Procrastination and Sunlight!

Procrastination is something I'm really good at (or really bad with, if you want to pull the "cup half full/half empty" argument on me.) Right now, I'm putting off a 3 page paper that's supposed to be an in-depth look at 2 poems about sunlight, while mentioning up to 5 other poems as well. I could've picked a different theme besides sunlight, I suppose, since there were 2 others I could've picked from; "anti-war" and "end of the world", but I figured sunlight would be the easiest to find poems on. Poems with sunlight are usually a bit too chipper for my taste, whereas "end of the world" poems tend to be right up my alley. I only have to write 3 pages though, so oh well.

In light of procrastinating, I'll point out the elephant in the room and say that it's been quite a few months since I've written on this thing. Sooo many things have changed in my life since my last post, I don't even know where to begin. I've started and practically ended my first semester at a state university. That's kind of neat. I'm an English major in the "writing arts" program. I really like it, although I admit it's very intimidating.

I didn't write enough this semester. I know that through my recent lack of interest in writing essays and short stories for my classes. There would always be long periods of time where I would be doing nothing but reading or critiquing other student's stories. I should've kept up on my blog during these times. Not only would I continue to grow as a writer, but I wouldn't feel so panicked all of the sudden when asked to write something. In any case, that's all going to change. I'm going to keep up-to-date on this blog, and maybe another one about a more personal, yet amusing aspect of my life. More on that later.

I believe I've found my niche as a writer, however. I enjoy writing darker stories and poems, but I also enjoy writing humor. Turns out, after submitting some stories in my Writing Fiction class, I'm much better at the latter of the two.

Speaking of which, I love the phrase, "The latter of the two." It's a phrase I've been dying to use for a very long time, and you just witnessed the first time I ever have. There were a few reasons why I've never abused the hell out of that phrase before. Not only was I not sure if it meant the first or second option, but I had no clue if it was "latter" or "ladder". When I went to end my last paragraph with it, I shit you not, I looked it up finally. There are a lot of phrases like that that escape me right now that I would look up for the hell of it (and to put off my paper some more). One phrase that I looked up over the summer was "The proof is in the pudding". Granted, I'll probably never use it, but it's nice to know what it means, and whether or not it's "pudding" or "putting". The later of the two makes more sense, because you could guess that it could mean where something's put, rather than something about a dessert. But, alas, it's the dessert.

Anyway, I'll definitely be making a valiant effort to be posting on a somewhat regular basis again... at least once a week if I can help it. It's 3:00 am here and I should really get that paper started. I don't think I'll be going to sleep tonight. Can't wait to see the sunlight in a few hours.

Making up my mind, in a flash!

I really like technology. I enjoy reading about it, playing with it, and buying it. That being said, I'm also very indecisive about it. I could research cell phones or something for days but eventually I'll be stuck between four different models.

I had to buy a camera recently. I don't really know why I thought I needed a camera, since I'm really into writing. All I knew, was that I needed that new camera.

I have a perfectly good camera right now. The only thing that bugs me about it is that I have to push the "scroll left" button extra hard to get it to work. I'm not really the kind of guy looking to exert the extra strength that goes into pushing that button. It really irritates me, especially with the right button being so easy to push.

Anyway, like I said, I needed a new camera, so I trotted on over to Best Buy and looked around in there for some models I had found online. I still wasn't exactly sure what kind I wanted. A camera with face recognition would be kind of cool, but to me, that's a "party camera", a camera college girls buy to take pictures of their best friends finishing up their first keg stand. Oh, the memories sorority girls share. I'd pay to see that scrapbook.

I was definitely interested in a camera with a nice zoom, manual mode (if I can figure out how to use it), and a high mega pixel count. I was quickly approached by a sales clerk who asked me if I needed help.

I looked up at him, "Oh, no thanks. I need a new camera and I'm just taking a look at what you guys have," I replied.

"Well, what would you primarily use it for?" he asked.

I lost eye contact and looked towards the table of cameras. I began, "Well..."

I knew he was just asking so he could find the camera that would "best fit my needs". It's a classic sales tactic. If I had said "I'm just looking to take pictures of my friends when we all hang out," like any other half wit passing through, he would've sold me some crappy camera that does absolutely nothing. I'm on a "poor college student" budget, but I didn't want that to stop me from getting a good camera.

I knew if I wanted to be sold a good camera, I couldn't possibly tell him the truth; I would probably use it to take a few random pictures of my friends the next time we hung out, then I'd lose it in a drawer somewhere and forget about it. I had to think of something really convincing so he would sell me something amazing, but inexpensive.

"Well, I'm a photography major down at a school in Massachusetts. I'm looking to get my Masters Degree in it so that I can travel abroad and take pictures at fashion shows in Paris. The school I'm going to is really expensive, so I'm on a tight budget for a camera, but I need a really good one with lots of capabilities."

