Posted by todd
Wed, 23 Jan 2008 08:04:00 GMT
No really.. I'm back! I'm single again, the girl moved out, and I've been traveling the world. We will catch up later but for now I want to share something I pretty much copied from the Internet. I'm not allowed to say the name of the site I got it from though so I can't give credit. I'm going to write some more later but this cracked me up for some reason.
Some guy's interpretation of every girl he's ever dated.
Oh hi, how's it going? It's me! Every girl ever. I'm really looking forward to this date. I'm not nearly as attractive as you remember me being because when we met the bar was dark and you were drunk. Come on in.
Let's start off with the unavoidable tour of my incredibly typical post-college-girl apartment.
You'll notice that I went ahead and purchased everything that Ikea and Pier 1 have ever produced. There's my decorative birdcage over there even though I don't have a bird, and there's my gay wicker basket with bamboo poles in it. I don't know what the hell that's thing's all about, but I bought it.
Hey check it out, I have more candles in here than a Roman Catholic Church. Doesn't it smell like Hazelnut!? If I were to light all of my candles at once you could see my apartment from space! I fucking love candles!
Come on into the living room.
Oh, I see you met my cat there. That's "Freddy Paws Jr." Why don't you pet him and act like you like cats even though you hate cats? There you go. Oh, he took a little swing at your eye there huh? Yeah, he'll do that. Hey, let's check out the kitchen.
Hey look at my refrigerator. There are pictures all over it! Look at all these pictures of me and my equally vacuous friends from college! We were so crazy! You can tell we're really good friends because our faces are all pressed up against each other like that.
And check it out, we're holding up alcoholic beverages to the camera in every single picture. That's to prove that we were partying. College was so fun! But of course I don't talk to any of these girls anymore because now they're all bitches.
Let's go back into the hallway!
Hey, before we leave I'm going to go in the bathroom for ten minutes for some mysterious reason. Why don't you sit awkwardly in my big, stupid, round papizan chair over there while you wait for me. It's like you're sitting in a hug! Be right back...
Tags breakups, travel | 2 comments
Posted by todd
Fri, 29 Dec 2006 07:41:00 GMT
AKA: Just because I'm smiling doesn't mean I understand you :)
Note: These stories were half written while I was in Japan & half not.. so I'm only pseudo-live :)
As the most active (and only)member of the Bachelors Guide to Travel (Which I really need to create), welcome to the Bachelors Guide to Japan, Part 1; What Not To Do.
Japan is an amazing country, and a great place to visit if you want to experience culture far outside of the American/European norm. That being said it's important to know how to behave yourself. These people have swords(in movies).
While In Japan DO NOT:
1. Buy the monkey.
Pet stores in Japan are similar to a pet store you'd be likely to see in a movie involving wizards. Sure, they have dogs and cats (Wizards like those too) but they also have animals I didn't know even existed. (You can also find these in the Japanese grocery store... in a different format.)
There was a very excitable spider monkey (I think) in the front window basically running up and down the cage.
He was cool but somehow it seemed better to leave him there in the store. I know, I know... a relatively large, geeky white guy wandering Japan with his pet spider monkey would be a chick magnet; however I'm taken.. and he looked like the poop flinging type. Also, do not try to take a picture of these monkeys or the owner will get upset, and the monkey will get screechy. (remember... swords)
Continuing through the pet store.....do not....
2. Buy the tiny monkey instead, his head is small but his teeth are not.
Honestly I'm not even 100% sure this was a monkey, but he was way calmer than monkey #1. This one would have fit in my backpack.... a "Traveling Monkey" if you will. As I walked up he yawned though and his teeth seemed roughly as big as his head (reminds me of a girl from highschool), making this type of monkey no damn good... and plus he wouldn't look at me. Every time you try to get this little bastards attention they turn their backs to you. The bitch of monkeys.
3. Buy THIS THING:
'Nuff Said.
4. Think that you will eat anything remotely normal to you.
I'll go into this feature of Japan in greater detail in a later chapter, but it can even trick seasoned bachelors on vacation... so it's worth mentioning.
