Dreaming of Schemes

There are times I wish I was an unreliable sociopath bent on a perpetual quest to make a quick buck. Only in my wildest daydreams I wish to concoct diabolical plots to collect money at the expense of others.

It would be nice to be a "get rich quick" type scammer by offering stupid people bad advice for an obscene cost. I would start a business where I would hold huge seminars offering people tips on how to make money. These seminars would be somewhat expensive but I would promise "fast results" from my advice. The first part of the seminar would be spent bashing republicans and rich people for making the economy so bad. I don't think either of them are completely responsible for that problem, but everybody hates rich people. I would spend the next part bashing democrats for wasting money on stupid things like education, health and immigration reform. That way I effectively cover  most political scapegoats. That will just hook the audience.

After blaming politicians through a series of vague rambling lectures, I will start loosely paraphrasing quotes from economists. Most of the quotes would say things about spending money to help the economy, saving money is bad and getting help from professionals is the best way to ensure financial security. I would then refer to myself as "professional help" and praise the audience for seeking my expert advice. After hitting all effective key points that pander to lazy white trash, I will close my seminar with "Getting rich has never been so easy! Don't forget to pay the exit fee on your way out!" Ingeniously I would charge people to enter and exit the seminar. Getting in would be the cheapest part. Getting out would be the most difficult and expensive. No one would be allowed to leave the building until they have paid my steep exit fee. Scamming people who want quick easy money would be the ultimate job where I could retire at the age of 28. Lazy people are abundant and stupid. It would be too easy.
 

Unfortunately for me, I was born with a conscience.  I can't bring myself to scam people with seminars full of faulty advice and entry/exit fees. 

I'm stuck being good. It would be way too uncomfortable for me to move outside of my comfort bubble. It's not so uncomfortable that it's similar to being raped. But it's more like "being fondled in your sleep by your favorite uncle" type of uncomfortable. I hate being uncomfortable in any way, shape, or form.

I guess I'll keep living a life of semi moral and ethical standards.

I guess I'll keep being Mr. Goody Two Shoes.

Image

Whether we like it or not,self-image is something we all have to deal with and think about. We are all self-conscious to some degree about how we think we are percieved and how we want to be percieved.

Ideally, I would have the body of a heavy lifter (Not the competitive muscle building gross kind, but the in-shape, good looking kind) But in reality, I have the body of a heavy reader.

Ideally, I would be super handsome and good looking. So much so I would be visible even through solid metal! But in reality I have looks plain enough to make wallflowers look like supermodels.

I wish people spent more time on their personality image. I would like to revamp my image for work and school. I have tried to give my image a makeover by bringing bagels to work. This would hopefully transform my image from "that asshole" to "that nice guy who occasionally brings bagels." So far, no luck. I wish I had taken better care of my image for work. Now people know as being competent at my job. I shouldn't have talked so much. In my past jobs, I just kept quiet and didn't draw much attention. The advantage to not talking as much is that people often associate shyness with being intelligent for some unknown reason. I've gotten that grossly incorrect stigma all my life from being shy. On the flip side, if you look creepy/have socially awkward behavior and you're shy, you get a more negative stigma. Usually, that's associated with being "a creep." (Mustaches usually don't help the socially awkward cause) Rumors start spreading of your inevitable shoot-out in the workplace. I hope I never achieve that status. I wish I had a more middle ground reputation. Something along the lines of "passably mediocre but pleasant." That would suit me just fine. I've always preached mediocrity in the workplace in order to prevent being overworked and overabused.

I feel that I keep most people at double arms length from me. I keep people from knowing too much about me, with the exception of close friends. This is something I have done since I left my first job at Cottonwood Hospital. Never again would I be screwed over by coworkers who knew too much. Conversely, I've been screwed over by people who knew too little and made crazy assumptions. In high school, people just assumed I did drugs despite the fact that I have not done any to this day. I don't know how people jumped to that conclusion. I didn't quite fit the profile of a stoner.

