Let it Ride

Since I now have a regular, real-world, grown-up type of job (despite not having anything to actually do at work) I have a full corporate benefits package. This is fascinating to me. But while medical and dental insurance are rather lame, the real excitement comes from something called the 401(k) Savings Plan. Have you heard of these things? Probably not, if you don't have a high-powered corporate job like myself. So, what happens is, I put a tiny part of a paycheck into this account, and then when I'm old and wrinkly, I get like a billion dollars. AND, apparently if I stay working here for over a year (eh...), then the company actually starts putting money into the account as well. All this is awesome in itself, but the coolest thing of all is that I can easily access this account via the internet, and can change all sorts of things, like which funds to invest in and all that. This webpage even has pie charts. So, while I'm grasping that the grand concept is to pick something and then in ten years when I have fake limbs and a flying car I can possibly adjust things to correspond with long-term shifts in the market (like, say, the rising price of flying car stock), the problem is that making changes is way too easy, and so far I'm adjusted my 'portfolio' three times in the last six days. But today I see that since yesterday I've hit the jackpot and made 95 cents, and I don't know how I'm going to be able to stop doing this, it's better than a damn smokey Indiana casino anyday. If anyone has any hot tips, let me know, but I only have 12 things to pick from.

I'm starting to get the feeling that I'm not meant to be a red wine drinker; I seem to get headaches quite easily. This week we finally saw 'Sideways,' and while it is a very good movie and not overrated at all (as I had suspected going in), the one thing it does do is give the viewer the desire to drink many many glasses of wine. Last night I opened the last bottle in the apartment, a 2003 Shiraz purchased (ahem, for $2.99) on a recommendation by our favorite Chicago tour guide, which was quite tolerable after ample time to 'breathe.' Problem is two glasses spread out over 2 hours shouldn't give me a headache, even a mild one. Granted, the headache could have come from a number of sources, but this isn't the first time this has happened. Unless it's the low quality of the wine that's doing it. And white doesn't seem to give me any trouble, really. I think further research is in order before I come to any realistic conclusions. In other alcohol-related news, I think I'm going to be making the switch from my current stock of vodka and tequila to a steady diet of bourbon. I'm going to be calling it 'my brown period.'

So, I'm about to start a new book, which one of my Xmas gifts should I pick next: One Hundred Years of Solitude, Don DeLillo's 'Underworld', The Best American Non-Required Reading 2004, or a non-fiction book called 'the history of god'?

I Heart Huckabees is on DVD, go see it and let me know what you thought.

I have decided to have a great weekend. Please do the same.

I'm 545 more cups of soda away from breaking even.

So I'm back to my clock-watching phase, yesterday during our weekly meeting (which I enjoy since it takes up at least a half hour of my day, and occasionally we get to do fun word puzzles) we watched a intentionally hilarious video called 'how to achieve succes in management' or something along similar lines. The video basically told us to come in early and stay late and work through lunch. I was inspired, so I talked to my boss about more work to do, she gave me a project, involving excel spreadsheets of course, and it kept me more-or-less occupied for the rest of the day. So that was a welcome change, but today I'm back to the same old task of looking busy. Sigh.

But, that's not exciting. Let me talk about my weekend instead. It held a great deal of promise, but Friday night I ended up not seeing 'sideways' because it wasn't shown at the U theatre after all, probably because it's still making cash-money in regular expensivo theatres. So stayed in. Saturday we spent a solid 45 minutes cleaning the apartment, made pork chops and mashed potatoes for dinner, and prepared for a night of fun and excitement. Where, you ask, does one go for excitement? Especially when the person in question leads such an exciting jet-set lifestyle?

Indiana, of course.

Apparently the hoosier state is only 20 minutes down the road. And they make you pay 2.50 on a toll bridge to enter the majestic land. Our purpose was to go to a casino. After a few wrong turns we ended up at the fabulous Horseshoe casino in Hammond. All the casinos are located on boats, though I doubt any of the boats are sea-worthy. Anyway, we parked and went in. M had the great plan to wait in a line for 15 minutes in order to sign up for the exclusive 'Player's Circle' club card, for the purpose of getting some free shit; I had a whole 'Hard Eight' type of plan in my head in seconds. Unfortunately, this plan never materialized, due to the presence of my new nemesis, the State of Indiana Gaming Commision, as represented by a 55 yr old 'lady' in a security uniform. For the second time in my life, the severe crack in my driver's license, along with my boyish good looks, have deemed me too great of a security risk to be allowed into an establishment forbidding juveniles. So, after a few minutes of protest, I left the premises, vowing to add the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, IN to my growing list of places to boycott because they questioned the validity of my indentification.

