To the Couple Having Sex in the Men's Room of the Pitt County Courthouse Today:

Are you kidding me? You can't wait until you get home? That's all.

A Happy Post that Goes, Terribly, Terribly Wrong in the End

EDITOR'S NOTE: I had started and nearly finished this post before I learned how tragically one of these little anecdotes concluded. It was SUPPOSED to be a counter to my depressing last post...a sort of "how to find joy in life's little everyday occurrences" piece. But unfortunately, this one does not have a happy ending either. Oh well, maybe one of these days....


I love randomness. There are few things in life that make me any happier than when crazy unexpected things just happen out of nowhere (not things like "Uncle Charlie had a stroke this morning!" but more along the lines of "that homeless man on the corner gave ME money!" You get the idea.) Today I had the opportunity to witness three separate such situations, each brought a huge smile to my face....right after the initial "what in the world just happened" feeling subsided.

The first happened on my way to work this morning. I had morning hearings in Onslow County, which means a trip up my favorite (heavy sarcasm here) stretch of highway, US 17. For those who don't know, this particular stretch of road is long, flat, straight, and generally as non-scenic as a road can be. About half way to Onslow, though, I noticed something on the edge of the highway. Something BIG.

As it was still pretty early, traffic was light, and I could slow down without pissing anyone behind me off. Soon I was beside the object, just barely coasting, and I could not believe my eyes - it was an alligator....a big alligator...no, no, wait....A BIG FUCKING ALLIGATOR. If this were Miami, I wouldn't be totally shocked. But here in NC, we don't get too many of these critters, and I've never even heard of one this large being sighted. In fact, I've lived here most of my life and this is the first I've ever seen in the wild around here. I remember growing up, it seemed everyone knew someone who knew someone who had seen one while boating or fishing, but firsthand accounts were very rare.

"So there you go," I thought, and then I continued on towards Jacksonville......


I parked my car at the courthouse, gathered my things, and began to head inside. Before I reached the door, however, I was stopped by a man who looked to be in quite a panic. "I need help," he said as he approached, his voice slightly quivering. "Can you tie a tie?" The fact that I was wearing one must have tipped him off.
"Yeah," I responded.
"Thank God. Do you mind tying mine?"
"Sure, no problem. But I don't have a mirror so it may not look just right," I said (while I thought to myself "OK, this is a little weird")

So I did the best I could, mirror-less and in a hurry. I loosened the knot and slipped it over my head without untying it, and handed it to the man. He pulled it over his head and tightened it to his collar.
"This is WAY too short!" he shouted, then angrily stormed off......


Things wrapped up in Onslow around lunchtime, and I made my way over to the Subway which in conveniently located only a few hundred yards from the courthouse. If you've been to Subway lately, you may have noticed they've changed the steak they use in their sandwiches (perhaps only temporarily; they're doing a steak promotion right now). Where before it was more of what I would call "Philly" style (finely chopped, almost shredded), it is now much heartier chunks like you would find in a beef stew or a can of Alpo dogfood. I've had the new steak, and it's good. It's different than before, but good.

The guy in front of me in line, though, was apparently not aware of the change. He ordered a steak and cheese, picked his bread, his cheese, and started to make his vegetable and condiment selections. But when the poor guy making the sub got the steak out of the microwave, and the customer saw that it was not the old kind, things exploded!
"Whoh, whoh, whoh...what is THAT!"
"This is our new steak. Subway sends us this kind now for the new sandwiches."

Well, to the customer, that response may as well have been "Here you go, sir, I took the liberty of urinating on your sandwich. I hope you don't mind. I also got a diseased prostitute out back to lick your bread, but I won't charge you extra for that." He demanded the old style of steak, and when told they didn't have any, he cancelled his order and furiously left the store.

I ordered my sandwich - the steak and cheese - and made my way down the line to pay. Just then a woman walked in and approached the counter.
"Steak and cheese, please"
"Yes, ma'am...and what type of bread would you...."
"Whoh, whoh, whoh...what is THAT!"

As I exited the building, she walked out right behind me, with no sandwich. She too had called off the order upon seeing the new steak. The staff was stunned. I enjoyed my sub even more.

Bravo, Life. Bravo.


And the sad conclusion....
When I got home, I started looking at local news websites to see if there was a story about the alligator. I figured an animal that size hanging out along a major highway was a newsworthy event. And it was....BECAUSE SOME JERKOFF RAN OVER THE ALLIGATOR AND KILLED HIM. Here's the story. That magnificent beast was 12 feet long, and approximately 85 years old. Can you imagine what such an animal had done and been through in his life. Scrapping out a living in a not-so-alligator-friendly environment, and managing to reach that size. Clearly an apex predator in that area...I can only imagine he must have lived off hunting deer. I can't think of anything else around here that could sustain such a creature. And then to die because some careless moron can't drive. How do you not see the TWELVE FOOT LONG 475 POUND ALLIGATOR in the road? I saw him from a good 300 yards or so away, and at that point he was in the grass! Kinda hard to miss. Sigh.

