Lost and Found

Myself and Special K were sitting in a to remain unnamed bar in college park on a sparkling cool December day, enjoying a well earned brew after a hard morning's three hours of work. We went in for lunch, but decided that we might as well close out the day there, it being the holidays and all, we didn’t feel like being in the office for any extended period of time. We finished our delicious sandwiches, Special K's was a triple decker club on rye and I had the grilled chicken with bacon, Monterey jack cheese and ranch dressing, and we were working our way up to a twelve pack combined.

The bar was more or less empty. The head count in total included one bartender, two waitresses and a cute hostess who wasn't on yet but had stopped in for lunch and was sitting at the bar next to Special K. I couldn't tell you what she was eating as those aren't the things you pay attention to at first when a pretty girl sits down next to you. You only move on from the sexy actions like a flick of the hair over the shoulder or gentle caress of an arm to the mundane things she’s interacting with an hour or two into the starring contest. I never made it that far thanks to the efforts of one heroic man.

Considering the lack of occupants in the bar, any new addition at least got a glance and quick summation from the staples, myself and bar friends, upon entry to the bar area. Even if the bar had been packed to the gill with all manner of horny, beautiful, naked women who were all bouncing up and down in unison, I still would have noticed this guy. The best way I can think to describe him would be think about a cross between a samurai warrior, Leonardo (of ninja turtle fame) and Shaggy from Scooby Do. The samurai warrior and Leonardo do seem to accomplish the same objective but the only thing you should take from the samurai is his hair do, the rest can be ninja turtle. Which personality should be used for your mental half man half turtle will become apparent in time.

Our hero enters the bar through the nearest opening in the partition dividing the dining area from the bar and begins to look around, going from table to table, the divinating look of one Sherlock Holmes etched on his face. The unknown object for which he searches seems to elude his gaze but his determination and lack of short term memory persuade him to continue searching the small room over and over again for another five minutes. Finally, convinced that his current course of action will not lead him to his prize, he moves on to plan "b".

"Hey," the hero says, beckoning to the bartender, the slightest look of confusion on his face.

"Yeah, what can I get for you?" the bartender, who can't be more than twenty one and looks more like he's eighteen, responds with the self assurance of a seasoned beer-slinging veteran.

"Do you guys have a lost and found?" Considering the previous actions of our hero to date, this seemed the next logical step in the process and frankly, those sitting at the bar, myself included, were amazed that things were following logic.

"We'll, we keep the stuff that people leave here behind the bar in case they come back for it. What are you looking for?"

"You don't have a birth certificate behind there do you?"

"Ahh....."

"I had it with me here last night but now I can't find it. I lost my ID a couple of weeks ago and it was all I had." At this point, everyone sitting at the bar was trying desperately not to laugh and the sound of a stiffed chuckle only made it that much harder. The hostess may have even peed herself a little right there on the bar stool.

"We don't have any birth certificates here. Sorry dude." The grin on the bartender’s boyish face was so wide he could barely form the words.

"Oh alright, thanks anyway." And with that, our hero turned from the bar and made a hasty exiting from the building back to the lonely streets where no one knew that he had lost his birth certificate while out on the town for a night of drinking. The moment the front door of the bar swung shut, we all erupted in a fit of laugher.

A Car Wreck Christmas

I have to get this in before christmas because if I wait till later it will be a truly offensive act that I won't be able to write about since I'll be in jail for the murder of a neanderthal. Yes, that's right, I'm talking about people hanging wreaths from the front grill of their cars. Few things around the christmas season make me want to peal my skin off more than those damn wreaths.

First off, the wreath is a dumb idea. I'm being a little hypocritical here considering that I have one hanging from my front door but I can tell you that I didn't put it there and if it were up to me, it would be providing warmth to homeless people as the flames engulf it. Wait, here's one stick and here's another stick. The only logical course of action must be to entwine them and force them into a donut shaped circle. No! Who in the hell came up with this shit? I understand that decorations typically serve no purpose outside of looking nice, but wreaths don't even make that cut.

