Wednesday, March 31, 2010

NERDgasm!

As you all know, I am a CS engineer. Which means I grudgingly yearn for all things new and innovative in the tech world. See, I am what most people would call, a walking contradiction. Because while one part of me goes apeshit for tech (the part that ALWAYS WINS OUT!), another part of me wants nothing more than to become a staunch Luddite smiting anybody with a cellphone or iPod! But I have to say after viewing this vid of the interface in action, my inner Luddite killed itself after seeing the light.

I know that this is just a concept being kicked around by the Microsoft gods; still I seriously just creamed my pants thinking about all the practical applications I could use this device for in my daily life! The iPad, like 99% of apple's products, is overhyped and fucking stupid! Don't even get me started because this entry will be 40 paragraphs long by the time I'm done with my tangent! Let's just say I have no respect for the over-privileged hipsters in the coffee shops with their macbook pros. You assholes just spent over $2000 on a device you use to check your email, watch porn, and occasionally write a word document. It's too much machine for most anybody that buys one and honestly, you look fucking ridiculous using it!

Whoa, I totally let that get away from me. MY POINT! This device needs to be made into a reality ASAP. With some kind of specialized tegra chip and an OLED display the battery life on something like this could be totally doable. I seriously haven't seen a user interface that got me this excited (and wasn't in some awful futuristic sci-fi movie) in YEARS!

Dear Microsoft gods,

If you make this concept a reality, I promise to upgrade all my computers to Windows 7, and openly heckle any and all apple users (more so than I do already). Also, if I ever have kids, I will give them up to you (what the fuck is a gay man with the attention span of a cocker spaniel doing with kids anyway?)

Thank you for listening Microsoft gods.

As always, your faithful costumer,

RGB


Thursday, March 25, 2010

I made a scene...

I have a lot of anger in me. I spend a large chunk of my daily life forcing a smile that I plaster across my face to throw people off. For the most part 99% of the people around me have no idea how angry I ALWAYS am. When I was a boy dealing with family violence, this man once told me if I smiled when I was sad I would always feel a little better. He also told me people would like me more if I was happy, even if I was faking it. Smiling never made me feel better, but it did get me more friends. So I began to care a lot about what people thought of me. It's why I work so hard at maintaining this generic effervescence I have spent a lifetime perfecting.

The problem is it doesn't work on everybody. The longer a person knows me and the closer they get to me, the easier it is for them to see right through me. It's the reason why I keep most people an arm's length away. I don't like it when people actually get passed all of my strategically placed emotional barriers. It's like they have caught me with my pants down. Except I am actually quite comfortable with my pants down so maybe that's a bad analogy... The thing is I prefer people to assume my entire life is, and always will be, sunshine and daisies. It's a sick compulsion that I am doing my best to rid myself of, but find myself failing miserably at every corner.

Monday I was having lunch with my new buddy Ted. We were laughing and joking around @ fatburger when in walks my ex-stepdad. I was in his face before I even had the chance to process what was going on. When it comes to this man, I just can't seem to control myself. When I was a child I saw him as this unstoppable force of nature capable of destruction beyond my comprehension. Nobody in the history of my life has ever been able to make me feel as small and insignificant as this man has. When I see him now, I see him for what he really is. Not some superhuman juggernaut, but a weak cowardly man scared of his own shadow. It makes me sick that I was actually afraid of him and I let him rob me of my masculinity when clearly he never had any of his own!

I wasn't planning on beating the crap out of him, we were in a restaurant after all; but I did feel the need to put a little fear in him. Then a couple dozen teenagers walked into the restaurant in the asshole's wake. Turns out my favorite wife beating, child abusing, meth addict is now a youth minister for a major local church. With this week being spring break, he's taken this opportunity to run a day camp so all these teens can get their daily dose of Jesus. Even I was able to see that a confrontation in this scenario would be in very poor taste, so I changed tactics. From the time the asshole walked in, to the time I realized that beating the shit out of him was a bad idea, I'd say about 20 seconds had gone by. Up until this point, unless you'd seen the mood I was in right before he walked in, it didn't seem out of place or abnormal in the slightest. So I still totally had a chance to walk away without making a scene. Unfortunately once I've been riled up, I don't really know how to wind myself down. I needed to get some kind of resolution or it was very likely I would have exploded.

This is when I remembered the teens the asshole was in charge of all crowded together in one large group. I walked right up to them and I said, "Excuse me guys, can I have your attention real quick? My name's RGB and I just wanted to let all of you know a little something about the asshole (I used his actual name with the teens, I didn't want to come off like an overly bitter ass so I even used his honorific "pastor" but for my purposes here, he's just "the asshole"). He abuses women and children with extreme physical violence and he's a meth addict." I lifted up my arm and pointed to my scar and I told them how he'd burned the skin off my arm with a frying pan after I tried to stop him from punching my pregnant mother in the face, which he ended up doing anyway. I told the teens that if I were them I wouldn't want to be learning anything Christian from a person like this and I would call my parents and ask them to pick me up immediately.

