Career Ending Moves: CEM

I’ve been employed for nigh two years now (13 or 444 depending on which timeline you’re following). One thing is for sure, wherever you work, whatever you do, whoever it’s for, however questionable the legality, it’s a horrid, soul-sapping experience. You’re better off lounging at your parent’s place with their abundantly-stocked fridge at your disposal, eating them out of house and home like they expected you to. You let your parents down, Man. They anticipated a failure but look at you, you’re not even a father yet. So, Working Class Man, GDP Contributor – you need a way out, don’t you? You can’t possibly spend another day being productive! How can you tolerate the shame of being punctual and responsible and fully-clothed? Your 12-year-old self would beat you up if they saw how great you are with a stapler and email. Look in the mirror, look what you’ve become! You’re contributing to team success. You have excellent peer relations. You haven’t been chastised by HR once. You’re even gonna have that presentation ready for Thursday’s meeting. It’s a damn disgrace. Another day of making a difference in the world is going to kill you.

Told you

Time to exit gracefully. Allow me to introduce you to CEM: Career Ending Moves. A careful application of a combination of these can unburden you from the merciless reality of being an upstanding member of society. Never again will you be shackled and obligated to answer a telephone or open Microsoft Word on purpose. Toss that unflattering uniform and ID card out the window today!

“Work for who?” – Queen Elizabeth

CEM #1:

If anybody asks for the date that your project will be completed on, give them the finger and reply, “The first”.

CEM #2:

Walk around the office barefoot. If they allow that, walk around with shoes. They can’t control you, Malcolm X.

CEM #3:

Tell your boss, “Nice mammory glands”, if she’s a her. Mix it up with a wink if your boss is a guy. (Hint: If he responds to the wink positively, resign)

CEM #4:

Wear an offensive T-shirt on a non-casual Friday. Something really bad like “This is my kidnapping shirt” or “Chloroform Everyday” or “One Direction”.

CEM #5:

Come to work covered in blood.

CEM #6:

Listen to the upbeat Taylor Swift songs loud enough for Eric, who sits next to you, to hear and be appalled.

CEM #7:

Clip your nails at the desk where you’re all singing Happy Birthday to Sandra, the lady whose husband just left her days before her birthday.

CEM #8:

Mention how work is gay and only enjoyed by Nigerians and women. (The bonus points here are for being racist, sexist, xenophobic and homophobic in just 10 words!)

CEM #10:

Get drunk and show up at your boss’ house asking for leave for tomorrow.

BONUS (For Software Developers):

CEM #11:

Use whatever bullshit subversion client your team uses to log onto your source code repository and delete a folder called “trunk”.  Ignore any warnings, Maverick.

CEM #12:

Log onto the most important production database server. Don’t punk out – people are watching. Open a new query to the biggest database. Type in “BEGIN TRAN”, execute the query and take a coffee break. YOLO.

There you go. You’re welcome. Come relax in the leisure zone, a paradise of pure laziness. It must feel like how Mandela felt after his long stay on Robben Island. Liberty, can you taste it? Welcome to unemployment, to care-free days of waking up at 11AM. To constantly having to borrow money from your parents, and giving excuses to your friends because you can’t afford that trip to see Ed Sheeran live. Congratulations on now having time to play cricket with school teachers while there’s still daylight, and doing the community service you incurred after being convicted of robbing an old woman of her pension, because you’re strapped for cash like all the time now. Every single day you, Captain America, will have the freedom to finally try and play the guitar, experiment with getting high on bath salts, and put up with various family members trying to fix you a job. Hey, you know better than to fall into that trap again.

PRO TIP: When people ask what you do for a living now there’s so many lies you can tell; you’re an actuary, you cameo’d on The Big Bang Theory, you’re busy finishing your second degree in financial quantum mechanics, you’re involved in studying mind control in dolphins, you felt it’s time for a break after the Nobel Prize scoop – you can be anything. Be proud of yourself.

I Promised I Would Blog About Murder

Right, so – murder. Murder murder murder. Bad thing that, murder. The Senate assassinated Caesar back in the day because they just couldn’t handle how smooth he was at conquering and stuff. Kind of like how you’re jealous of my well-formed sentences in that secret love letter I wrote to Jojo. Do you want to kill me then? Of course not. We aren’t savages.

The question does arise however; how do you handle the instinct to kill? That killer impulse, the primitive blood lust. Everyday it’s gnawing on the inside of you, desperately searching to be free, to be unleashed on the people who deserve it, who deserve your brutal wrath. Or not. You could be clean, good and wholesome. Good luck with that.

In old times, not last week or something, I’m talking centuries ago, people could just die on any day. Life expectancy was like 42 or something in the Middle Ages. That could be historically inaccurate but how do I know you’re a history teacher? So you could just wake up on your birthday or Tuesday and die. And because you were expecting to die in a barn or at the river at anytime, murder was more commonly practiced. You had a problem with grandma, you took her out, with a sword even. Some guy insulted your upbringing in the swamp, you handled that situation honorably with an axe at sundown.

