In order to light that marvelous charcoal ablaze, you have to have some kind of a fire making device… matches, a lighter, rubbing two fucking sticks together, whatever. My wife is the only smoker in the house, thus the keeper of the fire creation devices. Her friends… do not keep their own fire creation devices on hand, so they have a tendency to steal hers.

I’m digressing a whole lot… anyway, we didn’t have a fucking lighter in the house, or matches or any fucking thing to start a goddamned fire.

So, I head out into the world to purchase a lighter, so that I can start a fire in the grill to cook dinner on. The closest store that has the lighter I want is a Walgreens. I’m not sure if they have those everywhere in the world, if not… it’s a fucking drug/convenience store thing.

Having picked out all of the items I intend to purchase (utility lighter, regular-ass  BIC lighter, box of matches… I must’ve looked like some kind of fucking arsonist at the checkout line) I proceed to the cashier.

Just then, this fucking cocksmoking son of a bitch and his daughter walk in, walk right up to the cashier (cutting in front of me) and proclaim:

WE ARE HERE FOR THE BIG SHIPMENT OF SILLY BANDZ!

Now, I personally know what the fuck these things are because I have an 8 year old step-son, and it’s honestly the only fucking thing I’ve heard come out of his mouth for the last week.

SILLY BANDZ SILLY BANDZ  SILLY BANDZ

I’m not sure what’s fucking gayer about these things, the fact that they’re just fucking rubber bands that are shaped like things. Or… the fucking Z at the end of  ”bandz.”

I guess they didn’t figure the kids could identify with them, or wouldn’t be into them without that Z. Everyone knows that all the hippest latest shit, that has a name that would otherwise end in S, is WAY better if they replace that S with a fucking Z (James Withazee aka Jamez).

Look ‘em up, they’re fucking stupid. Yes, we’ve bought some for the boy.

So this fucking assturd begins grilling the cashier about fucking Silly Bandz. She tells him that they have received no such large shipment of said Silly Bandz.

He then starts into this kind of a “wink wink nudge nudge” thing with the cashier.

No such shipment, huh? No Silly Bandz here huh?

Well… do you have anything that looks like these?

He points to the three bracelets his daughter is currently wearing/fondling.

No, she says, we don’t.

The man then starts apologizing to his traumatized looking daughter, and accuses the cashier of holding out on them.

The cashier is a woman, at least in her late 60’s, it’s clear she doesn’t give a fuck about fucking Silly Bandz, or this fucking line-cutting jagoff. She doesn’t appreciate his fucking accusation either.

Finally after what felt like 5 minutes of this asshole standing there staring down the cashier, which to be fair wasn’t hard… she had to be like 4′ 11″… he finally apologizes to his daughter, again… and they leave.

Fuck Silly Bandz.

I’ve said “Silly Bandz” here so many times, in hopes that it’ll pop up in a Google search, and some fucking cocknecked parent will come here in hopes of finding them.

I pity you parent.

Does it work? Are you receiving me?!

Baby steps to 11 o’clock.

My weekend has been pretty fucked. Had to work late Friday, get up early and go to work a half day Saturday… now I’m here at work Sunday. All I’ve gotta do is turn some shit on… for some reason I have to wait until 11 to do it.

My wife picked me up a used copy of Borderlands yesterday (thanks!), I played it for a little bit last night. Seems pretty good so far, feels like Bioshock and Fallout 3. It’s old news though. I’m not one of these people with the expendable income to play current games.

Doody.

10 minutes until turning shit on time. Let’s go.

Also, GOOOOOOOOO SABRES!!!!!!!!!!

Downtown Atlanta, office building, security guards, work after-hours.

Mix well and add 5 hours on the phone with IT people that don’t have fucking idea one about what they’re doing.

That is how you make a fucking retarded evening at work. Allow me to explain further.

The job starts at 5 p.m. EST. I arrive a little bit early to make sure I’ve got everything I need in the office space and all the people that need to know I’m there… know I’m there.  The loading dock security guard approaches my vehicle.

“What are you here for?”

“I’m working in the building this evening, they’ve got me scheduled from (looking at paperwork) 5:00 till 11:00″

“Does building management know you’re coming?”

“I honestly don’t know, they should?”

“Go to the front security desk in the lobby, and talk to them”

“What about this gate over here, what time do they lock that up? I may be here late and I don’t want to get stuck in here”

“Nine o’clock”

“Ok, thanks”

I get out of my van, grab what tools I think I’ll need and head to the front security desk in the lobby. There’s a small African (from Africa) gentleman sitting at the desk. He seems eager to assist to me…. I explain what the guard at the dock told me and he picks up the phone and starts calling folks. I forgot to mention that this was a Friday and it was on the edge of 5:00 p.m. sooooo… not a lot of people at their desks, more like people in/on their way to their cars to get the fuck out. So of course no one is answering their goddamned phones and I end up standing there at the security desk for around 10 minutes.

