Illiteracy finally makes sense

Do yourself a favor: if you have a bumper sticker on your car that doesn't get you out of a speeding ticket, scrape it off.

I've seen way too many boring, stupid bumperstickers of late and they're no longer amusing me. I understand Semper Fi, the POW one, maybe the little star for people on a police force. Those get you out of tickets.

The ones imposing your belief on gun laws, abortion, Barack Obama? Please. You're not going to convince anyone by putting a catchy phrase on your Dodge Neon's bumper.

"His Pain, Our Gain," has never, and will never make me go to church.

There are other stupid one's too, and you know which ones I'm talking about, the get off my bumper because I'm a real badass ones.

"If you're into guns raise your right hand," accompanied with Hitler giving the stiff-armed salute. Yes, they go as far as bringing Nazis back. Nazis.

I'm not saying expressing your beliefs aren't respected, I'm saying there must be other points in the day you must've had a better time to do it. Or is it that I'm missing the entire point of these car-side bulletin boards? Is it that you want to express your beliefs all day, even when you're driving? Is it that we shouldn't adjust our impositions to water-cooler conversations? That simple, subliminal advertisements are effective and I, in fact, will be persuaded by these subconsciously?

I don't know the answer to any of those questions, but I do know this: if I had the choice between being illiterate or understanding these messages, I would choose illiteracy.

Now, how do I go about unlearning the English language?

Thing I did while bored today:
Looked up NCAA football records. Does the name Timmy Chang ring a bell anyone?

Other useless garbage:
1. Marilyn Milian is one bad ass judge, but the People's Court theme is so much more bad ass.
2. People shouldn't get confused when you say "Happy Thanksgiving" three or four days after the fact.
3. Heart-shaped cupcakes don't necessarily mean anything besides the person only had heart-shaped muffin pans.
4. "When it comes to yoga, breathing is Number 1," says FitTV's smoking hot yoga instructor. I will never do yoga.
5. The Super Wal-Mart in Northbridge has better deals on fruits and vegetables and hotter chicks working. True Story.
6. Two of my friend's mothers work at that very Wal-Mart. That's not mom joke as much as it is truth.

Bud Light and Thanks

Bud Light Presents: Mr. Really Overtly Nervous Pot-hole Avoiding Asshole in '97 Buick.

This one is for you, oh, avoider of sewer caps.

You carelessly swerve into on-coming traffic to save your pristine 150,000 mile shitbox effortlessly.

Mr. Really Overtly Nervous Pothole Avoider.

Your '97 Buick not only has the shocks of a Big Wheels, but it also has the rims to prove you don't mess around with car accessories.

So, crack open a cold Bud Light! Cause this one is for you.


Serious, yet thoughtful, Moment of Thanksgiving:
As I drove down Route 18 in New Bedford today I was given the meaning of Thanksgiving in a singular moment. I had woken up at seven, by the same alarm clock song I've been listening to for 90 days ("I could have lied" by Red Hot Chili Peppers), on just around four hours of sleep. I went to a shitty high school football game, missed cutting mean turkey farts with my family, and was starving. That's when I passed a homeless dude walking through the parking lot of an abandoned mill. I realized how lucky I am to have a family to go home to on Thanksgiving, a job or two in these tough times, and a place to call home. I thanked God for giving me all this and said a prayer for the man. That shit just hits me sometimes and I hope it hits you.


Other Random, non-serious, brain-junk I learned:
1. You know how people say, "There's nothing better than a brand-new, fresh pair of socks?" Well, there is. A brand-new pair of socks that have "L" and "R" telling you which sock belongs on which foot. That's better.

2. I like taking control of a conversation when the other party clearly doesn't want to talk. See: any clerk in the Providence Place Mall.

3. Apparently, when I get drunk, I use 90 percent less dick and cock jokes. That's shocking to me.
4. You can tame a little kid by looking him in the eye and telling him he's going to grow up and be a nobody.
5. Mortal Kombat is still fun at 25 years old.
6. Lassie was one hell of a dog.
7. I would, once, once love to see a high school version of Lawrence Taylor button-hook a quarterback Joe Theisman style. I would love that.
8. I'm capable of a serious moment every now and again.

