It's been a while since my last entry, so I think I'll have to do something to make it up to you, my loyal readers (if there really were such a thing).

To do this, I am going to start a "Lame List." I'm going to kick things off with 5(!) things!

Lame List:
12.22.08 - Gogurt!, Ally McBeal, Chris Angel, Chuck Norris jokes, papercuts

tonight i ate sushi and went ice skating with a pretty girl. she is superior because she only fell down once to my two times. my skates were too big so my ankles were all weak and stuff like a half hour into it. after i was done, my ankles were all sore and almost cut up.
then we went to the lift and each had one martini. it was nice to see her again, and hopefully there will be many other days to come for us to hang out.

tomorrow is christmas with my grandparents so they can jump the boat and head to texas from the end of the weekend through april.

i'm way too addicted to iminlikewithyou.com. they just added another game that i played a little bit of. it's a puzzle game where you put together a puzzle!

OMG FINALZ

Finals are pretty sweet. Sure, there's a lot of studying and stress and blah blah blah, but come on. You know you like them.

I was watching Back to the Future III tonight on tv (where Marty and Doc to back to the old west) and all I could think about for about 30 minutes was how poor a shot Michael J. Fox probably is. You know...

Also, I just saw the weirdest movie clip. It's from Altered States, a movie with a bad trip from the 4th place movie on the list of movies "where the effects of drug-taking are depicted." Pretty messed up.

clap on, my brother

I had a talk with a fellow Alex tonight and we decided that we're going to propose a new individualized major at Grand View University. This new major is going to be called "Clapping Assistance/Support."
This may sound like a joke, but if you think that then you are probably a joke and your whole family would most likely agree with this statement because they are giving me full support in this endeavor.

Clapping Assistance/Support majors will change the world. They will change people's lives for the better one life at a time. Clapping is a form of encouragement and support, and that's what people need in today's cruel, cold, harsh world. How many other already established majors can accomplish this? Not math. Not history. Not physics. Those just make people miserable.

To explain this new, life-changing major in more detail, I will break it up into two categories: Support and Assistance.


--Support

Clapping support is basically composed of what it sounds like; you support other people when they clap to create an environment that would be considered "supportive" to the person you are clapping for. When someone does something that is to be commended and/or greatly appreciated, they want a thunderous applause, not a few golf claps here and there.

--Assistance

Again, it is as it sounds. You assist those who can't express their emotions any further, but wish to. You will assist them in letting whomever-it-may-be know that they are very, very enjoyed/appreciated/loved. You can't overpower the one your are assisting or it defeats the whole purpose. You simply help push that person you are assisting to their clapping limit while holding yourself back to a level just below theirs, putting the focus on them and creating a spotlight effect for them. There is an art to this. You will learn it.


Now it's not as simple as it may sound in the above categories. That's barely a summary. There is MUCH more to clapping than most people realize.

There is an etiquette involved. For instance, is it polite to clap at a funeral? Most would obviously say no, but that is false. Clapping is usually an important part of any event-- even funerals. You will learn how this is true by taking the classes (classes is plural because the etiquette involved in clapping professionally is too vast a subject to learn in just one year).

There is also much to learn about various styles of clapping. There are different styles of clapping for different events, and there are literally hundreds of styles that will be taught. This is very demanding, as one would not want to accidentally use the wrong clap at the wrong time. It can be and has been proven to be disastrous. Many people have been ostracized by entire communities, banned from events, even disowned by their family because they used the wrong style of clapping at the wrong time.

Don't be fooled, though. Clapping doesn't have to be a dangerous thing. In fact, it is quite the opposite! Clapping is one of the most glorious ways to express emotion. It can do what words cannot (Think about it. Just go ahead and try to sum up what a single clap means. I dare you). Taking these courses and pursuing this major isn't pointless. It's the first huge leap towards creating a better future for yourself and everyone you will come in contact with. Become a Clapping Assistance/Support major today and become that change the world needs.

To modify (and improve) what the great George Clinton (funk legend) once said, "Go forth and Clap, my child."

25

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating Site

i hope this comes true... you have no idea

batman voice = comedic gold

One of the truths of life: The gravelly Christian Bale, circa Dark Knight, Batman voice makes saying pretty much anything incredibly hilarious.

Oh man, I just remembered something that my friend, Billy, and I were talking about not too long ago:

Bruce Vilanch (ie, Hollywood Squares; and by the look of him, plenty of Baker Squares) probably gets laid all the time. He'll probably get more this year than I ever will in a lifetime. All because he is famous, funny, and often on tv.