Leave your wreaths at home. I don't need to see them as I drive to work or when I'm trying to convince the hooker to get in the car for five dollars. You're going to be flying down the highway and the wreath you secured to the car with twisty ties is going to come loose and cause a twenty car pile up, killing two and injuring countless others. Then who's going to have a good christmas? No one. Your car looks retarded. I mean more retarded. It was a perfectly fine looking automobile and then you got in. That's when everything went downhill. The wreath is the burger king crown to top off your stupidity.

Speaking of crowns, my biblical history may be fuzzy from the raging hangover I'm suffering through, couldn't the crown of thorns placed on Jesus' head as he carried the cross to the hill of the skull be consider a wreath? And wouldn't the use of a wreath, in a way, celebrate christ's murder? And when you display a wreath, you'd actually be parading the joy you gleaned from the death of our savior for the entire commuting populous to see. You sick son of a bitch.

This whole wreath on cars thing is first small space rock that falls to earth, warning us of the monstrous asteroid that's on a collision course with our planet and is sure to destroy us all. I've read the signs and searched the ancient manuscripts. What is this colossal asteroid hell bent on ending humanity? Eventually, some asshat will figure out a way to add christmas lights to his car. That's when we all die. You know it's true. Their going to figure out a way to commercialize car christmas lights and then everyone is going to want it. Nuclear power plants will explode and governments will topple because of my rage. Please, let's stop things now, before it's too late.

Happy Holiday

I invented a new holiday unlike any other yesterday and wanted to pass the good news on, so here's what it entails.

It's called, inconspicuously, "Tell Your Coworkers You Love Them Day". The basic gist of the holiday is to go to work (sorry guys, no getting off of work for this one. We can make up a holiday for that later. I'm nominating the existing holiday of repeal day.) and tell the people you work with you love them. The rub is that certain procedures must be observed in the manner with which you approach them to proclaim your undying love. The tell is accomplished by simply walking up to them, no sneaking for safety's sake, gently leaning in close to them, possibly putting your hand around their shoulder and whispering ever so gently in their ear those three magic words. After completion of the deed, stand up straight, turn around and walk away, leaving your chosen coworker awestruck and confused. Bonus points if someone else is in the room with them. Triple bonus points if they're in some kind of meeting or on a conference call.

Considering this holiday is too revolutionary to be celebrated once a year, I'm proposing that it be observed on the second wednesday of each month. Once a week may be too often and could lead to problems such as annoyance, broken hearts and ichy venereal diseases. You may want to switch it up to thursdays every couple of months just catch your prey off guard.

Calc This!

I need someone to do this and report back to me.

I'm intrigued with regards to the equations the author of this webservice, obviously Einstein, has derived to solve the age old question of who is your soulmate. I would do it myself but I lack the virus protection on my home computer and big brass balls. I'm afraid it would come back with something like "Billy the Goat" and honestly I've never really liked goats. I can't say I had a lot of experience with them but I feel like they're naturally bad creatures. In fact, the last time I saw a picture of goat, I screamed like a girl it scared me so bad. It's kind of like Asian people.

Please, someone with the willpower of a sea otter and the intellegence of a drunken goose, use the calculator and let me know how it turns out. I need to know who my soulmate is but I don't want to be the first one to find out. I like to follow the crowd, not lead it. Hey, you might be surprised to find out that your soulmate is the lamp in your living room you've been sitting next to for the last year. You'll thank me when you're starting your family of lamps with human hands and one all seeing eye.

Shout out to the exlamation point! Woot!!

Your Eyes

Calitri's witty quip of the day is brought to you by Coworkers of America: Working together to accomplish absolutely nothing.

Next time your with that special someone, having a romantic moment, and your not sure how to close the deal, just use this line:

"Your mouth says oral, but your eyes say anal."

*Disclaimer: Calitri makes no claims that this line is orginal to him. He made it up on the fly but doubts that it's never been said before. The use of this line may result in slapping and mental retardation. Never operate a moving vehicle while using the line. Always read user's manuel before operating. There is no copyright on the line, therefore anyone and everyone is encouraged to reproduce it as much as possible.*

NaNoWriFlection

Nanowriflection:
-verb
1. To shit yourself while standing.
-interjection
2. Hallelujah!

I made up the word, I should get to define it right? Alright, enough fucking around, it's time to get down to the business of divulging my personal thoughts and impressions of my NaNo experience.

