Was It What Blown Weekends

There was a comment left on my last post regarding my assumed preference for wolves over bears.

So, you hate bears but you'd save a wolf? From quicksand, apparently. Bears, who we all know to stay away from for they are LARGE and, well, bears. But a wolf? Wolves are FAR more dangerous. Wolves pretend to be dogs. And you look at the wolf and you think "how bad can it be? It looks like my neighbor's husky!" And then you get close to the wolf to pet it and then IT RIPS OUT YOUR THROAT! Save the bears, hump on the wolves.

There you go. Left by a dear friend that I know for a fact doesn't always lock the front door to her house. Her expertise in the field of safety is questionable. I don't suppose I'll ever find a framed master's degree in the field of Not Being Savagely Murdered hanging from her wall. 

Wolves are far safer than bears. This is an inarguable fact. Despite the facts that bears are larger, stronger, faster and loyal to nothing but the relentless pursuit of hunny, you've got to consider things like... who do you think you could take in a fight? Bear Grylls or Wolf Blitzer?

Things like... what happens after you dance with wolves? You win the Oscar, typically. Then get a haircut. What happens after you dance with non-circus bears? Not much, unless you consider screaming bloody murder and decomposing slowly to be worthwhile activities. Dancing with bears is the sort of thing that you might have read about in the last chapter of "Into the Wild," had it been written.

You know what happens when someone comes to your house and sees a bear skin rug on your floor? They might think you have a lot of money to spend on frivolous things. They might consider you to be a captain of industry who smells of grapes. They may stare at your crotch while you strut and wonder if you're hurting people with your equipment. They might want to offer you a flagon of grog or mead. If they have an odd warrior name like Zula or April, they might want to have sex with someone on it. 

You know what happens when someone comes to your house and sees a wolf skin rug? Maybe they'd wonder why you're so poor that you're carpeting your floor with roadkill. Maybe they'd assume it was a dog and that you were a filthy person that didn't have time to clean up all of your carcasses before you invited them over to watch the game. Maybe they'd say, "Fuck, dude... you couldn't pick this up before anyone saw it? Good job, Michael Vick. Look - let me help you get it in a dumpster before the cops come over." Is that what you want? 

You're so backward.

Three Little Right Today Your

I think this will be the first year I can recall that I didn't help promote the Boobiethon. I guess that must mean I'm siding with cancer. Wow. I apologize for my carcinogenic behavior.

Am I such a lazy blogger than I couldn't get off my ass and write a few words that could potentially save some lives? Yes. This is indisputable. 

High school students, do not ask me to write you letters of recommendation to your favorite college admissions departments. A few months later, after I've decided that I couldn't be bothered to hook you up, you'll be cursing my name as you toil away at Safety School State. And your less enterprising friends with semi-reliable references will instead enjoy the scenery at prestigious Nepotism University. 

My bad.

__________

Completely unrelated aside to help me reach my unofficial minimum word requirement:

One of my lifelong aspirations has always been to own a bearskin rug. I'd grow a beard out, get a mug of something warm, sit on the rug and stare into a crackling fire while I talked to someone about the time I saved a wolf from quicksand and became its best friend. Maybe I'd have friends over and casually pet the bear on the head while saying, "Careful, old friend - we remember what happened last time you bared those teeth at me, don't we?" It'd be so bad ass*.

For whatever reason, every time I daydreamed about the rug (and, consequently, how much I really hate bears) I'd never be near a computer to look up what they cost. Then, I'd get near a computer and, before I remembered to price one, I'd get on Wikipedia and read about Unwound or something. 

This pattern went on for years. Literally, years. I would never think about my desire for rug ownership while I had the means to find out how to get one. I'm not sure what the issue was.

Then, the other day, I got on the google machine and remembered to price rugs. And, now, I'm thinking I should just focus on trying to save a wolf from quicksand someday. That'd still be bad ass, and it wouldn't require years of indentured service to Bank of America.

__________

* To be fair, for about 5 of those years, I just wanted a bearskin rug so I could be that guy that could say he'd had hooked up on a bearskin rug. That pretty much stopped when I realized that normal women who aren't named Sheena or Zula don't easily get turned on by the notion of having sex on a corpse. Live and learn.

Side On Changes Walk Tiny Birds

I just saw in the news that Tufts University no longer allows students to have sex in their dorms while their roommates are present, with, I assume, orgies and film shoots for various porn websites being the exceptions.

On one hand, I can see where you'd have to wonder how many of those ugly kids at Tufts were having sex with each other to merit the rule. On the other, I can completely understand. A story ensues...

