Common Sense

OK, this is the last post pertaining to my spring break, I promise. As we were driving back home, we went through Santa Fe, New Mexico. As we approached the city, the snow on the ground began to get deeper. Apparently, we'd just missed a pretty bad snow storm. We had been planning to stay in Santa Fe on the way back the whole time, but there were a lot of other people who were on their way to or from somewhere who simply got stuck, so almost every hotel was completely occupied. We drove to a ton of hotels, and got the same reaction from all of them: "Sorry. Over the last two hours, we've completely filled up." At one hotel in particular (it was the Fairfield Inn, I believe), my dad walked in and the manager looked really annoyed at him and pointed to a sign on the door that said "NO VACANCY." The only problem was the fact that the manager had the IQ of a side salad, and the sign was pointed toward the INSIDE OF THE LOBBY! People don't use their heads. I want to just kick them in the neck when people do stupid things. Sometimes, I do (sorry; you know who you are).

How Hard Is It To Spell Bargain?

I forgot to add this to my previous post, but it's worth mentioning. My family went to Tombstone, Arizona over spring break, and it sucked. It was totally commercialized. They were selling old-style lingerie from the 1880's from the building that used to house the Oriental Saloon, a place made infamous for the extraordinarily violent behavior of its patrons. There were a ton of historically significant buildings all around the city that were filled with t-shirts emblazoned with pictures from the movie "Tombstone." It was like every idiot in the area got together and decided to market the city not as one with an incredible history, but as "the city where the movie 'Tombstone' was set." Americans are stupid. The little history we do have has been ruined by t-shirt vendors and the people who put those dead scorpions in clear glass domes and sell them in gift shops. So, I was already pretty pissed at the Tombstone chamber of commerce when I walked into a shop and saw a handwritten sign that proclaimed a "bargian." I couldn't believe it. The cranky middle-aged woman behind the counter was so convinced of her own superiority to all us mindless cattle in her store that she didn't bother to spell check her own idiot writing. As if that weren't enough, in the next store I saw a sign advertising a sale on rattlesnake "vertebrea." That one made me lose it. Clearly, it was a pretty old sign, which meant that no one in the last year or so had told this schmuck that his sign made him appear to have the intellectual capacity of... well, Sean Penn.

Tucson, Witch Doctors, And What Some People Call Spring Break

Whew! What a week it's been! This is going to be one m***********g long post, 'cause, well, I've got nothing better to do. Turns out there actually is stuff to do in Tucson. It was actually pretty sweet. I drove down to Tucson, AZ for a week with my family and four other families for a week-long family fun spring break extravaganza! Mostly, that means sitting around the pool in the daytime and sitting in the hottub drinking virgin margaritas at night.

I celebrated my twentieth birthday while down there in the Grand Canyon state. I can't tell you how many times people asked me how old I was turning, only to show off their most disappointed face when I told them I was turning twenty. It went something like this: "Oh, it's your birthday? Cool! How old are you?" "Um, twenty." *downtrodden face* "Oh... OK. Uh... Sorry." Sorry? Sorry for what? Sorry that, no matter how hard I try, I can do very little about changing the order of the counting numbers? Twenty comes after nineteen, people. I'm not sorry about that. Why should you be? I'll turn twenty-one in the exact same amount of time it took everyone else on the planet to do so. Just about twenty-one years. Give or take.

One of the first things we did was head off to the Titan ICBM museum. It was awesome. I mean, the tour was OK, but the tour guide was hilarious... though not in any sort of "on purpose" way. His name was Dean, and according to his name tag, he'd logged over 7,000 hours as a tour guide at the museum. The amazing thing about that is the fact that everyone who works there does so on a VOLUNTEER basis. Even more amazing still was the obvious fact that Dean wasn't exactly a stickler for things like "common courtesy" or "working well with kids" or "remembering his lines" or "cutting his chesthair to a manageable length." All these pleasant characteristics were completely missing from the lab when God went to work on good ol' Dean. AWESOME. Not to be missed.

