Confessions of A Peanut Butter Junkie

No matter what anyone says or feels, I’m not the bad guy. I’m just some geek who occasionally likes to thumb his nose at authority. Especially when I know they are looking when they shouldn’t be. I’d seem so less strange if everyone had just minded their own fucking business to begin with.
I’d like to say it started in 1998, but the truth is, it was probably always part of my life and I just didn’t know it. But it was in 1998 that a coworker asked me, “What’s bothering you?”
“Nothing that years of expensive therapy couldn’t cure,” I replied. I was joking. And I was serious.
Now I never would have said a thing like that if I knew that it would get back to my dear
Irish Catholic parents: Edmund Francis Donnelly and Margaret Donnelly.
“Nothing that years of expensive therapy couldn’t cure,” I said.
If I knew what a can of worms I was opening up I wouldn’t have said it. But you can’t change time.
Back then I worked for Franklin Templeton. You may have heard the name. They’re a little mutual funds outfit. I handled reinvestment trades. Millions of dollars. Best job I ever had and I hated every minute of it. Here’s where it gets a bit sticky.
My boss was a nice guy named George Calamari, and I hated his guts. Think of the Lumbergh character from “Office Space”. My boss was a real nice guy who would hold really boring meetings and say the same thing over, and over, and over, and over again.
Christ man if you’re going to treat me like a child bend me over and jam a PlayStation up my ass!
He had obviously gone to college. He was a soldier. Not the military kind. The office worker kind. A mindless drone. Case in point the death of golfer Payne Stewart. Let me refresh your memory if you’ve forgotten. He died in a modern day flying Dutchman.
I was at the office that day when my boss George Calamari walks up to me and mentions what is going on. Payne’s airplane is flying seemingly out of control and radio contact has been lost.
“They’ve lost cabin pressure or the plane has been hijacked,” I said.
What else could it possibly be man. You should have seen the look on George’s face. He looked at me like I was a nut. Well what the fuck could it possibly be you over educated asshole! Okay that’s what I was thinking but clearly I was not at liberty to say it.
There was one other possibility that I never even considered because it would have allowed for obvious course corrections. The plane could have had a damaged radio, but as I said the plane would have had obvious course changes.
Payne Stewart’s plane flew on until it ran out of fuel and then Gravity did its thing.
Payne was frozen when he hit the ground. His body broke almost, but not quite like; glass. I thought it was horrific. I thought it was gross. And I thought it was funny. He broke up like a human Popsicle. If I was grossed out, if I was horrified try and imagine how my boss George Calamari took it. This is the same guy who couldn’t accept the facts as soon as they were presented to him: Payne Stewart’s plane is in radio silence. Payne Stewart’s plane is flying on endlessly and only making minimal air current induced course corrections. Payne Stewart’s airplane hit ground. Payne Stewart go ouch!
Now I know your thinking so what does all this have to do with you Kenneth G. Donnelly crazy Irish Catholic mother fucker son of Edmund F Donnelly and Marge Donnelly? What?
The question you should be asking is this. How did this super Geek even get a job at Franklin Templeton handling million dollar reinvestment trades to begin with?
I told the Payne Stewart story because I disliked my boss intensely and I wanted to illustrate one reason. The point if you didn’t get it, is that he was incapable of finding the truth in simple facts. He was the first true blue corporate yes man that I totally and completely understood. And hated!
And he hated me right back. If you can’t figure out how I got such a nice gig imagine how my boss George Calamari must have felt. He had know idea who I was or how I wound up in the wire order operations dept. of Franklin Templeton handling the monotonous but necessary task of processing Millions of dollars in reinvestment trades each month.
Son of Marge Donnelly, Kenneth G. Donnelly. Marge’s maiden name: Oakley. My uncle her brother is a very successful businessman named John Oakley. John does business in every state of this great union. He worked with a guy named: Wayne Huizenga who has a lot of money tied up in a little thing called Block Buster Video. At least that’s what my grandmother has told me.
Now I know it sounds pretty lame but my wealthy Uncle built the Block Buster Stores. He was the actual contractor who would send workmen out to a site and build block buster stores. He got rich doing this.
How did I get the job at Franklin Templeton? Dumb luck? Friend of a friend?
