Unemployed as the Employed Can Be

Well hello there again children of the Information Generation, and welcome back to the belated but fully deserved blogosphere, where I will once again blow your minds with my strong opinions, bold thoughts, and general use of the occasional profanity. Let me get started by first apologizing for not having posted in a little over two weeks, I have no excuse save for the fact that I was entirely unmotivated all last week to make up for the lost week due to shitty work schedule, you see I spent the last week on my couch mainly watching reruns of the MLB Network's The Rundown, and breezing through the entirety of News Radio on Netflix. Why, you ask? Because my job once again afforded me another week long vacation that I didn't ask for nor did I want, simply, sorry Brian there is no work for you this week and therefore no paycheck, please try again next week hopefully something will come around by then. Now, normally I wouldn't complain about being asked to take a few days off here and there, and maybe the occasional week, as was the case when I requested Thursday and Friday off immediately following the Monday of July 4th, but seriously this is at least the fourth week this year I have been asked to take off and adding up the other random days I have been asked to take off I would guess that I have spent a grand total of five weeks not working when I could have and should have been. That's five weeks sans paycheck in a year when I am hopefully saving some money for my triumphant return to the world of academia, my books for trade school are totaling upwards of six hundred dollars, and am currently in the process of moving out of my house for September first. Are you starting to understand where my stress is coming from? So last week I decided against doing anything productive really and spent at least ten hours sleeping and the rest of the day either surfing the web and blasting one off or watching various television without my pants on, in fact I bet it would be safe to say that of the seven days last week I bothered putting on pants in three of them and those were the weekend, although I may have made one more trip Thursday that involved putting pants on as well I was just in too much of a complete disaster zone that I really can't remember.

Now today I once again returned to work, only to learn that a.) there is nothing for me to do on my current job site save for gas up the truck and hand people tools every now and again and b.) nobody knows if I am going to even work till Wednesday let alone Friday. Now you might ask why not ask for a layoff, seems to me that I could save myself the aggravation and annoyances of the current situation and hopefully find myself in a better position where I will get forty hours a week, and at least if I am not I can collect unemployment and that is at least a steady once a week paycheck as opposed to getting one every four out of five weeks or so. My answer is simple. Hours. I need to work enough hours to take the test for my electrical license so that I can possibly provide myself with enough side work to actually enjoy myself once in a while whilst I entertain the possibility of not having a real job for multiple years, and my license would allow me to take a shortened version of the New York Electrical licensing test if they don't allow me to work with the Massachusetts license alone. I am currently just under six months from accumulating enough work hours for this test, and I have a little less than one year to get them, so a six to eight month layoff is the last thing I need right now.

Now more than likely I will work most of the rest of the year and I will easily get my license in time to start saving some real money and make some big boy paychecks as my co-workers call them, but for now I am worried, and I feel I have every right to be as I watch more and more about how our economy is in the proverbial shitter and is showing no signs of recovering. Already my work schedule is light and it isn't out of the realm of possibility that I receive an unwanted layoff for an extended length of time.

So once again I am sorry for the delay in blog posts but I promise to get one more up this week and will be returning to my twice weekly schedule from here on out.

Steve Carell is Not Funny

Back into the swing of this thing, not sure of the actual goodness of the last entry so let's see how well this one goes.

