socks, locks, and smocks

i need new socks.

i feel like a filthy hobo. these are my work socks and i have four more pairs identical to this one. it's not that i'm too cheap to buy new socks, it's just that i have procrastination issues. months ago what started out as a tiny hole, has now manifested itself into a full-on mummy shroud.

my reasoning is, as long as they continue to be all-business from the ankle up, i'm good to go.

i'm totally obsessed with "how do they do that?" shows. to my glee, the discovery channel is swarming with this type of programming. i'll stop everything i'm doing just to watch how an oreo is created. i could spend endless hours (i do in fact) watching how they make golf balls, water towers, surf boards, zippers, baseball bats, and padlocks.

i was thinking about this today and realized that as a child my favorite episodes of Mr. Rogers were the ones where he went to the twinkie or play-doh factory to give us a sneak peek behind the scenes. the mysterious curtain hiding the origins of my favorite things would finally be revealed!

i couldn't care less about henrietta pusscat or king friday VIII. stop wasting my time with this make-believe fluff and get me into that crayon factory. why does Roger's postal worker have to be so long-winded? he was always the one who stood between me and the soon-to-be-revealed secret world of lego manufacturing. as a child, i could easily envision the apex of my adulthood career within the four walls of the hershey complex.

complete contentment; eating chocolate bars till my stomach burst, getting to operate all those fun machines, wearing a hard-hat for no apparent reason, putting on those awesome looking white smocks with my name stitched on the chest. and when nobody was looking, i would swim in the giant vat of M&Ms. my co-workers would knowingly smile and look the other way; disregarding all health and contamination concerns - because they wanted to go next.

as an adult, my childhood dreams were effectively put in the garbage disposal when it was pointed out that mind-numbing/soul sucking factory work might not be in my best interest.

it was as true then as it is now; they never show the employees in the background of these TV programs. that's because nobody wants to see an octogenarian in a hair-net struggling to keep up with the conveyor belt. or the hungarian immigrant with a cigarette dangling from her crooked mouth as she inspects the quality of the Q-tips.

all social stigmas aside, there is a part of me that still secretly wants to work in a birdseed manufacturing plant. at least for a week.

new cars, new homes, new phones

why don't we get excited for people when they get new things?

you got a new $400 cell phone with GPS and a direct link to the space station? yeah for you. i can barely afford to pay rent.

you got a new baby? thank you for sending me three dozen identical pictures of your newborn sleeping. i just found out that the plastic water bottle i've been using the last five years is carcinogenic and has virtually eliminated all chances of me reproducing. but...congratulations. i'm happy for you.

you got a new car? awesome. i just paid $1200 to have my engine repaired last week. but i'm sure yours is fine.

you just got a dramatic new hairstyle? neat. i got a haircut last week and you didn't say a word. but really, it looks great on you.

you just won $400 on a scratch ticket? wow. lucky you. i've never won anything in my life.

sure, i'd love to look at a slide-show of your vacation pictures; even though i haven't had a day of vacation since i hit puberty. i'll just pretend i'm there in cancun alongside you and the dolphins. looks like you had an awesome time.

why don't we care? when we get something new we want to shout to the whole world! yet the instant we have to walk through someone's new home and hear them drone on about the wood grain of the cabinets and the top-of-the-line faucets in the bathroom - we shut down.

are we just selfish by nature or is there a hint of jealousy involved?

seeing others brag about their promotion only reminds us that we're not quite as far along as we'd like to be.

seeing others brag about their newborn only reminds us of our own ticking biological clock. and if we do have kids, we internally scoff - because they don't have a clue what they're in for.

why can't we just be happy for them? we politely smile and act amused when a friend shows off a new gadget or tells us they're engaged. yet the second it becomes us in the lime-light we completely forget how this appears to others and expect everyone to instantly become as excited as we are.

the facts are: the only people who care about your new baby are your parents and grandparents. not your office co-workers. not your mailman. not your casual myspace friends who you haven't spoken to in five years.

the only person who cares about your new car is the guy who sold it to you.

and the only person who cares about your vacation is you.

having said that, i just bought a new pair of jeans. a detailed description and corresponding photos are now in your email inbox.

white balls, worthless hands, and the letter G

since we saw temperatures in the upper nineties last week i decided it was time to put away the down-comforter and pull out the thin, white, $10 blanket i bought at Target last summer.

i put it in the washing machine - mainly to kill any spiders that may have been lurking inside. i threw it in the dryer and thirty minutes later i opened the dryer door only to have my face collide with a hot burst of air filled with thousands of tiny white balls. a myriad of perfectly formed cotton puffs spilled onto the floor and statically clung to every inch of my body.

in the course of a few hours all of my clothes, my entire bed, the television, the walls - all covered in endless drifts of white. it didn't help that i sleep with a 600 horsepower fan next to me. all night long i have cyclones of cotton particles swirling around my room. each morning i shake my head to get them out of my hair, which only creates more static charge, thus causing the puffs on the floor to come zooming through the air and cling to my eyebrows.

i open my laptop? hello white balls!

take a drink from my water bottle? hello white balls!

lodged between my incisors? hello white balls!

this week i've spent countless man-hours hunched over every article of clothing with duct tape wound around my hand, doing the little tap-tap-tap in a fruitless effort to eliminate them. and yet, the next morning they re-align and re-cover every piece of fabric i own. i've even attempted attacking the source of the problem. endlessly dabbing the hell out of the blanket; yet everyday it prosperously sprouts new balls. at some point shouldn't the blanket begin losing mass and falling apart?

the vacuum is worthless, it just blows everything around and creates more static charge; so i decided to do it manually. yesterday i spent my free time kneeling on the floor with a lint roller going back and forth back and forth. forty-five minutes later i had used up all the sticky on the roller...and only a third of the carpet was ball-free. that night, i came home from work and in blatant defiance the balls had all migrated to the swatch of carpet i had just toiled over all afternoon.

in fact, just now i had a white ball stuck between two letters on my keyboard. angrily, i flicked it so hard that the letter G on my keyboard went flying into the air. i went across the room, snatched the tiny black G square off the ground, and mashed it back into it's proper place. it was in this mashing process that i managed to break something.


the G key now sits all wonky and doesn't respond to touch. it's especially frustrating because i typically type around 90 WPM, and now i'm forced to type like a senior citizen. with my giant slab-of-meat hands I delicately try to reconstruct the tiny pieces of plastic; which is loosely equivalent to having a silver-back mountain gorilla attempt needlework. my useless bratwurst fingers were unable to correctly re-align the necessary components. there are several intricate pieces involved and now i'm flirting with the idea of just dripping crazy glue all over everything and calling it a day.



so for now i'm left with a rubber nub of a G as a thousand tiny white balls make a laughingstock out of me.