Top 10 Best Things About Almost A Whole Week of Getting to Work Before 6 AM

10. I get to leave at 2 pm.

9. Going to work early and leaving work early means I miss both of the day's traffic headaches.

8. My lovely girlfriend is letting me use the car.

7. Most days, I will have two-and-a-half hours between when I leave work and when I need to pick up Maryann. As long as I'm smart about it, I can gather a LOT of whores and heroin in two-and-a-half hours.

6. There's really no way to notice or care about any particular person at work being a jerk. At 6 am, everyone's an asshole and everyone hates you.

5. Free breakfast crap at work.

4. I can get the drop on Iron Man.



Drunk fuck.

3. The attempt to actually come up with 10 things that are good about being at work by 6 am may be futile, but it's certainly a great way to exercise the part of my brain that thinks the glass is half full.

2. The more I practice getting up early, the better chance I have this December of catching that fat fuck on the roof and making him cough up that Castle Greyskull.

1. "It's better to have to be at work at 6 am than to not have a job to go to at any time, regardless of convenience." -Confucius

P.S. The Albany cityscape looks pretty in the dark.

Top 10 Surprising Things About Quitting Smoking

(Quick background – Between the time I stopped blogging and now, I quit smoking and all nicotine supplements. Today is my 88th day without nicotine.)

10. Cold Turkey really is the only way to go. I tried for months and months with the nicotine gum. Ended up getting addicted to the gum. Seriously. My favorite was the “Fruit Chill” flavor. At times I crave it more than the cigarettes.

9. After you quit smoking, God still hates you.

8. The fear of being without cigarettes is much more potent than the actual withdrawal.

7. The layover between quitting smoking and becoming a self-righteous non-smoker dickhead can be surprisingly short if you want it to. It didn’t take me long to look at my co-workers smoking in front of the building and think, “Oh! How disgusting!” Also, my testicles are missing.

6. Some people actually WILL be completely fuckwadish to you when they find out you’ve quit, like the guy at work who – on my Day 2 – offered to give me money to buy smokes if that was “the problem.” This helped lead to the easy transition mentioned in #7.

5. Apparently, after you quit you’re not supposed to have any any. Like, AT ALL. Can you believe that shit?

4. Hookers hardly ever talk to me now.

3. At first, you think that the constant stream of well wishes from friends, family, and co-workers is annoying. Then, the first time you mention you quit and someone DOESN’T respond with a “Good going!” or “Congratulations!” you realize you really wanted it.

2. When you don’t have a car and you live in an attic apartment at the end of a windy, narrow, dark staircase, laziness becomes a surprisingly powerful ally in smoking cessation.

1. People who smoke smell like ass.

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10. I should not be up this early.

9. Where am I?

8. Why is there no one else in this building and what the hell am I doing here?

7. who the thing

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5. No, no. I'm up.

4. Stop it.

3. You're not funny.

2. Fuck jungle in my...am I talking in my wec432fffff

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Top 10 Ways To Skin A Boss

10. Lava.

9. Find out the address of the local chapter of the CSA - Cannibal Skinners of America. Give your boss the address, but don't tell him what it is. Just tell him there are a lot of people there who like it when you talk about yourself. For hours. Especially if you mainly talk about high school. Even though you're, like, 50.

8. Get a nice, secure hold right under the skin on his forehead, and then roll him down a hill. It'll be like peeling an apple. Except with blood. And a hill.

7. Get some secure restraints, duct tape, a private space, and a dull spoon. Make a weekend of it.

6. While he's asleep, sneak into his bedroom and whisper "Everyone knows you're not 25" in his ear. He'll jump out of his own skin and run screaming.

5. Skin him while he's asleep. If you can't get him to stay asleep or go to sleep, use a simple trap. Put a picture of naked, genetically enhanced tits inside a book. Any book. After looking at the tits for 3 hours, he will get curious about the book, read a few sentences, and fall into a deep coma from the strain. You can set off a nuke next to his head and he'll keep snoring.

4. Do #5, but set the book down in the middle of his lawn. Then, get the mower.

3. Really hot coffee.

2. Bear.

1. Ninja.

Top 10 Favorite Things About My New Monthly Night Work Trips to Great Barrington

10. Feelings of self-righteousness towards masses of the kind of pseudo-liberal, rich fucks who think "antique" should be used as a verb.

9. Overtime.

8. It's truly rare to find someone who loves what they do, and all the lecturers have one thing in common - they love to talk. For a long. Long. Long. Time.

7. My presence in Great Barrington is something akin to magic. As soon as I cross its borders, the populace is united. I find the high school where the lecture is taking place, set up my recording equipment in the lecture hall, and as I work the entirety of GB stands outside the lecture hall discussing one thing - how many questions they can come up with for me that I don't know the answer to and don't care about.

