laundry roach

it seems that every time i go to the laundromat, something strange happens. today was no exception.

i was quietly reading when my peripheral vision informed me that weirdness was afoot. i looked up to find the largest cockroach these eyes have ever seen. the beast was nearly 1.5 inches in length, with antennae each as long, if not longer, than the length of the beast's body. each of the back legs appeared to be 1.25 inches long (when extended), with spikes/hairs covering the surface of each leg.

i watched, in fear, for what must have been 45 minutes while this brute gnawed on some gum that was stuck to the floor. i began tapping my foot loudly, pretending to enjoy the mexican music coming from the boombox, in hopes that the vibrations would frighten the arthropod and encourage her to retreat back to the crack in the floor under the washing machine whence she came. no such luck. it was clear, then, that i was more afraid of the beast than she of me.

so we sat there, for the remainder of my laundry time, in silence. i read my book. she chewed her gum.

when the clothes were dry and it was time for me to leave, i felt i should explain myself to her, explain that it wasn't her fault i was leaving. but there were no words.

i just left.

and then josé, the laundry guy, squished her with his shoe.

mound rushmus: a new kind of religion

"Through a little discipline, and
nineteen or twenty courses, we can
all reach the summit of mound rushmus"
~St. Anselm

i would like to take this opportunity to share with you my new faith: mound rushmus (brought to you by the fine folks at the Coca-Cola Bottling Company in Atlanta, GA). are you tired of your old way of life? why not try mound rushmus? it worked for me and my friends.

through nineteen or twenty simple courses you can learn to harness positive energy and lose pounds fast. these are the basic tenets of mound rushmus:

1. drink your coke!
   
2. wash those hands!
   
3. i like your slacks!
   
4. how's that coke?

so why not give it a try? don't forget to bring your friends!

gchat

how come sometimes when i send hilarious gchats to my friends from home, they don't gchat back with me, and then they just sign off, even though the messages i sent were awesome and hilarious and not-at-all-annoying?

the party's over, the fun has to end

the train's pulling in. this is russ and axel's stop.
starting tomorrow, my couches won't have sleeping bags on them. the last 8 days have felt like 8 months. it's been fun playing mariokart every evening and boozing every night. but it'll be so nice to be rid of these assholes. just kidding. it will be sad. but seriously. it'll be nice.

serious question

i was walking to this UPS dropbox in the Taft Building, to return some DCs that were a size too small in exchange for some new balances i'm really excited about, and i passed a bus hut advertisement for "madea goes to jail." the title made me think of a cruddy movie that i, myself, had watched as a boy and i was shocked that i hadn't made the connection earlier: is madea like ernest for black people?
i'm not even trying to be funny. i'm just trying to understand. i watched an episode of tyler perry's "house of payne" last year to see what all the hubbub was about. i was baffled. but i think this madea-ernest connection might offer me a little insight. i mean, the ernest franchise was baffling in and of itself, but i came to accept it. if i can come to accept that the tyler perry franchise is a similarly bewildering phenomena, then i can stop trying to understand and just let it be.

seriously, how?

so, i was just on facebook and on the homepage thing, it showed that my friend pete was tagged in a photo. the photo was a picture of the snowy midwest united states. so i clicked on it and looked through the album because it's fun to remember that back in the real world, it's like cold and stuff. so i was checking out this photo album that was created by someone i've never heard of, and i came across this picture of a huge light pole that somehow ended up in the backseat of a car.

all of the comments below the photo asked exactly what was on my mind: "how could this possibly happen ... ever?" and the crazy skank who made the album offered ZERO answers. i've honestly been looking at the pictures for like twenty minutes, trying to wrap my head around how this could happen, and it's driving me insane. i even looked for news stories about the storm, hoping to find something about this car. but there's nothing. WHY AREN'T MORE PEOPLE FREAKED OUT BY THIS? this should be on national news stations. physicists should be baffled and outraged. i want answers.

bat movie!

so in the august of two-thousand and five, i went home for my nephew, luke's baptism. "home" is Ft. Wayne, Ind. i was living in Indnpls, Ind at the time. kienan hitched a ride with me from ft wayne to indy, where his car was waiting for him (kienan was living in Bloomington, Ind at the time). anyway, we got to indy and kienan decided to stop in to use the toilet and say hello to dave. so we got inside and dave mentioned that he thought he saw a bird or something but maybe he's crazy. we took a look around and i spotted a bat hanging in our dining room.

