Nihilistic Insomnia November 6, 2009
Posted by troyjen in humor.Tags: dreams, humor, insomnia, naked, narcolepsy, nihilism
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How did I go from being a recreational narcoleptic to an insomniac?
I once fell asleep on the Subway…..Sound normal to you? Maybe, until you realize I was standing up at the time, catching myself just prior to my face slamming into the floor…..Pretty troubling until you realize the increase in my narcoleptic symptoms was roughly correlational to my decision to take my relationship with Johnny Walker to a higher level.
Ok, fast forward to the mucus filled train wreck that is 2009. Now, instead of borrowing all of my wakefulness from Juan Valdez (my alertness line of credit as it were), all of a sudden I need a REM stimulant? I mean I know I’m getting older, but I always thought the “men” in menopause was meant to be ironic.
So, when you are involuntary awake at say 3 AM in the morning, its a great time to learn more about who you are. But, because my inner self has a restraining order against me, I go online instead. And if you think freaks are on twitter during the day, try checking out hot topics after the witching hour when the moon is full. Scintillating conversations that make the universe as described in the HBO show “True Blood” not only seem realistic, but preferable.
On the plus side, I don’t really miss dreaming. Every dream, every time, there I am, naked as a jaybird, usually in a very public place. At the movies? Naked. In the mall? Naked. At the high school reunion? Naked. Skydiving? Naked (the last one is by far my favorite btw). While initially entertaining, eventually the plot line becomes a little predictable – which of course requires me to sarcastically critique my own dreams – which I’m betting is not good for my mental health…..what’s left of it anyway.
So, this is what the future has to offer. Sleepless in Indiana. Even more hours to explore the depths of the abyss which can only be achieved through complete and utter boredom.
Well, at least I’m not naked.
Abusing My Good Name October 27, 2009
Posted by troyjen in humor.Tags: humor, ranting
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Can you contribute to a conversation without speaking? Can you give approval to an idea you haven’t heard? Can the Redskins still lose when its a bye week?
Apparently the answer is yes to all of the above – ok maybe not the Redskins one but its hard to imagine them winning in any circumstances.
In my little telecommuting slice of heaven, a bizarre unexplained phenomenon has recently risen to the level of blog worthy…….people have been dropping my name in the odd places and in unexpected ways. I think they think of me as a Brand, like using “Kleenex” instead of “Tissue”, “Coke” instead of “Cola”, “Crocs” instead of “Dorky White Guy Shoes”…..
“We ran this past Troy and he concurred”. Really? I would assume the phrase “ran this past” would indicate you talked to me about it, sent me a note, IM’d me……something to indicate I had some idea what you are talking about.
“I’d like to thank Troy for contributing to this project.” You would? While I appreciate being thanked, it would mean more if I actually had contributed i.e. provided some input or direction at some point…..unless osmosis counts.
Here’s the best one…..”According to Troy…..” apparently some people know my opinion without ever having asked it. Who knew sniffing print toner could lead to the development of mental telepathy via telecommuting – or in other words telephony telepathy?
Oh, and it goes without saying, in all the aforementioned cases I violently disagree with whatever point of view they are putting forward. I don’t know what they are thinking…..like maybe it will lend them street cred if they pretend a sarcastic downer is “with them”. As if people would say “Troy distrusts all things, people, scientific fact etc……if he buys into this, it must be true – depressing and morose, but true.”
Do they really think it will never get back to me that they dropped my name inappropriately? Because, as soon as it does, I have to send some urgent note correcting the error, which of course, causes even more churn.
On the other hand, maybe I am looking at this the wrong way. Its clear that my life is essentially jumping from one existential crisis to another. Maybe outsiders know me better than I know myself? They know the “True” or ideal me, not just the symbolic form representation I think of as me. In their Socratic quest for truth they have discovered my inner idiot, which happens to agree with everything they have to say.
So, I guess there is a positive in having your name dropped inappropriately so many times that you lose all credibility…..actually, not sure what I think about this…..I’ll have to ask them, make sure I get it right.