The manager of the hotel, who I came to affectionately know as the Bar Nazi for reasons that will be made apparent shortly, was a grade-A first class creep if ever there was one. Said my dad of the individual, "I bet he's one of those guys who hides those tiny cameras in the air conditioning vents in all of our rooms." The guy actually bore a striking resemblance to Henry Winkler, "The Fonz." Um, a little essential information for the following story: We stayed at an Embassy Suites in Tucson, and as some of you may know, Embassy Suites always provides a happy hour for their guests. Free Drinks! How cool is that? Anyway, the first night we were there, I schlepped up the bar and asked the booze jockey for a virgin rum and coke. This just happened to be Mr Winkler. He looked at me and said, "You know, this is a bar. If your parents aren't in the room, then you have to leave." I wanted to staple the guy's ass to his face. "Do you have any idea who you're talking to? I'll eat your babies, bitch!" If only I'd said that. Instead, I just said, "Yeah, they're around here somewhere. All I want is a coke." (Yeah, I know, that was decidedly unfunny. What can I say? I'm very non-confrontational.) From then on, he was forever more going to be known to me as the Bar Nazi. What a jerk-ass.

One thing I really miss about California is Wienerschnitzel. It's this awesome hot dog chain. They also have them in Arizona. One night, after we'd witnessed the Rockies get dumped on for three hours at a spring training game against the Mariners, we went to Wienerschnitzel for dinner. (The spring training game was so boring, we actually got more entertainment from the bats flying overhead. When one particularly tenacious bat finally caught a quite elusive moth, the entire section in which we were sitting erupted in applause. Yeah. I know.) Anyways, when we were in Wienerschnitzel, my whole family was greeted by a mute Native American man who was apparently homeless and most likely certifiably insane. The guy kept wanting to shake our hands, and he kept on showing us a bunch of weird stuff like the cover of a strange looking comic book, the cover of the Stephen King novel “Rose Madder,” his biceps, and a pair of black socks. I kid you not. He had a just about half his teeth missing, and his fingernails were longer than my fingers (OK, not really, but whatever.) The funniest part was the hand motions. I actually think I was able to translate some of what he said. So, what I’m going to do is attempt to give a rough outline of exactly what the guy was trying to communicate:

“Hey guys. Look at my wrist. I don’t have a watch, but it sure is a clean wrist, isn’t it? Hey, lady behind the counter. Look at this book. No. Look at it! The cow’s skull on the cover of this book obviously means I’m very strong, as indicated by my flexed biceps. Hey, I saw that you were doing some sort of martial arts a few seconds ago. That warrants a handshake.” (It was at this time that I said the line “Can you deal with that?!” from the end of Meet the Parents, while at the same time doing the goofy hand motions Ben Stiller does.) “No, really, I want to shake your hand. Look. The guy on the cover of this creepy comic book has knives. That means martial arts, too. Look! I can do it too! Yay! Oh, hey, look at these socks. I got these socks for just ninety-nine cents at the ninety-nine cent store. Isn’t that great? Look at this cover, because you obviously didn’t see me show it to the lady who works here. Look. It means I’m strong. Check out these guns!” And… scene. I wish I were making all this up, but I’m not. Seriously. My family came to call him “Cochise the Witch Doctor.” Why not? I really think he was a witch doctor! For reals, guys.

For my birthday, as well as the seventeenth birthday of one of my sister’s friends, we all went to a steak place called Pinnacle Peak (there were twenty-one people in total in our group for most of the week). Seriously… one of the best steaks I’ve ever had. It was unbelievable, and it was also HUGE! Best… birthday… dinner… EVER! I would honestly rank it as one of the top three greatest meals in my life. Highly recommended.

We all drove around Tucson in a giant convoy and kept in touch via walkie-talkie. When one family’s car was about to roll over to 100,000 miles, everybody in the group heard about it. The dad whose car it was is an engineer. So, what do engineers do on their spring break? They get video footage of their car rolling over to 100,000 miles! He’s got it on tape! It’ll probably be on the highlight video he makes of the trip! Man, I hope I never EVER do that on my family vacation when I get older.

All in all, we had a fun time. We laughed, we cried, we ate huge steaks. Not a bad trip. Not a bad trip at all. (And how did I remember some of those stupid little details about the trip? For my birthday, I got a digital handheld voice recorder. Now, I can “write down” my thoughts no matter where I am and save them for later! (I’m such a nerd.))

Spring Break

I can't believe this is my fifth post in a single day. That's got to be a record (at least for me). I guess it's because I'm leaving on spring break in a day and a half, and I wanted to get some stuff down before I go. Just think of all this as a sort of memory dump before I leave. I'm headed out to the center of the universe this year for spring break. That's right: Tucson, Arizona. Yeah, yeah. Laugh it up. OK, I admit, I don't think there's a single thing to actually DO in Tucson, but at least it'll be warm. I'm just looking forward to getting away from Colorado Springs for a while. I won't be back for a week, so I won't be posting until next weekend. I think this will actually be, by far, the longest time I'll go without posting. I hope you'll live.

