where I have been and what i have been doing

               Where I have been and what I have been up to


     So as my very minor and scarce updates have mentioned recently things have been changing quite a bit in the world of brilliant donkey as of late. To start with, I traded in both hellay and hellbee about a month ago. I am not sure what the Kelley blue book value on them was, but  after a lot of ( I must say good) haggling on my part I managed to get a total trade in value of three dollars and twenty four cents for the two of them combined. I am now working in just one completely different restaurant. As of now it is still pretty new to me, so I haven’t dubbed it hellsee yet, though in time I am sure that will come even if I don’t really mean it.  I have long been of the opinion and had the theory that for the most part every restaurant (and probably other types of  businesses as well are more or less the same). The name on the outside of the building may be different. The names on the nametags of the people may change but for the most part they are all the same. No matter where you go there will always be a certain percentage of slackers.

Always be a certain percentage of brown nosers.

Always be a certain percentage of people that get away with murder.

And always be a certain percentage of people that drive you absolutely batty every chance they get.

Working at hellbee for just under 15 years I was always amused to a degree watching people come and go. Watching them move on to the next restaurant down the street, and then the next and the next and so on and so on. All the while I would be thinking Carabbas, chillis, Ruby Tuesdays, Outback or countless others they were jumping to and from were all just different versions of the same place. If I just had a dime for evertime the  following conversation took place, I would indeed be a very rich man:

“hey BD, so how long have you worked here?”

“10 years, 11 years, 12 years, 15 years” depending on the time was always my answer.

“HOWWWWWWWW W LONG!?????” (enter gaping mouth, wide eyed, stunned look here)

The looks always said the same thing if they didn’t say it outright. It was always some version of “why the HELL would you stay here for THAT long?” Most of the time I didn’t really think I had an answer to that question, but the above mentioned theory was a big part of it is about as close as I could come to having one. So for allllllll those people over the past 15 years that asked me that question, there is your answer. Working for the last 4 years at hellay in my mind pretty much confirmed my theory for me. Same place, different building.

Anyways, so now I have moved on to hellsee. See? I told you it would happen. I officially dub thee, ‘HELLSEE”……….


Hellsee, I am not positive yet will not be all that much different than hellay or hellbee either. A few VERY big differences though are

1)it is a very small(read very UN CORPORATE) family restaurant. Needing a new set of salt shakers, won’t require sending paper work through 17 levels of management, and bean counters.

Won’t require six meetings, three conference calls, and countless emails to and from aforementioned  bean counters, and managers to determine whether or not new salt shakers are indeed necessary or not.

Won’t require asking for 7 salt shakers, KNOWING that doing so will automatically cause manager #1 to knock off one, bean counter #3-5 to knock off one apiece, and result in me finally getting the just 3 salt shakers that I needed in the first place.


And more importantly,

2)it is(or soon will be) in part MY very small very UNCORPORATE restaurant.


It is a small place (seating about 85), out in the middle of the boonies, in a small town I am thinking of dubbing “stuck”. For a city boy like me it is DEFINITELY a bit ‘off the beaten path almost an hour each way travel time for me to get there. I don’t as of yet mind the drive. At least not as much as I mind the thought of packing up all my stuff and moving at least. Lol


So now I guess I will have to surf the web in search of someone ELSE posting on a blog about ME being the jackass owner/manager doing all sorts of stuff wrong lol.

Well it is almost 3 am, so I am going to shut up for now and get this posted. I am sure there will be more but wanted to at least give a partial update.

Until next time, take it easy.

BD

tagged

Roadchick tagged me with the following meme.

Does anyone else feel suddenly snobbish or something when they use that word? Meme

Why does that simple little word always bring images of a stuck up Rich,yuppie, wife talking through her nose in my mind. I can even hear her saying something like

"Samantha dahling, did you get my meme? Biff is going out of town for a work confrence upstate, so I thought I would get you and the other guhls together for afternoon tea. See you around 3? Okay tah tah "

"Jeeves? The girls will be here around 3. Be a doll and wash the Bentley and have Consuela bring some caviar out on to the patio okay? kay.

Anyways,,,,,,The meme is as follows:

The Rules of this tag game are:
1. Grab the book nearest to you...no cheating!
2. Open to page 123.
3. Scroll down to the fifth sentence.
4. Post text of next 3 sentences on to your blog.

I actually have two books next to me. The first is "Play dead" by Anne frazier. It is a pretty good book and the first of hers that I have read. I also have her new one that I have been touting but haven't gotten around to reading it yet.

anywhoooooo that excerpt is:

"If all went smoothly,he would be back to Savannah by early evening. It was still dark when he boarded the small commuter jet, carrying nothing but a briefcase with copies of the divorce papers plus some notes on the TTX case."