I've decided that I will revamp my image for school this year. Instead of being "that guy in the scrubs" or "that hospital dude." I've decided to lay low enough that I can't be identified by my clothing. Eventually I would just be completely unidentifiable. People wouldn't realize I was in the class until I was forced to speak. Ah, yes, that would be sweet.

Ok, so I'm not going to revamp my image at all. Takes too much work.

Work is hard.

Mind Filter

Healthcare is dominated by women in a lot of ways. Most nurses, aides, and techs tend to be women. There arent as many women as far as doctors go, but they are catching up by leaps and bounds. I've spent years in my healthcare work often being the only male on shift. I don't mind. It doesn't bother me at all. It's helped me develop mental filters to block out conversations I could care less about. I don't have to explain the differences in conversational interests between men and women. But the gap is wide. After years of practice, I've learned to tune out any conversation with the following keywords:

"My birth control"
"My baby delivery"
"My period"
"My wedding"
"My weight gain/loss"
"My self-esteem problems"
"My marital/relationship problems"
"My divorce problems"
"My son"
"My daughter"
"Mygranddaughter"
"My grandson"
Any celebrity's name
Gossip about coworkers
Religious topics
Rating the attractiveness of coworkers/anyone else

I'm sure there is more. But those are the ones that stand out the most. I don't mind talking about people's children. That's not always filtered. But the filter switch turns on and the autopilot for nodding appropriately for pauses also kicks in when I hear a sentence that starts with "my son/daughter is so smart....". Yeah, I don't care how you think your child is more intelligent/cute than the rest of the chilren in their class.

I'm not insensitive, really. But that kind of stuff just doesn't interest me. Especially the more personal womanly topics. I would much rather go my whole life not hearing about that stuff about my coworkers. Trust me. This filter also applies in social situations when I am the lone male or don't know other guys in the group. The filter turns on and I'm back to my backcountry vacation in my mind.

On the flip side, I have filters for stuff I want to talk about. These keywords include but not limited to:

Beer
Fishing
Guns
Cars
Sports
Poop
Dirty Jokes
Video Games
Cartoons
Quotable movies and tv shows
Etc, etc, etc

You get the idea. Women can complain all they want about not wanting to hear male conversations. Well they can learn my near-patented filter technique or go somewhere else where they don't have to listen to it. I recommend the filter. There has been  many shifts/social occasions where I have had to apply this filter with women literally standing right next me talking loudly. Didn't hear a word. Just off in my own world where I don't have to talk about bleeding female parts or who dumped who.

Now that I have confirmed your hunch of a suspicion that I'm an asshole, enjoy your day!

Too Much Time

Including this one, I have now posted 270 pieces of relatively unspectacular writing. Plus, I have now garnered over 2000 views.

I'm not sure if I should be happy or sad about this moment. On one hand, I've had too much free time to post all this crap. On the other hand, too many people have too much free time to read my crap.


This blog makes free time look like an awful thing to have.

[Slightly] Sad.

Old Myspace Posts

I have painstakingly gone through the task of taking my old myspace blogs and copying and pasting them here. I have copied them in their entirety, which means nothing is edited. All grammatical errors are still there. Really really bad grammatical errors will not be edited. I'm leaving the old blogs as they were. Everything from 2005 to 2007 is new stuff for this page. Keep in mind I'm 40x more whiney and crass in those old blogs than I am now. The writing is awful and purely emotional driven. Even the blogs where I attempt to be funny suck.

Also keep in mind there are one or two of blogs that are super ridiculous and full of false information. Those are the earliest ones and I made up those blogs to get back at an ex at the time. Basically reading those old posts are like traveling back in time in my life. They start about a month before I graduated high school. I used to have more but I deleted them in high school in a fit of anger. I was so much angrier back then. I had a bad temper. After reading most of the old blogs, I realize how much I have mellowed out. I've generally been mellow but I was much quicker to angry emotions back then.

I doubt anyone will read them, but just in case someone does there is your prelude.

