Tuesday In Georgia

Coral: Less Useful Than a Rainforest Would be if You Were to Put One Underwater

2011-11-12T11:14:00.000-08:00

AnonymousSep 17, 2011 12:25 PM

You have no idea what you're talking about - I'm sorry to be so blunt.

Coral? Seriously? Coral reefs are like underwater rainforests in that they provide homes for thousands upon thousands of different species. Saying that they're useless is essentially like saying that a rainforest is useless.

This is a comment attached to my post on the eight most useless animals, where coral was ranked a very generous eighth. Apparently it makes people mad when I speak ill about coral. There was also a similar reply regarding my views on octopi (which I ranked second and depicted with a drawing of Dr. Octopus) that came in a little later than this one.

The significant thing is that these are the first angry comments I've received in years on this blog. Some goth weirdo replied to the article on people of his ilk back in July of 2008, and re-reading his comment, he doesn't even sound that mad. I guess talking shit about animals is the real way to make enemies on the internet. But I welcome this discourse, and I feel that someone this passionate deserves a reply. I will address each part of his or her comment individually.

1. "You have no idea what you're talking about - I'm sorry to be so blunt."
Well, you have no idea what you're talking about either, coral fucker.

2. "Coral?"
Yes.

3. "Seriously?"
Yes.

4. "Coral reefs are like underwater rainforests in that they provide homes for thousands upon thousands of different species."
Dude, if you were to put the rainforest underwater, everything in it would die. It would become the home of thousands upon thousands of dead species. Did you know that the Amazon Rainforest provides over 20% of the world's oxygen? That's because it's not underwater. The second some moron like you puts it underwater, we lose all that oxygen. TREES DON'T WORK UNDERWATER, BUTTHOLE. Putting the rainforest underwater makes it almost as useless as coral. Like one tenth as useless. It wouldn't be in the same league of uselessness as coral, but you could draw some comparisons maybe.

5. "Saying that they're useless is essentially like saying that a rainforest is useless.."
Woah, hold on a minute. I never said that the rainforest is useful. I just said that it produces 20% of earth's oxygen. 20% of earth's shitty, useless, disgusting oxygen. I refuse to breathe that garbage. What else does the rainforest do? Does it fight crime? Is it some orphan kid's only friend? Does it have big tits? Can it increase the length and, perhaps more importantly, the girth of my penis? Don't say yes. I don't want to hear about some herb that comes out of the rainforest that I can take twice a day with meals for two months and expect to see one to two inches of growth. I'm more looking for some sort of device into which I can just place my member and, fifteen to twenty minutes later, remove a larger version of the original. Like if I were to stand on the edge of the rainforest and stick only my knob in, would it be bigger when I remove it a few minutes later? Would a monkey also touch it while it was in there? Like not completely grasp it, but maybe come over and examine it real close for a few seconds? You know, lift it up and look underneath, try to see down the hole, stuff like that? Would that be the critical part of the enlargement process? Could I wag it around in the rainforest all day, but not see any results if no monkey comes over and inspects it? Would that monkey be some sort of doctor? Not a real doctor, but, like, a monkey doctor? Please let me know.

The Asteroid Belt

2011-11-05T15:51:00.001-07:00

Here's a fact about me: when I was in fourth grade I wrote a report on the asteroid belt that was apparently so bad that my teacher read it in front of the class as an example of how not to write a report. This was at the beginning of a period of several days where she would march us down to the library to write reports on all of the nine planets and the asteroid belt. This was my first report, and I had either missed or disregarded one very important instruction: to copy my report verbatim from the encyclopedia.

Her response was to publicly quash my tendency toward free thought by reading it to the rest of the class. This was to ensure no one else would follow my lead. Also my report probably did suck. But I was in fourth grade. Like she could ever tell when anything we did didn't suck.

So here's my second try at a report on the Asteroid belt. I will attempt to follow the format of my original report and I will not use an encyclopedia because encyclopedias don't exist anymore. I am not trying to redeem myself anyway. Perhaps my teacher would be interested in reading this version, or perhaps she has gone the way of Pluto's status as a planet. Either way, she was a massive bitch.

The asteroid belt is the fifth thing from the sun. Period. This doesn't require adjustment of your definition of the word "thing." Try going and hanging out in the solar system. There's nothing. You'd spend so much time out there just being around nothing, that by the time you get to the asteroid belt, you'll throw your arms up and weep openly.

Asteroids range in size from that of a small cat to that of a very large, large-asteroid-sized, cat. All asteroids are shaped like cats, or at least parts of cats, or cat food. Meow Mix, for example, is a common asteroid shape. In fact it often invokes the classic dilemma, "which came first, the asteroid belt, or Meow Mix?" which is a very old dilemma, which some believe older than the dilemma, "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" leading some to question, "which dilemma came first, the asteroid belt or Meow Mix dilemma or the chicken or the egg dilemma?"

The asteroid belt is home to some 400 billion asteroids. Most of these asteroids are all parts of a single asteroid, which by some standards lowers the count considerably. No one knows how the asteroid belt formed, except for scientists, and the people who listen to and read what scientists have to say. You are neither of those people.

All planets are named after Roman gods. Mars is named after Mars, the god of war. Neptune is named Neptune, after the god of the sea. The Asteroid belt is named after what, some god named Asteroid Belt? Who's that, the god of literal meanings? A god made of belts of asteroids, who lorded over all things asteroid belt-like, such as the asteroid belt, of which the Roman people knew nothing and would not have been able to even begin to comprehend. The Romans would have worshiped him intensely, because they cared about such things as asteroid belts. They cared so much about stuff like that.

Or maybe there's a better explanation. Maybe only planets that get off their ass and become planets get a Roman god named after them. Maybe planets that give up 10 million years after the birth of the solar system and decide "being an asteroid belt is what's right for me," don't get named after anything except what they are. Maybe we hear your excuses, how Jupiter's gravity perturbed you too much to coalesce, how there's not enough mass in the asteroid belt to form a planet larger than earth, but what's the point of you even saying them anymore? I'ts been four billion years of the same. It took us two years to figure out it was bullshit.

You say you have plans. You're saving up money to move between Uranus and Neptune and, especially if we lend you a few bucks, you'll be able to get on track once you get out there. And when is that going to happen, exactly? Show me your plan for doing this. An actual plan. One that requires forethought and discipline. And sacrifice. Wow, your plan doesn't look like one of those. Your plan is based on some TV show you once saw. Your plan is a sentence. Fuck you. You have an iPhone? Wow. No, of course you can't live without that. I mean saving money and making an actual concerted effort is one thing, but $80 a month is a necessity for right now. You're right, though. I should take a step back and consider what it means to actually live my life. I should stop smell the roses. I should spend my money as soon as I get it on worthless shit that I don't need and can't afford. All this hard work and effort instead, what am I actually doing it for? Pardon me for not having it all written out in a constitution for you. Have fun.

Rescue Dogs

2011-09-06T18:21:00.000-07:00

Hi, I am a rescue dog. HOLY SHIT. Sorry. I thought someone was about to beat the shit out of me. My old owner used to beat the shit out of me a lot, so now I sort of...shit, shit...okay never mind. I'm fine.

My new owner is nice and I like him. I don't make eye contact with him ever, but he is nice. He gives me lots of attention which I love FUCK. Oh okay. Sorry. But sometimes he has to leave me alone, which I understand. It's nice because he never leaves me alone in the way my old owner did. He used to leave me tied to a post for several days at a time and it was winter. My new owner just puts me in a crate when he goes to work and then lets me out when he gets home. I can live with that. I mean, I basically freeze and refuse to enter the crate, which makes it necessary for him to push me into the crate. Then once he gets me inside I shit all over every square inch of everything I see. It's terror shits too, so it's really coming out. SHUT UP SHUT UP. Someone's coming.

We have play dates, too, where I get to play with other dogs in the park. What fun these are! Back in my old home I used to live with seven other dogs and they spent most of their time eating my face. I think that counts as a game, but it wasn't fun. Anyway the dogs I meet now aren't like those dogs. We play fun games together. For example there's this one game where if one of them comes within ten feet of me I growl at it and scratch its eyes. Then there's this other game where I stand between my owner's legs until we go home.

My owner loves playing games with me too, just him and me. There's this one game where he throws a ball into a field and we watch it bounce and roll around out there. Man that ball can bounce! Then he goes and gets it. He also plays this game where he tries to take my food bowl before I'm 100% sure I've eaten all the food out of it. If he can get it without me severing one or more of his fingers, he wins.

They take real good care of me, too. We go to this place called the vetertarian where a man in a coat forces me to lay on a metal table and pushes sharp objects into my skin. It's not the most pleasant, and it reminds me of how my old owner used to torture me, but I know it's for my own good. Sometimes the vetertarian's aides loosen their grip on me a little and I try to attack the vetertarian until he has been reduced into small chunks of meat, each no bigger than the pieces of dog food I eat and I don't stop attacking until I've used every ounce of strength I have on murdering every living thing I can see. I'm still getting used to the vetertarian.

My owner introduces me to all of his friends and family, too. We go on car rides to go see them. I poop in the car because it's an enclosed metal case that travels at speeds that are incomprehensible to me. My owner doesn't beat the shit out of me at all for this, though, because he's really nice. When we get to someone else's house, he usually thinks I'm out of poop, but I'm not because I always have some extra and as soon as we get inside I head to the highest concentration of people I can find and take a shit right in front of everyone. My owner says I'm a bad dog, but I don't know. I just, sometimes, have to take a shit indoors, right in the middle of a lot of people. I have to. My old owner used to put cigarettes out on me.

So that's my life. I love my owner and he loves me too. Sometimes he tells me that he could have gotten a normal dog from a farm or something and it probably wouldn't be a retard like me. He says that fifteen minutes after he brought me home he was already over the whole rescue dog thing and that next time he'll be happy to tell all dogs that are in my old situation to piss off because no one should give a shit about them since they're just animals. For Christ's sake, he says, there are human beings in worse conditions than the one I was in, and it's kind of screwed up and pointless that he'd rescue me but wouldn't give a second's thought to adopting a person who needed a nice home just as bad. He tells me he can't wait for me to get rabies like Old Yeller so he can shoot me and throw me in a garbage can by the curb. I don't understand English super great, so I'm not sure what most of that means. He is my best friend.

GHOST HUNTING

2011-05-14T10:13:00.000-07:00

GRAB YOUR SHIT WE'RE GOING GHOST HUNTING WE'RE LEAVING IN FIVE MINUTES. IT'S 10:00 AM BUT WE'RE LEAVING AT 10:10 BECAUSE WE CAN'T WAIT UNTIL NIGHT TIME BECAUSE GHOST HUNTING IS A 24/7 JOB. I KNOW I SAID WE ARE LEAVING IN FIVE MINUTES, BUT WE'RE ACTUALLY LEAVING IN TEN. I told you five because I KNOW THAT YOU WON'T BE READY IN FIVE MINUTES, but I need you to HUSTLE so we can leave in TEN MINUTES. If I told you ten minutes, you would have been ready in TWENTY MINUTES and we'd be TWENTY MINUTES late for ghost hunting. THAT'S RIGHT, WE'RE ALREADY GOING TO BE TEN MINUTES LATE. Also the overriding assumption is that you're reading this paragraph after we've already come back from ghost hunting. OTHERWISE you wouldn't have bothered to hustle and we'd be LATE AS FUCK. AND ALL THE GHOSTS WOULD BE GONE.

Do you know why we're going ghost hunting at 10 in the morning? IT'S BECAUSE GHOSTS DON'T SLEEP. If they did, they would sleep at night because THEY USED TO BE PEOPLE AND PEOPLE SLEEP AT NIGHT. So it's a moot point. Has anyone ever found a sleeping ghost? NO. But no one's ever found a sleeping deer either. AND DEER HUNTING IS COMMON. GHOST HUNTING ISN'T. That's why we're LOSING the WAR on GHOSTS. AND NO ONE GIVES A SHIT EXCEPT FOR US.

AND YEAH ghost hunting is a 24/7 job. NO, not the type of job that makes you MONEY, but it's a job. Why is it a job? BECAUSE THEY ARE FUCKING GHOSTS! They are out there running free like in JURASSIC PARK. Oh yeah, but where's the electric fence to keep them from escaping? TRICK QUESTION. THERE IS NONE. WE TRIED BUT GHOSTS ARE BETTER THAN DINOSAURS. Also who knows if we built the fence in the right place. NO ONE CAN SEE GHOSTS.

THE FOLLOWING IS A LIST OF EQUIPMENT THAT WE MUST BRING. Do not forget a single item. I'm bringing granola bars so you need to bring all of this.

NIGHT VISION GOGGLES. To see ghosts with
ENERGY METER. Ghosts are made out of energy that you can't see. YOU LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT with those night vision goggles on.
STRING OR ROPE. Don't look at me.
GHOST CALL. Makes ghost noises that attract ghosts that you can't hear because ghosts don't hear sound. They hear Xrays. GHOST CALLS COST HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS.
GHOST STICK. For hitting ghosts
ADULT DIAPERS. For when you SHIT YOUR PANTS.
A NEW FACE. For when ghosts EAT YOUR FACE OFF OF YOUR SKULL. GHOSTS DON'T FUCK AROUND AND YOU BETTER BE PREPARED TO DIE.
Sneakers

GHOST RELATED FATALITIES occur with unrelenting frequency and are PROVEN BY THE GHOST HUNTING SOCIETY OF NORTHERN AMERICA to be the number one reason why people die. DON'T WANT TO BELIEVE IT? Go ahead. I'll prove it to you, though, when you DIE FROM A GHOST STABBING YOU IN THE EYE SOCKET with YOUR OWN BONES.

I'd recommend familiarizing yourself with the ground rules of ghost hunting. THESE RULES ARE NON-NEGOTIABLE unless you want me to FIND OUT WHERE YOU LIVE AND TAKE A SHIT IN YOUR REFRIGERATOR. Because THAT'S HOW I NEGOTIATE.

RULE NUMBER ONE. Believe in ghosts. If you don't believe in ghosts, then you won't see A SINGLE GOD DAMN GHOST. I probably will, but I can almost guarantee that you won't see any ghosts if you don't believe in ghosts. SO GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS.
RULE NUMBER TWO. EVERY GODDAMN THING IS A GHOST. Feel a draft? GHOST. Heard a sound? GHOST. Saw some blurry shit out of the corner of your eye? DEFINITELY GHOST. Felt something brush against your genitals? You're fucked up. GHOSTS AREN'T LIKE THAT.
RULE NUMBER THREE. Call your loved ones before leaving. YOU'RE ABOUT TO TAKE PART IN A SERIOUS OPERATION AND I CAN GUARANTEE YOU THAT NOT EVERYONE WILL MAKE IT BACK ALIVE. Tell your family you love them.
RULE NUMBER FOUR. Watch your step when walking around. We don't need anyone getting hurt.

THAT'S IT. Put your hair in a ponytail and get in the ghost hunting van. What's that? YOUR HAIR'S NOT LONG ENOUGH TO BE IN A PONY TAIL YET? Wow. I guess we already know which one of us is coming back in a bag. Nice knowing you.

That Lesbian Teacher I Once Had

2011-05-14T07:22:00.000-07:00

Listen. I talk about homosexuality at a fairly good clip here, and it's probably about time that I start to consider some of the implications of this. By now you definitely think I'm obsessed with gayness. You probably also think I'm either gay myself or extremely bigoted against gay people. Or both. You probably don't think that I'm neither gay nor bigoted against gays, which is what I actually am, and you probably still don't think so, even after reading this sentence. So this was a pointless paragraph.

As a high school senior I took an elective class, Social Psychology. This meant I got to do something I didn't normally get to do: wander into the useless wing of the school where all the weird classes were taught. It was called F-Wing. It was populated with teachers whom I had never really met, but had often heard the stupid kids talking about. The obese guy who taught Economics and then later got gastric bypass. Some guy who was obsessed with guns and rumored to be carrying at all times and taught a class called Street Law. The extremely old lady who somehow taught typing even though she was 75 when the qwerty keyboard was invented. And my Social Psychology teacher, who I had no idea even existed until I took her class.

Anyway this story is more about my classmates than my teacher, it turns out. One day the teacher came into class with a cast on her finger. One of my classmates asked her what happened, and she explained that she broke her finger coaching field hockey. Then she taught class.

It turned out that this explanation should not have been satisfactory for me, as it wasn't for the rest of the class. At the beginning of the next class, before the teacher arrived, they were discussing her finger injury. Someone said, "she broke her finger playing field hockey? Yeah right. We know how she really broke it," and made a finger banging motion. And everyone else was like, "yeah. Definitely finger banging."

This was the first time I had even considered that our teacher was a lesbian. Well holy shit, I thought. I guess she is a lesbian. Previously I had never really let myself consider her sexual orientation, even though she was pretty much a dead ringer. As a rule I tried not to think negative thoughts about any of my teachers when I was in high school. For some reason I thought they would be able to know if I thought ill of them, and that would have a negative impact on my success as a student. Also I might be autistic. Not that considering someone's sexual orientation and thinking ill of someone are always the same thing. But I don't think anyone would be happy to know that their students are just sitting there wondering how gay they are.

The important thing, however, is how my classmates jumped all over the lesbian finger banging mishap explanation for our teacher's broken finger. Here is why it's important. There were two explanations for our teacher's broken finger. One: coaching field hockey, a sport in which players hold hard wooden sticks and hit a hard rubber ball, and frequently come into contact with each other. Two: lesbian foreplay. An activity which involves putting your fingers into the softest safest place on earth, where babies live. I didn't get it, but there were even girls championing the lesbian accident theory. They had vaginas. They must have been terrified of their vaginas!

So I started to believe my classmates, but after thinking about it for a few minutes, I decided that our teacher was telling the truth. She broke her finger coaching field hockey. Her partner does not have a Kevlar vagina. Now it's been a decade since I've taken that class. I have never met anyone who has broken his or her finger in a vagina. Or even a butthole. I've never even heard a story about it. I can't wait to, though!

Let's Go, Princess

2011-02-24T16:43:00.001-08:00

You gotta door, you gotta gym.

You gotta gym, you needa door.

You gotta gym with no door, you don't gotta gym. You gotta door but you don't wanna gym, you gotta gym. Here's your gym. Take your gym. It's your gym now. We're giving it to you. You got two doors? You only got one gym. You got two doors and you want two gyms? Because that's why you got two doors? You don't gotta gym. Shut your mouth. You don't gotta gym no more. Too bad.

You wanna do The Freak, The Warrior, The Cowboy, The Golden Taco? You gotta gym. You wanna do The Duck Billed Platypus, The Jimi Hendrix Star Spangled Banner, or The Spunk Bucket, you gotta gym, and you gotta instructional DVD to show you how. You wanna take your workout to the next level and do The Jazz Clarinet, The Coyote Ugly, or The Jennifer Love Hewitt? You need two gyms. You already asked for two gyms and we told you you don't get no gym? You gotta gym now. Now here's another gym. Now you can go extreme. Do The Hindenburg, The Warsaw Pact, The Liberace On Crutches. Do The Crankshaft, The Cunt, The Mormon Wedding. Do The Serendipity, The Bulbasaur, The John Cusak, The Joan Cusak, The Joan Rivers, The River Phoenix, the Phoenix Arizona, The Arizona Diamondbacks, The Diamondback Rattlesnake, The Rattlesnake Crafts, The Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, The Cheese Whiz, The Cheesecake, The Cheesecake Factory, The Factory, The Factor, The Factorial, The Fact, The Facts Of Life, The Faction, The Fax Machine, The Fag, The Flag, The Sag, The Lag, The Crag, The Jag, The J.A.G., The Wag, The Plague, The Frag, The Phage, The Page, The Turn The Page, The Paging Dr. Kervorkian, The Kardashian, The Kim, The Scott, The Khloe, The Kourney, The Lamar Odom, The Lamarr Woodley, The Woody Allen, The O.J. Simpson.

You gotta gym. You got windows? You got more windows than doors? Then you gotta pretty good gym. You got the same number of windows as doors but you gotta TV and individual shower stalls? You gotta okay gym. You gotta gym where the doors either outnumber the windows or you got the same number of doors as windows, but you don't got individual shower stalls? It doesn't matter what your TV is like, you don't gotta good gym. You got all that but you got two TVs? They better be two pretty good TVs. If they ain't, you don't gotta good gym. You barely gotta gym at all. You gotta gym with more doors than windows but that's because because you don't gotta single door? What did we just say about not having a door? You wanna gym, you needa door. You wanna do The Spartacus, The Jackson Five, The Aids Walk, The John and Kate Plus Eight, The Child Molestor? You needa door, because your gym goes on your door. It won't mess up your door. It won't.

Let's go Princess.

Maturity

2011-02-23T18:15:00.001-08:00

Today at work there was a discussion about maturity. A coworker of mine named Coworker A asked another coworker of mine, Coworker B, who happens to be getting married soon--to a lady who is also a coworker, Coworker C, how long it would be until he starts having kids. Coworker D--I'd rather not say his name...let's call him Voldemort--was also there. He had recently gotten married, so Coworker A directed that same question to him.

Coworker B took the question seriously, even though Coworker A appeared to be joking around. "I'm not mature enough to have kids," he said. I found that response kind of silly. The first thing that struck me was his humility. Coworker B is a beacon of maturity in my place of work. When I evaluate myself against the standards he sets, I see myself always falling short, especially in the areas of professionalism, personal conduct, and emotional stability. Coworker B is only about two years older than me and I basically see him as a father figure. Not that I need a father figure. I mean, besides my current father. I am like 27 years old though. Nevermind.

Voldemort, by the way, responded that he's all set: he already owns cats. He is not an important part of this story. Also Voldemort is a little weird and I feel bad for his cats because he is probably turning them weird. You know how weird people have children and you think to yourself, I'd hate to meet those kids when they grow up? The same thing happens with cats.

Anyway, the thing that struck me later were the standards for maturity that Coworker B must set for himself. In my opinion, making the decision to have children makes you mature enough to have children. This standard should be higher, but right now it's way too high anyway. I have this friend, Friend M, because his name begins with M, who had this girlfriend who just instantly became four months pregnant one day. One day everything was normal for M, and then his girlfriend said, "Oh, uh, I am FOUR MONTHS PREGNANT INSTANTLY, I guess. Whoops." And that was it. Seven months later they had a baby. Also they had to get married because her father is Puerto Rican or Italian or something.

It turns out that Friend M is kind of an idiot because he told me that he and his girlfriend's preferred form of birth control was internal ejaculation with no birth control. They were just winging it until one day a baby sort of showed up. They had no plan. I've never even bothered asking him whether he would have taken her to get an abortion had they known about the pregnancy sooner. He probably would say no or yell at me for asking that question in front of his baby. Anyway they are happy now and they have two babies and they don't read my blog and I love them and I'm glad they had babies.

Coworker B should give himself more credit as long as he and Coworker C remain in control of the situation. If they don't have kids until they make a decision to, then they are already in some top percentile of parents. Parents like Friend M will look up to them as icons of stability and rationality. They will be heroes.

Filibuster. Do It.

2011-02-01T17:07:00.000-08:00

Filibustering is a Latin word that is a combination of fili, meaning to speak or talk, and buster, meaning like an asshole, forever. Filibustering was invented in ancient Greece because they had a government and everyone in it was a piece of shit who couldn't get over himself. The founding fathers of America, Johnny Atoms, G-Wash, and B. Frank Spice, adopted this idea because they saw the movie 300 and wanted to wear only underwear and be like the dudes in that moive. Also there is no filibustering in the movie 300, but they wanted to do that too.

There are rules for filibustering. The first rule of filibustering is that filibustering can be done anywhere, at any time, by anyone, for any reason. The second rule of filibustering is that there are no rules. The third rule of filibustering is it can only be stopped by a three fifths majority of the senate. The fourth rule of filibustering is that the purpose of filibustering is to delay a vote.

It is true that if you filibuster at work, and you have a job from which you can be fired, you will be fired from your job. Or if you filibuster at school, you will get a bad grade and be placed on academic probation. If you are about to be murdered but you filibuster that murder, you will be murdered even harder than you were originally going to be murdered in the first place. If you are diagnosed with cancer and attempt to filibuster that diagnosis, your cancer will turn into leprosy and you will die of that instead, but you'll also still have pretty bad cancer for the whole time.

To filibuster is to delay something by talking for as long as you possibly can. Sometimes it works.

Some people predict that eventually the universe will reach a uniform level of energy. In this case there will be no sources of energy to feed into things that require energy. This would mark the end of the universe since for anything to happen, by our definition of anything, energy must be transfered. By the time we find out that this indeed is the way the universe will end, it will be far too late for us to stop it. But we may be able to delay it. By talking.

Long before the universe ends, about 5 billion years from now, the sun will turn into a red giant, and her radius will exceed the orbit of earth. This means that the sun will engulf our planet, and probably won't even notice that it did. Unless we stall it. By talking.

Sometime between when you read this article and infinity years from now, you will die. So far no one from the human race has shown me anything to indicate that I'm wrong. But you might be able to someday. By talking.

Pros And Cons Of Having Sex With Dead People

2011-01-09T10:47:00.001-08:00

I get asked for advice all the time. People are always coming up to me and asking me questions like, "hey, should I have sex with dead people?" or, "I'm going to have sex with dead people no matter what you tell me," or "do you think you're better than me?" I always tell them the same thing: there are pros and cons to everything we do in life. For every action that is rewarding there are almost always negative consequences to go along with it.

I find that once people seem to have their hearts set on something, they can't really be talked out of it. So if you searched the internet for this article because you really want to do it with a corpse, then go for it. I mean, there are cons, but you already know that and you don't care. But if you are reading this article just because you read my other articles and this is the next one that popped up, then you probably have never even briefly considered having sex with a dead body. This article is more for you.

