There is a trailer that has been playing for the last three or four months at the movie theater I normally go to that talks about the Will Roger’s Institute and how donations from moviegoers has helped finance all kinds of programs used at the institute. According to the trailer, millions and millions of dollars have been donated to the institute. The problem is, I don’t remember ever donating money to them.
But then it hit me: Way back in the mid- to late-1970’s they used to play a Will Roger’s Institute commercial on the screen at the movie theater and then they would stop everything, turn on the lights and pass a couple of buckets around the audience for people to donate money into, kind of like a movie version of the collection plate at church.
The memory I have of this happening is of me sitting next to my dad at some movie I saw with him, the title of which has been lost to the winds of time. I do remember that the walls of the movie theater were brown, but I doubt that helps much. I won’t even attempt to name the film because that memory is absolutely gone. But I do remember several occasions where a film was stopped and a bucket was passed around to collect money for the Will Roger’s Institute.
So I’m not really worried about what happened to the collection bucket because it’s obvious that a bunch of them probably went missing and they had to find a new way to collect money from moviegoers. What worries me is what exactly happened to the rest of my memories of the circumstances surrounding those collection buckets. Where are they? Are they still with me?
Logic would assume that they have to still be with me, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to recall something that hasn’t happened for 30 years. Where has that memory been? Hanging out with a bunch of other random, nearly meaningless memories down at the pub, throwing back pints and waiting to get called up to mess up my mental processes for an afternoon?
The fact that I remember anything kind of leads me to believe that I probably remember everything. If a smell can trigger something specific in my mind (my kindergarten teacher, whose name is a mystery to me, used to smell like a very specific mixture of cigarettes and perfume that other women occasionally have and it hits my nose from time to time and brings me right back to the days of Dick, Jane and Spot), and a song can bring me back to a certain time in my life, should I assume that everything that has ever happened to me is stored somewhere in my memory?
If you think about that in real terms, that should boggle the part of your mind that is prone to that sort of thing. Everything you’ve ever seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched is somewhere inside of you if we subscribe to this theory.
I went so far as to call my dad and ask him if he ever remembered something like that happening. It was obvious that he hadn’t thought of it in probably the same amount of time I had. It’s kind of neat to be on the other end of the phone listening to someone’s light bulbs light up as they slowly recall some otherwise meaningless event that is only a noteworthy experience because it is a shared experience.
At the same time, a friend of mine told me about a time where a few of us TP’ed a guy’s house when we were in high school and I ABSOLUTELY CANNOT remember doing that. I don’t even have the faintest glimmer of a recollection of doing that and it has even gotten to the point where I want to go TP his house just so I can see what it feels like, see if I can’t jog some memories or something.
Where the hell is that memory? Why can I remember some guy standing in a movie theater, begging with a bucket, but I can’t remember something that should be a semi-noteworthy experience in my life?
Alcohol, I blame you.
Man, I could go on and on about this subject, but I don’t think I would get anywhere. What are your thoughts?
B!
Monday, October 26, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Catching The Wind
On my way home from work today I was behind a green Ford Thunderbird with at least three young adults in it. First off, I know I’m getting old because I can call people in their late teens and early twenties “kids” and “young adults.” I guess that makes me a “medium” adult, because I think the crossover from adult to “old person” is about 53 years old.
Ask me about that “old person” thing when I’m 53 and I’m sure I’ll be able to slide that one up to 70 pretty easily. Don’t ask me anything when I’m 70 because I won’t have time for any stupid foolishness like answering questions about my age and how I feel. I’ll be too busy going to bed at 6:30 at night and enjoying my breakfast at 4AM at Denny’s. And don’t you dare get in between me and my Moons Over My-Hammy. I will kill you. What are they going to do, give me life in prison? It will be worth the 2 years I serve to see the look of shock on your face when I stab you with in the ear with my fork for interrupting my morning date with two eggs and a slab of ham. Fair warning.
Anyway, as I’m rolling behind this Thunderbird, the passenger window rolls down and a hand comes out, trying to catch the wind. At the time I couldn’t tell if the hand belonged to a young person or an old person, boy or girl. All I could see was it trying to catch the wind. Then it did the “swan move” and made itself more aerodynamic, then it started surfing the wind as it blew past, moving up and down as the wind dictated.
