Yes, I'm Still Alive (For Now)

The issue with not doing stupid things with my life and making bad decisions is that I don't feel the need to do frequent blog updates. There's just not much drama to talk about. In addition, I'm able to get the everyday mundane things out of my system by having a great girlfriend who actually listens to me. Not all of my past posts were reports on the latest crazy escapade I got tied up in. Some were just regular old gripes about the shit that all of us go through, and I am able to vent that out every other night on the phone now. In other words, there's really nothing to talk about on this post either. I just hadn't been here in almost a month, and I wanted to write something.

I did watch WrestleMania a few weeks ago at my uncle's house, and it was very interesting because the older I get, the more in-depth I get into the politics of pro wrestling and who gets pushed to the front of the line and why. So I really watched this event with an eye towards what the future is supposed to look like in wrestling and what was going to happen at WrestleMania to advance in that direction. As a result, nothing that happened surprised me very much, except maybe the older ECW guys winning their match with the "New Breed" of stars (I just knew they would bury the older guys once and for all, but then they would have to find a new direction for the New Breed during the weekly TV shows, and it's easier to keep them fighting with the old guys). There was a lot of publicity about the match in which WWE Chairman Vince McMahon put a guy against the chosen guy of mogul Donald Trump, with the losing "billionaire" getting his head shaved. I even heard some folks convinced that Trump would be the loser because McMahon had too big of an ego to let his head get shaved. Well, what kind of ego do you think Trump had? And how could anyone with half a brain think that Trump would ever get involved in this whole scenario unless he was going to come out on top? When you see a huge celebrity involved in pro wrestling who you never would think would be involved, 99% of the time that celebrity will come out looking like a Mensa member because that's how you convince them to get involved--by promising them that they will come out looking smarter and sharper than the "rasslers." Plus, as much as I hate McMahon and what he's done to wrestling, I had no doubt from the beginning that he would let his head get shaved for the good of the business and to deliver the payoff for those who specifically paid the $50 to order WrestleMania to see McMahon or Trump get their head shaved as promised. To deliver a screwjob ending where neither got shaved would have been a horrible business decision and would have alienated any number of customers, so someone was going to have to deliver that payoff, and McMahon was the logical choice. On top of everything else, he was the bad guy, and traditionally the Big Match in wrestling scripts where things will be settled Once And For All goes to the good guy.

My job continues to create new guidelines and rules daily in an attempt to royally piss me off. The latest is to make us take our morning break and lunch separately because some people were abusing the ability to combine them and taking off an hour before quitting time. Well, the nature of our job makes it very hard to get up and take a break early in the morning because most of our work comes via FedEx and DHL and UPS early in the morning, and it doesn't slow down until maybe 12:30 or 1:00P. I mean, you can leave, but that's always made the people working with you look at you askew because they are working as hard as they can to get the mail processed in a timely manner, and there you are walking away. That's what made me combine my break and lunch, because it's been implied since I've started working there that to leave before your morning assignments are done is disrespectful to your colleagues. We all get yelled at if we have accounts that sent mail to us overnight and paid extra for it and the mail doesn't get done before that account's cut-off time. In addition, it's very hard to find something to eat in a half-hour in downtown Chicago unless you like swallowing food whole without chewing. We can't even bring lunch back to our desks because some fool got jelly or some substance like jelly on a piece of mail and when the image lab tried to make copies of that mail, the image machine got gummed up. So it's beneficial to everyone if we're able to combine our breaks and lunches. I actually haven't split mine up yet, even though it's been a couple of weeks since the mandate came down. I'm waiting for someone to have a problem with what time I take my lunch so that I can ask them why it's an issue. But our area is a bit of a mess right now, because our usual team leader is on maternity leave, and often we either have a team lead for the day who isn't very experienced and doesn't have time to worry about what time people are taking lunch, or don't have a team lead at all. This is an example of why it's so funny that for the last six months, I've been a member of the Q-Board Team, a group that gathers the production and error numbers and holds a monthly meeting with the entire floor talking about those numbers and what we can do to improve. Imagine, crazy, nutjob me, a responsible member of a J.P. Morgan Chase committee. If only they read this blog...but anyhow, I've still got some wild hairs, and if something happens or is mandated that I don't agree with, I have a hard time going along with the company line. In some worlds, the word for that is "asshole." But I'm sorry, if you're going to give me an instruction that doesn't make sense to me, and you don't give a good reason, I'm going to challenge it. That's not the way to go about moving up the corporate ladder, but I have a feeling that my attitude will be very important in other areas of life, and that's worth more to me. I'm smart enough to give the impression to those that matter that I'm going along with the plan. But sometimes taking my own path is the only option, such as a couple of months ago, when I had to be the watchdog who questioned a new method introduced that was incorrect. If there aren't assholes around like me to question things, we all could be doing our jobs wrong.

My health has been a bit of a problem lately. A few weeks ago, I woke up one morning and there was a sharp pain in my right knee, right on the top of my kneecap, like someone snuck in overnight and whacked it with a steel pipe. This coincided with a bad snap of weather, complete with rain, snow, and temperatures in the 30s and 40s. It got worse and worse, almost made me miss work, then went away after maybe a week and a half. I was supposed to go bowling with my family a couple of weekends ago, but at the beginning of the week, I woke up with a sharp pain in my left knee, at the top of the kneecap, like someone snuck in overnight and whacked it with a steel pipe. "Jacob" was in town for the Geek Convention, er, I mean our annual baseball fantasy draft, so this happened after three nights of dinner with Jacob and his friend, and I wondered if I had just been a little too active and twisted something. The weather was getting worse again as well. Also, the night before, I had a 1-lb. burger at Bennigan's, so perhaps it was a gout attack in my knee joint triggered by the mountain of undercooked ground beef. In any event, despite consuming several Aleve Gelcaps in the days leading up to the bowling outing, I decided to do the smart thing and not bowl, which saddened me because I bowl so wildly and out of control that some folks were really looking forward to seeing me. I hated to disappoint those who had not seen someone lift the ball higher than their head on his backswing before. I still attended and had a great time, though. But the thing with my knees was very strange. I don't want to go to a doctor now to find out what the deal was, because the pain is gone and the doc may not have any idea either. I have it narrowed down to accidental twisting that didn't affect me until the knee stiffened up overnight; changes in the weather affecting my joints; gout attack from something I ate; or someone came in during the night and whacked me.

Of course, the whacking thing is not viable, but perhaps someone out there (besides my exes) really does want to hurt me. Last Wednesday, I got a phone call on my home phone, from a name I didn't recognize, so I let my answering machine take it. My outgoing message doesn't say my name, and the message didn't refer to me by name. The message said, verbatim: "Told you nigger. I'm a chop your head off. Punk." No one has threatened me in any way before, so I'm 99% sure it's a case of mistaken identity and this guy would like to chop some other nigger's head off. Nonetheless, I've had my head on a swivel the last week. Hopefully, it won't be on a stick soon. The sad part is, my girlfriend pointed out, some dude out there is about to get his head cut off and doesn't know it. I'm just amazed that this shithead wasn't bright enough to block his phone number from popping up on caller ID before he started calling wrong phone numbers throwing out threats. Since my loved ones received the same e-mail of this moron's name and phone number, if I come up missing, the police will know where to start immediately. And that's no one's fault but his. If you're going to be a criminal, you really should have a criminal mind.