On my way home from the gym today a song came on my iPod. The song is called “Five O’ Clock World” by a group called The Vogues. I’m not sure of the exact release date of the song, but I’m guessing it comes from somewhere early in the 1960’s. I’m going to say 1962 just because it sounds like the music did before the Beatles came along. I could go look it up but I absolutely don’t feel like doing that so deal with it.
Anyway, the lyrics of the part of the song I want to talk about go like this:
“Up every morning just to keep a job
Got to fight my way through the hustling mob
Sounds of the city pounding in my brain
While another day goes down the drain
But it’s a 5’O Clock World when the whistle blows
No one owns a piece of my time
And there’s a 5’O clock me inside my clothes
Thinking that the world looks fine”
The point I am trying to make is that people have been feeling this way for at least 40-some years. Most likely a lot longer than that, but this song is the first I’ve heard about a guy hating his job and knowing his life doesn’t begin until his work is over.
How many of us feel that way? Is everyone really only working for the weekend? It makes me wonder what people would do if they could just do it. If money was no object, what would you do with yourself?
By the way, I hate that question. “If money was no object . . .” blah blah blah. Guess what? It is an object. It has always been an object. It isn’t the only object, but damn it, it’s a pretty big object. If money really weren’t an object, I can honestly say I would be writing this in a completely different time zone (at the very least) on a completely different computer while wearing completely different clothes.
Money is the object that keeps my life the way it is now. They say when you get rich your personality doesn’t change, you just become more of whatever it was you were in the first place. If you were an asshole before you got rich, you’ll just be a bigger one. If you were a really great person before, you’d just be a bigger really great person.
I can honestly say that the only thing that would change about me would be the fact that you wouldn’t be able to find me. That’s why the internet could be such a brilliant tool for me to use if I ever actually did something with myself and got rich. All I’d have to do is put up my daily bullshit blog and the bored few who actually read them could follow me along my completely uninteresting adventures to nowhere.
Let’s face it, I’ve never actually been headed anywhere in my life. People who have known me for a long time can attest to this. I always worry about the fact that I am not moving forward in my life, but the fact is, even if I am moving forward I am heading nowhere. So I’m just moving further along a tangent line into the ether.
Like the line from The Streets: “If you don’t know where you’re going then any road will take you there.” That pretty much sums up my life to this point. I’ve been blessed with gifts I don’t use, I have no “calling” in life that I know of and I end up wasting hours and hours searching for something that I have never found and probably never will.
Have you ever gone into a music store to browse while you are waiting for something else to happen (your car to get repaired, an appointment somewhere, etc.)? Then when an employee comes up to ask if you need any help you realize that you have just walked around a store for 20 minutes and not known what you were in there for? The standard response (from me at least) is, “Oh, I’m just looking. I’ll know it when I find it.”
That’s pretty much how I live my life. I’ll know it when I find it.
I just hope time doesn’t run out before I figure out which purchase to make.
On a related note, if anyone has found an extra Calling In Life somewhere, can you pass it along to me? I think I need one of those. Wow, you’d never guess my 37th birthday is in two days, would you? Holy shit I’m getting old.
B!
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Today I was driving home from work when the song, “Meet Me Halfway” by the Black Eyed Peas came on the radio for like the 900th time in the last two days. I have gone into depth in previous posts about how much I hate the Black Eyed Peas and how they have pretty much ruined music in the early 2000’s.
I can’t really fault somebody for making shitty music that the masses latch onto. It has happened time and time again over the years. I will freely admit that I was a fan of MC Hammer back in the days when he was absolutely demolishing real rap music with his vapid lyrics and “marbles in the mouth” delivery. The only reason I listened to Hammer was because his beats were SO DAMN GOOD! In fact, they are still good and you know it.
The main thing that separates MC Hammer from the whole horrifying thing that is The Black Eyed Peas is that MC Hammer isn’t a liar like Will.i.am is. When MC Hammer says, “You can’t touch this” it is the absolute truth. Did you ever try to touch it? Were you successful? Of course not, because you couldn’t touch it, just like MC Hammer said.
On the other hand, you have lyrics like these from Will.i.am in the Black Eyed Peas’ song “Meet Me Halfway”:
Girl, I travel round the world and even sail the seven seas
Across the universe I go to other galaxies
Just tell me where to go, just tell me where you wanna to meet
I navigate myself to take me where you be
Now, let me break this down so I can prove that this dude is a liar. First, we will take the line “Girl, I travel round the world and even sail the seven seas.” There is a girl involved, apparently, so this must be a love song. And because this is a love song, there has to be these unreal statements of devotion from the man to the woman because most love songs are full of shit and girls eat that shit up. I believe he would travel around the world, but not for a girl. It would probably because he was on tour and had some concerts scheduled in places that would take him to several different cities around the globe.