As a whole, I found it to be everything you might think it would be. Challenging, time consuming, sometimes miserable and an all around pain in the ass. Of course, there were good things about it too, and I'm going to concentrate on these simply because the other stuff wasn't really that big of deal. I didn't experience bad times or feelings often and they were greatly out-weighed by the benefits of writing a book over the past month.

First and foremost, it forced me to divorce the TV and, now that the writing is over, has increased my free time. I don't think I realized just how much TV I was really watching. I was in the routine of coming home from work, cooking dinner for myself and the little lady and plopping my ass on the couch in front of the tube for the next three hours until it was time for bed. I understand this was our together time every night, but honestly, how fucking sad is that? Sitting next to someone on the same couch with both pairs of eyes glued to the glow of the television screen does not count as quality time together. In the back of my mind I always knew that, but now it's clear as day. *Sidenote: Going to the movies on a first date is ridiculous for the same reason. How are you going to get to know someone in a place where you're not supposed to talk and you don't even face each other? I've done the movie first date before and it turned out horribly. I should have known better. I'm assuming that no one over the age 18 actually does this, although I'm surely wrong. If I ever have a son, there's no fucking way I'm letting him take a chick to a movie on the first date. If he's going to be my son, then he's going to have to be good with the ladies.* I now have time to work on editing my novel, which I'm not starting till January (need a little distance from it to get some perspective and recharge the novel batteries) and I want to start playing guitar again and writing music. Which brings me to my next point, committing to a difficult task and seeing it through till the end, even though you didn't have to, is the greatest confidence builder on God's green earth. Finishing Nano made me feel like I could do anything if I set my mind to it. It gave me back a speck of the will power I never knew I had. For those that know me, will power is not my middle name. Even so, I feel like, for once in my life, if I really want to do something then I'll stick with it long enough to get it done. And that knowledge brings freedom, my friends. And isn't freedom what it's really all about?

The other benefit I gleaned from NaNo, the reason I set off on this crazy adventure in the first place, was to improve my writing. I'm not sure if it shows or not, but I hope that it does. I haven't taken a writing class since high school and most the writing in my college career consisted of the technical variety. Not that I count writing a novel as a class but sometimes the best way to get better at something is to jump in and practice for awhile. I'd already been taught to swim in the literary pool, I just hadn't done laps in a very long time. Though my form may be a bit shotty now, I'm hoping that the more laps I make the better my form will become. To be honest, if I had known what I know at this point in my life, I would have majored in something literary like journalism. I'm better at writing, or at least grammar, than I am at math (don't laugh, not a ringing endorsement, I know). I always have been. It was just too impractical for me to do anything like that in college. My parents didn't have a ton of money to spend on college and I picked the only school that I didn't get a scholarship to. I was going to have student loans when I got out and wanted something that was a guaranteed job after graduation. Engineering was the best solution and it was what I thought I wanted to do with my life. Hell, I could still be an engineer in forty year and I wouldn't be upset about it as long as I had something else, like writing or music. I'm the definition of my job does not define me. Nano gave me hope that maybe I could be a writer or something. Gave me hope that one day I might put something out into the world that was actually worth a damn. I'm not delusional here, thinking that I'm going to be some kind of professional writer. I'm not that good, there are a thousand people who write better who'll never be published or even read and I'd never think I could do this as a source of income. My brain's went to shit long ago and I don't think it's going to get smarter anytime soon. The point is that now, there are possibilities out there and the chance that maybe I could grab one of them. This keeps coming back to freedom, in some form or another, and I don't mean for it to, but apparently it's inevitable.

As far as the actually writing of the book went, I'm amazed at how easily the thoughts and ideas came to me. I would lie in bed at night trying to fall asleep but not being able to because I couldn't stop thinking about the next chapter of the book, or how to finish the chapter I was writing or what I had written before bed and could I make it better. I was even interviewing bartenders for the story. Well, one really, but she was no help at all. In fact, her answers made me sad in a way, but that's a story for another time. I thought about the novel day and night, but that's how I knew I was doing the right thing. That's how I knew I liked writing the novel. (sane) People only obsess about two things: things they hate, and things they love. So I guess you could say that I love my book. It's not completely done, yet. Really, I have one chapter that I need to finish asap and the book probably needs a couple more that I'll writing when I start editing. I also need a way to end the book smartly that I haven't come up with yet. The book's supposed to be funny, though I'm not sure if I accomplished the task. I'll defer that opinion to Kristen when she reads it, post edit. She's my editor-in-chief on the project. I might try to get the final product published just to read the scathing rejection letters about wasting people's precious time. We'll see how I feel about the final product, but it could be fun either way.

