Your eyes are supposedly the windows to your soul or something like that....... mine also happen to be my soul's window to the heart; and how nourishing a view they offer. This log, at inception, is supposed to record the outpouring from my soul.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Epiphany - The Obama Diet
And yet, as shy as we are about exercising, I saw a whole house, congress that is, do an aerobics routine that must have been the envy of many a T.V. exercise guru.... sit up, stand, clap... sit, wait a couple of minutes... what did he say, oh! stand up, clap, sit... wait another couple of min.... and on and on for nearly an hour, he managed to get those creaky knees and elbows working in a manner such that would remove any doubt in anyone's mind that the American people aren't, as he claimed, the hardest working people in the world.
I mean, if O would make these speeches four days a week, congress would soon become a lean mean machine fit to lead the American people to a healthier if not necessarily wealthier future. That is, of course, if they take his example and go out and repeat his speech verbatim, with the necessary pauses and hand articulations, to their constituents.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Of Valentino, bankruptsy, and how not to fix your credit
What do they know about love anyway and the stupid things it makes u do... Like spend all ur money includin the rent and the car payment and the credit card's minimum payment due; to impress a girl who though she says she loves you for who you are and not the expensive dinners you buy her, or the limo u rented, or the diamond necklace from Zale's, she doesn't bat an eye as she takes it.....
"Awwwww! Baby, you shouldn't have" as she goes on to plant a sloppy wet one on your.... 'Oh come on baby, what do I have to do to get one on the lips?' You wonder as she fleetingly touches those delicate lips of hers; those lips whose image had you drooling halfway through yesterday's status meeting as u dreamt of them tracing their way from your forehead to your earlobe, down the length of your neck to that man-boob u've sworn to get rid off this year, something u'd forgotten about till u heard her lol-ing about with her bff over the phone the other day....
Ok back to those lips, as they hovered over what may in this case pass for a nipple then moved on down and made a bee line for that surging, passion filled.... Well, they didn't quite get there as your daydream was interrupted by the guy on your left wanting to know when the status meeting was supposed to end....
Now, she touches those lips to your right cheek and before u can tell her that u were hoping for more, she's off to the mirror to admire your money working for her, and u r wondering how the hell u r going to put off those pesky creditors and their collectors.
Speaking of which, my company... not the one I own, but the one that purports to put bread - in reality it only manages to put crumbs, on my table, recently announced that it was planning to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. No, they are not going out of business so don't go rushing those sentiments of good luck my way yet... unless of course they are accompanied by some lucrative offer of a six figure job doing little more if not less than what I am doing now. No, they are trying to restructure their massive debt....
I suppose, I should take out my notebook and take notes on how to do that since my ways of dealing with it, debt that is, over the years has been largely unsuccessful. I first tried the time tested method of paying the minimum due every month religiously, and worked beautifully until I hit my first financial crisis and missed a couple of payments... then all hell broke loose as the creditors hit me with numerous fees... late fees, neglect fees, over the limit fees and not to mention the tripled correspondence and thinly disguised threats... u better pay up or we will be reporting you to a credit report company..... Oooh!
What to do... well, I couldn't really manage to pay all these fees and the new increased minimum payments due, so I resorted to the next best method I knew, well I didn't know it but necessity being the mother of invention and all, I figured I should try and will the debts away.... and when that didn't work, I tried to ignore them.... I did not bother to open their love letters anymore... I was pretty sure they'd figure out I wasn't paying them and they'd go away.
And amazingly, it worked... for a while anyway, until some enterprising person in their collections department found out my phone number.... and some way or the other, the times when I was usually at home... and their assault would begin the very moment I stepped it in till I went to bed or left the phone off the hook.
"Hello... Yes, can I speak to Mr. Kh... ei... " Their hesitation as they tried to roll the unfamiliar syllables around their tongues would normally alert me and I was quick to tell them that Mr Kh... ei didn't live there any more... as a matter of fact there were rumors that he may have died.
That worked for a while... a year maybe, before somehow they caught on to me.... and when they did, they changed their tactics.
I had just gotten home one day when the phone started ringing... on checking the recently acquired caller ID screen, it stated that the number was 'unavailable' so I answered hesitantly.
'Hello!'
"Wassup Khay!" The unfamiliar voice asked cheerfully....
"Chillin man... what's going on?" I answered as I quickly flipped through the mugshots in my brain trying to mate the voice to one.
