The Horror, The Horror

After a long, stressful day at work I come home and begin my usual after work ritual. I remove my work clothes, and quickly change into the most comfortable thing I can find (usually some variation on sweatpants/gym shorts and usually the undershirt I wore all day - don't judge). On days when I go to the gym this ritual varies slightly. But generally after I change I plop down, eat dinner, and then spend the next 2-4 hours doing whatever the hell I want (I call this time "Raph Time"...well it sounds cooler in my head... I'll think of a better name for this later, maybe during "Raph Time"?).

So during lasts nights Super Relaxing Free Time (Raph Time still sounds better...), my Mom comes into my room. We're having a normal conversation when she suddenly recoils and blurts out "Oh God honey! What happened to your face?!" She collects herself, and realizes "Oh...sorry, it looks like you've just broken out a little."

Thanks Mom. You really know how to ruin Videogame-TV-Movies-Alone Time (ok that does it, I'm sticking with Raph Time).

Return of the Mack

Awhile back on a Monday morning (7/13 to be precise), I arrive and immediately see that I have several messages on my work answering machine. Apparently people only leave messages for me when I'm not sitting at my desk. It's a shame, because my ring tone is super cool, and I never get to hear it (it's not that cool anyway, whatever).

I fly through the first 3 messages which are mostly internal messages of people asking me ridiculous questions (like if we have any A4 paper WHICH WE OBVIOUSLY DO). Then I get to message number 4 which is "Return of the Mack" (a 90s gangster rap song) playing on someone's radio, obviously muffled through their pants pocket. It lasts for about 2 minutes.

My first reaction is that the voice mail is from my girlfriend. "Return of the Mack" happens to be one of her favorite songs, and it seemed like maybe it was a cute gesture from her: "hope your week goes well, enjoy this 90's jam <3 <3 <3", or something similar. I call the number back, it goes to voicemail.

"Hello you've reached [Raph's Boss] please leave a message...". Yup. My boss listens to 90's gangster rap on the way to work. The best part is when he gets in to work he sort of defensively asks me "Why did you call?". I had to awkwardly point out that I was returning his call....and that all I could hear on the message was "Return of the Mack". We had a good laugh. Then we promised never to speak of it again.

In Moldova, Company Hires You!

I send a lot of FedExes in my line of work. So far I've been fortunate enough to send two packages to Moldova (The Republic of). A funny thing happens when you try to send a FedEx to Moldova: the "Company" field disappears from the online form. This leads me to believe that there are either no companies in Moldova, companies are outlawed in Moldova, or even that possibly Moldova is a company itself (Update: I checked, its a country after all).

Wh4t 4 l33t r3$um3!!1

I just printed out a resume for a potential candidate at work (my boss does a lot of interviews because he's pretty high up in the company) and I loled at his email address. I don't want to use his real name or anything but for the sake of the story, lets say his name is Sean Lee. His email address (in this example) would be: S3an L33. Yup, he used his l33t email address for his professional resume. What a n00b....

...
...
..I hope he gets hired!!1

Farewell Borders

I'm sad that Borders is going out of business. Two "topical" blogs in a row! I wouldn't get used to it oh faithful reader (intentionally singular), I'll be back to spewing pointless nonsense in no time. Also, this isn't really that topical. Borders has been floundering for close to a year now, thanks in large part to Amazon.com and the Kindle/eReader revolution. Today I made my (most likley) last purchases at Borders EVER (for the record: a football book, a book about the history of the Earth, and a book about the Higgs Boson). This is kind of a big deal considering I've spent literally hundreds of dollars on comic books, ahem excuse me, graphic novels, over the past 3-5 years.

I will always fondly remember the time I spent alone there, sitting alongside the manga nerds as they killed time before their foam kendo sword practice sessions. It was one of the few activities I could do at school that was totally and absolutely a solo mission. I didn't have a car at school, which meant going anywhere for lunch or any other activity was always contingent on other people getting their  act together. This proved especially frustrating living in a house with 6 indecisive and usually, to use the technical term, "high as shit" guys. Strolling down to Borders on nice sunny day was a great way to get away from the arguments about kegs and who spilled an entire bag of sugar in the kitchen the night before and forgot to clean it up.

It was totally worth it.