Seeing that hand made me happy. It made me think about the first time I ever caught the wind in my hand like that. It made me think about riding in a blue Econoline 150 van with my dad back in the 1970’s. It was equipped with captain’s chairs in the front and no chairs in the back, just a shag rug because it was the ‘70’s and nobody had any concept of style or safety back then. Seat belts? Not so much. Maybe a lap belt for the driver, but everyone else in the car would have been left to bounce off of each other like a huge polyester mosh pit in the event of a crash.
But that passenger window in that van was perfect for catching the wind. My dad used to have an air conditioning system he used to call “the 255 A/C system.” It sounds cool, but all it meant was two windows down and 55 miles an hour. Nothing to do but catch the wind and sweat when you’re in advanced technology like that. Fortunately we lived in Colorado so you could get away with that air conditioning system for most of the summer there. Still, I wonder how much wonderful Colorado scenery I missed while staring at my hand while it caught the wind.
Then I have to wonder if I will ever get too old to be mesmerized by the feel of the wind on my hand as I drive down a road somewhere. I hope not. But you rarely, if ever, see old people driving with the windows down and their hands out the window. Did they just forget about doing that? Or is that something that loses its allure over the years?
I hope I never get too old to feel the wind.
B!
Ask me about that “old person” thing when I’m 53 and I’m sure I’ll be able to slide that one up to 70 pretty easily. Don’t ask me anything when I’m 70 because I won’t have time for any stupid foolishness like answering questions about my age and how I feel. I’ll be too busy going to bed at 6:30 at night and enjoying my breakfast at 4AM at Denny’s. And don’t you dare get in between me and my Moons Over My-Hammy. I will kill you. What are they going to do, give me life in prison? It will be worth the 2 years I serve to see the look of shock on your face when I stab you with in the ear with my fork for interrupting my morning date with two eggs and a slab of ham. Fair warning.
Anyway, as I’m rolling behind this Thunderbird, the passenger window rolls down and a hand comes out, trying to catch the wind. At the time I couldn’t tell if the hand belonged to a young person or an old person, boy or girl. All I could see was it trying to catch the wind. Then it did the “swan move” and made itself more aerodynamic, then it started surfing the wind as it blew past, moving up and down as the wind dictated.
Seeing that hand made me happy. It made me think about the first time I ever caught the wind in my hand like that. It made me think about riding in a blue Econoline 150 van with my dad back in the 1970’s. It was equipped with captain’s chairs in the front and no chairs in the back, just a shag rug because it was the ‘70’s and nobody had any concept of style or safety back then. Seat belts? Not so much. Maybe a lap belt for the driver, but everyone else in the car would have been left to bounce off of each other like a huge polyester mosh pit in the event of a crash.
But that passenger window in that van was perfect for catching the wind. My dad used to have an air conditioning system he used to call “the 255 A/C system.” It sounds cool, but all it meant was two windows down and 55 miles an hour. Nothing to do but catch the wind and sweat when you’re in advanced technology like that. Fortunately we lived in Colorado so you could get away with that air conditioning system for most of the summer there. Still, I wonder how much wonderful Colorado scenery I missed while staring at my hand while it caught the wind.
Then I have to wonder if I will ever get too old to be mesmerized by the feel of the wind on my hand as I drive down a road somewhere. I hope not. But you rarely, if ever, see old people driving with the windows down and their hands out the window. Did they just forget about doing that? Or is that something that loses its allure over the years?
I hope I never get too old to feel the wind.
B!
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
The Dumbest People In America: A Competition
Unbeknownst to the majority of Americans, I have been conducting a top-secret, ultra-undercover, amazingly scientific survey intended to determine the dumbest people in America.
I could easily bore you with all of the talk of analogous subsets, placebo groupings, double blind ad hoc testes wrestling, and, of course, the Dentyne effect, where no matter how hard you search for five dentists to agree on something, one of those motherfuckers ALWAYS recommends Big Red.
One day that fifth dentist is going to get theirs, I tell you. In spades. Or maybe in his teeth, because I don’t actually know what “in spades” means.
I have decided not to bore you with all of the scientific mumbo jumbo because it is really just a bunch of spreadsheets that would make no sense to anyone but me, and since I never wrote down a key to the meaning in case the spreadsheets fell into the wrong hands, you will just have to take my word for it unless somebody out there gets all fancy crazy and discovers/makes up a Rosetta stone to help translate my findings. You should take my word for it anyway because I literally spent minutes of my life gathering this information and organizing it into something sort of official looking.
