“So why do you think she left without telling any of us?” I asked my friend.
“I think she was afraid of our reaction,” she replied.
“Reaction? To what? I’ve always known she wanted to leave.”
“Well, maybe she didn’t want us holding her back.”
“Holding her back? Wouldn’t a true friend support her, whatever her decision is?”
“Umm. Okay. Well, maybe… Gosh, I don’t know.”
“I wouldn’t have made a move like that without telling anyone.”
“Well, that’s because you’re a guy.”
“What?”
“You’re a guy. You’re predictable.”
“Oh?”
“Yea. You can’t expect a woman do to that. Women are unpredictable.”
. . .
Do you think women are unpredictable?
Driving is very therapeutic, don’t you think? Cruising down a highway with your favorite tunes blasting in double bass. Feeling the vibrations of the music with the trembling of the road beneath you. Ahhh…
Driving at night is the best. I remember driving back from work late one night; it was 11:00 PM or so. I came to the last red light of a street that would became a highway for the next fifteen miles or so.
Another car came up to my left. I looked over. It was a kid roughly my age. He looked over. I looked at the light. It turned green and I jammed on the gas.
My car surged forward. Seconds later, his followed suit and began to inch in front of me. I looked over at him again. Just as he began to turn my way, I put my eyes straight ahead, and pressed down.
My engine roared; my car hit 80 and growled up to 90. We passed by a speed limit sign of 55.
It was late on a weekday, so there weren’t many other cars on the street. The few that were there served as obstacles in our competition.
We came upon a few cars. There was a slow driver in my lane. I had to loosen up on the gas. My opponent took the opportunity and claimed the lead.
I darted over to the right, lapped the slow driver and jumped in front of him to avoid rear-ending a driver in the right lane.
My opponent was several car lengths ahead of me. I had a lot of time to make up. So I pushed my car past 90.
It growled under my feet. Slight movements of the steering wheel were amplified ten-fold. My opponent seemed to be losing his nerve and slowed down. I overtook him easily.
When he was behind me again, a renewed sense of competition struck him. He caught up and was side-by-side with me for a few miles. Both of us kept our cars between 90 and 100.
Suddenly, he slowed down dramatically. Maybe he had a radar detector and got wind of a Five-O. It was probably dumb of me to go racing without one.
I took his act as one of cowardice and kept my foot on the gas. Well, I eased it back to 80, but no less. I saw him in my rearview mirror descend to the legal speed limit. But I didn’t see any flashing lights.
Ha! Sucker. I made it to the end of the highway without incident. I was triumphant once again. “Maybe tomorrow night’s opponent will put up more of a fight,” I thought to myself as I pulled into my driveway.
. . .
Do you find driving therapeutic?
As I sit here, recovering from a mighty wicked hangover from a going-away bar crawl last Friday, my eyes wander back and forth over photos of my ex-coworkers and the ten gallons of water I have next to me to replenish my dehydrated brain before it shrivels into a raisin.
That was quite a run-on sentence, don’t you think? Probably a product of my raisinifying brain. Oh well.
Last Friday marked my last day at the Management Consulting practice at Ernst & Young. As I’m sobering up, it’s dawning on me that I will not be working with those people anymore.
There will no longer be the 12:15 lunch outings for Dino’s tasty deli sandwiches. There will no longer be casual chats in the huddle rooms. There will no longer be discussions on the merits of fake meat in Blimpie sandwiches.
No more daring steps into organizing Hoboken or Upper East Side bar crawls. No more conspiracy theories or coworker gossip. No more greasy Wall Street Bar & Grill hamburgers for those long late nights.
I’ll even miss the unspoken battles between the QA testers and the developers. Not to mention the skirmishes surrounding client-consultant politics. And I just know I’m going to miss the $0.25 sodas.
I’m really going to miss Ernst & Young.
Not so much the company itself. Heck, if I liked the company so much, why would I be leaving? No, it’s the people that I will really miss.
I must add that a lot of cool people have already left the firm. The consulting industry, like many others, has suffered low retention rates. Better opportunities abound, and a lot of talented people have already fled the Big 5 for smaller, quicker, more efficient and higher paying upstarts.
