It's Been a Long Time....

"It's not a dog, it's a (sweater wearing couple of) ferrets you idiot," Governator Schwarzznegggis!?xyegger.

Welcome back!  Not to whoever is reading this why would I welcome you.  But welcome back me, to the internet.  It has been awhile since you last held me in your sweet embrace of endless cute animal pictures like the top of this page and new videos of Jimmy Fallon as Neil Young.

Now that I've reacclimated myself to the web, I'll break down where I have been.  I recently started a new job fighting crime in St. Louis, while still finding the time to work at an advertising company.  It's a full-time gig with my days and nights split between being the moral protector of a city that turned it's back on me years ago and the software of Adobe.  As you can tell that hellish mix scared away one or two AT&T internet repairmen, who also apparent lack in the superpower of MapQuesting my secret hideout.

Unfortunately, these new-found jobs have kept me from what my parents were starting to believe was my vocation...sleeping all day.  I mean delivering pizzas.

There truly was nothing like my life on the road, which is what I had at the hut and Nancy's.  The people you meet out on the old dusty trail taught me many a thing about - life, love, acceptable clothing when expecting someone at the door and the isolationist behavior of the obese.  For more lessons, just read On the Road by Jack Kerouac because I was once told by a homeless man (who exists in my dreams) that the book centers around a pizza delivery man and his trials and tribulations with his addiction to Rocky Road Ice Cream.  Back to my purpose of this entry.

Here are my thoughts on all the cliched, yet well-intentioned advice I was given/experienced in my first month on the job:

-Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.   Makes sense.  Kind of a yuppi-fied version of Johnny Tsunami's fortune cookie that read "Go big or go home."  While most people mean this as a way to trick you into dressing like a 1930's British banker,  I take it seriously.  Considering that the job I want is a professional NBA basketball player, I end up looking like this guy at work everyday.

Scouts call my mullet less athletic, but still maintain that I'm less of a dirty player than Rambis.

-Be the first one there in the morning, and the last one to leave at night.  Fair enough, I can appear to be a hard worker and a team player.  But we can't all follow this rule, otherwise the times get earlier at one end and later at the other until your 9-5 workday becomes a round-the-clock job without the Costanzian under-desk bed.  Plus, I'm afraid of the mornings.  I don't trust the sun until I have seen it at it's highest point.

Ben Savage: post Boy Meets World.

-Network/meet people/be friendly.  I enjoy meeting people as long as they are not this guy to the right.  But some folk take this to the extreme.  I recently met a nice enough person, or so I thought.  After walking half a hallway with said new friend I detoured for the bathroom.  He deked right, noted my direction change, spun left and followed me into the linoleum plaza.  I thought no biggie, he must just have urinate as well.  But what he did was far worse.  He stood within urine-splashing distance behind me continuing his Rolodex of getting to know you questions while I fought to hide my extreme unease.  "Where are you from?" "Wow, your name is Patrick, I know someone named Patrick." "Why have you not started peeing yet?"  Well the last one was a lie, but I half-expected it so I made fake peeing sounds just in case, and also as inspiration to get started.

There are plenty more examples I could and should come up with about work advice, but this has already gone to long and you probably stopped reading anyway, plus I should probably get back to clearing the streets of the bank robbin', old ladies' purse stealin', garbage pickin' field goal kick' Philadelphia phenomenon.  Damn, I've done it again, confused my life with a Tony Danza classic.  Now that I'm in a Danza-state of mind, I'll leave you with this.