Here, in its entirety, is that list:

1. Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, IN

2. Great Dane Pub in Madison, WI

#2 on that list I've been boycotting since the evening of my 23rd birthday. So far, the boycott has been a complete failure, as I have spent somewhere around 200 dollars there since then. But, it should be noted that I have not spent any money there in the past 12 month period. It took awhile for the Montgomery, AL bus boycott to get rolling too.So, there wasn't much else to do but keep on driving down I-90 east, since we had paid the toll and all. A few minutes of sulking later, we spotted a billboard for the Trump casino in Gary, IN, which was a few miles away. Not to get my hopes up, I scowled the whole way there, all the way through looking for a parking spot, taking the elevator, and walking to the entrance. Though, I did manage to use this time to practice my horrible Donald Trump impression, mostly just lifted from the Conan sketch where just the mouth moves ("This parking lot is gonna be huge: the biggest, most labyrinthine, gold-plated parking lot that anyone has ever seen!"). Of course I was admitted, and giggled with glee at the chance to lose all of my 'hard'-'earned' money. Well, it certainly didn't take long. I'm not financially secure enought for the 15 dollar minimum bet tables, so it was slot machines for us. Most of our time there was spent walking around (there were actually two boat casinos right next to each other, so we jumped ship from Trump's after we both instantly lost ten dollars (on nickel slots) in about 15 minutes) and trying to drink enough free soda to cut our losses but we both sat still long enough to lose about 32 dollars apiece, all of which in a rather steady, constant decline. We left, I got my first and hopefully last taste of White Castle, and we drove home by midnight. Now that's excitement.

Power Rankings

This is only funny if you've been on the ESPN page as much as I have.

A thousand things

The new Spoon album is out in three months (May 10), but if you know the right people and grease the right palms you can listen to it right now until you can buy a copy of yr own. (key word = BitTorrent) I've heard most of the songs live in the last year or so, listening to it now for the first time.

Beck, on the other hand, is officially past his prime. He had a good 10-year run, better than the Velvets.

Last weekend I bought myself an extravagant gift (hint = rhymes with 'Bly-pod'). I'm not going to stop buying CDs, and it's impossible to put even half of my collection on it, so i'm just using it for all-time personal favs (that reminds me, gotta put the first VU album on there) and to test new things that have been hanging round my hard drive for a year. (lots of early bowie, Hunky Dory rules, plus finally listening to Gang of Four (1981?), new one called Bloc Party, lots of Galaxie 500, the elusive first Gossip LP, the Microphones 'the glow pt. 2', about half of the Annie record, brian eno, the new furnaces EP compilation, the last new pornographers, thriller (fuck you corey feldman), tender trap, ted leo) . I spent most of last week at work secretly researching my impending purchase, came away with more knowledge than the bearded moron at the Apple store, but works fine anyway, though the headphones hurt my ears sometimes, all my good ones are too big, but after 4 days I've been wishing the commute was longer.

Speaking of the work, I now have officially have health insurance. Also have received my second paycheck, without incident. Still awaiting various official mailings that should have came weeks ago however. So work is good for money, but not much else aside from giving me red eyes and headaches. And boredom, like I said I waste a large amount of my day, I don't really have any real responsibility (yet?) and my 'training' has been completed, apparently, leaving me to do a few mindless tasks interspersed with 3 hours of surfing the web (must have hit N-Rohan.com about 75 times a week looking for an actual post of substance only to be continually disappointed). I'll start posting from work I guess, I've gotten quite adept at quickly switching to an excel spreadsheet if someone's walking by.

Now, obviously, I'm not very happy with the job status at the moment, I don't enjoy being a lazy slacker (except from 1998-2001, those were great times), but I really don't have much choice at the moment. If I'm assigned something I do it, and in the meantime can find certain things I can do to keep myself semi-occupied; but I'm not working hard at all, and most days seem less like working and more like attempting to make time go faster. I've heard I'm getting lots of responsibility in the next few weeks, enough to make me cry myself to sleep and hate work with a passion. So that should be nice.

So otherwise, fancy downtown restaurants the last two nights have been great, but nights out leave me exhausted, especially when surrounded by doctors. No offense, doctor-readership. This morning I was a wreck, foolishly decided to counter with office-brewed coffee, which was the worst coffee-based experience I've ever had and certainly not how I had hoped. I'm just now recovering, 12 hours later.

Tomorrow I'll finally see 'Sideways.'

Well, new Spoon (album's called Gimme Fiction) is good after one listen, their longest record, as unclassifiable as their last. I read somewhere (somebody's blog??? some webzine reviewing 'around the sun'?) that suggested Spoon's core due of Britt Daniel/Jim Eno should produce the next R.E.M. album. That will never happen, but it's actually kind of awesome to think about.

Afternoon Breaktime

Read this and be amazed and appalled, but mostly appalled.

And yes, I am at work, it's one of those kind of days. Which, actually, everyday has been so far: one of those kind. There's much babbling to follow, stay tuned. Also, Happy Day of Extreme Lonliness or Ritualistic Sex.