If they hadn’t left, I would certainly have a harder time leaving.
I’ve been through three large corporations since I graduated college. Of those three, while they’ve all touched me in some way, Ernst & Young has given me some of the greatest friendships I’ve ever had.
And a company that has attracted people like that is doing something right. So Ernst & Young ain’t all that bad. I just hope they get the rest of their act together someday.
Or hey, maybe all of my coworker friends will quit and we’ll start our own company together.
. . .
Ever miss your ex-coworkers?
Every so often, I’ll grab a beer, lean back into my couch, and observe the world around me. If I observe long enough, I begin to see patterns. My mind, spiked by the beer, will then formulate complex and perspicacious theories, because, as we all know, beer is known to spurn complex and perspicacious thoughts in people.
I would now like to share some of my beer-inspired complex and perspicacious theories, as an effort to show you how harmful the effects of alcoholism can be.
(For those who missed it, the sarcasm train just rolled by.)
These first two have been covered in previous rambles. The last two are brand new.
The Electromagnetic-Spirit Theory
Our brains are basically electromagnetic impulses, right? Well, what if these electromagnetic impulses were coherent enough to exist without neurons? What if these impulses could maintain a semi-conscious state after the body died?
Perhaps ghosts are essentially the electromagnetic impulses of a person whose body has died. These impulses are strong enough to maintain a faint but visible form.
Perhaps their thoughts aren’t fully conscious or rational; perhaps their thoughts are slightly crazed, like a person in shock.
This “shell-shock” phenomenon could be why these ghosts will repeat their last actions over and over again. They haven’t yet grasped the fact that their bodies have died.
The Sleep-Deprived Worker Theory
Technology that was supposed to make our lives easier has only forced us to work more. Instead of having more free time, we now work more hours than ever.
The workers of the American and Asian “rat races” are sleep-deprived. Not many people get a standard eight hours of sleep anymore.
The workers in Europe it better; they have siestas. They have realized the importance of afternoon naps. Right after lunch, they shut down and take a snooze. Then they wake up and go back to work again, refreshed and renewed.
The sleep-deprived workers are slowly burning themselves out. Work has become more important than anything else. Family has taken a back seat.
This lack of sleep is contorting our minds and our priorities. Our society could be next.
The Hero Theory
Hey ladies, ever notice how your boyfriend always wants to solve all of your problems?
You’ll talk to him about your day, complaining about how your supervisor is a jerk or how your parents are giving you a hard time. All you want to do is to get these problems off your chest; all you want is someone who will just sit there and listen to you.
And what does your boyfriend do? If he’s not watching TV, he’ll lay out an action plan for you, telling you exactly what you need to do to solve your problems.
You don’t like that, do you? You want to say to him, “Shut up. I just want you to listen to me.”
But you don’t because you don’t want to hurt his feelings. Or maybe you do, and then you get into an argument.
Do you want to know why he does that?
Well, ladies, here’s why. Your boyfriend wants to be your hero. He wants to be the most important person in your world; he wants to be the man who can solve all of your problems, your knight in shining armor.
Sweet, isn’t that? Sure it is. But if you need a shoulder to lean on more than a Superman, then tell him ahead of time that you just want to talk. Let him know that you just want to complain for the sake of complaining.
Hopefully, he’ll understand and you won’t have to take out the Kryptonite in order to have a simple conversation.
The Ice Cream Theory
Some believe that there’s only one “right” person for them out there.
But how do you define “right”? What makes one person more “right” than another?
There may be several people out there who are compatible with you. Each is “right” for you in different ways and degrees.
Think of it like different flavors of ice cream. You may have a favorite flavor, but there are many other flavors that you really enjoy too. Each is “right” for you in different ways.
Chocolate may rank high on your list. But Rocky Road is damn good too because of its nutty and marshmellowy goodness.
You can choose one of these flavors to be the only flavor you’ll eat for the rest of your life. But which one do you choose?
Some get lucky and find their favorite flavor early on in the taste test. Some have to try out different flavors before knowing which one they like the best.