"Dude... You still owe us $360.00 for that V.C.R. that your wife's been bragging to her friends about.." The owner of the voice having dropped any pretense of friendliness.
"What are you talking about?" I ask bewildered and taken aback by the menacing tone his voice had taken on.
"Dude, you got our money and we ain't letting you off so easily.... You better pay up or I'll personally come down to your place and repossess it.
"Huh!" Lost for words as I frantically search around the room for a place to search the phone and this intimidating bastard.
"You still live on Hancock st, don't you?"
"Yes... yes," I answer hoarsely; my throat having dried up as my wits escaped.
I finally manage to hang up after being harangued for five long minutes by the pompous ass on the other side who was probably getting being paid slightly more than minimum wage to harass me. I did not have the heart then to tell him that I had pawned off the damn VCR when things had gotten real tight.
Eventually, after so many calls like that, when I could not take the harassment any longer, I went in search of help. And no I did not find it in the numerous debt consolidation companies that seemed overly eager to help me and claimed not to have a catch... yeah right. Instead, I found it in the story of one Larry Winters who I copied almost to the word the next time this guy called.
"Hello!" On picking up the phone one evening after a particularly gruelling day at work.
"Khay, we still didn't get our money from you yet."
"Is that a fact?" I asked testily.
"Yes it is." The guy answered and went on to read a lengthy statement saying how I borrowed the funds five or six years ago... a neat sum of $160.00 to pay for a brand new VCR from their store with a promise to repay the said amount plus interest charged at 7.8% per month over a period of 12 months. I let him go on to tell me how that money coupled with the late charges and accrued interest now amounted to well over $600.00 and when he had come to the end I asked him when was the last time he had been to their store?
"Just the other day..." He quickly answered, "why do you ask?"
I asked him if he recalled how much a brand new VCR was going for the other day when he went to their store.
"I don't know... anywhere from $70.00 to $250.00 ."
"How much for this model that I bought?"
"We stopped stocking that model about five years back... "
"O.K... so you want me to pay almost three times what it would cost me for a good high end VCR for an old outmoded one? What kind of fool do you take me for?" I asked him as calmly as I could.
"One who would take out a loan to pay for a VCR...." He answered just as calmly though I thought I could detect that he was struggling to suppress his laughter.
"Well... listen up and listen carefully coz I'm only going to say this once," Mustering the most authoritative tone I could come up with. Then continued before he could come up with a smart ass retort...
"Here is the deal son, you are not my only creditor. As a matter of fact if you all decided to come repossess your crap like you have been threatening to do this past few years, you would have to car pool coz there is not enough parking space in my neighborhood to fit all y'all... and even then you would be really disappointed coz I don't have none of that shit anyway. I sold it all last summer during a communal yard sale.... y'all should have come to it. There was plenty of posters all over my hood. I even saw one downtown."
"Dude!" His voice now full of incredulity, " Are you shitting me?"
"Watch your language young one, you don't want me to tell on you to your supervisor." I am thoroughly enjoying this by now... "As a matter of fact, where is your supervisor?"
"Just a minute sir...." And I could almost picture the poor bastard shaking his head.
"Hello sir!" A long minute later the Sup picks up the phone and starts questioning me about the whereabouts of the VCR. When did I sell it, why and who gave me permission before finally telling me that I still owed them the money.
"Well, you and a hundred others." I answered him before deciding to end this stoopidity once and for all. "Here is the thing, like I was telling my friend before you, I owe so many people so much money, I simply cannot afford to make payment to all of you. Usually I pay one or two each month and this is how I figure out who..... I put your names in a jar and on the first Sunday of the month I do a random picking.
Now, if I hear from you or any of your minions ever again, your name will not go into the jar."
"Clung!" As I hung up the phone and let out a sigh of relief... n satisfaction.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Happy New Year! Again.... Not; or... Changaa by any other name is still as lethal
Hi Peeps... for those who've been worrying, wondering what the hell happened to me... Well, here I am, very much alive and brimming with energy; ready to take on this new year with... ahem!... gusto!
For those of you who had not been worrying.... Well, fret not, for there was nothing to worry about.... other than, that is, worry itself.... Oh! Oh! and that usurper that has taken to impersonating me of late and peddling his puny self as my alter ego or something. Please be very careful when dealing with him. Actually if I were you, I would not deal with him at all... but am not you now... am I? Hic!