Finally he gets someone on the phone and they tell him to tell me to meet them on the 6th floor. I ride the elevator to the 6th floor and stand in the elevator lobby for 2 or 3 minutes and no one shows up. The office I’m to be working in is on the 7th floor, so I head up there and attempt to go into the suite.

The fucking door is locked, I knock on the door… no one answers. Time for phone calls! I call the people I’m doing the work for, and then those people called some other fucking people…. and finally I find out that the dude who is supposed to be in the office has run out to do a quick errand and will return at 5 to let me in.

Fine, very good. I’ll just sit out here in the hall and fuck around with my Droid (DROID!). Everything is fine and good, I’m fucking facebooking and texting my wife about the ridiculous bullshit, when another security guard arrives on the scene.

“So they sorted everything out?”

“I guess, the guy at the front desk told me to come up here”

“They want to talk to you on the sixth floor”

“Who?”

“Building management”

“Oh ok…”

I follow him to the 6th floor and into an office where a woman is on her way out. She informs me that the tenant I’m trying to work for has no insurance hoo-ha on file and thus I cannot do any work in the building. I am to fuck off immediately.

I am then escorted from the building by the security guard.

Time for more fucking phone calls!

My contact is all “WHAT THE FUCK?!” not in those words, but similarly confused and irritated. So she makes calls and I sit in my work conveyance waiting to hear back. The site contact gets back from his errands and he sneaks me back into the building and into his office. Now… he’s supposed to stay with me until the fucking job is done. He did not, however, in fact we weren’t in the office 5 minutes and he was out the fucking door.

In a situation like the one we had going on… you’d figure he’d be fucking smart enough to realize that I was in at least a little bit of danger. He couldn’t be fucking bothered though, big man fucking stock broker type. I believe I’ve posted about my utter fucking abhorrence of those types. Fucking cocknecked faggot summummabitches.

Fuck that guy. I’m sure he’ll get, at the very least, a stern talking to at the end of this bullshit.

Allow me to continue!

I am to call into a conference bridge (stupid name for a conference call), which I do. The people that are already on it are aware of the bullshit I’ve had to deal with to be in there and they let me know that it’ll be 15-20 minutes until they really need me to do anything, so I sit down in conference close to the server room I’ll be working in.

An hour later they ask me to go turn something off, so I do it, no problem. I can fucking flick a switch on and off with the best of them.

Another hour goes by and they ask me to unplug one thing and plug it into another. Yes! Progress! I may make it out of here before the cops get here to arrest me for trespassing! Hu-fucking-zzah!

Move this to here, move that to there. More IT folks talking to themselves. I can’t tell if the one is French or Indian, maybe both.

“I’ve gotta take my daughter to ballet class”

“….” (me)

More sitting, more waiting.  New guy joins the call. This guy KNOWS what the fuck he’s doing, he’s making changes to this fucking router and that fucking switch. He’s doing it, and it’s looking like I may just get out of here before they lock up that goddamned gate and I have to go to the security desk in the lobby and get them to unlock it for me. Keep in mind, I’m not supposed to be in the building.

We’re working through this shit, making real progress. I’m moving all of the connections over from the old shit to the new shit. Then they tell me I’ve got a new piece of equipment to put in the server cabinet. I unbox it, set it in the cabinet and power it up, I move the connections to it as they tell me and it’s looking good. Then the shit hits the fan! French Indian forgot to configure some hoo-ha in this equipment a few months back before it was shipped to the site and they can’t do whatever the fuck it is that they need to do with it. It’s not looking so good for finishing this shit anytime soon, if at all.

The guy who knows how to get shit done says.

“Start undoing everything”

“Ok” I respond.

So I go about putting everything back the way it was. It doesn’t take long at all since it was really only turning 2 things off, and moving 3 connections.

1. Flip Switch
2. Flip Switch
3. Unplug cable from new jobber, plug into old jobber
4. Unplug cable from new hoo-ha, plug into old hoo-ha
5. Unplug cable between two new things, plug back into old things.
6. Done.

The guy who knows how to get shit done tells me he’s sorry for wasting my time and asks me:

“If we need to get you back out there tomorrow or Monday, will that be a problem?”

He’s the newest to the call, so I go about explaining how it came to pass that I was in the office that evening.

“Oh..” he said “well, we’ll get all of that worked out before we need you to come back”

“Ok” I said “have a good night”

It’s over. Done. I spent 5+ hours on the phone, pacing the office, sitting around… all for nothing. Not a goodamned thing was accomplished. That’s fine though, it all pays the fucking same.

Now to get out of the building. It’s 10 o’clock, and as I’ve been lead to believe the gate out of the parking lot will be locked, I reluctantly head to the lobby to see the security guard at the desk.

