Pure Sugar

My mother recently unconverted some long forgotten original short stories illustrated and dictated by me aged 5-7. They are really strange, yet laughably insightful about what was going on in 5 year old Jake’s head.

In other news, I have somewhat to some degree snapped out of my existential dilemma. I mean, Tanya is right, now’s not the best time to be entrepenuerial. On the other hand, what I want to do (alternative/renewable energy) is pretty much the hottest industry IN THE WORLD right now. Ce la vie, if it isn’t a bubble it will be there in a year or two.

I do feel a strange compulsion to migrate east, in the general (specific?) direction of NYC. I spent a lot of time there as a child and have always wanted to live there as an adult, just for shits.

I am going to do my best to write here at least once a week, but potentially more frequently than that.

World Affairs: Did you know that 6 hours in the sun can pretty much completely purify putrescent drinking water? For some reason, this is not well known in the world. That’s a goddamn travesty, and my little blog and it’s 4 readers at least are now informed. It’s called SODIS and it rocks. Big ups to my roomate Mike for pointing that one out.

This just in: I told someone at work today that I have “re-loaded my business development glock clip”. Discuss.

I think I’m having an existential crisis. The title was just a hook to grab your attention.

Ever since I graduated from college I’ve had the mostly singular goal of “make more money. 3 Years out, I am by and large an enormous success. However, it turns out that I think I’ve stumbled onto an important bit of knowledge. When you work hard at something you don’t care about or that you at least aren’t sure is really making the world any better of a place, success becomes less tangible. Mathematically, it looks something like:

1/√(your hopes and dreams) * (what you’re willing to do for money) ^(how much money you’re getting paid)

As you can see, you success is only diminished by a fractional square root of the sum total of your hopes and dreams. This is because the world makes money important for you as you get older. Someone really screwed the pooch on that one. I blame Ronald Reagan.

Put more simply for people who don’t like math, I’ve graphed the equation above on two simple axes, happyness and money.

The money axis is taken to represent relative salary in a job for which one holds no real passion or personal esteem.

The happyness axis should be self-explanatory, but then so should the advice of all those old people who told me my whole life to “find something you love and do it every day”.

For the longest time I told myself that those people who gave me that advice had their own slough of problems and were stupid dumb old hypocrites. Who takes advice from hypocrites?

Obviously what I needed to do was find the highest paying job I possibly could, then be smarter than everyone around me and get promoted. Throw in a few hostile promotion demands and eventually some job upgrading, and voila! Now I have disposable income that could support any number of small destitute villages around the world. I’m not Angelina Jolie or Madonna, but that’s partly because I don’t share any of it.

For the last 3 years, I believed all of that shit. I even leased a Lexus. But I think it’s finally wearing me out. My new job is even more money with even smarter and more capable people. I’m not working from home and there are people to interact with. By and large I should be thrilled. And don’t get me wrong, I know million or even billions of people would be envious of what I have and have accomplished. The world’s a crooked place and I was born smart and ambitious, leaving me no choice but to ride the happyness curve illustrated above.

But going back to all that whiny, feel good advice I ignored and even scoffed at…

What it’s taken me 26 years to realize is that those people I looked down on for telling me to follow my dreams but didn’t themselves weren’t telling me to because they heard it on TV and it sounded good. They weren’t trying to be duplicitous or fool me into thinking they dreamt about being whatever BS thing they were their whole lives.

It’s taken me 26 years to realize that they were, at least in some cases, warning me not to make the mistakes they did.

Back to the drawing board.

I know it’s a couple days early, but I love you mom, this one’s for you. Below is the email I sent when my former job unexpectedly shut off my BlackBerry costing me all of my contacts and messages:

Straight, to the point, feel the love. I really miss them. My mother, who just a few years ago could operate no device more technologically sophisticated than a rotary phone, immediately replied on her iPhone with the speed of a 12 year-old school girl texting her BFF: (i blanked out the numbers, stalkers)

I was so proud of her newfound and hard earned technological prowess I wrote back:

Thinking I had the last laugh, imagine my surprise when my mom actually came back over the top, and took it to the end-zone:

She out technologied me. Mom, you’re pimpin’ truly never drags. Happy Early Mothers day.

To Whomever it May Concern,

I, Jake R. hereby offer my last will and testament, in the event that this broke ass US Airways flight doesn’t make it to Las Vegas. I will board soon.