Immediately, since I told him I was just looking, he decided to ask about my fantastic school.

"I have a friend that's a photography major too! He was looking at the Hallmark Institute of Photography down in that area, but he didn't end up going, it was a little expensive and he wanted to go somewhere closer."

"Yeah, it's a really nice school. I go there." I smiled at my now established university. I went on, "I love it. One of my favorite things there is the dining hall. They spend a lot of money on the food. It's nothing like those community colleges," I snickered a little, for good measure. I know how bad the local community college's food is. I just graduated from there, and it's pretty terrible.

"Yeah, the food's pretty bad at those places." He paused as his eyes narrowed, "So, if the school has so much money for food, why don't they have a fund somewhere to supply you guys with cameras?"

"They expect us to be financially savvy enough to buy our own cameras. Also, since everyone buys their own cameras, each different camera offers a unique eye to the world, further making each photography project unique."

I was really running out of lies. Well, it wasn't that I was running out of lies, so much as it was about me forgetting what I had told him already. I already forgot what college I said I go to. I remembered it was in a state that started with an "M", but that was about it. It was time to bail.

"Well, I like what I see here, but I'm going to head over to Ritz Camera. They had a Figifilm camera for under $900. I think I'm going to go with that one." I declared as I turned away and began heading towards the exit.

He called out to me, "It's Fujifilm! And I thought you were on a budget!"

I started to turn around to explain my inconsistency, but my feet decided that would just make things worse. Before I knew it, I was out the door. I didn't need a camera that bad anyway.

Summer Bummer

Life's been crazy lately with classes ending, but now that it's summer, hopefully I'll get back into my blogging routine.

I recently got a pretty rad job. I work at a cell phone kiosk in Sam's Club, and sell almost every cell phone imaginable. We sell three "contract" phones services, including Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T, as well as the five prepaid plans Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Net10, TracPhone, and AT&T GO Phones. It's a fairly easy job, although the processes take some getting used to. I've only been there a month and a half or so now, and I've gotten most of them down pat. Some, however, I still have yet to learn.

Verizon Wireless, for example is the biggest bitch ever. We have to do everything for them manually, including the credit check and contract. All of the others we can do through the computer, but since Verizon is done over the phone after a 15 minute wait, it definitely takes the longest to finish.

When it's slow, there's literally nothing to do. The best I can do to keep myself entertained and stimulated, sexually or otherwise, is to greet customers and pace around like a lunatic. If there are no customers, I'm stuck using the computer. Once I'm done browsing the 13 pages that aren't blocked, I'm left to my own devices. By that, I of course mean my cell phone. Since I work at a cell phone kiosk, they're pretty lenient about making/receiving calls and text messages. That gets old too after awhile though. Half the people I send my "plz talk 2 me! I'm @ work and bored!" text messages to, don't reply. The ones that do reply, I simply run out of things to say to them.

It's at this point where I hit an all time low. I will look for anyone, in my cell phone's contact list, or someone in the store to talk to. About absolutely anything. Once I find a person, if I don't hold my composure and hide my desperation for human communication, I'll scare them away, worsening my situation.

I've recently found a way around all of this, though. One of my coworkers suggested I bring a book. I was so flabbergasted at the simplicity and obviousness of her suggestion, but I immediately started bringing various books and graphic novels to work. Today, I in fact got paid for 30 minutes of actual work, and 3 1/2 hours of reading comics. It was pretty fantastic.

All this lack of business comes with a price, however. The kiosk is closing at the end of this month. It really kind of sucks, for a lot of reasons. The main reason it does, though, has everything to do with my online training. The district manager was really late making it available to me, so I got it finally after working there about three weeks. After about two weeks of actually having the training and, within the same two weeks, procrastinating doing the training, I found out the kiosk is closing.

Now I'm stuck in an awkward position. I can either buckle down and do all of the training so my last 9 days of work go by smoothly, or I could skip it because there's really no point now anyway. Obviously, I'm going to skip it. It's going to be brutal though.

I'm going to miss this job. The customers at the Sam's Club kiosk were a huge step up from the customers at Sears. As many of you know, you need a membership to get into Sam's, meaning that not just any half-wit can go in there and annoy the snot out of me with their petty retail problems. The only half-wits that are allowed in Sam's are the ones that are willing to shell out an extra $40 every so often to enter the building. They're few and far between, though.

