Selected Thoughts: 2007-2009

I have gathered just a small sampling of the various one liners, absurd thoughts, and just random musings I have jotted down in my massive collection of notebooks, journals, legal pads, and various scraps of paper. The majority of these were written either in a booth at Red Apple, the Library at Macomb’s South Campus, or my back patio.


People who always have their sleeves rolled up should just buy a short sleeve shirt.

Fewer people would die skydiving if parachutes didn’t look so much like backpacks. If they didn’t, you wouldn’t accidentally jump with a backpack on.

I don’t like cage matches. I’d prefer a flaming circle. You can get out, but you have to have a really good reason to.

The fact that more people watch Wheel of Fortune then Jeopardy! Says a lot about our education system

Fat people are like skinny people if they ate a lot of food over a long period of time.

Bow ties are stupid. If they weren’t stupid, then everyone would wear them.

I want an alarm clock which has an air raid siren for it’s alarm…that’ll definitely get me up, or so used to it that I’ll be ill prepared when an air raid comes.

I got tired of cutting of the grass, so I replaced it with mini golf green. I watered it for a week, and I grew a small windmill.

I don’t anyone who likes licorice. Licorice is so nasty, they had to give it strawberry flavoring to make kids eat it. You know what else is like that? Medicine.

If Michael Myers killed people with a gun would he still be scary? I mean, he’d still be killing people.

I’m surpirsed they haven’t tried to sell us carbonated milk yet.

Why were attic doors fashioned to always seem like they’re going to hit your face?

I don’t take baths, because I feel dirty if I’m washing in the same water I farted in.

If a loveseat can fit three, then I call it a French loveseat

It shouldn’t be called deordarant. You ever put it ON an odor, you just smell like BO and Deordorant afterwords.

All the major news outlets should urge voters to write in Haywood Jablome for president. If it wins, some kid will have the happiest day of his life since his parents gave him such a horrible name.

Fact: Stripping down to your underwear makes you want to dance more than when you had your clothes on.

Mini golf likes to be called little golf.

Only Kill Bill Vol. 2 should be called Kill Bill, Vol.1 shouldn’t because she does not Kill Bill in it.

In darts, I only count it as a bulls eye if the board is flailing around erratically

Do piano players type fast?

Can you buy a translated dreydel?

How do you throw a garbage can away?

Instead of 911, why didn’t they just put an emergency button on phones?

If you paint a phone red, does it connect to the President?

Can a blind person tell the difference between movies and books on tape?

Does anyone dial the operator anymore?

Shouldn’t they call it anti-chap stick?

I can’t wait for 2020 so we can start labeling the decades again

Can anyone say they are a better person because of the internet?

Rollerblades can save on gas, but lose on dignity.

It seems the phrase “I don’t want to talk about it” is always followed with talking about it.

Life would be so much easier if wrinkled clothes were cool

How come This Old House never goes to castles?

Aviator’s are only cool in sunglass form.

Instead of voting, find someone whose voting for the other guy, and cancel each other out and stay home.

Sunday project: Record all your phone calls and transcribe them. Go over the transcripts and see if you can find Obstruction of Justice in them anywhere.

There is no such thing as pickles. Pickle is a verb

If stuffed animals could talk, what makes you think they’d be friendly?

It would appear as if George Orwell’s 1984 was wrong

Kids Book Title: Encyclopedia Brown and The Case Of The Dead Dog: A Future Rapist Mystery

I like putting the word search into search bars…just hoping one day it’ll actually make my computer crash

If you wear just headphones and tuck the wires into your pockets, people will think you’re listening to music and won’t talk to you

We really just let squirrels do whatever the hell they want to don’t we?

More jobs should have badges. Imagine being flashed a badge by a janitor.

Everyone should be allowed to fire a rocket launcher once.

Punch somebody and call out a random object you see. Tell them it’s a game.

My Rant About Food

It’s not my style to bash something that has been so good to me, but today I want to address a few things regarding food. Food is awesome, and I love to eat, but having said that, there are certain food items that I got a problem with…. A BIG problem with.

First let’s start off with lunchmeat. I love lunchmeat and I always have at least two packages in the refrigerator. But the name brand lunchmeat companies offer a so-called ‘deli style’ to their lunchmeat. Basically what this means is thin slices. I’m all for the thin slices, in fact, I implore them to pursue making lunchmeat as thin as possible. What I take issue with is how it’s packaged. They toss it all haphazardly into the container, I guess to give it some kind of a ‘deli feel’ to it. I don’t need a deli feel to it though, what I need is full pieces of lunchmeat that won’t tear into a million pieces because it’s tangled and intertwined with every other slice. And what angers me the most is that the machine that makes it probably initially makes the lunchmeat in a stack, and then (through robot or human) they mess it all up to look ‘deli authentic’. I’m gonna eat it right out of the package with the refrigerator door open, you don’t have to get all fancy for me.