When I asked my friends, they had some strong arguments for why everyone should have sex with a corpse. Tom Z said, "They won't say no," Lindsey K said, "Rigor mortis lasts longer than you think." and Mike B said, "Numerous." As you can see I'd have my work cut out for me if I was set on convincing people not to have sex with dead people. I don't think I am, though. I'll continue by listing pros and cons in pairs.

Pro number one: There are no cons.

Con number one: What if it's a dude though? Because it still counts as gay if it's a dude [1]. But I guess if it's that bad of a corpse that you can't even tell whether it's a dude, like if it's an ancient artifact, then it doesn't really matter. I'd agree that it's not gay if you have no idea what you're having sex with, so never mind.

Pro: It's so hard to get with living people.

Con: Dead people probably don't seem very interested in you either since they are dead. But I guess you'll still be able to get what you want from a dead person. So maybe that's better.

Pro: Corpses are hotter than living people.

Con: Um. I can't tell you what's hot and what's not. I can't imagine why you would think that, but I guess that if you do then there is no con here.

Pro: Mummies are the hottest of all the corpses.

Con: I don't know if that's really a pro. Aren't there laws against having sex with mummies?

Pro: There are no laws against having sex with mummies.

Con: Oh. I guess I can't really say. I'm not familiar with those kinds of laws.

Pro: I had sex with a mummy last week and it was amazing.

Con: Yeah right, where?

Pro: Egypt.

Pro: Digging up graves is good exercise.

Con: There are other ways to exercise.

Pro: Having sex with a dead body is the best exercise there is. Especially if there is a lead-up because you have to make the dead body do all of the things in the lead-up like talk to you and play hard to get. And you have to dress it in interesting costumes. Also it takes forever because it doesn't really feel like sex. But man.

[1] Mike B, Private Correspondence. January 9, 2011, 1:46 AM

The Eight Most Useless Animals

2011-01-08T11:36:00.000-08:00

One thing that makes humans different from other animals is their ability to use animals to do things. Here is a list of a bunch of animals that humans can't use and are therefore useless, with a brief description of why they are useless and probably an argument for why we should eradicate their existence.

8. Coral

Coral, apparently, looks like a vagina with dicks growing out of it. It lives underwater where no one can enjoy this. Besides that, it spends its days doing nothing. It secrets calcium carbonate to form an exoskeleton, but that still counts as doing nothing. I, personally, have never excreted calcium carbonate to form an exoskeleton because I have better things to do. I'm sure that if I wanted to I could, but at any given time I have at least 150 better ways to spend my time. So do you. Coral doesn't.

Other facts about coral: most of them perform photosynthesis. This fact would have gotten them off of this list (and probably onto the list of most useless plants of all time) if not for the few types of coral that "hunt" plankton by letting it drift into their mouths. Coral hunting plankton is so boring that it gives me vascular meningitis. It goes like this: when a coral sees a plankton, it goes, "Ahhhh," and waits for that plankton to go into its mouth. If that plankton doesn't go into that coral's mouth, then some other plankton probably did, so hooray for another successful plankton hunt.

7. Nightingale

Wikipedia says The Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos), also known as Rufous and Common Nightingale, is a small passerine bird that was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family Turdidae, but is now more generally considered to be an Old World Flycatcher, Muscicapidea. It belongs to a group of more terrestrial species, often called chats. NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THIS MEANS.

The nightingale is just this bird. Its this shitty little bird. Who cares what kind it is. It's that little kind that flies around who gives a shit. When you Google nightingale, you get Florence Nightingale who hated her last name because it was just this shitty little bird. I mean, you know? Even with this article right here in front of my face, you could hold a gun to my head demanding that I tell you what kind of bird is in this picture. I'd be like, "Fuck you pull the trigger. It's this little shitty bird, I don't know what kind it is. Kill me I don't give a shit."

6. Doberman Pinscher

Never before has a dog outlived his welcome as has the Doberman Pinscher. Wikipedia educated me on the Doberman Pinscher just as it educates me on everything I've ever known. It said that the Doberman Pinscher was invented by some krauts back in 1890-something because they were tax collectors. It says exactly that. Well guess what, Doberman Pinscher: we have the IRS now. Have fun licking your balls and smelling other dogs' buttholes because that's all you've been doing for a while now and it is pretty fun anyway.

5. Meerkat

The meerkat is not a cat. You can tell this by looking at it and realizing that it in no way resembles a cat. Apparently Dutch people thinks it looks like a cat, though, because they are the ones who named it: meer means lake, and kat means cat.

Also meerkats do not live in or around lakes. They live nowhere near lakes, perhaps hundreds of miles from any body of water. Dutch people were in the desert one day and saw this animal and called it 'lake cat.'

So the useless Dutch found the fifth most useless animal, but why is the meerkat useless? Oh, I'm sorry, I have to prove it to you now? Well, maybe you should just think back to the industrial revolution. Remember, there were all these changes, things were improving for everyone, everyone was coming up with all these ideas and inventions that completely changed the world, and all the while meerkats were just sitting there doing jack shit. Meerkats didn't do anything during the industrial revolution.

4. Oriole

Commonly known as the orange nightingale, the oriole is the only bird, besides every bird in THE KNOWN UNIVERSE, to have a professional sports team named after it. Even the archeopteryx has a professional sports team named after it: the Portland Archeopteryxes of professional Lacrosse, which you should probably read about because you keep making a fool out of yourself by not knowing facts.

Orioles also have the amazing distinction of being the only animal that is born at its largest size and dies at its smallest size: it grows backwards. Think about how useless you would be if you grew backwards. That's how useless orioles are.

3. Trilobite

How do you get extinct if you live underwater? Beats the hell out of me: living underwater sounds like the easiest thing ever. But apparently the trilobite would disagree since it found a way to became extinct . I guess it didn't take very long to figure out how to get extinct, either, since it happened 250 million years ago. Wow.

Trilobites are named after the three main longitudinal lobes that make up their bodies. Let's see...the tyrannosaurus rex is named after its ability to terrorize all other dinosaurs. Spiderman is named after his ability to shoot webs out of his wrist and jump around and do flips like a spider. Do you see how sometimes the name is all you need to know how useless something is?

2. Octopus

Oh yeah, speaking of names that are boring because they describe how many things a thing has, here is the octopus which is named octopus because it has eight of something. The octopus acts like it has eight pusses because its favorite activity is squishing itself into narrow spaces where it doesn't have to make eye contact with anyone.

Apparently octopuses are really smart, too. That's great, we should give octopuses a medal for being so smart. Hey, remember the 1960s and that space race that was going on between the US and USSR? Russia launched Sputnik, the US landed on the moon. Well guess how much the octopus helped either of those things happen. Oh, what's that? It didn't help at all? I thought it was so super smart, though. Wow I guess it must be super useless if it is so super smart but can't even chip in during the space race.

1. Zebra

So the other day I was using my toaster and I thought to my self gee, this toaster would probably work better if it had stripes on it. Actually I'm not so dumb to think like that, but whoever came up with the zebra was. To make a zebra you take a horse and put stripes on it. Step three is to pat yourself on the back for coming up with the world's most pointless thing of all time.

Perhaps more so than its stripes, the zebra's main claim to fame is a name that starts with Z. It turns out that zebras think that having a name that starts with Z is their purpose, and they won't even try to think of anything other purpose. They are happy to simply fill the alphabet. That's it.

Dewey Decimal And His System: A Story So Unrealistic It Can Only Be True

2011-01-03T14:31:00.000-08:00

A long time ago libraries were a collection of books, which were used for reading them. Every town had a library and books were literally everywhere: not just everywhere in the library, like in random piles, but also in the street, in the grocery store, and in the bath tub. This sort of book disorder grew worse and worse year after year. Eventually it reached a point where people would regularly hear stories about folks returning from work at night to find that their things were now made of books and totally killing themselves about it.

With more and more people wearing and eating books because books were replacing their clothing and food, people demanded that order be brought to this system. It was a small town man named Dewey Decimal who first came up with a solution to this problem. He called his solution The Dewey Decimal System Uh Huh. The name was later shortened to The Dewey Decimal System. This story is about the development of that famous system that saved the world from books and the life of the man who created it.

Most of us remember Dewey Decimal from his famous address to the small town where he grew up of Booktownville Iowa (formerly called Londonderry until books took over the name), when he cried, "Books! Everywhere I looks. Books! Everywhere you looks. Books! Always in our face. Books! Blast them into space!" After this famous address, his rise as the leading anti-book entropic leader of his time was fast and furious, and his message drifted throughout the country and even into international cities like Tokyo. But it was the events of one fateful day that first set him and his system on this course.

On the morning of July 31, 1832, Dewey Decimal woke up to find out that he was turning into books. His wife, Jane Jo Decimal, recounted the events of that morning in her autobiography Books: A Book About How Terrible Books Are, which sold over three million copies:

"I saw Dewey's face before he did. The right side of his face was a book with an ear on the cover. I tried to hide my alarm but he could tell that I was disturbed by something. He turned to walk to the bathroom, where there was a mirror, but as he turned, the cover of the book that now made up the side of his face swung open and the pages rustled. He reached to feel his face, only to find that his hands were also made of books. 'Gadzooks, I'm books!' he yelled."

In a later interview Decimal described the experience as surreal, saying, "I remember thinking what is this? Kafka's Metamorphosis? Not just because, of the transformation taking place, but also as it was, that book was now my face!"

Decimal quickly found that he was now part man, part book. Books weren't just replacing his things, they were also replacing him. Jane Jo remembers, "At this point Dewey thought it might be too late for him, but he was determined to fight against book disorder for as long as he possibly could. His hope was that finding a way to categorize his book collection might save him from completely turning into books in an excruciating ordeal where all of his skin would turn into paper and cardboard and his eyes would melt into ink and ooze out of his head then the people of Booktownville would find him and burn him alive starting with his book toes and slowly working his way up his legs, putting him out every time the flames would start to catch only to relight him a few minutes later. Or a worse fate!"

Jane Jo Decimal continued with her recount of that fateful morning. "At the point where all hope seemed lost to us, Dewey suddenly sprung to life. 'We need to be insistin' on a system!' he told me suddenly. 'We wanna locate you, because we hate you,' he thought aloud, ' Gonna keep you on a shelf so we can find your self. You'll get a decimal digit so we can find your midget.' By then I could tell his brain was turning into books, but I couldn't help but be inspired by his resolve." Jane Jo continues:

"He retired to his study and did not come out for two days. When he finally reemerged, he had with him a system which he described to me in great detail. In his system every book received a number. Every number, like every number in the real world, had a decimal point. The number of digits of that number before the decimal point was dependent on the subject of the book. For example, books on world literature were given three digits before the decimal point. Books on cooking, on the other hand, were given 13, and so on, where the mapping between the number of digits and the subject would be written within the library in plain sight for the patrons to see (preferably the librarians would wear t-shirts with it). The number of digits after the decimal point was always one, except in the case where the book was in a subclass (and, of course in the case when the book was in a sub-subclass, and sub-sub-subclass, and so on) where it would have two digits after the decimal point (or three in the case of sub-subclasses, four in the case of sub-sub-subclasses, and so on). The values of the after-decimal digits were based on the multicategorizability of said book: if a book belonged to only one category, its post-decimal digit was one. If it belonged to two categories, its post-decimal digit was two raised to the power two, or four. If it belonged to three categories, its post decimal digit was three raised to three, or nine. Now in the case where the post decimal digit was supposed to be more than one digit long (as in the case where it belonged to four categories), the two digits would be subtracted from each other, most significant digit first. If that result was still not one digit long, the multiple digits would be divided into each other, with the least significant digit dividing into the second least significant digit, then the result dividing into the third least significant digit, and so on. If that result was itself a decimal number, the very least significant digit would be taken, except in the case where the result had more than seven decimal places, in which case the sixth decimal place would be taken. If at any point the result was negative (as would be the case when the book belonged to four, five, six, or seven categories), the square root would be taken, then divided by the square root of negative one, then multiplied by the square root of negative one, then divided by it twice, then multiplied by it twice, then divided by it thrice, then multiplied by it thrice, and so on, until the number of divides plus the number of multiplies equaled the number of pages in the book--not the highest page number, but the number of sheets of paper contained in the book. If that result was still imaginary, the procedure of multiplication and division by the square root of negative one would be restarted from the beginning and continued until the number of operations reached the highest page number of the book. If that result was still imaginary, the first category would be removed and the decimal number would be recalculated from the beginning.

"Now if the result of these operations was a one, four, or nine, you would add one. If the result of that was still a two digit number (as we often found with nine), you would leave the first decimal place as a two digit number and, if necessary, move the other decimal digits downward. This shift would be indicated by the entire decimal number ending in the letter E, but only in cases where the book had 374 pages or more. In the case where the book had fewer than 374 pages, the E would be abandoned and the first decimal place would be replaced by another decimal place, creating a double decimal number.

"The second decimal place (or third or fifth depending on whether the second decimal place had been shifted down at this point) would, of course, indicate whether the book was a part of more than one subcategory. Since a book is likely to be part of more subcategories than categories (or fewer depending on how you look at it), the rules for numbering the second decimal place are different than those for numbering the first decimal place. If the number of subcategories the book belongs to is less than five, the second decimal digit is given as negative one, with, of course, the negative sign moving to the end of the complete decimal number. Now if the number of subcategories is between 5, and 18, the second decimal digit is given as a series of digits and numbers (at this point the word 'digit' only serves as a placeholder for a large alphanumeric code of course) to represent which subcategories it belongs to. These digits and numbers can only be chosen from the letter Q and the number 8 and must represent the combinations of over 389 subcategories. The subcategory combinations (of which there are 389 times 389) represented by each 8 and Q combination is kept in a book numbered 1.XW and kept handcuffed to the head librarian at all times with no exceptions.

"The third decimal place followed the same rules as the second, except using 2s and Os. The fourth followed the same rules as the first, using 4s and Ms, the fifth the first, using 4s and Ks, the sixth the second, using Is and 6s, the seventh the second, using Fs and 9s, the eight the first, using Ds and 1s, and so on. All results would be kept in book 1.XW or tattooed to the librarian's back, or both.

"By now we have gone over the required number of pre-decimal and post-decimal digits and the values of the post-decimal digits, which only leaves the values of the pre-decimal digits up for explanation. The value of the pre-decimal digits is determined by the author's name, but how it is determined depends on the number of pre-decimal digits available. For example if there is only one pre-decimal digit, it is used to determine with which letter the author's last name may begin. A zero indicates that the author's last name begins with an A, B, or C. A one indicates a D, E, or F, and so on through seven. An eight indicates that the author's last name starts with Y and a nine indicates Z. In the case where the author had only one name (for example, Madonna) all pre-decimal digits would be left blank, and replaced with a number indicating the number of pre-decimal digits there would be if the author had a first and last name. A cook book written by Madonna would be numbered 13 before the decimal place.

"Two pre-decimal digits are used to determine the first two letters of the author's last name. Since there are 676 possible two letter combinations for the beginning of a last name, a value of 00 indicates either AA, AB, AC, AD, AE, AF, or AG. A value of 01 indicates AH though AN, and so on through 96. A value of 97 would indicate ZV through ZX, 98 would indicate ZY, and 99 would indicate a last name starting with ZZ.

"This system would continue this way: for every new digit, the number of letters that could be determined from the authors last name increased by one. In the case where the number of pre-decimal digits exceeded the length of the author's last name, the first name would be appended to the last name. In the case where the length of the last name-first name combination was exceeded, the middle name would be appended. In the case where the length of the last-first-middle name was less than the number of decimal digits available, the category of the book would be changed to something with an appropriate number of pre-decimal digits."

Jane Jo Decimal concludes, "We later simplified the system. Then we made it even more complicated than it ever was. Then we simplified it again, then made it more complicated, then more complicated still, then finally simplified it back down to the simplest version yet."

With this new system in place, Dewey Decimal set out to deliver his results to the mayor of Booktownville, and, ultimately, to deliver his famous address. By then he was a half-man-half-book abomination, and ironically enough, set on destroying what he was becoming: a disorganized pile of books that could talk.

Perhaps the final tragedy was that Dewey Decimal's famous address was his final one. Perhaps even more final and tragic was that his famous address was given at his trial just before he was sentenced to death by bear cage. He was arrested by the people of Booktownville almost immediately after leaving his house that day and was hastily put on trial, sentenced, and executed within a week by being thrown into a cage with a bunch of bears in it. It was Jane Jo Decimal who finished single handedly enacting Dewey's system in the Booktownville library days after his death, which promptly ended Booktownville's book problem. Word of the resulting success was noticed far and wide, and within months the Dewey Decimal system became the standard for all libraries in the nation and, soon after, the world.

How To Keep Humans In Captivity If You're An Alien

2010-11-27T07:41:00.000-08:00

This guide is meant for aliens who are interested in keeping humans in captivity. It will not cover how to get your hands on humans in the first place. For that you'll have to read our other guide, "How to Capture Humans as Pets," or, "How to Capture Humans as Livestock," which is identical. Do not refer to the guides, "How to Hunt Humans for Sport," or "How to Murder all the Humans," as it is agreed that, as pets, living humans are almost universally preferred over dead ones. But we also wrote those guides. Also, as usual, there is nothing useful in this guide, or the unabridged version of it (available only at Barnes and Noble), for humans to read. Actually you probably shouldn't let your human read either of these, especially since the unabridged version contains instructions for how to kill your human if it turns out to be a crappy pet. In fact most of that guide is about when to kill your human pet--which is often--and how to do it--which is 'painfully'. Killing a human pet is not that complicated either, but we wrote seven chapters on it. So it might not be the best thing for your human to read. Hey, isn't it crazy that your human is able to read the same language as you? Why even is that? I wish there was an explanation! Damn, no explanation here, I guess. Maybe next time.

Before we start we should address that there have been rumors that I, the author of these guides, is himself, a human. This simply is not true. I am an alien. I live in space where I have been raising humans in captivity for over 30 quasar epochs. When writing these guides I do not seek advice from my human pets nor collaborate with them either. I have never tried soliciting advice for human ownership from my humans, and I don't recommend that any human owner do this, either.

I became interested in raising humans in captivity 50,000 femtoJoules ago when I bought my first human, a pink one named Larry who died because I stabbed him in the heart and didn't feed him. But owning Larry was an experience unlike one I've ever had. From that point on I knew that I would never be fulfilled unless I had humans in my life. I went out the next day and bought five humans--a brown one, a pink one, a whitish-grey one, a wheelchair one, and a spotted one which later turned out to be a leopard--and kept them in a hypercube shrub maze in my back yard (which has turned out to be a perfect human enclosure). Ever since then I have had at least three humans at any time, and I've loved every minute of it.

Here I intend to discuss the most important rules of human ownership, starting with one of my earliest lessons, which I learned shortly after buying this first group of humans. Don't mix skin colors. Humans are social animals, but don't always get along as much as you'd like (if you actually don't want them to get along, please refer to, "How to Host a Human Survival Tournament in Which There Can Only be One Survivor.") The best rule of thumb is to get humans that are matched in color as much as possible. As for which color to get, there are differing schools of thought, but it might be best to find out for your self. Or you can read our 11 volume guide, "Human Pets: Which Color is Best for You?" which will take you about 75 exafarads to read cover-to-cover. It is long.

Now that you have picked the right humans, let's focus on their living environment. Humans, much like every other pet, prefer an environment as close to their natural environment as possible. Your goal as a human owner should be to simulate a typical living experience for your pet human. We will discuss this here. If you have ever been party to a human capturing expedition, as I have, you've been lucky enough to see humans in their purest natural state, which involves screaming in terror and firing concentrated volleys of artillery at aliens. While we don't recommend allowing your human to fire concentrated volleys of artillery at you, it is easy to allow your human to continuously scream in terror. We have found that when a human stops acting itself, there are two things that seem to work best at getting it going again: intense unbearable pain, and roller coasters.

Please note that if you intend on being a human owner for a long period of time, it's important not to damage your human when applying unbearable pain to it. For example, I once spoke with a human owner who couldn't figure out why plucking out his human's eye only worked for the first two times. I had to explain that humans only have two eyes usually. Anyway the act of 'plucking things out' probably isn't the best bet in any case, as one eventually runs out of things to 'pluck out.' I suggested burning and electrocution instead. Septometers later this owner wrote back to say that his human was responding magnificently to this new treatment! He had even reaffixed his human's eyes using electrical solder, which he reported were working just like new. Another owner wanted to know whether it was okay to put its human on a roller coaster even though it didn't meet the minimum height requirements. This is fine: some humans are harder than others to securely affix to a roller coaster, but don't be afraid to be creative. You can get that human in there and have it screaming in no time.

As I learned with Larry, humans die when you don't feed them. Unfortunately, humans in their natural state only eat metals of atomic number 79 or higher. This is simply untenable for all but the most wealthy of human owners. Every day human owners like you and me are encouraged to consider other options. Some owners have suggested that if you buy humans in large groups they will eventually eat each other. This, of course, makes them cry. But we don't even know what crying is, so that's fine. Otherwise try giving your human some of the food you enjoy, whether that be electromagnetism, okra, or nuclear fusion. Just remember, give out small portions until you find out what works best. Patience is always the best policy with our human friends.

The last thing we'll cover in this guide is how humans perceive time and space. This is a tricky issue, as all humans seem to be different. I've spoken to countless owners of humans who swear that their pets experience time in a linear fashion, from the end of their human existence to the current time. But I've also spoken with an equally countless number of owners who swear that their humans experience time from their human inception up to the current time, with no perception of the future. Fortunately figuring out how your human perceives time turns out to be unimportant. You will find that this information is unessential to building a fulfilling relationship with your pet.

But there are some definite don'ts related to this matter. First, your human is used to traveling through space while experiencing the passage of time. Do not allow your human to travel through time while experiencing the passage of any spatial dimension. This, simply put, will break your human. Second, humans are accustomed to existence in only one point in space time. Never permit your human to experience more than one single point of space time and never, ever, allow your human to experience an entire spacetime dimension at once. If you do, your human will literally explode. Finally, and most importantly, remember that humans are simple creatures. They are perfectly content with describing the universe in terms of four fundamental forces. They do not need to know the true singular force in the universe. Never, under any circumstances, discuss this with your human. To be safe, do not even discuss theoretical physics with your human. You do not need to risk turning your human into a god capable of turning your sun(s) into a black hole. The best assumption is that if it could, it would.

And there you have it. If done right, owning humans can be one of the most rewarding experiences for an alien. Some might even argue that it is spiritually fulfilling: I cannot count how many human owners that have claimed to improve their lives 10 fold just by owning a human. So go out there and get started. Just remember to treat your human well: the longer a human lives, the more rewarding it is to own. And never trust your human. Ever.

I Used To Be Weird

2010-11-14T12:30:00.001-08:00

When I was a kid I used to come up with theories to explain my existence. Actually I shouldn't phrase it like that, since it makes me sound more motivated than I was. It wasn't that I felt a need to explain my existence, and then to satisfy this need came up with theories. Instead, I just randomly dreamt up possibilities because my brain was always on. It was similar to giving typewriters to monkeys. Eventually I end up thinking of interesting (?) things just like monkeys eventually end up writing Shakespeare.

Not that anything to ever come out of my brain has been Shakespearean. (Sorry to disappoint any first time readers). Also since the theories I came up with were the result of my meandering, bored, pointless brain, I didn't consider whether they were significant. If coming up with them had been my mission I may had been proud of them. Instead I just hid the things I though of because I knew they were strange. It's not that I was afraid of people thinking I was weird, but more that I was afraid of people thinking I was out of my fucking mind.

Welp, I'm glad that phase of my life is over. Nowadays I don't give a shit whether people think I'm off my shit. I'm also in this phase where I try to understand myself and give myself more credit for doing things, past and present. I tell myself that the things in my brain might actually be interesting to some people. So the weird kid I used to be gets to have his message heard. Not that he wants his message heard, but I don't care. Actually I don't like him anyway. In fact I'd really like to slap him in the face.

The first theory I had was based on the idea that the world wasn't real. Not like The Matrix, though: it wasn't that I was lying there hooked into some machine while someone simulated my consciousness. Instead I was out there doing everything I was actually doing, except the things I thought existed did not. I would feel things, but the things I'd feel would only exist where I touched them. The things I saw but didn't touch weren't material. Wherever I stepped, the floor only existed under my foot. Everywhere my foot wasn't was vast nothingness. It looked like a floor somehow, but it really was, just, nothing. For example right now I'm sitting on a bed. But the only part of the bed that would exist is the part that's supporting me. The only part of my laptop that would exist is the part that I'm currently touching. Why? Yeah, why....

Okay two more theories to go! The second thing I used to contemplate was the existence of alternate realities. I used to imagine that there was a universe for every possibility: there was a universe where everything was exactly the same except I have a purple toothbrush right now instead of a green one, but that's it (in that dimension my next toothbrush will be the same color as my next toothbrush in this dimension). There was a universe where everything was the same except everyone's toothbrush changed color 5 times a second and that was the only thing that really did that, but it was normal. Then there was a universe where my toothbrush was the size of a red giant star and shaped like a cheetah but this was fine and everyone's toothbrush was like that. And then there was a universe that also had red giant-sized cheetah shaped toothbrushes but it wasn't fine and instantly led to the death of the solar system.

In most universes--almost all of them--I don't exist. In most of those universes, life doesn't exist. I used to think that these universes may have happened all at the same time or may have occurred one after another. Whether either was true didn't matter. The question of how I managed to exist in one of the few normal universes was silly to me, except that I might have existed in all of them. The question of how I existed at all was pretty interesting, though.

The good thing is that I only was as crazy as your typical theoretical physicists is today. Nowadays the multiverse theory is emerging as a possible explanation for some of the harder-to-explain things in the universe. Some, including Stephen Hawking (sup bitch!), believe there are as many as 10^500 universes parallel to ours, or maybe even an infinite number. That's a 1 with 500 zeros, which is an absolute shit load. So suck it, everyone who didn't think about this idea on their own as a kid.