6. The people of Great Barrington are a truly evolved species. They have moved beyond any kind of understanding of common sense or body language. For example, if I am obviously working on my recording equipment, if I am wearing headphones and listening intently to them, and if I in fact have a job whose primary requirement is that my sense of hearing be directed at one specific thing; it's very likely that all of these things going on at the same time would signal - to the knuckle-dragging legions of the savage races - that I'm listening to what I'm listening to because I have to, because it's my job, and because it's very likely things could go wrong if I don't. But the people of Great Barrington have moved beyond such rudimentary communication, so much so that they don't even comprehend it. They will come up to me and ask me where the best seat in the place is, whether or not the seat over there is taken, whether it's okay if they plug their personal recorders into the sound board, whose sweater that is over on that chair, where the speakers are so they can sit near them, what channel they can get my station on in Pittsfield, or just to swagger up to me stupidly and say nothing but, "So...you're the sound guy, huh?"

5. According to Rage Against The Machine, anger is a gift. If so, Christmas came motherfucking early.

4. Country roads are so fucking boring when you can actually see where they go.

3. When you can't see where country roads are going, you get to see many more country roads.

2. If the car breaks down on a Great Barrington Road and I'm accosted and raped by Great Barrington bumpkins, I will at least know that after their assault they will give me tips on where to find the best covered bridges, which antique stores in the area are the best, and great stories about how they almost made it to Woodstock.

1. The end of the return trip is the only time I'm ever happy to see Arbor Hill.

Top 10 Things I Just Fucking LOVE About My Temporary Return To The Night Shift

10. There are so many cool videos on youtube about Wrath of the Lich King, so I get constant reminders of what I'm missing.

9. Last time I worked this shift, I had access to a car and so foolishly discarded the idea of walking home alone at 5 in the morning through a high crime area.

8. Getting to watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report again.

7. Once it's over, at the beginning of next week, I will experience that wonderful Christmas-morning-like anticipation about finding out whether my return to the province of the sun will cause me to burst into flames, or if some nosy reporter has figured out I'm Batman.

6. Playing cards with the mice. Ratty's a cheating motherfucker, but Squeaky will put out for any kind of cheese at all. She's a muenster slut.

5. I love seeing and talking to no one. It really strengthens my personal connections to the my workplace and the world overall.

4. Glen Danzig.

3. Thinking about the early morning employees walking in and wondering who could have possibly left the mouth-watering aroma of freshly-nuked microwave popcorn in the air.

2. Overtime.

1. C-SPAN.

Top 10 Reasons Why I'm Going To Miss My Co-Worker Colin

10. Retards make me feel smart.

9. I hate using q-tips on my ears. Colin renders such awkward tools unnecessary. Every time he uses that stupid, high-pitched voice he stole from South Park, my ears bleed like Ol' fuckin' Faithful, clearing them out of wax in the process.

8. Racists make me feel righteous.

7. There's nothing more annoying than a cranky 14-year-old intern, and Colin always keeps them in good spirits by having sex with every single one of them.

6. Without his emblemed shirts, I'll have no idea what preppy company that utilizes illegal child labor I should be sending all my money to this week.

5. Drunks make me feel disciplined.

4. Without him, my co-worker Dave will be fucking up constantly, and I'll be too busy laughing to do my job properly.

3. People who read muscle magazines make me feel literate.

2. Glen Danzig.

1. I could totally kick his ass.

Top 10 Things I'm Going To Miss About My Night Job

10. Jerking off in the Men's Room.

9. Blessed night protecting me from the harsh, deadly sun.

8. Having absolutely no one around to notice when I make an obvious, glaring fuck up.

7. The mice (they like me more).

6. The prostitutes who want my cigarettes.

5. Talking to myself without being ridiculed for it (except by myself, and I've asked myself to be more sensitive about my feelings).

4. Waking people up because of emergencies. Your boss will never appreciate you more than when you call him at 3 am to tell him a street cleaner somehow set off the building's fire alarm.

3. C-SPAN. Until you watch a Democrat from Wyoming yield the remainder of his time to a Democrat from New York, you just haven't lived.

2. Jerking off in the Ladies' Room.

1. Absolutely. FUCKING. NOTHING.

Top 10 Best Jobs

10. Dinosaur Hunter. No one can call you a slacker. You're going to have to work damn hard to take out dinosaurs because there aren't any left, which is why you'll never find one. So you never have to face the danger inherent in hunting dinosaurs. Regardless, people will still be impressed when you tell them you're a Dinosaur Hunter. Especially chicks.

9. Security at Christian Rock concerts. Everyone's well-behaved and on the off-chance that there are a few trouble makers, physical force will rarely be necessary. Just tell them Jesus doesn't want them stage-diving. Of course, you have to hear the music, but I don't see how that's any worse than working a concert for Third Eye Blind or Carly Simon.

8. Jesus. The biggest downside is imminent death, but you get plenty of reboots. Even if you refuse to show up to work for thousands of years, you won't get fired. Your customers will keep busy talking about how they know you'll be back at work soon. And if anyone says different, you get to fuck with them after they die.