I have recently been switched to night work at my job and though it really cuts into my hanging out and availability to do anything, I have recently found myself hours upon hours of daytime television watching time, and all of the repeats and old people shows that come with it. Now one of the things I do love about my free time is the ability to finally watch some movies that I had meant to see but never got around to or had the time for, one of such being Dinner For Schmucks, a farcical buddy comedy starring two well known and credited as funny actors, Paul Rudd and Steve Carell, and while I have fully accepted Paul Rudd as more of a Luke Wilson type of funny, funny in situations where he is surrounded by genuinely funny people ie I Love You Man (Jason Segel) and Anchorman (Will Ferrell) and not so much in films where he is expected to carry the comedy torch like such films as The Chateau. Steve Carell on the other-hand is supposed to be funny all the time, he has been in numerous funny films, some I have seen and some I haven't but heard were very funny or critics loved, and has been the biggest star of arguably the biggest comedy television show since Friends. Now I don't watch The Office much since I really don't like his character along with a few others on the show but I have generally regarded it as more of my personal taste and not a knock on the show that millions of people love, so I started watching the film, and coasted through the first fifteen to twenty minutes, ignoring the fact that I wasn't laughing because it's a somewhat long film, being just six minutes shy of two full hours, and I figured that it was just setting up background for what would be hilarious uproar once we got to the dinner. Another twenty minutes roll by where I am introduced to Steve Carell playing an idiot IRS auditor with a penchant for taxidermy, now I know that sounds funny when written out but trust me it isn't, you find yourself wondering how a person of his low intelligence can find them self surviving to his advanced age, let alone actually holding a job and a relatively important one at that, now I know in my head I am already punching huge holes in the plot, but that dinner has to be coming up and I saw Zach Galifianakis in the preview, and I KNOW he's funny so I continue to sit.

Now I am going to come out and be honest at this point, I never finished the film and couldn't tell you if the rest of the movie got really funny, all I know is that around the one hour portion of the film it became unwatchable for me, which is a fairly difficult thing to do, after all I did sit through the entirety of Hot Tub Time Machine and Bangkok Dangerous both of which I continued to question why I was watching while I was watching them, but this film if you can really call it that was fucking terrible, it was so bad that I literally switched the TV to replays of the MLB action I watched last night when I got home, and no I am not saying I watched the games last night I mean the actual show that I watched last night was on again with the same information and the same cheesy sports jokes and I watched that. So for all I know after the first hour of horrible, the movie could have gotten really good and really funny after-all IMDB gave it six stars which is one better than mediocre I guess, but upon further review what do I see user ratings have all seemed to have given it one and two stars! Now I am not saying that this is the end all be all judgment for the movie I mean half of the user reviews are just one star and the comment something along the lines of "poop teehehehe" but some of them are actually useful and described exactly what they didn't like. Now I have read a lot of these since starting my research and I have come to one conclusion as to why this movie really wasn't funny and the common theme is, Steve Carell.

Now I know, you are just as shocked as I am that Steve Carell the title character of this blog isn't funny in this movie, you probably started reading this and thought that it was a simple typo and that I meant Steve Carell is Wicked Funny or something, but alas it is true Steve Carell is just not funny and simply gets credit for being funny for a character that played out well in count them, one film, that being The Forty Year Old Virgin and even then his character wasn't an outright idiot, he was just naive and off beat a little, now you don't have to take my word for it and can do the same research that I have, but ask yourself if you are one of the millions of poeple who watch The Office, do you watch it for Steve? Is he really that funny, or are you more watching it for the witty banter between Jim and Dwight or the love story between Jim and Pam or perhaps you just love the awkwardness of Stanley, almost no one watches the show and loves Michael Scott, find me someone who does and I will show you someone with an IQ under forty.

Now let's look at Steve's movies since The Forty Year Old Virgin

Little Miss Sunshine

Over the Hedge

Evan Almighty

Dan in Real Life

Horton Hears a Who

Get Smart

Date Night

Despicable Me

Dinner For Schmucks

Now pick me out one of these films that you thought Steve Carell was hilarious in.

