Friday, May 30, 2008

Kissing Ronald



My first job (not counting a couple of paper routes I had) was as a cook at McDonalds. Nothing glamorous, but I earned some extra cash and got out of the house a bit more.

We used to get a meal break every shift we worked, and they were nice enough to give us a free meal. Of course I was never hungry by the time my break came. We made Big Macs six at a time, and if you “dropped’ one by accident, you would only put up five for the shift manager. Did you know you can eat a Big Mac in about three bites if you are in a hurry? And after 4 or 5 of them, you really don’t want a meal on your break.

There were other things we did for fun while working. After we closed at night there was usually a french fry fight. Those little onion rings really hurt after they have been under the heater for awhile. I later learned in chemistry class that this has to do with some property of oil and vegetables. Ouch!!!

Those ketchup and mustard bottles make good squeeze weapons as well. You can sneak up on someone and fill an ear with condiments in a split second.

One of my favorites was that every time we did something with food in the kitchen we would announce it to the shift manager. “Dropping fries!” “Six Quarter pounders on the turn!” We served fish sandwiches, as usual, so I would yell, “Shark Down!” This never failed to get a reaction out of the shift manager. We didn’t sell shark burgers after all. Some people have no sense of humor.

But the most fun was when we had a lunch break. Out back of the restaurant was a storage shed. This was used for various tools, bread storage and drink syrups. There was also a large helium tank out there. It was used to inflate balloons for birthday parties for the little kids. It had a big Ronald McDonald head on it so that it looked like Ronald was blowing up the balloons for the precious little crumb snatchers.

The other employees and I would sit in this storage shed and breath helium for our break. Kissing Ronald became the secret phrase for this activity so that the managers wouldn’t know what we were doing. That is also exactly what it looked like.

You would put your hand behind Ronald’s head to turn the valve, and you would put your lips to Ronald’s mouth, where the helium was released. We would catch a big lungful of H and lean back and say, “I love you Ronald”, in that high pitched voice.

Call it latent homosexuality if you will, but I will always remember the feeling I would get when someone would look at me at work and ask if I wanted to go kiss Ronald.

Those were the days.

-P

Monday, May 26, 2008

Tangents

Hey everyone,

At the urging of my other half (and I am not talking about the voice in my head), I have created another blog.


Please take a look.  It is probably not for everyone, but what is.  I will continue my hit and miss postings here.  Where else can I sound like a complete idiot and still have people leave me comments.

Thanks everyone.

-P

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Sing, sing a song...

My last few posts have been a little on the dark side, so I am going to try and write about something a little lighter in tone.


I have a terrible habit.  I almost hate to admit it here in public.  My wife is driven to distraction by what I do, but I can’t seem to help myself.


Grab your children and cover their eyes…er, ears…


I sing the wrong lyrics…on purpose…to songs on the radio.


And not just the wrong lyrics, but the wrong lyrics with a dirty undertone.  Kind of a perverted Weird Al channel if you will.


There have been a lot of misinterpretations of song lyrics over the years.  Louie Louie by The Kingsmen is probably the most famous example.  The Monkeys (Sweet Young Thing), CCR (Lookin Out My Back Door), and Pearl Jam (Glorified G), all come to mind.  If anyone wants to discuss what I am hearing when I listen to these song, feel free to ask.


But my problem is not one of misunderstanding.  I go out of my way to change the lyrics even if it is quite obvious what the actual words are.  Here, let me unlock this dark and cobwebby place in my head and show you.


Melissa Etheridge has a great song out called “It Only Hurts when I Breath”.  I love this song, I think it is one of her best.  But when I hear it I can’t help but sing:


It’s alright, it’s alright…it only hurts when I pee…


Seems kind of obvious to me.  But really pisses the wife off.  There are some songs that she can’t listen to anymore because she now hears my rewritten version instead of the original.  Here’s another example.


The Cranberries Song “Linger”.  While the skinny little Cranberry tart is singing “do you have to let it linger”, I am belting out, “do you have to pull my finger”.  It can change the entire mood of the song.


Every song is open to reinterpretation by me, I pull no punches and allow no one to slip under my musical sights.  Probably the only music that I can’t do anything with is country, it already makes fun of itself so I’ve got nothing.  We were watching a couple of minutes of the CMA’s the other night and Trace Atkins sang a song.  “You were looking out the window, of our SUV…”, how Americana can you get…(retch, gag, blow nose)


Sorry, I hate to get some of my lunch caught in a nostril.


Anyway, any song that tells you how many times to breath in a minute and when to swallow and blink your eyes is already to far gone to be messed with.

(Disclaimer – I love bands like Big & Rich, Lyle Lovette and Dwight Yoakam…go figure)


But anyway…even the Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Alice In Chains, rock Gods that they may be, are not beyond the scope of my dementia.  I ought to write all this stuff down someday.  I know Weird Al has already made a killing off of it, but I just can’t help myself.  I have even found myself changing the lyrics to his rewritten lyrics.  


