Living your life is easy as 1, 2, 3

As 2009 comes to a close, I’m realizing just how much I have on my plate. I’m building a time machine. I’m trying as hard as I can to get accepted into the community college. I’m dealing with my always tenuous living situation. And I haven’t even mentioned my whole freelance architecture business.

(Editor’s note: Until now.)

But that didn’t stop me from putting an ad in the local alternative weekly for a new service I’ll be starting. I figure life coaching is right up my alley. I know that in sports teams are always looking for coaches with experience and I’ve got plenty of life experience.

For those of you that don’t know, a life coach meets with people that aren’t very good at life and gives them advice on either how to get things turned around or the most effective way to kill themselves. I’m pretty sure a life coach is one of the only people allowed to kill somebody else. We’re really the only people qualified to determine who should live and who should die.

(Editor’s note: We’re like God if God were a life coach.)

Normally I charge $75 per hour for my services plus an extra $10 if you want to make out a little at the end of our session. But it’s resolution time and if nothing else I view this blog as a public service. So I’m going to help you make your life better with this free life advice.

Tip No. 1: Life is really long

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all my years, it’s that this whole living thing takes a long time. In fact, if somebody would have told me beforehand that this was going to take somewhere in the neighborhood of 70-90 years to finish, I’d probably have just passed to begin with.

But here I am with no real choice in the matter (because as a highly-qualified life coach I’ve deemed myself worthy of continuing to live) just kind of counting down the years because I’ve accomplished most of what I wanted to in life. All that stuff I mentioned earlier isn’t really important. I’m just trying to do it all because I’m bored.

Here is my list of things I hope to accomplish before I die that I made in high school. I’ve put an * next to all of the things I’ve accomplished.

• Wear jean shorts.*
• Trick someone into thinking DiGiorno pizza was actually delivery.*
• Learn to swear in casual conversation.*
• Fly a kite.
• Kick a midget.*
• Be on Knight Rider. (Note: This will be completed once my time machine is finished.)
• Bone a mermaid.
• Drive a Big Wheel.*
• Kiss Matt Damon.*
• Kill a hobo.*
• Eat at at least four different Applebee’s.
• Meet Pat Sajak and mistakenly think he’s the host of Jeopardy and repeatedly tell him throughout our evening together that Jeopardy is way better than that crapfest Wheel of Fortune and that surely Hell could be nothing more than sitting in a room full of old people watching constant reruns of Wheel of Fortune only to realize too late that Pat Sajak is in fact the host of Wheel of Fortune and not Jeopardy and I can’t backtrack because I’ve already presented him with a notarized certificate stating how much better Jeopardy is than that crapfest Wheel of Fortune and things just go downhill from there and he eventually stops returning my calls and we end up not talking again until we run into each other one day on a bus and there are a few moments of awkward conversation and staring blankly off into the distance and we realize that we’ve grown so far apart that we can never have what we did before but we both agree that this bittersweet moment has brought us closure on this whole ugly incident.*

So that’s something like 8 out of 12, which is 75%, and Michael Jordan shot under 50% for his career so I think that if I finish my life at 75%, that’s cool.

You should make a list, too. Sit down and think of everything you want to do before you die and then set out to complete 75% of them.

(Editor’s note: It’s easier if 75% of your list is comprised of things you’ve already done.)

Tip No. 2: Everyone is out to get you

The biggest obstacle you’ll encounter in your life is other people. For some reason our society teaches us to value others and be nice and to share. That’s all well and good except for the fact that everyone wants to see you fail. And I don’t mean “you” generically. I mean “you,” the person reading this. Everyone on Earth hates you and is conspiring against you.

If you take that attitude towards life, you’ll see instant improvement. Your relationships will improve dramatically because you’ll now understand them better and realize that your girlfriend is only dating you so that she can find the right time to rip your heart out and step all over it. Sure, she could do it now, but you’re in a good mood so there wouldn’t be much point. She’s just waiting until you get laid off, your house is about to be foreclosed on and there’s this funny looking teenager at your door claiming he’s your son. Then she’ll sit you down and tell you that it’s just not working out and she’d like to see other people.

Same with your coworkers. They’re only being nice to you because they want your job. It may not seem like it because you’re the janitor and that guy in the fancy suit is the human resources manager, but believe me, that thank you he said to you when you cleaned up that coffee spill in his office was just his way of saying, “I could have your job if I wanted it and I’ll take it if you get the least bit complacent.”

In my perfect society, you’d be allowed to punch people like this in the face. But in our current, broken society punching someone in the face is given a silly, corporate buzzword name like assault and battery.

So you need to approach all these bastards (and by “all these bastards” I mean everyone) with the knowledge that they would give anything to see you dead. And if doing so makes you a little bit paranoid in the process, all the more worthwhile.