As far as him sailing the seven seas? Not a chance. Not a chance in hell. Do you know how much time that would take? Do you know how dangerous that is? I don’t think anyone has ACTUALLY sailed the seven seas in like 150 years. They have engines now that eliminate the need for sails on a boat. Maybe he was so busy flying around in his G-5 airplane that he didn’t realize that. A better lyric would probably be “Girl, I go from place to place in cities around the globe but I try to stay away from places that don’t have 5 star hotels and limo service, and I would probably take a cruise ship from Miami to Jamaica, but I don’t have much more free time in my schedule for that because I have to drive Fergie to an audition to play young Jack Nicholson in the newest Batman movie.”
Now, the lyric “Across the universe I go to other galaxies” has got to be examined closely. Not for any other reason than the fact that if he were actually going to travel across the universe, he is in the wrong business for it. Even that kid from N’Sync got denied his little jaunt into space and that dude was way more popular than the Black Eyed Peas will ever be. The only way for him to get a trip into space would be for him to join the Air Force, become a pilot, work his way through the ranks, get into the astronaut training program, dazzle his superiors and be lucky enough to get assigned onto a space shuttle mission. Unfortunately for him, the space shuttle doesn’t have the capability to go across the universe or even another galaxy, and I’m pretty sure NASA would be pissed if he blew his whole space mission just to meet some girl and hopefully get some ass. Here’s a better lyric: “Across the street to Waffle House I’ll slip you a hotel key.”
The next lyric, “Just tell me where to go, just tell me where you want to meet” is the most realistic lyric in the verse because, as we all know, girls control the when, where and how any booty exchange takes place. Of course, by admitting to the woman that she is in control of where you will go with your life you have just F’ed yourself and you have given her the “hand” in the relationship. If you don’t understand “hand” you should go watch re-runs of Seinfeld until you get a better grasp on the way the universe works. Suffice it to say that if he does actually show up where she wants him to show up, he might get some ass but he will definitely have given her the upper hand in the relationship and she will probably actually send him across the galaxy at some point JUST BECAUSE SHE CAN. Way to go, dumbass! You’ve got to think of these things before singing them to your girl. And stop singing them to other people’s girls because I GUARANTEE there is some idiot girl getting ready to ask her boyfriend, “Would you travel across the universe for me?”
How the hell do you answer that? You can’t tell the truth (“Shoot, I barely like walking across the room for you, do you really want me to answer that?”) so you HAVE to lie. Way to make liars out of everyone, Will.
The last lyric, “I navigate myself to take me where you be” is not only a lie, but it’s an idiotic one because in the line previous he tells her to tell him where to go. If someone tells you which way to go, what does that make them? A navigator, perhaps? So how are you going to navigate yourself if you have to ask someone else where to go? That doesn’t work, unless he is talking about literally driving a Lincoln Navigator to where she wants to meet, but those things would never make it into space to go across the universe, and even if they could, they get horrible gas mileage and there’s no place to fill up. Plus, that thing would sink in the first of the seven seas and it would get crushed under the weight of the ocean.
This guy can barely navigate himself across a music track without making several stupid mistakes. I really hope this girl doesn’t hold her breath in hopes that he really will meet her halfway. She’ll be dead somewhere and he’ll have driven his SUV into a lake. Maybe she’ll be holding her breath halfway across the lake.
Hmm.
Maybe they deserve each other.
B!
I can’t really fault somebody for making shitty music that the masses latch onto. It has happened time and time again over the years. I will freely admit that I was a fan of MC Hammer back in the days when he was absolutely demolishing real rap music with his vapid lyrics and “marbles in the mouth” delivery. The only reason I listened to Hammer was because his beats were SO DAMN GOOD! In fact, they are still good and you know it.
The main thing that separates MC Hammer from the whole horrifying thing that is The Black Eyed Peas is that MC Hammer isn’t a liar like Will.i.am is. When MC Hammer says, “You can’t touch this” it is the absolute truth. Did you ever try to touch it? Were you successful? Of course not, because you couldn’t touch it, just like MC Hammer said.