I have been quite tame here.  I am sure that most of the stuff I blurt out in the car would never make it past the censers.  Of course there is satellite radio now.  They even let Howard Stern talk without a loop button.  Hmmmm….


-P




Saturday, May 17, 2008

Poetic License: Get to Know Me

Poetic License: Get to Know Me

I keep getting tagged with these things.  For someone who exists almost exclusively in a blog vacuum I sure am popular.


The idea behind this one is to tell six things about yourself that everyone else might not know.  I will try not to get to personal...lol


This one has some rules, so I will include them here.  I am also supposed to pick 6 people to have do this meme.  I don’t think I know 6 people in person, never mind online.  So, if you feel like doing this, please, be my guest.  Don’t forget to link to me if you do.


The Rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you (that's me!).

2. Post the rules on your blog.

3. Write six random things about you in your blog post.


4. Tag six people in your post.


5. Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.


6. Let the tagger know your entry is up. 


Ok, here goes…


1. I have a patent.  It is for an optical memory chip.  The number is 6,873,560.  I tried to get funding to develop my idea but I was told that the idea was to advanced.  My patent has actually been referenced by another patent.  I guess it can't be to ahead of the curve. If anyone wants to buy it, drop me a note.

2. When I was 14 years old there was a fire at the house next door to mine.  I was watching tv and noticed the kids huddled outside in their pajamas.  I ran out side and they told me there was a fire.  I ran into their house and their grandmother was trying to carry a pot of water up the stairs, I think she was in shock.  I got her out side and called the fire department.  I wasn't very popular at school so all the other kids said that I started the fire just so I could see the fire trucks.  The upstairs of their house had to be gutted.

3. My grandmother died when I was about 7.  We were very close and I was extremely upset at her passing.  I did not attend the viewings or the funeral.  I asked to go at one point thinking that my parents would have to buy me a suit.  I always thought that wearing a suit was a very grown up thing.  Everyone who was important and grown up wore suits, even the Beatles.  My mom asked if I really want to go, because I could if I wanted to.  I thought about it for a second and decided that wearing a suit was not a good enough reason to see my grandmother lying in a casket.  I still remember her as being alive to this day.

4. I had a girlfriend in the fourth grade named Beth Johnson.  We used to talk on the phone everyday after school.  When I moved from North Carolina to Minnesota we promised that we would meet in Florida when we were 18 and sail away on a sailboat.  I still want to live on a sailboat, but I doubt Beth would remember any of that.

5. I have a foot fetish.  Not just any feet mind you.  They have to be female feet (sorry guys).  The foot has to be well shaped with a nice arch.  The toes have to be the proper length, I hate when the second toe is longer then the rest.  The pinky toe has to be well formed, no stubby twisted little things.  And they must be clean. Sorry, everyone has a dark side.

6. I have always has a fascination with flying.  I used to take a bed sheet and use it as a parachute while jumping out of a tree in the back yard.  I came up with a design for the X-Prize that used a modified F-5B Tiger.  Burt Rutan has a way of spoiling everyones dreams.


There ya go.  I bet you're sorry you read this one...lol


-P



Friday, May 16, 2008

And You May Ask Yourself…Well, How Did I Get Here?

I never intended to do this. If I would have had a dart and a blindfold, I don’t think I would have hit this on a wall across the room.

I am referring to my profession. My daily grind. My 9 to 5. My job.

I am a network engineer by trade. I work with people who have degrees in computer science and electrical engineering. For the most part they seem happy with what they do, and look forward to the next challenge that might arise.

I on the other hand…hmmmm, let’s take a look at that hand. Shall we?

I watched the first men walk on the moon. I was 6 at the time, and fairly intelligent for my age. I pretty much taught myself to read using the news paper when I was 4. I used to take my writing and grammar school books and teach myself the lessons for the next grade up which were listed in the back as a preview.

I missed most of the fifth grade due to illness, but remained a straight A student through the middle of my 7th grade year. I had always planned on something in science or engineering, because that is what astronauts did. I wanted to go to the moon or Mars or some other place out in the solar system.

These are normal dreams for a child. Along with fireman or baseball player or butterfly catcher (my son’s choice when he was 5 or 6). But we all grow up, right?

When I was in the 7th grade I hit puberty. I became rebellious and decided that I didn’t want anything to do with normal society. Those people were sick conformist geeks. I would not get in line and Become One of the SILENT MASSES!!!

Sorry about that. Where was I?

One day I heard a song by the Beatles. It was the song Help! from their 1965 movie of the same name. I was immediately obsessed with becoming a musician. I wanted to play bass and sing in a rock band. I mowed lawns, did odd jobs for the neighbors, I even baby sat for some friends. All of this to save up and buy my first guitar.

Within three months of buying my first guitar I knew enough chords to join a band and play my first gig. I was the rhythm guitar player and singer. I stopped singing when my voice changed. I became a lead guitarist (never got to be a bass player), and joined a few bands who wrote their own music and preformed.

Like children, even adults have dreams that never come true.

