Wasting my life one day at a time...

This is just a test to see if I can still post my useless words on here for all of maybe three people to read. 

I'm back, baby. Time to get freaky.

Unbuckle those seat belts. The ride is over. Because of several factors, most dealing with my beloved career, I will no longer be blogging with the regularity you're all used to. I know, it sucks, but try to dry those eyes and get on with your lives. Most of you know me well enough to keep up with my life anyway, so it's not a huge loss. To those who don't, I pity you.

I won't go into the details, because I really don't know who reads this anymore (my boss?!) and I'm afraid things I say might get into the wrong hands, so I'm embracing my paranoia and playing it safe. Let's just say I value my job more than this garbage. And since I have better ways to waste my time at home than typing this crap, I'm afraid this might be the end. Sorry. Try to live with the sense of loss you'll undoubtedly feel, always there, like the phantom tingling of an amputated limb.

In honor of the recently deceased Gerald Ford, I got a paid day off yesterday. What was already a four-day weekend for me was extended into an unprecedented five-day marathon of laziness. How did I waste my 120 hours of blissful solitude away from the pressure-cooker of work? Let me count the ways:

Thursday: I worked on Thursday, but I attended my company Christmas party Thursday night, a fitting kickoff for my eternal weekend. The party was held at The Timbermine, a pricey steak place in Ogden Canyon. I was supposed to bring a date but it's hard to find a free woman in close proximity on a weeknight, so I flew solo. Showing a rare lack of restraint, I ordered a fairly expensive entree (22-ounce bacon-wrapped tenderloin), followed by a fairly expensive dessert. Nothing says corporate solidarity like packing your colon with USDA Certified Grade A beef. I don't really even like steak, but I wasn't paying for it so my stomach and I decided to exact a little vengeance on my employer, thus proving the old axiom incorrect. Revenge is best served hot, or medium-well in this case. Not cold.

Friday: My disdain for red meat aside, it would have been hard to top Thursday's dinner, but I did it Friday night at my cousin Katie's wedding reception. The wedding was held at the Salt Lake Temple, with a dinner at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building immediately after. Katie's family is quite wealthy and prominent, so the dinner was lavish and the guest list included a number of local celebrities. There was an assigned seat waiting for me, complete with a little embossed name plate and a tiny gift box that I was sorely tempted to open. Katie is your typical former high school cheerleader/all-American princess so all her little princess friends were in attendance, making the eye candy much sweeter than anything else I ate that night. Mmm. Also in attendance were a few former college football stars whom I recognized, along with a very popular sportswriter from the Salt Lake Tribune, a man I could only stare at with drool oozing from my open mouth. This is a guy who's on a first name basis with every member of the Utah Jazz, along with half of the NBA superstars. I wanted to go introduce myself as some sort of colleague from a rival newspaper, but the dinner started before I could and my window of opportunity was slammed shut, probably saving me some humiliation.

*Note to all ignorant men: Never wear a short-sleeved dress shirt, especially is you have a suit coat on over the top of it. You'd be astounded at how many men at the dinner removed their suit coats to reveal short-sleeved dress shirts, in the middle of winter no less! Unless you're going for a distinct blue-collar look, keep the short-sleeved shirts where they belong; in the garage with the rest of your oily rags. Simply owning one proves at least one of two things: You're either a former Mormon missionary who served in a hot climate and had some leftover clothing, or you're the most stylishly inept human on the planet, possibly both. Also, learn to match your leathers. Brown shoes go with a brown belt. If you happen to be wearing purple shoes for some reason, you'd better have on a purple belt. Also, wear either suspenders or a belt, never both. Grrr...they should teach this stuff in school or at Boy Scout meetings. No wonder there are so many lesbians these days.

Saturday: I was dying to go skiing, but I didn't make it out of bed until two in the afternoon, so that pretty much sealed the deal there. A man has to have priorities, and paying 60 bucks for an hour of afternoon skiing isn't a great investment. The rest of my family took off for the family farm Saturday night and I was tempted to go, since I have a "girlfriend" who lives in Kamas whom I use for entertainment when I'm staying up there. But when I found out they were going snowshoeing I decided to stay home, since snowshoeing sucks and I had a better offer than my Kamas girlfriend waiting for me at home.

Sunday: Since my family was up rotting at the farm, I attended church only briefly, by myself. Then I went to the library, where all the homeless freaks and crazies end up on Sunday afternoons. Although it was the sabbath it was also New Year's Eve, so I had several options for recreation. My first choice was to spend time with a woman I recently met, the same woman I spurned the Kamas girl for. She invited me to escort her to a party at a local club but I said no, since paying a seven dollar cover charge (14 dollars if I went with her) to go deaf and inhale cigarette smoke isn't fun or healthy. Because I said no, I had to endure endless text messages the rest of the night, each detailing exactly what she was doing in an attempt to make me jealous. I ended up at a dorm party at Weber State where I was given an exclusive tour of the haunted 9th floor from a friend of mine who works in the building. Some years ago, a distraught college girl killed herself in one of the rooms up there and it's been rumored to be haunted since. My friend claims that when he works on that floor he can hear someone whispering to him. Although I do believe in ghosts, I also believe that my friend is a liar.

