Kolerra

Hey Santa Claus,

Hey Santa,

How's it going? I'm writing because I figure everyone has forgotten about you by now and that you probably won't be busy for a while. I'm not gonna ask for anything. I just figure you're in the interesting position of being a really important person who isn't thought of for a majority of the year. So hopefully you have nothing better to do than read this and drink more cocktails.

I'm doing really well, Santa. Really well. I get plenty of sleep and waking up keeps getting easier. I'm healthy. I stay regular and I got veins popping out of my arms and legs. The blood is flowing, Santa! I'm learning. I'm reading stories about truth and righteousness and people getting cut completely in half. I'm not alone. I've got friends that I wouldn't trade for a thousand bronze statues of Calvin Coolidge. I can wake up talking to people. I'm doing so well that I think I might be someone someday. I think I might be able to do what I love for the rest of my life and I can be known as one of those guys that does what he loves. I'd like to be one of those guys that can spend an afternoon in nothing but his boxer shorts, blank look on his face, and eat saltine crackers right out of the sleeve. And the crumbs spill and pile up on his chest and he's slouched real deep into the sofa but even then he has some sort of grace about him. Maybe he's eating peanut butter too and he's got a grimy mix of crumbs and brown in his teeth but you can't even knock him for that because he's doing it on his own time. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not worried about making it look good. I've got no one to impress, Santa. I just want control. I want happiness on my terms.

And that's actually a lot to ask for, Santa. I'm sure you know. You're a smart guy. You've got a beard makes its own wi-fi and smells like love and you're probably friends with Jesus. Maybe I'm missing the point of what I'm supposed to be doing but the way things are going I think it might all work out. I think if I can hang on to what I already have and not fall on my face too many times I might just get it right. So if you could use your sled to keep asteroids from collide-sploding into Earth or hold off the Robot Uprising, that'd be nice because I'd really like to see how these next couple years play out.

Thanks.

Yellow Nellow

My stomach is not happy with me right now. I think I write with my stomach. I sat down at my desk about an hour and a half ago and I had just got out of class where we were talking about religion and philosophy and I was all fired up to talk about my ideas and write something important...

But I just like talking about food. I have drawer-cookies. They're delicious. Nothing better than drawer-cookies.

 I think after five hundred posts I've exhausted all my memories. And it's not like life-changing experiences are lining up outside my door every morning so instead of looking to the past, or trying to turn the mundane present into something exciting, I'll start reflecting on stuff I have yet to do. In the future-times.

There was this one time in the future where I came up with a really great Halloween costume. It's called 'Two Lighters Joe'. And what I did was take the two lighters I have sitting on my desk, put on a t-shirt that has the name 'Joe' scrawled on it, and eat half a frozen pizza in a half a dozen frozen-pizza seconds.

(haha, when you put dozen and frozen next to each other it looks like DOH-ZEN FROH-ZEN! or duhzen fruhzen)

Then I just spent the rest of the night running around yelling, "I only have TWO lighters!" I found my way out to the dock by the lake where a group of druids and anthropology majors made me King of the night. I'm taken to the bowels of one of the dining halls where I met their Queen, also known as the lady that makes sandwiches at the deli bar during Lunch time. Everything was rainbow colored and there was lots of puppets hanging from the ceiling. Like, creepy puppets that German children would receive to make them not understand happiness. It was great. There was a mirrorball and everything!
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 I just remembered this weekend how awesome mirrorballs are. They're amazing.

Remember that time my eyes will get pecked out by angry seagulls down in New Orleans? I'll drive myself to the hospital using my keen sense of action and even though I've plucked out the eyes of the seagulls so that they can be attached into my own head, the doctors say that bird eyes can not be put into people eye holes. Leave it to the stuffed shirts in New Orleans to not allow radical medical cross-species transplantation. That place isn't good for anything.

Then later, I was/will be walking down the streets, a blind beggar who can't get back home, I'll come across a man with a voice like worn-leather and Thin Mints and he'll hook me up with some awesome mirror-ball eyes for the low low price of several corpses.

Once I have the mirrorball eyes I can start up my own car rental service and use the funds to buy everyone in Wyomklahama an alpaca!

I'll be the folk/funk hero supreme!
__________________________________________

The future is looking good.

500th Post!

Five hundred posts.
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I was at home making an omelet out of my leftover frozen yogurt. I was really tired so I turned off all the lights in the apartment. So I'm making dinner in the dark when I heard this retching sound coming from my living room. I go into the living room and this smell hits me right in the face. It was like burnt blood and bacon grease and I'm thinking, "This will never come out of the carpet." I turn on the lamp and there's this small furry creature crouching underneath my coffee table. It was like a chinchilla or a lemur. It looked up at me with these big yellow eyes and it had three slits for nostrils. It was breathing really fast. Then I saw its tail had this big hand at the end of it with three fingers and a thumb. The middle finger was way longer than the other ones.

