TATTOPITW
there are two types of people in the world – sometimes updated weekdaily

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I’m sure your zero friends are impressed by your income

People who tell you how much money they have/make within 2 minutes of meeting you

People who do not lead a sad, lonely life

Last night, I went out to a fun photography meeting that happens every other Tuesday.  These are great: you get to take pictures of 2 or 3 models that they hire, learn about how to improve your photo-taking skills, enjoy meeting new (and often strange) new people, and have a few beers.  But about the meeting new people part.  There are few things I enjoy more in life than meeting a new, interesting person, and there are few things I enjoy less in life than meeting an awkward, unfriendly, or otherwise ridiculous person.

So, here I am taking pictures and drinking a few beers and meeting people, having a good time.  There’s this one guy who is going on and on about whatever at a volume that is reserved for only two things: bingo night at the retirement home or making sure that other people around you hear your whole conversation.  I’m pretty sure the conversation was about doing something unfriendly or making fun of a homeless person, which is not funny unless that homeless person used to work on Wall Street.

After listening to this guy go on and on like a flock of angry geese, I’m nearby and decide to do the right thing and introduce myself to him, just to make sure I’m not judging him pre-emptively.  Here’s what I found out in the next 3 minutes:

• He works at a prestigious company
• Most people wouldn’t understand what he does
• He is mean to the people who work for him
• He makes several hundred thousand dollars, and his boss made $3 million last year
• He doesn’t have any more time for me

A very stimulating conversation, indeed.  I did let him know that I write a blog and was once offered $50 / month to advertise on my site.  I think he was impressed and wants to be my friend, but instead of waiting to find out, I went and took a pee.  Guess I’ll never know.

To me, the adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again,” is misleading.  I think it should be, “If at first you don’t succeed, try again, but differently.”  It might lack the ring of the original, but people with particularly awful personalities should learn that they remain friendless because of how they are trying. They shouldn’t stop trying, but they should definitely avoid trying again in the same fashion.  While I’d typically say on this blog that these people are destined to die alone with their cats, I’ll take a softer approach today:

They’re likely to die alone with their cats.

Bloggers are flakes, so you think

People who write a blog for years as a creative outlet

People who write a blog for 6 months and quit when they don’t get rich and/or recognized at the grocery store

So, what kind words you all have had for me.  Here I am, dragged into a Mexican prison on April 4, 2009, tortured, fed Comet (it does make you vomit), made to bag cocaine in a corrupt government operation in Juarez, and when I get home, what do I see?

Hey TATTOPITW, why did you quit on us?

Hey TATTOPITW, where did you go, you big loser?

Hey you big douche bag, did you run out of creativity with your stupid little blog that I can’t live without?

I hate you, TATTOPITW, and I hope you’re in a Mexican prison being fed Comet.

Well, aside from that last guy, who was strangely correct, you’re all jerks, but I read the bible 8 times in that small prison cell and I forgive all of you.

I want to get back to writing to get past those horrible memories, suppress those flashbacks of chickens trying to peck my eyes out and watching reruns of Perfect Strangers – you have no idea what you’d be willing to do after letting Balki Bartokomous penetrate your inner thoughts.

The face I wake up to, screaming.

So, while I wish I came back to a supporting fan base, I can accept your frustration and just ask that we all move on.  I might not be able to write with the speed and frequency I once was (I had one of my hands sawed off and that damn chicken did manage to scar my right eye), but I’m back in the States where Balki is unwelcome and my safety is assured.

I missed you all.  Thanks for the warm welcome.

Knowledge is fear

People who are blissfully unaware of the constant danger they’re in

People who have been educated into fear

So I’m going to let you all in on a little secret today.  I’m a huge dork.  Big nerd.  Yes, me.

Last night, I went to see a great show (Cut Copy) at a Masquerade, a venue here in Atlanta that is far less gay than it sounds.  It’s actually an old factory/warehouse where many people undoubtedly lost their limbs in the very threatening looking mess of gears and rope that apparently used to do something.  The building is old, very cool looking, but old.

So when a group like Cut Copy gets a crowd of a few hundred people jumping up and down in unison, the building – which is old, by the way – feels the stress, which was communicated back to me last night by the floor in front of the stage flexing no less than 4-5 inches underfoot.

