I Managed to Step in All of Them

Things Found in My Elevator This Weekend

- 2 empty 40s
- a used condom
- a puddle of urine
- cat poop
- Doritos

Hogan's Memos

Tim Hogan is the manager of the building I work in. I bet he was an excellent hall monitor when he was 12. Since I'm leaving my job in a matter of days, I've decided its time to knock him down a peg or two. And probably get fired in the process. You can track my hijinks here:


http://hogansmemos.blogspot.com/

A Status Report

Current Contents of Refrigerator: 1 six-pack Red Stripe, 1/2 lb of American cheese

An auspicious beginning to a life in Brooklyn.

The Singularity

I had dinner with one of my friends this evening. Midway through the meal, my friend told me that his career goal is to be a cyborg by 2035. And to never die, instead he's going to live forever on the Internet as a software program. He was completely and utterly serious. He even explained the kind of entry-level job he would have to get.

I wasn't sure what to say. Everytime I looked in his eyes, I got really scared. Also, my curry was really spicy.

The People You Meet

I went back to the alma mater to see Barack Obama tell me exactly how and why I am wasting my life and my intellectual promise. It was pretty okay. But that's not what I want to tell you about. What I want to tell you is a story about another man. A man I met in a public bathroom. (I guess this is where most of my good stories happen and/or where I spend a good portion of my life.)

So it goes down something like this.
Following the ceremony with no end (but plenty of snipers), I had to pee in a pretty bad way. This may have had something to do with the iced coffee, orange juice and 3 bottles of water I drank that morning to combat my hangover and avert potential heatstroke. Anyway. When I finally got to the restroom, it was empty except for a well-dressed elderly man who was shuffling around with a long strip of paper towel wound around his shoe. Since I really had to go to the bathroom, this man didn't really register in my mind as something weird. Until he turned around and stood next to me at the urinal. And not, "using the next urinal" next to me, but "elbowed me in the side and misdirected my stream" next to me. And then he just stood there and watched me finish. And when I was done, he shuffled some more.
He was completely silent the entire time.

As my dear beloved Edward said when I walked out of the bathroom in a daze and told this story to him and his dear beloved mother, this is the sort of thing that could only happen to me. (That's what Edward said. His mother just gave me the ol' stink eye.)

Which is true, I guess. But it looked like that gentleman had been in there for a while. So what I'm getting at is that this was a high-traffic bathroom. And I couldn't have been the only person in desperate need of the facilities following Commencement. Someone else must have experienced this man. This man must be someone's lost grandfather.
Please leave any leads you may have in the comments.

Catholic Kitsch UPDATE

We here at the office apparently bobbled the head too hard and the rat tail broke off! Luckily, Fr. Tony has a message board where you can ask him questions. I submit the following (unedited):

Steve Says:
May 13, 2008 at 2:49 pm

Father Tony, I just purchased one of your bobble heads. Problem is, the rat tail broke off when one of my coworkers bobbled it too hard. Any recommendations on the best way to reattach it?

From: TwoKnights06(at)aol.com

Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 3:09 PM
Subject: Father Tony

I guess that's why I head a headache....I felt a sharp pain not too long ago....

Superglue should do the job

Peace,

Fr. Tony

Well, that settles that.

Catholic Kitsch

This is Father Tony.

He's a priest (as you've probably guessed). He's also a minor celebrity in the Catholic speaking tour world. Here are the most important things to know about Fr. Tony, as far as I see it:

1. He has a sketchy mustache
2. He also has a rat tail
3. He carries a cane sometimes (apparently just for effect)
4. I own a bobblehead doll of him. I think I own it ironically, but I'm not sure. I have some pretty complicated feelings to work out. The bobblehead looks like this. It even has a rat tail!

Beggers & Choosers: A Parable of Sorts

Tonight, I rode the A train home from a party after midnight. Because I am poor, and because it would have gone to waste otherwise, I filled up a plastic bag full of food left over from the party before I left. I didn't think anything of this until I finally got on the A train and realized that I was inevitably sharing the car with several people whom I will simply term as "down on their luck" (though to varying degrees).

After a stop or two, one person finally approached me and asked for something to eat. I hesitated for a moment, remembering the time I tried to feed the ducks in the park when I was 6 and ended up running for my life while a flock of geese chased me down for the entire loaf of bread I was holding (they eventually surrounded me when I crawled on top of a picnic bench. I don't remember how I got out of it, just curling up in the middle of the bench and crying as the ducks bit my sneakers.) before I realized that I would look like a righteous douchebag if I pretended I didn't have anything to spare while a bag nearly bursting with food sat at my feet and I held a cheese plate in my hands.

(Also, in an uncharacteristically sincere vein, I have a genuinely deep compassion for people in need.
Let's never speak of this again.)