So, to summarize: Nano - good, Homeless people - bad. Hope everyone had a great repeal day, I know I sure did.

A Bridge Too Far or Drilling Time

Dentists are, for all intents and purposes, greedy, lying assholes, who I wish, for the love of God, I'd never have to go to again. Of course, I'm not that lucky but if I go back between now and five years from now, it'll be a cold day in hell.

It all started when I went to the dentists for a checkup/cleaning/whatever. I haven't been since my sophmore year of college (about five years, maybe a little more) and I was worried because, given the amount of time between visits, I thought my teeth might not be the perfect pearly whites they once were. I brushed religiously, especially the week before the oppointment, but I didn't floss. I mean, who has the time to floss. I don't think I even remember how. The mouth seemed pain free and copasetic going in, but you never know.

After an hour in the waiting room with three devil children who I tried to ignore, they call my name take me back the chair of dential death and tell me that, since it's been so long, they want to do the full workup. I had full mouth x-rays done with the lead appron sprawled across my torso, which I'm convinced does nothing. My head is getting pelted from point blank range with x-ray waves but lets protect his body. It's ok, the body will be fine without the head. What the fuck? The cleaning went well, only receiving one blood transfusion and the standard, "you have some tarter build up, you need to floss more" speech from the dental hygienist. Another hours past since they took me back and I thought I was in the clear only needing the a okay from the denist. The dentist calmly stroles over to check me out, sits down for two seconds without address in me, promptly looks at the x-rays and proclaims that I had a cavity on the bottom set of teeth, right side. Son of a bitch! I was so close to pulling it off, I thought. Long story short I had to make another appointment to come back and get it filled.

A month goes by, without any pain or sensitivity in the tooth that supposedly has a cavity, and I head back for my second appointment. To be honest, I was worried that the cavity was going to be like one of those things were a person has cancer but feels perfectly fine, then finds out about the cancer during a random checkup and drops dead two months after. The body has an amazing ability to ignore problems including the sound of the alarm clock this morning, which caused me to be late for work (not really a big deal, but still). I figured as soon as I knew about the cavity it would start to hurt, but I got nothing. I'm sitting in the chair waiting for the drilling to commence when the dentist starts looking around in my mouth at the tooth in question. She also examines another tooth that apparently they had written down as having a cavity last time but failed to tell me about. She gets a confused look on her face and consults my file a couple of time. As it turns out, I don't have any cavities, they've magically disappeared in thirty days, never to return. Upset that she won't get to bill me for anything, she tells me that I chipped the tooth that supposedly had the cavity and that she wants to file down the spur the chip left behind and cap it as long as I hadn’t been experiencing any discomfort with it. At this point I was pretty stoked, thinking that I had come in to get a cavity filled and was instead going to get out of the fiasco with nothing more than a cap. I agreed to her treatment and she drilled the spur off my chipped tooth and capped the tooth with epoxy.

The only problem, which I didn't have immediately, is that now the tooth is really sensitive to sweet stuff and hot and cold things. Aren’t doctors supposed to fix problems and lessen pain instead of causing it? Isn't she supposed to fix the damage I do, not do the damage? I mean, I can beat the fuck out of my teeth well enough on my own. I don’t need some midget with a degree and a drill helping me out. I can chew on rocks in my own time, not have to leave the house or miss work and do the same amount of good as the dentist did.

I don't think I've ever had a pleasant experience with the dentist but it seems like each time I go now, it just reinforces the idea that these people will tell you anything to get more money out of you or the insurance company. There's a reason why you have to make dentist appointments months in advance. They're booked because they're filling the invisible cavities of hundreds of gullible sods like me. I'm never going back and when my teeth fall out at the age of thirty-five, I'll save them all and mail them to the dentist, telling her that she can fill them now if she likes.