I did have one lady in the store today, who was either really stupid or totally stressed out by her kid. While it was probably the kid, one can never be sure when it comes to the general public. She asked me briefly about a car charger for her phone that she didn't have on her, nor did she know the name of it. During our conversation, she was holding on to her son's arm, trying to contain him and keep him out of trouble. To no avail, he was using his other hand to grab at my fake demo phones and let go, causing the tether to snap them back into their places. After he did that to a couple of phones, his mother turned to him and screamed, "YOU NEED TO STOP THAT RIGHT NOW! IF YOU BREAK THOSE, MOMMY'S GOING TO HAVE TO PAY FOR THEM AND MOMMY CAN'T AFFORD THEM!"

I don't think she knew they were made of plastic with cardboard screens. If she did, she should really consider not spending her money on a membership at Sam's Club and worry more about saving up for the other plastic and cardboard things that her son will inevitably break.

Back Issue #3: I got bit by a spider (part 2) (WITH A PIC!)

Originally posted June 22nd, 2008 on MySpace.

Ok, so it's like day 6 of my spider bite. Still no super powers. All I'm getting is an infection. Seriously though, I'm somewhat afraid that my skin's gonna start rotting off my body. I looked up some spider bite pictures just now and holy shit... there's some pretty fucked up spiders out there. Take this link for instance. While that remains undetermined whether it was a brown recluse bite or not, they suspect it was. I can't even imagine that happening to my stomach. I mean, duh, I didn't get bitten by one of those but my bite still has the potential to get pretty gross. And speaking of really gross...

Here's a picture of my spider bite (Click it for the "full effect"):


It's gross, I know. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna have to see a doctor about it on Monday or Tuesday. It doesn't appear to be getting any better. When I move it stings like dry skin. It's pretty aweful. And since I'm not an Olympian God and don't have a 6-pack, the spider bite's on the top part of where my mini gut starts. So like, when I move, the spider bite's basically like, "WOW! [inflicts pain, inflicts pain] STOP EATING SUCH SHITTY FAST FOOD! I'M THE PAINFUL REMINDER THAT YOU HAVE A CREASE WHERE A GUT'S FORMING!"

Spider bites = best diet ever. If you're not convinced quite yet that that's true, take a good LONG look at my picture and tell me if you feel like eating after that.

Didn't think so.

Back Issue #2 : I got bit by a spider, and I don't have super powers... what a sham!

Originally posted June 20th, 2008 on MySpace.

At least I think it was a spider. I don't know. Regardless of the species, I still have no super powers. I didn't think it was going to happen, but it would've been cool. Cooler than a giant, red, sore welt on my stomach at least.

I'm not really sure when it happened either, just that it happened on Monday. It REALLY creeps me out to think that it was inside my shirt and just biting me repeatedly. I have like 2 other smaller bumps near it.

So yeah, on another buggy note, I don't know if many of you know this about me, but I'm most definitely extremely afraid of centipedes. Now I know what you're thinking... "Really Phil? Those stupid little red things you see under rocks?" And yeah. Understandable. Allow me to explain. When I was little and lived in Hawaii, I had one crawl across my arm in my bed. And for those of you who don't know, centipedes look more like this in Hawaii...


Yeah. Fucking terrifying. So back to my story...

So a few days ago, I was in my room minding my own business and changing my shirt. As I pulled it over my head, I saw something on my newly made bed. Yup... you guessed it. A centipede. I freaked out so bad, anyone would've laughed. It was very reminiscent of a woman on Looney Tunes screaming on top of a chair at a mouse. Except it was me, on the floor. Still screaming, though.

Anyway, I tried to think quickly and find something to kill it with, which happened to be my remote. So I grabbed the remote tried smashing it on the top of my bed. This proved rather ineffective at first, considering my comforter was cushioning all of my remote's blows, not to mention these guys live under rocks for Christ's sake, so they can take a beating. Eventually though, I killed it.

Filled with a case of "The Phils"

My geology/meteorology teacher is a bit flakey sometimes, and that's giving him a lot of credit. One of the biggest problems in my opinion is after knowing me for well over 6 months, he still doesn't know my name, even though we're in an extremely tiny community college and I'd like to think I stick out like a sore thumb sometimes, especially since I'm a little chatty sometimes. Anyway, let me take you back to around late November 2008...

Last semester, when he was my geology teacher, he had us do these big research projects where we had to write a 5 page paper and do a PowerPoint presentation about, as it turns out, anything we wanted to. I, unlike some of the people in my class, stuck to geology and did my project on diamonds. I didn't know much about them at the time, and thought it would be kind of fun to research. After doing all the research for it though, I'm really glad I picked what I did. Diamonds are pretty fucking cool. I would normally go on about all the awesome things diamonds do, but I'm far too lazy and tired to list everything, or even something, that I researched.