Next, Life cereal. It get’s way too soggy way too fast, and that’s all I have to say about that.

Third, the Styrofoam ramen noodle cups specifically tell you not to microwave them. Instead it tells you to heat water separately in another container and pour it into the cup and let it sit. Excuse me, but isn’t the whole purpose of me buying ramen in a Styrofoam cup suggest that maybe when I plan to eat it I will not have a separate container available (hence the Styrofoam container???) By the way ramen noddle companies, I microwave your cups all the time, gonna call the ramen police on me? Those instructions are as crazy as asking for a take out box at a restaurant and having them bring it to you and say “OK, but you have to take the food home on a regular plate and then put the food into the Styrofoam container when you arrive at your house…very important.” On the subject of ramen noodles in the Styrofoam cup, get rid of the peas and the corn, I can’t think of a single person who looks at that and goes “Peas and Corn, YES!!!! That’s what I’m talking about!”

This next concern is kind of related to food. It’s regarding the popcorn button on the microwave. Who uses that? Get rid of it, it’s useless. In fact, I think it’s dangerous. Whose ever used the popcorn button and not almost burned their house down? The popcorn button always ensures you get a bag of unpopped kernels or a bag of charred blackened death. There’s a reason why the bag says “Stay and Listen” it’s an unperfected science at the current moment, but I do dream of the day when we can get the right time it takes to pop a standard bag of popcorn.

For any coffee drinkers out there, just thought you’d like to know Maxwell House sucks.

Also, I can’t believe they still sell macaroni and cheese with the powdered cheese. How can we move forward as a world if we’re still subjecting our kids to powdered cheese? Really, how much more does the deluxe cost? Give the kids a frickin’ break. Other cheese concerns of mine are regarding cheetos, cheese puffs, cheese balls, etc. How is it that we have time to shoot electrons at each other in high tech labs, but we can’t find a way of adding cheddar flavor to these snacks without having to give it an orange dust that will literally stain everything it touches?

I would continue berating the foibles of food, but I am starving now, and must go and stuff my face.

Generalities In General

Some people love being ridiculously vague. To give a broad scope of a situation in simple terms, allocating almost no detail frustrates the hell out of everyone. There is also of course circumlocution, or “talking around a problem or question rather than actually addressing it full on” a tool which is well utilized by the teachers and politicians of the world. What made me think about this was a headline I saw in the Macomb Daily today that said “Foundation offers scholarship” and I simply thought they could not be any more general or vague in that headline.

It’s like seeing a headline that reads “Cop Arrests Bad Guy” or “A Person With A Thing Appeared At A Place Sometime Today”. Now, making a connection back to high school, something I like to do because I’m in the real world now, and when I was in high school they kept making ‘real world connections’ so they must be reversible, right? Had I written a paper about George Orwell’s 1984 entitled “George Orwell wrote a book that means something”, I’m sure it wouldn’t have even received the stellar 78% I got when I wrote it for real.

It seems though that people who love speaking in generalities love the phrase “…and stuff”. They use it more than I use Zatarain’s Cajun Seasoning (and I use a lot of Zatarain’s Cajun Seasoning). Many sentences they say end with ‘and stuff’. For example let‘s assume someone is giving a class speech about Abraham Lincoln (I say a class speech because I am making more real life to High School connections)

“So, the reason why Abraham Lincoln was a great President was because he freed the slaves and stuff.”

I can’t stand the phrase at all, even though I am guilty of using it myself from time to time. Also, it’s annoying when a person finishes a sentences with “and that was bad” or “and that was good”. Again, let us assume the fictional person speaking is still referring to Abe Lincoln.

“There was a Civil War, because the south wanted to keep slaves, and that was bad.”

Letting people know that slavery "was bad" is a lot like letting people know that the sun comes up in the morning, and the moon comes out at night. It's a waste of five seconds, you do not need to let people know that an obviously bad or good thing is an obviously bad or good thing.

Actually, instead of using a fictional person and dialogue to prove how awful and stupid speaking in generalities is I have a link to a video of what I consider to be “The Dumbest Person On The Planet”
Here’s the thing, people who aren’t smart should really learn more things and stuff, because that would be good.

My Life As An Unpublished Author

People like to ask other people questions. One question people like to ask me is what I do for a living. If I was a completely honest person, I would tell them ‘I am a cashier/stocker for a mid size Michigan based Hardware Company’. If I was a complete liar I would tell them ‘I am the personal candy buyer for the President, both current and past.’ But, if I was to land somewhere in the middle of those two extremes, I would tell people that I am ‘A writer’. Technically I am a writer, I just don’t get paid for it. I guess that makes me an unemployed writer, but nonetheless a writer.