Words and Nothing But

It is said that actions speak louder than words and that words are meaningless without some sort of showing that they are true, and while I do believe that sometimes we choose the wrong words or get caught up embellishing the truth, I find myself wondering why it is that no matter the actions a lack of words or the right ones can leave us feeling just as empty. Now I am not going to sit here and delve into my own personal issues, nor am I going to pour my heart out to you the reader, but lets just say that I have read into something a bit further than I should have and I am now unsure of how to deal with it. So today's topic will be about words, our choice of them, our use of them, and our fear of them, because lets face it, whether it is goodbye, I love you, I am sorry or even something as simple as no some words we choose to avoid because we either don't like them or we feel uncomfortable saying them aloud. When was the last time you walked out of a meeting with your prick of a boss thinking, "I am glad I really told him what I was thinking," or you received some bad news and later thought to yourself, "man, I really handled that well," can't think of many examples where you said the perfect thing at the right time, that's because it doesn't happen often, most of the time we react the way we know how to react and we say things or do things we don't really mean but it feels right at the time. Whether it is out of anger, sadness, or temporary happiness we say and do things that we don't really mean, but we don't realize it until we have been removed from the situation.

Where does that leave the other person? If it takes two to have a conversation, unless you are of course someone with multiple personality disorder, in which case I hope that someone else is reading this second paragraph, then when you falter with your words, what is the other person to think? Are they to just blindly accept the eventual apology from you if you had a fight, or perhaps just sit back and wait for you to find the courage to finally reveal to them and to yourself that you do in fact love them, or perhaps that you truly do need a break from each other even though neither one of you wanted it in the first place. When you really sit down and think about it, every day we leave someone hanging waiting for the words that aren't coming right now, and be it intentional or not, it is a selfish act one that is meant to benefit you, and next time I hope that you will think of the other person when you say you need to think about something, or you lose it and say something you know you will regret, because they have to deal with the hurt as soon as those words either leave your mouth or don't and it isn't fair to keep crawling back full of apology promising that the next time you will handle it better, you won't.

Now I am not sitting here saying that you only have one chance to say the right thing or do the right thing, because god knows how many second chances you have had, or how many times you have said how sorry you were and really meant it and they understood, but I am saying that we need to be more conscientious of our words, and how we choose them, because sometimes the right word at the wrong time, is just as hurtful as the wrong one, or even the lack of one.

Sex, Drugs, and Dubstep?

For those of you unfamiliar with electronic music and the whole techno scene this is dubstep, essentially it's a bass track with crazy sound effects scratched over it in order to make music, well I guess it's music but really it just sounds like a whole bunch of noises over a bass track to me. Apparently dubstep is a hugely popular form of techno music, and for most of my weekend at Camp Bisco I was subjected to listening to it live from such artists as Borgor, Bassnecter, and Skrillex, although these are highly regarded dubstep artists I don't get the appeal to noises and ridiculous amounts of bass pumping with not much else. Now going into the weekend both my friend Peter and I could both state that we could stand dubstep enough that we could simply ignore the artists sets and perhaps even find more of an appreciation for their craft and style, boy were we wrong, not only did we see the sets as they were played, but we were then forced to listen to the pounding bass coming from every tent all around us as the sound systems coming from people's tents were just as powerful and reverberating as the stage set up (or so it seemed, of course I know it isn't possible but when your portable sound system is shaking the jeep fifty feet away from it you might want to think about easing up on the bass a little bit). Now as I said seeing the artists was is totally different from just hearing the music and I did find a small bit of appreciation for the DJ's skills at his turn table, however that being said it was still just garbage and crap to my ears to hear it being blasted all night long, while watching some kid with glowsticks on his fingertips try to orb all night. At some point one would think that enough is enough and we need to change the tune, well that's just the problem, there really aren't any different dubstep tunes, there are only different samples from other more talented artists that are thrown into the same beat, so you are literally listening to a different intro before being blasted with the bass cannon once again. By the end of the weekend the dub had become so unbearable that it wasn't even funny to joke about it on the ride home, it literally made me sad inside just thinking about cracking a joke and I could tell Peter felt the same as we rode home three hours in radio silence.