I gave the woman a soda and a bag of chips and then braced for the worst. And indeed, people seemed to perk up throughout the car once I realized I was handing out food. Some people stood up and began ambling towards me. I prepared for the worst, I prepared for people to start biting my sneakers again. But then it happened:

"Do you have any chips that aren't jalepeno flavored? And some soda that isn't diet?"

The swelling crowd paused once they saw the kind of food I had to offer. I spent a moment looking through my bag, actually looking to see if I had anything this bag lady would prefer. I guess I took a little too long because after a moment she handed my food back to me and said, "Thanks anyway." And then the crowd began to disperse as well. And I sat there, holding a bag brimming with food, perfectly willing to feed the hungry of New York City, while everyone on the subway ignored me and my unfortunately flavored chips and low-sugar soda.

I had failed in some strange way.

An Addendum to the April 10th "Tony Stark" Incident

I finally saw Iron Man.
Tony Stark was only a little bit like the drunk man.

Toilets are Deeper Than You Think

While cleaning my bathroom this morning, I accidentally put my foot in my toilet and then tripped trying to get it out.
I feel that no other commentary is necessary at this time.

A Comparison

Things I was Supposed to Read Today
1. A manual on how to perform self-castration. It apparently has many benefits (such as preventing male-pattern baldness.) It also requires cutting your balls off though.

2. An article on perforated condoms. "Doesn't ruin the whole point?" you may ask. Yes, yes it does. But it is consistent with Catholic teachings on the Theology of the Body. So there's that.

3. An passionate 3,000 word endorsement of John McCain from the Senate Democratic Majority Leader of Rhode Island.

Things I Actually Read Today
1. A Wikipedia page about War Machine, Iron Man's occasional sidekick.

I'm A Burger King kind of guy anyway

So this happened a couple of days ago, but that doesn't make it any less true:

On Friday, I was mugged in the parking lot of a Brooklyn Wendy's. . The perpetrator stole a bag containing:
one (1) Wendy's Jr. Cheeseburger
one (1) Value Size French Fries
some (3-7) napkins

The worst part is that the cheeseburger and fries weren't even for me, they were for my long-suffering Director (she insists on the capital letter), Jess. If it was my cheeseburger that was stolen, I would have slowly walked home while that melancholy Charlie Brown theme song played. But since this was someone else's cheeseburger that I was supposed to be getting for them, I had no choice but to go back and order another from Wendy's.

(If you gave someone $10 and told them to buy you a cheeseburger and that person showed up empty-handed a full half hour later and told you that he was robbed for his fast food order, would you believe him? I thought so.)

I also got into a fight with a woman in line who punched her toddler in the face with a closed fist. But that incident does not fulfill the criteria of a Neighbor Steve story, which are:
A) Me getting hurt
B) Me being mortified/embarrassed
C) Me being weird
D) Michael Baltus saying something extraordinarily stupid and then making me blog it.
E) Drunk men on the subway
OR
F) Burritos

So let's just say I don't like it when people hit their children very hard and some people don't like it when I don't like it when they hit their children very hard.

Subway Encounter

I was riding the subway earlier this evening when a friendly drunk old man sat down next to me. After a few moments, he began to nudge me in the side with his elbow but I was pretending to read. I ignored him the first two times he did, but when he did it a third time, I figured it was either very important, very funny, very scary, or that he was very drunk. Regardless, I had no choice but to acknowledge him.

Since sometimes I pretend I'm a playwright when I'm drawing with my crayons, I've decided to tell the next part of the story as a play:

DRUNK OLD MAN nudges STEVE again. STEVE looks up from his book.

DRUNK OLD MAN

I'm gettin all Iron Man up in here.

STEVE

Sorry?

DRUNK OLD MAN

Iron Man. Tony Stark.

STEVE looks baffled. DRUNK OLD MAN points to the seat across from them where a woman wearing a skirt is sitting. She kind of has her legs open and you can see a bit of her underwear.

DRUNK OLD MAN

I'm like Tony Stark. Iron Man y'all.

(beat)

I'm hard as shit.

STEVE looks embarassed and goes back to his book. OLD DRUNK MAN nudges him again.

DRUNK OLD MAN

(whispering in STEVE's ear)

You know what I'da like to do?

DRUNK OLD MAN then makes a real disgusting "la la" sound with his tongue hanging out of his mouth for the next two stops on the train.

THE END.

I really hope I never hear that sound ever again in my life.

A Fun Game I Play Sometimes

It's called "Red Ink or Blood from a Papercut You Didn't Notice You Had?"

Did You Know...

My friend Michael was appoined the Arbitrator of Skinny Jeans on April 5, 2008?
Maybe you didn't. But it's true.
He also has the self-declared title of Captain Reach Around. At least he says so.
So, what I'm trying to say here is that this guy is a lot of things. But most importantly, he can tell you if your skinny jeans are hot or not.