Sight for Sour Eyes October 16, 2009
Posted by troyjen in humor.Tags: gas permiable, ken kesey, nihilism, sarcasm, sight
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I saw the….well…..if there was light, I would have seen it.
Yesterday I just upgraded my eyes from rabbit ears to high def. Doc had to shift me to gas permiable contact lenses because my corneas were no longer roundish. Thus…. no more glasses, just sanded off hockey pucks that require a miniature plunger to remove – vision unplugged.
I think the prescription might be a little strong…..my laptop is taking on Dali-esque properties (of course, that could be driven by my continued allegiance to Ken Kesey). I’ve now moved from Apple 2E to the hyper-real……and amazingly am still a sarcastic nihilist (can’t decide whether to go with sarcilist of nihilcastic).
Ok, so visual clarity has some yin and yang…..for example, some new observations:
- That’s what my eyes look like? My glasses actually made my eyes look less buggy – sort of a reverse SuperMan effect. Now my creepiness is on full display. Of course being creepy didn’t hurt David Letterman’s chances with da ladies….and…..um…..ok, sorry just threw up a little in my mouth.
- A dork, without glasses, is still a dork.You can take the boy out of dungeons and dragons, but you can’t take dungeons and dragons out of the boy.
- Indiana clear is just as boring as Indiana blurry – before it was just boring, now its vividly boring.
- My wife is hot – ok I already knew this but I just like to rub it in.
- That ball was clearly fair. I mean I was pretty sure it was fair when mostly blind, now I’m really sure. Stevie Wonder knew that one was fair. Should they really let Yankee fans umpire games?
Of course, like Proust said, the times you struggle through trying circumstances are the times that you grow the most. While not being able to read street signs was difficult I was able to discover my inner essence – which basically an unbearable darkness, that if ever unleashed would envelope the world with sarcastic indifference and a touch of whimsy.
On second hand, maybe it would be better to ignore my inner essence. Finally, I am seeing clearly.
Blogging So Good Its Scary! October 2, 2009
Posted by troyjen in humor.Tags: consumerism, Halloween, humor, macy's, puns cannibalism
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After deep introspection and thoughtful analysis for an extended period of time – at least two minutes (after that my inner, check that outer, child took over and started watching SpongeBob reruns) I have come to a startling discovery that should shake the very foundations of the retail establishment in in land of the free credit.
Macy’s is evil!
Like a moment of satori, the nefarious intent of the consumerism god, with its all seeing eye hidden by a star, is abundantly clear. It wants nothing more than to control our very existence, forcing us to unwillingly purchase useless items utilizing the “holiday myth” to maximize our hard earned credit limits.
That’s right, I said it. Holidays aren’t REAL. They are just a clever marketing scheme perpetuated by the Khakis laden overlord, to drum up sales.
Case in point……my wife usually goes to the Macy’s White Flower Day sale. Anyone know what “White Flower Day” is? The only “White Flower” I am aware of (not much of a metro-horticulturist) is the Poppy……and while the Poppy certainly is impactful both as an economic engine and a mind altering agent, I hardly think it deserves a Holiday.
Ok, so what I find eye rolling is not so much the abuse of Holidays to promote reckless consumerism, but more how marketers feel like somehow if there is not a Holiday related pun in the ad, we are not going to understand the linkage between buying a new car and say the Declaration of Independence (Freedom to shop).
And, the king of a marketing pun Holidays is Halloween……hands down.
- Prices so good its scary!
- Join us at the performance fleece Spooktacular!
- These prices are Frightening low!
- Open early, for all good little boys and ghouls (my personal favorite)!
Look, I miss a lot of things because I have a Twitter attention span…..but can someone clue me in on what the connection is between Old Hallows Eve and purchasing power? There’s just something about horror, blood and gore that incites within me the Pavlovian urge to acquire DearFoams. And notice how these marketers have an OED, obsessive exclamation disorder. Now I am not a grammar king (my kingdom for a conjunction), but I have been led to believe that there are other punctuation options.
