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When it comes to shoveling snow, I’m a minimalist. I don’t care to clear every last concrete surface and crevice. My only goal is to make a narrow walkway for the mailman, a walkway that would be on the same level as a hoarder who makes a pathway to the bathroom through stacks of boxes and junk. Lately though we’ve had a pretty good mailman, he comes early, and he does not leave notices in my mailbox saying ‘shovel your damn sidewalk’ (I’m paraphrasing).
I had a mailman once who absolutely refused to deliver our mail unless every part of my driveway, porch, and sidewalk was clear of snow, even the parts he wasn’t walking on. He shuffled his feet when he walked, and we got a notice in our mailbox at least once every three days saying we couldn’t get our mail because of the condition of our walk. Of course though, the conditions of my sidewalk did not seem to be impeding the delivery of a notice regarding the condition of my sidewalk impeding the delivery of my mail. Dizzy? So am I.

I recently received a phone call from the library informing me that I had late fees amounting to about $5. As far as library fees go, that is an awful lot. In fact, it’s so much that I take it more as a lifetime ban from the library than a fine. The library is useless anyways. Every library I’ve been in lately has bookshelves just collecting dust and the world’s longest waitlist for teenagers and creepy old guys to use the internet. They really should just get rid of the books and bring more computers in and call it a ‘Community Computer Center’.

The bathroom at work continues to get creepier every single day. One of the fluorescent light bulbs is flickering now, and every time I need to relieve myself, I feel like I’m in a prison movie or some twisted psychological thriller. I think the next step in terms of creepiness would be to walk in and see written in lip stick on the mirror ‘Hi, Jake. Can you see me?’ I refrain from using public restrooms as often as I can. On the subject of work, a customer finally caught me dancing in an aisle. I was dancing to The Fifth Dimension’s ‘Up, Up, and Away’ which plays at least once a day. What was so great about it was it didn’t even deter the man. He simply looked at me. “Where are your push brooms at?”

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.