Then I walked back to my table and sat down with Ted, who was quite understandably, speechless. I had just made a relatively large scene in a very small space, so EVERYBODY there was aware of my zany shenanigans. You could hear the proverbial pin hitting the ground it was so quiet. I wasn't embarrassed at all though. I was actually quite pleased with myself in a deeply perverse and semi-disturbing way. Right around that point was when the defecation hit the oscillation. A lot of things happened all at once. A few of the kids actually pulled out their cell phones to call their parents because of what I said. Some of them were looking to the asshole to give him a chance to explain himself. And then there were the other youth leaders that were there. They walked over to me and started harassing me because they felt what I did was highly inappropriate and uncalled for. I knew what I'd done wasn't exactly appropriate, but I felt like under the circumstances I'd actually shown a whole lot of restraint. So when they accused me of being innapropriate, I just countered with, "so is beating a pregnant woman and having an addiction to methamphetamines. But that didn't seem to stop him.". Saying things like that really throws pious douche bags off balance, so I took their silence as my cue to leave.

I was riding a wave of euphoria all the way to the parking lot. That's when I realized that Ted was my ride! When we got in the car I tried pretending that what had just happened hadn't actually happened. It didn't work. So I changed tactics and tried to brush it off with a couple of jokes that were in extremely bad taste. Also didn't work. So I then tried to play it off like it wasn't really that big of a deal. FAIL! So I did what I do, and I got angry. I told him to fuck off, and when we got to a red light I got out of the car and just ran off in the other direction. And that was the end of that. Because I totally know how to be mature and handle my business like a grown up.

I don't really know what to do next. Obviously I am embarrassed over the way I acted, but only because it was in front of a friend not because what I did was douchey and wrong. I am not really sure what the protocol is here for this kind of situation, if only I had remembered to ask Ted to put his ear muffs on before I began my tirade then all of this comfortableness could have been avoided. You know what they say about hindsight...

Friday, March 12, 2010

Don't make this a big deal!


I was going for ironically terrible (to the point where it was actually cool), but something went awry and it ended up just being terrible. Which in a way is kind of ironic... or maybe just really fucking unfortunate! God dammit Alanis Morissette has ruined the definition of irony for an entire generation!

Monday, March 08, 2010

B-day Partying!

I just had a really crazy weekend that ended Sunday afternoon, but for some reason I am still recovering from it even though it is now Monday night! Jane flew in Wednesday night from D.C. to surprise Tyler, who was flying in the next day for his birthday extravaganza! 6 months ago Jane sold her soul to the devil and joined a lobbying firm. Basically she's the really hot chick that corporate fat cats use to entice the politicians to take their meetings. It's all quite crude and slimy yet lascivious as the same time. But that's also probably why she makes more in a month than I do in a year; well that and her Oxford undergrad/ Cornell grad degrees (overachievers like her totally make me sick!)!

Anywho, Tyler turned 28 a little over a week ago, and the dude really needed to let loose because his advancing geriatric years are really coming up fast! The villa was rented, the bar was stocked, and the clubs had velvet ropes placed around our VIP tables all over the strip. None of us are very big gamblers, but that's never stopped us from having fun in Vegas. We danced, we drank, we went into the champagne room for "private shows", we smoked some J, we took naps, and then we did it all again, and again, and again. In between all that Tyler got laid, a lot, and then a few more times. Jane and I flirted with hot guys all weekend, but there's only one slut between the 3 of us and we both called, "not it", way back in high school, so Tyler had to carry that burden all on his own.

By Saturday night we were DONE! We are just getting too old to go 72 hours without sleep anymore. We checked out of the hotel and decided to head over to Johnny's house where I had a cake waiting for Tyler, which I had made myself! (Yeah... I'm conflicted... I am both ashamed and proud of my cake... Too much "Ace of Cakes" does things to your head... Starts to make you think fondant cakes really aren't all that difficult... Then all of a sudden it's midnight, you're feeling extremely tired and a little defeated and BAM! You have a cake that looks like it was made by a 9 yr old using paper mache and lumpy paste... Originally I was going to post a pic of the cake for everybody to see, then I sent the pic to a few friends including Matt @ DTB to see what they thought and Matt in particular was so patronizingly sweet about it that I knew it was even worse looking than I originally thought! So nobody else gets to see the monstrosity!) Johnny was really good at pretending to be impressed with my unfortunate baking debacle, but in the end it was alright because it tasted way better than it looked and we devoured the evidence quickly!

The next 24 hours were spent lounging around the house catching up with each other and our crazy lives. With all of us being in different time zones, it's been hard to set some time aside and just talk about nothing. This really allowed us to reconnect and just be our stupid selves without worrying about wasting time or any of the other normal nonsense life always seems to throw into the mix. It was definitely my favorite part of the weekend, and I wish there was a way we could manage to do this like once a month because it was seriously one of the best days I have had in months. I really fucking love my friends!