But Borders has also been a source of negative memories. Like the time I overdrew my account buying "The Ultimates 1 : Volume 2"  and had to ask my mom for money. Or the time I witnessed one of the most horrifically comical things I've ever seen. There was an extremely large, fat man in glasses and giant Jorts (Jean Shorts) sitting on the edge of a window sill. He was positioned so that his ass was angled almost up into the air, as his belly popped out of his shirt onto his frumpy paunch. He was reading a comic and talking on the phone at the same time. While on the phone, he began farting. Loudly. Continually. He made no effort whatsoever to conceal it and didn't even for ONE second look around to gauge reactions of the people around him. He didn't even break the conversation he was having on his phone. It's a soothing thought to know that next time he does this, he will be forced to sit in the comfort of his own home and shop on Amazon.com. Either that or find a Barnes and Noble.

Picture him in Jorts.

Farewell Borders :(

It was the best of times it was the blurst of times

So yesterday there was an earthquake. I'm sure you've heard about it by now, seeing it happened roughly (very roughly, I'm bad at estimating time) 20 hours ago. However, one thing this blog has never claimed to be is current...or even informative for that matter. All you need to know for the following word-splosion (it's like a story but less boring) is that there was an earthquake in DC yesterday afternoon, I work in an office in Boston on the 11th floor and I felt it.

My initial reaction? I honestly thought the vicodin I had just taken had kicked in and I was getting that oh-so-sweet painkiller headrush and dizzyness. You must be asking yourself "Wow! What kind of rockstar life does this Raph live?! Painkillers during the day on a Tuesday? I bet he gets laid on the regs!". Let me quickly resovle this misunderstanding by saying a few words: the vicodin was prescribed from my wisdom teeth operation and yes I do get laid on the regs. 

A quick aside about my wisdom teeth before we continue: I've never realized how much I enjoy solid food and drinking out of a straw, both of which I've had to abstain from since last Friday, or roughly 2 weeks ago (see? I told you I sucked at this whole estimation thing). The vicodin is great and luckily my face hasn't gotten swollen at all. The downside to all the vicodin is that my work ethic has suffered horribly. All I think about all day at work is going home to play videogames.

Speaking of videogames (and I'll keep this brief): I went 47-7 last night on Arica Harbor in Battlefield 2: Bad Company. For the uninformed, that means I killed 47 people and only died 7 times, acquiring a K:D Ratio (Kill to Death Ratio) of  roughly 7:1 (my best estimation of the blogpost, for those scoring at home). Again, for the uninformed, a K:D Ratio of 2:1 is considered a good round, and a K:D Ratio of 7:1 can roughly be described as a n00b genocide.

What was I talking about again? Videogames? Check. Drugs? Check. Oh right, the earthquake. So once I realized that my chair was actually vibrating, and that there wasn't some not-so-hilarious prankster from the legal team behind me shaking my chair (I'm looking at you Rick), I realized I was in an earthquake.

The real question is this: Really? An earthquake? Didn't we already have a tornado? Aren't there hurricanes coming? I'm not saying I believe in all this rapture talk, but I had this thought. What if the rapture really is happning this year, and God is hitting us with everything he's got. Only his arsenal of "end of the world weaponry" is about as dated as a scifi movie from the fifties. When I picture the end of the world, I picture the sky raining fire, rivers turning to blood, etc. Maybe God has (dare I say it?) lost a step. He's like an old pitcher who used to throw 99 mph, but now he's only working with a curveball and an 89 mph fastball. Maybe he can only muster a tornado here or an earthquake there*. Ice that arm big guy.

Anyway, it was my first earthquake. I'll always remember it, and most likely associate it with vicodin and having my wisdom teeth removed (and hopefully that SWEET 7:1 round I had last night). All in all, a solid portion of my life has been immortalized.

*I originally went on a tangent with alot of salary cap metaphors, but I decided against it.

Goodbye Button, Goodbye Temp

Yesterday I was doing my usual prep in the bathroom stall at work. This includes, selecting a toilet that isn't covered in piss/other weird stuff (once it looked like someone had thrown tobacco all over the seat, not chewing tobacco...rolling tobacco), then wiping down the seat with toilet paper and flushing the paper towel down the toilet.