I’m hoping there’s been a shift-change and the guard at the desk will not recognize me.

No such luck.

It’s the very same guy that walked me out of the building after I was told I was not allowed to work in the building.

His fucking jaw hits the floor.

“No one from building management is here to approve you to work here, why did you come back?”

I allow a little smirk to sneak across my face.

“Come back? I never left!”

“You never left?” He said, showing signs of confusion and a little bit of anger.

“Yeah, my contacts said that they had cleared everything with the building”

I hand him the insurance info shit that was faxed to the office.

“You’re going to make me do this, aren’t you?”

“Do what?” I ask, as his hand reaches towards the phone… I assume to call the police… he stops short and picks up a notepad and pen.

“You’re going to make me write”

“I’m not trying to make you do anything”

So he makes a little report, asking me for my name and my contacts name. I’ll throw that motherfucker under the bus in a goddamned heartbeat. Leave me here alone will you? You’ll pay!

Ten minutes later I’m on my way to my vehicle, relieved to be done with that shit and on my way home.

I pass through the final door and I’m outside. The African guard from earlier is walking back into the building.

“Excuse me” he says “were you cleared to work in this building?”

“I’ve already done the work, and I’ve already had this very same conversation with the guy at the front desk. Good night”

The most adventurous night at work ever.

First post of 2010. It’s only March…. hahahahahaha.

We paid for all of the other shit and then went to the item pick up counter, checked in with the thing at the counter and sat patiently waiting for our number to be called. We could see behind the counter where they were staging the items to be picked up by all of the other sad fucks that were sitting there waiting with us.

After about 30 minutes of waiting for our number to be called, I happened to see a mattress sitting there on a cart behind the no business fuckshit at the counter that calls out the numbers. She’s still not called us up to the counter and no one else has claimed the mattress as of yet, surely it must be ours and she’s just a goddamned idiot and hasn’t called us up yet.

I approach the counter.

“Hello, I couldn’t help but notice that mattress which is similar to the one I have purchased and am waiting for, is sitting there on a cart behind you. Do you think perhaps that it is mine?”

She wanders off with my receipt in hand to confirm or disconfirm my suspicion. She stops, looks at a tag on it, and starts walking back to the counter.

“Nope”

I sit back down with my family and wait and wait and wait. Another half hour goes by, I approach the counter again and restate my original belief that the mattress sitting on that cart for the last fucking hour was in fact mine and I’d like to take it and stop being a goddamned prisoner inside of this fucking gigantic yellow menace.

“Nope, it’s not yours”

“Well then where is mine? I’ve been sitting here for over a fucking hour. This is retarded”

“Let me check again”

She checks the tag on the fucking thing again…. AND GUESS WHAT?! IT IS MY FUCKING MATTRESS and it’s been sitting there staring us all in the goddamned face for the last fucking hour.
The real pisser is the fucking mattress sucks.

They all live together, they’re all standing right there at the fucking door each time a different kid rings the door bell to ask if he can come out. Somehow the god damned message gets through to not a fucking one of them.

I step outside to walk the dog, and I’ll be goatfucked if it isn’t the first fucking thing I hear from the loud (obviously) retarded one.

“WHERE IS (insert kids name here)?!?!”

“He’s inside… still sick, just like you’ve all been told”

“WHY IS HE SICK?!”

“Well… he’s a person, and people get sick”

“IS HE SICK FROM PLAYING TOO MUCH?!”

“What?!”

“IS HE SICK FROM PLAYING TOO MUCH?!?!”

“I have no idea what that means”

I really want to tell the kid to shut his fucking mouth until he has something at least mildly intelligent to say. I realize however that those are a lot of words he probably does not know the meaning of. Clearly his mother is one of the rare cases of anal pregnancy.

That’s probably offensive… oh well.

I’ve been listening to podcasts for several years now (4 or 5?), in that time it has become abundantly clear that a lot of shows rely heavily on the “how was your week” recap for the majority of their content. It’s fine when there is an amusing story that comes from it, but I find that it’s usually just a fucking boring To-Do list read aloud.

Do your listeners give a fuck that you went to the fucking grocery store? Do they fucking care what you bought while you were there? If something interesting happened while you were there, talk about that. Tell us about the piece of shit in front of you that’s shopping from the line, don’t tell us about the fucking contents of your shopping cart. If nothing interesting happened during your week, it isn’t necessary to drone through it just to fill up time.

Repeatedly I have recommended that he shut his fucking mouth, he just stands there and continues talking. He’s a fucking helper, or rather a helplesser, as he stands around talking and rubbing his fucking hands together all day. All day long, rubbing his hands together over and over and over. It’s amazing he has any skin left on the fucking things. It’s not as though I haven’t given him anything to do, it’s just that he’s too busy rambling about some inane garbage and rubbing his hands together.