On the other hand, you have lyrics like these from Will.i.am in the Black Eyed Peas’ song “Meet Me Halfway”:
Girl, I travel round the world and even sail the seven seas
Across the universe I go to other galaxies
Just tell me where to go, just tell me where you wanna to meet
I navigate myself to take me where you be
Now, let me break this down so I can prove that this dude is a liar. First, we will take the line “Girl, I travel round the world and even sail the seven seas.” There is a girl involved, apparently, so this must be a love song. And because this is a love song, there has to be these unreal statements of devotion from the man to the woman because most love songs are full of shit and girls eat that shit up. I believe he would travel around the world, but not for a girl. It would probably because he was on tour and had some concerts scheduled in places that would take him to several different cities around the globe.
As far as him sailing the seven seas? Not a chance. Not a chance in hell. Do you know how much time that would take? Do you know how dangerous that is? I don’t think anyone has ACTUALLY sailed the seven seas in like 150 years. They have engines now that eliminate the need for sails on a boat. Maybe he was so busy flying around in his G-5 airplane that he didn’t realize that. A better lyric would probably be “Girl, I go from place to place in cities around the globe but I try to stay away from places that don’t have 5 star hotels and limo service, and I would probably take a cruise ship from Miami to Jamaica, but I don’t have much more free time in my schedule for that because I have to drive Fergie to an audition to play young Jack Nicholson in the newest Batman movie.”
Now, the lyric “Across the universe I go to other galaxies” has got to be examined closely. Not for any other reason than the fact that if he were actually going to travel across the universe, he is in the wrong business for it. Even that kid from N’Sync got denied his little jaunt into space and that dude was way more popular than the Black Eyed Peas will ever be. The only way for him to get a trip into space would be for him to join the Air Force, become a pilot, work his way through the ranks, get into the astronaut training program, dazzle his superiors and be lucky enough to get assigned onto a space shuttle mission. Unfortunately for him, the space shuttle doesn’t have the capability to go across the universe or even another galaxy, and I’m pretty sure NASA would be pissed if he blew his whole space mission just to meet some girl and hopefully get some ass. Here’s a better lyric: “Across the street to Waffle House I’ll slip you a hotel key.”
The next lyric, “Just tell me where to go, just tell me where you want to meet” is the most realistic lyric in the verse because, as we all know, girls control the when, where and how any booty exchange takes place. Of course, by admitting to the woman that she is in control of where you will go with your life you have just F’ed yourself and you have given her the “hand” in the relationship. If you don’t understand “hand” you should go watch re-runs of Seinfeld until you get a better grasp on the way the universe works. Suffice it to say that if he does actually show up where she wants him to show up, he might get some ass but he will definitely have given her the upper hand in the relationship and she will probably actually send him across the galaxy at some point JUST BECAUSE SHE CAN. Way to go, dumbass! You’ve got to think of these things before singing them to your girl. And stop singing them to other people’s girls because I GUARANTEE there is some idiot girl getting ready to ask her boyfriend, “Would you travel across the universe for me?”
How the hell do you answer that? You can’t tell the truth (“Shoot, I barely like walking across the room for you, do you really want me to answer that?”) so you HAVE to lie. Way to make liars out of everyone, Will.
The last lyric, “I navigate myself to take me where you be” is not only a lie, but it’s an idiotic one because in the line previous he tells her to tell him where to go. If someone tells you which way to go, what does that make them? A navigator, perhaps? So how are you going to navigate yourself if you have to ask someone else where to go? That doesn’t work, unless he is talking about literally driving a Lincoln Navigator to where she wants to meet, but those things would never make it into space to go across the universe, and even if they could, they get horrible gas mileage and there’s no place to fill up. Plus, that thing would sink in the first of the seven seas and it would get crushed under the weight of the ocean.
This guy can barely navigate himself across a music track without making several stupid mistakes. I really hope this girl doesn’t hold her breath in hopes that he really will meet her halfway. She’ll be dead somewhere and he’ll have driven his SUV into a lake. Maybe she’ll be holding her breath halfway across the lake.
Hmm.
Maybe they deserve each other.
B!
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
A Gray Haired Creep
I don’t know if it’s just me or if everyone has been experiencing this, but it seems like more and more I am being reminded of exactly how old I am getting. It seems like several times a week I will see something on TV or hear a song on the radio and they will say what year it is from and I will think, “That was how long ago?! Are you kidding me?!”
Sometimes I even say that out loud. I’ll admit it. Luckily I haven’t done it in public. Or maybe I have. Oh my God! Have I done that in public and not even realized it due to my advancing years? Have I crossed over to the sort of advanced age related idiosyncrasies like sneezing SO LOUD that it restarts your heart because it’s so worn out it stops when you sneeze and I haven’t even noticed it because my hearing is so bad?