we were all pretty confused as to what to do about this bat, but i was certain that the video camera needed to be involved. we screamed and ran around the house like hyperactive children for around three hours or so. then we watched the footage over and over, giggling and squeeling like drugheads. a few weeks later, we did some interviews about the bat-fight, in hopes to make some sort of story that i could edit together and we could show to friends. three and a half years later, here's a proper version of that story:

more about the year of the dog

i was just chatting with my friend, wikipedia, some more about the year of the dog. she told me the ideal jobs for people like me are: politician, scientist, actor/actress, teacher, writer, movie director, pub landlord/landlady.

and i want to be ALL OF THOSE THINGS (except actress and landlady). and i wanted to be all those things before wikipedia even told me those were my ideal jobs. pretty smart, eh?

happy new year china

china got a new year today. that's always pretty exciting news. this one's called "the year of the ox." pretty good name, i suppose.
i was checking out what that meant, just now, on this website called wikipedia. it's pretty much this website that knows absolutely everything about absolutely everything. so wikipedia told me that the ox is a sign of "prosperity through fortitude and hard work." so that's good news right? i mean, sucks we gotta work hard and show some fortitude. but good news that if we DO, then we'll be properous. it would totally suck if we worked hard and showed some fortitude ALL year and then didn't get any prosperity. anyway, i guess what china is saying is, "if you plan on working hard and putting up with bullcrap, this year, it might actually pay off." i'm not chinese or anything. but i feel inspired. sincerely.

so then i was asking wikipedia what other years meant. like the year of the dog, which is the year i was born. and wikipedia told me all about myself. being born in the year of the dog means i'm loyal, amicable, sociable, and open-minded. but it also means i'm cynical, judgemental, stubborn, and quarrelsome. which explains why i love everybody and hate everybody at the same time. even more specifically, wikipedia told me that i was born in a water year of the ox. and water is associated with a difficulty to make a decision and stick to it, because water is "fluid and weak." BUT it can "weild great power when it floods and overwhelms the land." also, water's primal spirit is represented by the Black Tortoise. i didn't even know tortoises CAME in black! so cool! i really want to befriend a black tortoise now.

i feel like my brain is leaking out of my ears

i need to get my life together. my friends, axel and russ, are visiting from boston. and it's great to have them. but it's weird having friends here. i can really feel my health deteriorating, both mentally and physically. usually, i'm a real healthnut: i sleep anywhere from 1-14 hours a night, i eat fast food maybe once or thrice a week, and i drink beers frequently. but with friends in town, i've been sleeping anywhere from 4-8 hours a night, i've eaten fast food like 4 times this week, and had some beers nearly every night.

i definitely enjoy having them here. but man. when they leave. phew. i'm looking forward to getting my life together.

handful o' me

know what's weird? when you live in a place with no friends and the only person you talk to is your roommate and then all of the sudden (all the sudden) some friends visit from boston and they call their friends and they call their friends. and then you're just sitting there, drinking whiskey and goofing on "mrs. doubtfire." but then the movie ends so you continue drinking and you flip (change) the stayche (station) to arachnophobia and you goof on that for a bit. but then it's time to leave and you're not used to talking to other people and you're only used to talking to yourself so you both talk too much and too little. but then the music's too loud in that stupid bar anyway. and you're drunk already so who cares. besides. what would you say, anyway?

and that's what. that's what's weird.

which is the answer to the question i asked earlier about what's weird.

it's like swallowing a pill-sized form of yourself. then the water in your body (your body's 90% water) absorbs it so it grows to a life-size form of you. making the old you obsolete. but then in the morning you might feel hungover (which is caused mostly by dehydration) so a lot of the water's gone. which means the pill you is smaller than the old obsolete you. so you have some greasy food and fountain coke. presto chango. you're ready for a nap.

blogwarts academy: wizardry for the new willenium

get jiggy with this: some chump called pdiddyrule (more like pee-diddy DROOL) declared blog wars on me via a comment on my "i suck at waking up" article, in which i discussed such important topics as narcolepsy, insomnia, sleep apnea, manic depression, dandruff, and the cold sweats.

i've accepted said "blog wars" and discussed the terms with pdiddydewdrop. we will write back and forth, critiquing each other's posts, and we will make videos insulting each other and responding to each other's video-insults. eventually, we will meet and kill each other.

so it goes.

let the great blog wars of 2001 begin. may the best man waste the most time, bubba.