Tip No. 3: Change your name to something awesome

Fact: Your name sucks.

Fact: If your name was Craig T. Nelson, your name would not suck.

The bottom line is Craig T. Nelson is one of the greatest actors of this or any generation, but the totally sweet star of Coach would have never gotten the gig if his name were David Smith. Why? Because that name sucks.

If you want your life to improve, you need to change your name to something that will make people want to be in awe of you. Craig T. Nelson is the perfect example. Not only does it throw off the shackles of the first name-last name system, but it also includes a mysterious middle initial that could stand for anything. (Craig Tits Nelson?)

But you don’t have to follow Craig T.’s lead. In fact, I don’t think you can handle it. Don’t worry. Since I’m trying to come up with my own cool name, I will now share my list with you and you can choose one of your own:

• Gunnar
• Hairy Frank
• Bone City Johnson
• Fast Mikey
• Tiny Mo
• Jim Lehrer
• Hoss
• Willie “Fancy Walkin’” Jackson
• Jesus of Nazareth
• Wild Wendell and his Hillbilly-Rockin’ Band
• Doc Bologna
• Top Gun

Mind you, these are not nicknames. You’ll have to go down to the local courthouse and apply to have your name legally changed to the above choice. And just so you know before you pick it, you’ll have to use Wild Wendell and his Hillbilly-Rockin’ Band in its entirety every time you write it, say it or think it. It’s impossible to shorten awesome.

Polishing my resume for the job hunt

So a few of you suggested to me that one of the reasons I couldn’t get a job was because of my lack of a solid resume. Of course, none of you have seen my resume, so none of you actually said that to me. Mostly you said it was because of my unrealistic salary demands, my wardrobe consisting mostly of cut-off jean shorts and replica jerseys and my general lack of oral hygiene. Again, none of you actually said that to me, but that’s generally the feedback I receive from people who interview me.

It’s a free country, so you’re allowed to question my oral hygiene, but last I checked the Bible doesn’t say anything about God creating toothbrushes. Why would he give you teeth but no toothbrushes? Think about it. Seems to me that the guy who made teeth would know a little bit more about taking care of them than some guy who works for a company called AquaFresh. This is what happens though when Big Toothpaste gets their hands on those Washington fat cats in Congress.

But I digress. I was reading up online about resumes and how to make them (turns out your birth certificate isn’t your resume), and it seems like an awful lot of work to me. I don’t think it’s fair for a company to expect me to put in work just so I can go interview with them and not pay me throughout the process. I’ve suggested this in various board meetings (that I’ve crashed) but no one seems to be interested in my ideas to get the best of the best to apply. I know I would apply to tons more jobs if I were getting paid $25 an hour to do it.

Still, I need a job and the whole freelance architecture thing still hasn’t really taken off yet despite the fact that I spend a lot of time sitting around and thinking about how to make it work, mostly by playing Sim City. I thought I had a pretty good project lined up when I heard my next door neighbor’s kid begging his dad for a treehouse. I took a little initiative and drew him up some plans for a pretty sweet treehouse/grotto that I could have built for him for about $15,000, but before I could show it to him the plans got thrown away after they got mixed up in my old newspaper collection that my mom threw out.

I know what you’re thinking. “Why do you have an old newspaper collection?” It’s because for a while I thought I had a pretty nice money-making scheme where I would stand on the street corner with a stack of newspapers and yell, “EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!” and peddle headlines from a few years ago as new ones. (Holy shit! The Twin Towers collapsed again!) Turned out those newspaper kids didn’t make as much money as I thought and on top of that old man Carter, the publisher of the local paper, took two-thirds of every nickel I made selling papers and kept it for himself. He also locked me in his basement and fed me nothing but gruel. Even worse, it turns out old man Carter wasn’t actually the publisher of the local paper but just some random old man who locked people in his basement. It all worked out in the end, though, when he fired me because he thought I was editorializing too much in my sales pitches.

Getting back on point, though – my resume. I need a resume. So here it is. Any advice would be welcome, or if you want to steal it and use it as your own, that’s cool, too. Just be warned that you’ll find yourself sorely overqualified for most jobs to which you apply.

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Bill Legarm
Address withheld (no way am I giving you creeps my address – unless you’re a lady – then we can talk)
Phone number withheld (see above note)

 

Experience

January 1997-February 1997 | Assistant cafeteria worker

Worked here as punishment for repeatedly calling science teacher a witch (True, by the way. How else could he have built a full working volcano in our classroom?); Washed dishes; Cleaned up trays; Ate leftover scraps for money; The story about the pickles in the back room is totally untrue and not why I got fired.

April 2001-April 2001 | Communist hunter

Rounding up communists for fringe organization in Michigan; Was responsible for the arrest of 14 communists, mostly children; Fired when group found out about my refusal to acknowledge a united Germany – also I don’t know what a communist is.