And who cares that I got a B in Bio 100 in college and never took the lab because I didn’t feel like standing around in a lab with silly goggles on for 3 hours a week for 1 credit of work. If you ask me, the people who actually wasted their time for that crap have no business passing judgment on the stupid people of the world because somebody would just have to slip a mirror into the little slide on the microscope they spent 3 hours looking into to give them an idea of who the real dummy is. Really? All that work for one credit hour? Are you kidding me?
The real smart people took an astronomy lab because you didn’t have to cut anything open, you just had to look through a telescope, draw dots on paper and label them as stars and galaxies and you got the added bonus of hanging out with a pretty hot girl who, in retrospect, led you on just to copy your homework and who turned out to be kind of a bitch.
Ah, the ignorance of youth. How I miss it. The bliss of not knowing when a girl was using you to get her degree without having to give up the pootie. If I could go back, several women would have either not graduated or spent some time naked in my room, I tell you what.
Anyway, I will now reveal the findings of my survey and list, once and for all, who the dumbest groups of people are in America:
#5: Rich women in luxury cars they didn’t buy themselves. I’m guessing this is kind of a surprise to people, because who has better access to education and all that crap than rich people? But here’s the rub: rich women don’t have to be smart, especially if they are pretty. They can pretty much coast through life and have stuff handed to them without ever having to make an actual rational decision or original thought. All they have to do is look good and stay a few steps behind their rich husbands/fathers and make as few waves as possible.
#4: People who think that writers who resort to using Top 10 lists for humor have hit the bottom of the creative barrel and are using the lists as a cheap way to get a laugh. All I have to say to that is “F U” and please take special note that this is a top 5 list and there are MUCH cheaper ways to get a laugh. Take my fart jokes, please. So I’m only halfway to the bottom of the creative barrel you sons of bitches. There’s much more crap where this came from, trust me. And please, take my fart jokes. Pretty please.
#3: Texas.
#2: People who spell the word “maybe” wrong. Mabey, mabye and mqqqqbe are all spelled wrong. Learn your native tongue you pricks.
#1: Juggalos or whatever the hell the people who consider themselves fans of the Insane Clown Posse call themselves. I would consider them in the same league as Oakland Raider fans, but in reality the Juggalos are SOOOO much dumber that they take the Raider fans completely off the charts since the Raiders fans are at least smart enough to like a football team. There is literally not ONE redeeming quality about anything the ICP does at any point. They had one song that was mildly entertaining, but it wasn’t even good enough for me to know the title of, so that pretty much wraps it up for those guys.
As an added bonus, I will give you the dumbest animals in America at no extra charge: cats. I only have one bit of data to back up my claims, but I think it will suffice. A woman just found her two cats that climbed into a part of the house that was being remodeled THIRTEEN weeks ago. Instead of coming out after spending a couple of minutes snooping around in the remodel, the cats decided to spend the next 3 months trapped inside of the walls of the house.
You know how many times I’ve heard that story about a dog? Zero. You know why? Because dogs aren’t that fucking stupid.
I rest my case.
B!
P.S.—as a special addendum to this blog, I would like to retract anything I ever said about dogs being smarter than cats thanks to an episode I experienced last night where my dog threw up shit. Let me repeat that for those who may have missed it. My dog threw up shit. Out of his mouth. I am not lying about that. You only get one guess as to why there was shit for him to throw up.
So, to any dogs reading this blog (and I know you’re out there) you can send your thank you cards to Foster Charmington for dropping your collective IQ to a VERY unrespectable level. He would like to apologize, but he’s got kind of a potty mouth and I don’t want that kind of stuff going on in this blog.
Get it, potty mouth? Oh, fuck off, that was good and you know it.
I could easily bore you with all of the talk of analogous subsets, placebo groupings, double blind ad hoc testes wrestling, and, of course, the Dentyne effect, where no matter how hard you search for five dentists to agree on something, one of those motherfuckers ALWAYS recommends Big Red.
One day that fifth dentist is going to get theirs, I tell you. In spades. Or maybe in his teeth, because I don’t actually know what “in spades” means.