Moving right along, it came time to do our presentations, and I gave mine, and it went along smoothly and I got a good grade. But that's when things started to get weird. My friend Jeff went up to do his presentation on... whatever it was that he did... and my professor said, "Ok Phil, so you're doing _______?" and Jeff replied, not really catching that he called him Phil. I certainly noticed though. I've always felt like if there was one person in the class that the teacher would always forget their name, it would be me. For some reason, I'm used to being called the wrong name in class, but never have I been the person the teacher calls other people. And to be clear, Jeff and I look nothing alike.

Anyway, Jeff finished his presentation, and sat back down. As our professor was talking to the next presenter, I leaned over a little and got Jeff's attention from a few rows down, and mouthed a few words that somehow got across, "You might want to remind our teacher who you are. He called you Phil and he's going to give me your grade because he's an idiot."

Jeff raised his hand: "Hey, who's name did you write down on that paper?"
Professor: "Uh... yours!"
Jeff: "What did you write?"
Professor: "Philip!"
Jeff: "Yeah uh... my name's Jeff."
Professor: "Oh gosh, DUH! I would've caught that eventually!"

Sure you would have, professor, sure you would.

Anyway, normally this wouldn't weird me out as much, but frankly he should know who's who in a class of only 15 or so on the week before finals. Oh well though, it was a simple slip-up I guess... or was it?

Fast forward 5 or so months...

My professor likes variety in his classes, so what better way to do that than to assign the exact same research project in meteorology as he did when I took geology! One day we had to have a summary typed up on what we were going to do our research projects on. I chose lightning. Frankly, there's a lot of information on it, and it's pretty sweet. I also plan to incorporate extremely loud thunder claps when I change each slide on my PowerPoint, just to give my fellow classmates the "full effect". So I gave that to my teacher and he read it and liked it. Then my friend Jeff went after I did. He was going to do his project on the mini ice age that occurred in the 1500's or something, but my professor said it was too vague.

After going through a few other people's ideas, my professor made a few general statements to the class about the subjects people have been picking. He started off by saying...

"Like I was telling Phil, doing the mini ice age of the 1500's is too vague. You need something more specific."

This is coming from the guy who thinks a good research project is comparing a baseball player's batting average to the weather.

After he finished his little lecture on how to pick a research project he hasn't seen done before because he's bored with some subjects (which, I'll have you note, isn't lightning apparently), another student raised his hand and asked a question about the projects. My teacher replied:

"Good question, Phil! Let me explain..."

That's right. All of the sudden there's 3 Phils in my class. Surprise! I'm the only Phil that he has in that class, and probably all of his other classes too (it's not a big college at all).

So I've deduced a few things out of his inability to remember which person I am in the class. It's one of the following options...

1. He doesn't know anyone's name in the class but the name "Phil" sticks with him, so he just decided to stick with that.
2. He knows there's a Phil in the class but has no idea who I am, so he's calling everyone that.

and finally...

3. I do something that really bothers him and makes him think about me.


I hope it's number 3. If that's the case, I need to find out what it is that I do that annoys the snot out of him just so I can do it more. It might seem a little vindictive, but that's just necessary sometimes.

Anyway, if anyone has any other ideas as to why he might be having such a hard time remembering who I am, please leave a comment below. I'm interested to hear your theories!

"Hey Wendy, forgetting something!?"

This happened over a month ago, but since I've been busy with school and stuff lately, I haven't really had a chance to post it.

I was in creative writing one day. Let me tell you, definitely think twice before taking a class like that... especially if you can't stand poems of questionable quality written by your peers. If you answered yes to the proceeding, then that class isn't for you. That said, I really enjoy critiquing them... probably too much.

Anyway, class got out one day, and I want standing around with my friends Beth and Wendy. The 3 of us were talking while getting our stuff together when I saw a set of keys on the table. At that moment, I thought it'd be funny to take Wendy's keys so she'd freak out later. So I grabbed them and just carried them around a little, thinking a was a smug little bastard who pulled one over on her. I played with the light on the key chain. I even shined it in her face a few times to see if she'd say anything, but to no avail.

A few minutes later, the three of us had gone down 3 floors and went outside and were heading to the cars. While we were in the middle of saying something, I got tired of being anonymously clever, so I took the keys out of my pocket. The conversation went as follows:

"Hey Wendy, forgetting something?!"
"Oh my God, who's are those?"
"They're yours! I took them off the table while you weren't looking!" I replied, grinning ear to ear. Just then, Wendy reached into her pocket and grabbed her keys,
"No... These are my keys!"

The smug look completely washed off my face. I had definitely just stolen some random person's keys. I was borderline horrified. I quickly turned around and literally ran up those three flights of stairs and back into my classroom. I noticed they were my classmate Jodie's on the way up. Thankfully she was still in there.

She looked a little confused when I ran in the room panting practically shouting some story about what I was trying to do, which probably made me look like an even worse person.

At the end of the day though, Jodie has her keys, and I failed to prank Wendy yet again. That's what really matters, right?