Once upon a time, I was in college. I had just spent a long day studying, preparing for exams and preparing a paper* and I was very, very tired. I went to bed at around 10 PM and left a note for my roommate on the door saying I was tired and asked if he could be quiet when he got home later.

When he arrived, I could hear him outside the door saying, "fuuuuuuuuuuck," followed by feminine giggling. You see, while I was studying and preparing myself for an exam**, my roommate was spending the day romancing*** a really, really, really hot girl that he'd been after for a while. Apparently, he'd pretended to like enough bands that she liked and pretended to think she was smart and insightful long enough to get her to agree to go to bed with him. My note was, as the kids would say, a hard rock cockblock.

He opened the door and peeked in. I was laying on my bed with my eyes just barely open. He said, "How tired are you?"

Extremely, my friend.

"So, you're saying you could sleep through anything right now?"

I... I.... damn, she really is hot, isn't she?.... alright, yeah. I could sleep through anything.

"With your eyes closed?"

Probably? But definitely asleep enough for your purposes.

"So, I'm gonna walk out in this hallway and talk to her for a second. When I come back in - you're snoring?"

Sure. Camera phones haven't been invented yet. Knock yourself out.

"Nice."

So, twenty seconds later, my roommate stumbled into the door with his lady friend and ambled over to his bed with her. Cockblock averted. Since my eyes were closed, I can only assume that he also brought over a rabid polar bear, a jackhammer that needed oil and an unchained banshee on LSD, because the sounds that came from his half of the room for the rest of the night were inhuman at best. 

I'd like to sit here and say it was your standard meat and potatoes sexual encounter and that, on a good day, I could have done the same, but I'm pretty sure he spent an hour breaking her into little pieces and ended up having to rebuild her like Frankenstein before the sun came up and I'm not a demolition expert. If I wasn't pretending to be asleep, I'd have applauded and tossed bouquets of flowers onto his bed.

The next morning, the three of us went and had breakfast. He ate enough pancakes to refuel a Sherman tank and, surprisingly, she was able to keep food down after having her stomach imploded.  Me? I was considering changing my major to theater arts because my manhood was in question for about a year.

So, congratulations, nerds at Tufts University. Not only do you not have to worry about figuring out whether to upload your hidden camera footage to Redtube or to Youporn, but you're also spared the never ending nightmare that is being outsexed by your yeti of a roommate. Enjoy the peace of mind.

_____________________________________________

* I most certainly was not doing any of these things. Not by any stretch.

** Again.... not remotely possible. But whatever I was doing, I was definitely tired at the end.

*** I'm being very kind with this verb. 'Romancing' isn't the kind of thing that precedes dropping a cherry bomb in a woman's crotch. I probably should have said 'bullshitting' or something.

Gasoline Baby Under Skin Leave

The other day I went to Best Buy to acquire a printer. And printer paper. I assume I got the best options available, as per the name of the store.

As I was walking to the counter, I took note of the worthless crap they have along the windy road you need to walk through before you can get to the register. It's basically the "you already spent $300 - what's another $3?" gauntlet. I typically succeed at the gauntlet because I care very little about whatever People Magazine has to tell me about John and Kate Plus 8 Kids That Are Destined For Failure As Adults. This time, I made it to the register unscathed, but might have met my match in John, the register teen.

"I saw you looking. What were you looking at?"

To tell the truth, I was looking at the Funyuns. I like Funyuns.

"Get them. I'll wait, man."

Come on, dude. They're like... three dollars.

"You're spending $300 already."

I was.

"And you want those Funyuns. What's another $3?"

He got me. I bought food from an electronics store at a 600% markup. Before John, I felt invincible.

Unrelated:

As I left the Best Buy to drive home, there was a sign that said "No left turn."  True.... but it probably should have said, "No left turn, unless the world was recently beset by zombies. In that case, you know there are no cars coming.... go ahead and drive however you please. I mean, really... what are the odds that you'll run into the one remaining pocket of survivors on earth in the middle of this turn? You'll be fine. They're not coming. They're never coming. You've been alone for so long...."

It would need to be a bigger sign, but I believe in accuracy.

Also, unrelated:

I've figured out what Facebook is good for. When you meet someone and they want to be your friend and you really don't want to have a proper relationship with phone calls and hangouts and stuff, you can just add them to your Facebook and feel free to ignore them for the rest of your life. That way, when they need you, they can see your face and write on your wall. And when you want to ignore them, you can just.... not look at your Facebook account. 

The end.

Radio What The Heat Ready

So I saw a banner the other day that used the word SRSLY as part of it's tagline.