I think someone pulled strings for his dear sister my mother to get his odd nephew Me a good job at Franklin Templeton in their office located at : 100 Fountain Parkway St. Petersburg, FL 33716
At least I think that’s how it happened.
You gotta love my parents. Dear Ed and Marge. They worried about their geeky youngest son. He never dates. He isn’t married. What could be wrong with him. Let’s Shove him in the right direction shall we!
I’m such a fucker. My crime is I have never been able to conform. You would be surprised how much of life is conformity. Or maybe you have known that since you were five.
I believe now that their motivation was two or three fold. Get him this good job. Get him to go back to school, and would it hurt him to date a nice Irish Catholic girl. Who cares if said Irish Catholic girl is just way to homely. Who cares if said Irish Catholic girl has not one, not two, not three, but four, Yes Four kids from a previous relationship. See my parents had Six children of which I am next to youngest. Somewhere in their dear hearts and minds my parents hoped for, prayed for expected Grand Kids! Lot’s of ‘em. But it didn’t work out. The other sibs were not producing grand kids of any kind. And by the 90’s the hour was growing late.
Kelly Huffman. There is no force in the universe or any alternate parallel dimension that could have made me go to bed with her. Or even on a date with her. We had a few laughs, she was as Irish as I am, but I liked her not! I once mentioned with cruelty how tired of my family gatherings I was and that I would often see people two or three times a year standing in the same place with the same fucking drink in their hands. Kelly Huffman laughed about that because she knew it was true. We both laughed.
I am convinced now that they wanted me to give this poor girl a shot. They wanted me to conform. Be a good Irish Catholic boy. Produce more Irish Catholics. Or Adopt for god’s sake. But it was not to be. By a long shot!
Now Kelly Huffman knew it wasn’t going to happen and she hated me for it. Why couldn’t I love her and her four boys? Why damn it? Why?
Now there were at least two people in the office at Franklin Templeton who hated me. My boss George Calamari, and my coworker; the homely Kelly Huffman.
George and I had a few moments together. Real doozies.
I got up and left during the middle of one of his long boring meetings, because he kept repeating a litany of useless information, so much so that I started cracking up. I could not control the onrush of zany laughter, and out of respect for him I did the right thing and got up and left the meeting. He tracked me down afterwards though to chew me out, and I let him know in no uncertain terms exactly how I felt about being forced to watch him whip a dead horse.
Meanwhile in my private life my sister Eileen Donnelly, my other sister Margie Donnelly and my mother were nagging the living shit out of me to go to school. I swear they wouldn’t stop. Every time I saw or talked to them. Go to school Ken. Go to school Ken. Go back to school Ken. Go to school Ken. Go back to school Ken. School. Ken. Schooooooool Kennnnnn.
So finally I caved. Sure school! Anything! Anything but not Kelly Huffman. Not some homely Irish Catholic girl with four kids from a previous relationship. School okay. And guess who I wanted to pay for my school. Franklin Templeton that’s who. I was a full time employee. I had benefits. But I had enemies. Maybe if I had fucked Kelly Huffman things would have turned out differently.
George Calamari and the good folks at Franklin Templeton actually rewrote the company policy, and the actual form used to apply for financial aid. Long story short I was going to have to pay for school myself.
I’m stubborn. I found a way! I rubbed my stupid bosses face in it never knowing at the time just how deep I was in the shit.
Did I tell you his name? George Calamari. Calamari = squid prepared as food! I swear I am not making that up. So much did I hate George Calamari that I used this knew technology called the world wide web aka the internet to find out where he and his good wife and three daughters were living. I map quested his sorry ass. I map quested him. I thought about, even planed to go by his house with fishing bait: Squid and pelt his fucking house with it. But I didn’t do it. Never even came close. I am some kind of arrogant ass hole but I have never been a truly mean, evil or dangerous person. Just some slacker geek. But it was the internet that really got things going. Someone in my family knew that I searched my boss. They had installed spyware on my computer. They knew what I was up to. Oh boy. And I was beating off and looking at porn at least once a day.