Wars were fought every second month, and this lot of people intentionally murdered another lot of people, often over some crops, a beautiful princess, or for Birmingham. Men were conditioned to kill. They desired to grow up and be shot in head with an arrow for the King or Duke or Pope or Turkey. These were the guys that got all the chicks. Interestingly enough, they all died fighting in vain before reproducing. This resulted in less than optimal breeding partners; like accountants, engineers and sociology majors, being your great grandparents. Their weak genes being passed on explains your unglamorous demeanor today (sorry).

Peasants were slightly oversensitive and prone to violence

All people, men especially, are born with an insatiable thirst for glory on the battlefield. Our entire civilization is built on the murder of people who were stubbornly standing in the way of the ideals and mechanisms that shaped our current mediocre society. We showed the hippies. Something in our jeans genes compels us to be warriors. In the modern context, there exists no formal way to appease that appetite. Naturally, and we are especially great at this, we have discovered some discount substitutes.

Ever since you were born by accident, you’ve been in competition with everyone around you. Everyone in school wants to beat you up. We’re all so perversely competitive all the time. There’s no war, no fight for survival, so – what do we have instead? People try to outdo each other in Pokemon trivia, playing ping pong at church and repairing telephones. Everyday stuff.

School fights have evolved

There exists an infernal disco in our minds at most times. Other times it’s a silent, brooding anger. Sometimes it bubbles over into an outburst at your mother over a lost sock. Sometimes you supplement with Austrian torture porn or violent video games. Or that one Manson song in your playlist surrounded by all the other usual boy band offerings. It’s the reason why head shots in Battlefield are so satisfying.

Atleast you can shoot Unicorns with a bazooka on Playstation

In fact, all modern technology is the bastard child of military efforts to discover new ways to kill each other. How many ways can you kill a man with a microwave? Think about it. It’s a death machine.

After a while, all the milk-tossing isn’t enough, the persistent internal screaming gets too loud, and Miriam loses it. Miriam surrenders to the barbarism, having been conditioned all her life by The Vampire Diaries to have absolutely zero respect for the sanctity of life, she runs you over with her 2011 Toyota Corolla. Murder, Son. It happens. Because killers are what we are by nature, and everyday it’s becoming less mainstream to do it, to kill. Civilization has left so few people to massacre and even fewer excuses to dismember them recreationally. But don’t do it.

No matter how bored/great-with-nunchuks you are. If TV teaches us anything, it’s that, if you do a murder, Horatio or The Mentalist will catch you in next week’s episode.

Letters From The Front: Roach Wars AD 2024

Aren’t you supposed to be killing things?

Dearest Suzanne (?),

I’m afraid this may be my last letter to you. You may have noticed how sparse correspondence has become. We have begun using pen ink for hydration, and to draw moustaches on the people on the cover of our last issue of People magazine. Soon, it will end (this or the war, I cannot be sure). Even now we are fully engaged with the enemy on the front line. Oh, I’d hate to taint your sweet ears with talk of the violence. I can only say that I have one clean sock left. That alone speaks volumes, My Dove.

War changes a man. I have witnessed the horror firsthand. Before my eyes, men have soiled themselves in fear and succumbed to depravity and madness, and that was only during breakfast. No matter how tough a soldier’s exterior, he quivers and squeals like a little girl at the sight of a Roach. Everyday is a new betrayal.

Roachkind force us to become monsters to draw some feint hope of victory. It’s them or us. And if you weren’t part of the world we die to defend, I would gladly forsake my post at the vanguard. In fact, I tried. They shouted at me.

Their cowardly attempts at assassination have proven fruitless. Each night their soldiers attempt to breach our camp and slay the commanding officers in their sleep. I show them no mercy, My Love. Curse my aptitude at insecticide! I am a murderer! I wield death! My hands are stained with the blood of hundreds of their kind. To be honest, they don’t really have blood – just some icky white thing similar to that brand of toothpaste you’re so fond of (I’m sorry if I’ve spoiled toothpaste for you, My Dear). My soul is on fire with rage and aggression and hatred. Some of the men say that’s a fever but I took some aloe vera.

I can decapitate an entire squadron of roaches with a war slipper and yet, I cannot even sleep alone because of the nightmares. It’s become so bad that our chief arms sponsor – Adidas – have begun to ration the truffle butter. Must we eat our toast with margarine like savages?!

I long to feel the warmth of your hands in mine again. To hear your sweet voice remind me I’m late in the mornings. To awkwardly gaze at your lovely face when I mistakenly press Video Call on Hangouts for Android. How is my boy, our son? He must be getting taller each day. Thank the heavens he has your genes too. Never tell him what I do, My Angel. Lie to our child. Oh the lies! Make him believe his father was an honest, hard-working man. Tell him I drive a Corrolla and install water-features for a living. Never ever tell him the truth; that I’m actually a rocket scientist turned war hero. The shame.

