We’re All Going To Die

I’ve decided that we all need to repent for any and all sins that we have committed within the past year. I have become INCREDIBLY worried about the obvious impending Apocolypse.

Shh. I’m so sincere right now.

Have we NOTICED how crazy the weather has been?! HAVE WE?! It is November flippin’ 29th, and I am about to go outside to 70 degree weather. Normally in upstate NY, we have already begun the man hunts for small children buried in 8 foot snow drifts [which are never successful...we end up just waiting for the spring thaw in late April].

Now? I could go comfortably sunbathe in the Quad if I wanted to. Naked. And that, my dear bloggers, is not natural in the very least. Especially the naked part. That’s not even legal.

Let’s not even talk about how the number of hurricanes we’ve had DWARFS anything else EVER.

God is pissed off with us for something, and we need to figure out what it is. And quick. Or its a brimstone bath for us all.

My guess? The Almighty is angered by the downfall of Nick and Jessica. But that’s just me.

John Is Not Sober

Listen. Listen carefully. John is right now, this very minute, not sober. And he’s blogging. Which means ALL of you are in danger and should very much evacuate. Immediately. And I’m serious. Because I’m not sober. So leave.

What else? I’m sorry you all didn’t understand the last post. I thought you would. Sorry. BUT it was fun, right? Fun to read?

Yup?!

I thought so.

Also, I think all of you should get your personal diary or This Is The Most Brilliant Thing I’ve Ever Heard book and write this down…

Got it?

Sure?

…

Okay…

Shit. I forgot. If I remember, I will update. So sorry. Or as my old boss said…So sad, too bad.

Where Bad Jobs Go To Die

I was reading untitled this morning, and she gave me my post for the day. Inspiration. Yes now.

So for pretty much all of high school and one summer of college, I worked in Boston at the office my father works at. It was an insurance related company, and I can honestly say working there instilled in me the fear of the office God. I learned, at age 15, that I will never [repeat: NEVER] work in such a setting for the rest of my life.

The people that you come across…I can’t even describe it. As young as I was, I was able to look upon my co-workers and say in my head There is definitely something wrong with you. How are you still alive right now? The Fund [as we so lovingly called it] hired some of the most ridiculous people I’ve ever met in my life. Ever. If this were the Middle Ages, most of these people would have been drowned at birth.

The first woulda-shoulda-coulda-been-killed was this woman named Liz. She had gotten the job because her sister worked there and suggested her for the position. For the office, nepotism is usually the equivalent of getting fisted by a gorilla. Except for me. I’m a joy.

Anyways, Liz was a weird one. She’d get into work around 10, which was great, because that is when most people took their morning break. So she’d head out to Dunkin’ Donuts and return to the office around 10:30. She’d eat her donut and drink her coffee in the break room before heading back to her desk around 11. From there, she’d work for about an hour before going on her 1 hour lunch break, returning from it around 2 or so. Then, and this is the kicker, so scroll down carefully. She would nap. For over an hour. Underneath her desk. In a cubicle. After being questioned about it, she produced a doctor’s note saying she has a bad neck, and needs to lay down in the fetal position to ease the pain. She soon went on disability. Nut job.

Then there is Joanne, who in all honesty is a lovely woman. I really enjoyed talking to her. Early to mid 50’s, she is a jewel. Friendly. Funny. Always nice to be around. For a little while. Then, things would get awkward. I don’t know for sure, but I think it was a combination of her coke bottle glasses that magnified her lazy eye and the fact that she was missing part of a finger, always referred to it somehow, but never said how she lost it. Sometimes she would point at you with it. This little nubbly stub [cut at the first joint] waving in the air at you. It was creepy. She also wore enough make up to kill a clown. Sweet woman, that Joanne.

Then there were the crazies. You all have them at your work. Wave hello, and keep walking. Don’t make eye contact, because if you do, you’re done for. Debbie was the worst. First off, how fitting her name be Debbie. Doesn’t that just strike you as a crazy name? Debbie. DebbieDebbieDebbieDebbie. Look at what I just wrote. It looks odd, right? Say the name out loud a few times.