That post-workout feeling.

Let it be known: when I get a tremoundous workout in, and my bones and mind ache from the inflicted pain, I want to eat like a fat, 40-year-old woman with four kids after catching her husband in bed with another woman.

I want to eat bon-bons with Peggy Bundy.

I want to eat like John Candy in The The Great Outdoors.

Just terrible stuff too. Ice cream by the gallon, with potato chips. Bring me to BJ's right now and I'll eat a vat of butter. A vat.

And I want to sleep. Like Shaivo -- pre-death, post-good-looking.

I want to sleep like a bear in November, like a chloroformed waitress in a nightclub.

Like W after this second term is over, and wish the past eight years never happened.

I want to sleep like Christian Bale in The Machinest.

This is how I feel today, and yet, I won't get to eat or sleep like I fully want to.

So depressing.

Thing I did while bored today:
Cut my toe nails.

Question of the Day:
Do sausage, egg and cheese sandwiches from Dunkin Donuts give me the 'ria? Or just everyone else?

Random things I want to learn today:
1. If somebody asks you how your day is going and you reply, "Just livin' the dream," and then consequently looks at you and your sloppiness, and has that if-that's-his-dream-martin-luther-king-just-rolled-in-his-grave-look, THEN you have the right to be aggressive.
2. I hope I never get put in charge of buying groceries for my future-family. I changed my mind four times today trying to buy a loaf of bread.
3. In sequels, the general rule is this: Drama - you need to watch the prequel; Action - no need. There's no necessary information letting you know how awesome explosions are.
4. Axl Rose still can have my kids.
5. I've never gotten a text from a coach, but it's going to be odd to read something "flirty" then read, "Adrienne Caido had 101 aces, 199 kills and 200 digs."

Taking out the Trash

I don't know if anybody outside of Woonsocket realizes this, but there's a new way of doing things in this town when it comes to taking out the trash.

Yes, there's another way.

It's called WM (presumably Waste Management), and if you don't know about it, it's because you live in a 4-family house like I do.

To summarize, WM gives you a couple barrels to seperate your recyclables, trash and dirty magazines. Every week they come by and pick them up.

Seems reasonable and simple to understand, no?

Well, there's something else to this equation I don't agree with, but learned today. A robotic arm is attached to near the driver's side, picks up the barrel and tosses it over the top, removing your old, dirty underwear.

This robotic arm is taking away our shitty jobs, and one thing is for sure, we need our shitty jobs. Not only does it take away the job of the man who hangs from the side of the truck, jumps out, tosses your garbage, and haphazardly leaves your empty barrel in the street, but becuase of the amount of time saved, the driver is losing hours.

That's two shitty jobs being replaced and reduced by R2D2.

Across the country shitty jobs like this are being thrown away by self-checkout lanes in your grocery store and robotic arms. If there's one thing I know, we need our shitty jobs.

And Joe Six Pack sure could've used Nalin' Palin to keep 'em.

Up for Debate:
If an atheistic illiterate ran out of toilet paper and there was only the Bible and the Dictionary in front of him/her, which would he use as toilet paper?

Other meaningless stuff that people enjoy more than everything else here:
1. Santa Clause is real.
2. There's an automatic air freshener in my kitchen that sprays constantly, yet I've never smelled it.
3. Another Bill's kicker has gone wide-right.
4. Drinking more doesn't keep you from being more aggrivated.
5. Aestetically, collared shirts do more for women than zippers, even though zippers took more work to assemble probably and are way more convenient.

America's Most Awesome Show

I never thought back to the days when my dad and I watched Cops or Americas Most Wanted until recently.

Until recently, I just thought that was a way for us to appreciate the world around us a little more. Kind of like watching the kid in school get his ass kick repeatedly, while you count your change in line to get a kiwi-strawberry snapple. You always had that thought in the back of your head that while it may suck you couldn't afford much else, at least you were getting chairs slammed over your back WWF-style.