Now I understand that there are those of you reading this who clicked the link and thought to yourself, "Hey this shit isn't half bad, I don't know what Brian is bitching about." and to you people I say, how in the fuck are you supposed to dance to that shit, techno music for me at least is about finding a beat everyone can dance to, isn't that the origin point of all the break, and krumping, and the robot dance,don't you want to actually dance? I watched dub fans trying to dance during Skrillex set, and you know how they did it, I am going to teach you dubstep dancing and trust me I am an expert as I watched a lot of it, put your feet shoulder width apart, play the track in the hyperlink, now violently rock forwards and backwards at the beat, congratulations you are dancing to dubstep feel retarded? Yeah I did too. Now I know not all dance styles require a techno beat but think of all the club music that is popular, think about Britney Spears or Wiz Khalifa, all there music really is, is a techno beat with lyrics over the bass track with a catchy break where the chorus fills in. Dubstep doesn't allow you to dance, trust me I have seen it, The beat is simply either too cluttered with other beats and effects or too fast to allow for any other real form of dancing, I tried for two hours as Skrillex played his set before finally giving up and doing the violent droning headbang with the rest of the crowd, and they ate that shit up screaming and cheering at points where I really couldn't hear any difference in what was going on. Walking away from the tent I caught bits and pieces of conversations talking about how amazing that was, and did you hear that beat, everyone was so pumped and energized for the next set while I merely walked away with a pounding headache and a genuine hatred for the music and everyone who listens to it.

When the Dream Becomes the Nightmare, Camp Bisco X

Well hello again all, I have returned from my trip to Camp Bisco X (ten) with a few fresh ideas so without further ado lets jump right into it.

The festival, ah yes three days of music, peace, and harmony, well at least that's what they officially say, in reality it's more like music, peace, and as many drugs as you can cram into one weekend. It was unbelievable the availability of every single drug under the sun, as soon as we had set up our tent and sat down the first kid we saw walked right up to us and asked if we needed any L (as in LSD), literally we had been there for maybe ten to fifteen minutes, and that was the setting for the rest of the weekend, people walking through the rows of tents offering up everything from headies (weed) to oxys to ecstasy to drugs I had never even heard of before (Moon Rocks sorry for the forum link but it was the best description I could find) literally anything you could smoke, snort, or ingest you could buy, we even had one kid offer up some PCP which I thought had been totally phased out of the drug world. Now most of the drugs sold were pretty commonplace for the festival atmosphere and were expected to be sold in mass quantities as everyone and I do mean everyone at the show was on drugs, well except for the Disco Buddhas, which was a small tent at the back of the main stage ground for "clean and sober fans of the Disco Biscuits" which had at most six people inside of it, six out of the roughly 30,000 people who showed up were clean and sober, walking by this tent prompted Peter to retort that they were probably on probation, which was probably true. Anyways I am getting lost much like the many people I saw late at night, some passed out in other people's tents, and some just harassing Peter and telling him that because he touched the glowing orange crystal, he was going to hell (we saw no such crystal). Regardless of the drugs the festival was a beautiful place with an atmosphere second to none, when I said that it was full of peace and harmony I seriously meant it, not a single fight happened where we could see, not even an argument or shouting match it was simply incredible and beautiful as I totally found the meaning and an understanding of the whole life. Sitting in the field on the second day Peter and I found ourselves surrounded by some unforgettable characters, there was the girl painted like a cat with her multicolored leggings, the small hippie girl with her transformation posse, who changed from hippies to nightlife fiery pink haired dancers right before our eyes, there was the dirty blond hula hoop dancer, who seemed to inch closer and closer to us with each passing band, and the merry group of dancers who had sacks filled with balls that they swung to the rhythmic beats of Shpongle Live. Each unforgettable in their own way and each beautiful in the spirit of the show, it was like watching my own personal Woodstock, and I totally understood the whole spirit of the thing, as everyone found their individual rhythm that somehow moved in unison with everyone else's. But along with the beauty of the dance there was the rain and with the rain came the crashing end to the dream, which then became the nightmare. As the "war paint" washed off of faces I started noticing the toll that the drugs and sun had taken on the people I had marveled at not an hour before, the girl with the cat paint dancing alone no longer danced in her own beautiful rhythm but instead in her drug induced stupor, and when she smiled I noticed she was missing a considerable amount of teeth and those she still had were brown or black seemingly rotting from her mouth. As the rain intensified and the lightning came over head people began racing back to their camp sites and the blue haired hippie dancer no longer looked like he was full of life and energy but instead was running on nothing short of meth as his face was blotchy and his hair dye ran down his neck. The mud ruined the solid footing and in the pitch darkness cast overhead the throngs of walkers looked more like a hoard of zombies in search of brains. The only constant things were the increasing flow of drugs and the music, as the bass beats continued to push a dance through the bodies of all and no matter how much I tried I couldn't stop bobbing my head and dancing as if pulled by some imaginary force. Amazingly, people continued to purchase more and more drugs piling this on top of that hoping to score some "good" drugs as everyone complained that the amount of bunk drugs had increased over last year, sad to see so many people so desperate to score something that it really didn't even matter what they were buying, or worse finding as when every band stopped and people returned either to their camp or to the next stage there was always a small wave of people searching the grounds for fallen bags or loose pills, anything to get them high. Even the campers directly next to us fell into the whole scene, as I watched one proclaim the first night that he only wanted to drink beers, smoke weed, and maybe find some mushrooms. By the end of that first night he was talking about how the next day he was going to try acid, and by nightfall I heard someone convince him to try some Special K, and as he asked about it his friends reassured him that it was nothing, just don't bump it like you would molly or blow, he was fully into the scene and I fear that for people like him once you are in there is no turning back.

