Dear Patrick (Number 1)

Dear Patrick,

I’m not sure who, at which point in your life, taught you that walking into someone’s office while they're in mid-sentence (on the phone or with a guest) and proceed to wordlessly bend down next to them and try to lift them out of their chair to try and ‘fireman carry’ them into the hallway. Don’t get me wrong, I love the look of triumph on your face when you succeed, and I love even more the look of sadness when you fail, it’s just that sometimes it’s inappropriate to lift people up. Also, why do you whisper encouragement to yourself?

Further to the lifting issue, I’m going to have to ask you to please stop playing the game ‘Black King, White Queen’ with the chess sets in my office. You’ve now broken  both black kings (not going to accuse you of transferring your race issues onto my chess pieces...I’m going to, for my own sake, say it’s coincidence) and have made no attempt to repair them; looking at them helplessly, then at me with shame hoping I’ll either forget or forgive you... I will do neither by the way... praying the manager of operations will sweep in with the right kind of glue (from his OM utility belt?...which is just cigarettes, whiskey, and anger) and he has yet to.

Finally, please stop awkwardly asking to borrow a ‘twensky’. Say the word twenty. Also you don’t need to explain what it’s for. It always hurts your case. Also justifying your reasoning further hurts your case. When saying you’re taking out a new Polish immigrant (“straight off the bizzoat”) of 16 years old... The look of disgust and pity on the faces of your contemporaries at the office isn’t an invitation to offer justification, it’s just genuine expression of those feelings. Also stating “Well my 19 year old girlfriend has aged terribly” is so horrifying words fail me.

In conclusion, I applaud you on your lifestyle choices in so far as they provide us all with an endless supply of stories and feeling better about ourselves by comparison. Shine on you crazy diamond.

Sincerely,

Newsy

I took all his money, then his soul.

As I anger walk through the crowded train station to avoid the -20 degree wind, I begin to wonder... are these people staring at me because of my phenomenal mutton chops, or because I look so intense and (I think) handsome? I chuckle as I say out loud ‘both!’ so boisterously a nearby mother pulls her noticeably startled child away in the opposite direction.

Having recently removed a rather nasty curse, and everyone back to normal, I’m in an understandably good mood. I bought soup on my way to work, and decided to dust off my smoulder for the soup lady. As she poured soup into her lap, I’m just going to call it a win and high-five myself. The weather is improving, the cloud of misfortune is lifted and I resume training today.

Training is a party. Fortunately I don’t have to start from scratch like last time. Garbage bag sauna suits under sweatshirts and suicide worthy training sessions. But such is the price when you spend years in a hazy not caring about anything daze. Now I get to train like a normal person. Well pretty aggressive training comparatively, but still normal. I plan on dropping to 200 even, 5% body fat (By June 1...Bank on it). Currently 218, no idea the BF%. I drop to 199/200 I get to fight in a better weight class, which is good, cause as much fun as fighting a guy who is 6’8 310 lbs is (and it’s a hoot) I’m somewhat less inclined to lose teeth and break my nose these days.

I bring up fighting as while out celebrating a friend’s admittance to a phd program last week, he got a wee bit inebriated and decided to shout horrific things at the gathering of out of town drunkards on their hotel balcony who promptly came down to settle matters. He was slightly less brave with them standing directly behind him, silent and gesturing aggressively. His associate, who had also been yelling having left moments before their arrival, my friend and co-worker anger ball loud and angry but unable to be hit in the head due to many concussions and danger of death and his lovely wife Diane... somehow angry at me for allowing this situation to arise... it seemed pretty clear that if there was to be a fight, it would pretty much be me against the four of them, which means me focussing on the biggest asshole there, and hurling myself so aggressively at him that the others would presume me insane and run away. It’s my go to in a situation like that, and yes it has happened before. Not since I was like 19 though. I am a grown up now! I should not have to defend drunk adults from other drunk adults. But the situation never arose, and we all just awkwardly walked away. So back to training it is.

Also on Friday, after winning every penny from all participants in our traditional weekly poker game (part of that tradition is me winning every time) being flustered and certain of his eventual victory, one associate, I’ll name Mat, wagered his very soul. Which I won. My CTO mentioned ‘you know they won’t want to come back if every week you win all their physical and metaphysical goods’. You are right sir, but now I got another soul. I’m thinking of a new division of Awesome Inc.

Yessir... Got cursed... For realz.

So turns out I was cursed. Literally cursed. Someone felt so strongly that they actually implemented a full-on, ancient curse to ruin me. Now I know what you’re thinking imaginary reader, that there’s no such thing as a curse. Now I’m not saying ‘up yours buddy, there totally is’ I’m just going to say that if this curse, placed on me at the end of August, was intended to actually ruin my life as much as is possible throughout it’s duration, then mission accomplished. If it was a nonsense thing, then I pissed off God something fierce.

Anywhoo, cursed. Not the first time either. But I solved the problem a little over a week ago and I’m back to kicking ass and chewing bubble gum. Seriously like night and day. Coincidence? Probably. Does it matter? Not at all. But seriously how messed up is that? How many people can honestly say they’ve been cursed. Several times. I’m weirdly proud, but concerned at the same time. Also, to what extent did this curse impact others and their interactions with me? Regardless super psyched I’m rocking it pretty hard now.

As I pace back and forth in superman pyjama bottoms eating a cookie and listening to a game of thrones audiobook while researching ancient middle-eastern mysticism and curse protection, I am forced to ask myself; could I rock any harder? I respond no to myself while laughing maniacally. With this weird curse business seen to, I have been refocusing efforts to conquer the world. I’m a little sad to say that I have to be more vigilant in curse protection... and occult warfare altogether.

So let that be a lesson to you all... when you’re going through Hell, keep going... and there’s a chance you may have been cursed.