It’s been a long time since anybody asked, but I have often said that the truth is like an onion. It has many layers and sometimes it makes people cry. I lived on my own in a half way decent but slightly run down apt. located at 401 Rosery Rd apt. 505 Largo FL 33770 from 1995 until 1999. When I moved in I was still in my twenties and I worked for the Home Shopping Network. I went through my Carl Sagan phase in that apartment. Read Darwin. Discovered Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. I gave my self a “Good Will Hunting,” education and it didn’t cost me a dime. And this was way before the internet was in every school and it certainly was not available for free at my public library. But I made enemies, some of them in my own family. I’ve told you about my mother’s side now let’s talk about my father’s side of the family. Here’s where the Irish is so thick it almost sounds like Brad Pitt in,”Snatch.” I know you know what I mean. My name is Kenneth G. Donnelly. I won’t tell you what the G stands for not yet. But because someone decided to invade my privacy, violate all of my civil liberties and screw me straight out of existence it does have some significance in this story so we will come back to it I promise. I was born in Flushing New York. Not far from where my father grew up in Queens. I have walked down Queens Blvd. I could see the Twin Towers from Woodhaven Blvd. When the Twin Towers were still standing. I spent the first 8 or 9 years of my life in New York. We lived on Long Island, but made frequent trips to Queens because my grandparents and my great grandparents lived there. I think when I was a kid I only really had three choices in life. I could be a cop.I could be a Catholic priest.I could be a gangster. I thinnk my grandfather was a combination of two out of the three. My Grandfather still had a house in Queens, Rego Park to be exact right up until his wife died in November of 2006. My grandfather used to get a brand new Cadillac every year. The last one I actually looked at with my own eyes had On Star. My grandfather retired from the New York City police dept. I have wondered often what kind of cop gets a brand new Cadillac every year. My grandfather was forced into early retirement sometime in the mid 70’s. He has had the longest retirement of anyone I know. My grandfather never, ever, ever talked about being a cop. Not once. Not one tiny little morsel or tidbit about being a cop. He ran with other cops and whatever they had to say about being a cop…they said only to each other. In 1976 my father loaded up the family and left Long Island New York for St. Petersburg Florida. His brother my uncle John Donnelly drove one of the family cars, because my dad elected to drive the U-Haul. John Donnelly, my uncle on my father’s side also retired from the New York City police dept. He may still have been on duty and working during the first terrorist attempt on the World Trade Center. Do you remember that one? That’s when the bad guys loaded a van up with explosives and drove it into the underground parking structure and then let it explode down there. Yeah, so what you say right? My point is that if there was someone in my family who decided maybe I needed a little guidance, or maybe even decided that I needed a lot of guidance, or maybe decided to invade my privacy. There were people in my family who could do it and how could I know. Or stop them? They bugged my apartment, my phone, my car, and they installed spy ware on my computer to keep track of what I was doing on line. I ignored it for a long time, but it wasn’t easy. For some reason they wanted me to know that they were there. Listening. Watching. Pushing me. I’m pretty sure my grandfather never talked about being a cop, and was forced into early retirement because he was dirty. Dirty cops are everywhere, but I think it means something more when you are talking about a city like New York. Did I mention the guy had three homes? One in Queens. One in Breezy Point, NY out near Rockaway, and a Condo in Ft. Lauderdale. How many cops do you know who have three homes? Now I will tell you this. My grandfather was one of the cheapest sons of bitches I ever met. But still. It makes you wonder. Don’t it? Or I could be barking up the wrong tree all together. He may have been a dirty cop, and he probably had nothing at all to do with what happened to me. I mentioned that I lived at 401 Rosery Rd. Apt. 505 Largo, FL 33770 from 1995 to 1999.There was this guy that lived above me who was also a cop. I have to admit that I never knew his name. Not then. Not now. But I know that I started getting harassed sometime around 1997. Somebody got my brother Eddie involved. I told you about my fiendish plot to pelt my bosses’ house with Squid because I disliked my boss and his name was Calamari right?Someone in my family talked Eddie into actually asking me about it. “Well I wasn’t going over there to look at the fucking Christmas lights,” I said. I say stuff like that. I do. I have a dark side. And I think it’s funny. Poor Eddie. He was a boy scout. Never drank beer. Never smoked. You should have seen him cringe when I said that to him. I really think it started with someone’s good