And still others may get bored with their choice and want a sample of other flavors.
The key here is that there isn’t just one flavor that you’ll like; there are many different flavors that you’ll like in varying ways and degrees.
Same with people. You’ll encounter many people who may be “right” for you in some way. There’s no one “right” person for you, just varying degrees of “rightness” among the many people that you’ll meet.
. . .
What do you think of these theories?
It’s said that panic separates the heroes from the cowards.
When your life stands on the spider’s web above the gapping gullet of the spider, would you lash out uncontrollably, binding the sticky web to your limbs? Or would you calmly stare the spider in the eye, then reach out and kick it in the nose so it falls off the web?
Or would you go, “Ick, a spider!” and swat it with a newspaper before the analogy even had a chance to sink in, because you’re an arachnocidal maniac?
The movie the “Titanic” was just on TV. It made me wonder: am I a DiCapriocidal maniac? And more importantly, what would I do in a panic?
Many people did things in the heat of the moment (or, in Titanic’s case, the “cold” of the moment, ha!).
Some leapt into the chilling waters, some held their loved ones and cried, some pushed and shoved friends to get off the boat. It was chaos, total and utter chaos.
The medical definition of panic is: An overpowering feeling of fear that causes uncontrollable acts.
I wonder. What would I do in a panic? Would I act uncontrollably? Would I lash out and scream? Would I resign and just sit there and cry? Or would I remain calm and collected?
Firefighters, police officers, and other hazardous professions are trained to deal with panic and react rationally. For them, this comes with years and years of training and conditioning.
Children growing up in gang-ridden neighborhoods are similar conditioned. As are children in war-ridden countries. When violence is part of your everyday life, you become desensitized to it. You have to; it’s a coping mechanism.
How about for those who don’t have such conditioning? I would be a fool to ascribe an advantage to those children; no one should grow up with so much violence.
There are other ways to learn to deal with panic, however. For me, I did it through extreme sports.
Now don’t get me wrong. While part of me loves the adrenalin rush, I’m hardly an adrenalin junkie. I’ve done bungee jumping and sky diving. I’d really like to try hang gliding and cliff diving one day. But riding a motorcycle over a pit of man-eating sharks and through a ring of fire? I’ll pass.
I’m terrified of heights. It’s practically acrophobia. That’s why I’ve bungee jumped & sky dived: to face one of my biggest fears and conquer it. And what an adrenalin rush it is!
I’ve since eased up that acrophobia. It’s still terrifying, of course. Looking over the ledge of a tall building still scares the bejeebers out of me. But instead of instant cold fear, I now feel a tingle in my stomach—a tingle of excitement and adrenalin.
And you know what? It’s actually helped temper my feelings of panic in other aspects of life too. Public speaking was (and still is) terrifying as all hell, but when I think back to that first free fall out of an airplane, adrenalin shoots into my veins and I’m a little less nervous.
Picture this: you’re looking outside an airplane 14,000 feet in the air. The ground is a quilt of mismatched patches below. The wind is howling at you at 120mph. Your stomach is crawling into your nutsack.
Then you’re given the order. “Jump!”
That first fall is absolute terror. Cold icy terror. Your mind scrambles like a hamster in an electrified cage. You ask yourself, “What the hell am I doing??”
Then you’re free falling. It’s amazing. You’re floating above the world. The horizon at your fingertips, clouds by your side, and adrenalin coursing through your veins. It’s a euphoric Zen.
When I open my eyes again, the public speech I’m about to make is a little less scary. I don’t know if it’s a form of conditioning or just the adrenalin, but it works.
No spider is going to eat me, nosiree
. . .
Have you ever been in a panic situation?
I blame the dog for losing my pants.
Well, not the dog directly. But he was definitely indirectly involved.
They were a nice pair of gray pants. Went very well with a black or white shirt. The perfect trendy semi-casual office outfit.
A female friend once commented that they looked nice on me.
And BAM! As soon as a girl says something like that to a guy, he’ll start wearing that thing for days on end, until the same girl recants the compliment and violently pummels the guy with Lysol because he’s been wearing the same exact outfit for days, including stinky drawers and socks.