I said to it, "Hi." And it didn't say anything back.

So I was like, "Do you--do you want soda pop? To drink?" And it didn't say anything back.

I started making faces at it to get it to go away. Then my muscles started to get really heavy. Everything got really heavy. I was being dragged down to the floor by the weight of my fingers and hands. My eyes shut and the last thing I remember was the smell of the burning yogurt omelet finally overpowering the bloody bacon grease.

I woke up and saw Satan lounging on my sofa. I knew he was Satan because when he saw my eyes open he said, "Hi! I'm Satan."

I said, "What's up? Was that your cat-thing earlier? Is it house-trained?"

Satan said, "I will present you with tasks that no mortal man has completed. The rules are simple. If you complete the tasks I will spare your soul and get the stink out of your carpet. If you lose you spend the rest of eternity in the deepest, darkest pit of hell."

"What about my carpet?"

"The stench will remain and the apartment will be rented out to a nice young Dutch couple at a very reasonable price."

"Noooo! Not the Dutch! From Dutch-land! It'll smell even worse!"

"The game will begin now. You must eat this entire bucket of electric clams, shave my pet Sklottal, and sweat enough liquid to power this tiny novelty water wheel."

"Do I have to?"

"Yes."

"Really?"

"Yes."

I stared at Satan for a good thirty seconds then said, "Ok, hand over those clams."

After a while I said, "Satan!"

"What?"

"These clams taste funny. Does this month have an 'r' in it?"

"Aren't they shocking you? The electric clams produce enough power to stun an adult blue whale."

"No...they just taste like they've been growing in someone's armpit for the last three months."

Satan sat in troubled silence.

I said, "I finished! Let me at your skunk thingy, or whatever you call it."

"Very well. But my pet's fur is as tough as steel wool and releases a noxious fume that-"

"Ok, I'm done!"

The Sklottal shivered furiously beneath the sofa.

"Fine. I hope you aren't too exhausted because now you must produce a great amount of sweat."

I said, "I'll see what I can do, Lucy."

I concentrated really hard on sweating. After a while, everything went red and it got really wet and really loud. Then it got really hot and I heard the sound of ocean waves crashing on the shore. When I woke up my apartment was soaked and the windows were completely smashed.

From outside I heard the sound of someone sobbing on the phone. They said, "M-m-mom, he-he sweat so much. SO MUCH. And he ate the clams and I think the Sklottal went down a storm drain! I wanna go home!"

In hindsight, after a good night's sleep, a yogurt-omelet was a terrible dinner choice.
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Out of all my stories, this story is the most 500th story.

Savage Reeds

I was on Youtube the day before classes started, watching these animated philosophy lectures, animated by the South Park creators. And one of the videos was talking about how we don't perceive all of ourselves as our 'self'. You don't say, "I am hands". You say, "these are my hands". There is a layer of separation. And basically, when you do that, it alienates you from the world.

So I was brushing my teeth later thinking, "I am teeth. I am fingernail. I am gross-nasty scar on my shin. I am belly-button mole."

(Also, I think the one-year anniversary of nasty scar on my leg happened sometime recently. Still gross.)

It's an interesting idea. I'm not really sure what to do with it except talk funny. It makes you feel for more active in your actions, I guess. It's good to see yourself not just as your thoughts and 'consciousness' but also as your physical body. There's something empowering about that. Assimilate all of the world into yourself! Become your own God! Eat pizza-bagels and ice cream for every meal.
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But what I really want to talk about is my two favorite things to talk about: oranges and evil.

The best way I can describe the kind of evil I'm thinking about is with any of the music videos from Beck's album: Mellow Gold.


just look at it!

Loser
Beercan

I mean, those are two favorites and you can find the videos yourself but I didn't want to link to Vevo because it makes you watch commercials and that's just not right. But take almost any Beck song made in the early 90s and they all have these really surreal dark themes. Mountain Dew Rock, Snoozer, Nitemare Hippy Girl, Satan Gave Me a Taco, MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack, Fume.

But none of it, to me, is what you would ordinarily think of when you hear the world evil. I think that's because when you say a word like evil or good, there's an assumption that whatever it is is taking itself seriously. Its serious business, good and evil. So I didn't immediately associate these songs with evil, I just associated them with Beck. And they are Beck. They are his own unique creations.

But they're also evil. They're distopian and weird and angry and I've always loved them. Listen to the bass groove on Beercan. Or in the middle of the song when it sounds like they're chopping up clips from a Care Bear Special. Pick out any of the lyrics of Loser and you get these dark images. "Saving all your food stamps and burning down the trailer park!" The video has a grim reaper squeegee-ing blood onto a windshield.

None of it is threatening though. Or empowering or destructive or constructive. That's where it divulges from Death Metal or any other dark genre. It's chaotic. It just sits there and works itself up into this terrible frenzy that doesn't go anywhere or do anything but builds up its own rich life out of its idiosyncrasies.