7. Batman. You're rich. You get to beat people up. You get to boss around other super-heroes. Your boss doesn't even have your phone number, he has to flash a light in the sky. You can chill for a few weeks and just say you were lost in time or in another dimension. You can justify one-night stands by revealing your identity and telling the chicks that if you let them move in, the Joker will kill them.

6. Professional Uncle. The kids have more fun with you than with their parents, you don't have to give them as much shit as their grandparents do, and you have absolutely no responsibility whatsoever regarding their well-being other than making sure you don't say "fuck" around them too many times.

5. Manager for Menudo. All your clients are dumb-ass kids who think that your 75% cut of all their record sales isn't that big a deal, and you never have to explain why you're firing them.

4. Gene Shallot. You absolutely love EVERY. MOVIE. EVER. MADE. And no one cares that you look like Rip Taylor if Rip Taylor looked more like the clown from IT.

3. Camera man for Survivor. You spend most of your time with hot, sweaty chicks dressed in next to nothing. Of course, no one has a better lunch break than you. You get your foot-long meatball sub, bag of chips, and ice-cold diet soda, and swallow it all down five feet from the contestants with a shit-eating grin, only stopping the nonstop shoveling of food into your mouth to occasionally to give the pathetic, desperate contestants two strong middle fingers.

2. Oil executive. In spite of your negligible profits, you are able to make just enough money to live comfortably while helping the environment and offering an important resource to consumers at ridiculously low prices.

1. American Ambassador to Australia. Tropical environment, good money, you get to say you're an ambassador, and you don't really have to do anything. When have you ever read in the paper, "Tensions mounting between Washington and Sydney"?

Top 10 Shittiest Things About Working An Overnight Shift

10. Isolation. I used to be a pretty well-liked guy. I'm pretty fun once you get to know me. Now I can count the number of people who ask me to hang with them on one hand and still have most of my fingers unused. The only people who talk to me are prostitutes who want my cigarettes. Now that I quit smoking, I'll be a fucking hermit.

9. Sex. If you're in a committed relationship, sex becomes quite a challenge. Your partner will inevitably get randy during two specific times of the day - right before you wake up, and right before you go to work (or if those two things happen at the same time, only at that time). And unless you want it to burn when you pee, don't let #10 give you any ideas.

8. Food. You never get used to eating at different times from the rest of the world. As much as it would seem to be a simple mathematical problem of counting hours, you just never know when you should eat what meal.

7. Confusion. People just don't. Fucking. GET IT. People will make you feel guilty for not being able to hang out with them, not getting back to them as soon as they would like, not being able to help them at 10 am because it's too close to your bedtime. It doesn't matter how long you do it. It doesn't matter how long those people have known you while you've worked this shift. They will never bend to your schedule, and they will never forgive you for not bending to theirs. Which contributes to #10 quite a bit.

6. Explanations. You have to constantly explain to people why you can't do what you can't do, why you have to do what you do when you do it, why you eat what you eat when you eat it. Again, it doesn't matter how long these people have known you. People who have known me for the entire four years I've worked the overnight shift, in fact people who only met me after I had the shift, still need me to explain to them the incredibly complicated concept of time. No, I don't want pasta at 8 pm, I just fucking woke up. Yes, I am eating burritos at 7 am, it's my fucking dinner. No, I can't go see the doctor at 3pm. I won't be awake.

5. Co-workers. The people who can loosely be defined as your co-workers, only because you all get your paychecks from the same people, are just as oblivious of you as everyone else. Even though your life and theirs wouldn't even have anything to do with one another unless you worked the overnight shift, they still don't get it. They schedule mandatory meetings at 1 pm. Since you don't know who the hell anyone is, you will occasionally have to e-mail your boss and ask "Who is this? They asked me to make/give them something." Your boss will respond "His desk is right next to this other person's desk," which doesn't fucking help at all because you don't know who the other person is either. Because of this, whenever someone does something bad at work, unless the culprit is immediately caught, you are automatically the prime suspect. No one will ever be able to prove you did it, and no one will ever be completely convinced you didn't do it, because there's no one around to attest to either.

4. Fridays. Trying to explain or figure out what happened on what day is always an ass-pain because you're just as confused as everyone else. You come home from work, go to sleep, wake up, and go back to work on what's technically the same day, but to you it's the next day. This becomes particularly frustrating at the end of the week. When people begin milling into the building on Friday morning, they'll say things like "Happy Friday!" and "Thank God it's Friday!" and "Have a good weekend!" But it isn't Friday to you. Friday's tonight and tomorrow morning. It's still your Thursday.

3. Appointments. You know how hard it can be to get an appointment with some doctors unless you're willing to wait 4 months? Imagine how tough it would be if the window of time you have during the rest of the world's waking hours is something around 1 or 2 hours.

2. Ignorance. You are almost always forgotten by your workplace. When important updates to your job come up, you'll be lucky if anyone bothers to tell you. But you'll still be responsible for obtaining the information you never knew existed.

1. Crimefighting. The only cool overnight job is super-hero. At least they get to fight crime and save the world. I have to listen to the BBC. And jazz. And people who play banjos.