Idaho, My Second Home

I may make fun of Idaho a lot, but it has always been a second home to me. I actually enjoy going there. It may not be a vacation hot spot, but it feels familiar and close. I drive through most of the cities with confidence knowing where I'm going as if I had always lived there. I enjoy the more quaint aspects that Utah lacks. The small courtesies, the slower pace of life, the focus on the outdoors, the passive shy-ness of some of the locals. I like how everything and yet nothing is there.

As I drove there by myself for the first time in years, I realized how close to my heart this place was. Years of memories were made in the hills, the streets, and everywhere else. There are thousands of pictures of me in Idaho from the time I was born to recently. It has been a bigger part of my life than I had ever realized before. I don't think I will end up living there, but I know it will always be a big part of my life to be there. I will make it a point so that my future kids make it a big part of their lives.

In a way, I already miss being there. I was there for 3 days just because I felt like it would be nice to be there. (And I had a wedding to go to.) But I miss the somewhat big town with a little town feel.

Thanks, Idaho.

My Musings For The Day

I was asked the other day why I hadn't chosen writing as a career. I don't remember how the subject came up, but I put very little thought into the question. When I think about it now, I realized I couldn't do writing as a career for the fact that nothing I could ever write would live up to my standards. I would write a novel with the intention of getting orgasmic reviews. Most of those reviews would ideally read along the lines of:

"It's like getting a blowjob..........for your mind!"
-Editor of some crappy newspaper.

"It's a literary orgasm that only stops for rest and cigarettes."
-Pretentious nobody from a magazine

"This novel is like reading about a climax then having one yourself. Caution: don't read without clean-up tissues handy."
-Witty columnist from local paper.

Since I would not be capable of getting such good reviews, I would crumble under the weight of my own disappointment and never write again. [Not a] True story.


For some reason recently, I got to thinking about Sesame Street. I don't know why. I haven't watched the show in years. But when I thought about the actual concept of the show, it seemed quite absurd. Bare with me on this. Humor me if you will.
For instance, I thought of The Count. The vampire puppet whose passion for counting numbers has yet to be matched by any one soul or object. But if The Count were real, wouldn't that be a liability? Sure, The Count seems like a nice guy trying to teach kids about numbers. But what if he was unable to resist an urge to just feed on one of those kids for sustenance? One minute he is telling kids about the number two, another minute he is feeding on poor little Jimmy's neck because he didn't have breakfast that morning. Scary thought. Fortunately, the creators of Sesame Street have chosen not to dig into The Count's presumably dark past of feeding on the living to sustain his undead state.

Big Bird is another conundrum. He seems like the typical over-sized laidback bird. But if he were real, he would probably be an non-compliant, uncontrolled schizophrenic. He has an imaginary friend that is a massive furry elephant whose demeanor closely reflects that of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. That's fucking depressing on some level. I have nothing against the mentally ill. However an uncontrolled schizo is the last person I want teaching my kids about sharing. For all I know Big Bird's hallucinations might turn dark and start teaching kids about the effects of heroin on large elephants.

 Cookie monster would be another scary one if he were real. I realize he was recently renamed the "Veggie Monster." That in itself might qualify as a crime against humanity and should be punishable via capital punishment. But that's a different topic. Anywho, I'll call him Cookie Monster since I'm old school. If Cookie Monster were real, his addiction to cookies could turn violent if his fix is not met in a timely fashion. We already know how fanatical he is about cookies. But we don't know how fanatical he is when he is not receiving cookies. He could be sucker punching kids in the kidneys for a sweet fix of Chips A'hoy or Oreos. I assume he doesn't make a lot of money on Sesame Street since they appear to live in a ghetto neighborhood. Now that he is addicted to veggies, that makes him all the more dangerous. No one eats veggies in America. Kids would be getting shanked and beat over carrots and celery. That's not right.

