it a shot? Here’s a proposition for you folks out there (teenagers or adults or whatever) who are thinking about starting to smoke. Instead of enduring the ever increasing rise in the cost of cigarettes, the time spent out in the cold and rain and heat because you can’t smoke in buildings, the yellowing of your teeth, lips and finger tips from numerous cigarette filters, the annoying smokey smell that permeats your clothes, furniture, house and car, I propose making a swap. I’ll give you my chronically asthmatic lungs (I’ll make sure I don’t take any medication for several months so that they’re properly malfunctioning) and you give me your normal healthy lungs. It’s a win-win. You get screwed up lungs (essentially achieving the same effect you’d get from smoking cigarettes for years) and I get a healthy set of lungs free of the need to use inhalers, steroid tablets, and breathing machines to keep them running. Seems like an even swap to me. I’m not trying to be an online commercial for Truth or something. I’m just trying to understand. Not being able to breathe isn’t fun. Trust me I know. Is the little high you get off the nicotine all that great? Is it really worth the trade off? As stated before in another post about a different topic, I respect your right to smoke. I’m even a bit apalled at the unfair taxation and price gouging of your beloved cancer sticks by state governments who would rather tax their constituants to death than practice fiscal responsibility with the money they already have. I’m just struggling to understand why you choose to practice this right. It essentially seems to be a right to kill yourself. Yes, I have the right to drive my car off a bridge and plung to my death. Do I choose to practice that right? No. That seems extremely foolish to me. So does smoking.

This random thought was brought on by the daily (rather hourly) exodus of one of my coworkers to the front of our building for one of his many smoke breaks.

Rockin’ The Suburbs

I bought the latest Ben Folds CD back in the fall. It’s decent. It has the typical syrupy piano driven ballads that I grew to love from the Ben Folds Five mixed with some cool up-tempo tunes. It appears that now that Ben Folds has broken away from the Five, he’s developed a bit of a potty mouth. He throws in random curse words through out the album for no apparent reason. I suppose he’s trying to be clever. Ben is a really talented musician and songwriter. I still hold that opinion of him though sadly his standing in my eyes has gone down a notch. Anyway, the title song of his solo album is Rockin’ The Suburbs. In light of my recent move out to the suburbs, I think I’ll have to adopt it as my new theme song. I think I’ve already subconsciously done this because I woke up this morning with the song was stuck in my head. Usually songs get stuck in my head after I’ve listened to a particular CD in the recent past or heard it on the radio. Neither of those criteria apply to this song. I haven’t listened to the CD in months. Wait a minute. I did glance at the CD case last night while unpacking boxes. I guess that’s it. Anyway, I’m tempted to set that song as the song I wake up to in the morning. I’ve got one of those Sony Dreammaker CD/Clock radios. (Yours was so cool Aaron. I had to get one.) You can set the regular buzzer alarm and a CD alarm. With the CD alarm you can tell it what song you want to play at the specified time. The thought of this brings to mind movies like Ferris Bueller and the like where the main character wakes up, puts his feet on the floor and catchy music starts playing in the background. Heck, I may never write or direct movies but at least I can star in one. Even if it’s only in my mind.

Operation: Move — Mission: Accomplished

Well my roommate and I moved out of our old digs into a posh pad in the ‘burbs. It feels weird living out among all the rich folks. The vast majority of the Memphis Grizzlies live within a two mile radius of me. I’ve never lived in the suburbs before and since I’m still the same poor, struggling guy that I was this time last week, I’m kind of wondering what I’m doing out there. I’m joking kind of but not really. I’m still trying to figure out how I’m going to afford the increased rent ($40 bucks more a month) plus cable, utilities etc. I’ll figure it out somehow. If things work out right, I may be getting a job where my roommate works. I’d work less than 2 minutes from my apartment (by car). About 10 by foot. Maybe 6 or 7 by bike. All modes of transport I’d employ if employed there). That would save on gas. If I get an interview, I’ll have to drive a hard bargain. Demand a substantial pay increase over what I’m currently making. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Problem solved. Now I’ve just got to get them to call me back.

Surely blog subjects will abound out there in the land of the rich and snobbish. I hope that doesn’t rub off on me. Maybe they make some type of repelant for that. I’ll keep my loyal blog faithful informed. My first mission in the new digs, find out where the hot babes are. There’s gotta be a bunch around there somewhere. It’s a huge apartment complex. A flight attendant lives on the same floor across the breezeway from us. She was leaving as we moved in Saturday. I didn’t get a good look but the guys helping us move said that she wasn’t a knock out. But she also couldn’t be classified any lower than cute either soooo…. I wonder how old she is and I wonder if she has roommates. I’ve also got to get out and ride my bike and start rollerblading again. This is the perfect area for it. Nice, flat, wide roads (it’s a residential/commercial area) with very very little traffic. And cute girls out jogging in excercise attire. That’s motivation enough for me. Aaron, you gotta come up and visit me now. I’ve been down there, you and Carlton gotta come up and return the favor. Bring your blades. You never passed up a chance to watch me make a fool of myself on my rollerblades before. Why start now?