Several days into your Japan experience, you will likely begin to miss the food you are used to eating. Do not be fooled by locals offering to point you to resteraunts serving "hamburgers", or "chicken". Like many things, important things are lost in translation.
At some point an agreement was reached, presumably at the UN, to ensure the highly volatile chicken market didn't spin out of control. Think of the effects on the United States economy if a chicken wing shortage were to break out during football season! Completely unacceptable.
Anyway.... to keep George Bush from accidently invading Texas... WAITAMINUTE!!! It all makes sense now. Oil and chicken farms!
I'm getting offtopic. Back to the matter at hand.
At the end of the day, all the "good" parts of a chicken seem to be consumed in the United States, leaving Japan with the rest. Do not be fooled into thinking that you can order a random chicken dish without understanding Japanese!!! During my stay I was delivered:
a) A kabob type dish(Yakitori) consisting of some sort of root, chicken liver (I think), and.... wait for it.... not kidding..... CHICKEN BONE. CHICKEN BONE WHICH WAS EATEN(although not by me).
b) A "hamburger" made out of pork. (Ok fine, they have us on that one).
c) Raw horse meat served sashimi style (to be discussed later, so stay tuned).
5. Believe that you will be able to use an ATM 24 hours/day.
In a country known for it's extensive use of robots, mobile phones, and animated pornography you might think that an ATM machine wouldn't be difficult to find. You (and I) would be wrong.
Now don't get me wrong.... there ARE ATM machines you can use with a US card. You simply can't use them after 5PM or on a holiday.
It's my personal belief that the Samauri were not truly defeated by the advent of guns as you might think from American films. They simply were too slow and jingly by being weighed down by the pounds of Yen required to survive in Japan. You can't compete against a ninja like that... cmon!
You can buy cigarettes, beer, HOT coffee in a can, and rumor has it ladies UNDERWEAR in vending machines all over the country.
Just keep in mind that those aren't homeless people you see begging on the streets...
They are simply waiting for the banks to open after the 4 day New Years holiday.
Stay tuned for more...
-Todd
Posted in Travel, Bachelor Guides | Tags bachelor, japan, monkeys, travel | 23 comments
Posted by todd
Wed, 09 Aug 2006 20:20:00 GMT
(I wrote most of this a few months ago but never posted it)
A few months back I flew through my old stomping grounds of Raleigh, North Carolina and visited for a day. It wasn’t very well planned as the real reason for being on the East coast was for business in Atlanta the following day. In fact, it was so last minute that instead of staying with friends, I wound up staying in some random hotel in an area I knew was safe.
Safe for me that is. Apparently not safe for April, the alleged day spa owner who came running up to me as I was unsuccessfully trying to get into my room using the ghetto magnetic key card reader.
“Someone is following me. They followed me around the deck twice now.. I don’t know who they are.”
Now, there wasn’t anyone in sight, you can’t exactly tell terrified women that they are nuts. I mean, she probably WAS, but wouldn’t you feel silly if she wound up in a ditch afterwards?
She wanted to come into my room, but since it was a 50/50 shot between setting me up to be robbed or her being a total nut job, I told her I’d wait with her down in the parking lot until her friend came and got her.
She was very clearly on a lot of drugs and was talking incessantly, but pretty much unintelligibly.
Ladies, if you are ever trying to get a guy to save you and gain his trust, do not under any circumstances make the following statement:
“God everyone in this town is on drugs, all these strippers… coke… heroin. You think I’m crazy don’t you… You don’t believe me do you?!”
Well, when you put it THAT way.
I’m a pretty nice guy, but.... work with me here. The best response I could muster was “Well April, I don’t know you… so I don’t know if you are crazy or not. I’ll wait with you here if you want.”. I was still a little bit worried that the heroin van was going to roll up and roll me, but this girl seemed too dumb to set me up that well.
That’s all she needed to become my
insta-bestest-friend-in-the-world ™. “You really aren’t leaving me…are you??” (not so much a question as it was shock) “I’m TOTALLY going to pay you back for this… I want you to come down to the spa and I’ll give you a free massage… your girlfriend too! Do you have a girlfriend?” She rifled through her bags for about 5 minutes looking for her card before I convinced her to forget it.