After the Sweet Buzz of the Weekend, the Nasty Hangover of Reality...

I ended up making a Charlotte trip on Friday, and it resulted in a fantastic weekend. Caught up with some old friends, saw one of them get married off, watched some football, and took full advantage of the uptown nightlife. The trouble with such a great weekend, though, is that it can make your normal day-to-day life seem less than stellar by comparison. I'll go ahead and warn you, this entire post might be somewhat depressing, so I might end up taking it down if I look back after a day or so and it reads too much like a suicide note. Anyway during the 4-hour drive home Sunday afternoon, I seemed to have a million somewhat-related things running through my head, like:

- I'm not sure how much longer I can pretend to be happy about living in Wilmington. Don't get me wrong, Wilmington is a nice place. In fact, if I had to pick any city of less than 100,000 people to live in, this one would be high on the list. It's young, it's growing, it's near the beach...there's not a lot to dislike. The problem is that I want to live in a big city. That's what I wanted after I finished college (placing me in Miami), after I finished law school (sending me searching for a city other than Miami), and that's what I still want now. It just didn't happen to end up that way. And as hard as I've been trying to repress that feeling, being in Charlotte for a few days really stirred it up in me again. Did you know that Charlotte is actually bigger than Seattle, Boston, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Miami? OK, that was random. But I just feel like I'm missing out on my chance for the big city experience. What if I'm 30 and I finally get promoted/change jobs/whatever and get moved to a city...just at the time everyone else is deciding it's time to move to the suburbs? Shit, you're only young once, and I just feel like I'm wasting it. Maybe I would hate it. Maybe I'd come running back to small town living as quickly as I could. But if never even try it, I could never really forgive myself.

- While I have lots of friends with "good jobs," I'm decidely more envious of my non-law friends' jobs than the ones my law friends have. Honestly, they're doing some pretty cool stuff. I've never been too shy (except to people at work...don't really want that one floating around the office) about expressing my general indifference to the practice of law, and getting together with my college friends reminds me why. I hear things like "when I get off at 5:00..." and "what are 'minimum billable hours?'" And not there's the whole money thing. Not that we ever specifically discuss salaries, but they all seem to be doing about as well financially as my law friends. Just being in their apartments, noticing what restaurants they suggest, etc, can give off plenty of clues. I'm seeing that 3 years of experience/promotions can put you in basically the same spot as 3 years of extra school when you also take into account the 3 years worth of student loans that you get to subtract from your salary each month. Sure, I know there's an element of "the grass is always greener" at work, but it's something I've been thinking about.

- I still have a fairly respectable alcohol tolerance. From around 10 PM Friday until about 10 am Sunday, I was sober for a grand total of probably 4.5 hours. Got into town - pregame, then to the bars. Saturday morning - beer and football. Saturday afternoon - open bar wedding reception....and then back to the bars. And overall, I didn't come out of it feeling nearly as bad as I thought I might. But on the other hand....

- Vault Energy Drink affects me in the same way as I imagine cocaine would. I rarely drink caffeine at all. Pretty much never. But about 3 hours into the drive up, it was getting late, and I decided to stop and get some food at Burger King. Vault was a part of the soft drink lineup, and I thought to myself, "hmmm, that should keep me wide awake for the rest of the trip!" Holy Shit! By the time I got in Charlotte I was shaking like a Parkinson's patient and talking like the Micro Machine Man. It took several beers just to bring me down to normal.

- Why do girls ___? What do they mean when they say ___? What about when they do ___? What was she thinking when she ___? What....? Fill in the blanks however you want. Those are questions that have no answers as far as I'm concerned. I'm just very confused. I just, uh...err....I've said too much already.

- Want to know how to start feeling depressed real fast? When you say, "This has been the most fun weekend I've had in months!" and the response is "Well this is how it is pretty most of the time here...except when there's not a wedding or something we just watch more football."

- Wedding season is now officially over for me, and crap do I have a LOT of married friends now. And I'm as happy as I can be for all of them. I really am. But I'm starting to feel like people are now getting certain expectations for the last of us single folk. "So, when are YOU gonna take the plunge?" They may not be saying it (except my mom - she actually says it) but they're thinking it. What about when these married folks start having kids? What if I'm still single when they have kids? What would my mom say about that?


These thoughts weigh heavy on my mind.

This is the type of band I would form if I could get 25 friends to sign on....