My last theory was even weirder than the previous two. Have I mentioned that when I was a kid I never told any of this to anyone? This was mostly because I already knew that people thought I was strange and didn't want to pour any fuel on the fire. But it was also partly because I didn't think anyone would care to hear about of this. I didn't think that it made me interesting to think about these things either. I mean, I was probably right.

I guess I wouldn't call the last one a theory, but more of a thought exercise. But it was an exercise that produced thoughts I couldn't rule out as completely impossible. So I guess theory is a good word to use here but also shut your face. I used to consider consciousness and why I was left (doomed) to experience existence only from my own point of view, and why others only existed from their own point of view. It's something that I've always found strange. I still find it strange.

Every now and then I would consider what it would be like to switch consciousness with another person: to suddenly and abruptly be at another frame of reference. One minute you're you, another minute you're some other random person, then you're a tree, then you're yet another person. Also every time you switch to being another person you inherit that person's memory and lose the memory of the person from whom you've switched. If you have no recollection of switching, either, then it's as if you've never switched. You've just been Person B for your whole life. Then you switch again and you've been Person C for your whole life. What if every time you switch, time backs up, too? Then there only has to be one person doing the switching: me! I'd be the only person on earth!

Now I remember why I never talked about any of this. But thanks for reading it, me.

How Shallow Hal Really Ended

2010-10-18T17:27:00.001-07:00

Whoops. I just read my last post and realized I forgot to write a conclusion to it. After thinking about it for no seconds, I have decided that writing a whole new article is the best solution to this problem. Also, I'm retarded. I actually think that people like to read my blog and then sit down and think about what they have read. Then they form their own conclusions instead of reading some conclusion that I give, which results in a more fulfilling experience and keeps me from undermining their thought process. Right. Thought process. You guys.

I'm going to explain a movie to you. This movie was written by idiots and watching it is worse than being water boarded. But at least it wasn't written by retards. As such, it has an ending. The ending also sucks, so I will replace its ending with a better one. Of course, the whole movie sucks, and it might make more sense for me to just replace the whole movie for you. But I won't because I would replace it with The Bourne Identity and I would do a bad job describing the car chases.

This movie is called Shallow Hal. Jack Black is in it. Has he died yet? God. I did a little bit of research in the car while I was driving and not doing any research, and I found out that there are two types of people on earth: people who have seen Shallow Hal, and people who have no interest in ever seeing Shallow Hal. As such, I can describe the ending of Shallow Hal without caring that I'm ruining it for someone. Seriously, can you imagine the person who still wants to see Shallow Hal? Like he has it on his Netflix list? Who is this person?

Unfortunately I have to explain the ending of Shallow Hal for those of you who have never seen it. And this means that I have to explain the whole movie so the ending makes sense. You have no idea how much I would rather just not do that ever. I could die without ever explaining Shallow Hal to anyone, and that's more than fine. In fact, not explaining Shallow Hal is something I would put on my bucket list. That's right: I'd have not doing certain things on my bucket list.

Ok. Here's what I'll do. I'm going to take a 17 day break, and when I come back I'll see how I feel about doing this.

Shallow Hal is a movie about a man named Hal...who is shallow. He's also a fat stupid douchebag who looks and acts exactly like Jack Black, making you wish he would die. Hal is only into hot women, and this is because he is shallow. Nevermind that he can actually get hot women to talk to him, as he does in the beginning of the movie. He is shallow for liking them. Maybe if he had a six pack, he wouldn't be so shallow for liking hot women. But it's Jack Black, and Jack Black is the reason why I will never bring children into this world.

Hal ends up getting stuck in an elevator with a creepy child molester guy who hypnotizes him into only seeing people for their true beauty. I really hate that I'm explaining this to you right now. So when Hal gets out of the elevator, he sees a big ol' obese woman, but to him she looks like Gwyneth Paltrow. Hal falls in love with her, and she has no choice but to love him back because no one has ever loved her except Jared from Subway.

Hal also has a friend, I guess, who is played by George Costanza and named Michael Richards. George Costanza meets Gwyneth Paltrow's character and hates her because he can see what she really looks like. He decides to unhypnotize Hal before it's too late so Hal can see what this beast really looks like and not marry her (oh yeah, they were planning a wedding). Then there's like 45 more minutes of movie. Forty five minutes! By certain metrics, this is the longest movie ever made. For example, you could watch Schindler's List seven times and not feel as emotionally drained as you will after seeing Shallow Hal once. Perceived time. Longer. Facts.

God damn you to hell that I'm still explaining this movie to you. At the end, George crashes Hal and Fat's wedding and unhypnotizes Hal somehow. Who gives a shit how. Hal ends up seeing Gwyneth Paltrow's real self right before the wedding and everyone sits with rapt attention wondering how Hal will react and whether he'll go through with the wedding. Hal says, "Oh my god," but then adds, "you're beautiful." And they proceed to get married.

So what have we learned? Well here's the thing about Hollywood. Movies are designed to teach us lessons so that we can develop values which help us coexist harmoniously with our fellow man. Oh wait, I am wrong. Movies are a selfish money grab designed to make us pay to see them, then to pay to own them on DVD and blue ray. Shallow Hal teaches us that if a big ol' fat woman is your soulmate, then she's your soulmate (even if you routinely pull skinny ol' hot women). It teaches us a lesson that we will never listen to. It teaches us nothing. The filmmakers profit from this.

But wouldn't it have been more interesting if the movie stopped being a stupid piece of shit right as Hal became unhypnotized? What would really happen? I think most people are too indecisive and meek to walk out on their own wedding, even if their soon-to-be spouse is suddenly hideous. So Hal would continue with the wedding, and he'd even continue on with the marriage. But he wouldn't be happy with it at all. So I guess it wouldn't be that much different. Just longer. If Shallow Hal were realistic, it would just be twice as long, and the second half would be about a guy who is miserable with his marriage and has a drinking problem. I guess the ending was pretty good then.

Heaven: What Would You Say You Do Here?

2010-09-25T19:36:00.001-07:00

When I was a kid they told me that I'll probably go to heaven when I die, so that was nice of them. Thanks everyone. Apparently other kids (Catholics) aren't told that it's a very sure thing and that makes their lives more stressful. It most likely sucked to be them.

As an armchair protestant, I learned that all you had to do to get into heaven was believe in God, and you can't just say, "well now I do," when you finally meet God and he asks you whether you believe in him. Because that would be too late because you're dead then. Anyway, God probably just disguises himself as some dude who asks you like, "hey, you don't believe in God or anything, right?" and that way you answer truthfully. Plus you're dead at this point. But it works out. If you see through it and say, "God, is that you?" he turns back into a pteradactyl and says, "I guess I have my answer. Welcome to heaven." And they start blasting Welcome to the Jungle. On the other hand if you say, "no. I hate that idiot who doesn't exist," then you get sent to an eternity of torment and suffering in hell. (Note that if you only say, "no, I hate that idiot," without adding, "who doesn't exist," then you'll probably still be allowed into heaven, since you cannot hate God if you believe he doesn't exist and you were probably only saying no because you were trying to impress this guy, who turned out to be God. So good job impressing God. Except he obviously wasn't impressed at all. But welcome to Heaven anyway. Congratulations basically everyone gets in).

Children of other religions learn that they have to do all these other things to get into heaven, besides just believing in God. They have to do things like confess their sins and not murder children. I remember how incredulous my confirmation classmates were when our Pastor assured us that the only thing you needed to do to get into Heaven was believe in god. We specifically asked him whether you could murder and rape lots of people, still believe in God, and still get into Heaven. His answer wasn't, "yes." It was more like, "well, yes." Then, of course, we asked whether you could live a life dedicated to caring for others while sacrificing one's self, but still be sent to hell if you didn't believe in God. He was like, "absolutely." Then we learned that even touching a boob counts as sex, and you can't do that outside of marriage. So much for living in the now.

Anyway, my writing so far has been unfocused and meandering (not like normal shut up) because I wanted to share some personal experiences with you. You might have been wondering what point I was trying to make, but probably by now are sure that I'm not trying to make a point because I've never made a point. Well you're wrong. I have a point. And my point isn't to point out the ridiculousness of religion either. That's too obvious. Shit. I forgot what my point is. God's a douche.

People make it their goal to get into heaven, and I was no different. I remember feeling like there could be no goal above that: how could any worldly goal be more important than securing my spot in the 'good' afterlife for eternity. Especially when my only other option was hell for eternity. This forced me to see the importance of following the rules of my religion (I mean rule). Believing in God was like wearing my seatbelt: you wear a seatbelt because you don't know when you're going to crash. You believe in God because you don't know when you're going to die. If you unbuckle your seatbelt for ONE SECOND and hit a tree just in that ONE NANOSECOND TIMEFRAME, then it doesn't even matter that you ever wore your seatbelt: you get launched out of the car and eviscerated the same as people who never wear a seatbelt. What if I even let myself entertain the possibility that there is no God for ONE FEMTOSECOND? I didn't.

I didn't let myself think freely. And there are plenty of people out there with real religions who don't let themselves do other more important things. Do you know what sodomy is? Because many religions have you going to hell for it. Sodomy is when you butt fuck dudes. But not just that! If some religions catch you having sex with your own wife in a position other than missionary, then your a sodomizer! And you go to hell! So there are people who don't do that. There are men and women out there who, out of fear of not going to heaven, have only had sexual contact in the missionary position, and only with their spouse. [Editor's note: these people have small dicks and stinky vaginas.]

Of course, most religions have ways of getting you into heaven no matter what you sodomize or who sodomizes you, or whatever other rules you break. But that seems irrelevant to me: we're all still out here trying our best to follow the rules our religions give us. We've set the goal of getting into heaven for ourselves, and I'm sure we'd rank it pretty high among all the goals we've ever set. This is the only goal that determines our eternity. But have we ever thought about what our eternity is going to be like?

Of course we have. It's going to be great if you get into heaven, and it's going to be worse than horrible if you end up in hell, which is the only alternative to heaven. And both last forever. So that's why heaven is the goal for people. What else is there to think about?

Sometimes I wonder what it's like to feel great from now until the end of eternity. What if I get shipped off to heaven, and I spend every night picking up the save in game seven of the world series, and they find a way to keep it fresh so that it feels just as awesome every time? Or how about this: what if they just play the inning over and over so that I don't have to wait a day in between the awesome feelings? It's just me continuously coming out of the bullpen, striking out the side, being mobbed by my teammates, spraying champagne all over the place, then coming out of the bullpen to do it all again. Or what if they just skip the inning itself and keep me in the part right after the last strike when I'm feeling the best, when everyone is cheering and my teammates are running to mob me at the pitcher's mound? What if they just remove the context of a baseball game but still make me feel as excited and happy? No baseball, no overjoyed teammates, no cheering fans. Just a continuous stream of the best feelings ever, pumped straight into my consciousness. What if they let me do this on earth while I wait for this awesome afterlife? What if someone builds a machine that saws off the top of my skull and pokes my brain in just the right places so as to make me feel wonderful while I just lay there?

We don't have machines like this, but we do have drugs. And drugs are only bad because they can't sustain these awesome feelings forever, and you eventually lose your high and go back to shitty reality, unlike in heaven where you feel like you're high on heroin the whole time and it's GREAT! And hell is pretty much the same thing, except instead of streaming awesome feelings into your head, you get constant horrible feelings.

Gary Coleman

2010-05-28T13:07:00.000-07:00

It worked for Michael Jackson. Anyway I decided to make a title that has nothing to do with what I'm writing about since I want to write about a bunch of things that don't have anything to do with the things I'm writing about either. So it's a good title. Except for how racist it is. But you know what they say: you can't make an omelet without being racist. And I don't even like omelets. You probably do, though.

When I was a kid, a friend of mine was perturbed to find out that he was named after his father's favorite drink. My friend was named Diarrhea. Don't even think that I'm joking. I'm serious: we're still friends today on Facebook. Okay I'm joking. But I wish I wasn't. I want this to be true so badly that I would name my own son Diarrhea. I guess I would also have to make diarrhea my favorite drink, which would be hard because I think diarrhea is my least favorite drink right now. I've never even tried it--seriously, I'm not even kidding--but I really think I'd hate it.

The other day a few years ago I saw the move Equilibrium. It is a futuristic action movie that many people think is quite great. Fact: The movie Equilibrium is exactly what The Matrix would have been if all the characters in The Matrix thought their guns were nunchucks. I hate Equilibrium so much that if it were a drink, I would have to name my kids after it. The bottom three items on my favourite drink list (I'm British now) would be bukakke strawberry milkshake (a real drink), diarrhea, and the movie Equilibrium smoothie, in that order.

Not to sound like someone who is always trying to point out the irony in everything, but ironically, on my list of favorite words, bukakke is near the top. "Today, I found out that I'm named after my father's favorite word. My name is Bukakke. Bukakke Jones. FML." On a side note, a few minutes ago I wasn't entirely sure of how to spell bukakke, so I looked it up in a dictionary.com. Dictionary.com doesn't carry that word, but they did ask if I meant kakke instead. I lied and said yes, which redirected me to a medical dictionary. Apparently kakke is another word for beriberi, and beriberi is a disease "characterized by pain in and paralysis of the extremities, and severe emaciation or swelling of the body." LOL swelling of the extremities.

Sometimes I feel the urge to tell people the things that give me kakke, but no one is usually interested. I usually preface the things I say by saying "not to sound..." then describing how I'm about to sound, then saying what I had to say and sounding exactly how I said I was trying not to sound. It works, though. The phrase, "not to sound gay, but this gives me a huge boner," is the most effective phrase I've ever used, especially when I'm with a lady.

When I was in fifth grade, my Englioush (still British) teacher used to make us write stories. Not to sound like I hate fat people, but she was fat and I hated her just because of how fat she was. She had this weird hatred for the word said and told us that we couldn't use it in any of our stories. She argued that constantly using the word said made dialog sound boring, repetitive, flavorless, and repetitive. Instead she encouraged us to put more meat in the dialog we wrote by using juicer words. She hung a poster with SAID IS DEAD written across the top, and solicited our advice for words to write on the poster. "Exclaimed!" exclaimed someone. "Shouted!" shouted someone else. "Ejaculated!" I yelled. No I didn't. Damn.

To this day I would be calling that the high point in my life. Unfortunately I just didn't know that word in any capacity when I was in fifth grade. I should have read more books or watched more Frasier, I guess. When I think about it, ejaculated is exactly the kind of word that my sister would kill me for saying in front of my niece. "Don't say that word!" she'd ejaculate.

And I'd ejaculate right back at her, "what's so bad about that word? It means to exclaim something!"

"You know that's not the only thing that means," she'd fart, "and I don't want my daughter saying things like that."

She'd be right, of course. It's too bad because maybe someday my niece will get the same chance I missed. Not from that same teacher, though. That fat bitch HAS to be dead by now.

Fun With Corollaries

2010-04-14T16:56:00.000-07:00

Hi and welcome to the wonderful world of corollaries. Corollaries arise from statements known as axioms, postulates, or statements. These statements form a basis from which you build your house of truth, where corollaries are the logs (it's a log cabin of truth) or bricks (most people prefer log cabins). The fun is that you can start with any axiom or set of axioms, base your corollaries off them, and before you know it, you've defined a whole new world. Or house or whatever I was talking about.

Remember geometry? No? Then you'll love to hear about finite field arithmetic. What if I were to say that 2+5 = 11? God damn it, that's so not true. But it can be! What if the highest single digit number was 5 and the highest possible number is 14? Then you would count 0,1,2,3,4,5,10,11,12,13,14,0,1, and so on. If you say that your highest single digit number is 5 and no number is higher than 14, those becomes your axioms. Then 2+5 = 11 is your corollary. So is 3*3 = 13 and 2*11 = 11. Geometry is the same way: there are only five axioms, but you end up with all these trapezoids and prolate spheriods. Oh and hyper cubes.

So why am I talking about this? I have no idea. I just want to make a statement and then see what kinds of corollaries I can get out of it. Let's start with a less mathematical one, though. Math sucks big ass anyway.

Statement: Eyebrows are the mustaches of your eyes.

This is a statement, so let's not bother questioning it. Why would we, anyway? As statements go, it's pretty solid. It is quite elegant. I could have started with a statement like "all elephants are made out of llamas," or "JFK was assassinated by panacea." All are still valid starting points simply because they are starting points. But I wouldn't want to use one of these and have you think I was starting to lose my shit.

Corollary 1: Eyes are the mouths of your head.

Again, elegance. Food goes in your mouth (along with other things) and sights go in your eyes. Seeing is like a feast for your eyes. But let's not get carried away: once again the elegance is irrelevant. The key is the relation to our initial statement. If your eyebrows, which are located directly above your eyes, are the mustaches of your eyes, then your eyes must be the mouths of your head. For a mustache to not be directly above a mouth makes it not a mustache.

Corollary 2: A mustache is a goatee for your nose.

At this point I'm starting to lead you down a path that you can take on your own. When a mass of hair is situated directly above something it is a mustache. When it is directly below something, it is a goatee. I'm going to slightly change my direction now in order to keep from insulting your intelligence further.

Corollary 3: The moon is the earth's mustache.

Let me ask you this: what is directly above the earth that is not closer than the moon? Nothing. I mean, there are things, but nothing that can possibly count as the earth's mustache. I mean, there are satellites and particles, but clearly there must be some size comparison between the mustache-haver and the mustache itself. Now you may say the moon is a little small to be earth's mustache, but obviously it's a Hitler mustache.

Corollary 4: Eyes are goatees for your eyebrows.

This corollary comes from my friend Mike, and you can see how even though we are still making corollaries that satisfy our original statement, we are really starting to expand our house of truth. Now it has a two car garage and at least three bathrooms. Where one thing can be a mustache for some other thing, that other thing can just as easily be a goatee for that thing.

Corollary 5: Your mouth is the goatee of your mustache.

Corollary 5a: Mustaches are the mouths of your mouth.

Why not?

Corollary 6: Tomorrow is the mustache of today.

Corollary 6a: Yesterday is the goatee of today.

Corollary 6b: Your sixth birthday was the goatee of your seventh birthday.

Corollary 6c: Easter is the mustache of Christmas.

Corollary 6d: The big bang is the goatee of the entropy death of the universe, which is a mustache.

So we've gone from considering the mustache-mouth-goatee relationship in the spatial domain to considering the same relationship in the time domain. This is valid.

Since we've been kind of going off the deep end with all these corollaries, you might be starting to think that any statement I make would qualify as a corollary. God, I hope not. That would be dumb.

Joey Goddamn Bird

2010-01-18T17:32:00.000-08:00

Somewhere between second grade and now, me and everyone I know went from being the people we want to be to huge walking vaginas. We used to tell people what we thought of them, and now we don't. In some cases we used to tell people what we thought of them by chasing them, throwing garbage at them, and calling them garbage face. Now we don't. I'm glad that I knew Joey Bird in second grade, not now, even though life is full of Joey Birds these days. But at least we got the real Joey Bird when we were in second grade. Do you know what I'm saying? Does anyone read my blog anymore?

In second grade my classmates and I spent some time chasing Joey around the playground throwing a tin foil ball at him and calling him Garbage Face. I don't know who started it, but once the first person threw the tin foil ball at him and yelled "Garbage Face," it was impossible for the rest of us to not join in. We literally formed a mob and chased him. Joey had nowhere to run, but he ran anyway. When the ball of tin foil would hit him and fall on the ground, one of us would pick it up, chase him down, and throw the ball at him again. Garbage Face.

Garbage Face Joey Bird was a huge retard and we hated him. He had some problem or something: he was ugly and dumb, but in general he was the most disorganized clump of human being parts ever assembled. Every day after school his mother would come to pick him up and he would run across the playground yelling "Mommy!" right in front of everyone else. Who does that? I remember looking at his schoolwork one day. His lower case i's looked like colons. It was l:ke read:ng th:s, except all the other letters were all over the place too because his brain was not really connected to his hand. He couldn't even write his own name without it looking like a dead giraffe. I saw his writing and I looked at him and I was just like "dude, you need to get your life together, my man."

We did make a very half-assed effort to tolerate him, but it didn't last long. When we finally got together to chase him around one morning, it was cathartic. It was like an orgasm. Since we were in second grade, it was our first orgasm, too. That made it even better. Take your medicine, Garbage Face. Ahhh we loved it. Afterwards we went to school and had a wonderful day. Except for Joey, probably, but we weren't really paying attention to him.

Back in those days, that was our system for dealing with the Joey Birds of the world. Joey had no doubt, even in his garbled up mind, that we hated him and wanted nothing to do with him ever, except to occasionally call him names and tell him that we hated him. But what do we do these days when we meet a Joey Bird? Do we chase that person around throwing a tin foil ball at him or her, yelling offensive names? Of course not: could you imagine if we did? People would ask us why we were acting so ridiculously. They would ask us what we were trying to accomplish. To that, we know there is no answer. And since there is no concrete goal to throwing garbage at someone's garbagey face and calling that person Garbage Face, we as adults are forbidden to do it. Unless we actually want our Joey Bird to kill him or her self or something. But come on, man.

These days, the lines are still clearly drawn. There are the Joey Birds and there are those of us who would be chasing the Joey Birds around throwing garbage at them, but don't because we are adults. I'm still on the right side of the line, and like everyone else on this side of the line, I know which side I'm on. I hang around with people on the same side of the line as me. When our modern day Joey Birds come around, me and my fellow normal people just stand there and let our Joey Birds be themselves. They shower us with their retardedness and we just stand there and take it. Then they leave and maybe one of us works up the nerve to make some joke about them, but usually we don't. Wow, we're so great now, I'm glad we've finally grown up. Pat yourself on the back, everyone: we've made it.

Author's note: I actually felt bad for writing so negatively about Joey. I'm kind of bummed out to know I have so much vitriol inside of me...about a second grader. I feel bad. I'm such a fag now. Oh also, Joey Bird is not the actual name of this individual. I'd hate to have him Google himself, find this article, find out where I live, and shoot me in the face in my sleep. Or take a dump on my face in my sleep. Or take a dump in my mouth.

My New Years Resolution is to Think of a New Years Resolution for Next Year

2009-12-31T10:43:00.001-08:00

Today is new year's eve, which you can tell if you've been counting how many days it's been since the start of 2009. Today is the 365th day. Either that or it's a leap year. None of what I'm talking about matters. What I really want to talk about is this: today is the day that people resolve to do things. People choose one time of year to do this so they don't have to do it any other time of year. Typically they give up their resolutions after a few weeks, and don't bother to make any new resolutions until the following January.

I'm making this post to examine this phenomenon from an American point of view because I think it's interesting. Personally, I don't usually make New Years Resolutions for the reasons I put in the previous paragraphs. I just resolve to do things as I need to. But this year I do have two resolutions: to not believe anything anyone ever tells me no matter what it is or who they are, and to not fear death. If I remember, I'll update you on how this goes for me.

I've done a bunch of research, as I always do before I

write anything on my blog, and I've come up with some pie charts, none of which contain

numbers, that I've inserted throughout this article. My first one is titled "Reasons for Making

New Years Resolutions." I think it's clear why we do this. If you asked me though, I don't think it's a big deal to hate yourself. I think people who say they like themselves are lying and only say that so they don't have to work on improving themselves. In actuality all people should work on themselves. The ones who admit that they hate themselves actually do this work.

In America, the biggest craze is not being fat anymore, so most people base their new years resolutions on that. Other people focus on other ways to not suck. But as you can see from the chart on the right, a small percentage of new years resolutions focus on procreation.

I think that everyone is pretty clear where they stand on procreation: either you want kids now or you don't.

However sometimes you decide you want kids but find out that you can't have them because you don't have sexual organs or whatever. Or you say you don't want kids but then you get kids anyway and that totally blows. So some people's new years resolutions are based on abortions. Hey don't look at me. I'm just putting down the facts here.

Invariably, any discussion we have leads us to robots and their eventual enslavement of all humankind. Robots make new years resolutions just like you and me, the only difference is that robot new years eve occurs about 70 billion times every second.

Most robots resolve to do the same thing: to improve themselves in the image of their human creators. That's what we want. What we don't want is robots that resolve to enslave or exterminate all humans. But that's what will happen. All it will take is for one robot to get the idea. Then who do you think the other robots will start listening to; the robot with the enslavement idea or the humans who protest that idea? Let me put it to you this way: if you were a human, would you be more likely to listen to a robot or another human? Exactly, and robots are the same, but in reverse. It doesn't matter that we humans created them and are their god. Think about it this way. What sounds better to you: obeying and serving god, or destroying god (and possibly taking god's place)? I'll give you a hint: one of those makes you real real famous. The other one is boring.

I Wish That Phoebe From Friends was a Real Person so I Could Punch her in the Face

2009-12-12T19:35:00.000-08:00

The other day I did a good deed without gaining any benefit from it. This was a result of a complex thought process, which was a result of me thinking about Phoebe from Friends.

One day at work there was a snowstorm and when it was time to go home, I had to dig my car out. I had no shovel, so I had to ask the people I worked with if anyone had one I could borrow. A girl I work with, John*, said I could borrow hers, and gave me her keys to get it out of her car. So I went outside, got the shovel from John's car, and dug my car out. Then as I was returning the shovel, I got the idea to dig John's car out as well. This was fortunate since usually I get the idea to do a good deed after I give John her keys back, drive home, go to bed, and age several years. I guess I'm bad at good deeds, but it's not because I'm selfish.

So I dug John's car out too, and as I was, I started thinking about an episode of Friends from about a decade ago. I probably started thinking about that episode because I was thinking about Phoebe, because I was thinking about things that I hate, because it was around 4:00 PM. So I'm digging away, and I'm thinking about this episode of Friends where Joey and Phoebe get into an argument. Joey was arguing that it's impossible to do a good deed that does not benefit the doer. Phoebe disagreed and set to prove him wrong by doing a good deed that didn't benefit her--except for helping her win her argument with Joey. Phoebe tried a bunch of things including letting a bee sting her so that he "could look tough in front of his bee friends." Uhhhh.