The average person may say, “Wow, that’s really weird.”  To someone like me who took engineering classes in college, it says, “We are about to die.”

Here’s a look into my head, in the middle of a very good show:

Because my mouse drawing isn’t too good, that is me, mentally back in engineering class trying to solve for how much weight you can put on a beam before it breaks and we all die.

I found that a couple of beers could wash the engineering classes away, so I pursued that avenue.  Seemed to me that if someone nearby had known that I was having my own private Statics class in my head in the middle of this concert, they would have slapped me, and rightfully so.

I can imagine that lots of people go through this all the time: airplane engineers know all the things that can bring a plane down, train engineers know that we’re riding on 2 inches of faith, drug scientists know that if one molecule goes wrong in the batch of Advil, 100,000 people will probably die, trampoline engineers know that they’re probably going to kill a few children with their miscalculations – but consider it all worth it for those times when a cheerleader hops on for a try.

So where in your life do you know enough to be scared shitless?

Christmas is a time to tell people you’re better than them

People who write the Christmas update

People who hate the Christmas update, but read them anyhow, out of curiosity

Every year, I get more Christmas cards than I have friends.  When we send Christmas cards out, we usually go to Target, pick up a card that looks festive, and send them off to people who would not ask the question, “Honey, do we know this person?”  I think that’s a pretty sensible approach to pretty much all correspondence.  If a sender anticipates that a recipient may not know them, save the postage.

But of course, we all know that getting cards from people we hardly know isn’t the real crime of the Christmas season.  The real agony is in getting those “here’s what’s going on in our lives” letters that either accompany the card or replace it altogether.  You know, the 14-page account of every time the baby giggled, how the dog’s hips are feeling, and how the husband got lost trying to speak French to some shop owner in Bordeaux.  These updates exist for one reason only: to make you jealous.  During Christmastime, everyone is the Joneses.

Sorry it’s short this year, folks.  We’re just finished refueling the jet and we have to hurry off to Aspen.  To think, it was just 10 days ago we were in Hawaii for our short 7 month vacation.  Little Bobby just graduated Harvard and has started a hedge fund that has doubled every month since he began.  He’s going to sell it to the Japanese and use the proceeds to bring Mother Theresa back from the dead.  Hope all is well with your families, because we’re GREAT!  And as bad as it gets, we’re always better than you!

I am pretty sure that the precise number of people in this world that give a shit what is going on in someone else’s life is exactly equal to the number of women Richard Simmons has made love to.  Despite this, we all sit down with a nice warm glass of “I can’t stand these people” and read every page; every word.  We’re curious.  Has there been any failure in their life since their Shit-zoo learned how to tightrope walk last year?  Has their 15 year old who made the varsity football team last year turned to cocaine?  What about that little Korean girl they adopted – the one who won the state chess tournament when she was 5, and again at 17?  I thought I heard something about her and the tennis coach. . .

But no.  These essays of envy are not honest.  They don’t talk about when mom had too much chardonnay and told her children that daddy had erectile dysfunction.  They don’t talk about how everyone that was there on that family trip hated every minute of their time together.  That every second that passed between shots with the $4,000 digital SLR camera that stays in “Easy Mode” was spent yelling, complaining, and moaning about everything conceivable.  No, these are the Kodak moment essays that represent the true story through a rose lens:

“We refinished the basement”
- Tom spent 4 weekends cussing at the contractor while I wondered if I could trust these Mexicans in my house.

“Tina is adjusting well to college life”
- We haven’t been able to reach Tina in 4 months.  Her roommate said that she’s being released from rehab in a week or so.  We hope it’s a joke, but really aren’t sure.

“We’re loving our matching BMW convertibles”
- Suck it, my friends.  We’ve got it made, and you do not.

So I realize that it’s too late to change things this year, but for the love, give it a break next year.  Just go to Target and get a festive card, send it to people who know who you are, and let us all rest.  Then you’ll have two years to rub in our face when you sit down to figure out how to rhyme your entire Christmas card.

“Honey . . . what rhymes with learjet?”

Thanksgiving rubbed me the wrong way

People who buy luxury toilet paper

People who like to wipe their butt with recycled thumbtacks and glass shards

Well I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.  I really mean that, with few exceptions.