I have written hundreds of poems, and around 30 odd short stories, and about three quarters of a book. The book itself was supposed to be a massive undertaking over the previous summer. The only problem was, after starting the book, I suddenly found myself with a real job. So, I began to work non stop all summer long. I would go to work and think of plot points, characters, and dialogue. I would come home and use most of my spare time to work on finishing the book. I wanted to complete it by the first day of Fall (which I failed to achieve), and was averaging about 4 hours of sleep a night. I was sleeping on the floor in my office, because I would sit at my computer and write until I was sleepy, and just simply clear a space on the carpet and sleep right there until I had to go to work in the morning.

After three grueling months of exhausting work, my ideas dried up. I suddenly forgot about the book, and dedicated everything to my real job. Then the weather got cold, and it become even more difficult to write a book whose time line spans only a single summer.

I recently went back to writing it, only finishing a few pages before getting the sudden feeling of deleting the whole thing and starting over. Deleting everything and starting over is not an option though, for the book is almost finished. I don’t believe this book will ever be ‘publishable’ and it’s more of an exercise in whether or not I have to diligence to produce a ‘feature length manuscript’. I’ve learned some great lessons in the process though. Setting word quotas or having an outline is just stifling and unrealistically demanding. I had set goals and marks to hit by certain time periods, and by doing so was forcing myself to ‘fluff’ my prose. There are whole groups of pages I had to delete later on just because they were so haphazardly put in place just to stay within a tentative schedule of completion.

Another great lesson I learned while working on this project is difficulties in point of views. I learned the absolute horror show that is first person narrative. The limits it places on the plot, the over use of the word ‘I’ and the very selfish overtones that will naturally be evident in a story about a person told by that very same person.

I do hope though that I can finish this book one day, if only to say that I finished something that I started. But, I must be honest, I have moved onto a new story, one that seems to be going much better than the previous undertaking (and is told through third person omniscient, which gives me much more liberty). But, as long as I’m still writing, I’ll keep telling people that I’m a writer.

Let's Talk About Coffee Some More

My coffee maker is going to go through a window because I’m so sick of it. I’ve tried cleaning it (even with some real nasty strong stuff) and my coffee still tastes weird and the whole house smells bad. That’s not right, coffee is supposed to make a house smell good, it’s one of natures alarm clocks, just smelling coffee in your sleep can make you wake up with smile (as can the smell of frying bacon).

But this Devil’s urn of a coffee pot is useless, and is going to have a violent end to it’s flawed coffee making existence. I may just “Office Space” it and take it out into the backyard and just beat it mercilessly with a wooden baseball bat. I could tie a brick to it, drive down to Belle Isle and drop it in the river as well. Regardless, it has to go. I’ve spent too many days and too many cups with my nose around the brim going “Does this smell funny?” and then taking the cup to other people and asking “Hey, does this smell funny?” I’m sure people are sick of smelling my coffee mugs, especially since the coffee inside smells bad.

For full disclosure, I should let everyone know that it is early morning as I am writing this, and I am brewing a pot before I go to work. Am I cranky? Am I grouchy? You best believe I am. Because I have tried everything to make this work right.

I’ve tried words of encouragement, sort of talking to it in a puppy dog voice like “Good Morning Coffee Maker, you’re just the prettiest, strongest coffee maker ever, yes you are! Yes you are!” I tried to destroy it‘s self esteem. “Fine, nobody ever wants your coffee, because you’re ugly.” I even tried more conventional methods…such as cleaning it.

Somebody suggested that it was the coffee I was using. So I changed coffee, NOPE, still tasted like hot boiled garbage. This mail order Gevalia coffee maker has simply shit the bed. I should’ve known because it was a complimentary gift for trying a pound of Gevalia coffee through the mail. Seriously, how much does a pound of coffee cost? It was like 9 dollars. And they’re just like “Oh, and hey, we’re gonna throw in a fully functional kitchen appliance because you spent nine dollars.” They probably have a warehouse full of these piece of crap coffee makers and they can’t give them away fast enough. I can just see two of the workers at that warehouse having a conversation. Here is that imagined dialogue, in which the workers are named Victor and Sam.

Victor: Hey, just got off the phone with someone interested in our coffee.

Sam: What did they say?

Victor: They wanted to know how much a pound of coffee was.

Sam: What did you tell them?

Victor: Nine dollars.

Sam: And?

Victor: He said no thank you.

Sam: Hmm….we should send him a coffee maker anyway.
(SCENE)

I don’t care if that company can boast that their coffee is the official coffee of the King of Sweden, their coffee makers suck big time.