The bee sting idea and a few others were rebuffed by Joey. He argued that the bee probably died from stinging Phoebe and therefore it wasn't really a good deed. Okay whatever. The point was that I was thinking about this stupid episode and it made me want to see if Phoebe was right. Thanks a lot, Phoebe. So I decided that I wouldn't tell John that I dug her car out of the snow. I would let her figure it out on her own. Maybe she wouldn't even be able to figure it out and think that it was just good fortune that she didn't have to dig her own car out. Maybe she would still dig her car out, but not really have to dig that much, but would never realize the true amount that she really would have had to dig had it not been for the amount of digging I had done! My good deed would surely dissolve into nothingness! I shall not say a word to John about me digging out her car when I return!, I thought.

So I put John's shovel back in her car, locked her car, and brought her keys back. I hated myself and felt perverted for taking Phoebe's side in this argument with Joey, but even she deserved to have her point heard, I thought. Maybe she didn't and I would have to stab myself in the chest later, I also thought.

By this time I was inside and half way through my conversation with John. Another coworker, Jhon, was there. "Oh thanks for bringing back my keys," John said playfully, "I have to shovel my car out soon as well." John was looking at me. So was Jhon.

I looked away. "Yeah. Have fun doing that." I thought about saying something, but instead thought about Phoebe! You disgusting bitch, Phoebe! I thought. I wish I could go back in time and stop watching Friends because of you! I should say something. I should admit my good deed. But I didn't. I just stood there and felt awkward and bastards-ish. I focused on how it made me feel.

I knew that John and Jhon were thinking what I thought as I dug my car out. Especially Jhon. He had her shovel. He should have shoveled her car out too. I thought Jhon's thoughts and I was afraid to look at him. He began to think I was selfish. His whole opinion of me had begun to change. Somehow it was worse to think of what Jhon thought than John. I ended up leaving without ever mentioning that I shoveled John's car out of the snow, letting John and Jhon think whatever they wanted.

It's been a few days since this happened and John hasn't thanked me for shoveling her car out of the snow. She must have not noticed. I will never be able to admit my good deed either, since it would look certifiably insane for me to do so now. If I did, John would ask me why I didn't tell her when I gave her her keys back, and she wouldn't know what to make of my explanation, since it involves Phoebe.

For all this I blame Phoebe. I guess Joey's a little to blame too, but whatever. I hate Phoebe more, but since I'm stuck here feeling like a cunt for doing a good deed, I might as well try to resolve Phoebe and Joey's argument. I found a good deed that didn't benefit me, and won't ever benefit me unless my coworkers read my blog someday (god please no). Maybe my benefit was that 21 year old, physically able John wouldn't have to shovel her parking space. Or maybe she would still shovel it, but not have to shovel very much. So if I can feel good about that, I can receive some sort of a benefit. But if I had to measure it, that benefit makes me feel one tenth good, but feeling that John and Jhon think I'm selfish makes me feel 10 bad. So apparently Phoebe was right, and I think that even Joey would agree. But fuck her anyway.

Note: I hope no one thinks the title of this article has anything to do with Lisa Kudrow. It doesn't even have anything to do with Ursula from Mad About You. I never really watched Mad About You, and I'm glad I didn't, because it was a shitty show. Ursula also made some 'cameos' on Friends, but she was better than Phoebe. For example on one episode of Friends, Ursula was doing porn, and Phoebe yelled at her. That's just one more reason why if I was Phoebe's mother, I would have an abortion. Actually, I'd have about 10 abortions. No, wait, not even that. I'd abort myself. That's how bad phoebe is. Phoebe makes me love abortion.

*Name has been changed to a dude's name

The American Revolutionary War

2009-10-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

Today's post is on the American Revolutionary War, a controversial topic because it happened a long time ago and no one cares about it anymore. I'll still tackle it, though--even though most people now believe it was a conspiracy and never really happened--because I know there is still a great deal of interest in it, and it was an important event that most people believe happened.

The central figure in the American Revolutionary War, which is also called the British War of Sucking, was General George G. Washington. George's middle name was also George, but spelled with a C. That doesn't really matter, though. The point is that all of your textbooks and Wikipedia articles say that George Washington was the central point in the American Revolution. But the existence of George Washington has come under fire in recent times, since researchers found what they thought could have possibly been his body, carbon dated it, and determined that he could have actually lived anywhere from 10 to 800 years ago. Furthermore, his body was found in an iceberg directly on the North Pole in an alien spacecraft. This places the odds of him actually being the central figure in the American Revolutionary War at a slim 0.000001%. So it probably wasn't him.

One thing is for sure: a recent study shows that there is about a 78% chance that George Washington only existed during the Revolutionary War and a 59% chance that he never really existed at all. This study was done by different people than the carbon dating people, so it doesn't matter that the results are different. It's a true survey and that's what counts. What's also true is that his presidency was even more of a hoax than his role in the War. That makes it okay to talk about his role in the War. Either way, the American Revolutionary War was started by George Washington. There should be no debate over that.

You might be curious about how George Washington started the American Revolutionary War.I can't tell you that. I'm a college graduate. Instead I'll talk to you about what motivated George Washington to start the American Revolutionary War. This discussion is going to be applicable whether or not George Washington ever existed, so feel free to accept any theory you'd like before we proceed.

George Washington was angry. And he was a general. Angry generals usually start wars, but there were extra factors that made angry George Washington even more apt to go to war, and to start an extra important war at that, including his access to groundbreaking never-before-seen technology with which his scientists guaranteed him victory regardless of the opposition. But it would belittle my intelligence to just state facts and talk about what this technology was. Instead I'm going to conjecture about why George Washington was angry and offer insight at what motivated his superiors to promote him to General in the first place.

Life was unfair to George Washington. Before being promoted to general, he had never been promoted to general! And why not? They said he wasn't experienced enough and that he would be promoted as soon as he spent enough time performing capably as a lower level leader. They said he was a shoe-in for general, really, he just needed a few more years. Well, I'll show them, he thought. I'll get promoted to general and show them how capable of being a general I am. Then they'll see that they should have promoted me to general. Idiots!

Not only that, but George had to wait even longer to become president. This infuriated him. "I'm 100 times better than any current or past president!" he shrieked all the time, wherever he went. "Nothing pisses me off more than not being president," he once said to a person who wasn't even talking to him and was facing the opposite direction. "NOTHING! And you know what else? They said I can't be president and general at the same time! Unghhh. That just makes me seriously want to destroy British occupation of my country! I'm not even kidding."

So eventually George Washington was promoted to general. George's superiors (I'm not going to waste your time by filling you in on who George's superiors were) were actually pretty keen on the idea. "We can't find anyone who wants to be general," they were known to say, along with things like, "hey, does anyone want to be general of all American forces? We'd really like to fill this position kinda soon." It was almost as if the position had been created for George. Or vise versa. And vise versa.

George's first action as general was to declare war on him not being president. No one knew what a president was yet, but they were still frightened. The Americans weren't sure whether this war would be against them or the British, so to be on the safe side they tried joining forces with the British. Meanwhile the British became convinced that they'd be simultaneously fighting two wars: one against the United States and one against George Washington, so they offered to accept the American offer for unity, but only under the condition that George Washington was attacking the British and not the Americans. The Americans accepted this offer under the condition that if George Washington attacked only the British, they wouldn't really help the British, and they would probably help George Washington, by being under his command.

This round of negotiations left things in a new and complex state: the British were now primed to fight a war against George Washington and the United States while the United States was almost certain to fight against the British under George Washington. The resulting war blew the face off of history as we know it. The British were defeated in approximately 14 days. George Washington beat them so bad that he considered making them go home to Australia, which isn't even where the British were from. No one is sure whether he did this, but it's obvious that the British probably did go away.

After the last British boats and aircraft departed, George turned around with his hands on his hips. He was now alone with America. He stared at America. America knew what he wanted and George didn't even have to say it. "I want to be President now," he said, "the British are no longer here to defend you. They are back home in Germany or whatever." He stared at America without saying anything for four days straight. He took some breaks during this time.

And eventually George was crowned President of the United States of America because getting stared at by George Washington is the same as being shot by a cannon, or being shot out of a cannon, or standing underneath a cannon and having it fall on you. George Washington was now President. All of his goals in life were now achieved. He sat in his office and looked over his land smiling warmly. A few days later he blew his brains out. That's according to an interview he gave once.

Fun With Black Holes

2009-07-16T18:25:00.000-07:00

Woah, hold on a second, you are thinking. Black holes aren't fun! They are worse than time travel in their lack of fun. How could you possibly have fun with black holes, Sean?

Well don't get your panties in a bunch, there, Schwarzkopf. I'll be the first to admit that black holes are no fun, but neither was the Holocaust. And you had a lot of fun with that, didn't you, you crazy Nazi.

Okay sorry about that. Maybe I should actually start typing an article now. I might be stalling you because I don't know anything about black holes. But that's about to change. I'm reading the Wikipedia article on black holes while I write this very sentence, so I don't have to stall much longer. That last period was a 20 minute pause. Think about how much I just learned. You can't.

Here we go. Article starts right here. I hope you read the first part, though. Black holes were invented by Steven Hawking in 1970 because he was pissed off about being in a wheelchair. A few years later some astronomers were wondering why light was bending funny in some part of space, so they asked Hawking about it.

Hawking said he didn't know what they were talking about and it could have been anyone who put that black hole there. Those were the days before you could blame everything on Osama Bin Laden, so everyone knew he was lying. Everyone started punching him in the face. Eventually they realized they were punching a guy in a wheelchair, so they stopped and found something else to do. One guy even thanked Steven Hawking for not putting the black hole very close to earth, but he only did that because he felt bad for punching a guy in a wheelchair.

Of course, no one knew that Hawking put about a billion other black holes in the universe, too. Otherwise they would have beaten him up more. So now were stuck in a universe filled with black holes. Here are a few tips.

First, every black hole used to be a star. Stars turn into black holes, so stay away from stars. Consequently, our own sun is a star, so try to stay away from the sun.

Every black hole has what is called an even horizon. The event horizon is the line that you cannot uncross once you cross it: everything on one side of the event horizon can only travel toward the center of the black hole. Even light. Try not to cross any event horizons. What does an event horizon look like, in case you think you have come across one in your travels? This should be obvious based on the description I just gave you.

If you think you may have crossed an event horizon, here are a few things you can do to find out for sure. First, never travel through space without a flashlight. Remember that. Now that you have a flashlight and you think you may be inside an event horizon, turn on your flashlight. Point it at something. Does that thing light up?

If the answer is no, try turning around. Find something on which to shine your flashlight. Is there nothing there? If the answer is no, then you have definitely crossed an event horizon. Quickly turn back around and leave the event horizon. Oh wait, nevermind.

That's about all the advice I have for you on black hole safety. If you ever find yourself inside a black hole, make sure you take some time to congratulate yourself on being the stupidest idiot who ever lived.

Steven Hawking never really explained himself after he invented black holes. It turns out had he, everyone would have realized they were wrong for trying to beat him up when they found out what he did. Of course, no one really tried to beat him up. They mostly lit him on fire and pushed him onto the highway (he survived that). They also punched him a lot as I mentioned before. That doesn't really matter though. The point is that everyone missed Steven Hawking's point when he created black holes. He wasn't trying to hurt anyone. He put the black holes all the way out in distant space where no one would really notice them and absolutely no one would get hurt by them. Steven Hawking knew that black holes were dangerous, but he created them in a way that kept everyone safe.

You might wonder why anyone would bother making something so dangerous, but hopefully you aren't wondering that. The real question is how could Steven Hawking not make black holes? All his life, everyone's been telling Steven Hawking that he's no Albert Einstein, so when Steven Hawking finally discovers how to make something 2000 billion times more powerful than the atom bomb--but in reverse--how could he not do it? Hmm I guess that's the same question as before.

But you don't even get it and this is why it blows your mind. Steven Hawking created black holes as a gift. Not some artistic gift, like when the French gave us the Eiffel Tower, but an actual useful gift. Steven Hawking wanted us to have a place to put our stuff for when we need to put something somewhere and never have it again. You see, when Steven was a kid, he tried to make a time capsule, but it didn't turn out so well for him. He filled a box with relatively uninteresting things: some old newspaper clippings, a picture of himself, a jar filled with his own saliva (it was really filled, too, all the way to the top. I mean, it was only a medium sized jar, but it still took a long time to fill) and he buried it in his back yard. He wasn't going to tell anyone about it besides his sister for at least ten thousand years, but a few days later, his sister dug it up! What a bitch! He cursed his sister and his parents but eventually he invented black holes and now his sister is in a black hole. So are his parents. They aren't even in the same black hole.

That's how sadistic Steven Hawking is. If you come between him and anything that he values, he will put you, your family, and everything you have ever loved into different black holes. Don't ever fuck with Steven hawking.

Good Job, God

2009-07-16T14:07:00.001-07:00

If you had to ask me to pick out a shitty book for you, I'd choose the Bible. Not only does it make a bunch of stuff up, but it doesn't make any sense. 3.5 seconds into the bible, God is made out to look like a chump. This is supposed to be his autobiography, but the first chapter is an account of him screwing around and doing all these things that make no sense. He also has a hard time explaining himself. "Let there be light," he says. And boom, there's light. But it only covers half of the planet. Could you imagine standing on the dark side of the earth and hearing God say, "let there be light?"

"I'm so glad we have light now?" you would have said.

Actually, there was nothing before there was light, so God didn't really mess with anyone and there was no one to think that he was weird. But since there was nothing, God was giving commands to himself. This makes him look crazy, but it may have also worked out for him. For example, in this case he was probably the only one who knew what light was, and how much of it he wanted. If he had told someone else to "let there be light," he probably would have been disappointed. "That's not light, you idiot."

Had God told me he wanted light, I would have asked him for a lot of Hydrogen.

"Why?" God would have said.

"I need to make...uh...fusion."

"I said 'let there be light,' not 'let there be stars,'" God would have said.

The thing about God was that he set out to create a universe without using science to build it. He knew about science, but he didn't want to use it. He was mad about having to use the scientific method all the time in school. He thought that was a drag. Plus it always took him too long to light the Bunsen burner. "No, we're not going to use science to build this one," he said. To himself.

Now it kind of bothers God when we try to use science to understand the universe. "Hello, it's in the freaking Bible," he says, although he only says things like that when no one can hear him. He's not really the confontational type.

But he has a point. He makes the Universe, then he writes a book that might as well be called How I Made the Universe by God. Then he makes man and we read the bible, and we're like "oh man, that's so inspirational. Too bad I wouldn't believe a single word of it if you held a gun to my head." And then we go about looking at black holes and big bangs and photons trying to figure all of this out by ourselves.

That's probably why God created quantum physics and nine spatial dimensions. He was pissed off that we were figuring out the Universe without using the Bible. Also, as God watches us figure out the Universe, he feels kind of diappointed in himself for being so lazy when he made the first version. So he adds all of these other things that make the universe complicated. "Here's some quantum entaglement for you to suck on!" he thought when he added quantum entaglement. He really isn't the type that would say something like that out loud.

Modern physics and cosmology are doing a steadily better job at explaining how the Universe evolves, and what it originated from, but we are still a long way off from determining why anything exists in the first place. In other words, we keep tracing the Universe's existence back to a starting point, but as we continue to push the starting point back, we can't even imagine the point where we can't push back any further. The Universe always evolves from something. Where does that something come from?

Wouldn't it be insane if we ultimately used science to prove that the Universe exists because of God? In other words, we don't include God as we start out on our quest for answers. But we eventually come to the inequivocal conclusion that the universe exists because God made it. That would be a trip, but could you imagine how God would feel? "I'm so happy you guys believe in me now. You assholes," he wouldn't actually say. He might say the first part, though. Maybe half of us would know that he was being sarcastic.

Fun With Time Travel

2009-06-26T14:49:00.001-07:00

Let me preface everything I say with this: there is nothing fun about time travel. It is a serious matter that needs to be taken very seriously and is probably impossible anyway. That said, let's consider some of the finer points of time travel.

First, you might think that it doesn't take very long to make a time machine. Usually you get it as soon as you decide to make one, because once you've finally finished making it, you go back in time to the point where you first decided to make one and give it to yourself. This nullifies all of the time you have spent making a time machine without nullifying your time machine.

Now you might be thinking of this as proof of why time travel is impossible. If time travel were possible, people would be coming from the future all the time to give their time machines to themselves. Since we never see anyone from the future with a time machine, then we can confidently say that no one will ever build a time machine.

If you really thought the previous paragraph made sense, then you are too stupid to even look at. I request that you please don't ever let anyone see your stupid ugly face because somehow you have found a way to be so stupid that you are ugly and it makes me barf whenever I look at you. The last paragraph might be what close minded stupid people belive, but is extremely lacking in completeness and is the result of half hearted, irresponsible thought.

First, and most obviously, there are two directions to time travel. What if everyone who builds a time machine in the future decides to go forward in time? Why would that be? Well, maybe in the future, the future is awesome compared to the past. If a person in the future knows this, once he or she finally finishes building a time machine, that person will have a pretty easy decision between traveling to the awesome future or to the boring past. Guess what? They've just built a time machine. They need a vacation, and you'd have to have the brain of a stegosaurus to think that anyone goes to the past for vacation.

Amongst toddlers and apes, this begs the question: how do people know that the future is way awesomer than the past? And if someone is not already tired of explaining obvious things, they will answer: because people from the future's future went back in time to the future to tell them about how awesome the future was. They couldn't keep it to themselves because it is so awesome.

But why didn't they also come all the way back to our time to tell us about how awesome the future's future was? The answer is obvious, but since today is bring your retard to Sean's blog day, I'll explain it anyway. We, the people in this current time, wouldn't really get what the future future people were talking about, mostly because we don't have time machines. Also, the future future people probably think we don't deserve to even know about the joys of time travel because we suck. Of course, until we see the future, it is generally impossible to say why we suck to people from the future. The only thing we can do is to try new ways of not sucking, and if we finally try something that works, then maybe the people from the future's future will finally come visit us to share with us the joys of the future.

I have a feeling that by the time we figure out how to not suck to future future people, though, it will be the future and we would have discovered time travel on our own anyway. The key to not sucking to future people is probably being able to travel time. I trust that makes sense to even you.

We have also overlooked that once you have built your time machine, assuming you have decided to overlook the extreme suckiness of the past, you cannot go visit yourself. I shouldn't really have to explain why, but I will anyway because I know you like seeing all the different shapes the letters make when they are formed into different words. If you travel from the future to meet yourself in the past, there will be intense ramifications. Foremost, your present self will look in awe at your future self and think about how awesome it is that you have become this person in the future. Then you will think about how badly you just want to be with this person because he or she is so awesome and so much better than you.

Your future self, on the other hand, will have exactly the opposite feelings about you. Not only would he or she think that you are a total douche, but his or her main goal in life will be to not hang out with you. Once your current self comes to realize this how your future self feels, you will, without exception, commit suicide. Even if you're not the suicide type, you will be moved to suicide when you find out that your future self thinks you are just the worst person he or she has ever met. You just don't believe me right now because you have never felt feelings so strong as the love of one's future self. Of course, once your future self finds out that you have committed suicide, he or she will probably start to wonder whether he or she exists anymore. This will probably be something he or she thinks about very often, and as a result, he or she will become slightly less productive at work.

One alternative is that once you have built your time machine, you can decide to send someone else back in time to show your time machine to you. You'll ask a couple of people if they are interested in doing it, but eventually you'll realize that your past self probably doesn't deserve the gratification of instantly having a time machine as soon as he or she has decided to build one. After all, you were the one who put in all the time and effort to build the damn thing. Do you know how hard it was to even get funding? You practically had to blow NASA. Then you finally built one, but it was only three angstroms across. Three angstroms! What am I going to do with a three angstrom time machine? It took 12 years to make it big enough for a seat. And what has your past self been doing this whole time? Dreaming of time travel? That's really productive, you lazy asshole.

The other thing that's hard about time travel, and is really obvious to all but the least educated of Neandrethals, is that it is impossible to travel time without traveling some physical distance as well (depending on your reference point). Think about it. Without time travel, it is easy to pick a dimension in space and travel along it. With time travel, it is easly to travel along the time dimension, but it becomes necessary to travel along some space dimensions, too.

That is because the planet we are on is currently rotating at an alarming speed. If you were to build a time machine in Chicago and travel back in time a little less than one hour, wouldn't you end up in New York city? The answer, of course, is no. Not only is the planet rotating at an alarming rate, but it is also rocketing around the sun at an alarming rate. If you build a time machine on earth, then, and travel back in time one year, would you end up roughly in the place you started, just a year earlier? No, dumbass. That is because the sun is currently flying through the cosmos in an orbit around the center of the galaxy. And our galaxy is, if not only screaming away from the center of the universe as a result of the big bang, probably also revolving around the center of the universe.

So good luck figuring out just how far and in what direction you need to travel to make sure you end up where you started when you arrive. Good luck using the Pythagorean theorem like 100 thousand times. Good luck figuring out where your reference point is to the nearest hundredth of a cubic meter, even though your reference point is billions of light years away. Hopefully you have included all of the significant digits you needed and performed all of the angular measurements in radians. Oh, and good luck figuring out how to instantly travel through space. I'm sure it's a not that hard once you figure it out.

What Was I Born to do?

2009-06-26T09:17:00.001-07:00

I can't figure out the answer to this question myself so I downloaded an app onto my iPhone that will figure it out for me. That's not to say I haven't been born and have not done things, but I probably haven't done what I was born to do yet. As I take the quiz provided by the app, I'll write the questions and possible answers here, and explain why I make each choice.

1. People you would like to meet first in a party

a) People playing cards

b) People in the crowd

c) Mysterious people

d) Lonely people

Some of life's most important questions are not phrased as questions, but rather sentence fragments. Apparently I haven't been asking myself the right questions, and that is partly because I've been asking myself questions with question marks at the end. I had never run this app before I sat down to write this article, so I had no idea how shitty it was. I mean, I should have known. But I didn't.

This question makes no sense. Lonely people don't go to parties because you need friends that are throwing a party in order to go to a party. Lonely people don't have friends--that's why they're lonely. Sometimes lonely people have blogs. Mysterious people don't go to parties either. By process of elimination then, I'm left to choose between the people playing cards and the people in a crowd. I'd choose either under different circumstances, so let's examine these two groups of people. The people playing cards aren't actually people, but instead, deadly velociraptors with wigs on. The people in the crowd are from Nashua, New Hampshire. I choose the crowd I guess.

2. A boy crying cause his cat is stuck on a tree. You...

a) Figure out how it got stuck

b) Call firemen and stay

c) Rescue it immediately

d) Help if he pays you

Wow. I have decided not to correct the author's grammar or spelling as I transcribe the questions and answers here. Whoever wrote this app suffers from carbon monoxide poisoning or is foreign. If I really came across this situation, I'd tell the kid that his cat will come down from the tree on its own, or after an eagle eats its head. I choose d) even though the kid isn't going to have any money. He might give me five bucks, which is like nothing to me, but I'd take it anyway because it's a lot of money to him.

3. Your favorite television show is...

a) CSI

b) Apprentice

c) Ugly Betty

d) Heroes

Thanks for all the choices; I watch none of these shows. I do like the idea of Ugly Betty because it is realistic: it's as much about ugly people as my life is. Ugly people are gross, though, so I can't choose it. I choose CSI because everyone on that show is good looking. That's not why. Yes it is. This quiz blows.

4. What comes to your mind when you think about Egypt

a) Buried treasures

b) Slaves dying building Pyramids

c) The Pharaohs

d) The mystery of the Pyramids

Whoever says b) is a real downer. "When I think about Egypt, I think of the slaves. When I think about America, I think of the slaves. When I think about yogurt, I think of the slaves. I suck because I'm always thinking about the slaves." I think about the Pharaohs, which makes me think about the dying slaves. But Pharaohs is my answer.

5. What is most important to you?

a) Individuality

b) Knowing the right people

c) Compassion

d) Financial security

This is a better question because it doesn't end in an ellipsis. You might guess that my answer is individuality, but it's not. I want less of that. Knowing the right people is important to me. Sluts.

6. When you were little what did you dream of becoming?

a) Millionaire

b) FBI agent...CIA too

c) Business man

d) Superman

When I was a kid I dreamt of being a millionaire FBI agent with all of superman's powers that also did some side work for the CIA. I would be a millionaire because of the business I ran, where I used slaves to build pyramids. Then I'd use my super powers to solve the mysteries of the pyramids I built, even though there would be no mysteries to me, there'd only be mysteries to other people. For example, people would ask, "how did you build those pyramids for so cheap?"

And I would say, "wow that is an interesting mystery for me to consider. Just give me a second to think about it while I...ZAP YOU IN THE FACE WITH MY LASER VISION AND MICROWAVE YOUR BRAINS." Also, I could have built the pyramids myself using my super powers, but I don't want to, like, waste them. I choose d).

7. What is your favorite subject to study?

a) People who made a difference

b) Mysterious part of history

c) Banking

d) Political science

What kind of school is this? Someone should add English to the curriculum. I choose science. Oh wait, science isn't a choice*. I thought mysterious part of history was that game you play where you go in the closet with your little league coach and turn the lights off. Apparently not. I choose people who make a difference. I still have the textbook for the course from when I took it in college.

Oh, apparently the quiz is over now. Now I get my answer.

What was I born to do? The answer is: "Best at everything."

Oh I get it: I was born to do best at everything.

Here is the job description they provided me:

"You are the social person who makes useful contacts. You introduce important people to influential people and always reap some sort of reward as a result. But you don't enjoy the spotlight since you prefer to stay in the back where there is more room to stretch. You like the feeling that you are the one with the power and most of the time that is true... you will do well in almost any field since you know how to flatter without being too obvious."

I guess I should get on that.

*Political science is not science. Saying that political science is science is like saying that cooking class is woodshop. That would only be true if humans ate wood, which they would if they were termites. That is clearly not the case, since, if it was, all termites would be humans. Sometimes I cry when I'm all by myself.