So her compliment accelerated my gray pants into “nice” status. I’ll wear these pants when I go out with friends or to other related special events.
I wore them on the day I went to visit a friend I hadn’t seen in years. To keep my promise of maintaining contact with all of my NYC pals when I move to SF, I spent a week off from work to visit old friends.
It was nice gray pants and black shirt that night. Sweeeeeet. Gotta make a good impression on an old friend, right?
When I got to her apartment, I was greeted by her dog. He’s a very nice dog, but a dog nonetheless.
And by “dog,” I mean a “Trotting Panting Bouncy Animal Who Drools And Sheds All Over Clothes, Especially Nice Gray Pants.”
Do you see where I’m going with this?
I love animals, especially dogs. So when I sat down on my friend’s couch and her dog jumped into my lap, I didn’t push him away. Instead, I eagerly scratched the little fellah’s head.
He rolled around, jumped back and forth from floor to couch, and tried to doogie-kiss me (meaning me tried to French kiss me with his tongue). What better way to express one’s affection for another than by licking that person with the same tongue you use to lick your ass?
Oh, and he also deposited a significant quantity of doogie-drool and doogie-hair on my nice gray pants. That’s the second best way to express one’s affection for another: drool and shed on that person’s nice gray pants.
I was overwhelmed by this dog’s affection. After a while, I had to end the relationship, because I really can’t make such a strong commitment to another only after having met for a few minutes. Plus, if you’re gonna drool and shed on me so early in the relationship, how do I know you’re still going to respect me the morning after?
When I got home, I promptly threw the nice gray pants into the laundry hamper.
Well, that’s not exactly true. In proper male fashion: I sniffed the pants and considered spraying some Lysol on them to help air them out, so I can wear them again tomorrow. Because, as long as the smell doesn’t immediately knock you unconscious, it’s still fair game.
But the doogie-drool and doogie-hair ultimately changed my mind. Hey, I do have scruples, after all.
Ever hear the saying, “Out of sight, out of mind?” Well, that statement strongly applies to this situation. As soon as those nice gray pants fell into the domain of the laundry hamper, I forgot about them.
Then came the day I was to fly to SF again. The Day of Packing coincided with the Day of Laundry. So my nice gray pants came into my awareness again.
Flying to SF is as special an occasion as any. So into my luggage went the nice gray pants. I would have packed the “Nice But Not As Nice As The Nice Gray Pants” khakis, but opted to wear them instead so that I’d have a fresh pair of nice gray pants when I got there.
Then something horrifying happened. Terrifying. Awfulfying. And totally my fault.
My luggage was lost.
I accidentally left my luggage on the train as I made my way to work in the morning. Morning Sleepiness, coupled with, um, Morning Sleepiness, had my brain in a state of fuzzy fog. I got off the train and didn’t remember that I had left my luggage on the rack above my seat.
I didn’t lose my “Nice But Not As Nice As The Nice Gray Pants” khakis because I was wearing them, of course. But if I hadn’t had doogie-drool and doogie-hairs on those nice gray pants, I wouldn’t have put them in the hamper and forgotten about them. I probably would have worn them again that week.
And perhaps I would have even worn them onto the plane and packed the “Nice But Not As Nice As The Nice Gray Pants” khakis, because, after all, I have scruples about putting Already Worn clothes next to Freshly Cleaned clothes. And if I had worn the nice gray pants again, I surely wouldn’t have packed them into a luggage full of Freshly Cleaned clothes. Surely not.
Fortunately, this drama has a happy ending. I got my luggage back, along with my nice gray pants. The train station’s Lost and Found had my luggage. So things worked out in the end.
Save the fact that I’ve put a Restraining Order on my friend’s dog against my nice gray pants. Hopefully, that way, I’ll never lose my pants because of a dog again.
He sucked down the flamer and spat a few drops onto the tablecloth.
This ignited the cloth. The waiter stamped it out with a water glass.
I think it was Bacardi 151. Strong stuff. A sharp blue flame was dancing at the top. Birthday-boy Stephen had to use a straw to suck up the shot. I don’t know what the drink was called, but it was damn firey.