I have decided not to bore you with all of the scientific mumbo jumbo because it is really just a bunch of spreadsheets that would make no sense to anyone but me, and since I never wrote down a key to the meaning in case the spreadsheets fell into the wrong hands, you will just have to take my word for it unless somebody out there gets all fancy crazy and discovers/makes up a Rosetta stone to help translate my findings. You should take my word for it anyway because I literally spent minutes of my life gathering this information and organizing it into something sort of official looking.
And who cares that I got a B in Bio 100 in college and never took the lab because I didn’t feel like standing around in a lab with silly goggles on for 3 hours a week for 1 credit of work. If you ask me, the people who actually wasted their time for that crap have no business passing judgment on the stupid people of the world because somebody would just have to slip a mirror into the little slide on the microscope they spent 3 hours looking into to give them an idea of who the real dummy is. Really? All that work for one credit hour? Are you kidding me?
The real smart people took an astronomy lab because you didn’t have to cut anything open, you just had to look through a telescope, draw dots on paper and label them as stars and galaxies and you got the added bonus of hanging out with a pretty hot girl who, in retrospect, led you on just to copy your homework and who turned out to be kind of a bitch.
Ah, the ignorance of youth. How I miss it. The bliss of not knowing when a girl was using you to get her degree without having to give up the pootie. If I could go back, several women would have either not graduated or spent some time naked in my room, I tell you what.
Anyway, I will now reveal the findings of my survey and list, once and for all, who the dumbest groups of people are in America:
#5: Rich women in luxury cars they didn’t buy themselves. I’m guessing this is kind of a surprise to people, because who has better access to education and all that crap than rich people? But here’s the rub: rich women don’t have to be smart, especially if they are pretty. They can pretty much coast through life and have stuff handed to them without ever having to make an actual rational decision or original thought. All they have to do is look good and stay a few steps behind their rich husbands/fathers and make as few waves as possible.
#4: People who think that writers who resort to using Top 10 lists for humor have hit the bottom of the creative barrel and are using the lists as a cheap way to get a laugh. All I have to say to that is “F U” and please take special note that this is a top 5 list and there are MUCH cheaper ways to get a laugh. Take my fart jokes, please. So I’m only halfway to the bottom of the creative barrel you sons of bitches. There’s much more crap where this came from, trust me. And please, take my fart jokes. Pretty please.
#3: Texas.
#2: People who spell the word “maybe” wrong. Mabey, mabye and mqqqqbe are all spelled wrong. Learn your native tongue you pricks.
#1: Juggalos or whatever the hell the people who consider themselves fans of the Insane Clown Posse call themselves. I would consider them in the same league as Oakland Raider fans, but in reality the Juggalos are SOOOO much dumber that they take the Raider fans completely off the charts since the Raiders fans are at least smart enough to like a football team. There is literally not ONE redeeming quality about anything the ICP does at any point. They had one song that was mildly entertaining, but it wasn’t even good enough for me to know the title of, so that pretty much wraps it up for those guys.
As an added bonus, I will give you the dumbest animals in America at no extra charge: cats. I only have one bit of data to back up my claims, but I think it will suffice. A woman just found her two cats that climbed into a part of the house that was being remodeled THIRTEEN weeks ago. Instead of coming out after spending a couple of minutes snooping around in the remodel, the cats decided to spend the next 3 months trapped inside of the walls of the house.
You know how many times I’ve heard that story about a dog? Zero. You know why? Because dogs aren’t that fucking stupid.
I rest my case.
B!
P.S.—as a special addendum to this blog, I would like to retract anything I ever said about dogs being smarter than cats thanks to an episode I experienced last night where my dog threw up shit. Let me repeat that for those who may have missed it. My dog threw up shit. Out of his mouth. I am not lying about that. You only get one guess as to why there was shit for him to throw up.
So, to any dogs reading this blog (and I know you’re out there) you can send your thank you cards to Foster Charmington for dropping your collective IQ to a VERY unrespectable level. He would like to apologize, but he’s got kind of a potty mouth and I don’t want that kind of stuff going on in this blog.
Get it, potty mouth? Oh, fuck off, that was good and you know it.