Sleep Habits

I have two ways I sleep usually. One way is I lay very still and breath very shallow, and many people are convinced that I am dead. Of the two ways I sleep, I believe people wish I wouldn’t sleep like that. I guess they hate having to check to see if I’m alive, and then when they found out I am, have me yell in their face for waking me up. People always tell me that I look like a corpse when I’m sleeping, that I don’t move or budge at all. That is creepy.

The other way is when I’m having vivid dreams or a restless night. I thrash around like nobody’s business. I sleep like how you’d expect the Tazmania Devil to sleep. Last night was one of those nights, which came complete with a trippy dream that would put any Dali painting or David Lynch film to shame. At the moment, I wish I could supply you with some of the details of that dream, but they seem to have left my head forever. As an aside, I can’t stand dreams where you do a lot in them. Any kind of constant moving or action in a dream is awful, like running. You feel like somebody just poured wet concrete all over your body and you can’t run very fast. When I have those dreams, I wake up exhausted.

Dreaming about work is also terrible. I wake up to go to work feeling like I just finished working a shift, how awful is that? When I first started my job, it was a bit of shock for me, and I was having nightmares about the blue screen on the register, and my dreams were nothing but cashing out an endless line of customers. It’s a miracle I stayed on there.

Restless or eccentric sleeping habits are hereditary in my family. My younger brother Andrew sometimes sleeps with his eyes half open, and my older sister yells at people when she sleeps. Not like incoherent yelling, but actually scolding you for something you did, unbeknownst to that person that she is fast and sound asleep.

Last night, I fell asleep under my massive comforter and went on a wild ride of a crazy dream. I woke up this morning, and that comforter was laying on the floor to my left, and my smaller blanket was laying on the floor to the right. I was crunched up into a tiny ball, trying to fit underneath my bath robe like a blanket, my tiny feet poking out at the end. I had gone through two blankets over the night, and ended up wrapped up in a thin red bathrobe, freezing my ass off. I was really pissed at myself this morning for that.

My dad is a “sleep puncher”. Let me explain. Anytime he wakes up unexpectedly, he seems ready to punch something…or someone. A great example would be a time, many years ago, when he was sleeping on the couch while Andrew and I played a video game (it was a war game). The object of the mission we were playing was to destroy battle tanks, and at one point I remarked to Andrew “Where did that tank go?” I asked. He points at the screen. “It’s on fire down the street.” He said. My father only hears in his sleep “It’s on fire” and springs awake and jumps off the couch, kicking a cup of coffee off the coffee table and across the room. Nobody ever wants to wake him up (I mean, you'd be risking getting punched in the face.)

I could go on and on about sleep dreams. I’ll definitely have to do a part two on sleep habits. I think I’ll end it here for now.

A Super Nintendo Love Story

My Super Nintendo for the last few years has been a lot like other Super Nintendos, neglected, forgotten, abandoned, scarred. It’s cords all wrapped up and put into a box and out of sight where I wouldn’t have to look at it. But I have rekindled the old passion, that old romance that was so fiery and obsessive in my youth between my SNES and I. While the spark will never burn as bright as when I was eight (I just don’t have the room in my schedule to play Mario Kart for 11 straight hours anymore), I’m glad to have the game back in my life. Because after the SNES and I split for good that one time, I went along and saw other game systems for a few years, and had some fun, but nothing was ever like what I had with my Super Nintendo.

Somewhere in the back of my head, I regretted how I treated my Super Nintendo. I put it in a box and sent it away, no explanation or anything, I had to dig it up for closure. I didn’t find closure though, instead I found Donkey Kong, Super Mario World, Earthworm Jim, Zelda, The Lion King, Earthbound, Harley’s Humongous Adventure, and one controller. Suddenly I was in love with my Super Nintendo once again. Once again I was in a world of video games where the goal wasn’t to beat a hooker to death and steal her money but rather to collect gold coins on the back of a dinosaur and fight giant turtles that had spikes on their shells and wore punk bracelets. Where the only goal in one’s life is to quote unquote “stay out of the lava”.

Mario Kart taught me everything I need to know about life. That lesson is if you don't come in first, you might as well be that mushroom guy or that turtle guy at the end of the pack. Old video games are full of great lessons, a few of which I would like to share.

-If there is a banana shortage in the world, don't blame the monkeys, it was probably crocodiles dressed as pirates
-The only thing saving us from being destroyed by evil forces is three yellow triangles
-Jump on the back of a turtle and he'll hide in his shell; then you can pretty much do whatever you want to it
-There are a lot of people in this world who look like 'goombas'
-Earthbound is still the greatest video game ever created


For now, I'll just sit around and play a little Super Nintendo here and there. Who knows, maybe I'll give that old whore Sega a call one of these days, see what it's been up to, see if Sonic is still hanging around.

