How to be depressingly comedic

So, I'm at home. Alone. On a Saturday night. In Nevada. Keep in mind, that's not the punchline to this whole thing.

So, I like to think I have a good amount of friends (approximately 4). After that, I've got a solid dozen people who I think of as acquaintances (it's really more like an additional 4). After that, I've got at least 30 people in my phone that I call on random occasions to rescue me from my pitiful, lonely, existence in this sandbox (that number is closely accurate; however it includes people who have found their way into my phone via random encounters and socially awkward scenarios).

Out of every one of these near and dear contacts, this evening I called ALL of them. Yes, I said it. ALL of them. Tonight. The results go as follows:

Legitimately rang through to voicemail: 14
Intentionally sent to voicemail due to the "Ignore" feature: 18
Picked up and actually wanted to hang out: 1 (Turned out my truck broke down in my drive way on the way to meet up with him. But it was the thought that has automatically made this guy the best man at my wedding).

So, this result can take me down one of two paths. The first resulting in my throwing an iphone through a double pane insulated window.
The second (the road I chose), has inspired me to realize that, though I may be the least important thing going on in 97% of my (local) friends lives, I am going to use this as an opportunity to write tonight. And write. And write.

Feel free to remember the following quote as it is a Daris original,
"No matter how insignificant you may feel at times, you are always more important than the people taking you for granted."

Nevada makes me think about how cool it would be to live in Idaho.

Sooo...I just realized that if you stand in the parking lot of my office building and look East, you see this in the distance:

Yup. That's a sign that reads "The Chocolate Nugget". Apparently it's a candy factory of some sorts that I can only imagine is run by dark skinned oompa loompas with duelling gambling and hard drug addictions.

Then, when I look West from the parking lot...

That would be the famed "Bunny Ranch" of Mound House Nevada. Now, granted these pictures are bit closer than what I actually see from here, but not by much. And, it's the principle of the scenario.

My office is situated directly in between a Whore House and a Chocolate Nugget.

Don't believe me, go ahead, Google it.
Feel better about your own job? Thought so.

The Ethics of Communication (Not Educational I Swear)

So, it is, and has been for some time, the 21st Century and I think there should be a guideline for protocol when it comes to the following popular forms of communication: Texting, The Returning of Phone Calls, Emails, and Facebook. Someone with even the most miniscule knowledge of affable behavior or interpersonal etiquette within social settings should know, to a degree, the ways to act. However, I’m finding it more and more common for people to choose the low road of courtesy over the high.

3 Rules for Texting
1. You have 24 hours to return an un-responded text (Should it warrant response). After that, you have shown the sender that you chose not to use one of your 1,440 minutes in that day to think about them.
2. A recipient has a three day grace period to respond to an unanswered succession of texts over said three day period. Should a response of any kind be withheld, you have now been deleted from the contact list. We can only hope you aren’t in a Guatemalan jail or trapped in Roman Polanski’s pool house.
3. Confusing denotations and unclear verbiage cannot be taken personally until a verbal conversation has clarified any and all misunderstanding. After that, swing away.

4 Rules for Phone Calls
1. If the person calls you more than twice a day (and isn’t you wife/husband or immediate family member), you are only obligated to take every other phone call. Is it so hard to think that you get busy, and they need to find someone else to bother at times?
2. If you haven’t heard from the person calling you within the last 6 months, you are obligated to take the call wherever you may be at the time. You’ve kept their number for 6 months without using it, you know you want to talk to them.
3. It is NEVER acceptable to call someone, or take a call, while going number 2. (Rule number 2 is the exception; for the sake of irony)
4. I’ve warmed up to the idea of a Blue Tooth, but please confine them to their state mandated use of driving hands-free. No blue tooth in the line at the grocery store or while at the urinal. I was super confused when that guy rescheduled our appointment and kept calling me Donna while I was peeing.

4 Rules for Emails
1. It should go without saying, but, NEVER forward anything without my specifically asking you to. Not ever. Never never never. Stop it. Bad.
2. If your computer sends “Read-Receipts” and the email explicitly requires a response, make sure you send the response within an hour of reading the email. I know you read the fuckin thing. Now you’re just ignoring me.
3. Referring people when signing up for anything online is malicious behavior. I got a phone call from some used car lot the other day and the guy already knew my name and where I live; thanks a million for the alley-oop there Bill. Just know that Dish Network now thinks you are looking to sign up for their services but just can’t get through to them on the phone.
4. ALL CAPS MEANS YOU’RE YELLING AT ME GRANDMA.

The Mighty Facebook
1. If it isn’t going to be painfully obvious to me who you are, please reference how we know each other in a friend request or message. If you get denied, you should probably stop blocking your entire page from people.