There are a lot of other companies cashing in on this trend, but using a more subtle approach. For instance, Intel Inside could be considered pretty chilling if they were inside a who, instead of a what. What if Intel was inside Glenn Beck? Talk about ghoulish.
Microsoft has the slogan I’m a PC, which needs no additional Halloweenification. Essentially they are saying “I am the living dead.” C’mon, its obvious. Bill Gates has been a zombie for years.
Ok, one more. The KFC slogan “Finger Lickin Good” is an over-the-top shout out to either cannibalism or rage disease. I mean, once you start at the fingers, its hard to just stop there……according to Lays potato chips, you can’t eat just one.
Ok, that’s enough silly sarcastic bile for one day.
Plus, the length of this post is frightening!
Blue Screen Ponderings September 24, 2009
Posted by troyjen in humor.Tags: blue, blue_screen, humor, microcrap, nihilism, OS2, rant
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Blue Screen, smilin at me, nothin but blue screen, can I see.
Nothing brings on the blues faster than Mr. Blue Screen. Its like waking up from magnificent dream only to realize you still live in Indiana. That’s a tall cup of reality bites. Its sorta like a digital version of Maslo’s hierarchy of needs – if you can’t boot, nothing else matters……ok, Scotch still matters, but nothing else does…….alright, maybe football.
Don’t you, step on my Blue Screen shoes.
Part of the hilarity of this blue period, is the amazingly clear error message telling you to cleanse your BIOS (excuse me sir, I hardly know you) or to take action to prevent caching, because apparently checking is preferred (they don’t accept American Express).
To be fair, it did tell me that the “savrt.sys” driver was malfunctioning. Now lets pretend for a minute that I don’t know what that is……if that were the case, that might not be helpful information. Good thing I was pretending to be more more knowledgeable than I really am and just kept deleting things from safe mode until something worked. That’s right, I’m a techie.
She wore Blue Screen velvet. Bluer than blue screen was the night.
Ok, ranting time. I hate almost everything Micro-crap produces (except for excel…..even a cooler hits black jack every once in awhile), yet my life is totally dependent on their disfunctional product working at least well enough for me to log on. Its like that bad relationship in college where you break up but still share a condo. You hate “it” but still have to deal with “it” every day.
When is a company that has some idea of the concept of quality (i.e. the motorcycle maintenance variety) going to build an operating system I can switch to? Old time IBMers (big blue screen) will remember Merlin, aka OS2, which I still think was superior but for some unknown reason, was dropped so we could focus on….um…..ok, don’t know why we dropped it.
And don’t throw that Mac stuff at me. I’m hooked on PC (I finally was able to break myself of my phonics habit). Oh and my friends in Mountain View, the Chrome OS sounds like a good idea but show me the code baby. Ideas in the clouds can thwart a blue sky, but not a blue screen.
Devil with a Blue Screen, blue screen, blue screen, devil with a blue screen on.
Lets take this to a more ridiculous and irrelevant level. What if on occasion life handed you a blue screen? For instance, what if one day you woke up, were 40, couldn’t see well, had mysterious digestive problems, and lived in Indiana. Would you 1) take proactive steps to fix you situation or 2) blog about it at a feeble attempt of leveraging dark humor through sarcastic indifference?
I’d recommend the path of the bemused nihilist…..don’t let the fact that no one likes me dissuade you from taking this highly beneficial route. This aint the road less traveled, this is the road people don’t like to talk about at parties. To make it work, you can’t just like the downer, you have to BE the downer.
You ask so many questions, what answers should I choose, is it schizoid paranioa or just existential blue screen blues.
And thus, the ponderings are complete.
Healthcare, Education, & Random Jokes September 15, 2009
Posted by troyjen in humor.Tags: education, healthcare, humor, joe_wilson, jokes, Kanye_West, Serena_Williams
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Healthcare and education have been in the news a lot lately. As luck my have it, I have had many experiences with both this year – mostly of the negative variety. And, since this is MY blog, I’ll only share the bad ones….I need to keep up my rep.
