Photo credit: templetonelliot

The first workday at your new job is behind you.

Maybe your co-workers didn’t notice you. Maybe you’re well on your way to becoming the office fridge thief. Chalk day one up to co-worker jealousy of your good looks and a particularly dry atmosphere.

Now it’s your second day. If it went anything like mine did yesterday, you’re still headed down the glorious path toward promotion, salary increases, and crushing your enemies.

Here are 10 more items from Day Two:

1. Get more comfortable using the Internet for personal use. Check Gmail and read a blog or two. When clicking on Web site you thought was “safe for work”, freak out when a page pops up angrily instructing you that the particular URL is restricted by company policy. Shut down your computer and take lunch.

2. Tell your boss you want to have a meeting. Wow him with lots of questions in which you drop words like “on-boarding”, “performance work statements”, and “tracking models”. Propose completely revamping the company’s operations by creating “awesome” flow charts.

3. Go to lunch alone again. This’ll show your cliquey co-workers that you don’t need them and would rather eat a jumbo cheeseburger and read Special Topics in Calamity Physics anyway. Decide to make your plan to become their leader a top priority.

4. Fail to recognize your boss in the hallway because he’s dyed the gray out of his hair. Do a double-take at the last second, thereby guaranteeing he’s noticed the ridicule in your eyes. He’ll mistake it for awe of his power and promote you.

5. Continue to forget everyone’s names. They’ll wonder what your “deal” is.

6. Take your first work dump. This marks your territory and cements your shameless reputation as the office dumper.

7. Overhear a co-worker talk about that night’s company event at the Kennedy Center. Curse your subcontractor status.

8. Think you broke the automated coffee machine until realizing YOU’RE the Luddite you joked about being the day before. This will humble you.

9. Daydream about the new Transformers movie. Consider the existential dilemma of Optimus Prime beating Voltron at backgammon. This will help you think “outside the box”. Punch yourself for saying “outside the box”.

10. Realize this was probably a bad time to quit smoking.

Photo credit: bangalrore_scs

I started my new job yesterday and I can’t believe I haven’t already been promoted. I’m pretty sure my boss went home yesterday testing out new nicknames on me like “Sport”, “Champ”, or “Golden Boy”.

If you, too, want to succeed on the first day of your new job like I did yesterday, follow my example and emulate my professional habits. You’ll be flying past the proverbial corporate ladder and taking non-proverbial liquid lunches in no time.

Here’s how I did it:

1. Ask your boss five minutes into the workday if he has an extra mouse for your laptop. Whine that you work slower with a touchpad. He will think you’re a go-getter.

2. When your new co-workers go to lunch together without asking you, eat your salami and cheese sandwich alone in your cubicle. Plan how you will one day become their leader.

3. Leave the building without an electronic ID badge and then spend 10 minutes in the lobby unable to take the security elevator. Ask each person who walks past, “Do YOU work for [Company Name]? Do YOU work for [Company Name]?” Your boss will think you’re on important business.

4. Forget your new co-workers’ names almost immediately after meeting them. They’ll think they’re not as important as you and you’ll create an instant air of superiority.

5. Stand in front of the automated coffee machine for eight minutes trying to figure out how the contraption works. Joke awkwardly with a fellow office drone about what a Luddite you are. Explain to him what a Luddite is. He’ll think you’re smart.

6. When given the choice, take the cubicle next to the window. People will think you deserve it.

7. Steal Dasani water from the fridge. Pretend it’s yours and make everyone think you’re healthy.

8. Write down all your new user names and passwords on a Post-It so you don’t forget them. Ten minutes later, read the security training guide on how to protect your company’s system integrity. Shred the Post-It to show you can learn from your mistakes.

9. Wonder why no one is complimenting your first-day choice of outfit. Vow never to take GQ’s advice on skinny ties ever again.

10. Attend a one-and-a-half hour staff meeting at the end of the day. Take cryptic notes and nod your head a lot. When your manager tells you he’s going to need your help on something you don’t understand, reply confidently, “You got it!” This will delay the inevitable realization that he’s hired an idiot.

You’re welcome.

The Princess and I went to Chicago this past weekend for her college friend’s wedding and to celebrate my 32nd birthday.

Because I’m starting my awesome new job today and don’t want my bosses to figure out so soon what a lazy goofball I am, I can’t write a real post. So enjoy the slideshow I made of my favorite pics from the weekend.

And then get back to work.