US Airways, you frighten me. Sometimes you lose my reservation, sometimes you check my bags only halfway, on purpose, when I have a connection. Often times, when confronted with these shortcomings, your management actually defends these actions. For example,
(at the baggage counter in SFO)

me: Hi, I’m looking for my bag. I just flew in from Philadelphia.

baggage troll: FEE FIE FOE FUM! I hate your fucking guts and your dad’s guts too!!! snorglesnax!!

me: Maybe you could look it up with this little baggage tag they gave me in Philidelphia to track it. That’s what the nicer-than-you-but-not-by-much-man over there said by the carosel…

chief baggage troll : Don’t you come in here disrespectin our employees. Who do you think you are, Chris MOTHERFUCKING Martin?! (this was a direct quote, I believe she was referrring to the lead singer of Cold Play…who is blond.)

me: I am very sorry, I was just hoping you could maybe help me find my bag.

baggage troll: HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAS TO ASK FOR YO TICKET JACKET?!

me: Just once sir (as I hand the singly asked for ticket jacket over)

baggage troll: Oh yo bag is in Philly. Anythin else you want?

me:……….
(30 seconds pass by, I think I was visibly having tremors from the rage that was rising and increasing every moment from my inner most depths)

me: Well, I don’t think I can reach it from here with my hands, Philly is pretty far away. Any idea why my bag, which was checked in Philly to SFO, never left Philly?

baggage troll: Listen dude I already told you what you want to know, why you still here trippin’?

me: Please have my bag delivered to my house, here is my address and $20 for your trouble. You’ve been extremely helpful.

baggage troll: I got you dog. We straight.

In the event that the not so impossible should happen, say a mechanic forgets to tighten a wheel lug nut, or gas both engines, or decides that little itty bitty crack over the wing has “made it this far”, I feel compelled to set down my last wishes.

I would like first and foremost to leave my bed to my sister. I stole a mattress of hers in college once to sleep on and a friend at the time got wasted, passed out, and apprently became incontinent upon it. Aja, I’m really really sorry. This new bed is pretty nice. Also, the new one really hasn’t seen much action, so no worries there.

I would like to donate my mp3 music collection to my roomamte Mike. I never hear you listening to music, and I think maybe you need some in your life. Also, I know you have a special place in your heart and auditory cortex for Super Furry Animals. Enjoy.

I would like all of my clothing donated to the first bum anyone can find that has a really fun sign like “will work for meth”, or “if you think gas is expensive, try living on Jack and crack”, or “I will kill George Bush for a dollar”. Higher priority should be given to any transient missing a limb. The more the better.

Lastly, I wish to leave my organs, kidneys, liver, lungs, heart, eyes, and ligaments in a tissue bank to be used by memebers of my family as they see fit. This may seem altruistic and a little gross, but that’s how much I love my family. I also have no money to leave them, and nothing else really of value.

Also, I’m hoping someday a relative will have me cloned so I can sue the shit out of US Airways in the future for killing me in the past. I know they would let me do that in California, you can sue anyone for anything here. If you’re white. Or Jewish. If you can pass for both like me, you don’t even have to sue, you can just demand things.

I want to be buried in loafers, Gold Aviators, and my best overpriced designer hoodie. I still maintain that I invented the look and it’s only fair I be buried in it. I KNOW…the Unibomber may have have had a hand in his police sketch with helping come up with the hoodie/aviator/i dont know how to shave look, but I added the loafers and SOLD IT like it was my bitch for the last 5 years. Thanks for bein’ a mensch Ted.

In conclusion, on my tombstone I would request the following to be written:

“FUCK YOU US AIRWAYS”

Signed,
Jake Raden
May 8th, 2008

Witnessed by:
LeVonday Reese,
Guy who sold me magazines and trail mix near gate B3 in PHL International.