Friday, March 05, 2010

Me and Johnny

A couple months ago somebody wrote me an email and asked me a whole bunch of questions. One of those questions was about how Johnny and I had become friends because ever since my “ass kicking Johnny” post people have always been a little curious to learn how we became buds. Now that I am spending the next 3 weeks here in Las Vegas with him, and I can't seem to fall asleep, I think I can spare the time to tell that story.

Johnny and I have known each other since we were 7, but we didn't become friends until well after I turned 13. Johnny is actually one of the very few friends that I have that is my age. We never really had much interaction with each other in school because we were in separate grades, but we did see a lot of each other in martial arts classes. So beside his name, and the fact that he was a very good fighter, I never really took the time to learn anything else about him. That all changed the summer of 1998.

The year preceding 98 I was getting into a lot of trouble. I was a very angry kid acting out against my parents by staying out all night, defacing public property, and drinking on a regular basis. By the time that summer came along I had been arrested 6 times for a plethora of reasons all of which I was extremely guilty of, but due to my stellar scholastic achievements as well as my Varsity extracurriculars, not to mention my very rich dad, I kept getting passes.

Finally all parties involved had had enough and they decided that I needed a reality check. So the juvenile court judge sentenced me to 6 months of incarceration at a juvenile detention facility that was to be reduced to 2 months with one year of probation so I could conveniently be incarcerated in the summer months where it wouldn't effect my schooling or my sports schedule. Looking back it's almost comical the way they basically bent backwards to accommodate me and make sure there were no real inconveniences to me or my life. From sealing my records so it wouldn't effect my varsity status, to letting me out in time for my academic decathlon summer training session the week before school started.

I noticed Johnny the very first day in “juvenile detention”. I walked right up to him and started a conversation, I don't even remember what it was about, but from that moment on we were best friends. That summer bonded us in such a deep and uniquely personal way that I will never be able to fully express with words of how grateful I am for the experience. In general, I look back at juvenile detention with fondness and view it as a very positive time. We went to group therapy sessions together where we learned each other's life stories and we discovered that we both came from a very similar fucked up family life. We cried, grew, and learned together, and by the end we weren't even close to the people we came into this situation being.

The one thing about my summer incarceration that I remember even more than Johnny was how Tyler and Mrs. Tyler visited me more than my own parents. I remember before I left to serve my time, Tyler was practically in tears because he was so scared something bad was going to happen to me. My entire life he was the guy that had my back in any and every difficult or socially awkward situation I had ever been in, but now he couldn't help me. He swore to me he'd be there every visiting day no matter what, and he was. After he found out that I'd found somebody that I have known for years there with me and we were now good friends, our visits even took on a fun and lighthearted mood that had been lacking the first few weeks.

Johnny finished serving his time a week before I did, and that last week without him was the first time during my entire incarceration where I actually felt like I was being punished. To this day, that was probably one of the longest weeks in my life. After I got out, Johnny and I got together a few times and we had problems clicking like we had before. We were in different grades, at different schools, and we lived in different cities, so we really had to struggle at first to maintain our friendship.

I can't really remember the point where it stopped being awkward and everything just fell into place, but eventually it did happen. And I know that I am luckier than any other man on the planet because of our friendship. More than Tyler, or even Bradley, Johnny and I can relate to each other like nobody else can, and it has nothing to do with being incarcerated together. Johnny knows what it's like to come from a home with an abusive parent, he knows what it feels like to be the oldest sibling doing everything he could to protect the ones he loves. He knows what it feels like to break under all that pressure and just want to die for not being able to be strong enough. I love him as much as I love Tyler, and I love them both as much as I love my 2 blood related brothers.

Matt, I just had an epiphany that I am now sharing with you as well as all my readers. I am not going to lie, your last post made me really sad for more reasons than I really even understood after first reading it. Whether you are talking about friendships or relationships, you can't expect to ever be everything to any one single person. Like parfaits, onions, and ogres, we all have layers. The goal in life isn't to find a person that can't live without you, but to find people that YOU could never live without! If Brad, Tyler, or Johnny ever asked me to choose just one of them over the rest, I'd probably die because I can't imagine my life without all of them in it. I have never been jealous or worried about them replacing me with somebody else because at the end of the day just knowing that I would be there for them when they needed me has always been enough. When I was in jail Tyler wasn't jealous for a second that I had made a friend that in essence had replaced him, he was happy I wasn't alone, and to me that's what friendship is. That's why your opening statement really bothers me so much! Anybody who tries to marginalize you as a person isn't really your friend, but at the same time investing in a friendship only to see what you can get out of it isn't a real friendship either. I don't know if I am anybody's favorite person, and I don't know if I am the one guy any of my friends would choose if forced to make that decision (because these are not questions I have ever really asked myself); but what I do know is I need them, and that's enough for me.