Photo credit: jtowns

Today is my last day at the Federal agency where I have been working the past 4 ½ years. Since there is no longer the risk of getting Dooced, I can reveal that my employer for nearly half a decade was the FAA, a top-notch agency that I will miss.

The FAA runs on the expertise and dedication of thousands of public servants who work hard (in varying degrees) everyday to ensure your flight from point A to point B is safe.

(FYI: For those of you scared to fly, I have some good news and bad news. Scroll down to the last paragraph to read more.)

But what about the unsung heroes of the FAA who have kept the agency afloat and made my experience here an interesting one? They deserve thanks, too.

Thank you, Rhonda the security guard, for thinking my name was Allan my entire time at the FAA. I never had the heart to correct you so I let you continue to call me Allan, which was weird since you looked at my ID badge every afternoon.

Thank you, Culito my Puerto Rican immigrant friend, for hugging me every morning even before I had my coffee and butchering the English language for the entertainment of us all. (“There are plenty of fish in the sink”; “Attention, ladies and vaginamen”; “I can’t go to softball tonight, I have the Ricky Martin concert”; and my favorite exchange:

Arjewtino: “I worked at the Journal Newspapers in 1999 and 2000.”

Culito: “Really? Did they pay you in Jew money?”

Thank you, MJ, for once mishearing what Culito said and screaming in a crowded lunch room, “YOU WANT ME TO BRING YOU A HOOKER??”

Thank you, Brewies Chewies, for sitting on the toilet next to me last year, reaching underneath my stall and grabbing my FAA ID badge. You ruined “crossword time” for me forever.

Thank you, Sammy, the Muslim Egyptian hot dog vendor, who let me circumvent the line to buy Camel Lights, yet lectured me on the evils of smoking. I’m sorry I spoiled the result of the Liverpool-AC Milan match for you last month.

Thank you, Fausto Hilario, my Cuban cubicle-mate my first week on the job, for providing me my favorite name of all time, one which I hope to use for a character in a novel someday.

Thank you, Sgt. Barnaby, my favorite squirrel, for stashing away those nuts in the large planter outside the FAA and giving me a pseudo-Animal Planet episode. Haven’t seen you in a while, hope you’re not dead.

Thank you, all of you who walked past the escalator and instead used the elevator to go to the second floor, thereby delaying me by 10 seconds.

Thank you, , for not banishing me from the coffee club even when I didn’t wash the coffee pot.

Thank you, K-Mac, for banishing me from the coffee club just because I didn’t wash the coffee pot.

Thank you, Kirchner, for taking me for my first and, so far, only liquid lunch.

Thank you, D, for playing the role of big brother and guiding me through life. You can stop molesting me now.

Thanks to everyone at the FAA, my co-workers who never knew I had a blog, all the employees I repeatedly saw on the Metro and pretended not to see, and my friends — Patricio, Chosang, Mexican Liz, HC, KD, and everyone else.

One last special thank you to Train Wreck Secretary who once told me if I didn’t accept Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior that I was the anti-Christ. I hope God’s son got you that raise you wanted.

From above: The good news about aviation safety is that there has never been a safer time in history to fly. The chances of crashing are so slim that only the strangest series of blunders could make your aircraft hurtle out of the sky. The bad news is that you’ve been worrying about the wrong thing. Once an airplane is airborne, you are all but 100% safe from an accident. It’s when the plane is taxiing on the runway that you should be concerned.

* That heart-felt sentiment was written on my goodbye card from my co-workers.

HC, Arjewtino, MJ, Mexican Liz

Arjewtino, Chosang
Photo credit (via Treo): Chosang

Thanks for a fun last night out, people!

I played Wii for the first time recently and found it pedantic and boring, if not physically taxing.

A friend gave me a bootlegged copy of Baseball 2007 for Playstation 2 and I felt disinterested at best.

Culito invited me over to play Xbox and I yawned.

I thought my recent lackluster response to video-gaming was a sure sign that I had matured and started acting my age. Then I sang “Milk, milk, lemonade, ‘round the corner fudge is made!” and realized I was wrong.

The real reason, I believe, is that I miss the video games I used to play. I’m not talking about the games we, as a generation, used to play — like Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros., or Q-Bert. I mean the games I loved. Here are five games I miss playing:

Cyberball, Atari.

Blue and I were addicted to this game. As teenage nerds with no girls to talk to, we would venture to the Fallbrook Mall arcade every weekend to play the futuristic football game featuring fallible robots. Sure, the science behind it made less sense than the flux capacitor, but you got to destroy robots who tried to gain yards.