Oscar the Grouch appears to be the neighborhood hobo. I think in reality, Oscar would probably be a surly drunk. He already gets irritated by the locals as it is. If he were drunk or hungover, empty bottles of cheap vodka (and probably mouthwash) would be thrown at noisy passerbys. I would sincerely doubt Oscar would give a shit about the literacy of the children on Sesame Street when his main problem is that he lives in a trash can with no visible income.

I wouldn't go to Sesame Street in real life if I knew how to get there. It's too close to being at work.


Well those are my ridiculous thoughts for the day. I will leave you with a quote from former president Jimmy Carter.


"Choke on some malaise, sucka!"
-Jimmy Carter
(Note: He didn't actually ever say this. However, with that sweet accent I would say that all the time. I'm disappointed he never publicly took that opportunity for history's sake.)

Inside My Head Part II

I've been writing a lot of sequels to my blogs lately to try to capitalize on previous success. It's like a good movie. The sequel is almost never better than the original. But I always get related ideas from previous blogs and decide to write them anyway.


Scenario # 1

The other day I was teaching boy scouts about the ER at work

Scout: Is it cool working in an ER?

What I Think: Yes, very cool in that ER's are like elephant graveyards. It's where self-respect and dignity go to die.

What I Say: It sure is!



Scenario #2

Person I Don't Like: I need a vacation. Don't you think so?

What I Think: Yes. I think you need a grand odyssey in which you never return to this place to bother me.

What I Say: You deserve it!



Scenario #3

Overweight Person: You are just so skinny. I want to feed you something. It's not fair. I do everything right and never drop a pound. (They say this eating a bacon cheeseburger with a large side of fries.)

What I Think: Why do really overweight people always say they want to feed me food? People barely want to feed the homeless or starving kids in Africa for 2 bucks a month. Feed them. I'm eating plenty, I assure you.

What I Say: Ha ha, you're funny!



Enjoy

Wit

Some people have a wit that's just about as awkward as a first date. Some are just about as slow as the speed of smell.
More or less, you either got it or you don't. There are plenty who don't but pretend they do. Listening to those types is like listening to fingernails on a chalkboard while a cat is getting simultaneously raped.

I think I'm lucky to have the genetics I do. I have my mom's sharp and quick wit when I want to use it and my dad's cynical, crass and dry wit. Combined, they make a mix of smart-ass that is good for all situations. Multi-purpose wit, if you will. My sister mostly has my mom's sharp, high energy wit that I often lack. I wish I had half the energy she did with her wits.

Don't you hate it when you think of a comeback just a little bit after a situation occured? That's the worst. It almost feels like if you could just say those awesome things right when you need to, life would be awesome. Or terrible. There are plenty of times where I came up with a good comeback later on and thought "Good thing I actually didn't say that. I would have gotten my ass kicked."

Any case, I'm done talking about this boring subject. I just wanted to get across that I'm thankful I'm not a witless toolbag.



The end.

My Musings For The Day

I've decided I'm going to have more blogs titled "My Musings For The Day." This will mostly be smaller ideas I can't turn into a full blog but feel like writing them anyway. So you're just going to have to deal with my lazy title skills.

One week ago I was on the road to Idaho going on vacation. Now I'm at work barely able to retain consciousness. Some days returning to work feels comparable to poop returning to the butthole. Uncomfortable and sad. Ironically, I'm sending emails out trying to pick up more shifts.

Does getting older mean having to go to more weddings? I feel like I've gone to more weddings the past couple of years than I have wanted to go to in an entire lifetime. I already have two to go to this Summer alone so far. There may even be one more two more yet to still go to. On the getting older note, I also wonder if getting older means that Home Depot and Lowes are cooler places to go to as you age. I was in a Home Depot the other day and found myself wanting a lot of stuff there. I used to hate that place. I guess it didn't apply to me as much when I was younger. Now, I find myself wanting tools and a need to build stuff despite the fact I'm barely capable of operating a hammer.