Just kidding, my hearing is fine. What?
It’s quite a reality check when you realize that a very important event in your life happened over a decade ago. Are you kidding me? Do you know what is supposed to have happened a decade ago? Fifth grade. That’s it. That is the ONLY thing that should have happened that long ago. Everything else in life should have happened within the last 2 years because that’s how young people experience life.
College kids have no concept of the reality of age because everything that happens to them is new and fancy and full of fun and probably the very real threat of an STD. And I can honestly say that there is nothing wrong with that. As far as I’m concerned, everything should be new and fancy and full of fun and I’ll just bring a condom to make sure everything is the way it is supposed to be. Even the STD.
The best part of being young is (or should I say ‘was’) the fact that there are no consequences for most of your actions. Fail a class? “I’ll take it next semester.” Break up with your girlfriend/boyfriend? “I’ll get a new one in a couple of weeks.” Have a shitty summer vacation? “I’ll do something better next year. Maybe Cancun.”
But the next thing you know 12 summers have passed, you’ve never been to Cancun and you’re sitting at home on a Tuesday night, watching “The Biggest Loser” alone while eating a plain chicken breast and broccoli instead of being out at the bars enjoying San Felipe’s Cantina’s ½ price tequila shots on Tequila Tuesdays with bar food, the hot girl that worked there who wanted to do you but you never hooked up because one of you ALWAYS had a girlfriend or a boyfriend when the other was single, and at least 2 of your best friends in the world. Oh yeah, and tequila.
That was a really long sentence that mathematically adds up to this sentence: Why the hell do I even wake up in the mornings anymore? Honestly. What the hell am I doing being this old and this lame? A decade ago I was making more money, drinking a WHOLE lot more and thus having a WHOLE lot more fun, and I had no concept that someday I would wake up and be as old as I am.
I’ll be honest, though. I can’t really say I am depressed by the act of getting older, because mentally I feel just about as dumb as I was when I was 22, give or take some sparkles of age-induced brilliance every now and again (like when I finally figured out what securities trading is. Unfortunately I am getting old and I promptly forgot what I learned so I need to go look it up again just to make sure). Apart from how much it hurts to get out of bed sometimes, it’s really not too bad.
The worst part of it, to me at least, is the fact that I have gray hair creeping up into my facial area. I don’t like that one bit. Not one bit I say! Gray hair is for old people. Not almost 37-year-olds. It’s for like 55-year-olds and above. That stuff just does not fit into my lifestyle.
A couple of years ago I was at a pool party at my friend T-Rock’s house (just an FYI, eventually we are going to be too old for nicknames like that. Eventually Ice Cube is going to HAVE to change his name back to O’Shea Jackson because I don’t think anyone in their 40’s should be named after something you use to reduce swelling) and I was standing on the diving board, getting ready to unleash some mad diving skills upon the pool, when Zoom, a friend of mine whose nickname days are also numbered (can’t wait to see you half-stepping it with a walker and telling some lady at the nursing home, “They call me ZOOM, bitch!”) says to me, “Dude, what the hell is that on your chest?”
I look down, fully expecting an open wound, a tattoo I don’t remember getting or a large piece of barbed wire to be sticking out of my chest. Instead I come face to face with a large patch of gray chest hair where my black chest hair used to be. And the gray hair begins mocking me.
“What the hell is that?” I ask, a bit panicked.
“Is that gray hair?” asks Zoom.
“No, I think I was out in the sun too long and it bleached my chest hair blond,” I lie.
“Ha ha! That’s gray hair! Dude, you’re OLD!”
So I tried to cannonball him but I jackknifed my hip and almost drown because my leg didn’t work. That’ll teach him.
But he was right. It was gray hair. And that gray hair has steadily started the creep up from my chest into my goatee and into the sides of my hair. If I don’t shave for 3 days I can literally add 12 years to my face. That would have been awesome when I was 19, but it’s not so good when I’m already old enough to do anything worth getting old for.
Except maybe joining AARP. I hear they have some good tequila parties. But they probably don’t let anyone dance on the bar anymore. Not without a doctor’s note.
I think there is probably a box or two of Just For Men in my future. I’m lame, I know, but the gray hair belongs on someone else’s face, at least for 13 more years. Then I’ll take it back. Maybe.
B!
Sometimes I even say that out loud. I’ll admit it. Luckily I haven’t done it in public. Or maybe I have. Oh my God! Have I done that in public and not even realized it due to my advancing years? Have I crossed over to the sort of advanced age related idiosyncrasies like sneezing SO LOUD that it restarts your heart because it’s so worn out it stops when you sneeze and I haven’t even noticed it because my hearing is so bad?