Recent visit to the family doctor aka middle management:
- Dr: Yept, you’re sick. You definitely need to see a doctor.
- Me: You are a doctor.
- Dr: And therefore you should listen to me when I tell you to see a doctor.
- Me: So why did I come to see you?
- Dr: I don’t know…..You like being weighed and sitting on butcher paper maybe?
Recent visit to the opthamologist:
- Dr: You can’t see because you have a scratched cornea
- Me: How’d that happen?
- Dr: (shoulder shrug accompanied by gutteral sound implying a question mark)
- Me: If you don’t know what happened to my eye, how can you fix my eye?
- Dr: Have you ever heard of winging it?
- Me: Heard of, yes. But right now I’m more interested in what I can see.
Opthamologist 3 months later:
- Dr: Your eye didn’t heal correctly. I can’t fix it your sight with glasses
- Me: What are my options.
- Dr: Ever considered squinting?
Recent visit to the Catholic School:
- Teacher: Your son is disrupting Bible story time.
- Me: And I couldn’t be prouder.
- Teacher: Most 5 year olds would feel awful that they disappointed the teacher. He seems unconcerned
- Me: I was hoping sociopathic tendencies would skip a generation. On the other hand, its really the only legacy I have to pass on.
- Teacher: Since your obviously A moral, why would you put your son in Catholic school?
- Me: Hello? I have a blog. I need material.
Imaginary Conversations:
- Joe Wilson: You Lie!
- Me: Did it really take you this far into the blog to figure that out?
- Kanye West: You really should have blogged about Beyonce.
- Me: I would but I put a ring on it 14 years ago…..so it would be a little belated.
- Serena Williams: I should shove this blog down your bleeping throat.
- Me: I have Acid Reflux. It would just come right back out….BTW have you met Kanye and Joe? You three should really hang out.
And thus, my ramblings are complete for now. The overall theme……a healthy disrespect for authority figures, and a fascination with public figures who don’t realize people are watching them. On the positive side, its good to know that there are people out there more uncooth than I.
It gives me something to shoot for.
Karmic Timing September 10, 2009
Posted by troyjen in humor.Tags: circle_of_crap, humor, karma, vicissitudes
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The comic tragedy that I currently embody, somewhat ironically labeled “the present” (this aint no gift) continues to spiral into a place mere mortals fear to tread.
At this point, further documentation of this immoral vicissitude of despondence and malice would be tiresome. Instead, lets just run some alliterations together……Barfing, blinded, befuddled, begrudgingly bored, belligerent and bellicose.
My new method of coping with the gradual disintegration of my self worth/image/existence is to look right, then left, click my fingertips together and voice in breathy overtones “Excellent……everything is going according to plan – Muwa hahahaha!”
In a moment of self pity, it might seem reasonable to those still holding onto the illusion hope to query “What have I done to deserve this”? (Pet Shop Boys circa when I didn’t have ear hair.)
Because I have the convenient habit of forgetting my own sins, of course I think the answer is nothing. But lets face it…..there’s no way that’s true. The closest I have ever come to a Saint is “Abbey Ale”.
There is a high likelihood that my current painful but funny predicament is an entirely justifiable karmic blowback. The unfortunate reality is that if I could remember the nefarious actions I have taken to deserve this wicked pain, I could at least bask in the knowledge that I had it coming.
And thus, my Steve Job’s moment. Patent this baby…..”Karmic Tracker 3000, yes you really did deserve it”.
We could build this massive artificial intelligent bot that would search all information available (blogs, twitter, arrest warrants, FISA wiretaps) and record every malicious act you have perpetrated over the last 5 years or so. Then, when something bad happens to you, you can look at all the bad things you have done and bask in the glory of the circle of crap……comfortable that although now you have to take it, at least you got to dish is out a little.
I’d love to see that on a bumper sticker!