With the morning came the sun again, and all was seemingly normal once again, back to the brilliant beautiful atmosphere, but I knew better. It was and is a beautiful scene to see that many people living in harmony and unison but the toll it takes on one's body to live in such a manner is unforgettable and will forever remain etched into my mind.

Holiday Hoopla and all that bullshit

Ok blog follower folks, today will be my one and only post for the week, if you haven't heard I will be in Upstate New York for the next few days attending the tenth anniversary of Camp Bisco, so hopefully today's post will be good enough to tie you over until I return on Monday.

Now as you all know yesterday was the day we celebrate the Independence of our great nation, well actually we celebrate the accepting of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress as the document wasn't actually signed until August 2nd. Historical footnote aside the official holiday is celebrated on July 4th, and that could only mean one thing, party time! Yes in every city all across this land barbecues were had, beers were drunk, and in many states illegal fireworks were set off in amazing five minute displays prompting the ignighter to comment on how next year he will spend five hundred dollars instead of just three. In towns all over parades were held, and people fought to be the first to line their lawn-chairs along the route all weekend, everywhere it was summer and everywhere a good time was held, but I need to ask what does it all mean? I added my historical footnote not to be a history snob and thumb my nose at the American populous, but rather because I think it is important that we actually remember what we are celebrating this holiday and every holiday for. Now July Fourth might not be the best example of people celebrating something they are clueless about, but it is the only one I have to work with right now as it just passed. All across the nation July Fourth, our nations Independence Day is celebrated, baseball games are played in throwback uniforms, and people watch fireworks commemorating our victory over England in the American Revolutionary war, but how many people celebrating can recite even the first few lines of the Declaration of Independence? Who can tell us where the Continental Congress was held, or who the first and last states to ratify it were? The funny thing to me is that these are questions that one would be expected to know if they were going for United States citizenship and yet many of our own born in the good ol' US of A couldn't even tell you that John Hancock was the first to sign or that Thomas Jefferson wrote it but did not appear at the Congress. Don't you find it a little fucked up, that people who aren't born here know more about our country's early history than most of us born here? To me it speaks volumes to our school systems, and no I am not criticizing our nation's teachers although I kind of am, we put money towards so many things as a nation yet we consistently cut or ignore the education systems of our country. Correct me if I am wrong but as a nation the USA prides itself on being number one, in every major world organization you will find the United States in the Security Committee, atop the Olympics medal count you will always find the United States in either the summer or winter games, the worlds leading military power, and spear head of the financial industry, and yet our school programs fall short. Instead of worrying about education we allot billions of dollars to fight wars many of us don't believe in, we have super bombs that can be flown via computer satellite hundreds of miles away and are accurate enough to fly right up your asshole in the time it takes for you to drop your pants and sit on the toilet seat, but our kids don't deserve to be the best and brightest? Call me old fashioned but I think it is about time we reassessed our priorities as a nation, and perhaps dealt with it in the simplest way possible, our US holidays are created for a reason, because they are memorable dates in United States history, let's make sure that we know just why we are celebrating them, for what they stand, and who made them come about. Then we can continue to enjoy the beer and festivities that I do love oh so much.