Which leads me to…

2. Don’t block your entire page from people. I get it, you have whorish pictures on there that you don’t want family to see, or, you are afraid that the weird guy from the office who breathes ready loud is going to stalk you. It’s understandable. But, at least leave basic information available so that I can see if the blind date my buddy set us up on is actually going to be worth it.
3. Facebook age cut-off is 55. The acquiring of Social Security cancels out your need for online social networking. Unless at one point you were President of something. Or refuse Social Security.
4. Parents should never post anything on their children’s wall or on pictures not including their own face or someone older than them. By taking pictures with people equal to or older than your parents, you have signed your folks’ pass on commenting.
5. Don’t get mad if people don’t respond in the chat bar. Not a lot of people know how it works. Smart people do.
6. You keep sending me weird little application requests (Farm something, Mafia something else, etc). I keep actively ignoring them. Please stop.


Anyways. Just my two cents for the morning.

15 Way To Tell You're Broke

1. Your two week expired carton of eggs in the fridge is now a small chicken wandering around the salad dressing isle.

2. You only approach women in clubs who have shown their ability to cover cab fair.

3. The shoes that once doubled as your "Yard work" shoes are now "Good enough" to club in.

4. Your dog is eating more expensive dinners than you are.

5. "Cable television" now refers to you sitting on your porch listening to your neighbor beat his wife.

6. The lies you used to tell women to go home with you are starting to turn YOU on.

7. Your room at your parent's house is WAY bigger than your room now.

8. You cry when you pee. Not because it hurts. But because you know you can't flush without going to the sink with a bucket.

9. You just made a grilled cheese sandwich with a toaster laying on its side. The fire is now contained.

10. Sad love songs are now just bitchy, winey, crap from people who are lucky enough to have trash service.

11. You've lost enough weight to get a "Jared" sized contract and you haven't had a gym membership since May of '08.

12. Paper towels, toilet paper, and Kleenex are universally exchangeable in applicability.

13. There's a room in your house that now doubles as "The crying room". This room generally has a sofa which has cushions that are so compressed from being slept on that you're pretty much sleeping on plywood.

14. You've refilled that one empty bottle of water 24 times to make people think you can afford bottled water.

15. You're other car is a burro.

Boom.

These people actually exist

I get into work this morning and the first phone call I get is a guy on the other end explaining to me how he is too busy to do some aspect of his job and how he doesn't feel he has time to do something, so somehow, in a magical world where this man's irrational logic is the predominant deciding factor of the universe, he tells me that it is my job. Really pal? You think I want to go through the endless documents and monotonous rigmarole of your job when I don't even work for you...or have anything to do with you? You’ve got to be shitting me. What kind of response was he hoping I would dawn? "Yes massa, I would love to do that fo' you. You need yo' shoes shined sir? Maybe I could do a little dance, if that would be ta yo’ likin’".

No matter how many times I say people don't surprise me, somehow there is that one guy who just does.

Bellapube

So, my buddy Mike just invented a new word that needs to gain popular culture status with your assistance world.

The Bellapube. It's the drag strip that joins a girls belly button bush to her nether-fur. I don't care who you are or what your values may be, if you have this, just know that not even a lesbian coal mine worker will blow you. It's like a mustache for your FUPA ladies.

Yeah. We said it. Bellapube.

P.S. The pubes that reach your thighs like the U.N. reaching for any foreign nation in need...not sexy.

LA Trip

So, I was in LA this weekend for a break from reality. Kylie and Morgan were gratious enough to let me hang out at their place. Morgan had to work the whole time but we got to see a little bit of him. Obviously, Friday we had to go out on the town and get a couple drinks in us. We hit what I think was Hermosa Beach for a drink and stumbled upon a place called the Poop Deck. No kidding. It was this little dive bar that we spent about thirty seconds in until realizing it was essentially a Carson City, NV bar. Upon realizing that we were at risk of contracting something, we left and went to a few more "established" bars. Good times were had.

So, Saturday rolled around and we were able to fight off the massive attack of our hangovers. Kylie and I watched and episode of Criminal Minds, which, in all honesty, never gets old. I think it might be the insane amounts of graphic content mixed with the absolutely absurd rationalized epiphanies that the characters are able to come up with that just gets me. Or it may be the absolutely fantastic body of AJ Cook. Either way, we watched an episode. Noon rolls around and we decide to go to Venice Beach to wander amongst the lost, broken, extraverted, souls that inhabit the area. Needless to say, not all the souls we encountered were lost or broken, but holy shit if they didn't make me uncomfortable. Such as a man in a speedo, pretending to be Conan the Barbarian while supporting the efforts of New Balance.

Along with the woman in some kind of leopard/cheetah print working out at Muscle Beach who happened to bend over right in front of me when I pulled out my camera.

Long story short, there are some crazy ass people in Souther California.