Even Better Than the Real Thing September 3, 2009
Posted by troyjen in humor.Tags: ahh honey honey, drugs, humor, placebos, sugar
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In clinical drug trials, the point is proven over and over again……and like cockroaches and Brett Farve, it just keeps coming back.
While many drugs perform well in blind tests, one drug performs better than any other. The sugar pill – also know as Placebo Domingo (from the three fakers).
In fact, Mr. sweety recently outperformed prozac. Apparently people weren’t depressed after all…..just a little hypoglycemic.
The drug companies are in a panic because they cannot build a psychotropic that can outperform the brain of the average American Psycho (Christian Bale before Batman Began)
While dangling in the dystopic Disneyfied disaster (its devolving its dirigible, its delovely) that is American culture has made me the sarcastic, despondent, Morlock I am today, I still held on to a basic core set of beliefs……people are fattening, colon cleansers are yummy and drugs make you feel better. I never imagined that society would become so despondent that a grouping of Forrest Gump wannabe’s would create a new reality of bizarro world proportions, where fake drugs are better than real drugs.
Like Mulder said – they want to believe. Drugs are their real religion – if they take it, they’ll be cured, lose weight, enter the Matrix, etc. Not because the drug actually works (except for the Matrix one) but because they believe it will work. Sort of like “The Secret” for hypochondriacs.
Is this some sort of Baudrillard-ian prank to truly make Hyperrealism the standard instead of the exception? I mean, French philosophers are known for their sense of humor. Like the time Foucault dressed up like a Gorilla and pretended to be Kantian, mumbling on and on how it was a moral imperative to stick bananas up his nose….”and I categorically declare bananas to be yummy, ooh ooh, ahh ahh.”
Why, you ask, do my blogs always contain bizarre references to random philosophers? I majored in Philosophy – I’m gonna make that Diploma work for me – oh and I’ve been overdosing on sugar pills.
Where was I? Oh yeah, fake drugs.
What are legalized drug pushers to do? It will be hard for Pfizer to charge a premium for sugar pills (In this county, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the woman). And I think I speak for every parent in the world when I scream with vitriolic intensity – no more Cialis commercials.
On the other hand, we could leverage this to the hilt. Take Afghanistan (no one else will). What if we flooded the market with sugar pills and said they were Opium? The Taliban would have no funding source and we could crush them within weeks – or turn them into sugar beat farmers.
Oh, and a little shout out to the scrap book lovin, facebook embracin, Macarena dancin masses. If you like the fake drugs as much as the real drugs, don’t take either.
Except for the most effective drug known to man…..Single Malt Scotch. It cures almost anything….
As long as its chilled.
Are You Not Entertained?!?! August 28, 2009
Posted by troyjen in humor.Tags: blog, boring, humor, rennaissance man, tweet
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You bet I quote Russell Crow…..who doesn’t? He is the Renaissance man of our times (meaning he eats turkey legs cooked over a fire and doesn’t bathe often…..huzzah)!
So, while actively cultivating my social networking disease, a certain trend has become readily apparent. Whether its inextricably linked to the medium itself or a function of a little more management oversight than usual, it is undeniable that Web 2.0 has an Achilles heal……a hangover to its buzz, a Kevin to its Britney.
It can be really boring!
I don’t mean sorta boring, I mean really boring……eyes rolling to the back of the head boring. Holiday bulk letters “And Johnny finally potty trained” boring. C-span boring!
One of the main reasons I started blogging and tweeting in the first place was to escape the boredom of my e-mail “sea of red”. Now it appears to have crept into “new” media like a flesh eating virus consuming all within its path, making all that was once fun, dull. Sorta like non-alcoholic beer.
On the other hand, it certainly gives my blog new relevance.
Is my blog immature? Most definitely. Obnoxious and offensive? Probably. Occasionally funny? Hopefully.
Boring? Never! Or at least that’s the goal.
So that’s my promise to the blogging world. After reading my blog you may not be enlightened……..you probably wont be inspired……you definitely wont be more optimistic……..
But, as Nietzsche is my witness, you will be entertained!