Enjoy your week ladies and gentlemen and remember I will be back on Monday to talk about something new and exciting.

My Town, My City

Headphones in, I sit on the N bound for Queens, nodding my head with the sounds of Danger Mouse, looking around noticing every last detail on each advertisement for the local news broadcast, trying not to make eye contact with anyone on the train but when I do I just continue to nod me head and smile. The train rumbles along first underground then high above stopping eleven times before I finally reach checkpoint number two along my trek; standing, I adjust the straps on my backpack and exit the almost empty car. As I stroll down Astoria Boulevard, the streets smell the distinct scent of wet trash mixed with urine on a hot summers night, every now and then the faintest scent of food finds its way into my nostrils, a familiar feeling strikes me, the same scent I would get walking late night down the streets back home, I smile at this simple but strange pleasure as I inch closer to my final destination on this long arduous night.

Once again I find myself becoming familiar with this city of New York, one vastly different but still very homelike for me. I walk with a certainty to my step, moving quickly, owning the sidewalk. As the music changes so do my steps, a hop here a little bounce there, little hand motions (not enough that people really notice). I have been here only a handful of times in my life and I am all ready to claim it as my city. Years before I had laid claim to Boston as my city, but now before this vastness before me, these miles of untraversed sidewalk, it seems merely like my town, sure it's great and I am and will always be proud to call myself a Bostonian, but it is time to turn the page on the book known as Brian and New York seems to be the favorite for the next big adventure. Sure it helps to have a beautiful girl there already to nudge me in that direction, but I like to think that this decision was my own. It is a city that offers everything, most of all a chance to find out if I truly have what it takes to make it as a writer in this world, and no matter where I go, I am never seeing the same thing twice, everyone different, every shop even more extravagant than the last, a street block dedicated solely to four consecutive shops all selling beads. The city has something for everyone, and to a city person like me the grid system is a welcome sight compared to the street memorization of Boston.

I cross my third block and begin the silent countdown in my head of street numbers until I can finally lie down. On my right I pass a secondhand shop selling among other things, a book case collection of used VHS tapes, a leather restaurant booth, couches, chairs, and tables stacked upon each other in front of the store. After that a trailer which has taken up permanent residence selling falafel, sits with its lights on indicating to all that yes they are open for business, which is apparently what the boy inside was doing to the server girl, as he seemed determined to suck her brains through her mouth, and she was loving every minute of it. Ah yes the little things one notices make the world go round, in an age where everyone is in a rush to get somewhere it is nice to slow things down and notice the little things around you, life moves fast best to slow it down enough to enjoy it once in a while. Finally seeing a shop that accepts credit or debit cards I hop inside and order a pack of smokes, for thirteen bucks I could have gotten myself a halfway decent dinner, but instead I chose to shorten my life five minutes at a time with my box of me time. Lighting one up and taking a puff, I am careful not to blow the smoke at passersby instead opting for the nasal release, all the while imaging myself as a mighty dragon exhaling the fumes from the fire burning inside of me. I smile to myself and continue on my merry way, only five more streets to go, I can already feel her arms around me as she wraps her legs around my knees and plays koala. Finally crossing my last street before entering her building, I flick my cigarette to the ground and watch as it lays burning, until I step on it making sure to drag my foot backwards, stamping out all of its remaining life. Stepping onto the elevator I push the seventh floor, hook my thumbs in my arm straps and arrive at my destination.