“Do you party?”
...
...
I was pretty confident she didn’t mean chocolate cake and party hats.
Beyond that I had NO idea what type of “partying” she meant. It seemed pretty much a toss up between coke, heroin, and prostitution at this point.
Me: “Well, what kind of partying do you mean?”.
Her: ”Well, what kind of partying do you do? I’ve got a TON of coke in my purse. Want some?”
Me: “Ummm.. I’ve got a meeting tomorrow, and that might cause some sleep issues. Thanks though!”
It’s hard to imagine why this girl would be paranoid.
This got me thinking. Why was this girl AT this motel, and if she was so scared, why didn’t she go to HER room? This wasn’t exactly the kind of place you hang out at… just a lousy motel.
“April, what are you doing at this motel?”
“A bunch of my stripper friends are having a party upstairs, but I wanted to leave. And this guy was following me, and I didn’t know what to do so I walked around the building and…..blah blah blah blah”
It had been almost 20 minutes at this point, and it seemed clear that Aprils friends weren’t coming to get her….if they existed at all. With her credibility reaching a peak, and my being late to meet my buddy at the bar next door, I did what any good buddy would do.
I told the coked out stripper that I had to go meet my friend next door, and invited her to come with me.
She was rambling on her mobile phone with some chick bur started to follow me, eventually falling way behind. Apparently cocaine makes it difficult to talk and walk at the same time. I waited a minute and she still wasn’t coming.. just standing in the parking lot now talking. So I waved and told her I’d be inside.
My buddy was disappointed that I left the crazy girl out there, but the bartender seemed rather terrified that I’d considered bringing her in and dispatched orders to the staff not to let her in the door. She never tried though… just disappeared.
So all you Raleigh people... if you find a dead stripper in a ditch... check her purse.
Posted in Travel | Tags alcohol, cocaine, drugs, prostitutes, travel | 6 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by todd
Mon, 24 Jul 2006 03:32:00 GMT
This is the first in an….. at least one part series about business travel. There may be more unless I: A) Start dating someone causing a funny story. B) Get off my ass and try to make a video blog (I have very fancy new video software)… or C) Do nothing, because I’m a slack bastard.
Jet-setting.Sitting here, stranded, on the airport runway in Seattle it’s hard to imagine a more extravagant lifestyle than that of a frequent business traveler… What, with the “sexy stews”, and the wild hotel parties, it’s truly a wonder any of you settle down. The entire world should be floating around having mile-high orgies!!!
Unfortunately, the only stew here is the fat gay guy who really thinks I’m going to turn off my laptop just in case we actually get the clearance to take off.
Fool me once, shame on you.. Fool me twice… fuck you fat guy I’m not listening.
I admit, there is a stewardess, but she looks like she has been hanging out in a dual-action tanning bed/dehydrator. Austin Powers is going to be really upset.
At least I’m in first class, so they are plying me with red wine. Had they chosen scotch, I’d probably be arrested by now, or screwing the human hacky sack woman in one of her wrinkles….. I just barfed a little bit.
Either way… extravagant… that’s just the kind of guy I am.
Traveling isn’t always that glorious though. This morning, or should I say last night, I woke up at 4AM to get to the San Diego airport. Nothing good happens at 4AM unless it involves tequila and twins…or one girl and extra tequila… same thing really. This time, I was zero for two.. Or four, or… you get the picture.
You can’t really blame the airlines; they have a lot of moving parts and there are bound to be hiccups. Sometimes forget little things like dotting their I’s, or crossing their T’s, or THE FUCKING AIRPLANE. This is why they always offer you a shot for a dollar more.
So there I was, awake before I often go to bed, when they announce that oops… in the confusion it must have gotten lost in the couch cushion or something because there WAS NO PLANE and cancelled the flight.
Several rebookings later, I made my meeting in Seattle and turned around to come home...or apparently to drink wine and eat airplane food.
The Fat Gay Steward just gave me a bowl of hot nuts. That's how I'm going to explain flying from now on.