Truth be told, I am afraid to come home after this experience. War has left me a hollow, broken man. Would you even love me like you did before? This has nothing to do with the ridiculous rumor that I lost our wedding ring gambling for a pair of Yeezys.

Hush, save your tears, My Sweet! We can only hope for the best. For victory and peace, at last. I promise to kill them all. The brown ones, the flying ones, the stupid ones that run in your direction even. Stay strong, My Oasis.

Yours in Love and Pesticide

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PS: I’ve attached a photo of myself holding a shovel to keep you warm at night.

BORING, LONG, OVERLY-SELF-INDULGENT GARBAGE

I’m sure at least two people will read this (thanks). One will try to comment unsuccessfully. I only have a blog thing because of the fact that I wanted to comment unsarcastically on a friend’s blog. Then the computer-machine asked me to sign up.

Topics were initially hard to come by, and I didn’t want to have a blank blog. That would be wasting space on a fast shrinking internet. I’m not tripping or being ignant (look at these hip terms I know from listening to young Indian people living under the delusion that they are African-American). The Shrinking Internet conspiracy theory is still in it’s infancy.

Being a walking encyclopedia on how to avoid success, there’s a scarily limited number of topics I could approach to relate to you. Born with a natural inclination towards the absurd, I try to bring that across to dazzle you unsuccessfully. It is a sense of madness that, under the right amount of too much alcohol, you could mistake for insight. I asked my closest friends (notice the plural) why they don’t read my blog and they responded with, “Well…y’know…it’s just you…showing off all the big words you know. It makes me feel stupid.” I resent that answer, but firstly note that I do not really have friends, just people I owe money. There are no unnecessarily big words here so shut your face.

I read a lot of personal, theme-less blogs for inspiration. Some were insightful, others narcissistic. From highly entertaining and brilliant to “Oh God, please make it stop!”.

Most of these people have something to offer though. They do research. They have strong beliefs. They have regard for grammar. On the other hand, I aim to distract you from how inadequate I am at all the above.

So, apologies are in order. I’m sorry for not engaging you enough. I’m sorry for not introducing you to some highly intellectual debate about the illusion of freewill. I’m sorry for my poor speling. I’m sorry for not being the “illest”. Nothing here is provocative, I know. I’m sorry I can’t compete with cleavage photos taken in a bathroom. I’m sorry I can’t relate to you with quotes by Drake about love and pictures of cats vomiting rainbows. I’m sorry I can’t compete with relationship advice from 15 year-olds. Please forgive me for not being able to capture your attention in a world where no one can be expected to pay attention for more than 140 characters or a picture of “justgirlthings”. Don’t make my mistake and realize too late that every time you put your opinion out there, the world is going to respond with, “Hey, u hav no swag. Kill urself lol”

Mind you, I’d rather not be @SweetLoverXXX who tweets, “Luv a gal no mater wat size she is” and who’s shamelessly shirtless in his profile picture, showing off his “V” and wearing a snapback.

(By the way, aren’t girls supposed to have the “V”?)

Thug Lovin’ is the default setting and definition of love in the 21st century. Inspired by Rihanna music videos, it is based on saying “Only God can judge me” and “All a girl needs is swag”, and complete ignorance of responsibility and good judgement.

What. Is. This

No matter how much you tell people not to judge you, if you have 16 piercings and a tattoo that borrows from the Chinese alphabet, people will question your upbringing.

Okay okay, I got lost somewhere. Point is that in order to get attention (the most basic human need) you have to adapt. Even though you may find it ironic, it is also the reason that idiots are the ones cultivating deep, meaningful posts on Facebook. It’s different, it’s new, it’s unexpected and it’s what people want to hear to make them believe that they are, at the same time, misunderstood enough to be cool and understood enough to be popular.

So, this new year (why another one?), I’m going to try and make this place more up to date, more hip, more relate-able, no matter how stupid it is. Starting with a bold new theme soon.

Or maybe I won’t do none of that – surprise! I lied.

It’s fair to say that a blog serves the needs of the writer more than any reader. It’s a mechanism to vent your frustration. And nothing’s better at bringing people closer together than complaining. Some Intermad (Internet Nomad – clever, right?) stumbles upon your issues expressed with such fervor online, and they share your frustration with strong enough conviction that they join you in complaining and, before you know it, it’s a complain-a-palooza and somebody’s pregnant.

Either that or they immediately hate you and your ancestry because they only disagree with everything you said. They let you know by not so politely asking you to engage in certain acts involving a donkey’s privates, and address you with questionable titles like “faggot” and “spunkbucket lol”.

BORING, LONG, OVERLY-SELF-INDULGENT, GARBAGE. Blog. You get it now, right? Very nice.