After wiping down the toilet seat, I flushed the piece of toilet paper I had used to clean the seat with. As the toilet was flushing, I unbuttoned my pants. I watched as a tiny black object jettisoned from my pants, and went right into the toilet, knifing its way towards the very center of the toilet bowl and into oblivion. My first thought: "Oh man, I've never seen lint move like that". Then I looked down and saw that my pants were missing their button. One depressing moment of realization later and I'm finishing up my business. Luckily my belt is enough to hold my pants up (barely).

I headed to the mailroom to tell my friend Mailroom Temp the hilariously depressing event that just occured.

A quick aside: I started temping with Mailroom Temp. We worked on the most tedious project I've ever worked on together. We would stand for 8 hours a day, scanning documents that we knew no one would ever look at again. We would eat lunch togehter almost every day (we were similar ages and had similar intersets). We gradually became friends. Finally I got hired (another long story), and he got moved to the mailroom.

So I walk into the mailroom, huge smile on my face, laughing at my own slight misfortune. I immediately notice that Mailroom Temp is in tears. Apparently he took Tuesday off because he was sick, and he had just found out that because of this (presumably) he had been fired. Needless to say I did not tell him my funny button toilet story.

Rabbit Rabbit

Totally nailed saying "Rabbit Rabbit" this morning. Problem is I was awake past midnight and I was talking. Does this mean my "Rabbit Rabbit" doesn't count? I am very frustrated and will most likely have an unlucky month.

Jokes I've Made at Work That Were Way Funnier Than Anyone Acted (Part 1)

Today in an important meeting someone asked what unit of measure a "Tsubo" was. I correctly guessed Japan (I watch a lot of Jeopardy). The follow up question was: "What is the basis for the measurement"? My response was: "The length of a samurai sword?".

Silence.

Turns out a Tsubo is actually the length of a rice mat, that has a uniform length. In other news, no one thinks I'm funny.

Soreness

I am devastatingly sore. It's not a surprise to me. I know the reason why: I played soccer for the first time in over a year yesterday. I expected to be a little sore, but I didn't expect to be awkwardly hobbling around the office today. So I ask the question: "Hey my body, what gives?"

A little history for you: I used to be pretty out of shape. Even now I wouldn't consider myself an Alpha Male phyiscal speciman. But I ran a 5k with relative ease three weeks ago, and I regularly run on a treadmill. And not the "regulary" that people tell the dentist when they say they "regularly" floss. I mean I run for about 30 minutes (sometimes more) about 3-4 times a week. And yes I stretched before and after playing soccer yesterday.

I feel like this (sans diaper).

You'd think that I'd be safe with regular exercise and stetching. But sadly I am hobbled and bruised and the first game of the season is tomorrow. I feel like a freshman that's so excited for a party on Friday that he pregames himself into oblivion and vomits himself to sleep before he can even leave his dorm.

I did some quick research and yes, there is in fact a wikipedia page for Muscle Soreness*. It's pretty boring stuff. I'd reccomend reading this wikipedia entry instead:  Most Confusing Concept Ever.

*Accidentally typed "Muscle SCORENESS" about 15 times.

Video Game Review: Track and Field

I first stumbled upon Track and Field while perusing the (at that point) small number of Xbox Arcade games available for download. In the early days, there weren't a lot of third party software companies making games specifically for Xbox Arcade. Instead, Xbox chose to port old arcade games to fill out the game roster. How they got the rights to a game that was originally released for NES, I do not know. All I know is that I wanted to buy a new game, and I didn't feel like handing 60 dollars to a chubby kid with a beard in a sweaty Gamestop polo. Are they all virgins? I'm not sure, but it would explain why every summer I was refused a job at Gamestop. I'm convinced the fact that I had seen a vagina was working against me.

Track and Field is essentially an arcade version of the Olympics. The gameplay is simple. There are six events (yup! A full six events!) that all require you to run and then perform an action. In order to run you wiggle the joystick back and forth as fast as you can. To perform an action you press A (on the Xbox). Each event has a qualifying time or distance that you need to beat.

Hey look! I qualified!