I’m sitting in a hotel in a suburb of Philadelphia. It’s a Hampton Inn. I had to come here to my company’s headquarters after I quit my job for a new better one to tell the people here all the same things I’ve been telling them from SF for the last 3 years: you guys suck, I deserve more money, and someone at a another company is going to recognize that soon. Soon, in this case, being 2 weeks ago when I got a nice offer from another company and resigned.
Back to beautiful Morrisville PA…The accommodations are hard to describe. Off white walls, lightly stained wood furniture, and typical hotel room lamps scattered seemingly at random.
It’s how I imagine someone would choose to decorate a room if you opened up their skull, poured some bleach and Novocain in, then stapled it back up and asked them to shake their head to mix thoroughly. Post-Lobotomy or maybe PoLo for short.
I went to Kohl’s after work because I forgot to bring anything to wear on my business trip to the Spa and Fitness Center here. More on the Spa and Fitness Center later…
So I bought some shorts, a t-shirt, and a pair of 60$ sneakers at Kohl’s. I know I know, why would I buy 60$ shoes for one night in a shitty hotel when I have perfectly good sneakers at home?
Well it’s not really fair for you to ask that, I mean how do you know I have perfectly good sneakers at home?
Well, you were right, I do. But I bought them because when you’re alone in a weird small remote place, without any real options to do anything except work out, and you don’t have anything to work out in, sometimes you do crazy things. At the counter when I was checking out, the women handed me a piece of paper with my receipt and said:

woman (I think): “Here are you 10 Kohl dollars. You can use these next time you’re at Kohl’s.”
jake (me): “But I have been to Kohl’s exactly once in my life previous to this. And I was 17. That means this has to last at least 9 years to even have a statistically significant chance of being worth more than the $.005 I could get recycling it”
woman (I think): “It’s good for 12 months”
jake (me): “Can I just give it to you since you work here, and you can totally use it for yourself. I’ll give it to you for 5$!”
woman (I think): “You’re an angel! Don’t let my manager see!”</font>
And that’s how made 5$ today I wasn’t expecting to make.

So really, I guess those sneakers were only 55$. Moral #1 of this story: There really is such a thing as a free lunch. If you spend 55$ dollars first. And you don’t mind explaining low grade statistics to cashiers. And there are morally bankrupt Pennsylvania cashiers Johnny on the Spot with a Linc (a five dollar bill).

So back to the Spa and Fitness center. Please realize, this is not the name I gave to the Spa and Fitness Center, nor would I name it that if given that exalted responsibility. I would probably settle on or around

“Concrete and Mirror Room with Treadmill and Small Trampoline”.

I think this how they make superheroes out of 14 year old girls in the Ukraine. If all I had to look forward to was doing gymnastics on steroids in a room like this I could probably learn how leap small buildings, rotate my torso 360 degrees, and win Gold fucking medals at the Olympics too. But I digress. There were no steroids and no Olympics in my future.

I ran for an uneventful amount of time and for an uneventful distance. People kept walking by the Spa and Fitness Center and looking at me with either disgust, confusion, or a psychotic combination of the two.

I’m so glad to be leaving this place tomorrow morning. The only people I talk to when I’m here are people from work or the crazy people at the front desk. And I think the front desk people might all be raging meth addicts. They checked me into the hotel in like, 8 seconds last night. My workouts are confined to a glorified solitary confinement unit. The water from the tap in the room tastes like dirt. Like actual real dirt from the ground. I had at least 4 different conversations with people from work today about Deer as pests in their yards.

How do people starve in this country if we have places where Deer are PESTS in backyards?

By the time I walked back to my room from the Spa, I had the overwhelming urge that I was breaking down. I felt like someone HAD poured bleach and Novocain into my skull. I knew I needed to get out of this place. It was ruining everything I love and hate about me, which is maybe the worst possible thing I can imagine having to go through and be cognizant of. I have a name for this affliction, and its name is: Pennsylmania.

May the morning come swiftly, and the cab for the airport punctually. Or else I might just go drown myself in the office park pond across the street with all the Geese and water dyed toxic-chemical blue. What a fitting end it would be, dead in the water, just like my soon to be ex-job, my soon to be ex-company, and this whole damn suburb.

Lil Wayne - Lollipop lyrics

So I was listening to music on Imeem (imeem.com) today and I noticed that you can embed lyrics to your favorite songs. The above is not my favorite song, but it is HILARIOUS.

I’m particularly fond of the dounble entedre, “shorty says im so sweet she wants to lick the (w)rapper”

Brilliant.

I was doing my usual internet perusing today and I stumbled upon this little gem:

http://www.sadcom.com/labels/index.htm

It’s a website devoted to endangered and extinct Soviet lemonade labels. Now if you read any of the text you’ll see that the English is less than perfect, making for some really fantastic reading. I believe “lemonade” is really meant to say, “independent, additive/chemical free soft drinks”. But I’m just stabbing in the dark here.

Honestly most of them are beautiful, and they all share a certain Soviet, future-looking (think Jetsons) quality that is extremely endearing. I’m thinking I could make a quick stack of cheddar if I went to cafepress.com and made T-Shirts for each label/brand, hipsters and their ilk (me?) would buy them faster than I could empty my Paypal account.