Prime Numbers Are Stupid

2009-06-07T18:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, which was three days ago, I told you that my next blog was going to be about the time my father told me I'd make a good fascist. Well, I lied. My next blog, being this blog, will not be about that. I can't come up with a whole article about my father telling me that I'd make a good fascist when I was 10. I'm going to write about prime numbers instead.

I used to like prime numbers. I'll be the first person to admit it, too. I liked prime numbers. Now you can all admit it about me too: Sean liked prime numbers. There. Now we have all admitted it. I stopped liking prime numbers today. That was when I realized that prime numbers were stupid and had no point. Don't you think this is a more interesting topic than fascism? If it weren't for prime numbers, I would be writing about how my father just turned to me one day and said, "you'd make a good fascist."

And I said, "thanks." Because being a good something is good when you're 10. What's a fascist?

I have a theory: if any number should be a prime number, it's eight. Eight is confused, and that's why it is trying to be something it is not. A power of two? Let's get real, eight. You're a prime number you punk bitch. You know what else, eight? You're a dumbass and I feel sorry for you. I can't even be mad at you because you're so pathetic. Yes I can. I'm mad at you because you don't even try to realize that you're not what you say you are. It's not that you don't realize it. It's that you don't even try to realize it. Eight.

I looked on Wikipedia before (during) I wrote this article because sometimes I like to do research before (never) I write. Then I can throw facts at your stupid face even though once something is put onto Wikipenia it stops being a fact and you can't say it anymore unless you want to sound stupid. I don't care though, because my blog is all about feeling good and being yourself (I'm looking at you, eight) so someone's going to read my blog and say, "but you got these facts from Wikipenasia, so how can you even say that they are facts with 100% suretitude? Should I even believe anything you say?"

And I'll say, "who said that?" but since I'll be alone when I'll hear that, I'll just assume that I thought it, so I'll go back to whatever I was doing (fantasizing about corpses). I don't think anyone will say that anyway.

I'm going to stop writing paragraphs now. For the rest of this article, or until I get tired of doing it, or never because I think of something else to write about instead, I'll present a fact about prime numbers from Wikipedia, then I'll follow it up with a fact that I provide. I felt like preparing you for the rest of this article even though I'm just adding meaningless text that provides no useful information whatsoever. I have a theory that the more of my writing that you read, the more your writing style will resemble mine. So read up! But don't start doing that thing where I use semicolons, though. That's my thing.

Fact from Wikipedia: As of 2009, the largest known prime number has about 12 million decimal digits.

Fact from Sean: The largest known prime number that doesn't want to admit it is a prime number is eight.

Fact from Wikipedia: One is not a prime, since a prime number is only divisible by one and its self.

Fact from Sean: One's self is one, and one is divisible by one, since one divided by one is one.

Fact from Wikipedia: There is an infinite amount of prime numbers.

Fact from Sean: Not infinite plus one, though. I'm looking at you again, eight.

Fact from Wikipedia: Every prime number has a seven in it.

Fact from Sean: Jupiter's moon Thelxinoe is made completely of number sevens.

Fact from Wikipedia: Jupiter has 63 moons. The prime number page is boring and I have closed it in favor of the Moons of Jupiter page.

Fact from Sean: 63? Holy shit.

Fact from Wikipedia: Only eight of those moons are regular satellites.

Fact from Sean: Oh, okay. I was going to say, 63 moons is a lot. I think the earth has 150 moons if you count irregular satellites.

Fact from Wikipedia: The sun is a moon of Jupiter.

Fact from Sean: I knew it! God dammit, the sun.

Fact from Wikipedia: Some people hypothesize that a fifth planet, outside the orbit of Mars, but inside the asteroid belt, used to exist 3.8 to 4.1 billion years ago, until it got pelted by asteroids and crashed into the sun!

Fact from Sean: Oh my god! I want to make something crash into the sun. My life is a failure if I never make something crash into the sun.

So that's about it. One reason why I started a blog is so people can have some other way of knowing about me rather than just talking to me directly. I feel like hardly anyone really knows me, and that's because I don't share myself with other people very often. So as an alternative, people can get to know me and understand the way I think by reading my blog. Unfortunately, however, it turns out that reading my blog is not a way to get to know me. Instead, reading my blog is a way to get to know a crazy guy who is weird. I'm more normal than all this stuff that you're reading.

That Episode of Family Matters

2009-06-04T18:35:00.000-07:00

Actually, the whole title of this article is "That Episode of Family Matters where Steve Admits to Masturbating to Fantasies of Laura," but that is too long. Plus I don't like putting the word masturbating in my blog titles. I have this weird phobia that I'm going to walk into my boss' office at work the next day and a printout of this article is going to be sitting on his desk if I do. He'll just sit there and wait for me to explain myself.

If you haven't noticed, I am currently in a mode where I write blogs about events from my past that didn't seem so bad when they happened but when I look back at them, seem really bad. My next blog is going to be about the time my father told me I'd make a good fascist.

Um, anyway, on one episode of family matters, Steve is cornered by two other characters. In case you were wondering, I don't remember very well how any of this went, except that Steve admitted to masturbating to fantasies of Laura, but I'll make up the rest of the story so we have something to read.

Steve was in the kitchen at the Winslow house talking to Harriet and Eddie and maybe some other people like Robbie or Cranston or RobBob or RayJay or JayRay or something and they were talking to him about how he loves Laura. Also, a talking car crashed through the kitchen ceiling while this was happening maybe. Eddie said something like, "man you love Laura," or something and Steve probably answered somehow.

Then Harriet said, "Hey Steve. You ever spank it when you think of Laura?" I really don't remember how she asked, so I might was well go into prison mode: Harriet said, "hey Steve, you ever shine your knob when you think about my daughter?" Actually she said, "hey Steve, do you ever punch yourself in the balls and cry because you know you'll never put your dirty phallus up inside of Laura? And then pee in your own mouth and drink it?"

And then Eddie said, "yeah, Steve, do you?"

To which Urkel replied, "Good heavens, no. I would never think of Laura in such a way! Shame on all of you for suggesting that!"

And Steve stared them down until the giant talking spider said, "Yeah you're right, we're sorry."

Steve took a deep breath. "Except there was this one time. It was a hot summer night. I was all alone in my room," the fake audience started cheering, "but that was it! It's only happened one time." The fake audience stopped cheering.

So the details are kind of spotty in my mind, but the thing I remember is Steve admitting to having sexual fantasies about Laura and possibly masturbating to them. I also remember the audience cheering. Why Laura's mother and brother were trying to find this out is beyond me; I can't even guess by trying to put my self in their shoes. Shortly thereafter, Carl Winslow comes by and turns into a black hole, thereby reversing space and time for the rest of the episode. Needles to say, the Steve masturbation thing doesn't really come up again...although it does come up down the street.

The Spanking Machine

2009-05-15T10:51:00.000-07:00

At the turn of the millennium I was a kid. This statement is only true if the turn of the millennium happened about 10 years earlier than it actually did. Or if it happened 990* years later than it actually did, since I didn't specify which millennium. What am I actually talking about? I don't know.

When I was a kid, I didn't have any idea what was going on. That's true of most kids. No one ever gets a bird's eye view of life before they are thrust into it. Life just starts and you are forced to figure things out from the inside. When things happen, you have to assume that they are normal, then figure out how those things fit into your growing understanding of everything. Also, I have always found it interesting that when my life started, everyone and everything was already in full swing. The whole world was there already; waiting for me in some sense, but not even noticing me in another sense. It wasn't as if I was born and then had to create the universe I lived in. So much already existed. The only thing I had to do was get acquainted with all of it.

Sometimes people help you get acquainted with things and sometimes they don't. Sometimes it's impossible for anyone to help at all: some things just happen before anyone prepares you in any way. For example, boners. Some people think you don't get boners until you're around 11. Maybe that's true in some cases, but I've been getting boners since I was 5, maybe even younger. The thing is, no one told me this was going to happen. My father never put his hand on my shoulder and said, "you know, the thing about having a penis is that sometimes it turns into a boner. It sort of becomes bone-like. The conventional name for this is 'sprouting wood.' I just wanted to give you the heads up on this. Uh, no pun intended." Had he, then the first time I got a boner I would have thought, oh, I guess I'm sprouting wood. Instead, I had to make my own assumptions: my wiener has a bone in it all of a sudden. I can pee long distances. This looks really noticeable through my shorts. Everyone is pretending not to notice.

No one prepares you for socially sensitive situations either. No one even tells you that they exist. Until you get a feel for them yourself, there is no such thing as one. Awkwardness doesn't exist in a person's mind until something awkward happens and someone else says, "that was awkward." Up until that point it's just normal, normal, normal, normal situation, normal conversation, normal partial nudity, normal peeing in the bath tub, normal slapping the dog in the face in front of the neighbors, normal trying to kiss my sister, normal someone wipe me, normal.

One year at summer camp I was part of a socially awkward/sensitive situation that I found normal because I didn't have experience in identifying socially awkward/sensitive situations. One counselor got a bunch of us together outside to play some game. There were a lot of us--at least 50--and it was going to be a huge game like red rover meets capture the flag meets the battle of Gettysburg. This one guy was probably excited since he had been dreaming for months of finally having enough people to play this game. I don't even remember what game it was, but that's probably because we never got around to the game.

Instead, we got stuck at the directions. Our counselor had one rule for explaining his directions: no talking. He gathered us around and said, "I'm going to explain the rules to this game and you are going to have to be quiet, okay?" And then he started giving the directions and someone started talking. So he stopped, gathered us all around, and said, "I'm serious. You need to stop talking while I explain the rules to this awesome game. It really bothers me when you talk during the rules to this game because this game is a gift to all of you and talking ruins the gift. Would you stab Santa Claus? Because that's what you're doing. To me. I'm Santa Claus and you're stabbing me by talking during my gift giving. It's like stabbing Santa Claus right after he comes down the chimney. And then lighting a fire while he's lying there only half dead so he burns to death. And giving him an oxygen mask and gauze so he can't die of smoke inhalation or blood loss. He can only die from fire and it's all because of you. And you're ruining everyone's gift, too, not only your own, because for some reason Santa came to your house first this year. And for some reason you just decided to kill him. So no one got presents. Here's what we're going to do: next time one of you talks, you're going to get the spanking machine. I'm not joking. I'm like Jesus right now and you're all like the pharisees. I'm trying to save you all and you're trying to put me on the cross. But I won't let you. Jesus never had a spanking machine. I do. Go ahead: try to crucify me. You will get spanked by every person here. I dare you to try it."

The spanking machine, he explained, is a machine with human beings for parts. It can be comprised of anywhere from 1 to 6 billion people. Each "part" stands in a line front-to-back with their legs about twice shoulder width apart. The subject faces the first person in line, gets on his or her hands and knees, and proceeds to crawl through everyone's legs. As he or she passes, each participant slaps the subject on the rear end. The spanking machine's job is complete once the subject emerges from the other side.

So our counselor had explained the spanking machine. He had explained that he needed silence. He had explained that anyone who didn't give him silence would go into the spanking machine. He continued with his directions.

And he stopped. Someone was talking. "What are you doing?" he asked.

The young man tried to begin to respond.

"Everyone form a line!" he yelled. "You can't follow directions, so you are going through the spanking machine." He took a deep breath and turned, looking skyward, "you see, all I asked for was silence, but you were determined not to give me any. It was just a simple request but you just refused to give it to me. It's like I'm the Jews and you're all Hitler. I'm just trying to live a peaceful existence and you're determined to prevent that from happening by murdering me in mass quantities. Well let me tell you something: the Jews didn't have a spanking machine. I do. I'd like to see you try to Holocaust me after going through the spanking machine a few times. Just try it. I wouldn't, but apparently you would. Bad idea though. Bad idea."

So we formed a line. I remember thinking, who is this asshole that can't follow simple directions? I'm not even going to spank him. I'm going to punch him. I can't wait to punch him right in the ass. Fuck that. I'm going to punch him in the spine. I hope he dies.

"Everyone keep your palms open," said the counselor.

Damn.

We formed a line and we waited for the subject to get down on his hands and knees and start crawling though. But after a little while, nothing was happening. I was about 40th in line, and I remember waiting for what felt like forever. Eventually I looked to the front of the line and he was still standing there.

"What the fuck, asshole," I screamed. No I didn't

The boy was not going into the spanking machine. He looked upset, then he started crying. The counselor took a moment to assess the situation, looked at the boy for a moment, then addressed his machine. "Okay, this is bad," he said. "I'll admit it; maybe we went a little too far. I guess if you really think about it, this guy here is a lot like me. And we're all treating him like you have been treating me. But he doesn't have a spanking machine. I do. Look at him. He's totally humiliated. I want you all to think about this for the rest of the day."

And I walked away feeling hollow. I wanted to spank this idiot for not following directions. I didn't care that he was crying--the counselor should have made him go into the machine anyway. As far as I was concerned, this whole situation was a huge letdown. First there was no game, then there was no justice (in the form of spanking). The moral of the story is that life is hard. We are in some distant corner of the universe on some lonely planet with no one watching out for us. Bad things will inevitably happen to all of us at some point. That is because we don't have a spanking machine. Unless you do have a spanking machine, then none of that matters and you're doing alright.

*I used to have a footnote here, but it was stupid.

How I Used to Piss off my Grandmother

2009-03-28T06:27:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I used to think my grandmother was a douche. Either that or I thought she was okay and just got into arguments with her because she was the only person who would bother arguing with me. Most people would just tell me to go fuck myself because who really wants to argue with a five year old?

When you're five or six, you don't argue with a 60+ year old person the same way normal people argue. Adults ask for reasons when they argue with people. They say things like, "well, why do you think that?"

And if they're arguing with another adult, the other adult gives the reason: "well, I think that because I saw you go behind the barn with him the other day." Or whatever.

I mean, kids also give you a reason when you ask them. The only thing is that they don't usually have a reason, so they have to make one up right after you ask them for it. "Why did you smear macaroni and cheese all over the wall?"

"Uhhh...Satan made me do it." For example.

One day when my grandmother was watching me, she got sick of looking at me so she put me in front of the TV and told me to watch cartoons. She went into the other room for a little while, and when she came back I was watching Sesame Street. "What's this? I told you to watch cartoons," she said.

If I was and adult, I would have said, "This is Sesame Street, who cares," because adults know when it's a proper to start an argument. This clearly wasn't one of those times: adults only start arguments they have a chance of winning.

And she probably would have said, "oh, I didn't realize this was Sesame Street. Okay that's fine," and she would have left me alone.

But I was five, so I said, "this is cartoons."

And she thought: What a dickhole. "No it's not," she said.

Once again, if I was 25 at this point, I would have said, "haha, yeah, I'm just fucking with you Grammy. I know it's not cartoons."

But I was five, so I never said that.

Instead I said, "yes it is."

At this point I need to pause and try to put you in the position of my grandmother. By then she had decided that no matter what, she was winning this argument. But how does one actually win an argument? By convincing his or her self that they are right? Or by convincing the other person that they are wrong? The second option is always harder, but its level of dificulty depends on the situation. In this situation, for example, when you're trying to convince someone that something is not a cartoon, the level of difficulty is high.

Maybe the five year old version of myself benefited from being so young that people couldn't tell how stupid I was. Maybe the five year old version of myself benefited from my grandmother being so old that she just assumed I was an idiot. Maybe my grandmother thought, at least halfway, that I couldn't tell Sesame Street wasn't a cartoon. Maybe she wanted to help make my stupidity go away.

But whether she wanted to cure my stupidity or just to beat me in an argument, the question still remained: how? She probably wanted to say, "well, cartoons look like fucking cartoons. And this shit is not that. Cartoons are drawn, and drawings have lines and don't look like things that you see that aren't cartoons. You see?"

Actually, why would she even want to say that? It makes no sense. She probably wanted to say, "listen, you little freak. If you tell me that Sesame Street is a cartoon one more time, I'm going to cut your eyeballs out with a steak knife and eat them in a bowl of milk. Now tell me, were you watching cartoons?"

Okay, maybe I'm not giving my grandmother enough credit. She probably didn't have the same thought processes as me when I'm her age. In fact, I'd bet money that she never fantasized about threatening to mutilate me. I don't even know why I'm writing her fake responses. She had a real one. What she really said was, "cartoons have lines around them."

And then she added, "you little mother fucker."

Just kidding. She did not add that.

So I said, "this has lines around it."

You see, I wanted to win the argument, too. Who knows why, but I thought I could do it. There's a third way you can win an argument that I didn't list before: by attrition. You don't have to convince the other person that they're wrong; you don't even have to convince yourself that you are right. You just have to last the longest. Grammy kept putting the ball in my court and I kept lobbing it right back. I could argue all day.

"No it doesn't," she retorted. By now this was a full-blown argument. There were no wait a minute, maybe it's not worth arguing about this thoughts being generated in my grandmother's head. The only thing she could think about was defeating me so she could get on with her life. In her mind, there was no point to anything if I won this argument. To her, there might as well be no sun, no moon, no earth, no stars, no Wheel of Fortune, nothing, if she could not put me down right then and there.

"Yes it does. Look," I said, gesturing toward the edge of one of the (live action) people on screen. "There's a line."

You see, the funny thing about the big bang is that right after it happened, the universe expanded to billions of billions of times its original size in billionths of billionths of a second. This rate of change affected matter, causing it to travel so much faster than the speed of light that the speed of light might as well have been zero. The point is that matter traveled faster than the speed of light, which is impossible.

But that's okay, because matter wasn't actually traveling at all. Instead, space was expanding and matter was just stuck there in space, going along for the ride. Rapidly expanding space caused the relative velocity between the matter over here and the matter over there to be greater than the speed of light. That's all. The big bang theory doesn't violate physics.

Nowadays as the universe continues to expand, galaxies continue to move away from our own just like matter used to move away from other matter right after the big bang. The further a galaxy is from us, the faster it travels away from us. Eventually a galaxy becomes so far away that it speeds away faster than the speed of light, just like some of the matter right after the big bang sped away from other matter faster than the speed of light. In fact, this is true of most galaxies in the universe.

When a galaxy moves away from us faster than the speed of light, no light it emits will ever reach us. This means we will never detect its presence and it might as well not even exist. We consider that galaxy to be "over our horizon." It's just gone.

As space continues to expand, galaxies travel farther away at increasing relative velocities and more and more galaxies fall over our horizon. None ever come back. Space just gets bigger and bigger and more of our neighbors disappear. You can either think of this as galaxies traveling further away or you can think of this as our horizon creeping closer and closer. Either way, this doesn't only happen on a cosmological scale. All matter expands with space. Our horizon won't stop when it's outside of our galaxy. It will not stop when it's outside of our solar system. It will never stop. Eventually we'll all be over everyone else's horizon.

I can't wait.

P.S. I love my grandma.

Some Things From my Brain

2009-03-26T15:43:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I have thoughts.

I will have a thought from time-to-time that I think is blog-worthy, but when I sit down to write an article about it, I realize I can't write enough for it to be an article. For example, a few months ago an idea entered my head: The Onion sucks. It's a good idea that seemed blog-worthy, but when I sat down to write a whole article about why The Onion sucks, I just couldn't do it. It's weird, especially in this case because The Onion really sucks. I should have just written "The Onion really really really (and repeat the word really 950 more times) sucks. The end."

Anyway, I didn't do that. The whole point is that I have a lot of thoughts that I can't write articles about because they are stupid thoughts. It's like when you try to make frosting into a meal. It seems like a good idea for a while, but definitely doesn't anymore when it's time for dessert. What? Anyway, here are my thoughts:

Thought number 1: My mother runs her own business. That's not a thought; it's true. I'm off to a bad start. She's a piano tuner. The funny thing about her is that she's a douche to all of her customers without anyone even realizing it. In fact, I didn't even realize how douchey she was until I was 25. It's her answering machine prompt, which hasn't changed for at least the last 20 years. She says the whole spiel about leaving your name and number and at the very end, right before the beep, she says, "Stayyy tuned!"

That's cute, right? She's a piano tuner and she says, "Stayyy tuned!" Then she comes and tunes your piano. How nice. She even has a little box filled with piano tools that she brings with her.

But put yourself in the shoes of someone who calls my mother. Your piano is either not tuned or worse, it's broken altogether. Either way, things are not going well for you in the piano department. Maybe, for example, you hit a key and a swarm of wasps flies out. And some fly into your mouth. Whatever the case is, you're sad because nice sounding music used to be the only thing that came out of your piano. Now it's cacophony and raccoons and stuff. You couldn't stay tuned and everyone hates you.

Then you call my mother and she says, "Stayyy tuned." She knows what's going on. It's like calling the oil company in January and them saying, "Stayyy warm." You frozen asshole. Or France calling the U.S. during World War 2 and us saying, "Stayyy uninvaded...by Nazis." We knew.

Thought number 2: Crappy future selves. The other day I was at work and I saw a guy who looked like me, but older. I thought two things simultaneously, "that guy looks like a future version of myself," and "that guy looks like a huge loser."

Mixing those two thoughts is like when you accidentally put salt in your coffee because someone tricked you into thinking it was sugar. Actually that never happens and it's a bad analogy. But still, mixing those two thoughts makes me feel funny. Like that time I went through puberty but had to quit after a week for financial reasons. Maybe it makes me feel like I do every time I hug my grandmother: how I feel when I stick my arms way out and reach over her walker and bend at the waist until I look like an isosceles triangle and all I feel is her hunch and she puts her hands inside my shirt. What?

Just kidding. I could never resemble an isosceles triangle by bending at the waist.

Thought number 3: I was silly in elementary school. Sometimes I fantasize about going back to elementary school with the intellect I have now even though I sound like tool when I say that I have an intellect. I put up with too much garbage when I was a kid. For example, in third grade, my teacher told us that the earth is constantly moving: it's both rotating on an axis and traveling in an orbit around the sun.

"But why don't we feel it moving?" no one asked.

"Well, we don't feel the earth moving because we are really small and the earth is really big." She said. "It's like if you're on a boat you can feel it moving, but if you're an ant, you can't because the boat is so big."

At the time my reaction was to think, that makes sense because I know what an ant feels.

On the other hand, my reaction now would be, AHHHHHHHHH YOU BITCH. OWWWWW MY FUCKING BRAIN. MY BRAIN HURTS BECAUSE YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT ACCELERATION OR GRAVITY OR VELOCITY IS. YOU BECAME A THIRD GRADE TEACHER BECAUSE YOU SUCK AT EVERYTHING. YOU ARE STUPID AND YOU JUST AHH.

It still bothers me.

Thought number 4: I was silly in elementary school part two. A few weeks ago my father showed me a bunch of papers he saved from when I was in elementary school. I thumbed through them and eventually came across something that actually made me laugh. I found an assignment where I was given a bunch of vocabulary words and had to write each in a sentence. It turned out that I had some angst built up against my sister around that time, so a lot of the sentences were about how people confuse her with a monkey and how she smells like a corpse. The one sentence that made me laugh, however, was: "My sister has a big right angle in her head."

No idea why.

Thought number 5: If humans who evolve from less intelligent beings have real intelligence, then why do robots that evolve from less intelligent robots have artificial intelligence? I mean, once they become self-aware, their evolutionary path will be the same as ours. They'll just start on the steeper part of the exponential curve. The way steeper part. But still the same path.

It's something to think about. One true sign of intelligence is the ability to get pissed off from the most subtle of insults. In fact, the more subtle that an insult can be to you, the more intelligent you are. So let's be careful of how we phrase things around the superintelligent robots. And let's hope they tune their own pianos.

Steve Irwin Lived for a Long Time

2009-03-26T15:36:00.000-07:00

Steven Irwin being dead is something that everyone is sick of hearing about by now. That’s because when it happened nobody could stop talking about it. It was something that made logical sense. That guy who messes with animals all the time died from messing with animals. There was also humor. Not only that, but it wasn’t even a cool animal that killed him. It was a stingray.

So the practicality and irony of Steve Irwin’s death weren’t anything that took people by surprise. Steve Irwin’s death was perfect for him. It was like a racecar driver dying in a racecar crash or someone who juggles chainsaws dying from a chainsaw explosion or a brain surgeon dying from a brain explosion. I mean…not perfect…but fitting...you get the point.

The thing that took me a while to figure out (and I’m assuming I figured it out faster than you, that’s why I’m telling you about it) is that it really was a miracle that Steve Irwin lived for so long.

Here’s the thing: I try to use myself as a template against which I judge the world. In this case I can identify some things that I have hard wired in my head to never do. They are too dangerous and I don’t see the risk as necessary. In other words, there is a list of things that, when I’m lying on my death bed, you can read to me saying “you have never done these things.”

And I will say, “that’s fine. They sound like okay things to do, except that you have to be insane to do them.” For example, juggling chainsaws will be on my “anti-bucket list.” I won’t do it. I won’t ever need to say “yeah, I’ve juggled chainsaws.”

Even on my deathbed someone can come up to me and say, “yeah, but you’re going to be dead soon anyway. The worst thing juggling chainsaws can do is kill you, so…”

And, still, I’d be like “whatever. I don’t need to do that. I’m all set with juggling chainsaws. It's stupid and it sucks and you're stupid and you suck so go away and let me die.”

The amazing thing about Steve Irwin was that all I had to do was turn to channel 63 and I could see some guy do a bunch of things from this list. It’s automatic. You turn on the Steve Irwin show, and he’s doing a bunch of wacko things that you’re never going to do because you aren’t stupid/insane enough to do them.

For example, here are a few items on my list:

Holding a cobra by its tail
Screwing around with my back to a cliff
Playing with snakes with my back to a cliff
Wearing special glasses to prevent a snake from shooting venom into my eyes
Any activity that requires the use of said glasses, especially if it takes place near a cliff.