Double Dribble, Nintendo.

Since even Super Mario and his brother Luigi could have beaten me at basketball (as long as they ate magical mushrooms), I had to turn to this game to feel like an NBA star. It eventually taught me how to shoot three-pointers from the corner, except in… well, you know… real basketball games.

NHL ’94, Sega.

I dominated this game. Whether I played as the Campbell Conference All-Stars or the weaker L.A. Kings or the awful Winnipeg Jets, I would beat all opponents. Even if I had a midterm I hadn’t studied for the next day and it was 2am, I always made time for this game. This was the version earlier than the one made famous in Swingers (“I can make Gretzky’s head bleed”).

Contra, Nintendo.

When people ask me where I developed my lifetime hatred of South American terrorists and alien life-forms hell-bent on human destruction, I cite this game. My friend Resnick and I used to record our games on my VCR and then watch them in order to analyze our skills and improve. Ballplayers call this behavior “watching film”. We called it “we have no girlfriends”.

Snafu, Intellivision.

This game and console are so old most people reading this weren’t even born when they went out of business. But I remember taking trips to Northern California to visit my uncle and aunt and playing this game for hours. It pretty much involved manipulating a snake-like figure that grew longer so it wouldn’t crash into itself. My sister and I fought over the controller every time we played but, luckily, I was bigger and would pound her if she took too long to play.

So you attended your first blogger happy hour. You met the hosts -– INPY, Kassy K, Roosh, , and myself –- as well as many new people. You imbibed too many drinks, talked to dozens of new people, and realized that not all bloggers are insecure, self-absorbed nerds (just most of us).

Now you need to write a recap. But how?

The first thing you need to do is ask yourself a series of questions to determine if you should even write one, such as:

Did you go home with Roosh?
Did you do something stupid you wouldn’t want your new blogging friends to remember?
Are you still hungover or will you need a couple of more days to recover?

If you answered “no” to at least two of these questions, you’re in good shape to write a recap.

The next step is to defog that alcohol-soaked region of your brain you call a memory and try to remember who you met that night so you can link to them and hope they link to you. Another series of questions:

Did you brazenly think you wouldn’t forget anyone’s name?
Does the idea of recalling even one blogger make your skull feel like it’s shattering?
Did you promise a blogger you’d look up his/her blog the next day only to wake up wondering why your underwear is on your head?

If you answered “yes” to at least one of these questions, you might not want to write a recap until you have read others written by bloggers with better memories or who drank less than you.

The third step is to determine what funny stories, if any, there are to write about.

Did someone smack your ass?
Did someone spill a drink down your chest?
Did someone mistake your lap for the toilet?
Did you flash the bartender with another girl because you weren’t being served quick enough?
Did someone try to make out with you five minutes after meeting you?
Did someone dance so poorly it made Elaine Benes look like Fred Astaire?
Did a blog fan/commenter admonish you for your disgusting smoking habit?
Did one blogger freak another on the dance floor, leading the freaked blogger to think someone else was freaking him, reach behind him, and grab the freaking blogger’s ass?
Did someone tell you he had a blog only to find out when you got home that it didn’t exist and he had made the whole thing up?
Did you embarrassingly tell that same person you had not only heard of his blog but that you were a “big fan” of his?

Answering “yes” to any of these merits a happy hour recap.

Now that you’ve decided to write a recap, what should you say? Here are some options:

List and hyperlink all the bloggers you met in hope that they notice you and start reading your blog.
Write how good-looking and nice they all are (they are).
Post the most flattering photos you took of your new photogenic friends.
Joke about how Arjewtino was shorter than you expected.
Discuss how much you drank.
Discuss how much other people drank.
Discuss how you might have blacked out.
Discuss how you ended the evening with your head in the oven because you thought it was your pillow.
Discuss how you didn’t get out of bed Saturday until 5pm.
Make fun of yourself for being so nervous to meet everyone.
Promise to attend the next happy hour.

Great to meet and see everyone, had a great time. More recaps from co-hosts:
INPY

KassyK
Roosh is MIA; this might explain why

My favorite photos (courtesy of AJ) from the HH that don’t include me (for once):

Brewies Chewies looking down MJ’s shirt.

Baby Bien and Brewies Chewies gazing longingly at each other

Culito, only three beers in, telling me he loves me

I don’t regret that someone took this photo of my friend and me in a swimming pool:

I don’t regret that I posted it on my blog when recapping my friend’s wedding in Tampa in March.