Honestly though, the commentary is really the magic of the page

1. At one point a bold header makes reference to “Last mogicians“. It leads into a succinct but moving account of how the good, natural, local sodas have been pushed out first by Pepsi, then Koke. It’s heart-warming to see that issues like Globalization are not philosophical doodles on behalf of the overpaid US Bourgeoisie. Everywhere you go, the small, local, independent is suffering for the sake of the corporation. The hive mind is pushing out the self interest of the individual. Soon all we have to choose from is Coke and it’s varietals. Globalization unfortunately seems to mean for us homogenization of EVERYTHING that can be commoditized. Soda, clothes, cars…for now.

Unrestrained free market economics runs a serious risk allowing EVERYTHING to be commoditized and at some point then homogenized for economies of scale and efficiency. It’s just not efficient to have choices and differences and decisions to make. It’s efficient to live like ants. Nameless, anonymous, and singularly-focused.

Oh well. At least it’s a nice day out.

Today I went to the gym, and it was awesome. I was filled with great strength and vigor and my muscles were thoroughly blasted. I was feeling good, like (Gov) Arnold in an orgy good.

Then I went to the grocery store, searching for clean protein, a meal worthy of my pump session. I decided on a Yellowfin tuna steak, and an avocado mango salsa. No homo.

As I was leaving I realized I was almost out of smokes at home, and that the tobacco cabinet at Safeway abides. Then I thought to myself,

“No self, it won’t bother you not to have them, plus, they cost money and spending money is not as fun as not spending money when it comes to vices.”

And I left. When I got home I promptly smoked my last cigarette. A few hours later, I was smoking a bummed cigarette with my roommate, and I realized the foolishness of my earlier decision.

For some reason I managed to convince myself at the grocery store that, if I just didn’t buy cigarettes I wouldn’t notice they weren’t there. Now this it turns out is a ridiculous notion. No one who knows me, and especially ME, would believe that. I’ve been smoking for 5 years. I’ve never really quit for more than a week. Most recently, I tried to quit 2 weeks ago. Obviously it didn’t take. So the idea that I could simply quit by NOT BUYING THEM, is just ludicrous. I’ve tried lozenges, gum, cold-turkey, you name it, I’m still smoking.

But shit, what a beautiful idea. That anyone could quit smoking if they just chose not to buy them once.

On a separate note, I met someone today who was invited by a particularly scummy guy to go to, now get this, an Iron Maiden concert. I bet he drives an Iroc, too. In the end, I guess Life imitates Art. For referemce, listen to “Teenage Dirtbag” by Wheatus.

I heard another a good story today. My roommates friend was dog sitting for a family friend for an older dog and it died on her watch. After the expected awkward news-breaking and kvetching, the family asked her to take the dog (dead) to the vet for cremation. Apparently, she acquiesced.

Now this girl did not have a car, and thus (this is too much) has to take the bus. With a dead dog. In her infinite wisdom, she put the dog in a duffel bag. ‘Natch, how else would you take a dead dog on a bus?

On the bus, the grimreapper was PUNCHED IN THE FACE, and mugged. The mugger, on this unlucky day, stole the duffel bag and made off without contest with a dead fucking dog.

Unbelievable.

Lost called, they said they want their street cred back.

This show is unbelievable. I watched the first and second seasons religiously, and completely missed 3. Now I’m catching back up since the season premiere, and it’s R.I.V.E.T.I.N.G.

If you aren’t keeping up you should really consider going to ABC.com and watching the first few episodes in high-def for free, streaming. Then start watching it on Thursday nights. Then it will blow your mind like the first time you ate pizza, really stoned.

Men,

Do you like Jerking Off and Live Music (and also Ireland)?

Then I have a website for you!

Sperm For Tickets

Why Ireland is in such desperate need for skeet I cannot imagine. It’s a great idea, I guess (?), but why do they print on the tickets “Spermfortickets.com”. Last time I checked that’s a pretty huge violation of patient privacy. IE the ticket itself is advertising that a person in fact donated their sperm to be at the concert.

Now I don’t work in the business of making sure people don’t break Patient Privacy laws (actually I do), but that seems a little…ballsy? Exhibiting testicular fortitude?

Maybe the Irish are trying to compensate for something acting like that. Like that they have to get sperm from other places to make babies.