This Week’s Sign of the Apocalypse, and Other Useless Ramblings, Again

I guess I’ll open with the standard blogger bit, “sorry I haven’t been posting as much lately, I’ve been busy, I’m tired, I’m sick, I’m sick and tired, I’ve been traveling, a ferret broke my computer, zombies came from Montana to Virginia and ate my brains, etc.” The truth of the matter is twofold, regarding my lack of posting. First, I admit, I do a lot of my post-writing, or at least rough drafts of posts, at work. Shhhhhh. No really, I take breaks occasionally and spew thoughts down onto (virtual) paper when I can. Well, heaven forbid, a little secret, I’ve been busy at work lately. And it’s been hectic here at work recently on a few other levels – more on that in a near future post. Needless to say, my normal creative time has been spurned by actually having to work, at work. Jeez.

Secondary to that, with creative time limited to where I can’t even work out outlines and drafts, let alone full posts when they come to me, is that I’m my own biggest critic. I’ve tossed away about 50 rough drafts lately of stuff I deemed unworthy of posting. You know, since so many literature critics and publisher editors read my blog…… But what I mean is that, not only has my time available for the verbal diarrhea that I call BorderlineTMI been limited, I’ve been harsh on the work and scrapping it before posting. I don’t know which is the chicken or the egg here.

Low time to post = work I’m not satisfied with so I don’t post it?

I’m overly critical of my own work = so I don’t *really* get into the writing unless I’m pretty sure it’s going to be bombtastic = so I don’t finish it properly, or I just slough off a writing opportunity because I’m worried that the low time to post will result in a work I’m not satisfied with so it won’t be posted?

All of which defeats the purpose of a blog that is admittedly about nothing, other than clearing my head of the demons disguised as useless ramblings of thoughts. Or simply mental weight loss. The more I write this stuff out to you (all), the lighter my head is because I don’t have to think about it anymore. And I can spend more time thinking about important things like bacon, bacon on sandwiches, and why can’t I remember Ben Affleck’s character’s name in Dazed and Confused. Man he was a dick. Wait, he played a dick character in Mall Rats too. Mr. Jennifer Garner totally got his start in movies playing assholes!

/channeling my inner-Asian-drive-thru-worker-from-Dude-Where’s-My-Car/

And then…..

And then….. I totally also remembered it’s been approved by blog admin for me to do cornucopia smorgasbord posts. Instead of writing at length on one useless subject in my own twisted ways, I can write on a British metric shit ton of subjects in my own twisted ways. Or like 10 things. British metric shit tons are a lot. 10 is probably more like it. Maybe I’ll do like 5 things, in shorter bursts, once or twice a week, and try and be better about larger topic posts. Yeah, we’ll try that.

Without further ado……another smorgasbord post. (Look I used that properly! Without further adieu. Without further, a doo. Temerity Jane would be proud.)

Ok, I don’t know if you could tell, but there was like a 5 minute pause between when I typed the last sentence to when I’m typing this now. I had to go for a walk. I totally had one of those OMGWTFBBQ moments and just needed to let my brain take it all in and not freak out. Weird shit happens sometimes, and it frankly weirds me out. And now I’m pissed for today that I didn’t use up my weird cosmic psychic points on a lottery ticket – but rather on this post. See, in the previous line, I linked to a Temerity Jane post where she basically lists all her language and verbiage pet peeves – one of which I remembered as “without further ado”. (if you’re not reading her blog, you should be, at least for her monthly cliff-notes version of Cosmo.) (I just lost man-points didn’t I?)

So I went to her blog to search for the subject post, so I could link to it here. And she’s got some ads on her site. No biggie. And freak-out time….one of today’s ads features one Mrs. Ben Affleck. Yeah, Jennifer Garner. Yeah. So earlier I blabber about bacon and Ben Affleck above? I mean, like why did my brain choose him today as my outlet for randomness? Then I try and be funny and call him “Mr. Jennifer Garner”. Then seconds later I link to Temerity Jane’s page to find Jennifer staring at me? This was all just too much to handle. So I took a walk.
And now I’m back. So really, without further ado.

*This Week’s Sign of the Apocalypse*
I’m sure most of you know, from real life or just reading on here, that recently Mrs. HokieJayBee and I got a brand new 50” plasma. It’s nice. Real nice. And we totally shouldn’t have purchased it. Because less than 7 days after installing it. Our second zone AC/heat unit went out at the house. A new $4500 unit later, it’s less lunches out with the work crew to try and save some pennies. Which means more lunches brought from home. Which means more leftovers and more microwaveable crap. So I recently brought some Hot Pockets. Blech, I know. And I totally stole them from Mrs. HokieJayBee’s stash, so they were Lean Pockets. Double blech. And all I have to say about them, is, yeah, they were FRIGGIN AMAZING. They were Lean Pockets Garlic Chicken White Pizza. And they were two breaded lunch pockets of pure win. Yeah, I said it.