Friday, October 2, 2009
The Infinit Ownership Test
Today, while at the library, I came across a top secret document that the makers of the Infiniti line of automobiles use to weed through all the riffraff as part of their ownership requirements. They don’t want you to know these answers because Infiniti is a luxury brand and they don’t want trailer park scum like yourselves being able to get behind the seat of one of their automobiles.
I say we all take these answers to heart and go to the nearest Infiniti dealership, take the test, pass it, go for a test drive, then go straight over to the nearest Nissan dealership and buy one of their cars because they are the EXACT fucking car only cheaper. Sound good? Now, get out your cheat sheets and prepare to answer the Infiniti Ownership Test. The answers will appear in bold print for your convenience.
Question 1:
When driving on a thoroughfare with a posted speed limit of 45 MPH, what speed should you travel?
a. 45 MPH
b. 47 MPH
c. 52 MPH
d. A posted what? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Question 2:
When driving on the freeway, what is the proper procedure for changing lanes?
a. Check your mirrors, signal, make sure there is adequate clearance, slowly merge
b. Signal and change lanes, checking your mirrors after you already in the other lane
c. Just go man, just go
d. Drive right up the ass of the guy in front of you until you can see what he ate for lunch, then cross as many lanes of traffic as there are, cutting off as many people as you can, then cross as many lanes back across the freeway as possible to end up one car length in front of where you started.
Question 3:
When encountering a stop sign, how long must you come to a complete stop before proceeding?
a. 1 second
b. 2 seconds
c. As long as it takes to ensure I have the right of way.
d. I bought this car to go, not stop. I acknowledge the stop sign’s presence with a slight nod of my head as I blow through it then contact my attorney to slap an injunction against the Stop Sign Placement Coalition and go on about my day.
Question 4:
Which lane should you be in to make a right hand turn?
a. The right hand lane
b. The center lane
c. The left hand lane
d. Whatever lane I want. My car is better than everyone else’s and they should be happy to share the same road as me.
Question 5:
What kind of person best fits the profile of an Infiniti driver?
a. Someone who knows the rules of the road and always drives defensively
b. Someone who enjoys a car that performs and who knows the rules of the road
c. Someone who cares about the well being of other humans in the world
d. Someone who is a self-important prick who knows nothing about how to drive except that shiny cars look cool.
I know it’s a short test, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t pass it. Happy Infiniti driving, assholes!
B!
I say we all take these answers to heart and go to the nearest Infiniti dealership, take the test, pass it, go for a test drive, then go straight over to the nearest Nissan dealership and buy one of their cars because they are the EXACT fucking car only cheaper. Sound good? Now, get out your cheat sheets and prepare to answer the Infiniti Ownership Test. The answers will appear in bold print for your convenience.
Question 1:
When driving on a thoroughfare with a posted speed limit of 45 MPH, what speed should you travel?
a. 45 MPH
b. 47 MPH
c. 52 MPH
d. A posted what? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Question 2:
When driving on the freeway, what is the proper procedure for changing lanes?
a. Check your mirrors, signal, make sure there is adequate clearance, slowly merge
b. Signal and change lanes, checking your mirrors after you already in the other lane
c. Just go man, just go
d. Drive right up the ass of the guy in front of you until you can see what he ate for lunch, then cross as many lanes of traffic as there are, cutting off as many people as you can, then cross as many lanes back across the freeway as possible to end up one car length in front of where you started.
Question 3:
When encountering a stop sign, how long must you come to a complete stop before proceeding?
a. 1 second
b. 2 seconds
c. As long as it takes to ensure I have the right of way.
d. I bought this car to go, not stop. I acknowledge the stop sign’s presence with a slight nod of my head as I blow through it then contact my attorney to slap an injunction against the Stop Sign Placement Coalition and go on about my day.
Question 4:
Which lane should you be in to make a right hand turn?
a. The right hand lane
b. The center lane
c. The left hand lane
d. Whatever lane I want. My car is better than everyone else’s and they should be happy to share the same road as me.
Question 5:
What kind of person best fits the profile of an Infiniti driver?
a. Someone who knows the rules of the road and always drives defensively
b. Someone who enjoys a car that performs and who knows the rules of the road
c. Someone who cares about the well being of other humans in the world
d. Someone who is a self-important prick who knows nothing about how to drive except that shiny cars look cool.
I know it’s a short test, but you’d be surprised how many people don’t pass it. Happy Infiniti driving, assholes!
B!
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