My Current Obsession With Weathersealing My House

I work in a hardware store, so I spend the majority of my days around various items for home improvement. Since starting my job about six months ago, I have learned basic (very basic) plumbing, what a chuck key is, and I am obsessed with weather sealing my house. I should probably explain a few things...

First off, anybody who has ever been inside my house knows that it is extremely cold. There are rumors that my house is on an Indian Burial Ground, thus why the temperature is always around ten degrees colder than everywhere else around us. Last year, when the Spring thaw came, driving down the street you could see everyone's lawn except my own, which was still covered in snow (and wouldn't melt for another week). Being a little guy, I hate the cold, as most little guys do.

I obviously wanted to do something about it, and you would to if you had to consider a coat as a piece of your pajamas. I'm constantly looking at the different products we have to make your home more energy efficient (and less cold). Double draft stops for doors, foam insulated pads for the inside of electrical outlets, plastic kits to stretch over the window, and I'm even thinking about getting a large insulated blanket to wrap around the hot water heater. This is insane!!! I should not be worried about the energy efficiency of my home, that's something my dad would worry about. I should be worried about the lack of pizza rolls in the freezer or how I'm going to sleep in my bed without having to actually clean all the crap off of it.

Six months ago if you would have asked me if I was concerned or thinking about weather sealing my house for the winter, I probably would have laughed. Now if you ask me, I would probably cry, because it's sad that I have enough time on my hands even working constantly to sit and think about stuff like this.

That's what the last six months have been like. I get spurts of energy where I suddenly become obsessed with 'fixing' something around the house because of something I saw while at work. I have still yet to re-caulk the bath tub. I was going to fix a hole in the drywall (so glad I talked myself out of that one), and made myself learn all the parts in the back of my toilet and how they function. I'm twenty years old, yet I think like a 47 year old South Warren handyman.

On a sidenote, everyone should learn about the back tank of their toilet if not the whole toilet. The toilet has to be one of the simplest things in the world, and pretty much anyone can fix a problem with it. Also, nine times out of ten if you're toilet is broke, you need a new flapper (write that down).

I had no idea how simple the mechanics of a toilet were, and upon learning the fundamentals of toilet repair, I became very angry at plumbers in general. I should open my own free lance part time back tank toilet repair company. All we'll do is fix things in the back tank of the toilet. When it comes to the bottom half of the toilet, that's when you can call a real plumber. Allport's Partial Toilet Repair Co. (we specialize in changing flappers). I think it's a very feasible plan.

My (Favorite) Coffee Mug Is Broken

DISCLAIMER: The following post is me over-reacting to my coffee mug being broken.

In a matter of moments, my favorite coffee mug was broken. The handle was smashed into a million (actually three) pieces. Of course, I didn’t break it, I would never be so neglectful around my coffee mug. It was my mother who broke it while I was out of sight. I of course will be trying to repair it with some kind of crazy glue or epoxy. I would’ve started earlier, but I’m waiting until tomorrow when Employee Appreciation week begins at work and I get it real cheap. Sometimes you just gotta wait it out.

Of course though, I have tons of coffee mugs, all of which had they been broken instead, I would've said that they were my favorite. But they aren’t broken, so they aren’t my favorite, my favorite is the one that is broken, simply put.

She suggested that I use the cup as a pencil holder, and I calmly (furiously) rebutted “No! I have a place to put my pencils, I need a place to put my coffee!” and then she cried and I felt bad. (The following dialogue is not verbatim, and has been exaggerated immensely. Also, my mother did not cry.)

Having coffee in the morning, all I can feel is grief for that mug. Someone did mention to me that I could still drink coffee out of it, it was just the handle that was broken. After I broke both of that person's feet, I calmly told them "You can still walk, you're legs aren't broken, it's just your feet." If a person could drink coffee out of a mug without a handle, then they wouldn't make handles would they????

But, I can lament and rant about the architectural history of the coffee mug in it's many dynamics, and it's immense trials and tribulations over the years, but it won't fix my broken (favorite) coffee mug.

From what I can gather, something fell out of a cupboard and landed on the mug (which was in the sink), and of course the rest is history. Just like that, something falling from a high shelf completely shook and rocked my whole world, disturbing the very bedrock of my existence as it has never done before.

In all seriousness though, it would make a very handy pencil cup on the desk in my office... doesn't mean I will though.

A Brief Wonderous Journey Into The Eclectic (And Eccentric) Collection Of Stuff

I own a lot of stuff. Amongst all my stuff is some rather quirky items that I impulsively bought purely out of immaturity, nostalgia, or both. I thought that I would gather some of it together to illustrate just what kind of crap I just have laying around my room.