The first event is the 100 meter dash. If you have a pulse and one functioning thumb, moving the joystick back and forth quickly enough to qualify in under 16 seconds is easy. The next two events are basically the same thing: the long jump and the javelin. You wiggle the joystick as fast as you can, then press the action button to jump or throw before the fault line. The longer you hold the action button down for, the greater the angle of leaping or throwing. Each of these events gives you three tries to qualify, but chances are you will have no problem qualifying on your first try during these incredible easy events. With the first three events under your belt, you're probably thinking "Hey this game isn't so hard, I wonder why I spent 1000 Microsoft Points* on this...". I can measure my life in terms of the time before I attempted the fourth event and the time after I attempted the fourth event. Nothing was ever the same.

The fourth event is hurdles. The mechanics of the event are nearly the same as the 100 meter dash: wiggle the joystick a fast as you can, timing your jumps over the hurdles with the action button. In theory its simple, but if you make one mistake (ranging from not running fast enough between hurdles, knocking over a hurdle, slightly catching a hurdle on a jump) you are pretty much guaranteed failure. So you're probably thinking "Oh that's not so bad, if you don't qualify you can always try again!". You would be wrong to think that. If you fail to qualify at any point in Track and Field, you have to start over from the beginning. Again, this doesn't sound so bad, but the first three events are maddeningly easy, lulling you into a false sense of security until you get to the hurdles. Compacting this problem is that the long jump and the javelin are identical events, with three tries each. Meaning on average you need to play the game for almost 10 minutes real time, before you get a single chance to try the hurdles again. Most likely you will fail, and need to start over.

This guy has two more hurdles to go, and he's already .25 seconds too slow to qualify.

I've beaten the hurdles well under 10 times (exact figures are hard to come by, as I was high a lot in college). The fifth event is the hammer throw which requires you to spin around as fast as you can, throw a hammer in the right direction and throw the hammer far enough to qualify. You get three tries, but I've never qualified. I had to look up what the sixth event was because I've never played it. It's the high jump. Chances are I'll never get to try it. Chances are you'll never get to try it either, unless of course you are Asian, or have surgically attached Asian hands.

It may sound like I'm complaining about Track and Field, and that I hate the game. Nothing could be further from the truth. It's incredibly addictive and challenging. I recommend it for any stoner out there, or anyone with kids. Or you could be neither (like me) and still enjoy it for some sadomasochistic reason. The safeword is "Vintage"

*Upcoming rant about Micrsoft Points to come. Hopefully featuring an interview with an expert on the subject, lets call him "Beardy"



No way man! She was cute!

There comes a point in every man's life when he learns he is completely unable to verify whether or not a girl is attractive when he is black out drunk. The lesson is learned early for some, others never learn it or are aware of it and simply choose to ignore it. I had an experience when I was 21 years old that should've made me realize how completely incapable I am of judging how hot a girl is whilst blacked out (a story deserved of its own post). I didn't learn my lesson. Not until 2 years later, at my 5 year high school reunion.

I was playing wingman for a friend who was persuing some former high school crush. I should also mention how reluctant I was to attend my own reunion, fueling my need to get as drunk as possible. So there I am, drunkingly talking to this girl's friends, slowly losing any sense of the world around me, propped up only by large quantities of adderall. When suddenly one of the girl's friends that I hadn't noticed before starts hitting on me hard.

It's dark. I'm wasted. I'm into it.

The predictable happens and we end up making out HARD at the bar. I'm told it was a sight to behold. Luckily it was at the end of the night, in a PACKED room. So the event went mostly unnoticed (I hope). Unluckily, someone snapped a candid of us together. In my defense, she looks cute in the picture.

I have very little recollection of the rest of the night. All I remember is "coming to" in her apartment (which was near the bar), realizing I needed to get out of there, and planning to go on a date with her. Did I mention she was a virgin? A blessing in disguise because int he moment I didn't want to take her virginity. And after the fact, I'm grateful my penis was nowhere near her.

More predictability followed. I accept her friend request, realized how big of a mistake I made, and made sure I never saw her again. My big idea of going on a date was quickly brushed under the table (I was looking for girlfriend material at the time), brought up only by my more malicious friends. My friend's attempts with his high school crush petered out (although they were wonderfully aided by my wingman skills - which I will never let him forget), and I never had to see her again.

For the most part I have no regrets. When you're blacked out and on drugs, you do a lot of things you normally wouldn't do. Isn't that why you put yourself into that state in the first place? But I know that, at least for myself, I will always need a second opinion on any girl I'm hitting on. And like any exercise, its much safer with a spotter.