…

See? So anyways, Debbie was the most socially awkward person I’ve ever met. She was never not talking to herself. Always walking through the halls with a stack of mail in her hands, chit chatting away. To herself. When she would talk to you, though, her eyes would open up really wide. Pair that with her dark hair that was styled via electrocution, and it was an scary sight. And regardless of what you said, she would nod her head up and down too quickly for it not to be physically damaging, and keep saying Yeah? Yeah…Yeah! I know what you mean! She would then, in mid conversation, turn around and continue talking to herself, leaving you confused as all hell. I think she ended up quitting because she on the verge of getting fired anyways. See, she had her own filing system for mail and folders and such. It was basically a What color would look nice here? type of thing. Obviously, numerics were for losers.

Meg was a crazy, as well. Okay. A part time crazy. Usually she was fun to be around and talk with, but that was only until you did something to hurt Mother Nature or something. One time, the office got infested with a few mice. Meg decided to catch them all to save them from the exterminator, and put them in a box underneath her desk. There, she fed them and cared for them. Isn’t that sweet? And by sweet, I mean gross and fucking disgusting. Go wash your hands, Meg, and don’t sit with me at lunch.

Finally, there is our brave and fearless leader. Paul the President. He’s known me since I was a little tiny blogger, brand new and only a few years old. He would always joke around with me and what not, and try to be the cool guy. When you try to be the cool guy, you invariably fail. The thing was, he would try the same methods of communication with me when I was 17 and 18 that he did when I was 5. Every summer when I would start, he would shake my hand. And every time, he’d say Are you afraid of me? And every time I would fall for it, because in my head I was thinking What type of fucked up question is that?! I’d say no, and then he’d hoot and holler and say Then why are you shaking?!

I swear to God, Paul, if you say that one more time I am going to shit in your mouth.

And I’m serious. I will never work at the Fund again. Well. Yes I will. This winter break. I need the money badly, so I will suffer for 3 weeks to make some cash. But these people better stay the hell away from me. I’m not kidding when I say that I will hurt you if I feel the need. Or at the very least write bad things about you on the internet.

Hear that, Paul? People from around the globe hate you right now. Who’s shaking now? Huh?! Stupid bastard.

Jooced 5ives

I had just gotten home, and what is the first thing I do? Sit down, go to my blog, and go right down the blogroll. It took me about an hour to go through it all, once I had gone through all the links and such. So it got me to thinking. I read so much shit [as in good shit, awesome shit, I want this shit] during the course of a day, and find so many great sites, I will become enveloped in the blogosphere and soon will no longer have time for my real life.

Oh well.

Anyways, this week I’ve decided to introduce you to a site I’ve been visiting for a while now. 5ives is a list blog [and I know how some of you love the lists] centering around 5 points. Every entry is a different subject, with 5 bullets. It is always random and bizarre and funny and I love it. These are a few of my favorite posts.

So check out 5ives: Merlin’s List of 5 Things. It can be one more site that you visit everyday, taking up that 5 more minutes of your day, until, eventually, you get jooced. I just made that up. If dooce means getting fired for your blog, jooce can mean getting fired for reading blogs.

Good luck, bloggers. And don’t get jooced.

UPDATE: I just thought of this. So what would happen if you were fired from you job for blogs in general? For writing and reading? Would you then be DJ’ed?

Harry Potter And The Shut The Hell Up

I know I’m not much older than high school students. It wasn’t that long ago that I, too, was a teenager who was thrilled at the thought of a trip to the mall, only to hang out in the food court for three hours sucking down a single drink from Orange Julius.

But I feel an immense distance from these people. I’m 21, and I didn’t grow up in that different of a culture than a 14 or 15 year old. For the most part, there hasn’t been a huge cultural shift or anything drastic like that. So why in the HELL are teenagers, more specifically those in high school, so DAMN idiotic.

I swear to God that I was never as stupid as these kids. Or annoying. Or as ignorant. Or as stupid. Did I say that already? Well it deserved repeating.

It just seems that kids and teens now have such a huge repertoire of knowledge that I never even dreamed of having. When I was in elementary school, I knew of swears, but did I ever think to use them? Hell no. Not unless I wanted to get beat with the fat end of stick. But now, 4th graders know more swears, sexual positions, and recipes to drugs and bombs than I EVER did when I was their age.

And these kids grow up to be the annoying 14 and 15 year olds that, when out in public, I actually point them out to the guy in the van with the overcoat and candy. Society will be better off this way. And you know I’m right in this.