That's pretty depressing to think about. (Although, since he's gay and I'm not, I will undoubtedly get more ladies than he will.)

the nerds in my english class are always blown away when i talk about things like star wars, nintendo (or video games in general), or anything adult swim related.


today, the nerds and i were trying to remember what the mushroom in mario bros looked like, so i drew it for them and they were surprised (#1) that i knew and could draw it so quickly. then i told one of them that his mushroom looked more like boxy brown from aqua teen hunger force and he was blown away again (#2).

we started talking about how it seems like everything has a face on mario bros games. as the subject was almost exhausted, i dropped the big-surprise bomb (#3): i went on talking about how it was stupid for bullet bill to have arms. he's a bullet. what are his arms going to do? if i ever get shot at, i hope the bullets have arms and fists so they would punch me instead of kill me.

that's right, fools, i know my shit, too.



in unrelated news, i hate artie lange. he's kind of funny sometimes, but his humor is pretty gallagher-esque, "i hate fags"-type stuff that just ends up being annoying (gallagher as in the prop-comic, not noel gallagher, the musician). not to mention, if you're on the howard stern show, you're probably an asshole.

college fatties & perez hilton is weak in dreams

i SHOULD be writing/finishing my article that's due in reporting class, but i just wanted to put a reminder on here (to myself) to also write the song about the freshman 15 (i guess it's twenty now) that i just thought of. it's going to be great, i promise.

i also had my monthly battle royale dream (not the same as the japanese one. i don't know, nor am i friends with that many asians). it was really vivid earlier this morning. i woke up at 6:30 a.m. telling myself, "hey, you should write this down!" but just laid back down hoping to get back into the fight.
it started with some weird deal where i had to find some location in chicago to stop something bad from happening (maybe to prevent a bomb from exploding in a city?). then all of a sudden i was in a house and people kept showing up like it was a party. there was some crazy guy who kept wanting to kill me but i kicked his ass. as i was fighting him, someone else in the room pointed to a picture on the wall and said, "hey! it's him!" turns out he looked oddly similar to Perez Hilton, the famous celebrity-gossip blogger.
i was fighting people off left and right, when some other crazy guy pulled a knife on me. i was like "what!?" and grabbed him (at this point, he turned in to a large knife with his head at the top of the handle) and began to smash him with a hammer. while i was busting this fool to pieces, Mr. T yelled for me to come over to the other room where he was and i just yelled for him to hold on (but i said something way funnier that i can't remember).
anyway, the dream was way more awesome than this (everybody adds this statement after explaining their dream), but they're a motherfucker to remember.

i was driving around with my friend billy and after i said something, he said, "that's bloggable" and i almost instantly forgot what i said.

wow, i just realized i get nick nolte and gary busey confused. both live in their own world, but gary busey really takes the proverbial cake on this one. nick nolte just gets a proverbial slice of the proverbial cake.
























fig.1 Gary Busey






















fig.2 Nick Nolte


as you can see, it's fairly simple to confuse the two madmen.

by the way, here is some archival footage from a recently scrapped documentary about the life of gary busey:

Don Cheadle, Congratulations!

Because he just agreed to take on the role of War Machine in the next Iron Man movie, Don Cheadle just got added to my list of great actors with hypocratic roles. Here is the list as it stands now:

Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda vs Iron Man: War Machine)
Ben Kingsley (Sexy Beast vs House Made Of Sand and Fog)
Clint Eastwood (Dirty Harry vs Bridges of Madison County)
Nick Nolte (Lorenzo's Oil vs real life)


Side note: There was a girl I liked in Omaha but she blew me off, so now Nick Nolte is once again my favorite thing that came out of Nebraska.


Unrelated to this, when you listen to friends talk about video game action, it sounds like they're just describing a bad trip. "I was watching the bomb get Billy and wasn't paying attention. Then I noticed the wall eating me and I died."

2 things:

1) I'm a quarter century old now. Kinda sad about it in a lonely way.

2) Instead of having 24 hours to feel this way, I have 25. Thanks, Daylight Savings.

bon vivants and cock saddles

I swear half the people in my reporting class are at least half retarded. There are too many reasons why I believe this to be true, so I won't even go in to it.

(I totally just spent like 3 minutes wondering if I used the proper usage of "in to" in the above statement. I checked it online and found I was correct which now means I totally fucking rule.)


Despite what I may sound like after reading what I just wrote, I'm totally living life like a reserved, well-mannered madman. I'm living the dream so much I might as well patent the damn thing. I'm so bon vivant, it's starting to take its toll. With all that good food, I should start frequenting the old treadmill.

So I've decided to personally wage a war against the "trend" of everybody growing mustaches. Come on, you're in your early twenties. You shouldn't grow a mustache until you get married, have at least one kid, turn at least 40, and give up on trying to look not-creepy. To wage this war, I will now refer to them exclusively as "cock saddles."

Man, don't even mention goatees.

LOLLERSKATES!!!

I'm afraid Sarah Palin is going to ruin Alaska for me. I know it's a ridiculous (and unfortunate, in this case) way to think, but in my head she directly represents Alaska now.

[edit] 10.26.08

I just ate some Alaskan Snow Crab legs and Alaska is cool with me again.

Hey, who's that awesome rock star? He's unreasonably awesome!

I've solved my no-wireless-internet problem in the house by getting a 25 foot ethernet cable. Genius.

i've spent a lot of time worrying if i'm using the right usage of in/in to/into. so much in fact, i literally stay up at night thinking about it.

so i recently got Bill Bryson's book "Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer's Guide To Getting It Right," and it's seriously making me rethink the whole English major thing. There's so much little shit to remember (like when referring to the Sahara Desert, the "Desert" isn't necessary because it's redundant; Sahara already means desert).

there's a pretty big difference between the phrases "badass" and "bad ass."