History!
Last year, today, I was still reeling from the improbable loss to the Giants by my beloved (then) Patriots as I finally sat down to hastily put down on paper (virtual) my goal(s) for the new year. This year is no different.... I happened to have bet heavily on the underdog Cardinals, and I'm yet to get rid of the terrible aftertaste of defeat... Which is why, even as I type, I am washing down a tasteless Brazilian fare with copious amounts of Captain Morgan and ice even as I try to bring this already long narrative to the point(s).
Resolutions!
Last year I went the theme route.... whereby I took a phrase I knew very little about, not having bothered to look it up on wiki, and decided that I was going to live my life that year with that phrase as my motto. Now, keep in mind as you read this that I have never been one to bother with making, let alone keeping resolutions.... so even as I wrote this here post, I was not in all seriousness expecting that I would follow through with it... I was just trying to reach my self-imposed post quota... I think.
So..... following a series of unexpected events that began this past Christmas, that may or may not have been alluded to on the previous post by that person who is definitely not me, I seriously thought about making resolutions for the New Year this time around. So, on 31st of December, at about 11:39 P.M., drunk as a poet on pay day sic! I sat on the bottom step of a staircase at my Uncle's house, pen and paper in hand, poised, ready to seriously start on the resolution writing process.....Hic!
I'll cut this part of my story short, since that is as much of that night as I remember, but suffice it to say that numerous searches of my person; pockets, crevices, etc, since then have not elicited any written list of resolutions.... Quite to the contrary, numerous photos arriving in my mailbox since then show evidence of said paper, or one very similar to it, being torn into shreds and thrown up in the air in some celebratory gesture.
It has taken me slightly longer than a month, and another disappointing Superbowl, for me to consolidate those shreds and come up with my New Years resolution(s)... hence the title of this post being Happy New Year.
I will not bore you with the details of the process.... nor will I bother to paste a picture of what they(my resolutions) finally looked like... But, I will let you know this, I did decide to keep with the theme I used last year... only this time the reckless abandon will be tempered with good judgement(where available) and a general sense of direction(true north and the likes).
I will also let you know that I had decided (and Crys u would have loved this one) to stop drinking, what with the gas prices rising and the credit crunch..... crunching, coupled with our new President asking us to be more responsible n shit, but then I happened to pick up his autobiography of sorts and chanced upon him drinking cham or chang'aa, or 'moonshine' as he so eloquently calls it back in Kendu Bay.
Now, who am I to reduce my chances of becoming the forty-something-eth President of the US of A....... those chances are already slim as it is. So, in a bid to emulate his story and to, perhaps, capture the dreams of my own father, and further my political aspirations, I will keep tipping the bottle and pouring libation to our common ancestors even as we enter this hope-filled era of bipartisan partisanship.
Hic! Happy New Year.... Again...Hic!
And screw Santa.... no more Christmas Lists.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Happy New Year peeps!
Apparently, Santa, after hearing of it through the grapevine, or perhaps, after chancing on Kei's blog while stealing his employer's bandwidth, decided to cut him (Kei) a break and not bypass his chimney-less house this past season. And not having much of a list to go on, he must have decided to guess at what Kei might have wanted to put on the said list..... And obviously he doesn't know Kei very well, or nearly as well as I do, coz no way in hell would I have picked this particular gift for Kei. Heck, judging from the 'deer caught in the headlights' look that has been in his eyes these past three weeks or so, Kei himself would never had picked the gift, let alone put it on a list.
Oh Yeah! you should have seen the shock that had registered on his face when he had unwrapped it and found a shapely, 5' 4" c-cupped figure with flawless dark skin. The shock had given way to some indescribable emotion when he had caught a flash of the sparkling whites. Now, he should have known better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. Granted, this was no plain horse and her killer smile made it hard to look elsewhere... but still, a rule is a rule is a rule....innit?
Anyway, our boy is mulling over the dilemma of his life. He would have liked to have been able to re-wrap the gift and return it to the store it came from but Santa did not leave a receipt. So, he (Kei) is stuck with the gift, at least for now. So, if he is not around to indulge your voyeuristic tendencies, he is either busy writing to Santa to get him to send that receipt, or he's out there trying to figure out how this gift works. Santa, apparently, forgot to leave the user's manual too.