I never thought it would be a preperation for anything.

I relish those days now, because it may have bored my mom a ton, at least if I saw those knuckleheads out in public from those dramatized, ultra-suspenseful AMW shows, I'd know exactly who to call: John Walsh.

Now, working in a restaurant bordering Woonsocket, I say to myself all the time, "I wish I watched that show more often." Everytime there's a creepy, spotty-bearded 40-something with a teenager, I wonder if there was a kidnapping or an amber alert. I wonder if I could do something.

My boss sometimes watches Cops before he leaves and says something remarkably predictable like, "Is this the Hoe, Hoe, Hoes Christmas episode?" That sometimes makes me think of the good ol' days of my mom shaking her head, wishing something otherly was on, like Bridges of Madison County.

Another thing that I wish to throw out there: Cops and America's Most Wanted are the most pointed, deliberate, self-explanatory show titles in television. They never beat around the bush with their titles and you have to appreciate that. Cops is exactly about cops, and America's Most Wanted is exactly about creeps at your local grocery store, fake-checking the ripeness on honeydews.

Thing I did to entertain myself:
Tried to find the Super Wal-Mart past Uxbridge, in-or-around Northbridge, that may be past exit 4, but not presisely, with one set of directions saying it was directly on the highway.

Random, meaningless crap I wish I didn't learn:
1. Adam and Eve were technically the first names ever used, but technically, they're not.
2. If Jesus had Dane Cook's wit, the famous parables would last forever and the bible would've been 1,000 pages longer. Oh, and it would've only been the biggest book in the world for maybe two years, and then been replaced by King Arthur's books, which consequently would be written by the Blue Collar dudes. Eck!
3. If freshman gain 15, what do you call the rest of the weight people put on throughout college? That's something I didn't randomly learn today. I'm just curious to know.
4. I'm not at all entertained by watching Patriots football anymore, but will watch the Bruins' Milan Lucic fight anyone.
5. If you say "Youk" instead of "Youkilis" I shake my head, but I will applaud you if you say "Jap" instead of "Japanese".
6. Dude is in my vernacular forever.
7. Don't fool me with your triple-chocolate muffins, all i need is one chocolate source to buy your shit.

92 percent of teenagers are, in fact, screaming annoying kids

Many people once thought the world was flat, and many people seem to think writing reviews for products online are actually helpful.

I'm not talking professionals from Rolling Stone and movie websites. I'm talking Itunes and amazon, woot, etc. from customers with no shopping agenda.

I like a decent customer review, with thoughtful ideas properly written to illustrate what is good about an album, or a product.

And it may sound like I'm mad about something here, when I'm not. Just dumbfounded and coming to terms with reviews by OzGeorge on Itunes.

While I have my own gripes and grievances about Miley Cyrus and Jonas Bros, I don't have an opinion about people that listen to them, because they're mostly screaming annoying kids. I'm not going to like screaming, annoying kids anyway, so why care what they listen to?

92 percent of teenagers are, in fact, screaming annoying kids. That's a real stat.

Now, what I don't do is go on websites and defy their music or productivity becuase I don't like screaming, annoying teenagers. But OzGeorge and every 30-year old, hanging onto Pearl Jam's greatest hits and The Real World, can't let this go. He had to defiantly say Hanson was the better alternative to Jonas Bros. He had to say Miley Cyrus had no musical talent. He had to say Mariah Carey's E=MC2 had no originality. All previous mentions received one star.

Why?

Becuase, I've learned, time is no of essense to some people. Wasting time is actually the most productive part of the day for some, and that despite public opinion, the things whiny, annoying, spoiled, screaming teenagers are admiring and hollering over today, are the same things we all used to holler and admire back in the day, no matter how long ago that was.

Things I did while bored today:

Looked up ulcers online, becuase I think I have one, or three.