The other book within reach is "Lost Lake" by Phillip Margolin who is one of my favorite authors.

That excerpt:

"Oh, and there was a call from that man Kirkpatrick."

"what did he want?"

"Morelli is being arraignedat the hospital at one O'clock."

"Today?"

"That is what the message said. He called last night after we forwarded the phones. Than answering service took the call."

(end excerpt)

Okay this isn't really fair. Roadchick, gets an excerpt that causes all kinds of funky possibilities to take out of context. I can't seem to come up with any way to make those excerpts funny or kinky but oh well.

I will pass this on by tagging Michael at Cardiac Fantasies, Christine at Ramblings of a gypsy Soul. Consider yourselves tagged you two.

BD

just a quick note

For the three people that actually read this blog. Sorry, I haven't posted hardly at all for the last few weeks or even been able to visit a lot of the great blogs out there as much as I used to. I am fine. I have just been really busy as of late with a job/career change. I seem to be finally settling in now and getting used to some fairly major changes. Anyways, I hope to get back into a some what more normal routine and posting again within the next week or so. I hope all of you are doing okay.

Take care

BD

what I would never write

Things I would never write


Ever since I was a kid, I always promised myself a few things. Some of them are as follows:

-I will never no matter how old I get, I will NEVER EVER walk outside in shorts and black socks. NEVER will I be that old.

-I will never no matter how old I get, I will NEVER EVER wear socks with flip flops!

-I will never no matter how old I get, I will never EVER be one of those ‘ when I was a kid I had to walk to school in 4 feet of snow past packs of rabid, wild dogs’ kind of people.

-I will never no matter how old I get use the words “son, daughter believe me this is going to hurt ME more than it hurts you.”

-I will never bring up the ‘starving children in India’ as an attempt to guilt someone into
Eating Brussel sprouts!

-I will never tell my kids (should I ever have them) to keep the number for UPS handy so when their mother breaks out the brussel sprout guilt trip, they can offer to send them to the starving children absolutely, positively overnight. ( this one will be tough)

Did you ever come up with the perfect comeback to a joke or remark but do so AFTER you were on the way home? You know, driving home in your car and you think "DAMN ! I SHOULD have said "yeah well the jerk store called and they are running out of YOU!" You ever do that? Well don't feel too bad I have too. However, 22 years later coming up with the brussel sprouts reply for mom brings that to whole NEW levels, Dang it why didn't I think of that back then?
Anyways, where was I?



-I will never be one of those “well I remember when candy bars were a nickel, and you could fly all the way around the world on $32” type of people.

HOWEVER,

I DO know a loop hole when I see it. Thanks to this week’s Sunday scribblings which is
“things I would never write”, I not only see the loop hole I am jumping through it!

I never thought I would ever EVER write the words “whew Thank goodness gas has gone DOWN to ONLY 2.60 per gallon!

I never thought I would write “Yes! I found coke on sale today for JUST $4 per 12 pack!

I never thought I would write “woooohooo thanks to my discount my cable bill is ONLY $48 dollars per month! Can you believe it?”

I never thought I would write “ I sure am glad I started conserving energy, my light bill went all the way down to $98!”

I never thought I would write “Thank goodness it is 2 for 1 happy hour, that makes this beer only $2.45!”

As I die hard Boston Redsox fan I never thought I would write or say "Damnit It has been 3 years since we won the world series, what the hell are you guys waiting for???"

Finally, with my pension for being wordy, I never EVER thought I would say or write "sorry this post is so short but that is all I have for now."


Thanks again Sunday scribblings for the loop hole and allowing me to keep my childhood promises to myself. You all are the best! For more Sunday Scribblings click HERE.

tags:Seinfeld,aging,Sunday Scribblings,old fart,smartass,
tags:Red sox,Seinfeld,baseball,humor

Pale immortal release date

Today is the day of the release of Anne Frasier's new novel "Pale Immortal". Several people in the blogosphere are partying in celebration of this event. I am buying my copy today, though it will have to wait until I finish reading "Play dead" before I can get to it. So in spirit of the party, your friendly neighborhood bartender(thats me) is offering free drinks. Relax, it really is JUST a bloody mary!

or is it?

Meanwhile, you can check out the video by clicking here . If you want to wait until the sun comes up feel free I won't tell anyone or blame you for that matter. You can also check out the first couple of chapters at the Pale immortal blog or just join the fun at Anne's blog. Good luck Anne, though I doubt you will need it.


