The first thing I want to say is that Hillary Clinton needs to drop out.  Ok, it was fun for a while Senator Clinton, but you’re done.  I really can’t see any reason for you to still be running.  It’s time for you to inform your supporters that they need to now support Obama.  All your negative campaigning and racist remarks are doing is hurting your party.  Do you even care?  I am starting to think that all you really care about is the “Clinton” party and you could care less for this country.  If you did care you would be campaigning for Obama starting last week after you got your ass kicked in North Carolina.  But you don’t and you’re not.  And for the love of God please don’t bring up West Virginia as any kind of victory.  It’s sort of like winning Hazzard County and unfortunately for you, Boss Hog is not a super delegate.  By the way, Obama picked up more super delegates yesterday than you picked up pledged delegates in West Virginia.  Thanks for the memories Hillary, now do your party and supporters a favor and hit the road.

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   As I have previously mentioned I was at a wedding a few weeks ago.  It was a beautiful event for one of my best friends and I had a wonderful time.  I have 3 more weddings (that I know of) coming up before the end of the year that I will be attending and had one that I had to miss about a 2 months due to timing and financial issues.  I am not writing a post on my popularity.  That would be arrogant and it’s already well documented.  I am also not writing about weddings in general.  I am actually writing about giving wedding gifts and my apparent ineptitude at doing so.  It’s just always been something that I have scrubbed out on for one reason or another.  It may have been that I was broke at the time or maybe just forgot; regardless of what it was its kind of sad and inexcusable.   

There are sort of a rules and regulations of giving wedding gifts and I have broken them all.  It’s one of those common courtesy things they write about in those how to have good manners books.  I’ll run down brief history of my ignorance and laziness. 

 

The first wedding I was ever invited to came when I was about 22.  It was a college friend (who may or may not have finished college) who married a girl with a rather impressive trust fund.  Needless to say with my friends and I still being on a college budget, and the couple dripping in wealth we didn’t feel the need to get them a regular wedding gift.  Instead we pitched in about 25 dollars each and gave them a box filled with sex toys and porn.  Yes, a big box filled with dildos, a gimp mask, a gag ball, various lotions, edible underwear and a couple of porn mags that you wouldn’t even want to look at if you were in jail.  Our friend thought the gift was funny, but he opened it in front of the bride’s parents who I don’t think were as amused.  I pulled another wedding guest faux pas that night, but we’ll save that for another time. 

 

That was my first experience with wedding gift giving and it was such a backwards one that maybe it ruined me for life or at least for my young adulthood.  The next couple weddings I went to took place during a very difficult time in my life financially (like almost every time in my adult life).  I was on one of my unemployed stints and had two friends getting married and the dates were reasonably close together.  One of the weddings was in Phoenix, the other in Kansas City and I was and still am in San Francisco.  I put both of those trips on my credit card and told both friends that they would get their gifts within the 1 year limit once I found a new job and was back on my feet.  Those weddings were about 5 or 6 years ago and I think I still tell them every time I see them that the gift is coming.  I’m sure they understand that I meant well, but it’s just not going to happen.  In my defense not all of our friends went to both weddings – I think something has to be said for that.  As poor as I was at the time, my presence was a gift in its own right.  Regardless, I still feel like a scrub about it. 

 

As I grew up, I started to kind of know better.  I learned a thing or two.  I was a groomsman in a couple weddings about a year later.  I gave one couple a DVD box set of Sex in the City for her and Curb Your Enthusiasm for him.  A little lame for a wedding gift looking back but at least it was something.  For the other wedding, I am pretty sure I got them something; it just escapes me on what it was.  I’m going to fast forward a few years to probably the most inexcusable wedding gift blunder I have made.  In the fall of 2006 I was a groomsman for a close friend in Washington DC.  I had a little bit more money at this time than normal, but I figured I had a year to get the gift out and may as well hold on to my cash so I could spend it on the trip.  Well, a year and a half later and still no gift.  Again, it’s not on purpose.  I just sort of forget at the time and feel awkward later. 

 

I really don’t know where I am going with this, but have a couple other things to get off my chest before I can move on.  The engagement party thing is a little crazy to me.  So I have to give you two gifts?  The amount I spend on weddings and I have to give two gifts?  What if I can’t make it to the engagement party?  Do I have to send a gift?  This just seems backwards to me.  I can’t enjoy the free booze, but have to send a gift anyway?  There should be some unsaid thing that if I send a gift to someone after not being able to attend the engagement party, they should send me a 6-pack or something.  Sounds fair to me.  The other is if I can’t make the wedding.  I understand in this situation I am definitely expected to send a gift, but you have to understand that there is no possible way that I am going to remember to.  I owe a friend whose wedding I recently had to miss a gift.  My other friend who couldn’t make it just sent him one.  Thanks for putting me on the spot DK.  So while I am sure he had forgotten, that gift I am sure will remind him how big of a scrub I am.  To those of you whose weddings I just attended or am about to attend, I think I have a good idea as to what to get you, but remember I have a year…

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You know who I really hate?  The people in meetings at work who nod their head while the boss is talking as if they agree with and understand everything that the he or she is saying.  You’re not only kissing ass but lying too.  These are two traits that really bother me about people.  I have a lot more respect for the guy looking blankly at the wall while the boss is talking.  At least we know he’s honest.  And just to add to this statement, I also hate the person in the meeting who is always adding to a statement made by the boss.  More often than not it’s the same yes man or woman blindly nodding their head at every word coming out of management’s mouth.  You have to know that most of us don’t want to be there.  The more you talk the longer we’re stuck at this meeting pretending to be interested or struggling to stay awake.  99% of whatever it is these people are saying is pointless, boring and repetitive.  Keep your opinions, comments and questions to yourself unless they are actually useful for the rest of the group.  You can always kiss your managers ass behind closed doors in one on one meetings so no one else has to listen to your BS. 