Thanksgiving is a time for family, a time to gain 5 lbs., and a time to go to someone else’s home for several days and and be tethered to their preferences instead than your own.  And nowhere in a strange home is preference more apparent than toilet paper.  When it comes to stocking the bathroom, there really are two types of people in the world: those who prefer comfort and those who feel that “cowboy walking” is a small price to pay to save $0.04 every 6 months by buying cheap toilet paper.

I was going to try to find a picture of a cowboy on Google, but figured pictures don’t get much better than this.  God bless you if you spend the holidays with a family who does this.

So now I sit here in my office recovering from a moderate case of Rudolph ass, just trying to make it through the day, but I can’t help but reflect on my experience.  During the trip, I actually considered changing my diet to minimize the number of episodes I would have to endure, but decided that was a little bit ridiculous.  I could make it through.

Well, I did make it through, and now I feel like cartwheeling everywhere I go to avoid the friction of walking, but it’s over and I’m back home to the stuff that the bears cuddle with in the commercials.  Which actually brings me to another question: why do Americans need bears cuddling with toilet paper?  Why can’t we just tell it like it is, like in the old “great taste, less filling” commercials?  Can we handle “superior absorbtion, less chaffing”?  Too much for our puritan sensibilities?

A world free of rabbis and priests

People who tell jokes from memory

Funny people

People who tell jokes are morons. If I hear another recited joke, especially if it’s one I’ve heard more than 3 times before, I am going to projectile vomit on the person telling the joke and then put the video on youTube.

Now, I’m not saying that the jokes themselves aren’t sometimes cute or entertaining. Comedians make a living re-telling jokes, but at least they wrote them in the first place, which is evident when you watch them perform: their personality is the joke and the words just convey this person’s [sometimes] brilliantly twisted view of the world. But people that read jokes in books or the Internet should be sent to whatever the modern equivalent of Australia’s leper colonies are. Yes, some of these jokes were funny back when How to Win Toddlers and Influence Morons was in its first publishing, but the people who tell them today make me want to go lava diving.

The funniest people that I know are funny because they give you a window into how they view the world, and it doesn’t involve rabbis, Moses, Jesus, black people, or hispanics. Ok, sometimes it does. But it’s not on purpose: there would be an actual rabbi in the story, not a hypothetical rabbi that runs around in his Israeli sports car that not only stops on a dime, but picks it up. Funny people often hear jokes they think are funny, and fail miserably trying to re-tell them, either because they can’t remember them, or they’re more aware of how awkward joke telling is, which appropriately ruins the atmosphere.

I love that we live in a special time where, if we’re unable to laugh with you, we feel comfortable living at you. So basically, if you’re a joke teller, know that we’re laughing at you later, when we’ve finished pretending to laugh at your joke and you’ve walked to the next group of people to re-tell the joke, having just felt validated by our feigned enthusiasm. The cycle will then repeat, and it’s even that much funnier, knowing that more and more people are going to go “ha ha, that’s great”, and then turn around to their friends, bug their eyes out, and make some sort of a “SAVE ME!!!” gesture.

I leave you with some actual examples of funny:

The Onion

Stuff White People Like

The Show with Ze Frank (no longer running)

The Fail Blog

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs (the gig is up here, too)

Ashamed To Be Proud

Adults who play video games

Adults who pretend they have stopped playing video games

Why is this post coming so late in the day? Because I was up until 3:00 last night. Was I boozin? No. Was I outrunning cops across the Mexican border with a truckload of drugs? No. Was I bitch-slapping a stripper? No. Was the guy on my television? Yes.

I am proud to be ashamed, or maybe ashamed to be proud to say to the public out there: I play video games. I am too old to play video games, but I do anyhow. What is too old? Well, that’s subjective.

I bought a new computer mouse that is specifically made for computer games. No, I’m not kidding. This mouse is pretty badass, but it does make me look somewhat friendless for owning it: it glows from a cool blue light inside of it, it looks like some sort of dinosaur-snake-head thing. The web site for these computer mice takes this shit very seriously. “Made for gamers, by gamers.” This is equivalent to a box of tissues saying, “made for people with runny noses, by people with runny noses.” I’m not exactly sure why it’s like that, but trust me, it is.

