Guidelines To Not Look Like A Douche

Welcome to "Guidelines to Not Look Like a Douche," the first step you can take to help yourself be a better person. If you follow these simple rules, you can minimize your chances of looking like a douche. However, due to many unknown variables in your lives and in your surroundings, merely following these rules may not completely protect you from looking like a douche. My advice is to think before you do something that will make you look like a douche, and then don't do that thing. Just as a disclaimer, these rules pertain primarily to males, as I haven’t the first clue about female fashion.

1. Never shall one wear a collared shirt underneath another collared shirt. Frankly, this is completely unnecessary and makes people want to injure you.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Never shall one pop the collar of his or her collared shirt unless for the purpose of protecting one’s neck from the sun. Under this exception, one must proclaim openly that he or she hates himself or herself for said collar-popping.
3. Never shall one wear two collared shirts with the collars popped. EVER. If you do this, just stop. Look at yourself in the mirror, and just stop.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Never shall one wear or use at any given moment greater than two articles of clothing or accessories with the logo of his or her respective undergraduate university. This includes, but is not limited to: headbands, socks, underwear, ties, cuff links, umbrellas, earrings, flip flops, handbags, sweatshirts, shorts, and foam fingers. Check yourself now! Are you wearing too many?*
   
   
   
   
   
5. Never shall one wear an unbuttoned or minimally buttoned button-down shirt without an undershirt. This is mainly as a courtesy to others who may happen to see you in public.
6. Never shall one wear a flat brimmed hat on top of another flat brimmed hat, especially facing in opposite directions. In fact, let this apply to all hats.

Keep in mind that this list is just a preliminary guideline. I will add more to this list as I see more people who look like douches around town and get more ideas.

*If you find yourself wearing two collared college shirts with the collars popped and a college hat or something, I'm going to pass out.

Look How Self-Sufficient I Am!

Having lived mainly off Hot Pockets, Lean Cuisines, and Nutri-Grain bars for the past few days, I have realized how ill-equipped I am to live on my own. My excuse, though, is that I’m out of my element here in New York. It seems odd to prepare an entire meal in some random dude’s house. I think that when I’m in my apartment at school, I will be able to succeed in real cooking. That and I’ll have the dining hall to fall back on.

But in case you didn’t get enough of my fake cooking from before, now there’s more! Tonight I decided to treat myself to a nice home-cooked gourmet hot dog dinner.

After researching the recipe online, I was able to discover how to make hot dogs without a grill. Turns out you just boil them for five minutes…

Anyway, I think at this rate I will either die of a clogged artery or my body will simply wither away from the lack of nutrients. Luckily I will be back home in a week, where I can mooch off my mother’s cooking.

You Suck, Brain

I had a very odd dream last night. Actually, it was more of a calm nightmare. A few of my friends and I were sitting in an outdoorish food court. I got a cup from McDonald’s or something and filled it with water from some other restaurant. After drinking it for a while, I looked inside the cup and noticed that there was mold and fungus growing everywhere inside the cup.

I went up to the cashier and demanded a free sandwich because of the disgusting cup I just drank out of. This seemed like an appropriate request at the time. He looked at me and explained that the cup was from McDonald’s, so he doesn’t owe me shit.

Stumped, I went back and sat down with my friends.

That’s all I can really remember, but I can definitely identify some of the real-life occurrences that may have resulted in the creation of this dream.

I think the cashier incident resembles my run-in with the manager at Wendy’s. In both cases, I was publicly humiliated and accomplished nothing.

The outdoorish food court must have been from when I ate at Chipotle last weekend. Or maybe it was from when I ate at a food court at the Palisades Mall. I’m not really sure.

What I am sure of, however, is that the moldy cup was definitely a manifestation of the fact that last week, I ate mold. I was sitting in my room, happily eating Tostitos with queso and surfing the net. After a while, I looked into the queso jar and noticed a green, fuzzy, coin-sized patch of mold growing inside the container. I gagged a bit and died a little on the inside.

I proceeded to wipe my tongue with a paper towel, as if that would change the fact that I probably swallowed numerous colonies of fungus.

This dream must have been my brain reminding me of an incident I tried to repress deep within the inner workings of my mind. And for that, you suck, brain.

So Everyone's Friends Now, Huh?

Ok I’ve been at my first legitimate full-time job for a little over a month now, and I’ve noticed a number of things about the workplace. Because of my lack of work experience, I have no clue if this is what most workplaces are like. If I were to guess, it probably isn’t.

Before I describe the employees, I’ll talk a little bit about my lab/office/place.

The first thing you may notice when walking through the lab is the giant microwave in the hallway that reads, “No Food Allowed.” Upon further inspection, one will learn that this microwave is used for dissolving solutes and assorted other experiments.