flying cars: it's about time

back to the future part II promised us flying cars by 2015. finally, it feels like we might meet that deadline. this flying car, or "roadable aircraft," sells for $194,000 but i'm sure that the price will come down by 2015. my plan is: by the time i'm able to afford a new car ... the price of the flying car will drop to a price i can afford.

so we're probably looking at about 2037, maybe. if i'm lucky.

i suck at waking up

i don't have to work until 5pm today. but still, i wanted to get it up kinda early. i set my alarm for 10:48am. but look at that bed. how the heck do you expect me to get out of that comfy little cocoon of comfy comfort? with those t-shirt sheets and that big comfy blanket and pants and sweatshirts and all types of crud to get buried underneath, safe and warm from the oscillating fan that makes me shiver when it points at me. it's impossible to get out of bed before 1pm. IMPOSSIBLE.

besides. i was up til like 3:30 working on my script (i'm SO l.a.!) and editing some old videos. so don't judge me. besides, it's like dr. steve brule says: "when you're sleeping, there's no lonely times. there's just dreams."

happy inauguration day

we got a new president today. that's always pretty exciting news. i woke up early to watch the festivities. one of the funniest parts (for me) was when they announced that john williams had prepared a piece for the occassion. i'm a fan of his movie scores and immediately named "back to the future" as my favorite. boy did i have egg on my face when my roommate, adam, corrected me, "alan silvestri did back to the future." serves me right for illegally downloading that song my freshman year of college and believing it when it said john williams was the composer. anyway, williams did the scores for star wars, superman, indiana jones, hook, home alone, ET, and jurrasic park - all of which are among my favorite theme songs.

adam was telling me about how a lot of classical music buffs dislike john williams because of his tendency to "borrow" from other composers. i quoted swingers, "everybody steals from everybody." adam agreed. then, about a minute twenty into this song that john williams wrote for the inauguration (called "air and simple gifts"), the song starts to sound uncannily familiar. "it's the beef it's what's for dinner song!" i immediately exclaimed. and it was. it definitely was. "air and simple gifts" is four minutes and twenty-four seconds long and literally two minutes and sixteen seconds of it is the "beef it's what's for dinner" song (aka "hoe-down" from "rodeo" by aaron copland.)

but after doing a little research i found out the melody was actually from an old quaker song called "simple gifts" that was written back in 1848 (that explains the williams' title) but there's even some speculators that think it was an old celtic tune before it was a quaker tune.

like i said, everybody steals from everybody. stole that from swingers. and it was said a million times before that movie was ever written. anyway, it was a nice inauguration. the inaugural address was very well done. and the song john williams wrote was cool as well. check out "air and simple gifts" if you like:

ed poe: dead at 200

edgar allan poe would've turned 200 years old today. the only thing that stopped him: death.

poe is just one of dozens, literally dozens, of great americans whose lives were cut short by death. most famous for inventing the po'boy, the sandwich that made new orleans famous, poe also dabbled in writing. awhile ago, i bought this book of short stories that he wrote. the first one was called "the black cat" and it was totally awesome. after that, i didn't really finish any of the other stories because he uses SO many words. and i have no attention span. still. black cat was awesome.

at work, there's this calendar that has birthdays of famous musicians and it said that today was janis joplin's birthday. then some customer came in wearing a janis joplin t-shirt and i was like "hey it's her birthday today." and i think it made the customer uncomfortable. she avoided eye contact and mumbled something like "meh, yeah. i heard that on the radio, meh." she was trying to play it off like she's not a joplin-nerd. but c'mon. there's nothing wrong about being nerdy about stuff you like.

the calendar also told me that today is dolly parton's birthday. she's 63. what's weird is: i remember seeing dolly parton in a movie or something when i was like 11. and at the time, i figured she was like 50. and, for whatever reason, when i remember someone as being 50 when i was 11, i assume that now, they must be like 87. which is ridiculous because it hasn't been 37 years since i was 11 years old. not yet anyway.
so tonight, i was checking out other birthdays and i found this awesome website (with a sweet cosmic background) and it told me that LOADS of cool people were born on january 19. for instance: jodie sweetin (stephanie from full house); shawn wayans (of wayan's brothers fame); junior seau (pro footballer and children's advocate); desi arnaz jr (illegitimate son of lucille ball); dewey bunnell (of pop-rock trio "america"); paul cezzane (post-impressionist painter); and robert e. lee (leader of the douche bags who fought to keep slavery legal).

more importantly, today was doctor martin luther king jr day. and that dude was awesome.