BD


tags:Anne frasier,pets,vampire,recipes,smartass,
tags:Pale immortal,bartender,cooking,humor

Labor day ramblings

Labor day Ramblings


Fair warning, this post is probably going to go all over the place and May be in need of a pg-13 or worse rating due to a bit of the language. Proceed at your own risk.

First off to get the bad stuff out of the way. It was a bit of a shock to find out today that Steve Irwin known by most as the crocodile Hunter died today after being stung by a stingray of all things. My thoughts and condolences go out to his family. However, at the same time I can’t help but envy him to some degree. He died doing what he clearly loved doing. To think of all the times I have watched him wrestle alligators, crocodiles, play with sharks, rattlesnakes and the like and thought “man this guy is nuts” or man this guy is going to get himself killed. I can't help think this stingray just happened to get off the stingray version of a lucky punch on the school yard bully. I wonder if he is swimming around now with his chest all puffed out. I wonder if the sharks and such that used to pick on him and call him names aren't avoiding him right about now. "whoa thats the guy that got the croc hunter!"Just two days ago, I was invited to go fishing for the first time in years. I caught a few small fish, and myself.

Twice.

Other than that the only thing I caught were three or four fairly small stingrays. Each time I caught one I guided him over to my landlord on the other end of the boat to get him off the hook. Each time I felt like a big ole scaredy cat in doing so. Each time, I looked around with a bit of Paranoia expecting the local chapter of the P.R.U(Penile Repossession Unit) to swarm in, surround the boat and take me in to custody. Now to see that the stingrays got to the crocodile hunter of all people, I don't feel so bad,,,,,,,,,,chrikey!!!!! . I saw an interview on the news regarding this today. The prime minister(is that what they call them in Australia I think?),,,Anyways, thier version of the president summed it up best when he said something like "I as the president can go to America, or most other countries and few if any of the people there would have any idea who I was. Steve on the other hand was instantly recognizable by most." Rest in peace Steve and thanks for the years of entertainment.



Next, To my 3 readers let me start by saying Happy Labor day to you. Why do they call THIS Labor day anyways? Especially when half of the country gets the day off? Either I have been doing things wrong the other 300 or so days a year that I LABOR or this should be called NOT Labor day!

Fast forward to tomorrow and beyond.

Ring ring ring

“hello?”

“umm BD? This is Manager X at Hellay, It is 10:00 are you coming in to work today or not?

“today is not labor day!” Click!

Ring ring ring

“hello?”

“ummm BD? This is manager Y from Hellbee, it is 3:30 did you not realize you were working today or what?”

“call manager X from Hellay” Click!

Ring ring ring

“hello, you have reached 633-9675(off-work), This is BD, I can’t come to the phone right now but if you will leave your name, number, and a short message I will get back to you or see you at work on the next labor day in 364 days,,,,,,beeeeeeep!”

Will this work? We shall see, stay tuned.

I was reading a post by Alyndabear the other day. In it she was talking about some of the odd places people who had come from to visit her site. Curious I decided to look up some of these on my own site. Some of the ones I found are as follows.

First the expected: The majority of the three people that tend to read my blog come from places like Sunday Scribblings, waiterrant, barmaidblog, FlashFlood, or the Clarity of Night.


Then there were the "not so expected"

One came from typing in “Just for men hair coloring” into thier search engine. Okay I can deal with that. I did a post regarding this here so I can see how that would happen.

Another found my site as a result of looking up “pinoy’ , again I have done a post where I mentioned that word a time or two before so again I can see that as well.

Yet another, by typing in “Janice Tobin”. I had forgotten using that as totally fictional name in one of my posts/stories. Someone it seems was doing an ego google I am guessing. Okay, fair enough.

Then there is the disturbing, or downright creepy:


Apropos of nothing whatsoever:

To whom it may concern,

A)I have no idea what you were looking for when you typed in “mexicandonkeygirls” into your search engine. B) I really don’t WANT to know and C)It is safe to say you wont be finding it here. Please be careful when you leave. I would hate to see the door hit you in the ass(no pun intende,,,,,ahhhh who am I kidding TOTALLY intended) on the way out.


Briliantdonkey is simply another way of saying "SMARTASS" and not violating any kind of Terms of service agreement. You can even look each word up in the thesaurus later in this post for confirmation.

It in NO way, shape or form has ANYTHING to do with mexican girls, donkeys, or whatever you may have been looking for.

I am not overly familiar with how this whole search engine thing works. Apparently, by using the word Mexican, in a post or two out of 39, the word Donkey in my title, and the completely innocent use of the word girls who knows how many times, Some search engine decided someone looking for MexicanDonkeyGirls MUST be looking for MY site,,,,,, Computers don't make mistakes my arse! WOW!