Last night I went and saw Harry Potter, which you all know I was excited about. Until I realized I was one of the oldest persons in the entire theatre. I was SURROUNDED by teenagers. Horribly annoying teenagers. This may ruffle a few feathers [wow, I sound 63], but at least half of these kids in the theatre should be the posterchild for abortion. Their contribution to society will be nothing more than an increased use of the shocker [believe me, I know this. My brother is 17, and that is the link in his profile]. They are just loud and irksome and hysterical for no reason. When we were going into the theatre, one girl screamed as if someone had just punched her in the baby maker. I turned around to see what happened, and found out she had screamed because they were running across the street. That’s it. I turned and said There is no need for screaming like an ass, and kept walking. How’d she react? I don’t care. She’s an idiot. I knew I was in the presence of danger, though, when I heard a girl say I need Harry…in my PANTS!

I so would have risked the assault charges if I didn’t have to worry about money.

The teens who could be considered redeemable [and that is like trying to pick out the best venereal disease to smear on your face] still blew my mind. They were dressed in Harry Potter outfits. But not something they got at a costume store. Oh hell no. They were wearing really expensive oxford shirts, nice blazers, J. Crew ties, trench coats and pea coats. They were wearing at least $300 worth of clothes. Some of them had track jackets with a House Seal from the movie, along with Quidditch positions emblazoned on the back. Like I would really think you were the Seeker for Slytherin. Ass. I even heard one claim over and over he went to school at Hogwarts. They all walked around with an attitude that said they owned the place, when, in fact, if they came any closer to me than they did, I would own them. What is even funnier is that most of them didn’t even read the books. Its hard to read when your too busy being a whore.

Then there were the few kids [aka all of them] who would scream Oooooo! or Whooohoooo! or even whistle whenever something remotely sexual happened. The first thing I thought was how bad of a habit this is to get into for teenagers. I imagine two teens, speaking softly, underneath their breath, as they begin to move closer to one another on the couch. Then, as they finally reach the moment where their bodies cling close to one another, their eyes slowly close and their lips gently meet, one of them screams OOOOOOOOOOO!

Let’s pray to God that they are all impotent.

Survival Of The Fittest

Last night I went out with a bunch of people to celebrate a friend’s 21st birthday party. We went to the Olive Garden, where oddly enough, the 8 of us all ended up ordering the same thing. Half got the tortellini, and the other half, including myself, got the tour of Italy. I was fat and tired and in heaven by the time I was done.

Because we needed to wait about 25 minutes for a table, 3 of us got a bottle of wine to pass the time. It was a Reisling that my friends and I normally drink. At Liquor Square, it only costs about $8, so we got excited when we saw it on the wine list. Until we saw the $20 price tag.

How ridiculous is that? I was tempted to go down the street to Liquor Square and grab a bottle there, and just bring it back. But no, we ended up spending over 2 times the real worth of the bottle, which was just pointless. Well…not completely. I got a nice little buzz.

But I was still a little perturbed by the whole rip off thing later in dinner. So after our complimentary wine tasting before dinner, my friend Tiffany pointed out how there we just so many bottles of wine chilling on the ledge between us and the next table. About 20, maybe.

I’d like one of those. That rose wine was so good.
I’ll get one before we leave.

When I say get one, I don’t mean go up to the bar and pay for a bottle. Not after paying 20 bucks for an 8 dollar bottle of wine [22 after tax and tip]. If an 8 dollar wine costs 20 at the Olive Garden, imagine how much their house wine would cost?

So Tiffany and I discussed it for a bit, and came up with a plan. In the hustle and bustle of us leaving the table, I would just take a bottle. That was it. That was the plan. I would put the [very awkwardly shaped] bottle in my jacket, and just walk out.

You know what? It worked. We got into the car and drove away. And enjoyed a very nice bottle of wine when we got home. And I felt not an ounce of guilt about it, because if you are going to mug a poor [seriously...I've got no monies] college student, then that college student has an inalienable right to mug you. It’s in the Constitution. Read it, fool.

Moral of the story? Don’t charge John an exorbitant amount of money for something, or he’ll rob you.