that's not my brother

what's weird is when you think you see your brother joe at the in-n-out burger by the airport at 11:30 on a sunday night, but then you notice "that guy has glasses. joe had laser eye surgery like a year ago. why would he be wearing glasses?" and then you notice "that guy is a 19 year-old armenian-american with a weird hairdo."

get ready to get bummed out

the nineteenth of january 2009 is "blue monday," which apparently is the most depressing day of the year.

good thing the optimists' society is here to save the day by sending cheer packages to such celebs as jeremy paxman.
"who the crap is jeremy paxman," you ask?
"is he the inventor of arcade favorite, paxman," you ask?
... "no," is the answer. and the name of that game is actually pacman. not paxman. common mistake.

jeremy paxman is a english journalist, author, and television presenter who invented the arcade favorite, miss paxman.

why does he get a cheer package and i don't? i dunno. i didn't read the whole article. i'm tired. you read the whole article if it's so stinkin' important to ya. here.

fruit cereal with orangemilk

check out this new breakfast cereal i invented: i found myself wanting a bowl of cereal today but there was just one problem: NO MILK!
we've all been there. so here's what i did: i worked with what i could find in my fridge! (because i'm afraid of leaving my apartment!)

i sliced up one banana, a few strawberries, and half an apple; put the contents in the bowl; poured orange juice over them; and a splash of cran-raspberry juice (for color).

you get all the comfort of a bowl of cereal, with all the vitamin C of a fruit bowl!

for an added treat, throw in about four shots of vodker and watch your favorite episode of "quantum leap!"

more on weather (moron weather)

so right now, back home, the temperature is zero degrees with a windchill of negative thirteen. here, the temperature is eighty degrees with a windchill of eighty degrees. it's exactly eighty degrees warmer here than home, but it FEELS ninety-three degrees warmer.

it feels NINETY-THREE DEGREES (FAHRENHEIT) warmer here. it really kind of makes me wonder why (if you don't love the city in which you live, if you have the means to move to another city, and if you don't like being miserably cold in the winter) you wouldn't move to a place with nice weather.

day off/sleep in/bad dreams/strange lies

probably 99.9% of everything i put on here is 100.0% true. but this post represents the 00.1% of what is only 94.6% true. bear with me: i just woke up, so i'm trying to get all this down while it still doesn't make sense.

so last night, i couldn't sleep. and while i couldn't sleep, i couldn't dream. so i certainly couldn't dream that i was in the shower. and a voice couldn't sing to me: "it's time to wash the hair! the hair! ... don't you know what time it is? it's time to wash the hair! the hair to wash the time!"

i had no idea where the voice had come from. it startled me to the point that i woke up. i was drenched in sweat, which actually turned out to be water, from the shower, which i am still in, right now, as i live and blog.

and i'm worried about the water and the sweat and their effect on my computer. so i searched the help desk and asked about water damage but the man just laughed at me and told me i was in the wrong department. he sent me to the "girls' sweatpants" department. the people there were less than helpful and told me stories from their upcoming trip to africa last summer. i didn't have time to hear how the stories ended because it was time to wash my hair to wash the time.

then i woke up to find myself in bed last night and i didn't know whether it was even worth not sleeping, only to not have such a strange dream.

Seasonal Affective Disorder can make you S.A.D.

so, awhile ago, i dated this girl from puerto rico, which is a place where, allegedly, the weather's always pretty good. when we dated, we were living in boston (massachusetts) where, allegedly, the weather's pretty crummy. it was the first cold winter of her life and in october, she was already bitching about the temperature. "just wait til february," i joked. by february, it was legitimately really f-ing cold. she would get pissed off when we were walking places and she'd say things like "why do people live here? don't they know there are places where the weather is always beautiful?" and i would argue that growing up with seasons builds character and instills in people a "this too shall pass" way of thinking.

but now i live in a place where the weather is always pretty great. and the last time i went home, when the plane landed and the stewardess told us the local time and temperature, it was one degree. ONE DEGREE. just one. and that's fahrenheit. not celsius.

today, the high here was 85. my mom told me that back home today the high is 4. and i'm honestly starting to rethink my argument about living in cold places.

and apparently there's a legit condition that makes people mopey when the weather's lousy. i don't think i suffer from it. i'm able to get mopey in all types of weather. but for those of you whose mood depends upon the weather, check out these goofy lamps that can trick your brain into being happy: it's like she's eating breakfast and chatting on the phone in a tropical paradise!

blog followers

i haven't been internetting much the last few days. so i hadn't noticed until just now that the number of people who follow my blog has DOUBLED in size, from 2 followers to 4 followers. i never dreamed of this level of blog-success, or blogcess, as we in the blogging community refer to it.

it seems like just 40 days ago that i was starting this blog and not telling people about it. and look at me now! talk about a classic blogcess story! i would like to take this opportunity to thank all of my four readers. but in particular, i would like to thank the one with the funniest profile. his name is American Lion, he works in the science industry, and he looks like this: teddy roosevelt, step aside. your place in the history books has been usurped.