1. Those of you who are not familiar with Harry Belafonte would know him best as the guy who sings 'Day-O" from one of the greatest scenes in the movie Beetlejuice, where they dance around before mutant lobster hands attack them. (Sidenote: Those mutant lobster hands scared me alot when I was little)







2. This shirt, which proclaims 'Fooey On Fouts' regards current Warren Mayor Jim Fouts. I got this from somebody awhile ago, and it always makes me laugh. I have never worn it, it's way too big. It fits like a nightgown. It's sits in the back of my closet, and makes for a great conversation piece every now and then should the topic of Warren Politics come up (which it rarely does).






3. As the title suggests, this is indeed a book written by disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagowhatever. (I know I could just look at the pic to learn the spelling). I didn't know there was something this man could be worst at then being governor, but there is, being a writer. Is it just me or does he kind of look like a Cabbage Patch doll??






4. One of my favorite things is B1. I used to have both of the Bananas In Pajamas, but somewhere along the way B2 got lost. Seriously, I am holding onto this for my children, and I hope they'll pass it along to their children as well.









5. This is of course an action figure of the popular host of HBO's 'Tales from the Crypt' The Cryptkeeper. He is of course donning a very elegant tuxedo, complete with tails. This was my favorite show when I was five years old. Why was a five year old allowed to watch Tales from the Crypt? Don't ask me, I don't know. BTW, I didn't know this, but Danny Elfman composed the theme music to the show. For those of you who aren't familiar with Danny Elfman, he's done the music in basically every Tim Burton movie.



6. This is the entire series of MGM Classic Horror Film Monsters plush collection. They are (from left to right) Dracula, The Phantom Of The Opera, Creature From The Black Lagoon, Frankenstein, Bride Of Frankenstein, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, The Mummy, and The Wolfman. Six of them were easy to find in a dollar store. It would be three years before I would complete the collection. The Creature From The Black Lagoon was the hardest one to find. The Hunchback comes in a close second though.

A Post About Mom

A lot of people ask me how me and my siblings are so eccentric and quirky. Well, it's because of the larger than life character in our lives that we call 'mom' or when we're mad 'Linda'. I decided that I would like to just share a bit of the eccentricity that is my mother today.

First things first, she can't remember the first names of certain politicians (In 2004 she constantly referred to John Kerry as Bob Kerry) and at the moment she keeps calling Republican for Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, Tom. Such as "Jake, are you gonna vote for that Tom Snyder guy?"

She loves to share facts and stories about celebrities. Below is a list of statements she has made to me out of the blue:

"Did you know Tony Curtis and Robert Wagner both had sex with Yvonne De Carlo, the actress who played Lily Muenster?"

"Did you know that Judy Garland internal organs were rotting?"

"You know what I'm getting out of this book? Martha Stewart is a real bitch."

"Apparently Cary Grant was a huge homosexual even though he was married a few times"

"I just finished McKenzie Phillips' book... the word I wish to describe it as is debauchery"

"Pam Grier met John Lennon once, and thought he was a complete asshole"

My mother really likes all the aforementioned celebrities though.

She loves watching movies, all kinds of movies. It's strange to think that a person who cries every time they watch 'Terms Of Endearment' would also like the movie 'Smokin' Aces', and will often get Goodfellas and Casino mixed up, and just simply ask "Ok, which one is the one where Joe Pesci get's beat to death with a shovel and buried alive?" (That one is Casino by the way).

Anyone who knows my mom knows that she will slip in and out of accents throughout the day. One minute she'll be speaking normal, and then suddenly she becomes British, or Jewish, or her favorite, a tough ol' broad from the streets of Boston. But anytime she goes into an accent it always ends with the phrase "What are you trying to kill your poor mother over here?"

She also is addicted to sniffing candles. She's a good old fashion American candle sniffer. Can't walk past a candle without putting her nose to it. There could be a label that says "This candle smells like nothing" and she'll still sniff it to see what it smells like. She could do some real damage at a Yankee Candle.

So, basically what I'm saying is, if you think my being weird is a bad thing, you can blame my mother. If you think it's a good thing, you can thank her.

Singing and Dancing When Nobody's Around

Whenever I am the only person in my house, I really enjoy singing very loud and dancing like a complete idiot. I mean like a total and complete dork, I really get into it. I’m pretty sure my neighbors can hear me though. They’re probably just getting up and suddenly hear someone shouting the lyrics of Frank Valli’s ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ (A song I know all the words to thanks to the radio at work), always cracking at the high notes. I can just hear them talking to each other "What a jerk!" or "Will someone shut that kid up?" or "Do you hear that singing? It's probably coming from the only house on the street that isn't renting"

I have injured myself many, many times whilst dancing around my living room. I have hit my foot on the coffee table so many times, I really can’t feel pain in my right foot anymore. I’ve slipped and fell a few times trying to slide across the linoleum floor in the kitchen (I do that move mostly just after Christmas when I get new socks for presents) And one time I was dancing and ended up standing on the couch, and I just simply fell.