intentions. I want to believe that they really wanted to help me. They just went too far, and for some stupid reason they wouldn’t back down. Some time during the period that I lived at 401 Rosery Rd. apt. 505 Largo FL 33770 I made the mistake that probably invited the police to investigate me. At that time they would have found nothing but a few traffic violations. But if the guy living above me was a cop and he was home one day when I snapped at some customer service rep on the phone he probably heard some talk that he couldn’t ignore. I mentioned that I worked for the Home Shopping Network right. Do you know what I did there? Why customer service of course. I was the voice on the line when some old lady in Boise, Idaho decided she had to have that Cubic Zirconia. “Welcome to the home shopping club. My name is Ken. Did you want to order the Blah Blah Blah,” I was paid to say.I did that, or some variation of that for three years. Then I worked for Allstate Insurance for a while. They have a national call center located at 800 Carillon Parkway, St. Petersburg Florida. I took insurance claims over the phone. All this phone work turned me into a horrible cynic. There were just so many people who would call you up and just abuse the living crap out of you on the phone. How often have you had to call a customer service dept.? Some times life just demands that you call them right? Some time between 1995 and 1999 when I was still living at 401 Rosery Rd. Apt. 505 Largo FL 33770 I got myself a Sony PlayStation. Okay I was in my twenties, but single. And I still love video games. I enjoyed the original Tomb Raider, and Resident Evil.It was the Resident Evil that got me into trouble. Some where along the line as I was playing that game I got stuck and I decided to order a Players Guide. I sent a check to some outfit in California, more than 20 bucks I sent these bastards. I still have not seen that players guide. But you can bet I called the customer service dept. a few times. I was nice at first. What other way is there to be? But the stupid book never came. And the company I was dealing with was not providing me with customer service of any kind.Basically they took my money and just refused to send the stupid Players Guide. I went ballistic. I really did. I screamed. I cursed. I threatened physical violence. It probably wouldn’t have happened had I not been doing customer service my self for years. But I had been and I expected this company to treat me right. When they refused I lost it. What can I say. But I scared someone. The guy upstairs. The cop. Did he work for the Largo Police Dept. or the Clearwater Police dept. I do not know. After the debacle with the third party supporting the Sony PlayStation, I cursed Sony, sold my console and bought my first Personal Computer. I paid close to 2 grand for a Pentium 2. I think this was February or March of 1998. I had been hearing www this and www that, and then the Heavens Gate thing happened. Do you remember that? I have a morbid fascination for crap like that. Bada Bing Bada Boom. I was online. I went with Verizon at first, I think; but switched to what was then called Mindsping and would later become Earthlink. It was around this same time that my brother Eddie stayed with me for a little while. I gave him a key so he could come and go as he pleased. I really can’t remember how long he was there, but I would swear it was only a matter of days. Not even a month. He was separating from his second wife who also happened to be his first wife. My brother the boy scout, he married the same woman twice! The oddest thing about his visit was that at about this time my parents were planning a trip, a cruise to Alaska and for some reason they wanted to borrow my camcorder. This struck me as odd because they had one of their own. In any case my camcorder wound up over at my sisters house. This won’t have any real meaning to you because you can’t see where I kept the camcorder. I’ll try and explain, but I know it won’t have the same impact as if you had seen it. I kept the camcorder on a shelf of my entertainment center and it pointed across my living room to the corner where I had my desk set up. The desk where I put my 2 thousand dollar Pentium II computer. My parents made their trip to Alaska. My camcorder did not go with them. After it had sat over at my sister’s house for a few days they just decided they didn’t really need it with them after all. Meantime I am studying to be a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer. As I mentioned my family had nagged me into going back to school, but I wanted a short cut. So I wound up at the University of Phoenix. What a fly by night bunch of rip off artists at this so called school. Six months later I was in debt up to my eye balls and the tech bubble popped. I had two personal computers. I could network them. RJ45 and all that happy crap. What a waist. I never worked in the technology dept. of any company and I guess I never will. And I’m still more angry that I never got my Resident Evil players guide from that rotten outfit in California. Damn you Sony! When the next gen video games came out I supported Microsoft and bought an Xbox. Some where in there when