Speaking of the good ole Thesaurus:

So I am working on my Lonely Moon contest entry about a week ago. I came to a part where I was in danger of using the word “thoughts” twice in one short paragraph. To avoid this, I clicked on dictionary.com and from there clicked on the thesaurus.com link.

A little side note here. When looking to name your book on synonyms or like words you couldn’t come up with a better name than “THESAURUS”? Intrigued by this question I was side tracked once again for a few moments and naturally typed “thesaurus” into the thesaurus box. DOZENS of possibilities…… in your OWN book, on your OWN site! I rest my case! Ahhh but I digress.

Where was I? Oh so I am looking for another word for thoughts. I type “thoughts” into the “word list” site box(see how much easier that was?) I am expecting to see ,,,,,,,,Oh I don’t know,

Ideas,
Observations,
Thinking,

Stuff like that.

To my surprise the first result listed is “breast”. Don’t believe me? Feel free to click this link and see for yourself! I Dare you. Even EYE can’t make this kind of stuff up. Needless to say, this result I was NOT expecting. Now mind you, I could let this new information go. Hell I HAVE let it go for days now. Tonight it occurred to me that doing so was so very UN Briliantdonkey like of me though. So with that in mind let me say the following.

:::::enter my best Dr. Phil voice here::::::::

Fellas, walking up to a beautiful woman and saying “penny for your breast” will STILL cause you to get the shit slapped out of you.

-Coming home from the strip club and claiming you were just there to ‘get in touch with your thoughts’ is NOT a good idea.

-Next time you get caught staring at another woman’s boobs, “I was just thinking” is in SPITE of thesaurus, NOT going to get you out of the dog house.

And ladies, Next time you look at your husband, boyfriend, brother, father in law, or even girlfriend for that matter and ask in exasperation “why are you always thinking about breasts?” On behalf of the fine folks over at the thesaurus company let me say ….

Congratulations, you may have just A) asked your question a bit redundantly or B)answered your own question!

That’s all, the three of you have been a great crowd, goodnight.

BD

edited to add: This just in as of 5 minutes ago: search engine= donkey, shit, cigs

sends someone to MY blog. WTF? I soooo have to start watching every word I say for now on.

There is nothing like finding out your name is now synonymous with 'smoking donkey shit' to help keep your ego in check ........

And my mother thought I would never make her proud......Pshhhhaww!

I am not quite sure which is more disturbing. That fact, or the thought of What in the WORLD are these people searching for?

I am kind of curious as to how other people found me, so if you would if you would like to tell me in the comment section I would appreciate it. No big deal, I would just like to be able to send out my "don't worry they can't be mad at you forever" emails.

BD

tags:Labor day,google,Breast,Steve Irwin,smartass,
tags:thesaurus,waitress,crocodile hunter,humor

Results are in

The clarity of Night short fiction contest has come to a close. The results are in. I didn't win, but I am glad to see 3 of my 5 choices for winners finished in the winners. Congratulations to all that did win and I must say it is well deserved. I was quite impressed with the level of competition shown in most if not all of the stories that were submitted. A special Congratulations goes out to Rebecca Snowden of Writing Blind who won first place in the contest and 3rd in the readers choice award as well. Her story "The man in the moon" was well deserving and very well written. More special Congrats go out to Flood of Flash flood who took home first place in the readers choice award. Her story "Robbed" can be found right there. If you would like to check out either one of thier blogs you can find thier links over there on my sidebar. There were 100 submissions to the contest and Jason and Anne had to make some very tough choices in picking the winners. I know I did while casting my votes as well. Head on over to "the clarity of night" and check out a lot of , if not all of the entries. Also be sure to visit Anne Frasier for some insights and peeks at her soon to be released book PALE Immortal. Congratulations again, Anne! If you don't want to read all 100 entries here are a few of the others that I personally liked the most.

"In the Moonlight" by Jeff Neale:

This was a bit different from most of the stories of Jeff's that I have read. It was also quite a bit different than most or all of the other entries. That said he did a marvelous job with it, but I don't want to say too much or I will give it away.

"Under a Puzzled Sky" by R.W. Randall:

A story that I think most of us can relate to on some level at some point and time in our lives.

"I can dig it" by Jaye wells

This Genre is 'not my thing', but in spite of that this was a story that I enjoyed quite a bit as well. Again, I don't want to say too much, as doing so will give away a vast majority of the 250 word story but go check it out for yourself. I also suggest you visit her blog especially if you are interested at all in writing related topics.


There are a lot more great stories, but like I said, these are just a few of my favorites. Congratulations Jason and Anne on another great contest and an awesome turnout!

That is it for now,

BD