(Quick tangent: I was walking down one of those streets in San Francisco at the time that had a very familiar name. I hate streets with familiar names. They always make me think, "Did I read about this street in a book or see it in a movie? Or do I recognize the name because I've been walking in circles for a half hour?" Streets should be numbered - no exceptions.)

It was an advertisement about text messaging from some phone company.

(Yet another tangent: Yes, every blog post I write will be about marketing. Accept it.)

The company was saying that their text messaging service was best. But what caught my eye was the abbreviated version of "seriously." Was it required? I suppose the user is just trying to save time while they text message.

(Probably the last tangent: Can "text message" be used as a verb?)

But, you know what? If you're writing a text message, you're already saving time. How much extra time did you need exactly? You know how much time you're already saving by writing a text message? This much, at least:

"Ring............ Ring............ Ring....... Yeah, hi..... I'm good, how are you?....... Really? That's cool. Hey, let me....... Uh huh.......... Yeah........... Uh huh, I know. Hey, let me........... Yeah, hey, let me........ really quick because I have to...... Okay, yeah....... Yeah, I just wanted to remind you that I'm not going to be there until 7......... Okay.......... Alright.......... Bye."

You're saving that, minus the words "I'm not going to be there until 7." This is at least 80% in time savings. If you needed 81%, you're just being greedy.

What Sunshine Go Along Decides

So, I'm adjusting my diet a bit. 

I'm not an obese man, but, according to skinny, nerd experts everywhere, I'm what you might call 10 - 12 pounds overweight. This is due to the fact that, instead of acting like I hate myself and sustaining on the bird feed doctors recommend, I like to eat burgers, drink beer relentlessly and exercise only when it's convenient. While an expert might say I'm being negligent, I prefer to say I choose to live the life that paupers everywhere would be jealous of. 

(Find a homeless man and ask him how he'd like to spend the next ten years. I guarantee you his response sounds a lot more like my life than a personal trainer's. You know this.)

But... to be fair... I'm going to attempt to live clean and healthy for about a month or so and see what comes of it. If there difference between "eating like a scared rabbit" and "taking a whole pie to the throat as I see fit" is only something like 8 pounds, I'll promise, between hearty chugs of beer, to never ever do this again. 

And now, to assuage any concerns you might have, here's a brief FAQ:

"But, eating healthy makes you live longer. Wouldn't you want to live as long as possible? By eating like a jerk, you're taking years off your life here."

I appreciate your concern. I really do. Typically, when you ask a question like this, you get one of two responses:

1.) I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.

2.) What good is living forever if I'm miserable?

Either of those responses would do well in this space, but I'm going to reject them both and offer up a third:

3.) That means I have to spend more time on earth with your judgmental whining, doesn't it? Excuse me while I peruse ThisIsWhyYoureFat.com for dinner recipes.

"Skinny people look better. I'm sorry. They just do. I don't know why you'd want to be a fat, ugly slob. Are you some kind of jerk?"

You keep calling me a jerk. I suspect we'll be fighting before this FAQ is over.

Skinny people look skinnier. If you consider that more attractive, then that's your thing. But, the more important point here is that I stopped caring what other people think of me a little while ago. Sure, it might make me a bit of a jerk, but it also frees me up to eat all the cake I want. So... tied one all.

"Overweight people are a burden on the health care system. You're the reason that insurance premiums are higher than..."

Stop this. Stop it now. You're completely wrong about this.

"But even ten pounds is enough to put you at risk for diabetes. You should consider the cost benefits of..."

I'm not getting into the health care debate. I said stop this.

"Single payer! Public option! Skyrocketing costs!"

OK, fine. I'll try and be quick about it.

I'm not an economist. I'm not a health care expert. I'm merely a dude. But I don't think the issue with the health care system is overweight people - it's the extravagant money involved.

Think of it this way... what's the difference between Vince Vaughn in a movie like Swingers and Vince Vaughn in a movie like Made? What's the difference between your favorite band's first album and the crap they've been churning out ever since? 

The bottom line is this: Any time you have something that's inherently good, fun or cool, it will remain that way until it becomes ridiculously profitable. That includes entire genres of music, internet technologies like Twitter and homemade porn. In its infancy, any good idea is completely free of stupid. Once a corporation decides to make money off of it, it becomes a soulless shell of itself, filled with profit margins and decisions that are driven by maximizing profit, rather than increasing quality.