November 2001-December 2001 | Mall Santa

Point of clarification: By Mall Santa I mean Front Yard Santa. The company that hires the Mall Santas didn’t hire me, so I got my own costume and set up in my front yard. In hindsight that wasn’t the best idea, but if attempting to bring joy to the neighborhood is wrong (and, according the arrest warrant, it is), I don’t want to be right.

July 2005-May 2006 | Stalker

Long story short, apparently the girl I thought I was dating wasn’t actually dating me. More on that in a later post. Still, this counts as a job because I got a hold of her bank account number and so I was kind of getting paid to do it.

September 2008-present | Freelance Architect

Designing and building buildings for major cities and corporations. My designs can be seen in various places including in my head and scribbled on public restroom walls, which is where I do my best thinking.

Education

All my life | Street smarts

You could hire somebody that reads books and has a degree, but do they know how to make a weapon using some rope, a piece of gum and a medium Frosty? Neither do I, but while they’re reading and getting degrees, I’m sitting around in my underwear watching MacGyver. Who do you think is going to figure it out first?

Skills

• Bob Barker trivia
• Opening Excel on my computer
• Watching Knight Rider
• Driving exactly 7 miles per hour over the speed limit
• Playing the Flying W on the guitar
• Really good at I Spy
• Boiling water
• Pretending to be Jason Bourne
• Eating ravioli
• Huntin’ commies
• As a general rule, if Ronnie James Dio can do it, I can do it better

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By the way, I completely agree with you. I have no idea how I haven’t been hired yet.

 

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I’ve got to make some money

I might not be as dashing as the man on the cover, but I'm close.

In a perfect world, there would be no crime or war and I’d be able to Taser people with my mind. As it is, I have to stun them instead with my vast knowledge of Hollywood Squares and my ability to list every color tie that Bob Barker wore during his last 500 episodes of The Price is Right. I’ve got it all on a spreadsheet if you’re interested.

Unfortunately, neither of those things are “marketable skills” and they fail to impress employers when featured on my resume. So somehow I need to acquire some sort of valuable training but I can’t because the stupid community college won’t accept me because technically I didn’t finish high school. In reality, I did finish high school, but they wouldn’t let me graduate because I failed all my classes, which is stupid. I was there. I put in my time.

So I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do since my mom is insisting that I start paying rent to live over the garage. And since my freelance architecture business is growing a little slower than expected I just don’t have a regular source of income. All of the places I’ve applied to have fallen through because they refuse to meet my salary demands, even though $75,000/yr. is an awfully reasonable request if you ask me. Stupid Burger King.

I applied for a job in my friend Barry’s electronics start-up business and he seems like he’s impressed with what I have to offer but just doesn’t have the resources to hire me. Once he makes his first sale, though, he’s going to revisit my resume and see if maybe I can help out building high-definition TVs or something. I’d kind of like to build rockets for him, but he said that’s a little later in his business plan and he’d like to hire an astronaut to help out in that department. But he assured me that if I became an astronaut, he’d be totally down with me joining the yet-to-be-created rocket science department of his company.

That’s a great fall-back, really, but I just don’t know if I have that kind of time, especially since my mom has already started advertising the garage sale to sell all my stuff this weekend. I looked around on-line for some fast-track astronaut classes, but the only ones that I found never called me back even though I gave them my credit card number. Joke’s on them, though, because my card is maxed out to its $450 limit.

Ultimately, though, I don’t really want to be an astronaut. Space freaks me out with all those stars and dead space monkey corpses floating around up there. I just don’t think it’s a very safe environment for someone like me, and on top of that I’m incredibly fair-skinned and it would be a bad idea for me to be that close to the sun. Also, NASA gets mad at me when I call them and ask, “How big is Uranus?”

If you don’t think that’s hilarious, you’re dumb.

Looking back on high school, I did have a meeting with my guidance counselor once, and he asked me what I wanted to be when I was older. When I said I didn’t know, he told me to figure out what I was passionate about and strive to make a career out of it. That’s easy since I’m really only passionate about one thing and that’s mangoes. I found some nice land and tried to start a mango farm, but that ended quickly once Mr. Jenkins found out I had covered his backyard in mango trees without his permission. On top of that, I had accidentally planted apple trees because I don’t actually know what a mango is.

The longer this plays out, the more I realize the community college is my only real option. If I could just show my mom that I’m committed to getting a real job someday, maybe she’ll let me stay. So I’ve started courting the president of the community college in hopes that if I can get into a relationship with her, she’ll let me in despite my “poor academic record” and “questionable criminal history.” (Those are exact quotes from my last rejection letter.)

So far she hasn’t returned my advances, however, and recently she informed me that she was not interested and that her husband worked out. Little does she know that, while I don’t work out now, I finally figured out how to put together that bench press I bought two years ago and I plan to work my way up towards using it by doing a series of light curls and three to five push-ups per day for the next two years. So I’ll be pretty ripped some day.

