I chose the city over the boy.

“This is what I love about her.. she TAGS!”

After nearly 5 years together, I think we’ve drifted apart. You used to make me feel special when we were out in public together, but I’m starting to realize that you’re also with every other boy and girl in the city. (You whore!) I’m sorry, but the magic is gone and I’ve found someone else that makes me feel special again.

I’m sure we will be very happy together, but thanks for memories…

Love, Me

“Hey Emily! How would you like your Aunt Jenny to beat your ass for the first time?”

I removed the camera from around my neck, put it on a shelf, and started to walk over to her. She put that shit away before I even had to touch her. *smirk*

Animal had this tradition of sitting in a corner at a party with a beer-filled metal bucket. He never seemed to leave his spot unless it was to go to another party and being the royalty that he was, people were always more than happy to get his bucket filled for him. Nobody seemed to know much about who he really was, but there were rumors about how he’d been in school for 10 years or someone had ordered a pizza and he was the one who delivered it.

I graduated from college over 10 years ago, but he’s the sort of person you don’t forget even though you hardly knew him. On the rare occasion that I still swap college drinking stories with friends, Animal always gets a mention. I don’t even know his real name, but he gets brought up in those conversations more often than even the people who I considered close friends at the time.

I know that I talked to him on a few occasions and while I remember that he was nice, I was too shit-faced to remember what we actually talked about. I also know that I made several beer-bucket runs for him, especially at places were I knew the people throwing the party and could cut in line. Usually all I had to do was hold the bucket up and they knew who it was for. Yes, I was a “bucket bitch.”

I recently created a new account on MySpace and unlike the old one, this time I listed what college I went to. Just today, I got a friend request from THE Animal himself and I felt like I’d been blessed by the Pope.

So I quit wearing a watch. Now when someone points to their wrist and mouths “What time is it?”, I just point to my blank wrist, shrug, and look at them like the dumbass they are… all without removing my headphones.

“If there’s a drinkable liquid in the world that doesn’t cause loss of motor function, impaired judgment, slurred speech, dehydration, and eventual unconsciousness, you don’t want to know about it.”

Yep, that about sums it up.

However, there is one duty that keeps coming up that doesn’t fit so neatly with the arty-farty stuff: Dating Consultant. Last week when I was taking staff photos of new employees, this woman walked out with me afterwards and asked where to go to meet single people since she had just moved here from San Francisco. I just told her to go out and do things that interested her and that she’d probably meet someone that way, but in all honesty I didn’t know what to tell her. I mean, I’m the person who is at my happiest when I’m single, so I’ve never looked for people to date despite the fact that I’ve done a fair amount of it.

This is not the first person at work to ask me for dating advice, either. A supervisor there is going through a divorce and she started to ask me dating questions when she found out I was divorced as well. Since her divorce isn’t even final yet, I told her to get a pool boy.

Family Friend: Wow, you look so much like your mother!
Me: She’s still got some catching up to do in the tattoo department, though.

However, I will share with you one of the most painless shopping experiences I’ve ever had in my life and it will probably come as no surprise that it happened at the Apple store. Since I’ll be staying at a hotel this weekend and won’t have my laptop, I finally decided to drop $29 for an A/C adapter to go with the video iPod that they practically gave me a couple of months ago to replace my 1st generation iPod. I went to the iPod accessories section, asked the guy where they were, and he handed it to me. Then he asked if I needed anything else and when I said “no,” he asked if I would be paying with a card. That’s exactly what I was going to do and he whips out this hand-held scanner, takes my e-mail address to send me a copy of my receipt, and gives me a bag from his back pocket. I was done before I even knew what hit me!

I really hate shopping, but if more stores start doing this then maybe I’ll hate it a little less.

“It could be worse,” I said. “He could’ve said you needed to rub one out.”

(Thank you… I’ll be here all night!)

While everyone who sees it agrees that it is fugly, I’m probably the only person who finds it offensive. Being a web/graphic designer myself and knowing a lot of arty-farty types, I think it sucks that someone was likely paid a few grand for this piece of shit while there are so many truly talented people who can barely scrape by because they aren’t kissing the right ass. However, I’d pretty much settled down about this after realizing that complaining wasn’t going to get me anywhere because I don’t know the right people yet. Also, my declarations about the painting created a hostile work environment probably did more to actually create one that the painting itself.

This brings me to today, when another piece was brought in to go down the hall a little. The new piece is actually pretty cool, but again the color scheme clashes really bad with the wall color, carpet, etc. While waiting for maintenance to hang it, the internal operations guy came over by our cubes since it was the closest available seating. He made a comment about how they were just here to splash a little color and I said “Can you spash it over here?” and pointed directly to the hideous painting closer to us. I’d been warned that I should probably watch who I complained to about the artwork, so if I’m jobless tomorrow then you know why.

Is nothing sacred anymore?!

I should make the disclaimer here that while I do a lot of creative things, none of what I do could really be considered “fine art.” That said, I’ve heard a lot of complaining by local artists, musicians, etc. who blame this city for their lack of success when the real issue is almost always their lack of talent, motivation, or ability to self-promote. While I’ll admit that there can be a fine line between promoting that annoys and that which genuinely reaches its intended audience, one would think that the chances of success would be a lot better in a city like this with less competition.

Besides, the only way this place is going to get a better local art scene is if people stay here and contribute to it, rather than running away.

The Ambiguously Gay Co-Worker (AGC) stopped in to shoot the shit yesterday and the subject came up again, so he tried to defend himself by saying that the Gay Co-Worker (GC) just wished he was gay. Since the GC is in a happily committed relationship, I called bullshit and asked him for proof. Apparently, a bunch of people went out drinking after work and on the way to the train station, the GC had to hurl. Since the AGC is a nice guy, he went in the alley with the GC just to make sure he was okay. The GC then grabbed him and told AGC to kiss him.

“So, did you kiss him?” I asked.

“NO!” replied the AGC.

“Well, he did just barf.”

“Right.” (He pauses.) “Heeeyyy!”

Sadly, I promissed the AGC that I wouldn’t tell the GC that I new about this story, so I can’t give GC shit about this too. Oh well, I’ll take what I can get.