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The other day my boss bought us all a bunch of sandwiches from Subway.  I really don’t like Subway sandwiches, but they were free and I get paid less than most street beggars so I gladly took it.  The last time I ate Subway it made me really sick.  I was bloated all day and it eventually gave me diarrhea.  This time was no different.  If I want to eat safe, like I am about to get on a plane for a 5 hour flight and don’t want to ruin it for the people sitting next to the bathroom, I usually will eat a Subway type sandwich.  Nothing greasy. Just a plane turkey sandwich on wheat.  But not Subway, their non greasy, low fat turkey sandwich makes me feel worse than I do after 3 Jumbo Jacks.  I have had 3 Jumbo Jacks in one sitting before, and it doesn’t feel good.  What is going on with their meat and condiments that is causing this?  Quiznos and Togo’s don’t send me on a sprint to the toilet.  I guess it answers the question as to how Jared lost all that weight.  He just blasted everything he ate out the other end after every meal.  Eating two sandwiches from Subway every day constitutes an eating disorder in my book.  Seek help Jared, you big nerd.

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I have been watching Thursday nights on NBC off and on for some time now; obviously throughout the Seinfeld years and now for The Office.  One thing that has been a constant for all of those years is the show ER.  While I have managed to never see a single episode I have seen a million commercials for it.  If I were an idiot, just by seeing the commercials week after week; I would think that this would have to be the most amazing show ever and gets better every week.  Every week it’s, “the most shocking episode ever” or the most “suspenseful” or “heart pounding”.  Or they say something like, “you won’t believe your eyes”.  I think if they could legally get away with saying, “this week will shock you so hard you’ll orgasm in your pants, seriously right there on your couch”, in that deep TV commercial voice they would.  I especially love when they promise you someone is going to die, “watch this week, one of the ER doctors won’t be making it home”.  But the tactic that I appreciate the most is when they try to make you feel like you’re making a huge mistake if you miss the show.  “You won’t want to miss this week’s episode of ER.”  I predict next season if they get really desperate for viewers they’ll add, “You won’t want to miss this episode of ER.  If you do, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.  You may even kill yourself”.

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I have a favor to ask.  If you are invited to a bbq or a party or whatever where an evite is sent out, and you have to respond no; you don’t have to let us all know that you can’t go because you’re going to Italy or Hawaii or someplace that is much cooler than the party you were invited to.  I understand that you’re excited and you should be, but it makes the rest of us feel sort of shitty.  An acceptable response would be something like, “I wish I could make but I’m going to be out of town”, or “oh man, I’m bummed my wife has this lame vacation planned”, even “I’d rather pass a kidney stone”, would be sufficient.  Really anything that doesn’t make the rest of us feel inferior because while you’re lying on the beach drinking a Lava Flow, we’re moping through another week of work with only some shitty bbq to look forward to.  

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Something really strange came to my attention the other day.  I work in a big building downtown.  On the bottom floor is a convenient type store with candy, magazines, snacks, cigarettes and the such.  They also have a small medicine section.  About once a week I go in to this section to pickup, Rolaids, Alka-Seltzer or other various stomach medications.  In that small medicine section, they have condoms.  This is obviously fine with me as I think condoms should be an easily accessible product to help prevent disease and unwanted pregnancy.  The thing that was weird to me was that the only option they had was non-lubricated condoms.  I saw this and realized that is all that they ever have there.  If you are only going to have one type of anything at your store, wouldn’t you have the one that most people buy?  If you’re only going to have one kind of ketchup you’re not going to have Hunt’s, you’ll have Heinz.  I have never heard of anyone buying or using non-lubricated condoms.  I feel like it would take off a layer of skin.  It seems painful and uncomfortable to remove.  So what’s worse is I have come to the conclusion that it is probably the same 2 boxes of non-lubricated condoms that I saw 3 years ago when I first went in to the store.  The owner must feel like no one ever buys condoms in the financial district, so he just never orders more.  Condoms do go bad.  So I just hope that anyone in my building is prepared to walk down the street to Walgreens just in case they find themselves and a co-worker getting horny by the coffee maker or about get busy in a meeting room.  Because if they are planning on getting their protection downstairs, that rubber is going to be as dry as a bone; clearly meaning that it won’t be only thing that‘s dry.

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Thanks everyone for reading.  It was a little longer today because it has been a while.  I’ve been kind of busy, but am hoping to get my next movie review up this week.  Speaking of movies, I saw I’m Not There this week.  Amazing film.  It is going to make my top 100.  I just need to figure out where.