But don't you worry, I will be here to try and keep you entertained and perhaps wash some of his dirty laundry:)
Speaking of which, his love hate relationship with one Brianna is finally over. The said relationship took a turn for the worse this past Sunday following yet another New England storm, spurn out of control, hit an embankment, flipped and rolled down the hill and finally came to rest at the rock bottom..... Ahem! I meant the edge of the woods. When the smoke, and the snow, had finally settled, Kei was the only one left standing, and that only with the help of amazed bystanders.
He was virtually unscathed, though I suspect the wounds are inside..... As I type this, he is still besides himself with grief at the unexpected demise of his 'baby'.
Personally, I think its about time that relationship ended anyways.... she had the unpleasant habit of making him dip into our drinking budget, and actually every other budget, one too many times. Not to mention the amount of grief she put him through over the years. I don't care how sexy she looked and sounded, personally I think VR6 engines are overrated; and big, loud straight exhaust pipes are juvenile. The only thing I'll miss is the cold air intake.... n even that, just a little.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
I kissed a girl.... and meanwhile
Kei is cooking... according to his latest status on fb. Facebook, he is pleased to note, (not quite sure why he would be pleased but drinking usually makes him easy to please, and he's been drinking some this evening) has become so popular it is turning out to be quite a phenomena. Kind of like uhmmm... can't quite think of anything even close..... But it's not like he's paying me to write this crap anyway, let alone think.
So he was cooking and he invited, on the same status message, anyone who happened to be hungry to go over for some half-cooked ugali and some kachumbari and five pieces of nyama choma. Somehow, and this is not normal for him, he forgot to mention that the 'anyone' on that invite was meant for his female friends only.
An omission he will likely live to regret seeing how the only one who answered the said invite was a local bum. Did I mention how prevalent this fenomena book has become? How does one who can't afford a roof over his head manage to get an internet connection let alone have a Facebook account?
"It's called the public library, dumbass," was the bum's quick retort, in between mouthfuls of the half-cooked ugali and kachumbari and....... "and it's prudence not an inability to afford that effing roof." He had gone on to explain as he munched on the third piece of nyama and in effect making Kei feel rather stupid... you know that kind of stupid like those peeps in 'left behind' must have felt when they woke up to find that they had been, you know, left behind.....
It didn't help that this was the second or third time in the same evening that he had felt that stupid... if not worse. The first time being as he was... believe it or not... wrapping a gift for tomorrow's gift swap at the office. Yes he did quite feel rather stupid as he tried to wipe the blood off of the bloody gift. The blood in this case being from the numerous paper cuts sustained in the wrapping effort. The pain made worse when he'd realized that the said gift in the end still seemed to be wrapping the wrap paper instead of vise versa.
Then he started to cook, (perhaps I should say half-cook judging from the result) and stupid took on a whole hot new meaning as he burnt his knuckles and barely missed, by a fraction of an inch I should add, including a piece of his index finger in the kachumbari as he diced the tomatoes. Which, now that he thinks about it, would have served this arrogant bum well, if he had gone on to take a bite of his food and found a finger tip ogling at him. He'd more than likely have tried to sue as soon he'd gotten over the trauma so it's just as well. The last thing Kei needs is anaa freaking creditor. They are already carpooling to his premises as it is.
Then, (you thought that was it, didn't you....) he turns on his T.V. and instead of tuning to TNT or The History Channel like he normally does, he makes the mistake of tuning to MTV... First, he doesn't understand why the commentator's first remark is "oh! finally dude, welcome to the new world!" Then shock on him as the 'dude' goes on to introduce the playlist and Shakira's 'hips don't lie' is not number one... whaaat!
Well not only is it not number one, it is not even on the damn playlist. And to think that the only reason he sat through the whole playlist program was to see at what number she had been relegated to.
Well, in that half hour or so, Kei learnt that Britney had gone from asking to be hit one more time to gimme gimme more (no wonder she went to rehab, dame's always asking for it); that Miles Cyrus was actually the name of a girl and not some milestone on highway 66 like he had initially thought; that Lil Wayne was "ill"... though he wasn't quite sure what the illness was, unless it had to do with his repetition of the phrase of "I'm ill" at the end of his song; and that some girl - Katy Perry or something, had actually been nominated for a grammy for singing about kissing a girl.