After this brilliant display, the waiters brought over what looked like a Genie lamp. Instead of a wish-granting Genie in the lamp, however, there was something better—alcohol!
A napkin was placed as a bib around Birthday-boy Stephen. The waiter held the lamp above his head and poured a stream of glorious lemon-colored alcohol into his awaiting maw.
From a particular angle, it looked as if the waiter was, uh, draining the reservoir and using an open mouth as target practice, if you get my drift.
All of the men at the table accepted this divine gift from our waiter eagerly. “Thank you sir, can I have another?”
And I mean, “all of the men” in the strictest sense. Bashful-boy Ben ducked into the bathroom, whimpering and arms flailing, when his turn came.
Kudos goes out to Iron-liver-boy Eric for swallowing a very generous stream of that yellow liquid from the waiter as he stood above him on a chair and held the lamp at waist level. I think the waiter was smiling.
And I’ll say this about Eric also—that boy can sure swallow. He’s not a spitter, no siree. He’s a swallower.
After this restaurant, we went back to Birthday-boy Stephen’s Upper East Side apartment and downed a few more beers. You see, we were determined to ruin what was left of this fleshy piece of tissue he calls his liver.
I can’t say we excelled as well as we should have, though. It totally slipped my mind to make him do as many shots as he is years old.
I suppose one could argue the yellow stream from the restaurant plus all the delicious frozen Margaritas (and when I say delicious, I mean these babies are so damn good you’ll be packing 2-3 of these easily before you realize there’s alcohol in them) should be an adequate amount of brain-numbing poison for our friend.
But hey, the way I see it, there’s no such thing as an adequate amount of brain-numbing poison among friends. And besides, there’s nothing funnier than a friend with a handful of brain cells left as he tries to walk with dignity out of a restaurant.
We finally left his apartment late in the night (well, technically, it was the next morning).
As we walked out, he scrambled to the bathroom to pass what was left of his liver through his colon and out of his system.
And with that thought, we all knew that it was another successful birthday party.
. . .
How do you kill your liver on your birthday?
Are you feeling lucky?
I can’t shake it, but I’ve been feeling lucky lately. Maybe a little too lucky. And that’s a bad thing, because there’s also this feeling that my luck will run out soon.
With a vengeance. Not a soft, wimpy puff of air. A loud, jarring, and possibly very painful crash.
I almost killed myself while sky diving once. And I’ve had lots of near-misses while driving. But I was able to walk away from all of those incidents. Lucky me.
Oh, but wait. I lost my luggage this weekend. In it were my lucky boxers, my lucky shirt, and even my lucky bunny slippers. Well, that’s not entirely true. I don’t really have a lucky shirt and only one pair of bunny slippers, so they can hardly be called my “lucky bunny slippers.” But still.
When I lost my luggage, I figured my luck had finally run out. It actually relived me. There was no loud and painful crash. Just a puff of lost belongings.
Then someone found my luggage and returned it to me. Damn.
Sometimes I wonder about guardian angels. Do they exist? Or are they just rationalizations of past occurrences? I don’t know; I wonder.
For instance, how in the world did I survive that sky diving accident if there wasn’t a guardian angel watching over me? And how about all those near-misses while driving? And what does “near-miss” really mean? Isn’t a near-miss a hit?
Or maybe it’s all a set of coincidences. Maybe these things just happened by random chance. Who is to say there even is such a thing as luck?
And if I don’t believe in it, why do I have a pair of lucky bunny slippers?
In the same way that people are agnostic just in case God exists, maybe this is my way of believing in luck—just in case it exists. Better safe than sorry, eh?
That’s probably a lame reason, but it’s the best I can come up with right now. Until my luck runs out and a near-miss turns into a near-hit (is that even a term? does that even make sense?), I’ll keep on wearing my lucky bunny slippers.
Because, well, I really want to postpone that loud, jarring, and possibly very painful crash as long as possible.
. . .
Are you feeling lucky?
If I only had eight hands…
…I could finish redesigning my sites and create the new ones I’ve been planning for so long.