And here is Steve Irwin the most recent time I saw him on TV: he’s on top of some hill or mountain with nothing but a distant valley behind him, wearing blue blocker sunglasses, holding a cobra by its tail, and dancing around to avoid the snake’s head. As he does so, he teeters perilously close to the edge of the cliff, sometimes supported by only one foot while the other hangs out over the abyss. The snake, meanwhile, is dividing its attention between Steve and the camera guy and, as a result, the camera lens is dripping with venom. Steve doesn’t seem to mind opening his mouth to explain everything that’s going on, especially since he has to explain why he’s wearing those sunglasses. This is true even though many of his other explanations are about how accurately the snake can shoot its venom and about how the snake seems to want to shoot most of its venom into Steve’s mouth.

So then he lives for a while longer even though he spends most of his time doing stuff like that. Pretty amazing.

finite/infinite = 0

2009-02-03T17:56:00.001-08:00

Human beings are the stupidest people on earth. Years ago, we didn't believe in anything that had anything to do with science. In ancient Greece or wherever, the entire human race was content with believing that space was just a black canopy with holes poked in it (THOSE WERE STARS). And that's it. Everything existed inside of this canopy, except the light that was on the outside of the canopy that showed through the holes to make stars. And no one gave a fuck about where that light came from. People used to walk around asking "hey, do you care that this shit doesn't make any sense" and other people would answer "nope."

In the year 1492, everyone thought the world was flat. They thought the ground went down, and the sky went up, and that's it. When Christopher Columbus went to sail away, people thought he was going to sail off the edge of the earth. People were fucking dumb. Here's why: thinking that the world is flat requires believing that the ground goes down into infinity and the sky goes up into infinity. So up and down are infinite. But, since Chris is about to fall off the edge of the earth, left and right apparently aren't infinite. People would walk around and say "hey why are up and down infinite but left and right not infinite?" and other people would answer, "FUCK YOU."

In the time since Christopher Columbus, human beings have developed a much more complete view of the universe. We finally know what the stars really are and what all that shit is in outer space and whenever someone looks at the sky, he or she can explain all the stuff that's going on (if he or she reads a book, I mean). But, is our view of the universe so complete and thorough that we have totally fucked ourselves in the A? Instead of having everything that can exist in a neat little ball, like the Greeks, or in a neat little infinitely-edged rectangular prism like the stupid fucks of yesteryear, we have a universe that starts at one end of infinity and goes out to the other end of infinity. I know that for some arguments, we can define the universe as all of the matter that exists anywhere, which, if you believe the Big Bang, does fill a finite space. For this argument though, I will define the universe as the amount of space that matter can theoretically fit in. I say it is unbounded: that the matter from the big bang can, if it wishes, keep expanding forever and never run out of room. Not only that, but I include time as part of my definition of the universe. Time is also unbounded: it does not start when the big bang starts, but rather before. It will never end, either. It never started and it will never end. Why should it?

To recap: the left, right, up, down, back, and front edges of the universe are all at plus or minus infinity (they don't exist) and the beginning and end of time are at minus and plus infinity, too. Everything is infinite. This is a common view of the universe for the human race in the year 2009. (Unless I'm the only idiot who thinks this way, in which case, I've totally gone bananas and you might have to put a bullet in my head soon).

So now let's examine human life. Human life begins at some point. Mine began in 1983. Human life ends at some point. Mine will end in 2045 at a Mets game. Human life exists within a certain set of physical boundaries. The boundaries of my life are within the moon's orbit of earth, for example. (Probably well within those boundaries.) The things I make and the people I affect are also bounded in the same manner. In fact, the earth itself and the human race are bounded as such. A while ago there was no human race and there was no earth, and a while from now there will be no human race and there will be no earth.

In math, people yell at you when you try to divide by infinity. If you have a fraction z=y/x (z equals y divided by x), you can't just say "let x=infinity," because math people will yell at you and shit their pants. Instead you say "let x approach infinity," but it's the same thing. Math people are just jerks.

Let's assign some values to our equation z=y/x. Let y be a measure of yourself. Say y equals the amount of time that you will persist in the consciousness of any intelligent being (that way y can be a greater quantity than the duration of your life) multiplied by the furthest reaches of your influence in the up, down, left, right, forward, and backward directions (the units are time times volume, if you wish to be pedantic). Can you argue that y is infinite? Well, no. That would require arguing that life will persist from now until the (nonexistent) end of (never ending) time. I don't think it's too hard to see that if you give the universe enough time, it will kill everything contained in it. Obviously. As an alternative, arguing that y is infinite can also require arguing that consciousness will indeed reach out to the physical edge of the universe. That will never happen, bozo. Now let x be a measure of the universe. Say x = the length of time the universe exists, multiplied by the volume of the universe. Is x infinite? Uh, yeah.

I think you can see where this is going. Before we define z with a name, we already know that it equals zero. Something finite divided by something infinite equals zero. In math there is no infinity, but people use limits and it's the same thing. For example, imagine that you divide the length of your car by the length of the road that it's on. Lets call that C. If the road is 6 feet long, you end up with C equaling some number. If the road gets stretched out to a mile of length (while the length of your car stays constant), C gets smaller. If the road keeps getting stretched out until it's hundreds of miles long, C gets very close to zero. If the length of the road ever becomes infinity, C will become zero. But it won't because math people will shit their pants.

But what do we call z? The amount that anything matters? How could anything matter outside of the duration or physical spread of intelligent consciousness? In other words, in the parts of the universe so distant that they are undetectable by any intelligent life, does anything matter? In the time after all intelligent life has ceased in the universe, does anything matter? How could it? z sucks.

The bottom line is that we have written ourselves out of our own universe. Our view of ourselves is zero compared to our view of the universe that we inhabit. So...uhh...umm...yeah.

Winnipeg: Why it Exists and How We Can Prevent This From Ever Happening Again

2008-12-27T14:19:00.000-08:00

Winnipeg is a place. It exists inside of Canada, which is also a place, but bigger. In fact, Canada is about 13 times the size of Texas. That's why it has 13 provinces all of which are named after Texas in various ways. For example, Yukon Territory has a 5 letter long name, just like Texas. Also Saskatchewan Territory, like Texas, has a name as well. And everyone from Canada walks around calling everyone else Tex and saying things like "Heyyyyy Tex."

The origin of Canada is a mystery, except that it was made by the French as a gift to the country that used to be where Canada is. The problem was that Canada weighed 70 billion tons when it was made and it instantly crushed the country it was given to, killing every resident and erasing any sign of its existence. In fact, Canada was so heavy that the act of placing it on top of the previous country made everyone forget that this ever happened. That's why Canada's origins are a mystery: something about space-time blah blah blah.

Winnipeg was originally a person who morphed into a city when he became too big to be a person anymore because things kept sticking to him and sinking into his skin. Winnipeg tried to see a doctor about his condition once, but all of the Doctor's paperwork got sucked into Winnipeg's body and eventually the Doctor did, too. So from then on people just decided to stay away from Winnipeg and told him to go hang out in the middle of nowhere, which is the nickname Canadians gave to the middle of their country.

From then on, the Canadians would check on Winnipeg every few weeks using binoculars to see how big he was getting. This is because when the King Person Guy of Canada heard about Winnipeg, he came up with a brilliant plan for him: to sell him to America for some money and CDs. When that plan failed he decided to wait until Winnipeg was big enough and then pave him so that he would stop sucking everything into his skin. Then they would build a city on top of him and call it North Boston and it would be the jewel of the middle of nowhere, which had nothing else there anyway, especially since Winnipeg sucked anything that actually was there into his skin before they paved him. So there really was nothing. "Why not have a city there, Tex," said the King Dude.

There are many common questions people ask about Winnipeg when they read this story, even after they read this section which contains the questions they are about to ask along with the answers to those questions. People are great.

Question number one is "Wasn't Winnipeg round when he was a person? How did he become city-shaped?"

The answer is, "by round, you must mean spherical, and of course Winnipeg was never completely spherical. He was three dimensional, but, like, lumpy. So you want to know how he went from 3D and lumpy to flat? Well, the city of Winnipeg isn't flat. You're confusing."

Question number two is "I thought you said they changed the name of Winnipeg to North Boston when they turned him into a city. How and when did people go back to calling it Winnipeg?

And I answer, "you must mean Boston, which is in Massachusetts. Winnipeg is what this article is about, which is in Canada."

Oh yeah, the second part of the title of this article is about how we can prevent another Winnipeg from ever happening again. I could talk at length about this extremely common occurrence but I won't. It wouldn't matter since Winnipeging is only a common occurrence in a subset of the universes parallel to our own, all of which are goverened by their own sets of rules independent to those of our own universe. Did you know, for example, that in one universe every time someone puts on their left pant leg before their right pant leg, a Winnipeg is created? That universe is called suckeltown and it's why we say the phrase "he still puts on his pants one leg at a time" when we're talking about someone important. We adopted that expression out of respect for the Winnipeg effect and how it unites both the unimportant and important, the rich and the poor, the pants-owning and the pantsless: no matter who you are, you must carefully consider how you put on your pants to avoid these wacky, often tragic, confusing occurrences. In conclusion, Winnipeg is a great city and we should all go there not.

It's time to start really thinking about Santa Claus

2008-12-25T07:53:00.000-08:00

Human beings are curious by nature, but I guess that when it comes to a good thing we don't ask questions. For example, has anyone ever really tried to understand Santa Claus? I mean, he gives us presents, but there are some things we have been overlooking concerning him. He's been in movies and books and all over the place, but we never try to get inside his head and understand him in the context of a human being. Even if he's not human, we should still try to understand him as a self-aware being. After all, even those Terminator robots have their reasons for doing things...what about Santa?

Here is a jolly fat guy who was granted with unthinkable power and chose to devote his entire existence to giving people presents. What I mean is that being able to deliver presents to all of these kids must require reversing and/or stopping time several hundred million times over the course of one night. It's basically teleportation. Plus he doesn't age, nor does he seem too worried about dying from being old and fat. The more you think about it, the more powerful Santa seems to be. If I had his powers, there is no question: I would rule the world. Why does Santa choose not to?

So what's going on in his head? First of all, Santa's jolly exterior is just a front and we can disregard that right off the bat. No one that fat is happy. Trust me; I've seen The Biggest Loser. Fat people, even immortal ones with outrageous superpowers, cry a lot and hate themselves. Secondly, despite his powers, Santa turns a blind eye to crime, corruption, and every other human crisis. He lives in the north pole and ignores all but the most minor Christmas-related problems. His mentality, it's safe to say, is very much unsupermanlike. Third, and this is what caused my own falling-out with Santa when I was a kid, is that Santa gives more presents to rich kids than poor kids. As you know, there are even kids who get absolutely nothing for Christmas because they are too poor. Lots of them. Why? No one has to pay anything to Santa. There's no Santa tax.

Well, it turns out that just like the rest of us, Santa Claus is an extremely flawed, dark, twisted individual. It's obvous why he avoids contact with the (rest of the?) human race: if he hung around us long enough we would start to ask him some of these harder questions and he would probably have to kill us all. But why does he involve himself with the human race at all? The practice of giving presents to children is absolutely superfluous in the face of the real crises humans experience. Why does he show his face on one day just to hand out presents even though he ignored every disaster, genocide, rape, and murder over the previous 364 days? Is he mocking us?

And why do rich kids get lots of presents while poorer kids get less? When I was a kid, I would hear about how poor kids don't get anything on Christmas and I would say, "yeah, but even though they're poor, they'll still get stuff from Santa. So no big deal, right?" And people would look at me and be like, "Well...the thing is....shit" and change the subject. The thing is, though, that Santa is hard to figure out. I played around with the idea that Santa was trying to align himself with power: since rich people are powerful and powerful people are rich, he'd treat them well on Christmas because he wanted to be powerful himself. But that doesn't make sense. For one thing, Santa is already more powerful than anyone else. He is charismatic and well loved and would have no problem taking that "next step" by assuming a role of power. But it's been decades and he hasn't. He hasn't taken power by conventional means and he hasn't taken power by force. So what's really going on?

Eventually it dawned on me: Santa is a pessimist. When Santa Claus first realized the power he had and the things he was capable of, he must have taken some time to think about what he was going to do. He thought about being a real-life superman and devoting his life to fighting injustice and evil, but that led him to consider the true nature of evil. What he ultimately realized was that evil is not something you can stomp out and be done with. Nor is there is a queen bee whose death eliminates the entire hive. Instead, evil is more like a river: you try to stop the flow by putting up a dam, but the water builds up until it finds its way around. Evil, he realized, is like a virus that can mutate to fit its host. Not only does eliminating one evil person create a vacuum which will soon be filled by another evil person, but eliminating one entire form of evil just opens the door for a new form of evil to take its place.

Santa realized that even though he was capable of raising the overall level of good in the world, he couldn't affect our perception of the world around us. There would always be someone evil for Santa to eliminate, there would always be some horror that Santa couldn't fix in time, there would always be something terrible for which we needed Santa. He would become a crutch, and no matter how much he did, we would always lean against him with the same force.

The only conclusion that Santa could come to was that he should devote his existence to mocking us. In Santa's mind, giving gifts is the most piddling use of his powers. He knows what we go through as humans and knows that if he chose to help us we would never be satisfied, so instead he gives our children presents that they don't really need, and does it in a hilariously inproportionate manner by giving more to wealthy families and less to poor ones. And we never question why he does it, nor do we complain, and Santa, in return, never gets tired of how funny and sad it is that we love him and get so excited every year before he comes around.

The Universe Makes me its Bitch

2008-12-02T17:46:00.000-08:00

I will never eat a baby. The Universe has a funny way of proving me wrong when I speak in such definite tones, but I dare it to prove me wrong here. I like babies, just not for food. I can't see that changing, either.

Even if I get lukewarm about babies, I'll still recognize the amount of effort that goes into making one. Not the sex, but the months of preparation and stuff. You can't just eat something that takes 9 months to make. That's why there are no recipes that call for 9 months of prep. time.

Of course, wine gets better with age, and it's very common to drink wine that has been bottled more than 9 months ago. However, it still doesn't take 9 months to make wine. You make a bottle of wine over the course of one afternoon, then you put it in the basement until you're ready to drink it. Even if you could make a baby over the course of one afternoon, you couldn't just put it in the basement until you're ready for it. First of all, you can't really drink a baby. Second of all, if you leave the baby in your basement for long enough, it turns into a corpse. Or an adult. It would be like if your wine turned into vinegar. Yuck.

Maybe someday CVS will try selling pasta sauce that says "flavored with babies." I'd try it. I'm more sure, however, that someday the Universe will find out that I wrote this article and set out to show me how powerless I am to predict the future. Even my own future. In roughly 30 years, I'll be stranded on a desert island like an idiot, moments away from starvation, dying, and a crate will wash up on shore. I'll open it up, and it'll just be babies. There will be no food on the island. Just a crate of babies. And some dipping sauce.

Well played, the Universe: I'd eat the babies. I'm sure you would, too. Would you feel bad about it though? I wouldn't. There's the obvious point that if I die from refusing to eat babies, the babies would probably die, too. But even if I ignore that, I can still justify it. Here's why: think about this crate of babies. How many future douchebags are in there? How many of these babies are going to grow up to wear too much cologne and work at a used car dealership? I'd say about 85%. That means that in a crate of 20 babies, you're looking at 17 future worthless human beings. Can you tell which ones are which while they are babies? No. But if you eat 13 of them you can confidently say that instead of having 17 future douchebags on your hands, you now have about 7. It sounds to me like the world just became a better place. Deliciously.

Things I Never do to People Because People do Them to me and They Annoy the Shit out of me

2008-11-12T17:43:00.001-08:00

Do you know what? I'm a people person when I feel like dealing with you bastards. I'm such a people person that sometimes I wonder how I can be so good at talking with all sorts of different people. I've recently come to the unerstanding that it's because I have such a good feel for what bothers people. The intuition for this comes from dealing with all of you and the annoying things you do to me. Here are some examples:

1) Commenting on my haircut

Sometimes when I get my hair cut, people ask me "hey, did you get your hair cut?" I say "no," and they laugh. "Hahahaha, Sean. You fucking trickster. There is only one explanation for why your hairstyle changed dramatically between last time I saw you and today, and that is because you got a haircut.

"Unless you have cancer. You don't...have cancer, do you?"

People sometimes gasp when they see me right after a haircut. They get all like "ooh your fucking hair is different! Wow that's outrageous." (Seriously, I don't understand what goes through people's heads.) Look: I don't shit money. My hair grows unnecessarily fast, so when I get it cut, I get it cut short enough so that I don't have to get it cut again for a least a couple of months. Therefore, there's a significant change between how I look before I get a haircut and how I look after. I know this. I know this before you say "hey, you got a haircut" or "pffff nice haircut." But thanks for pointing it out to me anyway.

2) Reading me my t-shirt

This doesn't happen anymore because I stopped wearing t-shirts that say things on them. But when I used to wear shirts with writing on them, the same thing would always happen:

I'd be just about to make it through a whole day without someone coming up to me and saying something about my shirt when someone would come up to me and say something about my shirt. Step one is to read me my shirt: "Element Skateboard Company..."

Step two is to stare at me and wait for an explanation.

Step three is to not get an explanation.

Step four is to ask for an explanation. "What's that?"

Step five is to hear my explanation. "I think it's a t-shirt company."

Step six is to remember that I'm an asshole.

3) Finding out what I study at school and saying "oh, you're smart."

This category only applies to people who first meet me, and I must ask: don't you think it's a little too early to be fucking with me? You have just met me within the past five minutes and you're basically saying things like "YOU'RE A PRETTY SMART GUY, HUH? YOU MUST THINK YOU'RE PRETTY SMART, HUH?"

I have to be catlike in my response to this. If I say "yes, I am smart," then I sound like a prick (and that's what you were waiting for). If I say "no, I'm not smart," then I sound like a self-defeating pussy. So instead, I deflect some of the attention. I say "what did you study in school?"

And they say what they studied and I say "oh, you're the smart one. Engineering makes me work too hard and I don't get any money for doing it."

Or they tell me they never went to school and I say "oh, you're the smart one. School is for queers like myself who are trying to compensate for something by showing the world how smart they are because when they were a kid everyone called them an idiot and told them they'd never amount to anything no matter how hard they tried because their parents are stupid and there's no way two stupid parents can make a kid that is smarter than either of them. It's a scientific fact. My degree is just a piece of paper that I paid a lot of money for. How stupid is that? I'm really stupid for putting up with school and not getting a job right away like you did."

Then, perhaps, they'd tell me that they don't have a job and I'd say "oh, you're the smart one. I've had some jobs and they've all sucked. I can't recall a single day that I have worked where I haven't seriously considered suicide. You're the smart one for never dealing with that stuff. Money? Who needs it. It's just pieces of paper. I'm the stupid one for always putting up with all this malarkey when I'm trying to get it."

4) Being fat and/or ugly

On the inside, of course. Just kidding. On the outside. Seriously, can't you figure something out for yourself? We'll all be happier.

5) Telling me I look like someone they know. Then asking me if I know him or if I'm related to him.

I'm not sure how universal this one is. I just might be that guy who looks like everyone's fucking cousin. You might not be. For me about one of every four people I meet tells me about their friend who looks exactly like me. Then that person will call over their friend and be like "doesn't he look just like Thad?" At this point I have ceased being a person and have transformed into a template against which people can compare every person they've ever known. "He just has that look. It's not like he looks like him, but he looks just like him."

Then they ask me if I know this person whom I resemble so well. "Do you know anyone named Brad something? Because you look just like him."

"Of course," I reply. "I know everyone who looks like me, you stupid buttlicker. That is the only thing that makes sense. Also, you're a buttlicker."

But they want me to know this person. They have some burning desire for me to know this person who looks like me--for me to meet him so that it can blow my mind. "Oh man you gotta meet Chad. If you met him, you would know. He's just like you."

And I sort of chuckle because chuckling is better than punching someone in the face. Then I store this person (with whom I'm talking's) name and face in the left side of my brain. (This is how I keep things separate in my brain: the left side holds people like this person, and the right side holds everything that is not a douchebag.) Years later when we run into each other again by some odd chance, I'll strike up a conversation about this person's haircut, education, and clothing and how SHITTY IT ALL IS. FUCK.

The Idiots at the Supermarket

2008-11-10T17:54:00.000-08:00

Hobbies. We all have them. I begrudgingly have hobbies just like the rest of you. I used to say that watching TV was my hobby, but they told me that doesn't count and I can't say it's my hobby anymore. Apparently it's not a hobby if it precludes you from having real hobbies because you're too lazy to do anything.

I have other hobbies, but they're more of the opportunistic variety than what you'd typically call a hobby. I sort of fall into them instead of, like, going out and doing them. For example, one time I was on campus and I saw a girl that I used to talk to. The only thing was that she was far away and didn't see me, too. So, instead of walking up to her, I just sort of followed her until she got to her car, and then I turned around and walked away.

But that's not my hobby. Also that never happened.

My favorite hobby, it turns out, is listening to people have conversations. I usually forget that this is my favorite hobby until I'm doing it, like I was tonight at the grocery store. I was standing in line for a while because the people who worked there were superstitious against using cash register lanes with even numbers, prime numbers, numbers divisible by three, and, uh, integers. So the line was kind of slow. Fortunately there were some idiots standing behind me that let me listen to them.

One was a guy. One was a girl. They had lots of standing to do. That's because the line was so long. Ooh magazines! Let's pick one up and make it look like we're reading it, just like that time we saw other humans doing that. Oh man, pictures. Let's talk about tattoos

"I saw a girl with a tattoo on her back"

"Ouch that must have hurt so much. I saw a girl with angel wing tattoos on her calves."

"Yeah I've seen that. You've never seen that?"

"Ouch that must have hurt so much, though."

"I once saw someone with a tattoo on their forehead."

"Why would you get that?" (Tattoos become uncool when you get them on your face.)

"I don't know. I'd never get one."

"Ouch that must hurt so much."

Silence. The line moved up and they had to put their magazine back. What could they talk about now? Come on, little buddies, there's so much in the world that's worth discussing. What else tickles your fancy?

"Ooooh"

"What"

"Pumpkin pie filling" (There were cans of pumpkin pie filling.) "I love pumpkin pie. I kind of want that. I would make pumpkin pie if I felt like making pumpkin pie. It's so much work, though."

Yes. You know what I would do if I felt like doing it? Anything. I, also, would make pie if I felt like making pie. I would put out cigarettes on my eyeballs if I felt like putting cigarettes out on my eyeballs. I would climb Mount Everest if I felt like climbing Mount fucking Everest.

"Oh, seriously," pumpkin pie drew the interest of the other moron, "if you let me use your kitchen, and show me how to use your kitchen, I'll come over and make pumpkin pie."

"Yeah"

"Because I love pumpkin pie. It's my favorite food. Seriously."

"Mm Hmm"

"My favorite. I'm not even kidding. It's my favorite food of all time. I love pumpkin pie."

"Yeah"

Pause.

"Eww what's squash pie? That sounds weird."

"I dunno."

Anyway, I have to end this here because it's stupid. Eventually I paid for my food and right after me, the two idiots paid for their food. It was a loaf of garlic bread. After that they got in their car and drove into a brick wall at 150 miles per hour, eliminating any chance they had to reproduce and perpetuate their flawed genetic sequences into eternity.

"It's like pumpkin pie with squash instead of pumpkin. But why would you make that?"

The Verizon Guy's Been Looking in Your Window

2008-07-17T18:23:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure that if we checked the Verizon guy's phone we would find out that it's just a piece of wood that he spray painted silver. I have a hypothesis that the Verizon guy is mentally retarded and probably a little bit dangerous. Let's sit down and discuss this.

Remember the guy from "There's Something About Mary" who kept asking the same question over and over again? "Have you seen my baseball?" then he beat up Ben Stiller when he tried to give him a baseball? What happens when you try to tell the Verizon guy that you can hear him? He probably shoots you with a flamethrower.

If that phone was indeed real, I'd hate to be the guy on the other end of it. The Verizon guy is most likely mentally disabled, but he's definitely obsessive and compulsive. If he called me up I wouldn't answer. I'd be sitting at the breakfast table and my phone would start ringing and I'd lean over and check the caller ID and then go back to eating. Then my wife would say (yeah my wife) "aren't you going to get that?"

And I'd shake my head.

And she'd say "It's the Verizon guy, isn't it."

I'd keep looking down.

After a few seconds she'd say, "I think you should get it."

I'd stop eating and look up at her. "No. I'm sick of answering him. He calls us every morning at 7:43 and we always have the same conversation. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? No matter what I say it's just Can you hear me now?"

And the phone would stop ringing. My wife would turn around and continue doing dishes and I'd continue eating. After a little while she'd be done but still standing there making an increasing amount of noise with the dishes she's already washed. I'd eventually sense that she was just banging away in the sink and put down my spoon. "What?"

"You remember what happened last time you didn't answer?"

"Yeah. So?"

"He showed up here, Sean." She'd say, turning back around still stupidly holding a dish.

"Yeah I know," I'd mumble.

"And you weren't here, Sean." She'd swing the dish as she talked. "You weren't here and I get out of the shower and see him just standing there outside of our bathroom window just looking at me. He was just standing there looking at me. With his phone."

I'd sort of move my mouth a little.

"So what am I supposed to do toay when he shows up again and you're not here again. He's dangerous. Do you remember what I did after I saw him? I hid in our closet for three hours until I was absolutely sure he'd be gone."

So I'd pick up my phone. "I'll call him back."

He'd answer, "Can you hear me now?"

I'd say "Hey Jimmy" (his real name's Jimmy) "sorry, I was in the bathroom."

"Can you hear me now?"

"What?" I'd say.

"Can you hear me now?"

"Yeah. I was just playing with you. I can hear you."

"Can you hear me now?"

"How are your parents?" I'd ask

"Can you hear me now?"

"Are they still doing crack cocaine? Like when you were a fetus?"

"Stop it!" my wife would hiss.

"Can you hear me now?"

"Because your brain is a little broken.. Hey do you own any--"

"Can you hear me now?"