Available on their web site is a 60-page guide to the new “gamer.” It discusses things like how you should hold your mouse for different styles of play (like it’s some sort of kung-fu thing) and gives bios of professional computer gamers who use different mouse-holding styles. There are dozens of pages dedicated to how to become a professional gamer and a picture of a Korean kid who won $125,000 in a computer game tournament (but apparently used none of those winnings to purchase Proactiv solution).

It goes into more detail about how to hone your skills to become more accurate in games where you have to shoot other people and react quickly: “learn exactly how much mouse movement translates to movement on your screen. Practice by picking a spot on a wall or a tree, and then turning quickly and shooting. After several hours of practice, you should be able to hit the spot without difficulty.” Several hours of practice? These professional gamers can’t get through a meal without missing their face with their burrito and knocking over 4 cans of Jolt, but they can control the motor skills of their alter-ego with laser precision.

Time well spent, in my book.

Sick People Make Me Sick

People who come to work when they’re sick

People who stay at home when they’re sick

Ok, yes, I missed yesterday. Why? Because I am sick. And why am I sick? Because someone else who was sick came to work and rubbed their sickness all over our workplace like a cat in heat.

I know, I know; this is a very complicated idea that is incredibly difficult to understand: people get sick from other sick people. If you are a sick person, you can get other people sick. Let that sink in for a while. Actually, why don’t you let that sink in for a few days at home.

I think one of the big reasons that people come into work sick these days is because they are trying to be career-oriented. Once, a few years ago, I called in sick and said that I could still be on a conference call later in the day, but I wasn’t coming in. The hell-bitch on the other end of the phone responded, “If you’re sick enough to not come into work, you shouldn’t be on a conference call.” Damn, lady: I have a cold, not Parkinson’s.

People in the workplace have a distrust when it comes to sick days, thus people act like combat marines: “NO, I CAN PUSH FORWARD, I CAN GET THAT TPS REPORT OUT TODAY.” This misplaced toughness is just stupid and ridiculous. Yes, I think if you can still move your arms and fingers, you should aim to get some work done while you’re sick, but you don’t need to go to the office and contaminate everyone else, their families, their families’ workplaces, and on.

Well, I have to go. I have a tee time….doctor’s appointment. Yeah, Dr. Tee. He’s asian.

It's either a cold or instant death

A) People who go to doctors

B) People who use WebMD

So I have to call myself out on this one. I have found that when something is wrong with me, my first instinct is to say to myself, “self, you can figure this one out on your own.” To me, and many people like me, this means going to webMD.

Usually, a trip to webMD starts out pleasantly. I am greeted by a nice, cool color scheme and a friendly looking semi-transparent man that I can click on to identify my ailments. No screaming amputees on the other side of these walls, just calm aqua and taupe. I click on the arm, click on the finger, tell it that it tingles a little bit and then webMD goes into its back room to think about it for a few seconds before giving me the prognosis.

And my top results?

Aah, so that little tingle in my finger is just MS. How wonderful.

It’s unlikely that I will go and see a doctor at this point. I usually just go straight into prayer. And the good news is that it isn’t necessarily MS, it could just be a stroke or social anxiety disorder, so I don’t really need to worry that much.

After a few minutes of silent meditation, the tingling starts to subside, offering me the moment of clarity that I needed to realize that I was just sitting on my hand before the symptoms began. Did you know that sitting on your hand can give you MS?

In a funnier episode involving my wife, I was awakened in the middle of the night by a strange, irrational person who was convinced she had meningitis. There was indeed a stiff neck and a slight temperature. I asked this person who had taken my wife’s otherwise logical body what had given her that idea? Ignoring me, she fetched the laptop, entering her symptoms and spinning the computer around there on the bed, much like you see in a movie after there has been a “transfer of funds”: bacterial meningitis. Neighbors to this bad news were “whiplash” and a list of alternating conditions that kill / cripple you instantly (snakebite, sudden death syndrome, an E! marathon) and pretty innocuous problems like “you probably slept wrong, dumbass”. Of course, being the medical professionals we are, it is the serious ones that are most likely.

A cool towel or 2 later, the once 98.7 degree temperature had fallen down into a normal range (98.6) and the neck was starting to soften. Hyperbole hung its head and walked out of our bedroom, and by a strange miracle, my wife did not have meningitis that night.

webMD saved me that fateful evening. I would have almost certainly missed Conan otherwise.

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