Next you may come across a series of rooms, each labeled with its respective area of focus. 132 - Biochemistry. 134 - Molecular Biology. 136 - Stuff You’ve Never Heard of. When you peer into these rooms, you’ll notice that they are illuminated by eerie yellow lights. These are the very lights that you will spend the entire workweek under.

In these rooms you’ll find all sorts of gizmos and gadgets and tube shakers and centrifuges and what not. Some machine is always on in every room, whirring or swirling or vibrating.

If you backtrack a bit and make a left, you’ll be on your way to the break room/computer room. But not before you pass the 6-foot metal container labeled, “NITROGEN. HIGHLY PRESSURIZED.” Don’t mind the white smoke fuming out of the container and covering the entire floor of the hall. This is normal! At least when someone is filling up his nitrogen tank…

In the break room, you’ll find a refrigerator packed to the brim with all sorts of lunches prepared by fellow employees. These may include lo mein noodles, sticky rice dishes, various Asian soups, and other wonderful ethnic eats.

You would also see my tiny desk. Yes, my desk is in the break room. It is very conducive to working. You’ll also see the rack that used to hold my 9 name-customized lab coats. That is until they were taken away due to a misorder. At least I got to wear them for 3 weeks.

Now we can get to the various characters I encounter in the workplace. We have the way-too-happy middle-aged ladies. We have the cool and hip grad students. We have the very uncool and nerdy grad students. We have bipolar/unreadable lunch ladies. We have goofy handymen. We have angry handymen. We have intimidating Asians. We have easygoing Asians. We have famous people that I didn’t know were doctors like Dr. L. Tomlinson and Dr. C. Klein. My workplace is a colorful microcosm of society... if society were full of science geeks people.

But in particular, there are three people that for some reason smile and give me “the nod” every time I walk by. Why are these people so happy? Why are they so nice? I don’t understand. Actually, I think it’s because walking by someone is too awkward, especially when you’re the only two people in the hallway and approaching each other from opposite ends. Then it’s really awkward. And our hallways are long. So I guess smiling and nodding is a bit less awkward. Anyway, I always return the smile and nod, but then I feel so fake afterwards. After passing these cheerful people, I find myself making sarcastic smiley faces to myself as I’m walking to wherever I walk to. Then again, maybe I'm just a scrooge.

So in closing, is everyone suddenly friends now? Did I not get the memo? Does this sort of thing happen at every workplace?

Yay Independence!

So I’ve been meaning to write about my busy, busy weekend, but yesterday the power was out in my apartment. I couldn’t do my laundry, and I couldn’t make dinner. Worst of all, I couldn’t turn on my fan in the 90-degree hotbox that is my room.

Since I’m dripping with sweat just sitting here and typing, I will make this entry brief. I’m not really dripping with sweat, don’t worry. Maybe a little bit…

On Friday, I bounced from work early and flew home, only to sit on the highway by my house for 45 minutes. I was rushing home to meet up with my friends in time to go to Philadelphia and see She & Him! When Zooey Deschanel walked on stage, I wasn’t sure if I was watching a video or dreaming or something. It just didn’t seem real. I had never seen a famous Hollywood star before! I’ll add that she sounded even better live than on the records. I was surprised to hear how well she could project her voice.

I was kind of sad that she didn't ask me to join her band like I had imagined in the weeks leading up to the concert, but I had fun nonetheless.

On the train ride home, there was some crazy lady who was drunk or drinkin’ drugs. She scared me. Just thought I should mention that.

Then on Saturday, I went golfing with my friend Matt for the first time since last summer. I ended up shooting a 47 on the front and 44 on the back, which I guess was okay for not having played in a while.

After the round was over, I found out that a few of my friends were going to St. Joe’s University to visit their apartments. So I rushed home then met up with them to head over to Philly. Needless to say, they had some sweet cribs, and I was very envious.

Then! We got back home at around 10 and hung out at my friend Alyssa’s house for two hours. By now I was very exhausted.

The next morning, I woke up early because a few of my friends were going to Baltimore for the Fourth of July. When we got there, we ended up walking around Inner Harbor for over five hours in the scorching hot weather. I don’t know what prompted us to do this, but I’m just glad we didn’t make the hike to Fort McHenry.

The fireworks were cool and stuff. Some new ones that I haven’t seen before.

We slept early and woke up at 7 to beat traffic and drove home.

Then I drove back to New York after taking a long nap.

My sentences are getting shorter and shorter.

Too. Hot.

All in all, I thought the weekend was great, but I may have been a little ambitious. By the end, I was too tired to really enjoy myself, so I don’t think I had as good a weekend as I could have had if I weren’t completely dead.

Anyway, until next time!

Hmm

This is questionable, Facebook.