The shower of course is still the best place for singing. The acoustics of a bathroom plus the sound filter of running water is almost as good as Auto-Tune. I sound like hot shit when I sing in the shower. You ever notice how odd the combination of the bathroom and music is though? People love music in the bathroom. They'll sing the shower, get a shower radio, whistle on the toilet... something about bathrooms just brings the inner Mozart out in everyone. What's my favorite song to sing the shower? Surprisingly I love to sing a great oldie, Bobby Darin's 'Beyond The Sea'. I sing it more than anything else. I don't know why, I just always really liked it.

On the subject of music, Halloween is coming up, so the music has changed at work, and I can only guess that when I'm at work today, I'll only hear "The Timewarp" thirty times. And I'm pretty positive that should I be down an isolated aisle where I'm all alone, I will do The Timewarp every time.

Half Assing It

That's pretty much the work I've been doing around the house lately. Anytime I set to do something at home, I give it a lackluster, mediocre effort. I give it the so-called "community college' try. For example, yesterday I did a load of laundry, and at this moment I am still not done with it. I put a load in the washer around 3 pm yesterday, and completely forgot about it, so my clothes didn't go into the dryer until around 8 pm. I forgot about the dryer, and pulled my clothes out around 10: 30 pm. I folded them on the floor of my office, and there they are still sitting, at 5:01 pm the next day.

But they are just one mountain of incomplete work laying around the house with my stamp of approval all over it. There are books scattered all over the place that I took off the shelf, read the first three pages and got distracted by something else (probably TV or the internet).

My room itself has completely self destructed itself into a den of a crazed, rabid, fiend. There is just crap tossed all over the place. But the fact remains that I am just too damn tired to get anything done anymore. With all the clutter, mess, and complete disregard for the sanitary integrity of the dwelling, should one see the room without knowing who it belongs to, they would assume it would be either a madman just inches away from being the homeless guy at the car wash, or a drug addict who likes to read.
(DISCLAIMER: I am not inches away from being the crazy homeless guy at the car wash, nor am I drug addict who likes to read)

I will keep putting it off just like I have put off doing other things in my house. Things such as finding out how to fix that damn hole in the ceiling, recaulking the bath tub, or even finally getting around to picking up those branches I put in a pile behind my van when we had that fierce wind I don't know how long ago... oh, I should probably take the bottles back. They've been piling up in the garage for like the past three years.

Well, I am very happy to report that while I was taking a break from writing this entry, I successfully installed a new toilet seat in the bathroom. Of course it only took forty seconds, but nonetheless I completed something around the house! Having done that, I guess I can leave the mess in my room, the caulking in the bathtub, the bottles in the garage, and the large branches behind my van for awhile longer. Oh yeah, I'll probably leave that hole in the ceiling in the back hallway for now as well too. After all, there's only so much I can do in one day.

I Love My Uncool Slippers

I am a man of leisure. As one of those, I take great pride in having comfortable footwear. And nothing is more comfortable than my pair of slippers that I constantly wear around the house (See Figure 1.1). Outside of the shower, it’s been a long time since my bare feet have walked across any surface of the house. I purchased these slippers off a clearance rack at Target for about 3.99 about a year and a half ago, and it’s still one of the best deals I ever spent four dollars on. But I am aware of how ‘uncool’ I look in my slippers and socks. My feet look like they belong to a wimpy dad who carries a fanny pack full of things his wife doesn’t have room for in her purse. But I like looking ridiculous when I’m confined behind the drywall of my house. I like that I don’t have to worry about how I look. I'll admit that sometimes if I know I’m not leaving the house that day, I won’t bother changing my clothes. Some may say that’s disgusting, but they only say it because they’re guilty of doing the same thing and are too embarrassed to admit it.

Of course, there are rules to spending more than one day in the same clothes. First at the top of this very important, and hygienic list, is to always smell test. When you roll out of bed, and feel like scrubbing out, just take your index and thumb, and pinch the shirt you’re wearing right in the middle of the chest, and pull it up to your nose. Inhale. Eye’s watering?? Then I’m afraid you need to change, because you smell bad. You can only get away with staying in the same clothes if they don’t smell like they’ve been worn the previous day.

Location is also very important, where did you go in those clothes the previous day? Say for instance you spent yesterday working hard down at the Seaport loading mackerel into 50 gallon drums, you probably can’t wear that shirt a second day. But let’s say you just sat around and watched TV all day, maybe went to the grocery store for a quick second, then maybe you can get away with it.