I have also found with getting older that my clothing styles are slowly changing. I was at Smith and Edwards Army Surplus Store getting stuff for camping last week and stumbled upon a sweet jacket. It was cheap and I thought it was fashionable. Well fashionable to me anyway. An old man who worked there commented on how awesome the jacket was. After bringing it home, I got a slew of crap about it. Apparently, it's an "old man jacket." I was also informed that I might as well play the part of the old man while wearing it and keep hard candys in my jacket. Maybe even a hanky. I really feel like I am an old soul at heart with a lot of the stuff I do and like.

After seeing a lot of family from both sides recently, I've noticed a steady view of how people see me. In short, it adds up to responsible and boring. In contrast, when people talk about my sister they talk about how high energy she is, and how much of a free spirit she is. They talk about how much fun how wreckless she can be. It's usually a detailed description when it comes to talking about my sister. When I get talked about, it's usually a long pause followed by "He's a good guy." Or even "He's responsible." But that's about it. Don't take this the wrong way, there is no jealousy of this. I like to think I have good and strong simple characteristics. I guess it wouldn't hurt if I heard that I was funny or at least cool to be around. But meh. Responsible and boring is kind of my thing. I'm better at that then being outgoing like my sister. I'm too shy for the most part. There are times I wish I had the energy of my sister and how she can get along with anyone. But that's a little too outside my bubble.


I feel that I've done a decent job at trying to write in this blog more often. Truthfully, it just feels good to write even if if no one is reading. I feel like I'm getting back to my old roots of writing more often and feeling good about it.

The quality of my blog has improved, I think. I hope you think so too.

How To Be Successful At Any Job

There are millions of books that will tell you the key secret to being a model employee. They discuss generally small things like posture, body language, attitude, morality and ethics. I have found a way to bypass all of that unnecessary crap. It's not as if my body language or ethical moral code ever made a difference at any jobs I've ever had. All these books and blogs tend to leave out the most important piece of advice: sabotage.

Now, I don't mean go out and ruin someones career for shit's and giggles, or even be a total open douche. I present a passive aggressive solution that combines almost two contradictory ethical codes.

Laziness pays off now. Hard work pays off later.

That's right! You can do both! You can have your cake and eat it too if you follow my simple guidelines. How do you do that, you ask? Please keep reading to learn my priceless secrets.

No one is excellent at any job when they first start. I was just downright awful when I started my last job. I couldn't do anything correct. Use this to your advantage when starting any job. Gradually ease into the job. Establish that you take your time and might be a slow learner. This sets the stage for how people will percieve your future work ethic. Decent, but not great is what you want to aim for. If you work hard with a good attitude, it just sets you up to do more thankless tasks than you can possibly imagine.

Everyone loves a hard worker. You don't have to thank them as often and they tend to pick up slack with few complaints. Everyone hates a lazy worker. They get paid the same amount for doing less and are generally less respected. Plus that just puts them in the crosshairs for the next round of layoffs. Thusly, you will need to set your work effort to "aggressively mediocre." This means you do the job properly, but not poorly. This also means you don't excel. You just stay in the middle. People won't expect as much from you but won't expect less as well. This works well in your favor. No one asks you for more things, but they also don't float rumors about how worthless and lazy you are.

Now this is where it gets good. This is the key to your success. Let's say you have worked at this job for a year now and you have been deemed competent enough to train somone new. Let's say your name is J and your trainee's name is W. W is nice and enthusiastic. Wants to excel but doesn't have as much background in the job. J is tired of the job, wants a raise, and wants to appear better at the job without working harder. The right thing for J to do is under-train. Now I don't mean don't tell them very important things. That's a dick move. Plus if someone else trains them on days you're not there, you will seem super incompetent for having not mentioned something so very important. What I mean is, leave out small things. Small things add up. People remember small things and make a bigger deals about them. It's a fact of life.

So while J is training W, J casually forgets to say a few things about an obscure task that isn't used that often. However, the job requires you know this task, just in case. J actually forgets to go over many of these small things. These things are small enough that another trainer would likely forget them as well. After W is done training, W is supposedly ready to be autonomous and somewhat reliable.