Baseball Is Sooo Boring

There's this huge thing now about all those baseball players who supposedly used steroids. You know what I have to say to that? Why weren't all of them using steroids? Baseball is actualy more boring than jazz and sleep combined. I was playing baseball one time, and I actually fell asleep on my way to second base. NASCAR is more of a sport than baseball. They need to make steoid use mandatory. They could administer tests to make sure you have a certain amount of steroids in your body at any given time. This would actually have two separate benefits: 1) the game would actually be more exciting than a coma, and 2) all baseball players would die young, leaving us with only the real sports.

Female Comedians

Is there anything more anti-funny than a female comedian? If there is, I haven't found it. Apparently, they all got together and decided that, once and for all, jokes about the menstrual cycle are HILARIOUS. No, ladies, they're really, REALLY not. That's seriously all most of them have material about. That, and male oppression. That's not funny. No wonder you feel so oppressed. If male comedians told nothing but jokes about jock itch and swamp butt, it'd get pretty old pretty fast, and you'd be calling for them to be oppressed. "You know what's so great about having your period?" Yeah, actually I do. Nothing. So shut up and bring me my juice.

If You Could Figure Out The Answer, An Entire Generation Of Physicists Should Just Kill Themselves Now

In Sam Milazzo's astronomy class today, this fat woman (who arrived twenty-five minutes late) made a startling discovery. You see, he had just finished telling us that we have no idea why elliptical galaxies have so many more stars than do spiral galaxies. Then, the woman who didn't care enough about the class to arrive on time piped up by suggesting a remarkably simple solution (I don't remember exactly what it was, because I was too busy mumbling "You're an idiot" under my breath). Sam turned to her and said, "Nope. That doesn't account for nearly enough of the mass that we're talking about. We may not know what it is, but we do know it's definitely not THAT." I was laughing so hard (while at the same time trying to keep quiet, 'cause the woman was two chairs away from me) I couldn't breath. She totally got put in her place, and I was loving it. It was just so amazing to me that this woman thought that, despite the fact that there's probably a group of 40 physicists employed by the government for the sole purpose of figuring out this problem, she'd answered the question. She'd solved the riddle. Einstein? Aristotle? Newton? All morons compared to her. It was priceless.

Truth

I really hate those Truth ads about smoking, especially those stupid faux-sitcom ones with the lame laugh tracks and jokes worthy of Full House. It's retarded. The worst part, though, is the fact that these geniuses over at Truth have a grasp of grammar that would make a 17-year-old prison inmate who never went to high school look like Henry Higgins (if you don't get that reference, I pity you). The tagline for the aforementioned sitcom ads is this: "It might be funnier if it wasn't true." Stupid. When using the conditional tense, you're always supposed to use the word "were." Never "was." So, my response to the Truth exec who greenlit this is, "You might be more credible if you weren't an idiot."

Just Hit Them

I really, REALLY hate those signs people put up in their yards that look like a glow-in-the-dark cutout of a small child and read, "SLOW- Kids at play." People, if you can't keep your children from playing in the middle of the street, then you don't deserve to see them graduate from kindergarten. What kind of parent are you if you can't tell your children, "We don't play in the street. Cars belong on the street, and people belong on the sidewalk. It's dangerous to go out on the road, so just play in the front and back yards."? When I have kids, I'm going to put out a sign that says, "Please speed up so I can teach my kids not to play in the street." It's mutually advantageous.

There's Six Years...

I don't have class today because of the crappy weather we've got here in Colorado Springs. Someone turned the tv on, and "Live with Regis and Kelly" is making background noise. I was checking my email when I heard Kelly say of a ninety-five year old pilot who's spent nearly six and a half years of her life in the air, "Now there's six years she'll never get back." Oh really, Kelly? I was under the impression that air-time could indeed be relived at one's own discretion. Apparently, I was wrong. Evidently, though some may have the option of "getting time back," this woman is too old to be afforded that privilege. Kelly Ripa is an idiot. I hate it when people say that kind of thing. After watching a bad movie: "I'll never get those two hours back." After breaking up with one's significant other: "I want my eight months back!" Do you really want it back? I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to experience a bad movie or a doomed relationship again. Keep that crap. I'm moving on. If anything, I'd like to have all the good times back, and be able to experience them again and again. As Jen once asked me, "If you could pick a single moment to relive for all eternity, do you know what it would be?" I know my answer. What's yours?