Posted in Travel | Tags airlines, airports, hot, nuts, seattle, sexy, stews, travel | 5 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by todd
Mon, 13 Mar 2006 21:50:00 GMT
AKA: Sweet Jesus!
If you read my stories regularly, you probably know that I’m a mobile phone geek. I’m not a software engineer anymore, and most of my day involves either directing a group of engineers, or more often doing strategery (Thanks GW) to make you phone haters buy more stuff on your phone.
In short, my job is to turn you all mobile consumer whores. Don’t fight it.
The best part about a career in mobile is that your clients (the phone companies) are spread out over the whole world. That might seem scary if you only watch the US media, but as I’ve discovered, there are actually other countries in the world where people don’t live in mud huts or eat babies.
Those are pretty much the target market, so occasionally I get sent somewhere weird.
Barcelona was weird.
Barcelona is exactly two scotches and one sleeping pill away from San Diego. Actually that’s a lie. That got me to Belgium.
Tack on some Belgian beer and a terrible hot dog.. now you are in Barcelona Spain.
I know what you are thinking right now.
“Ooh. That would be soooo cool! Spain! The Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria!”…
This would be true, if Nina was a transvestite hooker with a cataract problem and a voice as deep as mine. Personally, I don’t find that very “cool”. No joke, I was followed by this “woman” who went so far as to grab me and try and convince me to come with her. Now, Barcelona is notorious for pick pockets, and this woman was getting on my nerves anyway, so I wound up giving her a nice hard shove and telling her to fuck off. That worked and stopped her. She (not joking) pouted at me and looked highly offended.
Who knew that tranny prostitutes were so sensitive?
First off, people in Spain don’t really speak English. (shocker eh?)… My Spanish is terrible, although I can understand the gist of a conversation.
Guess what! People in Barcelona don’t speak SPANISH EITHER. It’s apparently some dialect of Spanish and French, known as Catalan. I got nothing.
All those years I spent watching Sesame Street, for NOTHING.
When you don’t speak the language, it’s tough to make friends in a new city. For instance, there were two very nice guys who always hung out in the hallway outside the apartment I was staying in. Every night I’d come home and they would be sitting there.
Every morning I’d leave for the tradeshow….. and they would be sitting there. They were dedicated to whatever it was they were doing out there, but I missed out because I couldn’t introduce myself.
Then one morning I walked out and sure enough, they were there, along with about 2 dozen little scraps of newspaper folded up into square packets, and a funny looking smoking device made out of a soda bottle and some tin foil.
They were very dedicated to freebasing cocaine. They looked very worried that I had busted them.
Now, I’ve been around the block a few times, and really could care less what other people do with their time. Beyond that, I didn’t really want to worry about getting jumped by drug addicts every time I came home, so what could I do?
I made buddies with them.
“No worries man, none of my business.” I told them while raising my hands up in the international sign for “none of my business”. Then I started walking away.
“Mi Amigo, Mi Amigo, come back!” said the crack head.
So I go back. Still not quite sure what the hell they were smoking. Apparently their English was better than my Catalan, and they had understood my statement, thereby automatically making me their buddy.
Crack head #1 takes a puff off his bong and offers it to me.
“No thanks man, I have to go to work. What is it though?” It sort of smelled like pot, and I’d heard that Barcelona was full of hashish.. That would have been cool. Pot heads don’t rob people… eat all their chips, yes.. rob them…. Notsomuch.
“Es cocaine y hashish”. Fuck. These guys were smoking cocaine and mixing in hashish for flavor, apparently.
“Thanks, but I have to get going. Maybe later” I figured that as long as they didn’t think I was going to call the cops, they wouldn’t screw with me.. so after about 5 more “Mi Amigo’s” I got out of there.
The rest of my trip pretty much consisted of me turning down propositions from ugly prostitutes and hard drugs from 22 year olds. On the upside, one of mi amigos actually did give me directions to a decent club my last day in town. They were the friendliest addicts I’ve ever met.
Still.. if you ever get the chance to fly 18 hours to Barcelona.
Don’t.