Surprisingly, This Works Amazingly Well

Wise Words Indeed

Somehow, inexplicably, I've just now stumbled onto the "fake psa" section of the website for The Office. I really don't know how these have escaped my attention until now, but they are hilarious little spoofs of NBC's "the more you know" ads. Definitely worth checking out.

A Graphical Explanation of Why I Haven't Been Posting Much Lately

My firm does business all over the state, and as such, the caseload is divided up by county. Ever since I started, I've been assigned to work on all the cases from these counties:


Last week, we had two people quit. Until we can hire some new folks, I'm responsible for the caseload from these counties:

Yesterday I got to see both the SC and VA borders (and numerous places in between) over the course of an 18-hour day. It was awesome*.




*This statement is actually a lie. It was not awesome at all.

Feeling Old

I have some great neighbors at my apartment. We've been hanging out a lot more lately, and they're all good folks all around. The only thing - I'm not saying "problem," only "thing" - is that I've got almost three years on everyone else. Not that this should be an issue, and really it's not, but something happened the other night that made me feel really old.

I was at a small gathering across the hall, when I noticed a rather attractive young lady who didn't seem to be talking to anyone, so I went over to introduce myself (Side note: when I first noticed her, I thought to myself, "wow, she looks like a hotter version of a girl I dated in high school." Turns out she even had the same name as said girl. Irrelevant to this story, but pretty random nonetheless).

Anyway, the conversation eventually moved to the "so what do you do" phase, at which point she informed me she was a student at UNCW. Grad student? No. Fifth-year senior about to graduate? Try again. Nineteen year-old sophomore? Bingo.

Suddenly I felt like I may as well be about 43.

Not that that stopped me from talking to her, but it did make me feel kinda funny. (Side note #2: I don't think I've ever posted my "hitting on a younger girl in Ireland" story on here - probably one of the funniest/scariest/sketchiest days of life. I'm gonna check my archives for that one. If not, I'll definitely be sharing that one soon.)

UM Football Predictions

I hope neither one of these comes to pass, but deep down I feel both will:

1) Larry Coker will not be the head coach at next season's kickoff

2) The average attendance figures for the '06 UM football team will rival the average attendance for the '06 Florida Marlins (not a good thing, in case you're not familiar with the pitiful support the Marlins typically receive)

A Tragic Loss

I am devastated by the news of the death of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, and my heart goes out to his family. This guy was a complete joy to watch on TV, and worked wonders in the name of wildlife conservation and public education. It's easy to forget these days with dozens of "up close and personal" wildlife shows out there, but when The Crocodile Hunter first debuted, no one else was doing what Steve was doing. The only animals that were ever handled were the cute cuddly ones, and the dangerous ones were always in cages or on leashes. Then came the Croc Hunter.

I remember my freshman year of college - when the show really started to take off - it became a viewing event in my dorm (rivaled only by Monday Nitro and Tar Heel away games). People would get together and marvel at what this man's passion, at animals they had never seen anyone get that close to, and at some animals they had never seen at all. And for all the theatrics, the moral of the story was very simple: respect for the environment, respect for the power of nature, and respect for all creatures, even if they're not of the cute and cuddly sort.

One of the most frequesntly spoken expressions at those dorm gatherings (and probably anywhere else the show was being watched) was "He is gonna kill himself one of these days if he keeps this up!" And tragically, that's exactly what happened today. Maybe it was inevitable. But if it's any consolation, he went out doing what he loved, and I for one don't think that's such a bad thing.

Sir Toggleberry's Unethical Excursion to the Uncharted Continent: August 2006

I know you've all been in suspense over this month's edition of my favorite tracks post. "Why hasn't it been posted yet?," and "How will I know what I should be listening to now?" are the two most frequesntly asked questions I've been asked*. The first one is easy to answer: I spent the whole weekend at the beach, nowhere near my computer/internet. As for the second, here's what you should be listening to right now:

1. Chad Rex and the Victorstands: Cities by Hotels
2. The Muckrakers: Slip Away
   
3. Drag the River: Me and Joe Went Out to California
4. CL Smooth: American Me
   
5. Girlsareshort: Perfect Sound Always
6. Gin Blossoms: Learning the Hard Way**
7. Our Lady of the Highway: Lord Stop the Bar
8. Ghost Buffalo: Ruin Everything
9. Phillipians: New Inspiration
10. Kaki King: Yellowcake
11. Gomez: See the World
12. Barenaked Ladies: Easy***
13. Heartless Bastards: All the Time
14. Quantic: An Announcement to Answer
15. Carey Ott: January

*No one has actually asked me these, or any other questions regarding this post
**Yes, you read that right, the Gin Blossums are back!
***Same goes for the Barenaked Ladies