High Tension

I wrote a few weeks ago about a class I’m taking called Rhetoric of Film. Since our professor is obsessed with horror movies, we watch one about every week. We’ve seen Dracula, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Psycho, Carrie, Friday the 13th Part III, and Scream. None of these scared me at all. I may have let out an Ew or something because of a death scene, but that would be about it.

That was until Prof. Phillips decided to show the movie High Tension last night.

I haven’t been this scared by a movie since I was 7 and my next door neighbor and I watched Nightmare on Elm Street. And even then, I could see the humor in the movie. I mean, come on. He uses a Nintendo gamepad to control someone and kill them? Please.

Anyways, this class meets once a week, from 6 to 9. So when we watch a movie, we take a 10 minute break either before or after it, depending if we watch it in the first or second half of the class. Prof. Phillips put the movie on as soon as everyone arrived. Afterwards, during the 10 minute break, half the class left. Why? Because they were afraid and didn’t want to talk about the film.

The film is all in French, and it is amazing. But scary as hell. After we got out of class, I had to call my friend Courtney so I wouldn’t be walking home alone. You know. Just in case a killer jumps out from behind a wall, someone will know how I died and what not.

Courtney, if you’re reading this. Thank you. You are my hero.

Anyways, rent this movie. I’m not going to tell you anything about it, because I went in knowing nothing, and I was feeling weak after I saw it. Also, try not to leave any comments along the lines of Remember the part where the man jumps off the roof and lands on the pitchfork?! because we don’t want to give away stuff. I just made that up, so don’t be upset.

But yah. I’m man enough to admit that I was afraid to sleep alone last night and was kind of weak in the knees after we watched the movie. It was that good.

Rent it.

This Is Called Payback

A few weeks ago, I needed to perform a personal narrative in front of my class. The assignment required I write out a script of some sort, and perform an event from my life.

Thank God I have a blog.

So I performed this in front of my class, and I got an A- on the performance.

After I got the grade back, I called my Auntie Jan, otherwise known as Freak In My Yard, to let her know that I told that story in front of 25 students and everyone enjoyed it. They even told me to say hi to my aunt for them. She was thrilled that she attained some sort of local celebrity status, even if it was just within a small classroom.

A week or so later, I got a voicemail from her. She was sitting down with my Nana and a few other family members, and she was telling everyone how I performed the Halloween Prank [they call it a prank...I think social services calls it abuse] for my class. That’s when she remembered what her most memorable moment was having to do with me. So she called me right then and there, and reminded me.

When I was in 4th or 5th grade [about 10 or 11 years old] I was living with my Nana in her house. This was the house my father grew up in and my grandfather designed. My family had moved in with my Nana because after my grandfather passed away, someone needed to move in and help take care of the house and her. In no way is she incapacitated, but she is older, and my father’s family didn’t want her to be alone.

So anyways, my mother and father went away one weekend together, so my Auntie Jan came to watch my brother and I. I don’t remember much of the weekend, because for the most part, it was very uneventful and boring. Auntie Jan made dinner for Nana, Mikey and I. We played with friends. We went to bed. Nothing special.

Except for Saturday night.

The bathroom upstairs had one of those showers that is really a stall with a semi transparent door. The door to the shower wouldn’t lock, but snap into place once you closed it. I loved this shower, just because it was different and fun and I’m enthralled by simple things.

Now, mind you. I’m 10 or 11 years old at this point.

I had been watching Saturday morning cartoons earlier that day, and I happened to catch on Nickelodeon some old school cartoons. You know. Tom & Jerry. Droopy. Looney Toons. Stuff like that. So after a whole morning of cartoons, an entire day of pre pubescent activities, and a full meal, I was ready to shower and get ready for bed. The life of a kid is a life well led. So I hop into the shower, when it hits me. In Tom & Jerry, when the baby duck and Jerry were running away from Tom, they ran into a shower just like mine!

Thrilling, yes. I know.

Tom, thinking he was so smart, quickly turned on the shower in order to flood them out. Or drown them so he could then eat their water-logged corpses. Whatever. But, instead of them drowning, the water slowly filled up the entire shower, making a pool. Tom should have thought twice about that.

And so should have John.

I was using a face cloth when an idea hit me. How cool would it be if I could make this into my own little pool? I could float to the top of the shower and look out the top of the door. This was the idea of the century. Now I just needed to put it into effect.