Posted in Travel | Tags barcelona, cocaine, phones, prostitutes, travel | 4 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by todd
Mon, 30 Jan 2006 20:28:00 GMT
I'm sitting in a bar in the Phoenix airport right now. I'm in the "America West SUCKS" part of my flight, where they inevitably fuck up and strand you somewhere for no apparent reason. I'm flying to Minnesota, where I have every intention of hunting penguins, yet for some reason America West can't get an airplane into the DESERT.
God knows what they will do when they hear it snows up there.
So, first, let me do my best at putting America West (and United in general) out of business. Don't ever fly them if you, you know, want to actually get somewhere. They screw it up every time. I'm not even joking, the "on time %" on my flight schedule is 50-60%. 50% isn't a boarding time, it's an estimate.
Luckily my company pays for everything when I fly, which means I'm going to drink till somebody shows up with an airplane. Hell, I'm not driving (although with odds like 50%, I might as well).
The major downfall to where I'm at is that there seems to be some cigarette smoking race going on. I'm a bit worried that I'll be thrown out when they realize I'm not puffing. Now, I grew up in Erie Pennsylvania. Lung Cancer was our state animal. But once you live in California for a bit, these things strike you as odd. People just don't smoke in Cali. (Because it KILLS YOU)
Phoenix is apparently making up for us. I'm not even exaggerating, EVERYONE within my site is smoking right now. I'm sure that I reek.
Holy shit, I see my fellow passengers moving. Either they have given up and are leaving (distinctly possible), or they are changing gates.
Wish me luck, and send your extra breath mints to Arizona. They need them.
-T
Posted in Travel | Tags America, Erie, phoenix, smoking, Sucks, travel, West | 9 comments | no trackbacks
Posted by todd
Wed, 11 Jan 2006 13:43:00 GMT
Aaah Startup companies.... I'm back where I'm meant to be.
It's a pretty stressful place, we make no money (which you may not realize, IS important for companies to do). Basically my job to build something that we can sell to the mobile phone companies, before we run out of money...and do it while keeping up with a CEO who shows up asking for custom demo 1 hour before the client arrives (he didn't get it).
I wouldn't trade it for another "easy" job, unless I needed a nap, but there are some downsides.
Here they are:
1. I hate fat people on airplanes.
2. I hate kids on airplanes.
3. I *really* hate fat kids on airplanes.
I'd gladly pay an extra couple hundred bucks per trip if American would promise me that it would be only average sized people over age 15 aboard. Fifty bucks more if they capped it at 60 years old. There, I solved the airline bankruptcy problem.
So when Little Susie Sausage Legs sat behind me squealing like she had just caught the ho-ho truck, I was somewhat displeased. Her little brother was with her, and a mother, who was clearly just outnumbered. She actually told the stewardess "I'm glad we are back here, so they can be a bit more like kids". I think may have caught my thoughts on that plan when I looked at her.
But! Susie Sausage Legs was not one to be hushed. My trusty iPod saved the day though.
Jay-Z beats Susie any day.
Then, she started kicking the seat.
Then she started kicking my foot bar. AHA! Something I can react to. Wait for it... waaaait for it.... KICK! That little girl probably burned 75 calories she jumped so damn high. Nobody kicked my seat again after that.
After landing in Baltimore, I spent the rest of the night investigating male birth control. That trip preeeetty much closed the door on my wanting kids. I never wanted them, but people keep saying I will. Those people are wrong. Unfortunately, the only way for a guy to have more birth control than a rubber, is to get himself CUT! As they say in Raleigh, that dog won't hunt.
The internet swears that a male birth control pill is in final testing and should be around in a few years. SIGN ME UP!
Now, don't get me wrong, I don't hate kids normally. In fact, I'm really good with kids. Other peoples kids. I'm not sure I'll ever have them myself. I'm sure it's beautiful, and changes your life in great ways, and blah blah blah...
I'll be in Barcelona for a week in February, I'll consider having kids when they make a 2 week diaper. Till then, it's strictly things that use litter boxes.
-T
Posted in Travel | Tags airlines, baltimore, birth control, fat kids, kansas, travel | 9 comments | no trackbacks