Resident Evil 4 came out for the Nintendo Game Cube I went and got a Game Cube just so I could play Resident Evil 4. I lived in an apt. at 401 Rosery Rd #505 Largo FL 33770 from 1995 to 1999. For some stupid reason after I invested money I didn’t have in school I moved out of that apt. and into a home with my sister Margie. I was still working for Franklin Templeton Monday through Friday 9 to 5. On Saturdays I drove over the Howard Frankland to Tampa to go to class at University of Phoenix. Did I mention what a bunch or greedy money grabbing con artists these people were? My timing was all off. I learned MCSE for Win NT, meanwhile back in Redmond Washington Bill and the boys are cooking up Windows 2000. This is 1999 I’m talking about. I was hemorrhaging cash. To become an MCSE I had to pass six tests, and for some stupid reason despite the huge loan I had taken out…these tests were not built into the curriculum at University of Phoenix. Did I tell you what a fly by night operation this so called school was? I can’t figure out why my sister invited me to live with her. Talk about a bad idea. She had just bought her second home, but it was a fixer upper and I’m not sure either of us belonged there. I think I was there for less than six months, but while I was there I had my computers set up in the living room. I had access to the internet, but at that time I was still using dial up. If I wasn’t working or studying or taking some damn test I was enjoying myself online. I would hang out in chat rooms, surf porn just the stuff that any single guy would do. For all my talk about my apartment on Rosery it was at my sisters house that I hatched my plot to pelt my bosses house with dead Squid. Remember his name was George Calamari. And Calamari = Squid prepared as food. I swear I am not making that up. Next thing you know me and my sister are having a fight of some kind. Long story short after 4 nice quite years at my own place, I am moving for the second time in 6 months. And I fucking hate moving. To make matters worse I had absolutely no money and no where to go and god help me where do I wind up? You guessed it. At my parents house, 9475 119th way North Seminole Florida 33772. This was one painful half-assed moved let me tell you. I had to leave shit behind at my sisters place, and her place was in fixer upper mode which is to say it was total chaos and I did not want to leave stuff behind. I think when I was living with my parents they Nanny cam’ed me. This is really sick because I just can’t figure out what they wanted or expected to find. These are two strict Irish Catholics who probably think masturbation is a sin and actually believe it would be better for me to be out knocking up some Irish Catholic girl. Any how I wore Ed and Marge out in about six months and found myself moving yet again. I gave them a right to be mad at me because after I finished school and became and MCSE I was so sure I would be able to get a new job that I quit my job at Franklin Templeton. I put in my two weeks notice, but I didn’t have anything lined up. Now it’s summer 2000. I can’t even tell you what I was doing for Money at this time. I really can’t. But I wound up in my sisters ex husband’s house in Seminole Florida, with my brother Eddie –the recently separated boy scout. The house was a 2 bedroom one bath and on weekends Ed and I shared it with Ed’s two kids. My nephew John and his sister Kendal. John is the only true grandchild of Ed and Marge. Kendal is kind of a step grandchild being the daughter of my brothers ex wife, but not his biological child. I enjoyed being with the kids especially my nephew John. I remember I had both of my computers set up in my bedroom and they were networked and we would play Command and Conquer Tiberian Sun and Diablo and Diablo 2 until all hours of the morning. I’m not so sure my brother Eddie approved. He was never a video game guy and hated the level of violence in the games especially in the Diablo games. Long story short he kicked me out of the house. Let me bring you up to speed. In about 1 year I have lived in my own nice apartment, my sister’s fixer upper, my parents house, and with my brother in a mice infested dump in Seminole. So I find a new apartment, back in Largo. This one located at 810 1st Ave NW apt 1 Largo Florida 33770. The Westside apartments they were called at the time. This is January 2001. My landlord is a world war two vet named Richard B. Howard. My rent a mere $310.00 a month. When I moved in I didn’t even have a bed. Picked up a twin in some used furniture store, bought the cheapest mattress I could get brand new. The place was so small you had to go outside just to pass gas. I swear I am not making that up.If you’ve been to college and lived on campus you had a bigger dorm room. But it had a kitchen, and a small bathroom with a shower. It was a dump. But it was all mine. My neighbor was a guy named Tony who I met when I worked at The Home Shopping Network. He was STILL working at the Home Shopping Network. Guess whose wife also worked at the Home Shopping Network. My old boss, the one whose name is a synonym for squid prepared as food. Calamari. I am convinced now that none of this was coincidence.