Fortune Cookie

Normally I don’t take much stock in fortune cookies. I know that there is a whole group of people randomly concocting vague “fortunes” designed to strike a chord with anybody likely to crack open a fortune cookie.

And it would probably go a little something like this in the fortune cookie writing headquarters:

“Hey Bill, check out this one I came up with: You find beauty in ordinary things, do not lose this ability.”

And then Bill would be like

“Yeah, listen to this one: A thrilling time is in your immediate future.”

And then they would both laugh and be like “Suckersss. Someone out there is gunna think they’re special.”

What a bag of dicks fortune cookie writers are.

Anyways, I usually just read the fortune and add “between the sheets” to the ending because it makes me giggle. For example, “A thrilling time is in your immediate future… between the sheets.” Hehehe! I’m also convinced that fortune cookie writers have this in mind when they write the fortunes because they always seem to fit so well together! Or maybe I just need to get my mind out of the gutter…

However, these are desperate times, I’m in dire straights man, and other such overused clichés (that's actually not even true, I'm just being dramatic. I say this at the risk of making the whole premise this story untrue. Suck it, I'm trying to be heartfelt.) So, returning from that tangent, the point is that I decided to take one fortune cookie to heart.

And it was this: If you’re not happy with what you’ve got, how could you be happy with more?

And I was like, okay little Asian cookie, you could have a point there. I really should be happy with what I’ve got. I’m young, and life is hardly ever dull because my friends are some of the craziest people I know, and I have a whole network of people who love me and will put up with my whining. But most importantly, I have so many possibilities. Because the one upside of being unemployed and uncertain (besides endless free time to do whatever I want) is the boundless potential. Just like a stone on the brink of a cliff has the potential of high velocity, so do I, on the brink of many possibilities, have the potential of great things.

Oh and also, "If you're not happy with what you've got, how could you be happy with more?... between the sheets." HAHAHA :)

Potato Chip Factory

I am so immature. Seriously. Is it acceptable to be this immature at 23? You know what my biggest fear/largest source of anxiety is right now? A job.

And it’s not like I’ve never had a job before. Oh I’ve had plenty. But this one is different. It is going to take my life over completely. This party lifestyle that I’ve had a death grip on for so long? It will pry my fingers loose and I will see late drunken nights in the middle of the week and packing up to go on a weekend adventure on a whim just fly away like some asshole butterfly.

And this is why: This business operates from Tuesday to Sunday so I only get Mondays off. Monday of all days. And on top of that, what I’m going to be doing ain’t all that great. I basically am going to be harassing people at Home Depot about their kitchens and trying to get them to sign up for free consultations. Yeah, I’m that asshole.

But hey, I need a job because I want to travel and continue to party someplace cool like Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires. (You don’t have me yet adulthood!) And plus I should have some sort of usable skills for future job endeavors. Because, let’s face it. I have a college degree but didly squat when it comes to career-esque skills. Who wants to hire the lazy college grad drunkard? Yeah, nobody.

So this is what’s going through my head: Oh my god I need to get a job because I have to save up to go travel but it has to pay well otherwise I won’t be able to save because I’m really bad at that and another stipulation is that it has to have some sort of leadership quality so that when I attempt to get a job I actually want, they might actually want to hire me because I have to do something eventually the party can’t go on forever oh my god but I wan’t it to, why can’t it because I need to grow up one day and I have to see things and do things and be happy.

Welcome to my mind. On top of this, my best friend tells me that at her job at a medical office, old people are always coming up to her and saying

“Live your life while you’re still young! Do everything you want to do now, BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!”

And I’m all “Shit dude we need to get out of here. Let’s go to South America!” But to get to South America we need money and to get money we need to have a well-paying job but all the well-paying jobs suck your soul dry… and around and around goes the vicious circle.

Anyways, I decided to unload all of this to my mother who responds thusly:

“Did you know I once worked in a potato chip factory where I had to sit all day and pick out the bad potato chips from the bags?”

And at this point I’m completely stopped in my tracks and the vicious circle has stopped spiraling for the time being because all my energy has now been concentrated on how funny it is that my mom had a job like this once and wondering why she never told me such a hilarious detail of her life and questioning what a “bad” potato chip is because I’ve never met a potato chip that I didn’t like.

And is that even a real job? In my head it just looks like a bad comedy skit. But apparently there’s a pretty sizable amount of potato chips that are deemed unfit for consumption and people have to sit and pull those out. And how do they even train people for such a job? Do they have pictures and charts and grafts depicting what is considered a “bad” potato chip? Are there categories and different levels of “badness”?