Important: Never go to the same places or see the same people you saw yesterday. You will feel paranoid that they will realize you haven’t changed, and you’re paranoia is completely justified. They will notice, and they will be judging you, if only in their head, but still nonetheless judging you.

Also, it can never stretch more than one day. If you stay in the same clothes you slept in for the day, then you’re just ‘scrubbing out’ for the day, and everyone does that. If you go to bed that night in those clothes, wake up, and make another day of it, then you’re just being a scrub, and people don’t like that.

Tiny Pajamas and Doughnuts

I had not noticed until this morning, that a certain pair of pajama pants that I own are no longer fitting. Where they once dragged under the heels of my feet, now only resemble really comfortable capri pants. As I made the intrepid climb down off my bed (it sits a whopping 2 ft. 5 in off the ground) and walked to the bathroom, I felt a suddenly draft wrap around the tiny toothpicks that I call ankles. Looking down, I notice that these pajamas legs were leaving my ankles and a small part of my lower leg completely exposed. This was unexpected and prompted a debate that I still have not resolved. Am I growing or are these shrinking? I quickly checked the waistband to make sure that while I was sleeping it had not shifted North into Senior Citizen territory of resting around my belly button. Of course, the waistband was right where I had left last night.

For full disclosure though, I have not worn these pajama pants in many months, which leads me to wonder just exactly where in this pajama void they actually cease to stop fitting me? I may never have the right answers for this situation, but there is a glimmer of hope that keeps me wonder, am I finally growing?? Most people my age don't obsess over height as much I do, but they never had to grow facial hair in order to convince people they were old enough to work in a hardware store (and growing facial hair is not an easy task for me).

While I'm on the subject of work though, I have a bone to pick with the crew that was working at the Tim Horton's at 8 Mile and Mound at 5:30 in the morning yesterday. At the drive through I asked for a dozen doughnuts...little did I know that they had no intention of letting me pick those doughnuts. As I went to pay, he slid a box, full of random doughnuts that he had pick for me (which I suspect he was trying to get rid of the old stuff). Who does that? How can a place that advertises "We specialize in doughnuts" not let you pick your own doughnuts, but rather just grab a bunch of different doughnuts and send a person on their way? First thing I said was "I'm gonna need a lot more Boston Creams in there". The Boston Cream is the coveted 2nd place of all doughnuts, the Silver Medalist behind the Eclair, which is of course just a larger Boston Cream. "...and take that cruller out while you're at it." I firmly believe in a man's right to choose the doughnuts he eats. When it comes to doughnuts, I am one hundred percent pro-choice. I mean, seriously, who want s a plain doughnut if they're not on a hayride or an apple orchard? You want a plain doughnut? Get a 1960s Sci Fi ray gun that makes things bigger and aim it at a box of Cheerios...the rest of us will stick with our Boston Creams.

Mountain Dew, Facebook, C-SPAN

I would like to mention my utter dismay and so called "bummed outness" at the fact that I had to settle for a Mountain Dew: Livewire out of the cooler at work because we are out of Mountain Dew: Code Red right now.

First off, let's set down some universal truths: Code Red is delicious... Livewire sucks something awful, and that's not up for debate at all. Around 5:45 p.m., as I went on my fifteen minute break, I walked with a bit of a chipper swagger (almost a full dance) down the paint aisle to the front to get a Code Red that I had been daydreaming about (that's how exciting my daydreams are).

It just makes so much sense that it would be the only pop we DIDN'T have...everything else was stocked to the front, almost spilling out, but no Code Red anywhere. I muttered a quiet 'shit' under my breath and then I saw Livewire and almost puked in my mouth (I even might've actually puked in my mouth, or maybe it was just taste of Livewire).

Lately also, I've been spending too much time on Facebook. I will though be brave enough to admit that I am one of those douche bags who think that they have clever statuses. Sometimes I do write something that I think is really really funny, and nobody will like it, and I kinda go 'what the fuck, that was funny!'... i'm not saying it's right, i'm just being real with myself.

I've always had a hard time falling asleep...that was until I got hooked on a sedative called C-SPAN. Have you ever watched a House Subcommittee Hearing on Domestic Agricultural Quotas late at night? It takes five minutes before it just absolutely ravages your body and you fall into a deep sleep. It almost like Valium is being crumbled up and is being vented out through your televisions speakers when you listen to Rep. Bart Stupak (MI-1 D) talk about farmers in America. I'll wake up in the morning and see C-SPAN still on the TV, and I'll notice I'm still in my work clothes, my lights are still on, and there is a half eaten plate of food on my bed and remark 'wow, did that knock me out or what?"