…I could paint my room in no time.
…I could rub my eyes, pick my nose, scratch my ass, and still shake your hand all at once.
…I could do eight-times the amount of work and get to leave the office at a reasonable time.
…I could write four rambles at once.
…I could code up a lot of web pages.
…I could cook an awful lot of spaghetti.
…I could be named Octo-Mike.
…I could climb up trees much faster.
…I could work in a circus and date the fat bearded lady.
…I could play four guitars at once and be my own band.
…I could do some awesome finger-painting pictures.
…I would have six more sets of fingernails to cut.
…I would always be an octopus for Halloween.
…I would need some really funky clothing.
…I would probably scare my Mother half to death.
…I would be cast as Dr. Octopus in the upcoming Spiderman movie.
…I would be able to scratch eight itches at once.
…I would really freak out my dates.
…I could pleasure a woman ten-fold. (Ooooh yeeea…)
. . .
What would you do if you had eight hands?
If you had to choose between Honor and Passion, which would you choose?
The movie “First Knight” came up in a conversation with friends the other day. If you’re not familiar with this movie, it’s based on the legend of King Arthur and Lady Guinevere. Though Lady Guinevere is married to King Arthur, she falls for Sir Lancelot.
Then she has to make a choice: King Arthur or Sir Lancelot?
She’s bounded by honor to King Arthur; she feels passion for Sir Lancelot. Lady Guinevere loves both men, but her love for each is different. She marries King Arthur because he saves her kingdom; she makes love to Sir Lancelot because he saves her life.
One interpretation puts Lady Guinevere in the role of an unfaithful adulterer. Another places her as a woman who is swept off her feet by true love.
By the end of the movie, King Arthur is slain in battle, making her decision null and void.
I have always tried to live my life honorably. I believe passionately in honor and choose to base my actions in it.
In my opinion, one needs a consistent set of ideals and virtues to live by. Guidelines, if you will.
Sure, you can go by “the seat of your pants,” so to speak, and live chaotically. That would probably be a lot of fun. You’d be just like the little green gremlins in the movie—so aptly named—”Gremlins.” These little green critters live hard and fast; they also die just as hard and fast.
There’s definitely an appeal to chaos. And I can’t honestly say that I don’t want some chaos in my life. Anyone working in the Internet industry has to love chaos (and boy is that an understatement).
My sky diving trips are example enough that I even need some chaos in my life.
But beneath it all, I’ve laid down some laws that I must adhere to. And I’d as soon die than to compromise them.
A little extreme? Perhaps. But without order, where would civilization come from? But without ideals, where would dreams come from? Without honor, where would respect and consideration come from?
There’s a young lady whom I’m crazy about. I can’t say it’s love; talking about that is a whole other ramble. But she creeps into my thoughts and dreams more often than I care to admit.
But there’s a catch.
She’s going out with a friend of mine.
There’s a terribly irony to this situation. You see, my ex-girlfriend is currently going out with a friend (well, ex-friend) of mine. Apparently, my ex-friend had a major crush on my ex-girlfriend while we were going out. He waited till we separated, then he moved in.
I guess I now know how he used to feel, huh? How terribly, awfully, horribly ironic is that?
This young lady has no idea of my feelings for her (at least, I don’t think so). I can hide my emotions very well; being a professional consultant has taught me that.
And I have no intention of ever telling her. Even if they break up. I respect my friend too much to hurt him like that. Even if he tells me it’s okay. My honor dictates this.
Is this wrong? Should I deny my own Passion for the sake of my Honor?
It’s certainly a dilemma. But I don’t feel guilty about this decision at all.
The way I see it, we can’t live our lives as a slave of pleasure, as much as we’d all probably like to. We need guidelines in our life. Civilization and society require it. (Religion works along the same lines, though I’m not religious at all.)
Some people tell me that I shouldn’t live this way; that I should follow my heart and do what feels right.
Well, there’s an inherent contradiction there. Though my heart feels one way, what feels “right” to me is the exact opposite. So what should I follow?
In my opinion: Honor.
. . .
If you had to choose between Honor and Passion, which would you choose?