I don’t regret that Roosh described it as “so hot”.

I don’t regret that someone found the photo using Windows Live search.

I don’t regret that the photo showed up on Windows Live when someone searched for the term “wedding pool”.

I don’t regret that the person who searched for “wedding pool” not only saw this photo of two guys drunk in a hotel swimming pool but decided to click on it.

I don’t regret that this photo was cached or techno-saved or whatever it’s called when a photo turns up on some search engine.

But for the love of Christ…

Who doesn’t use Google?

Click to enlarge.

They say no one ever really retires from kickball.

But after more than two years encompassing five seasons, it’s time for me to hang up my cleats and flip cup.

I joined kickball in spring 2005 for the thrill of competition and camaraderie. (Also, I was told, it was full of horny nerd-girls who liked to drink.) I was captain of my first WAKA team, the Bayside Tigers, a team comprised mostly of my goofy co-op neighbors who played like the same Screech who attended our moniker’s fictional school.

I led that team to an 0-10 record. That is not a typo. Oh and ten.

I joined the Kids Who Don’t Read Good in the fall and instantly liked my teammates. I stayed with the franchise as we evolved into Slow Children at Play the following year and, most recently, joined NAKID as Captain McDreamy and the Rainbow Coalition (named such, I think, because of the higher-than-normal ratio of gay guys on our team).

My kickball career has seen some amazing moments on the field, like the time in the spring of 2006 when we, an under-.500 team, beat the first-place team in the playoffs to make it to the .

There were also some great moments off the field, like the time I Evel-Knieveled across four tables and a pyramid of beer cups. Or like last fall, when paparazzi caught me drunkenly going home with the rubber chicken and sold the exclusive photo to Wonkette.

Kickball is not really a sport or an activity; it is, rather, an event — a combination of easy athleticism and heavy drinking. As those who play it can attest, kickball centers around one thing — . We talk about it in e-mails leading up to game time, sneak it past U.S. Park Police, drink it in excess at bars that look the other way, chug it to play flip cup, and rue it the next day when we’re hungover at work.

The truth is, I’m not retiring from kickball but rather the phenomenon of kickball. The general debauchery one can expect on any given kickball night — boob flashing, grinding on the “dance floor”, ass grabbing, pantsing sorry about that, Nickels), , vomiting, watching your male teammate make out with a girl AND a guy – has worn me out.

My teammates are in denial about my retirement. Who can blame them, when I, the team’s starting pitcher, put up the following pitching stats this season:

But yes, Rainbows, I’m done with kickball. It doesn’t mean I won’t still come cheer you on against our arch-nemesis Balls Deep or drink with you at the bar once or twice next season. It’s just that kickball is a kid’s game and, at nearly 32, I no longer want to keep up with you.

A teammate asked me recently what I was going to do with my Tuesday nights after retirement. That’s what I’d like to find out.

Yesterday we established that the Virginia DMV is not a fan of the Chosen People — based purely on its online personalized license plate generator.

Today we’ll continue with your submissions. Send in either a jpeg/gif of your creation at , or let me know the category/lettering you’d like and I’ll post it for you.

Click on any license plate for a mini-slideshow.

From Phil at Playaz Ball:

From :

From Horizontal:

From :

From :

From :

From Nenesmom:

From Florida fan Jim Swift (as a UCLA fan, I’m posting this against my better judgment):

From :

Think I’m exaggerating? Maybe I am. But the state DMV’s online personalized license plate generator sure has some issues with the Chosen People.

Despite providing a variety of plate categories — military, university, special interest — and the ability to type in whatever you’d like on your license plate, Virginia won’t let me type in the word Jew.

Or Arjewtino. Or Arjwtino. Or Jewcy.

Of course, being the resourceful blogger that I am, I found a way around the commonwealth’s fascist automobile identification system:

Click to enlarge.

Try your own. If you create one, send it to me at as a jpg and I’ll post it here.

If anyone is having trouble converting your plates to jpg or gif files, e-mail me and tell me what category you chose and what the plate says and I’ll make it for you.

Thanks to Foxymoron for the link.

Click on any of the plates below and you can conduct your very own mini-slideshow.

From :

From Average Jane:

From :

From INPY:

From Horizontal:

From Magic Jewball:

From Baby Bien:

From Barbaro:

From :

From Freckled K:

From :

From :

From :