W is now in some trouble. These small tasks keep coming up and they can't do them (or they think they forgot how to do them. Pefect!). People remember these things. W can't do most small tasks but is reasonably good at the bigger ones. Rumors start going around that W isn't very good or kind of slow. People start to mumble things like "This wouldn't have happened if J were here." or "J would have known what to do." J's value just increased by 100% without having to work harder. J is now percieved as more valuable. The more W screws up, the better J looks. Now of course, people can look back and say "Well J trained W. It's J's fault that W sucks." This is a minor complication that will be forgotten soon. Most people aren't in agreement with blaming trainers. Plus J can remark about how they had to explain EVERYTHING when training. If there is something people hate in the workplace, it's someone who has to be babied during training. Now this remark doesn't have to be true. It just becomes seemingly true the more W messes up and needs small tasks explained. This leaves the rest of the workplace longing for the good ol' days of when J worked. Ah, yes things were better when J was around. Things got done.

This laziness pays off long term. It will take W a while to get used to the job and be competent. J's value will increase as a result. Eventually, J's value as an employee plateaus when W gets to be decent at the job. But the beauty part is that the process is repeatable with each new employee J trains. It will seem as though the department is bad at hiring good people whereas J's value coincidentally increases with each new hire. If the new hire has experience within the company and is known to already be competent, this scheme will not work. J will probably be caught being lazy when the trainee appears more competent. J's stock in value will drop to all time lows. Someone may even catch on to the the grand scheme of under-training to increase one's value.

You get the point. It's quite repetitive. But it's gold, I tell you! Gold! I would even daresay, it's platinum! Perhaps even uranium. It's that good. It works every time.

Just for ego's sake, we'll call it "The Walker Maneuver."

One Year Weight Loss Anniversary

That's right. One year ago today I decided that I was going to lose weight. It was after Memorial Weekend that I decided it was time. It made sense to have one more weekend full of gluttony and start over anew on June first. I was 50 lbs heavier then. I got tired of looking at old photos of myself and realizing how pudgey I had gotten. I was tired of running to a code and being out of breath. I was tired of wearing clothes that had adequately disguised how much weight I had gained.

My goal to lose weight was somewhat complicated by the fact that I had a wedding to go to the week I started. Weddings are packed with terrible food. I showed some self control and didn't eat too horribly. After that, it was relatively smooth sailing. By August I had lost 30 lbs. When a new semester started that fall, I went off the deep end again. I started eating terrible and didn't exercise much. I didn't gain that much surprisingly. Even after 3 months of bad eating I had only gained 10-12 lbs back. By the beginning of December, I knew it was time again to go back so I didn't undo all my hard work. From that point on, I have watched my eating and kept the weight off and lost an additional 20 lbs.

It's been hard resisting my favorite foods. Fast food is a soft spot of mine. I love greasy food so much. Letting go of ice cream, donuts, and other pastries was also difficult. I still enjoy all these things just not on as frequent of a basis. It's still hard to resist all these temptations. But when I look back, it's been so worth it. I feel great, I look better, my attitude is much better. The work and effort has been worth every drop of sweat.

I can be very fickle some days. It's hard to keep me on track with anything. To see that such a good habit has stuck with me, makes me proud that I did what I set out to do. I don't care if people say I'm too skinny, or too scrawny, or whatever. I would rather be skinny than chubby any day of the week. I've been quite healthy about my weight loss and know that I am well within my healthy weight for my size.

It's not often I can say that I'm proud of myself. There are very few things that I do that live up to my standards. But losing all the weight that I have makes me very happy. It feels that for once, I did something right and stuck with it. I hope to continue with this healthy lifestyle. It has been most beneficial to me physically and emotionally. I don't have to wear larger clothes to hide my flab. I don't have to be sad that I don't fit in my favorite clothes anymore. I don't have to be so self conscious about how I look when I run into old friends.

I was going to post a pictures to show contrast. But I've decided I'm much too lazy to do that. Maybe another post. But until then, happy weight loss anniversary to me!