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I’m building a time machine

If I had a time machine, all my problems would be solved.

That’s why I’m building a time machine in my garage.

To be fair, it’s actually my mom’s garage. But it’s kind of like mine, though, because I live over the garage. Think Kirk Cameron in Growing Pains, but less preachy. Also, my room is less a room in the traditional sense and more some stuff I put up on the roof of the garage. It’s cold in the winter and things tend to get wet when it rains, but it’s a small price to pay for freedom.

But back to my time machine. It was designed by a well-respected design firm. And by “a well-respected design firm” I mean it was designed by a homeless guy outside the design firm’s office. But it’s cool, because if you’ve ever seen Good will Hunting you know that if you’re around something long enough you’re bound to learn about it. You also know that Matt Damon is the perfect man.

But I digress. I’m not sure what the homeless guy’s name is, so I just call him Hoss, but he’s very reliable. Whenever I need to have a meeting with him, he’s always there, usually sans pants.

Recently Hoss asked me for a progress report on my time machine and I told him that things were going well. I told him that because I’m a liar. Things aren’t going well at all. In fact, I’m way behind schedule. The problem isn’t so much that I’m not putting the work in to get it done – I spend close to 15 minutes a week on the damned thing – as much as I’m having trouble tracking down the parts.

I thought I’d found some plutonium on eBay, but I was unable to purchase it before the government took away my computer and arrested me for cavorting with known terrorists. First of all, cavorting sounds like a made-up word to me. Secondly, isn’t this America? If I want to buy a little plutonium from a dictator in a country I’ve never heard of I should be able to do so. This eroding of our civil liberties is getting out of hand. (I plan to touch on this in a later post.)

So no plutonium. Of course, fuel wouldn’t do me any good, anyway, because I don’t have an engine to fuel yet. Hoss and I had originally decided on building a jet engine from scratch, but stupid Auto Zone doesn’t carry jet engine compressors. So it was on to Plan B – the engine from a 1983 Chevette, and good luck finding one of those that works.

So my time machine is completely unusable and that’s too bad because I’ve got big plans for it. It’s kind of like when I went house shopping and I was looking at a house and the real estate agent laughed at me when I told her I was ready to make the purchase. Turns out she thought I was just a drifter looking for someplace to stay warm. She also didn’t like my payment plan which involved winning the lottery. She didn’t care that, based on my calculations (which I made up), I was sure to win some time in the next 27 years. She also didn’t seem to understand that I had already invited all my friends to the housewarming party.

Now here I am again … big plans and no way to execute them. All I want to do is form an army, go back to 1862 and beat the North and the South in the Civil War and form a new nation known simply as the United States of Awesome.

I’d bring my electric guitar, too, and I’d shred out some “Holy Diver” for everybody and get credit for writing it and make it our national anthem. And when Ronnie James Dio tries to release it in 100 years he can go fuck himself because I already recorded it and released it on the phonograph. That would also give me plenty of time to learn how to play guitar, which is good because right now I only know three chords – a C, a G and one I invented that I tentatively named a flying W. You have to play it while you hold the guitar behind your head. If you don’t, it sounds wrong and you look less awesome.

Of course, on top of all this, “the man’s” trying to hold me down. Hoss and I were talking about this just the other day. Building a time machine costs money and neither he nor I have any money. Neither of us has a “job”, per se, though he donates plasma regularly and I dabble in freelance architecture. I’m currently working on a building I hope to erect (pause for laughter because I said “erect”) a couple blocks over. It’s going to be 200 stories of solid steel and the windows will be made out of bulletproof glass and there will be gargoyles all over the place – maybe every other floor or so. I talked to a developer the other night and he told me I need to find some tenants if I really want to sell this to city council. He also said something about not knowing why a small suburb of 5,000 people would need a 200-story office building at the end of a residential street and I thought I heard something about years of schooling to become an architect, but I had pretty much stopped listening at that point.

So I’m working on lining up some tenants. My brother, Chad, is a lawyer, and he doesn’t really talk to me anymore, but I think he’d be interested. Also, my friend Barry is going to start an electronics company. He actually already started it and he finished building his first LCD TV the other day, so once he gets a buyer for that and really starts making money, he said I could block out a couple floors for him (but nothing too high because he’s afraid of heights). So things are looking good on that front. Once the money for my design starts rolling in, Hoss and I will be able to really get moving on this time machine.

But until then, I’m stuck in this holding pattern, staring at a bunch of useless parts and listening to my mom tell me to get that monstrosity out of her garage because she has to park her stupid Ford Taurus in there. As a certified time machine expert (I made the certificate myself) I can tell you this – the next Ford Taurus that goes back in time will be the first.