Just kidding, my hearing is fine. What?
It’s quite a reality check when you realize that a very important event in your life happened over a decade ago. Are you kidding me? Do you know what is supposed to have happened a decade ago? Fifth grade. That’s it. That is the ONLY thing that should have happened that long ago. Everything else in life should have happened within the last 2 years because that’s how young people experience life.
College kids have no concept of the reality of age because everything that happens to them is new and fancy and full of fun and probably the very real threat of an STD. And I can honestly say that there is nothing wrong with that. As far as I’m concerned, everything should be new and fancy and full of fun and I’ll just bring a condom to make sure everything is the way it is supposed to be. Even the STD.
The best part of being young is (or should I say ‘was’) the fact that there are no consequences for most of your actions. Fail a class? “I’ll take it next semester.” Break up with your girlfriend/boyfriend? “I’ll get a new one in a couple of weeks.” Have a shitty summer vacation? “I’ll do something better next year. Maybe Cancun.”
But the next thing you know 12 summers have passed, you’ve never been to Cancun and you’re sitting at home on a Tuesday night, watching “The Biggest Loser” alone while eating a plain chicken breast and broccoli instead of being out at the bars enjoying San Felipe’s Cantina’s ½ price tequila shots on Tequila Tuesdays with bar food, the hot girl that worked there who wanted to do you but you never hooked up because one of you ALWAYS had a girlfriend or a boyfriend when the other was single, and at least 2 of your best friends in the world. Oh yeah, and tequila.
That was a really long sentence that mathematically adds up to this sentence: Why the hell do I even wake up in the mornings anymore? Honestly. What the hell am I doing being this old and this lame? A decade ago I was making more money, drinking a WHOLE lot more and thus having a WHOLE lot more fun, and I had no concept that someday I would wake up and be as old as I am.
I’ll be honest, though. I can’t really say I am depressed by the act of getting older, because mentally I feel just about as dumb as I was when I was 22, give or take some sparkles of age-induced brilliance every now and again (like when I finally figured out what securities trading is. Unfortunately I am getting old and I promptly forgot what I learned so I need to go look it up again just to make sure). Apart from how much it hurts to get out of bed sometimes, it’s really not too bad.
The worst part of it, to me at least, is the fact that I have gray hair creeping up into my facial area. I don’t like that one bit. Not one bit I say! Gray hair is for old people. Not almost 37-year-olds. It’s for like 55-year-olds and above. That stuff just does not fit into my lifestyle.
A couple of years ago I was at a pool party at my friend T-Rock’s house (just an FYI, eventually we are going to be too old for nicknames like that. Eventually Ice Cube is going to HAVE to change his name back to O’Shea Jackson because I don’t think anyone in their 40’s should be named after something you use to reduce swelling) and I was standing on the diving board, getting ready to unleash some mad diving skills upon the pool, when Zoom, a friend of mine whose nickname days are also numbered (can’t wait to see you half-stepping it with a walker and telling some lady at the nursing home, “They call me ZOOM, bitch!”) says to me, “Dude, what the hell is that on your chest?”
I look down, fully expecting an open wound, a tattoo I don’t remember getting or a large piece of barbed wire to be sticking out of my chest. Instead I come face to face with a large patch of gray chest hair where my black chest hair used to be. And the gray hair begins mocking me.
“What the hell is that?” I ask, a bit panicked.
“Is that gray hair?” asks Zoom.
“No, I think I was out in the sun too long and it bleached my chest hair blond,” I lie.
“Ha ha! That’s gray hair! Dude, you’re OLD!”
So I tried to cannonball him but I jackknifed my hip and almost drown because my leg didn’t work. That’ll teach him.
But he was right. It was gray hair. And that gray hair has steadily started the creep up from my chest into my goatee and into the sides of my hair. If I don’t shave for 3 days I can literally add 12 years to my face. That would have been awesome when I was 19, but it’s not so good when I’m already old enough to do anything worth getting old for.
Except maybe joining AARP. I hear they have some good tequila parties. But they probably don’t let anyone dance on the bar anymore. Not without a doctor’s note.
I think there is probably a box or two of Just For Men in my future. I’m lame, I know, but the gray hair belongs on someone else’s face, at least for 13 more years. Then I’ll take it back. Maybe.
B!
Monday, October 26, 2009
Memory On Sabbatical
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!
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!
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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