Monday: I broke Saturday's record by sleeping until three. That night, my friend and I went to see the new James Bond movie. The first rule of movie attendance is to check the entrance for ticket-takers before paying any money. If the coast is clear, you shouldn't bother buying a ticket. Since it was late on a holiday evening, the ticket-taker was probably sweeping up popcorn somewhere so we waltzed in without paying. Not exactly what Jesus would have done in the same situation, but if I ever become king of the Jews, I'll be happy to make a few lifestyle changes. The movie was decent, a nice improvement over all the recent Bond movies, especially since they finally got an ugly guy to play the title character. But he still got the ladies, proving the value of an expensive car, dry British wit, a tailored tuxedo, and a silenced weapon in your pants (sexual innuendo intended).

Tuesday: Since the rest of the world had to work while the federal employees got the day off, I thought it would be a good day to go skiing. I took my first trip to Snowbasin this year and when I got my picture taken for my ID card, the camera couldn't maneuver all the up to my lofty head so I had lean backward to get my photo taken. My head looks all scrunched and weird because of it, plus I was only half awake at the time, so now I get to spend the rest of the season trying to cover my picture when the cute girls working the lifts scan it. I guess there are negative consequences for being tall. What little snow there was really sucked, and there were rocks and other hazards exposed all over the mountain. I went home after I scraped a ski on a rock, tired of dealing with the unexpected crowd and hidden hazards. The day featured the usual collection of haggard ski chicks, along with one or two gorgeous ones, a fact which always makes me wonder if the women are thinking the same thing about the men. If so, I have little doubt which catergory I fit into.

I was at the gym the other day when I walked by a guy struggling at the bench press. Being the kind, compassionate soul I am, I stopped and gave him a spot, possibly saving him a few broken ribs or at least a bruised ego. After he'd recovered, the guy insisted he spot me with my lifting, and that's how I got sucked into a forty minute weightlifting session with someone who seemed to define white trash.

When you wear a baseball hat for no apparent reason other than fashion, you're probably white trash. And if you wear a hat to coordinate with grungy gym clothes and rotting shoes then there's no doubt about it. Baseball hats, originally designed to sheild a fielder's eyes from the sun, have little practical use indoors. Obviously not everyone realizes this. And if you're going to wear a hat, at least make sure it's the same color it was when you originally bought it. Besides the hat, he had a multicolored goatee infecting his chin, bushy sideburns, and used bad grammar when he attempted to speak. His stench, raspy voice, and hacking cough showcased his addiction to nicotine, and he was gnawing on a wad of gum the size of a billiard ball. Very classy.

The guy asked what I did for a living and I told him. Then I asked him what he did. Not surprisingly, he worked construction and seemed proud of it. And why not? There's glory in getting arthritis at the age of 35, and having a bad back is quite en vogue these days. Getting skin cancer from being out under the sun all day is pretty cool too, and having hands that are perpetually cut and bandaged is a big turn on for the ladies. Only those who have ever carried a cordless drill on their toolbelt can attest to the almost erotic pleasure derived from it, and it's been recently proven that wild African chimps, much like construction workers, are capable of wielding simple tools. Interesting.

Trying to make conversation, I asked if he went to school anywhere, since he seemed to be in his early 20's.

"Nope, some of us don't need college to be successful," he said.

There was a long moment of silence after this statement. I stood there, pondering what he'd just said, wondering how I was so lucky to hear what is perhaps the most ignorant thing ever uttered by anyone. I almost thanked him for giving me the honors. He might as well have said "Some of us don't need oxygen to stay alive." It was beautiful.

I got a great workout that day, since I could lift more weight with a spotter there to ensure my success, but my mind wasn't on it. I was busy thinking about what the guy had said. The fact that he was deadly serious when he said it was almost more amusing than what he'd actually said.

If success is swinging a hammer all day and then going home to a crappy rental house stuffed with six roommates and fighting over the remote control, then he's living the dream. To my little gym buddy, success obviously has nothing to do with financial independence, or mental enlightenment, or peace of mind. Success is having somewhere to go every day along with something to do, followed by a paycheck in an envelope every Friday night.

Maybe I put too much emphasis on money. I'm often told that I do. But besides the obvious cliches of love and health, what else is there? Sadly, my gym buddy probably won't ever know anything besides his day-to-day existence. When I'm rich and powerful, I might swing by that gym again, hoping to find my friend crippled from years of manual labor. Then I'll make him aware of a simple truth: College isn't always a prerequisite for success, but you do need money to be wealthy.

The country of Chile clings to the western shore of South America like a pair of wet swim trunks on a sallow old man. The nation is home to the world's driest desert (the Atacama), the world's second tallest mountain range (the Andes), and one of the most beautiful and intriguing women I've seen in the past year.

I met her at my brother and sister-in-law's Christmas party over the weekend, a Saturday night affair packed with dutiful Mormons spewing profanity-free conversation. When I arrived (late), I immediately began sizing up the women in attendance. Not bad. Married. Weird hair. Too churchy. Ugly sweater. Talks with her mouth full. And then...hmmm, what do we have here?