*Life’s Little Victories*
Same day last week when I brought the Lean Pockets of Euphoric Bliss, it was totally a double whammy good lunch. You know that feeling when you’re finishing a meal, and you’re like, “man, I wish I had one more little thing. Like, not another entire side dish. But, just one more little tasty morsel of something.” And you’ve eaten your double pack of Lean Pockets, and you’ve eaten your yogurt, and your granola bar? And you’re just craving one more bite of something to finish it all off? And you stand up to go to the vending machine to get one more little snack? And you’re cleaning off your desk from the lunch trash you just made? And you feel a lump of something solid still in your lunch bag when you go to move it? And you reach in and totally find a single brownie in a zip-loc bag? And you do the, man-I-thought-my-lunch-was-gone-and-I-was-going-to-get-a-snack-from-the-vending-machine-but-found-a-brownie-DANCE?

I just realized as I scan my sticky-notes-of-blog-ideas that I have a good amount of food/lunch based ones. Authorized title change: This Week’s Sign of the Apocalypse, and Other Useless Ramblings – The Work Lunch Edition

*When Did They Change Bananas?*
Yeah, I mean when did the fruit and vegetable scientists change bananas? I had a banana with my lunch the other day, and it tasted normal, it was a fine banana. But it was totally different. One reason I never really took to bananas growing up, was the fact that I’m a texture/consistency guy. And those godforsaken stringy lines that you have to peel off the banana, after already peeling the peel off the banana – just flat gross me out. So, I shied away from bananas for pretty much my whole life. The look and feel of those stringy things on bananas just makes me vomititious. And this lunch banana I had the other day, didn’t have ANY of the weirdo vein strings. NONE. When did they change bananas? And why wasn’t I notified so that I could start enjoying such a lovely fruit again, earlier in my life?

*Wait, They’re Called What?*
So the other day in my office’s kitchen, someone left out snack food on the sharing table. You know, the one table in your office that everyone leaves fair game food? Whether it be something they just brought too much of, or on purpose to put on the sharing table, like chips and salsa. Well, the other day, this free-for-all snack was a Brittish/Scottish cracker/cookie packet of “Digestives”. Yeah, digestives? I totally had to google it to find out they’re not some sort of old-people-fiber-Ensure-fake-dessert-keep-your-shit-firm-kind of thing. Apparently they’re just the British equivalent of a coffee/tea dunking cookie/cracker, or even a simple graham cracker to us hillbilly ‘mericans. I’m thinking someone lost a job over the naming of the cookies when they noticed horrible horrible horrible sales here in the states.

Boss: “Winston, ol’ chap, get in here.”
Winston: “Right O.”
Boss: “Why are our North American sales so bloody low this quarter?”
Winston: “I haven’t the foggiest. We can’t seem to sell our Stomach Assimilation Cookies or our Intestinal Track Swiffers.”

*I Hate the Pepsi Guy*
I guess we’ll stay with the work kitchen thing we’ve got going today. So, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, there’s vending machines in our work kitchen. One food, one drink. Our drink machine is a Pepsi product based machine. No biggie. I’m not some whacked out Coke head that I won’t drink Pepsi products. Actually, come to think of it, other than the main product Coke>Pepsi itself, I prefer Pepsi products over their Coke counterparts (Mt. Dew, Dr. Pepper, etc.). Anyways, the reason I’m talking about this here is because our Pepsi machine delivery guy is a total dickjob. You see, he doesn’t do inventory control by buying and stocking less of his lower sellers (i.e Diet Caffiene Free Pepsi), and subsequently buying and stocking more of his higher sellers (i.e. Mt. Dew or regular Pepsi). He does inventory control by putting the low sellers at the front of lines of the popular rows. Want a Mt. Dew? Have to wait for someone to buy that Diet Caffeine Free Strawberry Pepsi first, which has been strategically placed in front of the Mt. Dew rows. Or buy it yourself and pour it down the drain, and then buy your Mt. Dew.

This is level one dickheadedness. Total level two asshattery happened to me the other day. I head to the machine to grab a soda. “Hey! Nothing is blocking the Mt. Dew row! Sweet!” So I buy the soda. Get the bottle from the machine. Head back to my desk. Crack it for the first drink. Spit the goat urine out all over my office floor. Upon inspection, totally got had with a Diet Mt. Dew. Dammit! It should be noted that a diet Mt. Dew, in the same green bottle, turned around facing away from you in a vending machine, looks *exactly* like a real Mt. Dew. I didn’t realize vending machine-ism was such a maniacal malicious game. Does this mean I can pay him with slightly less valuable coinage that looks just like real money? Like Canadian quarters instead?