If there was little or no money involved in health care (between drug companies, medical supply companies, labor, legal fees, lobbyists, insurance and everything else), you'd be able to walk into a doctor's office and get top notch heart surgery that day without destroying your budget. The best thing that ever happened to acupuncture, reflexology and voodoo was staying off the insurance companies' radars. If United Healthcare gave its customers a yearly voodoo allowance, severed chicken heads would cost $40,000 by the end of the week. The wild west had its negatives, but being able to get your cancer knocked out by the local blood-letter for a fistful of silver nuggets without being placed on a permanent drug regimen had to be awesome.

So, in short... my ten pounds isn't putting a strain on a damned thing. If it was fifty, you'd have an argument. Maybe I'll die earlier, but if it cost my insurance company less than $200,000 to let me do it in a hospital, we'd all be wasting our energy debating things over things like fantasy football instead.

"Are you doing something with carbs?"

Yes. I'm eating them. Just not in beer form.

"How much weight are you hoping to lose?"

I don't know. I... I really don't know. I'm not interested in thinking about it. We'll see what happens.

"Are you exercising? You can't just eat less without exercising."

I'm not sure if this will qualify as an answer but... I'm not going to exercise - I'm going to stop not exercising. 

"That doesn't make any sense."

It would if you thought about it.

Be Your Shade Wanna Think So

A few thoughts:

---

I've been watching these Radio Shack commercials where they say "Our friends call us The Shack," or something similar. 

For one... way to go, Radio Shack, on invoking the Royal "we." Not too many retail electronics stores that specialize in selling RCA-to-Optical cords have the kind of self-confidence required to refer to themselves in the first person plural. Best Buy can pull it off, but they've got the balance sheet to back it up. Kudos for the ambition.

Second... who exactly are your friends? Do you, Panda Express and Things Remembered get liquored up and troll around the mall at night looking for action? Does Cinnabon have Jenga night every Tuesday? I'm very curious about your social circles, The Shack. Can I call you The Shack? I buy my cell phone covers from you. Does that make us buds?

  ---

I'll bet everyone on earth has a superpower and just doesn't know it's a superpower. For example, if you just moved and I'm helping you unload your truck, I guarantee you that I will be the one that finds the box that you put your books in. Then I'll pick it up and basically destroy my back in the process, but I'll play it off like it doesn't hurt because I'm a beast. A goddamned beast. That's my power.

That, and if I'm standing in an elevator lobby, I can tell which elevator will be the one to open next. With... say... 75% accuracy. Maybe 65%. But still, it's impressive.

    ---

Shows like CSI are entertaining, but they just make it easier for criminals.

"Oh, so they can get prints from the inside of the gloves too? I'd better melt them on the way home. Man... I love stabbing bitches."

       ---

I was watching some commercial where Laurie Metcalf was telling me I should feel bad about some poor kid in Africa who lost his parents to disease and has to raise his little brothers on his own. She wanted me to send her money (apparently the Roseanne residuals aren't covering it by themselves).

There were shots of the kid sitting in the corner all sad and shit. He looked very poor. And sad. And skinny. And he missed his parents. There was a shot where the kid was looking at a picture of his parents while sitting on the floor and totally not fake crying. It was all very dramatic. If I had a heart, I'd have felt sad for him.

Then it occurred to me... hey, poor kid with the dead parents, where'd you get that photo of your folks developed?

"At the Walgreens."

Walgreens? They've got Walgreens in Africa? It's not just flies, shitty wells and goats?

"No... there's a Walgreens behind you. You can't see it because the camera is facing the wrong way. It's in the shopping center with the Subway and the Radio Shack."

I've been told that his friends call him The Shack now.

"I work there 35 hours a week. Nobody calls it The Shack. They come in, get RCA-to-1/8th converters and leave. Here in broke assed Africa, we can't afford iPhone docking stations, so we have to hook our mp3 players up to our component systems through the RCA jacks. Please send Laurie Metcalf some money."

              ---

I saw a sticker the other day for a religious organization. It said "One True God," and the address of the church they wanted to advertise.

Now, I'm not an expert on world religions, but I do know a thing or four about marketing. This is a terrible tag line. 

For one - it doesn't have the pop of a line like "Your God Isn't Even A God" or something edgy enough to make an eyebrow raise. Waste of ink, people. This is wasted ink.

But, more importantly, I think we're at the point now where most prominent world religions have the one god feature. You're not exactly in a market share competition with the ancient Egyptians. If you're shilling more than one god, you're resigning yourself to a clientele that consists of book store employees, weird artist types and women that I used to date ten years ago. 

This is akin to Exxon saying, "Buy our gasoline; we've got unleaded." 

Know your market, religious leader types, and pander accordingly.

                    ---

That might have been it.