"hey! new haircut!"

is something i hear pretty regularly at work despite my infrequent visits to the barbershop.

it happened again today. i made a drink for one of the regular customers. she smiled, thanked me, and said "hey! new haircut!" i said, "huh?" and she said, "you got a haircut!" and i smiled back and mumbled something that neither confirmed nor denied the alleged haircut. i think i said something like "yeah, it's a little different," then i trailed off and pretended i needed to do something elsewhere.

i have the worse damn time telling people that they are wrong even when they are DEFINITELY wrong. like yesterday, this guy, who apparently coaches swimming at some nearby high school, was chit-chatting about how the size of the team has almost doubled this year on account of last summer's olympics. he added that a big part of swimming's rise in popularity across the nation was due to the success of michael phillips. PHILLIPS! i'm listening to this guy and agreeing with him and i wanted so badly to tell him that the kid's name is michael PHELPS. but i just didn't have the heart. the guy's a swim coach!

likewise, i can't bring myself to inform the people who say "new haircut" that i have not, in fact, gotten a haircut in nearly a month. it just looks different all the time because sometimes i shower before work and sometimes i just wake up and get it a little wet so it doesn't stick up so much and sometimes i just wake up late and let it look stupid.

death of a gnat

i watched a bug die tonight. i didn't kill it. i don't think i did anyway.
he flew right between me and my computer screen and he just sort of sputtered out. it looked like the engines died and he crash landed right by my keyboard. his legs were working for a bit after that. but they weren't accomplishing much. then the legs gave up. but they would shoot back into a frenzy for brief half-second intervals for around another minute.
then he just stopped.
i felt sorry for the little guy. but i suppose it was just his time to go. but still. the leg movement indicated that maybe he wasn't ready. i stopped what i was doing and doodled how i felt about it.

vegas in crazyland!

i went to crazyland the other night and found this movie. it's about taking one's first roadtrip to las vegas (nevada). this thrilling docu-drama-adventure-comedy is hosted by axel and features appearances by nic, patrick, veró, and tom hanks. watch as tom hanks and the gang battle the harsh desert climate and eat harsh desert cheeseburgers.

watch the movie here and click on "watch in high quality." it's better for your eyes. or if you don't feel like going there, just watch it down below:

don't update facebook when you're not sober

that's the lesson i learned last night.
i didn't have to work today, so i went out and had a couple of pints last night. when i got home, i "surfed the web" for a bit and decided it would be kooky to make my facebook profile all about kickboxing. the result was: stupid.
i still find "eyes of the tigers" funny as my favorite music. and i definitely laughed, soberly, at the about me section. i love when people say "just ask!"
but the fact of the matter is: two people friend-requested me today and this will be their first impression of my facebook persona. they'll think i'm one of those people that puts up silly fake pictures and silly fake info. and i guess i am one of those people. BUT STILL. i'll never update my facebook profile under the influence again.

one-line-drawing

one-line-drawing is fun when you're sleepy because you don't know where it will take you. and you don't care. too sleepy.

saber tooth tigers

how did these things ever get extinct? they were so awesome. i mean, aside from the silly little tail.

uh oh, jesus is back

crud. so, apparently, a new baby jesus got born on christmas. his dad's a carpenter and his mom's name is virgen maria. i don't really know what the "bible" says about all this. but i'm pretty sure, according to modern folklore, that we've only got about 33 years until all that "apocalypse" business starts happening.

have your fun now. clock's tickin'.

jolly new year!

i'm hungover. i've got some more predictions for 2009:
my brother will get married.
i will eat a lot of cheeseburgers.
anthrax will get popular for a little bit again.
some people will die. osama bin laden and fidel castro, to name two.
michael jackson will be back in the news for something.
i'll get a new job.
a robot will kill a person.
we'll have some kind of breakthrough in time travel.

that is all.