Drunk Dialing

Virgin Mobile recently announced their newest development for the wireless market: number blocking. The basic premise is this: you know you're going to get wasted tonight, so you plan beforehand to block certain numbers from being called from your phone. This is to protect people from the aftereffects of what has come to be known as "drunk dialing." That's when you get hammered and decide you want to call up your ex. Most people, when they're sober, know this is a bad idea, but they somehow seem to forget all the reasons they think it's bad once they've got eight or nine shots of jagermeister in their bellies ("I just wanted you to know I'm soooo over you"). Virgin Mobile saw a need, and rushed to fill it. The only problem is, they didn't really fix any problems. Maybe if they could invent some sort of machine that would completely disable your vocal chords and shut off your car, then we'd have something to talk about...

One Of My Many Problems (Ha! This Just Might Be The First Installment In A Series)

It has recently come to my attention that I have the worst fortune in the world. I’ll tell you what I mean. I have this little problem with being attracted to girls who, I’m pretty sure, don’t feel the same way. Now, that happens to everybody, I know. That’s not the weird part. The problem is, a couple times in my life, I’ve found out that the girls actually DID feel the same way, but I didn’t find out about them until after they were “over” me. Now, I’d thought this had only happened twice, but last night, my sister told me about a third time it had happened. (Actually, in the true chronological order, this was the first time it had happened to me.) The other two had happened in middle school, and one was even because of a friend of mine (you know who you are). I liked this one girl with whom I went to school at Seattle Christian Elementary School. Apparently, as my sister puts it, “everyone knew about it.” Well, thanks for only waiting a paltry TEN FREAKING YEARS to tell me! I was floored when I heard that, because I totally thought that girl wanted very little to do with me. (Some of you may find this hard to believe, but I consider myself to be mildly self-deprecating.) I guess I'm just doomed to be attracted to girls at a different time than when (if ever) the feeling is mutual.

Googol

I just had my world thoroughly rocked. I just got out of Sam Milazzo's astronomy class (which, as some of you may know, is an experience in and of itself). We were talking about just how big the universe is. You might be surprised. There are 400,000,000,000 (that's four hundred billion) times the mass of the sun in the Milky Way alone. If I wanted to count to that number, it would take me approximately 67,000 years to reach it, and that's only if I didn't take any breaks to eat, sleep, or breathe. There is a number, which I'm sure most of you have heard of at one time in your life. It's a googol. It's a 1 followed by 100 zeros. Do you know how big a number that is? OK, there are about 10^86 (that's ten to the eighty-sixth) subatomic particles in the universe. 10^100-10^86 is still 10^100! That means 10^86 is NEGLIGIBLE! It doesn't even make a dent in a googol! Here's another way of looking at it: if the universe were packed to the brim with neutrons (no space AT ALL between them), there still would not be a googol of neutrons in the entire known universe. Why, you may ask, do we have such a number if there is absolutely nothing in the universe that would require it? Well, because it's dang cool. And get this: that's not the biggest number we have a name for. That honor is reserved for the googolplex, which is a 1 followed by a googol zeros!! That's right. It's a 1 followed by so many zeros, you can't even write it in scientific notation, because it wouldn't fit in the universe! I have finally given up and conceded that I am, for all intents and purposes, infinitesimally insignificant. Though, to be honest, I'm actually kind of relieved.

Kinda Mad

As those of you who actually know me in real life can attest to, and contrary to my online persona, I'm pretty much the most non-confrontational guy you'll ever meet. Seriously. Don't laugh. Today was an exception, however. I was hostile and mean and I got all up in everybody's face. In line at the grocery store, a woman walked up behind me and, in an attempt to get me to move forward a few feet so she could get her cumbersome cart through, she said, "Excuse me." I turned around, and with the meanest face I could muster, said, "Sure. You're excused. I don't know what you did, but you're excused, and as long as it doesn't involve me moving, I don't care." She looked at me like I'd just pulled out her spleen with my bare hands (though, it's been years since I've actually done that, and I might have forgotten what *that* face actually looks like). I felt kinda bad, but then I got home and had dinner, which made me happy again.