While living in Seattle in the early 90’s and hoping to break in to music at the birth of the grunge scene, I took a job as a computer operator. Actually it was given to me by a friend. But she knows, and I know, that I never should have been hired for that job. I had no experience what-so-ever. I learned everything from scratch. I did end of being pretty good at it, but it was never what I wanted to do.

As I have gotten older I have gone back to my childhood dreams of science and engineering. I would love to have a degree in theoretical physics. But that dream is almost as difficult as the dream of being in music. I am so busy working as a network engineer that I have little to no time to attend school.

I actually dropped out of high school when I was 18. I earned my GED with a B+ average while in the marines. I even took the SATs for a possible run for the Marine enlisted officer program. I had chosen to go to college at the University of Michigan for aerospace engineering, but my eyes weren’t good enough to fly jets. So, like an idiot I dropped the whole process.

So, with no real high school education, no college degree, and no formal training, I design and test computer networks for a variety of clients. I make as much as my peers (finally), and am tasked with the same responsibilities. But I am not happy. I feel trapped in a never ending loop of design this, write about this, fix this.

I know for a fact that any other job I did would follow exactly the same process or loop. But it would be something that I chose. Something that I had an actual interest in. Right now I am just waiting to get old so that I can stop doing what I am doing and not have to worry about it anymore.

Go ahead, berate me and tell me how good I have it. I have heard it all before.

If life is what you make of it, I have made a mess of mine.

-P

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Motorcycles and Memories


I recently took a weekend trip to my mother’s house on the outer banks of NC. What made this trip unique was that I rode my motorcycle down.


I have been riding for about 2 years. Not a lot, and not as much as I would like, but I try to get out when the weather is good and I have some time to relax. Due to the increase in gas prices, I have started riding to work now. I drive about 100 miles a day round trip, and it is really helping to bring down the cost of my commute.


But back to the trip…


It is generally a 6 hour trip from my home to my mom’s. I rode into work on Friday morning, (about an hour), and then left from work to head on down, (about another 5 hours). I did have my doubts about the trip. Was I going to be able to ride a bike that far, would I get run over by a truck, would it rain on me…stuff like that.


Even though I have been riding for a couple of years, I still lacked confidence on the bike. I took the riding classes and all, so I am up on the basics. But I am still a newby. The last time I had ridden a motorcycle, (before buying the one I have now), was in Mexico in 1981.


I was 18 years old and some friends at the Holiday Inn in Puerto Vallarta had a little beater tucked in a closet. The chain was hanging off of it and no one knew how to fix or ride it. Truth be known, neither did I. But I convinced them to let me fix it and ride it around town.


I got it running. But I had no idea what I was doing. No helmet. I never got it out of first gear, (maybe second). But I would run up and down the cobblestone streets of the town with the motor just a whining. Every now and then I would end up at the bottom of a hill and I would be forced to push the bike up the hill because of the weak engine and my lack of experience. I even carried a few tools with me to repair the chain when it fell off, (every day).


So here I am now, 45 years old, and running down I-95 on a 700 lbs motorcycle at between 75 and 80 miles an hour. Either I am a complete idiot, or I have to stand on this bike because of the size of my balls. Actually, I am an idiot. But I love riding that bike.


After the ride to NC, (no rain, no run ins with trucks, and only minor cramping), I now have an acceptable amount of confidence. I feel more certain as to what to do in different situations. So I am thinking of selling the car, getting some rain and cold weather gear, and riding the bike all the time. Hell, I’m not rich, and $4 - $5 per gallon gas is not going to suddenly fit into my budget.


I have decided that the only car with acceptable gas mileage, it the car that is paid off. So I think I will be riding the bike for awhile. There may even be a trip down to Florida in my future…we shall see.


-P

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Meme...Me?

Someone seems to think that I don't post enough. So guess what happened to me.

I guess this is a blog thing, because I have never heard of it before. It is called a meme, or is that supposed to be a me-me, and you are supposed to answer everything with one word.

I am not fond of things that probe you for personal information. I don’t have anything to hide, but I tend to be a private person. That being said, I have a tendency to whine uncontrollably when prompted. (you have been warned) Maybe that is why my wife sent me something that requires one word answers.

Here goes…enjoy.

1. Where is your mobile phone? connection
2. Your significant other? home
3. Your hair? long
4. Your mother? drama
5. Your father? memory
6. Your favorite thing? future
7. Your dream last night? nothing
8. Your favorite drink? scotch
9. Your dream/goal? education
10. The room you’re in? cage
11. Your ex? who?
12. Your fear? money
13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? moon
14. Where were you last night? billiards
15. What you’re not? sane
16. Muffins? coffee?
17. One of your wish list items? flying
18. Where you grew up? everywhere
19. The last thing you did? sigh
20. What are you wearing? jeans
21. Your TV? information
22. Your pets? spoiled
23. Your computer? slow
24. Your life? lacking
25. Your mood? lost
26. Missing someone? reload
27. Your car? thirsty
28. Something you’re not wearing? gauntlets
29. Favorite Store? Borders
30. Your summer? hopeful
31. Like someone? nope
32. Your favorite color? green
33. When is the last time you laughed? Sunday
34. Last time you cried? Leo

-P