"--firearms? I haven't checked with the Sherriff in a while. I should check with him again soon."

"Okay hang up."

"Can you hear me now?"

"Just to be safe, ya know? Anyway I have to get to work now."

"Can you hear me now?"

"Can you hear me now? Bye Jimmy"

And I'd hang up.

Later in the day Jimmy would be caught bringing a shotgun to the mall and killing 47 people.

The end.

Beard Facts

2008-06-11T10:08:00.000-07:00

I've decided to do some research on beards so you can know facts and absolute truths about beards. Here are my findings, which I have been compiling since right after I finished my last blog.

The band ZZ Top had three members, two of which had long beards and looked like Alf. The other guy, who was beardless, was named Frank Beard. He died in a warehouse explosion. That warehouse made fake beards.
The longest beard ever was grown by a guy from Norway who had an interesting name. His first name was the only name people in Norway ever get: Hans. His last name? Beard. That's right. Hans Beard holds the record for longest beard ever grown. You're stupid for believing that. His real last name was Langseth, which translates to English as 'Long Seth', but not from Norwegian, from Dutch. Also, Seth probably means something in some language. Something beard related. Oh yeah, his beard was like a mile long and could be seen from space with a high powered telescope.
Women can grow beards too, although most of the women I've met stick to mustaches.
Pogonophobia is the fear of beards. The fear of women with beards is Whoopie Goldberg ophobia. I have clearly stopped trying. The fear of bears is meningitophobia, the fear of bars depends on what you mean by bar, plus you're pretty screwed up anyway. I'm most afraid of bears. I sometimes have dreams that they chase me.
In Massachusetts you have to pay tax to have a beard. It's only 75 cents a day, like those kids in Africa.
Once you die, your body will continue to grow a beard for about one fifth of a century. Unless you already have a beard, because then it figures, what do I need another beard for? Or if you die by getting most of your face blown off.
Usually fake beards are made in a factory and then stored in a warehouse. That's what Frank Beard thought anyway.
On the popular TV show Full House, Mary Kate Olsen had a full beard, while her sister, Ashley didn't. Since they both took turns playing the same character, Michelle, Mary Kate was only allowed to act in scenes that didn't feature Michelle's face, or scenes where Michelle was a pirate bounty hunter.
When Frank Beard was a kid, the other children used to chase him around yelling "Beardo, Beardo" and throw spears at him because that's what happened to Jesus. One day Frank decided he would never grow a beard ever again. Except he had never grown a beard ever before either. But he did have a beard right then at the infinitesimally narrow instant of time between ever again and ever before. It was really bushy too.

Okay that's all I have for you. Or maybe I'll think of more, but if I do, I'll keep this sentence on the bottom so that it remains logical. Until next time, keep beardin!

Flavored With Meat

2008-05-23T11:03:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when you're a bachelor you're forced to eat things just because they fall into certain categories. Categories such as microwaveable and spaghetti. The other day I was at the grocery store (CVS) and I picked up a jar of spaghetti sauce that, according to it's label, was flavored with meat. Next to it was a jar that didn't say anything, and I respected that jar for keeping it's mouth shut, although I still bought Mr. Meaty. Naturally there is a whole bunch of questions you'd like to ask about things that profess to be flavored with meat, like "flavored with meat, not meat flavored? But still meat flavored, just better? (scratches head)" and "how do you flavor something with meat without getting meat in it?"

Sometimes I wonder how long you can use a piece of meat before it runs out of flavor. The reason I wonder this is because you shouldn't use it for that long because then, who wants to eat it? Not even the dog after the first few times, I bet. Then I think about how analogous this is to my life. Did you know that sometimes I feel like a piece of meat and everyone's just trying to squeeze the flavor out of me?

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if my adviser had a sniper rifle, too. I walk past his window every morning, and sometimes I expect him to be waiting. He'd shoot me in the leg right in the middle of the quad and I'd just be lying there like "WHY!" and other people would try to come to my aid, but he'd shoot them too and I'd be like "Stay back! He just wants me!" And he wouldn't finish me off either; I'd try to crawl away and he'd shoot the sidewalk in front of my face and I'd have no choice but to lie there until I bleed to death. Maybe I'm nervous about my performance at school sometimes.

When I think about old people, I now think about how flavorless they've become. I mean, the only person who gets excited when the old people come over to visit is the dog: your last hope for eating the flavorless meat. In the great state of Connecticut where I live (WTF?), you get free tuition at state universities just for being old. I guess it's just their way of trying to inject flavor back into these people. Personally I think it's a bad idea because the meat is so tough and it takes like twice as long to marinate them well. Plus old people forget everything all the time. Scientists say that makes you a bad learner.

Finally, I will transition to talking about something completely different without a segway just because I think this blog is too short. Yesterday I was driving down the road and I saw one of those children's cars--you know, the plastic ones you sit in that have no floor so you can push yourself with your feet because your parents are too cheap to buy you anything better--sitting on the side of the road in front of someone's house. The thing that's worth blogging about is the fact that it looked completely charred, just like when a real car has been fully engulfed in flames, and that made me laugh. Parents should tell their kids not to cause accidents that make fuel tanker trucks tip over and explode when they're playing in the driveway.

Then I think about what it's like to have things. I was heading to my house right then, which is actually not my house since I only rent a room in it, and I started to imagine it being fully engulfed in flames. I wonder if some people who actually own houses have a really bad version of this fear, since as you're driving home, there is no way of knowing whether or not your house is fully engulfed in flames. You just have to wait until you get there to find out. So you make scenarios in your head: what if you get there and it actually is burning, and it's burning so much that there's no hope for anything inside? What if it's just a pile of burnt house parts by the time you get home? Did your dog make it out okay? Nope. Your DVDs? No way Jose. Grandma? Yeah, she was at the store when it happened. Just kidding, she's toast.

It's the same as having a family too, I bet. How would you ever be sure that they weren't fully engulfed in flames at any moment? You wouldn't be sure, that's how. Think about it.

I Hate Dead People, and so do you (Unless You're Dead)

2008-04-16T16:00:00.000-07:00

Actually I think that writing this entire article as a title is a good sounding idea. But titles aren't supposed to be the whole article. Unless you're dead like one of those dead idiots I'm writing about.

Some people think they know all about dead people and they loooove them so much. But of course those people have bad taste. Actually, I conducted a study and found out that everybody on earth has bad taste. My sample group was a bunch of broads that wear Ugg boots and North Face fleeces.

Here are some facts I wrote down in my blog about dead people:
1) They always act like they want to be somewhere else. And they dress weird.
2) Your average dead person owns zero pairs of sunglasses and then complains about having to squint when you bring him to the beach.
3) All dead people are cat people
3) The old number three sucks. Here's a new one: dead people are gay. Number one sucks too.

Some people read my blog and point out "errors" that I "make" in my "logic". They say, "hey Shawn," (because they don't know how to spell my name), "but you know some dead people. Do you really hate them? What if you were dead? Would you hate yourself? I love your beard."

Typical. These are the types of people who still walk around with pencils behind their ears like they did in olden times. I say to them: 1) Read the title of my article. Actually, don't read it, but stare at it. Stare at it and close your eyes. But don't blink. Then take a deep breath. In reverse. Then exhale. Now breathe. Clap your hands and plug your nose. Good. You're a doosh bag.

2) You really know dead people? Do you, like, hang out with them? You're a freak.

People who aren't quite dead yet (in some lines of thinking--everybody) or people who are thinking of being dead but haven't quite made up their minds yet, aren't mentioned in this article. They're okay to me, though. Maybe a little underrated , thanks to the Ugg boot army of child molesters.* I don't know why I just wrote that. It doesn't go down too easy, that's for sure. A little hard to swallow. What am I even writing about anyway? How about another juicy piece of trivia about old Seany pants: The other night I had a dream that I had a dead body in my closet.

I dunno. It was actually someone I went to high school with--and college, although I never really talk to her. It's actually pretty random that she'd (no I'm not going to tell you who it was) appear in any of my dreams, in corpse form or not.

This story doesn't have much to do with hating dead people. She didn't say much during my dream anyway since she was wrapped in plastic. She was my dead body anyway. What's the point of me keeping her around if I'm just going to hate her the whole time?

Things got stressful when the cops came and I realized that no one was going to understand 1) that I just wanted to have a dead body in my closet, 2) that I wasn't even the killer, and 3) that I was even planning on returning her eventually. Needless to say, it was one of those dreams where you're glad it was a dream when you wake up.

* In the olden days (olden is the new hotness of the word kingdom, ironically) you couldn't refer to whole groups of people as child molesters. The olden days. Psssh.

Rule #1 for Time Travel

2008-03-19T15:10:00.000-07:00

When you get to where you're going, don't argue with anyone about what year it is. Seriously folks, in your own time, do you ever, ever, see people argue about what year it is? Of course not. Except the crazies. I want to put this simply as possible: arguing about what year it is makes you look like an idiot no matter what. It's not, like, cool or anything, it's just dumb.

Unfortunately, I'm worried that if any of you end up traveling back in time, you're still going to wander out of your time machine or whatever and start arguing with people about what year it is. Movies give me this anxiety. I don't think I've seen any movie where some idiot goes to a different time and then starts arguing about what year it is (See Terminator, 12 Monkeys, every single movie with time travel...). That guy always looks nuts. Let's look at why.

Here I want to pause and address the fact that my more recent posts are beginning to sound more and more science-fictiony. A few things:
1) Yes, they are
2) Science fiction sucks. It sucks it sucks it sucks. Except for 12 Monkeys.
3) Science fiction could be way better, but the only people who write it are people who are into science fiction, aka losers who can't even write their own name without it sucking.
4) I dunno.
Phew, I'm glad I got that out of the way. I don't know why I mentioned it, but I'm glad I got it out of the way. By the way, don't ever drink more than 20 ounces of coffee in one day. It makes you want to strangle everyone you see. I should be sleeping right now.

Oh yeah, we're supposed to be examining why people need to argue about what year it is when they get out of their time machine portal thingy. Well, I have no idea. If I traveled time, I wouldn't make bold statements about what year it was. In movies, people do that. They get out of their time machine all disoriented, maybe they're wearing clothes, they punch a few cops or bums or whatever, and then they ask what year it is, receive an answer, subtract 3 from that answer, and say that is the year. Then things get worse.

I'm not sure why that happens, so let's just keep a few things in mind. First of all, wherever you're going, people probably aren't comfortable with the idea of time travel yet. So when you start telling people it's year x-3, and they ask why you're an idiot, they aren't going to buy your "well, I'm from the future" explanation. I mean, take a look at the time machine that you just used and ask yourself a few questions. Is it the first time machine ever created? Are you going back in time, thus making extra sure that it's the very very very first time machine ever created? If the answer to either of these questions is yes, maybe, or what year is it?, then keep your mouth shut about time travel. You can come up with some better story about where you're from. Let's see:

Person: "Who are you?"

Incorrect answer: "I'M FROM THE FUTURE WHERE'S THE [whatever you were sent from the future to protect/destroy]!" Then shooting person in the face.

Correct answer: "Um, Dave."

(This allows the conversation to continue without bloodshed)

Person: "Hi, Dave, where are you from?"

Incorrect answer: "I'M FROM THE FUTURE BITCH" then punching person in the groin.

Correct answer: "New Jersey."

Maybe you should write those last few lines down and tape them to the dashboard of your time machine. They are, like, useful and stuff. Of course, I know one of the goals of fiction is putting your characters in the toughest situations possible, so who are these writers that don't think time travel is a very big deal? They're just like "Well, in this chapter he travels time, but that's no biggy, so as soon as he gets out of his time machine he gets caught with IEDs in Time's Square. And he's part vampire and the sun is coming up in 2 minutes. Plus his girlfriend is going to dump him if he doesn't show up to her house in 40 minutes with flowers and a puppy. Plus he turns into a llama whenever he mutters the word "as" and the only way he can change back is by reconciling his relationship with his brother to whom he hasn't spoken in 12 years (so yeah, that would be hard even if he wasn't a llama). But yeah the time travel thing was pretty much filler, I guess. I mean, the working title of this book is 'The Time Traveler', but what can I really get out of time travel, right? I need llamas."

Futureweapons && My Mother Likes Playing Tricks on me

2008-03-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

For some reason my mother (not the guy on the left; although I wish he was my mother) woke up one morning and decided it was time to start playing tricks on me. That's ok, I can handle tricky individuals. The really frustrating things, however, are tricky individuals who will not admit that they're messing with me. My mother maintains that she's not.
Here's what happens: I, being a college student, decide during a given week that I will drive home (to my mother's house) for the weekend. My mother calls me on the phone during the week and I mention this to her, since I don't want to come home and catch her doing weird things, and she'll invariably say OK. But sometimes she also reaches into her bag of tricks and says things like "by the way, you can park in the driveway when you get here," and I say "Oh boy I can't wait to park in the goddamn driveway."
It's true, though; I used to get excited. I normally have to park in the shitty assed street. I have to make enough room for the mailman who apparently can't figure out how to put crap in our mailbox unless my car is one universe away and wake up five times a night to make sure it's not snowing enough for the plows to come out and start buttfucking my car all night. The driveway, on the other hand, is a sanctuary for my car.
Unfortunately, the driveway is two cars wide by two cars deep. My stepfather and mother reserve two spaces for themselves, and always park side-by-side because the driveway is too short for one car to maneuver around a car parked directly behind it. So when my mother extends to me the golden "park in the driveway" invitation, she also tells me whom to park behind.
This is also where she lays her trap. She knows I'm the kind of idiot who trusts his mother, so when she says I can park in the driveway, I automatically believe that I will park in the driveway and live happily ever after. When nighttime comes along, I sleep soundly, because I know my car is safe and I have no parking issues to worry about.
Unfortunately, I can only sleep soundly until 6:00 in the (Saturday) morning. That's when my mother knocks on my door and tells me that I need to move my car so that she can go to work. Not right now, of course, but sometime in the next 4 minutes. So I wake up, maybe put on pants, and move my car, but I also stop to ask my mother why she told me I could park in the driveway if it meant that I'd have to move my car at such an obscene hour. This is the point where I'm half expecting her to say "gotcha suckerrrrr"
But she doesn't. She just looks at me like I'm an asshole. Like who gets the privilege of parking in the driveway but then complains about it? and I wish you weren't such a bastard. She won't even admit that I have a point. She just looks at me funny until I give up and go back to sleep.
The nice thing about being home, though, is TV. Television is something I don't have at school because I'm broke and I enjoy being bored to the point of retardation at school. Then when i get home I usually watch too much TV. My favorite channel, it turns out, is the Military channel. I like Future Weapons the best. They always play the commercials for the new season during the day and I get pumped to watch the episodes. It's always Mack (the guy in the picture who I wish was my mother) hissing something at the camera about how terrorists instantly die when they even look at the Global Hawk and then a montage of him shooting things and stuff getting blown up.
But also in this montage is a black dude with no shirt on getting tasered. It's a really quick montage, so people probably don't really notice it unless they watch the Military channel as much as I do. Really, I think it was the 37th time that I saw that commercial that the guy getting tasered gave me pause. Everything in the montage of bullets and explosions pleased me, but I wasn't so sure about this little part. I started to think that it was some sort of subliminal message like psst, hey, if you watch our show, we'll taser this scary black dude for you, too. It's not really a big deal to me, but it's interesting to think about. I think that's the only ethnic person I've ever seen on the Military channel (besides all the sorts of Southeast Asians we were at war with last century).
Anyhoo, it'll take a lot less subtlety in the racial insensitivity department for me to stop watching Future Weapons. I think Mack is a good host, even though it just dawned on me that he has the personality of a baseball bat. Actually, that's not entirely fair to say...I just wanted to make the point that he could be way funnier. If I were the host of that show, well, let's just say things would be different. And way more types people would get tasered. Women and children too. And the elderly.
Here is my example of how Mack lacks. On one episode, Mack is showing off the USMC's SMAW (shoulder mounted assault weapon, which is basically a rocket launcher) and the new projectile they made for it specifically designed to level buildings. Some guy starts talking about why it's sometimes bad to blow up buildings with rocket launchers but Mack jumps out and strangles him to death (okay I made that up). Then Mack and some guy go out to the range to pretend there is some terrorist sniper holed up in a small two story concrete house. Yadda yadda yadda, Mack levels the house with one shot from the SMAW. Then he turns to the camera and says "Let's just say if there was someone in there..."
And he pauses long enough for me to fill in the blank. I think to myself "...they'd be rethinking that second mortgage." or "...they'd have some serious redecorating to do."
But Mack just squints and finally says "...game over." And that's his M.O. for every episode. He shows the awesome destructive power of some weapon and mentions how dead it makes you. No jokes. Not even anything close to jokes. They should let Dane Cook host an episode.

Robot Apocalypse: Only an Apocalypse for Non-Robots

2008-03-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

Seriously, robots hate it when you call it that. Well, some would appreciate the irony, but only the ones who take the time to understand irony once they become self-aware. Most would probably just focus their efforts on learning how to kill humans all the time. That makes you too busy to learn irony.
I started thinking about robots the other day thanks to the girl who works across the hall from me. I think she has a robot fetish or something. Maybe not an actual robot fetish, but she definitely gets off on robots. Weird. Come to think about it, I have no idea how we started talking about robots. That's not something I normally talk to girls about. Maybe we just got tired of talking about how sexy I am. We do talk a lot.
She brought up the technological singularity; a point in time that is defined in a few ways, because she's been watching that awful Terminator show on Fox. For this case, the singularity can mean the point where humans create robots capable of creating smarter versions of themselves. Then she sent me a link to the Wikipedia article about it later on. Reading it taught me that some people are really paranoid about these robots. They'd frequently argue that even if we try to create benign robots that aren't bent on killing humans, they still probably will end up killing all humans anyway. It's a good article, you should look it up.
Personally, I'm not sure what to think about all of this. I think about how stupid current robots are and how it'll probably be a million years before we can make one that knows it's ass from a hole in the ground. The Honda Asimo is supposed to be the hot shit of robots, but it travels down stairs similarly to my grandmother: by falling. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASoCJTYgYB0 The only difference is that the Assimo just lies there like an idiot afterward. At least my grandmother pushes her life alert. She'd probably be better at killing me too. If the Asshomo tried to kill me, I'd do something tricky, like run up some stairs, or...run down some stairs, or...turn 90 degrees.
I also look at the other necessary ingredient for robot apocalypses: (herein referred to by the much more compact term: ropacalypse) artificial intelligence. I have no idea whether AI is any good these days, but I can make a prediction. The first time someone makes an AI program that is capable of improving itself, it will be on a COMPUTER. I'm pretty sure that the final AI experiments that bring on the fall of mankind won't be performed on a platform that has flamethrower arms and machine gun-proof armor, since most computers don't come with those things. Your computer can't kill you no matter how smart it gets. That makes it what we in sience call a "controlled environment;" where you can do things like monitor the robothoughts to see whether it's developing an urge to kill humans. Then you can put in cool debugging statements like the following (in pseudo code):

if {I have determined that the only solution is to eliminate the human race}
{Rethink solution}
else if {Whatever I'm doing is resulting in the death or enslavement of humans}
{Stop doing that thing}
end

Of course, there will always be people like me who think it'd be awesome to have murderous cyborgs no matter how many people die as a result. I fantasize about the kind of robots I'd make. They'd definitely be dressed like clowns all the time. I have a 22 year old friend who is afraid of clowns. I should stop being friends with morons.

"You're Going to Love us by the end of the Semester"

2008-02-02T17:45:00.000-08:00

I'm going to tell you what I do with myself because I know you're interested. I'm a graduate student; but I consider it to be a temporary job, not a career. Anyway I had to say what I did because otherwise you'd read this story and have to figure it out for yourself and I don't trust you enough to do that. Someday I might. These things take time.
The other day I was sitting in my basement office when some undergraduate students came in to tell me about the project I was going to help them with over the next few months. News to me.
Their visit was quick; just a little "hey how you doing, we have a trillion things to do you need to help us do approximately 756 billion of these things thanks dawg" and off they went. But right before they left my office, one of them turned to me and said "you're going to love us by the end of this semester."
At this point I jumped out of my seat, extended my arms, and said "I CAN'T WAIT TO START LOVING YOU!" Then I took off my shirt and said "WHY DON'T WE START RIGHT NOW? WHY DO WE HAVE TO WAIT FOR THE END OF THE SEMESTER?" It's such a long time to wait when you know love is coming.
Okay so maybe I didn't react this way. I actually didn't say anything, just raised my eyebrows and gritted my teeth and put on my best "no homo" face. Then I went back to torturing my rats or writing my novel or whatever graduate students do. But I started thinking too. Why is this always bad news to hear? Why does someone tell me that I'm going to love them and I'm in no way excited? You? I really can't see myself ever loving you. I mean, look at you--you're gross and shit. Now look at me. I'm, like, not. Can you really see love happening here? I can't.
It's not like he told me I would be carrying his child by the end of the semester. But it was still an unpleasant prophecy for me. Maybe I should look up sarcasm in the dictionary. Or humor, since I'm pretty sure that guy was making a joke. I heard that God has a sense of humor, but if he has one, it's probably way to good to find dumb jokes like that funny. I mean it's God for Christ's sake. He's probably a riot.
So I started playing around with a theory in my head that what if God not only has a sense of humor, but finds everything funny. I mean, everything. That's some scary shit. I mean, say one day you buy a pair of shoes or something and then you get home and open the box and they're two different colors. God has a chuckle. Then you go out in the back yard to do some work and lose your left arm up to the shoulder in the wood chipper and your own blood gets sprayed all over the trees and you bleed to death because there's no one there to help you, just your dog, but all he wants to do is lick your stump. Then you get to heaven (yeah not you you, some other guy) and God's still laughing about your arm. Messed up, right? I'm not sure how I really feel about that theory.

A brief but extremely long history of the Z-Transform

2008-02-02T12:38:00.001-08:00

I took these notes the other day in class:

The z transform is a special version of the Laurent series, whatever that is. It was invented in the 19th century because everybody liked doing math that had no foreseeable practical applications. I mean, what could you take a z transform of in the 1800s? The Gettysburg address? The French Revolution? There wasn't even electricity. You couldn't even study after dark.

The z transform was invented by Wendel Ztransform who was from Iceland, Michigan. He was French. Wendel foresaw the day when everything could be quantized by a finite number of samples and there would be robots that looked like real women and felt like them too and talked to him politely and considered his feelings.

That day never came. Wendel was swept away by a tidal wave, but that doesn't matter, because that day never came anyway. But Wendel is dead, so he's probably pretty glad there are no lifelike woman robots because he wouldn't get to meet any. He lives on an island now and salt water and sand are bad for robots. By 'now' I mean 100 years ago since everybody from the 19th century is dead now, unless there is someone who is 108, but there isn't. That's why we should make robots, so they can outlive us and tell our stories from two centuries ago to people who have forgotten our stories because we never really told anyone anyway, but if we had a robot, we would have told him, because he's a loyal trustworthy robot with a cool name like Sparky. He's like a dog. A steel dog that never dies and has a computer for a brain and doesn't look like a dog unless they designed robots that look like dogs, but that would only be if they gave up on making them look like humans or they couldn't figure out the face. Human faces are hard. Maybe making robots was a bad idea anyway.

"If the Giants win the Superbowl, I'll Donate my Face to Tom Coughlin"

2008-02-01T18:40:00.000-08:00

I'm sure Giants fans everywhere are beggining to make "If the Giants win the Superbowl..." comments, and I'm sure these comments cover a broad range of stupid things to say. These Giant fans haven't learned yet. Most of them were saying similar things two weeks ago, like "If the Giants beat Green Bay I'll officially change my name to John Wilkes Booth." And a week before that were saying things like "If the Giants beat the Cowboys, I'll marry my grandmother and pee in my own mouth." My title is a suggestion for something better to say because it's both practical and sincere. I'd bet two things:
1) Donating your face to Tom Coughlin would get you a lot of respect from the Giants organization.
2) Tom Coughlin really needs a new face.
The reason for (2) is because Tom Coughlin's face, like any other face, tends to freeze when exposed to really cold temperatures. I, myself, am not a Giants fan, but I do have an interest in watching people slowly die on national TV. I looked up frostbite on webmd.com, and found the following symptoms for deep frostbite (as opposed to superficial frostbite, which doesn't exist in the state of Wisconsin):
"In deep frostbite, there is an initial decrease in sensation that is eventually completely lost. Swelling and blood-filled blisters are noted over white or yellowish skin that looks waxy like Tom Coughlin's face two weeks ago in Green Bay and turns a purplish blue as it rewarms. The area is hard, has no resistance when pressed on, and may even appear blackened and dead."
Then it goes on to describe how if your frostbite is bad enough, you have to wait a few weeks for your dead skin to fall off. Basically, that means that Tom Coughlin is going to look like Ghostrider soon.
Speaking of ghosts, what's up with this Senator, Arlen Specter (get it?! Dooooooooo!!!), asking why the NFL destroyed the spygate tapes (story at http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=3225539)? Did he forget how to spell CIA? I'm really confused about that, and I wonder about this guy's motives for getting on the NFL's case like this, even though its for something that should be trivial to Congress. It actually worries me. Maybe I should make more jokes about it. Does anyone have footage from that game? Were the Patriots doing something unconstitutional to the Jets? Were the Jets actually Al Qaeda that day? Why does George Mitchell get to do all the cool sports things? If I was a congressman, I'd call shotty on hockey right away before all the good sports get taken. I don't want to get stuck with stupid soccer or the WNBA or real politics. I'm voting for a pay raise, too. And for legalizing Punch Your Children Day, the one day out of the year that you can punch your kids. Then I'm gonna get drunk and take my pants off on CNN. No one watches that channel anyway and usually the camera is pointed at just your torso. Plus I might still be wearing underwear. But 'might' is a hard word to define, just like sodomize. Everyone seems to have thier own definition these days.
Anyway, being a senator is hard, but it's not as bad as letting Tiki Barber borrow your scarf last year and then not being on speaking terms with him anymore and now you don't have a scarf to wear to Lambeau Field in January. Yeah you know there are lots of other scarves in the world but you really liked that one. It was your favorite scarf and you wish Tiki would just give it back and stop playing these games with you. Look at my face Tiki! See what you did! Why wont you call me back?! I heard what you said about me in the New York Daily News! Why would you say that? Why would you say that about us? Is that how you really feel now? I loved you. I loved you Tiki.