Now, that really got to him and I can see why seeing how he actually got to first kiss a girl sometime last year and he'd gotten so blown away by the experience he was gonna sing about it from the top of the mountains, well he'd actually settled for the rooftop.... But I, being his closest friend and confidant and the sane prevailing voice in his lil head, managed to discourage him, telling him how stupid such a move would be. Of course, I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me when after the song ended he had turned to me with painful accusation shining from those big mournful eyes of his. (On second thoughts, I've met his neighbors from downstairs and I'm glad the floor didn't open up.)
Now, as I sit back and watch him watch as the bum brings his fingertips to his lips and sucks each one clean, I can only imagine what is going through his mind right now. He is wondering if kissing those greasy bum lips would be worth the grammy that singing about it would obviously win him; and I am not about to stop him this time. Even I aren't that stupid. So watch this space ladies and gentlemen, or better yet, tune in to MTV next year a time like now for the nomination of "I kissed a bum" by none other than your one and only... please insert here whatever this fool who thinks he owns me and this here blog is to you....
Merry Christmas fools... now, please stand under the damn mistletoe, there is money to be made and more to be had.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Non-essential? Me? No way....
Apparently yes way. Ten O'clock, which on regular Friday mornings would find me finally settling down to actually working, after wasting an hour n a half having breakfast and searching the internet in earnest for the motivation to work, found me this morning settling down on my couch, wondering for a bit what the hell to do with myself.
Being one of what was termed, non-essential staff, I was sent home a few minutes after getting to work this morning due to there being no power(electricity) in our work building. The winter storm, that apparently happened last night, took out half the trees in the neighborhood, which in turn, having sworn never again to go down alone, took out several essential electric poles and wires with them, rendering a whole business district and the residences around it powerless. But its not like they hadn't been warned.... I mean, haven't we been telling them that mother nature cannot ignore the birdies they've been flicking at her all this time forever? Wasn't it Crystal who told them to find a bunker or a bible.... Me I said get both.
Anyway, for all her issues, and she's got quite a few, mother nature does have quite a talent when it comes to painting landscapes and shit. I mean, she can actually turn a dreary looking background into a most breathtaking view, in the time it takes to say... (insert choice expletive)... or as was in my case, the time it takes to sleep off a double shot of rum in a little bit of coke.
O.k... I was gunning for a thousand words but the computer repair guy just called and I won't have enough time...... So I'll let these pictures do the rest for me:)
My view when I got up.
With the window down....duh!
What's up with this. I now can't see my beautiful neighbor getting dressed this morning... damn Ice!
Only way to explain this is that they managed to effectively camouflage themselves. How else did they evade mother nature's icy paint brush?
Brianna n I were visibly shaken at the sight of these waters. They have previously cost us al lot, in terms of time, funds, engines and what not.
this lane is usually lined with cars at around two o'clock when the shifts change. I guess it won't be the case today.
I decided to take a different route home... hopefully get gas somewhere.
I guess I was not the only one fascinated by the phenomena.
No power no gas...Whaaat! And Bri pining for gas... whaat!
Crazy folk all over the place. This dude drove by so fast in his four wheeler.....
School is open? U ain't catching me dead in there. Oh! Wait, I don't go to school... so uhmmm... neva mind.
Do I see a green light at the end of the tunnel?
Something... Must be one of the aliens that were slaving all night.
Bri and I so sympathize..... We've been here before. We know firsthand how it feels:(
Clearly, America does run on Dunkins. Must be the only Dunkin Donuts that is running...
Twenty minutes and twenty dollars later...... My curiosity and her fuel tank both satisfied....
Home is just past that last tree that seems to be hanging over the road:)
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Australia: The Movie
I just read this here article and I couldn't agree more with the heading. This particular movie venture was a rather impromptu affair hurriedly forced upon me by some storm that suddenly blew up in my part of the world this past week; Let us call it Lucy for now... trust me, Katrina didn't have nothing on her. Anyway, I picked this movie, not because I new anything about it or had even seen the trailer.... and thank God coz I most likely would not have gone based on the trailer, but because it was the only one showing at a convenient time.
I am most definitely not a movie buff.... and while I've seen lots of movies with Kidman and Jackman in them, only the X-Men series comes to mind.... Actually in Australia, I kept expecting Wolverine's claws to emerge every time Jackman got into a fight. Australia I don't think will be slipping from my memory anytime soon, and it has nothing to do with those two. Nullah (Brandon Walters) in his movie debut managed, in my eyes, to steal the movie...... How? Oh! Crap... I'll have to watch the damn movie again to be able to tell you how.