Allan Johnson Is A Commie Lunatic

I just got back from a lecture given by Dr. Allan Johnson, Ph.D. During the preceding ninety minutes, I was given enough reason to hate liberals that I don't think Michael Moore will ever have to eclipse the sun in front of another movie camera again. This man is probably the stupidest person I've ever been within earshot of (except this one guy I heard at King Soopers. I think that guy somehow wanted me to hate him. He made Forrest Gump look like Isaac Newton, but not in any sort of cute or endearing way). Anyway, back to Allan "The Mongoloid" Johnson. He talked all about the oppression of women and minorites by white men. I honestly think I was the only person in the room who actually grasped the irony that Allan Johnson is, in point of fact, a white man. That was just delicious to me. It's amazing that he's somehow caught on to the scheme, though. I thought it was foolproof, but this grandfatherly genius has exposed the vast conspiracy behind sexism and racism! Puh-lease! If this was such a deep-seeded conspiracy, then why are there only like nine people around the world who actually believe it? For God's sake, there are more people who believe man has never been to the moon or that the holocaust never happened than believe that the world is secretly run by men. Try to get a married man to say that with a straight face. I guarantee it won't happen. Men will do whatever women tell them, because we are slaves to our proclivities. Heck, I've got a friend who doesn't fart unless his girlfriend lets him. There's no way you can be a functioning human being and actually believe that men can control women to even a fraction of the degree that they control us. Oh, we like to pretend that we're in charge, but who are we really kidding? Apparently, Allan Johnson.

A Revelation

Man, how long has it been since I last posted? Like, four or five days? I'm really slacking. Oh well. At the end of a break in the middle of my interpersonal communication class, one guy came back into the classroom stinking of cigarette smoke. I found myself reacting in a way that very much surprised me. I reacted with relief. That's right, relief. I came to the realization that, barring some horrible accident, this guy was almost guaranteed to die before me. That made me feel good. I liked that knowledge. Eventually, I'm going to be a ripe old man while that guy's breathing his last agonizing breath. That, my friends, is the best "I told you so," ever. EVER! I've decided I'm not going to bother smokers with my petty complaints about "cleanliness" and "common courtesy" and "preferring to not smell like a flaming turd." They have the right to take themseles out of the game early, and who am I to argue? Good riddance. Maybe, if we're lucky, they'll all die their horrible deaths kind of around the same time, and we'll be able to start anew with citizens who have an IQ higher than that of a phone book.

Breaking News

This just in: Taking a cue from the guy who broke into Paris Hilton's Sidekick, copycat hackers have unlocked and posted the digital phonebook in Michael Jackson's Blackberry. In a related story, SunnySide Daycare Center of Santa Barbara, California has recently changed their phone number due to a flood of anonymous calls.

Stop Naming Kids Names That Aren't Names (Or Names That Just Suck)

Finneas? Are you kidding me!? Why would Julia Roberts do that to her child? I've noticed a disturbing trend in Hollywood: actors and actresses who apparently hate their children. They name their kids things like "Apple," "Ocean," and "Sullivan." What's wrong with you people? Don't you realize that these kids are eventually going to have to go to school (since most celebrities couldn't homeschool a pumpkin)? When they get to school, they are going to get ridiculed without mercy. They might as well name their kids "Punch me in the face," because that's what's going to happen anyway. What ever happened to parents naming their kids actual names like Michael or Nathan or Michelle or James or Jennifer? Those were the good old days. Now, the hot new thing is to use your children to broaden your own career by getting you a little more facetime on tv. "This just in: Milla Jovovich named her new baby boy 'Carburetor,' after a scene in her upcoming film, 'Hot Wheels: The Movie,' which features, among other things, a giant carburetor." It's getting ridiculous. There should be some law that prohibits people in America from naming their children anything that's not in The Big Book of Children's Names. I would even volunteer to enforce it. I'd just walk up to them with a wet towel and start snapping away until they agree to change the name.

Canada's Looking Pretty Good Right Now

I'm thinking about possibly moving to Canada. At least there, the number one movie is not "Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman." I don't want to live in a country where that's the biggest money-making entertainment source for all media across the entire nation. Even the title is so bad it makes me envy the deaf and illiterate. Here's a hint, Mr Tyler Perry: putting your name in the title of your movie when no one has heard of you is pretty much the dumbest thing you can do, besides buying a Dashboard Confessional CD, and of course listening to said CD. Maybe if I get this pen ALL THE WAY up my nose this time, the bad things will go away...

Albert Eistein School Of Medicine

I was listening to the radio on my way to class today, and I heard one of the stupidest things anyone could ever hear. Someone made a reference to the "Albert Einstein School of Medicine" and I almost choked on the gulp of water I had in my mouth at the time. That's the most retarded name for a school of medicine EVER. Bar none. That's sort of like "Mike Ditka's basketball training camp" or "Bernie Mac's school wear they teach you how to be white." Totally ridiculous. I hope whoever approved that decision died nameless in a foreign country.