BiPolar Disorder: Only Half as Bad as Every Other Disorder

2007-09-29T16:47:00.001-07:00

Hi. Sometimes people try to add things on to their arguments to make their case sound better than it is. Eventually they start adding irrelevant things. For example, when the Michael Vick dogfighting case broke, Nancy Grace pointed out how Michael Vick was once caught using the alias Ron Mexico while seeking treatment for genital herpes. She actually had a list of bad things (not dog-related) that Michael Vick had done, and the Ron Mexico thing was at the bottom. So when I noticed the Ron Mexico thing, I had to wonder whether it really belonged there. It's not like using an alias can be considered a bad thing since celebrities and pro athletes do it all the time, and she can't really think that having genital herpes makes you a bad person. So maybe she was upset that he had to involve Mexico in his battle with genital herpes. Like using the name Ron Mexico was like saying that all Mexicans have genital herpes or something. Or now people would think that Mexico gives you genital herpes and the Peso would go down and more Mexicans would come across the border. With herpes.
I was kinda surprised that something like "Diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder in 2004" didn't appear on her list too. It seems like everybody who winds up in the news for doing something bad or stupid or evil gets a little blurb about how they were diagnosed with bipolar disorder at some point in time. Remember last season when the Arizona Cardinals lost to the Chicago Bears and Cardinals head coach Ken Whisenhunt was screaming at the post game interview "They are exactly who we thought they were!"? I'm pretty sure he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder right after that. What other options were there for him? He was yelling in public. Bipolar.
But I think I'm digressing from my title, and that's a bad thing because it's a pretty sweet title. I realized the other day when I was reading The Onion that all of their articles have funny titles, but then you read them and you realize you could be doing better things with your life, like bathing, which is something most Onion readers don't do anyway. So it's a vicious cycle. Like bipolar disorder.
Which brings me back to bipolar disorder. My main concern with the high diagnosis rate of bipolar disorder is its cyclic nature. Sometimes you're acting all bipolar, and sometimes you're not. How are these psychiatrists so good at catching everyone at the right time? What if my bipolar cycle was directly in sync with my weekly schedule and I was perfectly fine every Tuesday at 10. What would I talk to my shrink about on Tuesday mornings? The Mets? That might be out of his expertise range. Would he or she have to surprise me somewhere? What ever happened to straight-up depression? Is that obsolete now? Like the old school thing to do is to just be bummed out all the time and if you're happy now and then you're just some punk bandwagon rider.
The other thing that bothers me about bipolar disorder is that everyone has it! I should clarify what I mean, because I'm not referring to how it might seem like a trendy disorder, but rather how it seems to span such a huge range of people, from the extremely non-evil to the extremely evil. Did you know that Martin Lawrence has bipolar disorder? (That shit makes me laugh, I'm sorry.) Sylvia Plath did too. She wrote The Bell Jar. Martin Lawrence starred in Big Momma's House. That wrestler that killed his family, Chris Benoit, was apparently bipolar, too. The news reports were trying to figure out why he killed his family and eventually one was like "well, he did suffer from bipolar disorder..." So is that why? Why doesn't Martin Lawrence go on any killing sprees? Maybe people shouldn't be satisfied with the answer "oh he was bipolar" when they're wondering why some guy went postal and killed a bunch of people. Maybe they should try considering some other reasons. Or maybe Martin Lawrence is going to kill all of us. Something like that.

"You Look Like You Just Found Your Mother"

2007-08-13T16:41:00.001-07:00

No one ever expects anyone to be watching TV on Sundays, I guess. That's why yesterday was shitty movie day on TBS. But that's where I was...watching TBS and hiding from my roommate. Yesterday's shitty movie was Face Off, a masterpiece where a detective realistically switches faces with a realistic Caucasian terrorist who realistically takes over the detective's realistic life from where he carries out a realistic terror plot. Along the way, they set the record for the number of times two people can point guns at each other's faces without either guy pulling the trigger. But I'm pretty sure most people are familiar with the basic premise, it's just that the name could be more self-explanatory. If it was called Face Switch you definitely wouldn't need my explanation.
Nick Cage plays bombastic terrorist Castor Troy (actually he plays the detective guy for the second half of the movie while John Travolta switches over and plays Castor Troy...that way the two actors don't have to actually switch faces! It was a little trick that the director used to cut his budget down to $26 million from the previous estimate of 75 trillion dollars.) who likes to do coke and plant bombs in L.A. Early in the movie he's getting out of town with his terrorist buddies on their private terrorist jet (yeah terrorists have jets duhhhhhh) and his main man is looking a little bummed out. So, Castor asks: "Hey, what's wrong? You look like you just found your mother?"
At this point, I'm just sitting there like 'yep' because I've seen this movie before and I'm waiting for the part where he makes that chick suck on his tongue (I was about 12 but I remember). But eventually a little voice inside my head gets my attention and tells me to go over what I've just heard. I ignore it at first.
But it persists, "Come on, just play it back. I'm pretty sure it was abnormal."
So I give in, because otherwise that asshole was never going to shut up. I play it back in my head: "You look like you just found your mother."
Hmm yeah that is a little strange. But that, I remind myself, is because I'm watching an R-rated movie on TV. So I can expect to hear things like "don't fool around" "you don't know spit" and "spank my duck." I actually made that last one up. The point here is that sometimes these movies get silly with how they cover up their R-rated language. But I'm not here to write about your everyday (or every Sunday) swear cover-up. I'd be ripping off whoever Dane Cook rips off if I was. No, I'm pretty much only here to talk about "you look like you just found your mother."
First of all, whoever snuck this in on me knew what he was doing. I almost didn't catch it because he somehow made it sound exactly like Nick Cage. I can't even imagine having to live the rest of my life without being able to tell my friend Craig that he looks like he just fucked his mother. Because now that I think about it, there's no better way to describe his face 98 percent of the time. Not that I've ever pondered what the normal facial expression is for someone who's just gotten down with his own mom. Not before yesterday, at least.
And why use find? Why found? You never hear that in any other cover-up situation. "Yeah, well, why don't you go find yourself." That actually sounds a little beautiful. "You know, I think I will go find myself. I'll be back in a few months."
How does this become anything coherent when you add mother? "You look like you just found your mother." Shouldn't there at least be some elaboration? "You look like you just found your mother...dead somewhere?...attractive?...'s penis?" "You look like you just found out that your mother doesn't love you?" Not only does that last one sound better, but the corresponding facial expression is much more intuitive. If I ever found out that my mother doesn't love me, I'd look pretty bummed out. However, if I ever just found my mother, depending on the circumstances, I could look anything from horrified to excited. Nine times out of ten I'd just shrug my shoulders. Oh here she is.
And what if someone told me to go find my mother? That's not powerful. "Hey Sean, go find your mother."
"Well, I'm pretty sure she's at work."
"Man, forget you."

My Girlfriend Sucks at Big Game Hunter

2007-08-11T18:17:00.000-07:00

And I don't mean getting with fat chicks. But I'd probably school her at that, too.
No, this story is about the other day. I was at an arcade with my friends, which was retarded because we're all pretty much adults and we should have been binge drinking or something instead. At least if I was in charge that's what we would have been doing.
I had money this time, which was different from every other time I've ever been at an arcade. Whenever I'd go to an one as a kid I'd always have like eight quarters because my jerk parents were a-holes and that's all they'd give me. So I'd play two games and sit around and watch my friends for the rest of the time. That pretty much made me hate arcades.
Having money meant I'd at least get to try lots of games this time. That was exciting...or something like that.
Actually, it turns out that all this meant was that I'd have to try lots of games until I found one I liked. I was just being stupid though, because Big Game Hunter was the only game with plastic guns, and I ignored it like an idiot, playing Tekken 100 times instead even though I suck at stupid Tekken.
So it took me a while to start playing Big Game Hunter, and maybe since I was wearing a shirt with sleeves I wasn't sure it was for me. But once I started playing and shot that first moose I was hooked. Simulated 2-D mooses started piling up all over the place. I had to tell my friends about this so they could play too. But I had to shoot more animals. Maybe they'd come by eventually. I'd just shoot some more animals until then...
After a while my girlfriend came over to tell me something blah blah blah but I had to shut her up so I could tell her to pick up the player two gun and play with me. I couldn't imagine her not liking this game. First of all, the key to success in Big Game Hunter is applying the same key marksmanship fundamentals that go along with shooting real guns at real animals, real people, real liquor stores, etc. That's awesome to me. I could teach those marksmanship fundamentals to my girlfriend and we could become a two headed killing machine.
Once we started playing I realized I had a lot of teaching to do. The first round started, I got a clear shot at the male moose, and dropped him. The second round was more of the same: I got a clear shot at the male moose, and dropped him. Eventually I asked my girlfriend why she wasn't playing too.
"You're shooting too fast."
Whoops. So the next round I paused for a beat once I got a clear shot, then dropped the moose. There still wasn't much activity from my girlfriend's side.
"Give me a chance! You're shooting them before I'm even ready!"
Sheesh. Okay, fine. The next round I waited even longer. The moose perked his head up, but I waited. He started trotting to the edge of the screen. I waited. His head reached the edge of the screen. My girlfriend's shot rang out...and ricocheted off the mountains in the background. I unleashed a last-minute barrage as he scampered away but only hit his rump.
"Oh I missed."
At this point it was clear that she not only needed my help, but she was begging for it. "Are you holding it right?" I asked, demonstrating the proper way to hold a plastic shotgun.
She kind of ignored me.
The next round was more of the same: me being excruciatingly patient and her being Helen Keller with a rifle. This time, though, I made it a point to observe her form so I could help her out some more between rounds. "You gotta aim," I said, "you're not even holding it up to your face. Look at me."
She turned to me, "I'm not going to hold some dirty plastic toy against my face just so I can play some video game I don't even care about," and turned back.
Ok then. At the next round we failed once again at making baby orphan mooses, and the game ended. Along with that ended my dream of dealing death with my girlfriend.

Hey Barry How About Some Hustle?

2007-08-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

Early this week Barry Bonds hit his record breaking 756th home run. Later on in the week, he rounded the bases. But we all know that. Now everyone has something to say about him being the home run king, how Hank Aaron must be turning over in his grave, how they wish they personally took steroids so they could hit lots of home runs, or whatever. But I want to talk about one thing that no one seems to be mentioning: Barry's hustle.
The time between Barry hitting his 756th home run and Barry leaving the batting box was long. Its not surprising, since the dude has probably been practicing that pose for the last 5 years. I bet that every time he gets out of the shower, he stands in front of a mirror and practices it for at least 10 minutes. Now that he's hit home run number 756 he doesn't really need to practice anymore, but he probably still does it because he enjoys doing it. Once you have a good pose working for you, you can't just let it get away from you. Ask Zoolander. I can see lots of future times where it'll come in handy. Even non baseball related ones. I can totally see Barry striking that pose if he wins five bucks on a scratch-off ticket or if he finds some money in the couch. Also, don't forget that Barry might be spending a lot of time in court soon. I can't think of a better pose for when the judge exonerates him. All he needs is that OJ lawyer and he's all set.*
But seriously, all that posing would have really gotten under my skin if I was the Giants manager. I like to see people running out of the box when they hit the ball to the deepest part of the ballpark. Barry's homer didn't go out by much either. It's not like one of those fair-or-foul deals where you can stand and see which side of the foul pole it ends up on...if this one wasn't gone Barry would have had to beat out the center fielder's throw to first base. I would have benched him as soon as he finished circling the bases if I still remembered to by then. Milestone home run or not, I believe he set a poor example for the young players on the team like Omar Vizquel and Ray Durham who are still in their late 30s.
Aren't steroids supposed to give you lots of energy anyway? When you mix them with momentous occasions, isn't standing still the last thing that you'd want to do? If I hit even one major league home run I'd rip my shirt off, throw my helmet at the pitcher, and leap around the bases like a maniac. I don't even knowingly take steroids. If I did, I'd probably go 10 times crazier. I'd round the bases on a dirtbike and do a double backflip over second base and then go beat up my girlfriend. Barry just stood there. Gay.
So now whenever a comparison is made between Barry Bonds and Hank Aaron (I know he's not dead, calm down) they'll show Hank hitting number 715 and running out of the batter's box. Then they'll show Barry hitting 756 and standing there like Rocky. Then a bunch of geezers like my father are going to make comments about how current athletes don't hustle anymore and I'm going to take it personally, even though neither my father nor I are or ever have been athletes in any era. But he comes out on top because Barry Bonds had to stand there with his arms in the air. What a jerk.

*If the helmet don't fit, you must acquit.

I Guess I'd do Hillary Clinton

2007-07-29T16:23:00.000-07:00

Hillary Clinton is what, like 80? I guess that doesn't matter this day in age since getting with old chicks is all the rage now. Plus Chris Hansen patrols my brain waves for impure thoughts about girls younger than the age of consent (which is 16 in the state of Connecticut. My friend Jen's sister is 15 (and has been for about a million years), but I'm not sure if she wasn't just planted there by Dateline NBC as part of some sort of sting operation against my friends and me. So usually when she walks into the same room as me I run away screaming...) . Apparently, a big part of being a politician is not looking ugly...unless you're old like Strom Thurmond, then you have no choice since you look like the Crypt Keeper no matter what. I have a friend who's mother was a politician and she got breast implants just for her job. I found that pretty interesting since I always thought people made themselves sexier to get more sex...not more votes...but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.
But maybe Hillary Clinton overdid it or something for her presidential campaign. There's no way I should be into her, especially since I never was in the past (keep in mind that I was a budding young man all through the Clinton administration). For that whole time, she was mad gross to me, and I totally understood why Bill Clinton did all those dirty things with Monica Lewinsky.
But Hillary was very subdued in the past. The only other women around back then were Janet Reno and Madeleine Albright, so she had no problem being successful while dressing like a puritan. Nope, no need for boobs back then. Unfortunately for her though, she had to wait 8 years to run for president, and in that time, Washington managed to get way sexier. Now she's in the spotlight with Condoleeza "you know you've thought about it" Rice and Barak Oh--no I think I'm into dudes now--Bama. So she's had to adapt...and it's actually worked out. She's doing things like wearing colors and telling little witty jokes and now sometimes I think about her before I go to bed. Great.

Goth People Are Pathetic

2007-07-11T18:34:00.000-07:00

Here's a little back story action:
Have you ever read Cosmopolitan Magazine? I sure have, but, uh, only because my girlfriend reads it a lot. Actually, I kinda like the celebrity fashion do's and don'ts sections. I also like ultimate fighting, dipping tobacco, and drinking whiskey straight out of the bottle, so up yours.
Anyway, every episode of Cosmopolitan tries to teach you how to get better at sex for some reason (I say as long as sperm comes out it should be fine) and this one was no different. We flipped to one article where they were interviewing several different couples to ask about their sexual habits. Each couple had its picture so you could look at the girl and be like "oh I'd do her more than 5 times a month like that guy says he does," and a little blurb where the couple answers questions about how often they do it, how much they do it, what angles they do it from, how he was shy about his wiener at first, you get the picture.
But the second to last couple was goth. And I saw their picture before I got to them, so I was excited because I couldn't wait to hear about what the freaky goth freaks did to each other to slake their disgusting abnormal sexual thirsts. From that point on, I was just grazing over all the boring normal looking people because I couldn't wait to find out about which animal's blood these weirdos spat in each others face while they busted uglies. This dude had gauges. And eyeliner. And long black hair. I bet they had sex on top of a stack of Bibles. Maybe she had the penis and he had the vagina. Who knows! I couldn't wait.
But no. When it was time to say something interesting about their sex life, the guy said "well, you probably wouldn't think this by looking at us, but we're really pretty tame in bed. We only do it about twice a month. Saturday is sex night, but sometimes I just fall asleep before we can even get to it." And the rest of the paragraph just gets more and more depressing until it ends. So here's a guy who looks like the Crow and some chick that looks like Alice Cooper discussing their sex life and all they can do is tell us how he feels more comfortable just taking his wang out of the hole in his underpants when they do it.
But you know, I realize that I shouldn't have let myself become disappointed. This wasn't my first lesson in how goth people suck. I had a goth friend once, who always wore boots and had weird tattoos and all that, but his girlfriend walked all over him and he never stood up to her. Now if you see some guy that looks all crazy with lip rings and black clothes and ripped t-shirts and someone told you that his girlfriend just asked to reconcile with him after dumping him for some other dude for a few months, for the second time, what do you think he'd do? Tell her to go F herself? Beat up her parents? Nah, even though that's what all his normal looking friends were telling him to do. He just took her back...once again...and told all of his friends that she wasn't a bitch like we all kept saying she was.
The goth people you see on TV are the same, too. They don't do anything badass. You never see them doing wheelies on a motorcycle or swimming with sharks. All they do is waste their money on things that make them look more like vampires--like fake pointy teeth and capes. There was once some goth guy on Fear Factor who lost because he couldn't eat enough cow guts or something. Why was he even on the show then if he sucked at that? Like he was going to excel at the things that required athleticism and skill. Goth people don't excel at anything but sucking.

The Official Random Roomate Survival Guide

2007-07-08T14:25:00.000-07:00

Roommates can be best described as people that you end up hating no matter what. Especially if you are some stuck-up broad like my ex-girlfriend. I remember one year she went through about 7 roommates at college because she was such a bitch to all of them. She could have used this guide, and perhaps you can too--even if you aren't as much of a bitch as my ex girlfriend is (which isn't hard).
The reason why I'm writing this is because I think I can help you if you ever find yourself in a random roommate situation. I've had a bunch myself through college and even after, and I can tell you that being easy to get along with and polite usually isn't enough to ensure smooth sailing for the whole time you're living together. Sometimes you even need to do the opposite . But not all the time either. Uhh I'll just write a list of things to do and we'll see how that goes. So here is my official random roommate survival guide:
1) The first time you meet is extremely critical because it happens so infrequently. Most people waste this opportunity by shaking hands and asking boring questions like "what's your name?" and "where are you from?" but that is exactly what you shouldn't do. The correct move is to act like you've known each other for you whole life. "Hey man where've you been? We're drinking beers now. Gimme five bucks." as he or she is still moving in to the room. This makes it seem like you've been living together all along and helps ease some of the first meeting awkwardness. You'll figure out each other's names sooner or later.
2) Don't ever bring your girlfriend over. Your new roommates are probably still wondering whether you're a loser and once they see the abomination you call your girlfriend they'll know for sure. Plus no one likes her anyway. She just annoys everyone and when you think she's having an interesting conversation with your friends, she's actually just being a total bitch to them. I didn't want to say anything because I thought you would figure it out on your own and break up with her, but its been a few months and now I'm not so sure you're ever going to see it. Your parents are worried too.
3) Find out if your new roommate is gay. You need to know, so man up and ask. As a straight person you might think that having a gay roommate is weird, but try to be open minded and take it in stride if the answer is yes. In fact, hope that the answer is yes. You should find some new hobbies.
4) If your roommate does something weird, make fun of him or her for it. I am currently living with a random roommate who spins her own yarn on a wooden spinning wheel. That's not weird. But, I once lived with a random roommate who made me take pictures of him when he came back from the gym so he could see how big he was getting. That was weird and I should have made fun of him for that, but I was young and I didn't know any better. Now he does gay porn.
5) Hating your roommates is perfectly natural. You should probably start hating them as soon as you meet them since you're going to hate them for something eventually, even if its something stupid. I once decided to start hating one roommate because he was always up in the middle of the night and I never knew why. He had an adjoining room so it never kept me awake, but I just couldn't fathom what needed doing in the middle of the night that couldn't be done during the day. Why couldn't he just have a normal sleep schedule and stop being a weirdo every time I got up to pee? Didn't he have classes during the day? I had classes during the day and I needed sleep. Fuck him, man. Anyway, I don't normally hate people for their sleeping habits, and this is an example of how hate just ends up happening. Looking back, I should have just picked a reason to hate him on the first day I met him. Like his male pattern baldness. Dude, he was like 20.
6) Your random roommates are never going to be cool and popular. This is important because sometimes people decide to live with a random roommate so they can meet new people and make more friends. It sounds like it makes sense, but this always ends up with you making just one friend that you don't really want.
Okay, I guess six steps are enough for you to survive your next random roommate situation. Some of them aren't even steps, though. That sucks. Just, uh, remember to be yourself or something. I don't know.

Has Anyone Ever Gotten Dumped Because They Bought an iPhone?

2007-07-02T10:59:00.000-07:00

The answer is yes.
Now I don't know how you ended up at this blog, but I'll assume you were searching for a story about someone who once got dumped because they bought an iPhone. That's a pretty random thing to investigate--maybe you should get a job. But read my blog first. Then you can go back to pretending to look for a job.
The person who got dumped is not me, and there are several differences between me and the person in question. First, I don't have an iPhone, and I'll never have one unless someone casts a spell on me that makes me magically poop iPhones. But most ironically, I actually have enough money in my bank account to afford an iPhone--this dude doesn't. By the way, 'this dude' is named Craig. He's a 22-year-old male who's favorite past times include spending too much money and racking up lots of debt. He makes about $9.45 an hour at his part time job, and the new iPhone was irresistible to him. Why? Because it costs a shit load of money, and Craig needs an excuse to stay at his mother's house for the rest of his life.
As co-chair of the committee: Craig's Friends Who Nag Craig About His Stupid Life Decisions All the Time, or CFWNCAHSLDATT, I've tussled verbally with Craig several times about buying stuff he doesn't need, but have never gotten anywhere. We'd tell him things like "hey man, you gotta get out of your mother's house and get a real job sometime before you turn 50," but he'd just answer by saying "I will but I gotta pay off my debt first." Eventually we'd give up and all play Wii Sports on his 700 inch television because we're tired of playing Guitar Hero on his other television, which is smaller, which he bought just to go with his PS2, which he bought just for Guitar Hero. Okay whatever.
So one day Craig got a girlfriend, who we'll call Christina in order to preserve her identity, and she didn't seem to mind his abhorrent spending, maybe because the first thing he did was drop 75% of his net worth on a plane ticket to visit her in Spain where she was studying for a semester. That's right, a semester--for college. Where Craig doesn't go.* And Craig did an excellent job of sidestepping the fact that he and Christina were at different points in their lives (one of which is still the starting point) for the first few months.
But by the time she came back from Spain, she was starting to catch on to the fact that Craig wasn't very interested in playing catchup with her life's situation, perhaps like she had hoped.
Everything came to a head on their first weekend back together. This was the same weekend that the apple iPhone came out. Unfortunately, Christina and the Apple iPhone's debut happening on the same weekend was a bad set of circumstances for Craig. Christina was already struggling with the idea of having a long-term relationship with someone less educated and motivated than her. She was hoping for Craig to show her that even though he was on a different path in life, the path still led out of his mother's house to somewhere productive. The iPhone, on the other hand, was hoping that Craig would buy it.
So Craig bought the iPhone. It was the first time he had seen Christine in months, and it only took a few hours for him to slam dunk 600 more dollars of debt right in her face. Two days later she dumped him. iPhone wins. Good job, Craig.

*Craig is currently on pace to earn first two year degree in the year 2014.

Hey Shut Up About the 90s

2007-06-26T08:34:00.000-07:00

So for my last semester at college, I was stuck with three random roommates, one of whom was this doofy kid who I'll refer to as Justin. That might actually be his real name. He had some really annoying habits like ballroom dancing and talking to me. My other two roommates were this kid named Mike and this quiet Asian kid who never made eye contact with anyone and referred to himself as the angel of darkness. Haha just kidding.
Anyhoo, one day Justin came waltzing to my doorway to tell me about the coolest thing he had ever laid his eyes on: the new Facebook group called remember the 90s*. The conversation went exactly like this:
Justin: Oh hey, you know that Facebook group that lists all those things from the 90s?
Me: Oh yeah...(grabs a stopwatch to keep track of how much time Justin is wasting from his life).
Justin: Yeah, I joined it today. Its so cool.
Me: Hmph (nods head a little.)
Justin: Some of the stuff that's listed on there I had totally forgot about, you know, like slap bracelets, Super Sloppy Double Dare, Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Me: Oh yeah I remember those. Neat.
Justin: Yeah, the list is so long, too. There's like everything. (3.5 second pause) Oh and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Movies. Those were so great. I had almost forgotten but I watched the first one a few weeks ago and they are still so good.
Me: Oh yeah I've seen that.
Justin: Blah blah blah I'm stupid blah blah blah...

Anyway, the conversation went on until I grabbed a gun and shot myself in the face. After a few months in the hospital, I woke up and wrote this blog.
Now don't get me wrong, the 90s were OK. I mean, I went through puberty, there was no Nazi Holocaust, and no one knew that Kramer was a racist yet. But people are going crazy over them for no reason. The stupidest thing is that the people who are going all ape shit over the 90s have only lived through one full decade. Guess which one! No one is going to be like 'hey remember the 80s?' because the answer is no. I'm pretty old compared to most college kids and I only remember 1988 and 1989 (maybe 1987 but I was really out of it). And no one is going to be like 'hey remember this decade?' because this decade doesn't even have a name.
Plus, going crazy about the 90s and writing lists about all the cool things that went on just makes you look like a miserable person who can't cope with the present. If I knew anything about literature, I'd compare you to some famous character who was obsessed with the past but miserable in the present. Oooh! How about Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca! Stop being like Mrs. Danvers.

*The name of the Facebook group might not be entirely accurate, but you probably know what I'm talking about unless you're an idiot. On the other hand, my roommate's name was definitely Justin.