I immediately put the face cloth over the drain. While it stopped the emptying of water for a little while, it didn’t do the trick. So I went and grabbed a towel, too, and placed that over the drain. That did the trick. After I bunched it up over the drain, I started to get a nice little wading pool going on. Now, I just needed to wait.

So I stood there. Naked. In the shower. Waiting for it to fill up into a closet sized swimming pool. Really, I don’t know how long I stood there.

Then my Auntie Jan [FIMY] started yelling into the bathroom. I immediately tried to play off the whole situation, because she couldn’t see what was going on. So I could just lie, and she would never know, right?

John?! John! What are you doing in there?!
…Nothing.
John! What’s going on in there?
I told you, nothing!…Why?
The whole cellar is flooded! What’s going on?!

I immediately reached down and took away the towels and threw them into the hamper. I was panicking. I needed all this water [which had gotten to be almost calf high] to drain immediately before my aunt had any funny ideas of perhaps really killing me.

It was too late, though. By the time the water had drained, and I had gotten out of the shower, the entire basement was flooded. Nothing too severe [by the way, thank the Baby Jesus because my family would've killed me], but the floor was wet and my father had to run the pump when he got home.

They weren’t entirely happy with me. At all. Come to think of it, I don’t think they were very impressed with why I had done this in the first place. I think that explaining this to family and friends must have gone something like…

Wait, why did your basement flood?
Oh…well…our son accidentally flooded it.
What? How?
Well…he was taking a shower…
And?
…
What happened?
He tried to turn the shower into a pool by covering the drain with towels.

I’m their first born. You can just taste the pride.

Wine & Vlogs & The Blog Of The Week

So after a week of surfing and blogging and reading and writing, I found the new Blog Of The Week.

If you read any of last week’s winning blogs, you may have spent some time on Millie’s site. Her son, Steve, helps her out with her blog and sometimes makes posts to it. In addition to that, Steve has his own blog as well, called Off On A Tangent.

When I have the time, I try and do some of the things he suggests and gives directions for in his blog. The thing I’m trying to do [without asking help from my designer friend] is creating a favicon for my site. You know how next to the web address up at the top, there is a picture of a B for blogger? Well, there is a way to change that, and I’m trying to figure it out. We’ll see if I’m successful. I’m going to bet no, but its fun to try.

If you click the About Me section, you are linked to an informational page with links to his blog and his vlog [video blog]. There is also info on how to hire him to do documentaries, interviews, or weblog implementation.

One of my favorite things, though, is the vlog show he and his wife, Carol, have. It is called The Steve & Carol Show, and if you look at one of the more recent shows, you can see Steve a little buzzed in wine country. If you want, you can use the iTunes Podcast feature to subscribe to his vlog, and every time he updates, it will be updated on your computer.

So do yourself a favor and take a look at Steve’s blog. You may find something you like and something that may be useful for making your blog even better.

Steve, your winnings, like everyone before you, will be given to you in the form of your paycheck. Congrats.

Setting The Curve

I took a midterm the other day, and I am one 100% sure that I failed it. And that is okay.

See. It wasn’t my class. It was a TRF [Television, Radio and Film] class. I’m not even in that school, much less in that class. But I took the midterm, and it was incredible.

Because the class focuses on filming and what not, there isn’t really a way to give a fair midterm to everyone. So the professor put the picture of everyone in the class [all 75 students] and you had to name them all. And that was the midterm.

So I went to class with my friend, and that’s when the hilarity began. Now, all 75 students have been studying the faces of their classmates for the past week, so they can name them on the spot. Who’s that? Oh that’s Carmen. But who’s that? Oh, that’s Mark.

Enter me.

The looks that I got were priceless. Picture this. The look of a student [cocky, arrogant] who fully believes that they have this test aced. Then, picture their face when they see me walk into the classroom, and the dream of an A drops to an A-. The expression was incredible. Shock. Dismay. Confusion. I can only imagine how they would feel. Spending a week studying the faces of your 75 classmates, then seeing a random ass person walk in and take the test? Amazing.

I probably screwed some people up. But it was a fun time.

So I decided that I’m going to do this more often. I’ll go to a class, and just take the test. I’ll get such a poor grade, I’ll raise everyone else’s grade! Genius.

ps…I signed the test as Chad M. Murray