Well gotta go. One last thing though. Posts will probably be less frequent for the time being (And there was great rejoicing). We don’t have internet access at the apartment and won’t for the forseable future. For one we don’t have a computer there. I’m in the process of building my next computer but that project is on hold for the time being. I bought a case that looked a lot cooler in the picture and discription on ebay that it does in person. Then I bought a used video card off one of my coworkers. That’s the extent of Project: Daryl’s Next Computer to this point. If I ever get around to finishing that, I’ll try to convince my roommate that we need to get Road Runner. Anyhow, that means I’ll be posting mainly from here at work. Which is where I do most of my posting anyway. But with school fast approaching, we’ll once again be buried under an avalanche of calls and I probably won’t have the time or the energy to post. Have no fear Okimaniacs. I’ll post as often as I have time. Later. It’s almost time to head back to the ‘burbs.

Austin Powers Nonsense

Oh Behave!! The new Austin Powers movie comes out next week. It definitely wasn’t at the top of my movies to see list this summer. I’ve seen just about all the movies I wanted to see this summer. Spiderman, Star Wars Episode II, The Bourne Identity, Men In Black II (which is terribly disappointing by the way), The Minority Report, Mr. Deeds. But I’m a sucker for pop culture so alas I’m gradually being sucked in by the hype that is Austin Powers in Goldmember. The website is groovy. Yeah, Baby. Yeah! The commercials and movie trailers keep getting funnier and funnier. They’ve even got cool product tie-ins. The Motorola phone is totally shaggadelic baby. The neatest thing I’ve found related to the movie is the Austin Power AIM Bot. If you’ve got AOL Instant Messenger, send an IM to Austin Powers. (Be sure to put the space in there) The Austin powers automated bot will pop up. It gives you all kinds of interactive games and things to do related to the movie. You can ask it questions, learn about the actors, play games, get your wacky Austin Powers horoscope, get a swinging spy name, the works. It’s really fun. Definitely something to check out. It’s a total time waster. But it’s a fun one. I suppose I’ll go see the movie next weekend. I saw the last one in the theater. It was okay. I really like the first one. The Austin Powers franchise is one of those things that doesn’t really appeal to me right off the bat but once I go to see it, I’m always entertained. I’m sure this one will be the same way. I’ve learned one thing from all of this. I’m a huge sucker for a good advertising campaign. Well actually I already knew that but anyway….

Homeless People

I saw a homeless guy panhandling for change at a street corner last night. I passed him going to and coming from church. He had the usual scruffy, disheveled appearance. Hair unkempt. Clothes well on the shabby side. And of course the sign asking for assistance. I always feel bad when I pass these folks. If I have some cash in my wallet I’ll give it them no questions asked. I’m nowhere near being rich. In fact based on my current income I’m probably just above the poverty line. But If God has blessed me with a little something extra I’m more than happy to share. It’s obvious that this person needs it more than I do. The problem is I don’t carry cash on me very often. I just feel weird carrying cash on me. I prefer to use my check card for most purchases. Anyway this makes me sad because when I encounter a homeless person, I usually don’t have anything to give him (or her). I want to give but don’t have anything. I’ve heard numerous people say that they don’t give any money to these people because they’re really not homeless. They’ve heard a person who heard from a person who saw one of these people getting into a nice car (I’ve heard Lexus, Benz, whatever. Fill in the blank with whatever fancy expensive car you like. I’ve heard them all.) at the end of the day and driving home. They use this to say that these people are just lazy and no account, etc. etc. Basically they don’t need the money. To this I say WHAT? Why would a person who is well enough off to drive a Lexus or whatever spend his days panhandling for change? Why would anybody do that unless they’re really in dire need? That’s ludicrous. I’ve never understood that argument but lately that’s all I hear from people defending their stance on not giving a homeless person change. I sure would like to meet the person from whom that startling third or forth hand revelation came from. This just seems callous to me. But I suppose people can do what they want with their money. Which brings me back to the other night. I’m sad that I didn’t have anything to give that man. I suppose I could have emptied out my ashtray (which is my coin receptacle since I don’t smoke). I think I’ve got like 15 cents in there at the moment. That won’t even buy a gumball these days at the local Quik E Mart. I guess I’m just as guilty as the people I’m talking about for not giving that. I don’t know. It’s a dilemma.

P.S. It rained again today. And last night. And the day before that. UGH!!! Will it ever end?