Anyways, my mom was once one of those people but now she has a job she loves. So the moral of the story is that no one is ever stuck with a shitty job. If you’re not into charts of bad potato chips, move onto the pretzel factory, right? And then make those fucking pretzels your bitch.

Imma Punch Your Lights Out

I'm pretty sure I'm the only person on the planet, yes, ON THE PLANET who still listens to regular ol' FM radio. Most cool kids nowadays have their fancy-pants iPods or Sirius or XM radio or whatever you want to call it. Something where their shit gets blasted straight to their cranial from fucking outer space. But no, not me. I've got good old fashioned FM radio where all the stations decide to conveniently take commercial breaks at the same god damn time.

But that's not the only thing I have to contend with. No sirree. If you've ever listened to FM radio (and I'm sure you have despite all your fancy gadgets) then you know that radio stations love to choose
one hit song and play it on a loop every mother loving five minutes. And if you're like me and can't stand the sound of yourself driving (what does that even sound like? I've never paused to find out but I'm sure it's a terrible desolate sound) then you'll suffer through the looping song, even if you hate it.

The current flavor of the week (or weeks shall we say?) is Ellie Golding's Lights which I have to admit I really enjoyed at first. Like maybe the first 6 fucking loops. And I'll admit I was totally rocking out in my car, singing words that I don't even know. What is she saying anyways? Because this is how I sing it: "You turn the lights out shorty turn to stoooone, shine me when I'm alone. And so I tell myself that I'll be strooong, leave me when I'm gone. Keeps on calling calling callingggg... etc. etc. you get the picture. I realize I could just google the lyrics but where's the fun in that? It's like a god damn puzzle where I get to change the pieces every time.

Anyways, after hearing this song a few hundred times while driving around Orange County applying to jobs, I start to get irritated and I'm all SHUT UP ELLIE GOLDING OR IMMA PUNCH YOUR LIGHTS OUT.

And then a few loops later I'm all rocking out to it again (it's so freaking catchy) and analyzing half understood lyrics.

What do you suppose she's talking about? WHY THE FUCK IS SHE SO FASCINATED BY THESE PARTICULAR LIGHTS??? She's totally on drugs. Someone get Ellie some help!!!

OR she's seen extraterrestrial lights and she's all GIVE ME BACK MY FUCKING GROWN UP VOICE YOU ALIEN FUCKERS, I SOUND LIKE A CHILD!!!

Which is why she wrote the song in the first place so she it could go on satellite radio and the song would get blasted into the cranials of the alien voice thieves who made her sound like a fucking baby so she's calling calling calling them to get it back...

...This is all getting very complicated. So I end with this. Write a new fucking song Ellie Golding.

The Destruction of Mechanical Pencils

 I hate pencils. I hate the feeling of scratchy graphite against paper, I hate having to sharpen them, and I hate having to erase shit. Pens are the way to go. They're so smooth, you can just roll your words right onto that clean, white paper. What's more, I hate mechanical pencils because of the infuriating noises they make; like screeching banshees.

It's even worse when trying to take a test. As I'm attempting to concentrate on questions about test-retest reliability, true experiments, and validity, all I can focus on is the sound of the maniacal screeching of the mechanical pencil in use next to me.

"Okay," I think. "You can do this. Just don't pay attention."

I try to cover my right ear with my right hand so I can't hear the deafening noise that I'm almost certain is killing dolphins somewhere, but this proposes a problem in that I am right-handed and therefore need my right hand to take the test.

I lift my right hand away from my ear just to test it out. EEEEEEEEEK SCREEEEECHEEEEEE EEK EEK EEK FUUUUUCK MEEEEEE. Oh those poor dying dolphins.

I start day dreaming about snatching the demonically possessed pencil from the girl to my right and excersizing the fucking demons out of it and then snapping it in two, letting its graphite life force spill out of it only to be stomped on by my boots.

"Muahahaha!" I will laugh maniacally with my fists curled and raised to the heavens in a vengeful gesture of justice while the girl weeps over her fallen comrade and fails to finish her test because she has no writing utensil and no one will lend her one because of her abuse of utensil noises.

My classmates cheer and raise me up and I am given an award for saving dolphins.

And then I realize I've spent precious minutes contemplating the destruction of a pencil, look down at my own noiseless pen (pens are the best!) and finish the fucking test to an orchestra of screeching mechanical pencils that I start noticing all around the classroom. How am I the only one that notices this? Whatever...