I have this weird fascination with what I call "the gray race," which is basically any person whose ethnicity isn't immediately apparent. We all know people like this, folks who could pass for Hispanic in bad light and Asian in good light. Black people who look a little too white, and whites who look a little too swarthy to check the caucasian box at the DMV. Picture Tiger Woods, who epitomizes the spirit of the gray race with his bronzed skin that's not quite black. He's a little bit of everything (even white!), a stewing mass of genetic material that somehow combined to form an incredibly toothy grin (white again!) along with world-class athleticism.

So I'm sitting there checking out this girl, trying to decide what her ancestral roots are. She was average height, average build (deliciously curvy, but not chubby), and had long dark hair just thick enough to be sexy but thin enough to be shiny and manageable. Mmm. I began to drool, and not from the cookies and Doritos on my plate. I finally decided that she was half white, half Native American. When I asked my brother yesterday, he said she was an import from Chile, which would be good for me under most circumstances since most women in Chile would love the attention of any white man, no matter how ugly, just because it would transcend the norm. I've been told that red hair is even a turn on for them, thus proving that entire races can suffer from mental disorders. Sadly, this girl had no trace of an accent, proving she's a long way from her Chilean home and has probably lost the white-man worship her entire continent usually displays.

After a really gay game where we had to guess Christmas songs based on clues, the party split up. Those brave enough to endure the frigid night chill convened to the garage for a ping-pong tournament, while the wimps stayed inside to play Scene-It. I was planning on staying as close as I could to my newfound love interest, since she'd already crashed the list of the top-10 most important people in my life and I barely knew her name. Lust does strange things to young men!
But my brother insisted that I come play ping-pong with the men, since after Forrest Gump and the guys in the olympics, I'm world-class. So I grudgingly made my way to the garage to freeze with the rest of the guys, while the chicks enjoyed a rousing board game. Imagine my shock when I entered the garage to find my Chilean beauty swinging a wooden paddle with a vengeance, destroying a guy twice her size. She eventually lost, but she put up an impressive fight and she was the only woman to play. I stood in the corner and watched, her hair swinging wildly with every lunge. I'm sure the copious amounts of drool that cascaded from my open mouth are now frozen on the garage floor.

I ended up winning the thing and left the party soon after, but not after a stimulating conversation with the woman in question in the kitchen. She knows both of my brothers from the singles' ward and asked how I fit in. She thought I was older than my older brother, a strange observation, since my brother's baldness tends to age him about fifty years. But I politely straightened her out and managed to hide any amorous feelings I covertly harbored. You gotta play the game.

I found out the girl's age (26 or 27), but couldn't get much else out of my younger brother. The only move I can possibly pull now, short of getting her number from my sister-in-law and placing an awkward phonecall, is to diligently attend the singles' ward, worm my way into this woman's social consciousness, and hopefully win her over with whatever charming qualities I might possess. The only problem with the whole thing is that after we get married, barring some unforeseen miracle, my own children will be members of the gray race. Red-headed Hispanics? May the world have mercy on my posterity.

Living at home at the age of twenty-five finally led to a violent outburst a few days ago. Believe it or not, the fury unleashed wasn't mine. A good friend of mine, who, unlike me, is stuck living at home instead of choosing to be there, finally released some of his festering rage.

One of my earliest memories is being stuck in the nursery at church while my parents performed their ecclesiastical duties, and that's where I first met this guy, when we were both three years old and still in diapers. We suffered through school together until we finally parted ways for a few years; with me at college and him on a mission in Connecticut. After we reunited, he headed off to St. George/Las Vegas to strike it rich, finally coming home a few months ago deeply in debt and weary from a few sun-baked years.

So now we're both twenty-five year old losers living at home, much to our parents' frustration and shame. The only difference between us is that he's been out there, tasted freedom, and yearns to suckle at its fattening teat again. For me, living at home is all I know, and my ignorance is blissful.

The other day, my friend got a voice message from his dad, asking him to get off his lazy butt and put the snow tires on the car before it snows again. Included was a reminder of how much money he still owes and the fact that he's basically unemployed and sleeps too much and needs to get married and...SMASH. Before the message ended, he threw his cell phone against a cement wall in the basement. It exploded into about fifty pieces, an embodiment of the collective anger our generation is entitled to. Then (from what he told me) he stomped on the pieces that remained, crushing the jagged shards into even more pathetic bits.

It obviously wasn't the smartest move for someone desperately in need of money, but he said he doesn't regret it. I heard the whole story while we were at Best Buy looking for new cell phones the other night.

He's thinking about writing a personal narration of the incident and gluing the remains of the phone together into some sort of sculpture and then selling it on Ebay, entitled "Nokia Rage." It's not a bad title, and weird stuff like that sells every day. At the very worst, he'll make a few bucks from some creepy person out there, some aging pervert excited to own a piece of someone's raw human emotion.

If my frustrations ever get to the phone-smashing point, I give anyone reading this permission to put me out of my misery, swiftly and painlessly. I'm sure my lifeless body would lure at least a few Ebay bidders.