While still being high on life after killing the beast-fly, I went even higher by moving into a sweet house in a sweet side of town called Beaverdale. They have sidewalks! I'm within walking distance of a pizza place, a hardware store, and old-people's bar, a young-people's bar, and a beaverdale-people's bar (that has a rooftop bar as well! DOUBLE NEAT!).
There are two cats in this house and that makes me pretty happy. I love cats. <-- Not even being sarcastic here, honestly!

So I was supposed to kinda write a review over these cds:
31Knots "Worried Well"
Kamikaze Sperm "Diesel & Kicks EP"
Wire "Object 47"
Backyard Tire Fire "The Places We Lived"
Jaguar Love "Take Me To The Sea"
The Broken West "Now Or Heaven"
This Car Up "Smile When You're Alone"
Bears "Simple Machinery"
Son, Ambulance "Someone Else's Deja Vu"
Bedouin Soundclash "Root Fire"

I'll just be brief in stating what I thought of them. Here goes!
31Knots "Worried Well" - Actually pretty good. I also downloaded their previous cd hoping for more of the same, but really wasn't impressed. I'm just glad this band is moving in the right direction, so I will have another good cd to look forward to two years from now.
Kamikaze Sperm "Diesel & Kicks EP" - This cd really really sucked. I deleted it immediately.
Wire "Object 47" - Maybe I didn't really listen to this enough or maybe I just didn't get it, but this didn't impress me at all.
Backyard Tire Fire "The Places We Lived" - Kinda midwest-y sounding and a few steps above mediocre. There are a few good tracks on here, but some were just pretty flat.
Jaguar Love "Take Me To The Sea" - I LOVED this cd. Great vocals, great music. Kinda have to be in the right mood to listen to it.
The Broken West "Now Or Heaven" - I remember listening to a previous album by this band and thinking it was okay, but this newest album is a definite improvement. Much stronger melodies and better writing.
This Car Up "Smile When You're Alone" - I don't remember this, but I think it was okay.
Bears "Simple Machinery" - This was probably my second favorite album of this group of downloads. It's fun --in an indie music kind of way.
Son, Ambulance "Someone Else's Deja Vu" - Eh.
Bedouin Soundclash "Root Fire" - Basically a REALLY stripped down album compared to their more recent material. Heavy on the hand drums and more stretched out. I'd probably just mix this in with some Paul Simon and not even notice.

There have been lots of questions about life that I've been going over the past few days, so I'll probably get into that next time.

Also, summer fell off a cliff. What gives? I mean, it's great weather for moving shit into a house, but one day I was wearing shorts and t-shirt in 80+ degree weather and the next I'm digging through storage trying to find hoodies cause shit's only in the 60s. Oh well, I still love you, Mother Nature.

As they said in medieval Spain, "For now, it's shower time!"

annoying fly update

I SLAYED THE BEAST!!!



(pictured above, L to R: scale size reference, the beast, the weapon)

It's little victories like this that give me great joy in life. Or at least the peace of mind that I know there is one less thing that could possibly mess with me while I sleep.

Everyone has a first at some point

Instead of just saying something like "blah blah blah, So this is my first post! OMG, SPECIAL!" I'm just going to get right into it.

I used to hate blogging. I thought it was for self-absorbed people who just like to brag about themselves. And maybe it is. I'm just using this as an opportunity to get better at writing boring shit.
That's what I usually think of my life as consisting mostly of: boring shit. Occasionally something worth mentioning happens, but I never really think "hey, i should blog about this!" because I figured nobody cares.
So this is just an attempt for me to write about myself and make it as interesting as possible. Okay, so maybe not interesting, but it's about me.

(ten minutes pass at this point while i'm trying to figure out what to write about first)

Okay, so there's this huge black fly buzzing around my room right now and I'm wanting to put an end to it really badly at this point because I want to go to bed and I don't want to think about this thing landing on my face at night while I'm sleeping. I don't have a fly swatter- instead, I have a dvd case. It'll have to do. The problem is, whenever I set the case down the damn fly decides to buzz around just long enough for me to get the case back in my hand at the ready, then takes off (probably laughing). I'm pretty determined to get this tiny asshole and put an end to its flying (and possibly laughing).

I've been in this habit recently of downloading like 8 cds a day. I may not actually know who the artist is of the music I'm downloading, but I like to be surprised when I just randomly download a cd and then listen to see if it's something I actually like.
Tonight I downloaded:
31Knots "Worried Well"
Kamikaze Sperm "Diesel & Kicks EP"
Wire "Object 47"
Backyard Tire Fire "The Places We Lived"
Jaguar Love "Take Me To The Sea"
The Broken West "Now Or Heaven"
This Car Up "Smile When You're Alone"
Bears "Simple Machinery"
Son, Ambulance "Someone Else's Deja Vu"
Bedouin Soundclash "Root Fire"

I'll post a very brief review of each at a later time once I listen to them all (but so far I'm really liking Backyard Tire Fire).


Anyway, I need to lose some weight. I'm getting lazy.