When I suggest more activities for him to… I dunno… help with the task at hand, he stands there staring blankly at me, rubbing his hands together, trying to find some flaw in the job I’ve given him to do. Blank stare combined with random rapid blinking, while rubbing his hands together. I think he’s trying to think of a clever way to say I’m stupid, but he’s not smart enough for that. Instead he continues rambling, now he’s regurgitating something he heard on the Science Channel.

“This is my religion” he says, speaking of the Science Channel

“That’s retarded” I tell him, “It’s just as retarded as Christianity”

“God is protons and light all around us” he says

I ignore him and continue being productive, meanwhile he’s scrubbed yet another layer of skin off of his palms.

WHY ISN’T THERE A PHONE IN CONFERENCE ROOM 400?!?!?!?!?!

I don’t know, you fucking cunt.

I guess that’s it… I wonder if my sister has my copy of Hollywood.

2 weeks ago “code enforcement” rolled through the neighborhood handing out warnings for people who hadn’t cut their grass yet. They came to my house and informed my wife that we had 48 hours to cut the grass or we’d be penalized. The penalty for not cutting the grass is up to $1,000 and up to 60 days in jail. I don’t know about anyone else, but I think that’s pretty fucking ridiculous. If grass was meant to be cut it would cut itself, wouldn’t it? 

So we’re in a fucking panic, we don’t have a goddamned lawnmower yet. The dude across the street will do it for $15, but fuck him, I’m not paying fifteen dollars for some yahoo to come over here and cut the grass for 2 minutes. It’s also interesting that code enforcement came through just 1 week after he put his fucking flier on the door. Luckily my wifes friend can get her hands on a weedeater, and she came over (while I was at work) and chopped through the shit in a couple of minutes, crisis averted.

Of course, that’s not a permanent solution, so we’ve gotta get a lawn cutting solution of our own. That same friend of my wife knows some dude that has an old piece of shit mower that he’ll sell us for thirty bones. It’s nothing fancy, standard 20″ cutting deck, he changed out the spark plug and put some oil in it… I think he painted it too. We got it on Friday and I cut the grass when I got home from work. It took me longer to realize that I had to pump the fucking primer bulb more than I had, that it did for me to cut the grass. Then, since there’s no way to the “backyard” except to go through the house, I had to make a fucking lawnmower sled with a garbage bag and drag the thing through the house and out the sliding door to the patio. Fortunately there’s no grass in the back, so no cutting there. 

Fuck you code enforcement, how can you tell me I have to cut MY grass, eh?

Air conditioning, here in the southeast United States it’s kind of a necessity. In the summer (and this  year, early spring) it gets humid and hot as a motherfucker (motherfuckers are very humid and hot). This  year, however, we’ve already had 90+ degree days. Wouldn’t you know it, we throw the switch on the A/C unit and the fucking piece of shit just hums and buzzes away. Fucking landlord said it worked like a champ before we moved in here last October. Anyway, the fucking thing doesn’t work now so my wife calls the landlord up and tells him as much. She tells him we know a guy that can look at it and tell us what the problem is. He reluctantly says “ok” and we get the dude out here to check it out. As it turns out we need a new dealie outside (compressor or some such shit) 1300 dollars he tells us. The landlord probably shit himself when we threw that number at him, he suggested that we ask for a used one. HVAC dude says he has one, but he doesn’t guarantee that it’ll work, 450 dollars. The landlord gives us the go ahead and he sends the money via Western Union early the following day. 

It takes the dudes something like an hour to install it, and it’s pure profit for them, not like they paid for the used one. They probably pulled it out of some house that was getting a nice brand new one. Whatever, it doesn’t matter, I’m not paying for the fucking thing. They leave, and I notice that the fucking furnace/air condtioning thingie in the house is leaking. There’s water coming out of everywhere in the thing. My wife calls the dudes back and they’re like “oh shit, the what have you is broken inside the whatnot, the best thing you can do is turn it on for a little while until you get cool and then let the water go away.” It didn’t seem like a very good plan, and it wasn’t!

They explained that we need a new “coil” and that they’d keep their eyes out for a used one, since it had become clear the landlord is not interested in replacing bad parts with new ones. They called the next day and said they had procured one, and that they would install it for 250 dollars. The landlord said go ahead and pay for it ourselves, and we could deduct it from the rent.

The dudes come out a few days later and install the thing and everything seems alright, no more leaking! Wee-haw! But wait, there’s more!

The thing is cutting on and off just randomly, it won’t stay on. WHAT THE FUCK!?!? It’s annoying the fucking piss-hell out of me, I don’t know if it’s the thermostat or what the fuck. We dealt with that for a little over a week I think and my wife called the dude up and explained the problem. They came out this past Friday and had to replace some circuit board thing (with a used one!) and now it works fine, finally.