The Folding Machine & You

When in the course of human events, your folding machine eventually gets a paper jam, I have some advice for you: please don't let me try to fix it. It will just end it tears. Probably mine because I will accidentally flip the power switch and turn the machine on while my hand is wedged between two of the rollers trying to pry a wad of paper loose. And then the machine will try and fold my hand.

My hand does not fold. I have definitive proof of that now.

It was like that scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where that bad guy gets his cape caught in the grindstone at the end of the conveyor belt.

Adventures in Plumbing

At approximately 11:42 this evening, my toilet began to overflow.

Regretfully, no one noticed this was happeing until approximately 11:44 this evening

I just got a new subletter Tuesday. By the time I got home last night (after surviving The Great Burrito Debacle), he was in bed. Which meant that within 5 minutes of actually meeting him tonight, he had to bashfully walk into the living room and tell me he had clogged the toilet and the bathroom was full of water. I ran into the bathroom to shut off the water only to discover that he had left out one important detail: namely that he had been- ahem- using the toilet before it had overflowed. This is probably a lot of people's worst nightmare; breaking a stranger's toilet before you're able to flush.

I felt for the kid, I really did.

Neither one of us really spoke much for the next 15 minutes. I don't know what we would have said anyway. We just rolled up our pants and waded in. I like to think that this was a bonding experience for the two of us and that in a few weeks, we'll remember tonight and laugh about it. But then again, maybe my roommate will cry himself to sleep tonight, utterly mortified at the situation.

It's really touch and go.

My phone rang twice while I was plungering the toilet. I wasn't sure at first if I should answer my phone considering the situation I was in. I mean, I was ankle deep in some dirty water. And then I realized, whoever is on the phone can't see me. But the entire time I was talking on the phone, I thought to myself, "If I drop my phone right now, I'm not going in after it. I'll just buy a new one."

Thankfully, I didn't drop my phone.

Data Entry Eulogy

When not getting into wacky burrito-related adventures, I work for a magazine where the average age of the readership is somewhere around 64. That's the average age, but most of the people who call on the phone seem a lot older than that. I am constantly being told to speak up.

Another hazard is that almost every day, I get a letter or a phone call telling me that one of our subscribers has died. When I first started working here and somebody called to tell me that one of our readers was dead, I would always express my condolences. And I would feel very sad for a moment. I don't really do that anymore.

What I do instead is give the person a data entry eulogy.

The program we use to track subscribers is much more complicated than necessary. It was clearly created for a sales team that wants to keep track of all of its clients. So there are lots of unnecessary fields that I don't normally touch. Now, when someone dies, my only responsibility as an Editorial Assistant is to open this program, open their file and check a little box that says "Deceased." It's a bit impersonal, so I've started playing around with the files, imagining lives for our deceased readership. Like inventing their Personal Interests (though strangely enough, the only options in the pull-down menu are "Golf," "Sailing," and "Tennis.") , their Alternate Nickname (nearly always "Hoss"), and the Other Country in which their Primary Residence is located (which I often fill in with a metaphysical state. Metaphysical "state," get it?).

Anyway, when this is all done, I feel like I actually know the person a little better. Or, at least, I can pretend like I do. And then, finally, I check the "Deceased" box and whisper "Bye, Hoss."

The Great Burrito Debacle

At approximately 8:15 on April 1st, 2008, I was given the wrong burrito. Or rather, I asked for a burrito and I got a salad instead.
It was the worst April Fools joke ever.

I would have chased the delivery man, but I didn't have any shoes on. Elizabeth, my imaginary girlfriend, did not have any shoes on either, but she chased after him anyway. Either I am a big pussy (this is her theory) or she likes burritos a lot more than me.

I think she likes burritos a lot.

I also have moral qualms about eating the salad (but this is probably just related to my irrational and crushing Catholic guilt). Elizabeth has no such qualms. She also scooped out the guacamole for me to eat. These are two reasons why I like her.

UPDATE: At 8:23, Elizabeth spilled the salad all over her lap. Clearly, it was actually immoral and she was punished by the Baby Jesus.
We can't give the salad back now!

UPDATE UPDATE: Sometime much much later (9:30-ish), the delivery man finally returned with our real food. And then he asked us to give him the salad back. Elizabeth told him "It's a salad. It went bad." And then I guiltily shoved the half-empty salad container into the bag (upside down with no lid on), handed it to the delivery man and closed the door in his face.
The burrito was pretty good though.

So This One Time....

I ate ice cream and a 40.
At the same time!

Enter from Stage Left

Hello,

Here are some things you should know about me:

1. I might be a fictional character.
2. Then again, I may not.
3. I am definetly the sidekick in somebody else's sitcom. Maybe it's yours?