Other un-notable things I "learned":
1. The only grievance about this blog so far is that I don't post enough.
2. This more of something I learned back in high school. Lyrics from NOFX's Louise are absolutely grotesque and hilarious. "Treat my clit like bubble gum/bitch make me cum." Ah, the good ol' days.
3. Van Halen had 4 lead singers, one of which nobody knows about.
4. The only tough part of reading is having time.
5. Eddie Murphy's Raw is my favorite comedy special of all-time, but David Cross has some of my favorite jokes, and neither Cross or Murphy are remotely as good as Richard Pryor is to me... Don't bother figuring that out.
6. Even if you have a cold, people will undoubtedly refer to you as a pervert if you a box a Kleenex anywhere in your room.

halloween head.

Before today, I never knew what Ryan Adams' song "Halloween Head" was about. I mean, I always had an inkling as to what, but never resorted to a specific meaning.

Now I have something to resort to when listening to the song.

It was 9-something in the morning at a small breakfast place in Lincoln (in the conservatory with the candlestick), when in came what I could only describe as "the brightest, ugliest red hair I've ever seen."

Very red. Very ugly. Very adjective-friendly, in a bad way, though.

And in the back of my head the song was playing, a song I only listened to three-to-four times tops. TOPS, because I never understood what a Halloween Head was. But now I do, and suddenly the lyrics make perfect sense.

"Head full of tricks and treats": that's too obvious. "It leads me thru the nighttime streets": becuase it's more red than those sneakers that light up. "Black cats and falling trees,Under ladders always walking": persumably because they looked at this chick's hair.

I had some questions that you can't answer because you never saw her hair, but do you think when girl's came over and braided each other's hair, they skipped over her's?

How about at prom? I bet she was convinced her hair looked awesome by some zitty band geek that night.

Thing I did to stay occupied:
Went to wikipedia and hit "Random Page". Go ahead do it. I've read about Route XX in Maryland, some random ass movie Kurt Douglas was in when he was 17, the United Nations.

Other intersting things I learned:
1. Never too late in the day to fit a "Clue" joke in.
2. I have yet to read the dictionary on the can in my new apartment because my new roomate subscribes to 20 magazines.
3. Sleeping 13 hours really fixes nothing at all.
4. I managed to say, "I wish I had cancer" and still make eight people laugh loud.
5. No matter how many times I angrily yelled, "GO!" at some old lady today, she definitely wouldn't have heard me or driven any faster.
6. My window has been wide open for 4 days and it still hasn't been as cold as my old apartment yet.
7. Red heads, in small doses, not so scary. Red heads, in large doses, scare the shit out of me.

Being Gay is too tough.

Last night I went out dressed as a very gay male cheerleader, with a light blue shirt and matching pants.

There was glitter involved, and yes, the shirt was cut off the circulation to my head.

One thing I did learn was that staying in character all night was exhausting. And telling people you're gay is reason enough to believe you actually are.

Probably the best, most enlightening experience was being able to just say whatever I wanted, which is a lot. That led to several very vivid things I'd say to chicks only to back it up by adding, "too bad I'm gay." A moment later, though, I'd remind them I was in character and that I really wasn't gay, and would totally tear that ass up.

It also led to me telling my friend I thought his father was hot, and all the things I'd do to him if he wasn't with his wife.

I was dancing, doing cheers. All in the spirit of my character.

But by the end of it, I realized my acting was too good. I didn't want an accidental hate crime to occur, so around more sensitive types, I toned it down.

I also realized it takes a lot out of you. I was just tired of being gay for a couple hours. I can't imagine doing that gig for the rest of my life. And forget about being the catcher in the relationship. I'm alllllllset. That's like telling your boss you'll take on the overtime without getting paid.

Activity I did while bored today:
Cut my finger tip off, apparently.

Other non-important things I learned today:
1. It's very tough to play guitar without a finger tip missing on your left hand, let alone type a stupid blog.
2. Realize I can sleep 14 hours straight, hence why this blog is posted on Sunday, not Saturday.
3. The T-Mobile store in Emerald Mall is not a good place to roam if you have patience issues.
4. I'm upset over the lady at T-Mobile telling me Starbucks is closing, and I don't know why.
5. Driving with a padittle (one-headlight) is almost as bad as driving with your mother.