And I think the richness of that chaos is important. When Beck was making all this music he was poor. He was a bum. He was a guy playing on the streets and crashing open mics at cafes. So he was taking all this destitution and squalor and bottom-of-the-barrel scum that he was living in and he turned it into these amazing collages of evil-sounding things. It's like that thing I said about collecting trash in ,"The Most College Post of All". If you collect specific kinds of trash you can make awesome things out of it.

I guess what it comes down to is imagination. Even if you're sitting in a pile of trash, even if you're surrounded by horrors, it's special because you are a part of it. You can transform it. You can make it entertaining. Anything you want. And it will be all the more powerful because of its filth, its sour potency. And I think to aspire to nothing higher than to make a kingdom out trash and be its ruler is indulgent and 'evil'. But that's what makes it fun. And its all about having fun.

"How you like me now?
Pretty good.
Going ooon, feeling stroooong."

Morning Traffic Light Follow

It's a good good morning, ladies and gentleman. It's a good morning.

And I know I was going to talk about evil. But it's too good of a morning.

I even wrote a poem about evil yesterday. On a note-card. I'll probably put it up someday but a poem about evil that you write on an index card is not for every occasion. In fact, it's probably only good for two occasions:

1: You die. It's time to go through all your stuff. Your friends find this old, dusty chest hidden in your attic/basement that's full of index cards. On the top is your poem about evil. And on the bottom is your severed hand!...and like, a whole bunch of Starlight mint wrappers. And a polaroid picture of you wearing spandex shorts next to a girl with a velociraptor mask.

2. You're drunk. You're in a smokey coffee house and people in turtlenecks and fancy haircuts are reading poems and suddenly you yank your head out from the drool puddle you've been lying in and say, "Hey! I--I--I gonna read something. I'm gonna make all your poems look like dog-toys." After you read, everyone that hears it names their kid, "Murphy".

...and option 2b: it's really late at night and I'm looking for something to put up here.

So look forward to any of those scenarios coming true in the near future. Except #1. Cuz I don't have a dusty chest yet. Right now I just have a drawer with several notecards, several dozen dinosaur tattoos, and two almost empty packs of Stride 2.0. That doesn't have the same weight to it...

Anyways!

What I want to talk about is freshness. So, since I'm such a brain genius I realized I could cut back on laundry if I washed my running shorts in the sink after running in them. So I bought some hand soap from Target and I was washing my shorts with that last semester.

Then, at some point, my handsoap stopped smelling like citrus-goodness. And it started to smell...off. Like, contaminated in some way. It was an "all-natural"  handsoap so maybe it fermented or something but my top theory was that one of my roommates...gonna keep up the clean language..."jenked" in it. Now, I'm just paranoid. But I know smells. I know what soap is supposed to smell like. I never walked in on one of my roommates doing the dirty deed, but I threw out the handsoap at the end of the semester anyway.

But now! I'm especially excited about a new era of freshness!

That's not just any blue liquid in a jar with a Lipton tea lid. That's Tide+Febreeze in a jar with a Lipton tea lid!
It's also known as my "Jar o' Blue". And underneath I wrote "(not for drink)". Cuz let's be honest. It does look pretty tasty. Maybe I'll just dip my finger in it...no.

But I can open the lid and rest my face directly over top of it. It's like I'm lost in a sea good vibrations. If I do it for long enough, I can almost forget that my myspace account still exists and can never be deleted.

So there you go, kids. More tips for surviving college. That'll be fifty scents for every not-misspelled word you read. Pay me in the comments. Or kajiggers. It says kajiggers but it's the same thing as comments. I'd change it but it's kind of been around since the start. It'd be a shame to throw it under the bus like that. If the apocalypse doesn't happen, I'll change it back to comments.

Back Again

I guess I might as well blog. Blog! doot DOOT doot doot doodoodoo
BLOG!
Go ahead and blog! doodoodoo

that's enough of that...

Let's make some goals for the 2012. Specifically, let's make goals for the spring semester. That way we don't even get a little bit arrested. Or mad at plants.

1- Classes. Do well in them. Read lots. Think lots. Make the good grades.
2- Run a bunch. Or RUNCH!
3- Hydrate!
4- Do comedy, like, at least a baker's dozen times. (4.5- remember to use "baker's dozen" more often)
5- I think I've finally reached a satisfying level of blogging. So I will just try to maintain the 2011 pace.
6- Have fun and
PRATTY!
PRATTY!
PRATTY!
PRATTY!
PRATTY!
PRATTY!

In an ideal world, there would just be an infinite cascade of PRATTY's that would spill out of your screen and seep deep into your keyboard. It'd smell like pomegranates!
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So, last year around this time I was talking about my completely rational distrust of bricks and all things made of brick. And I still hold that fear near and dear to my heart. (that is a great sentence full of "ear").

But this year I want to do things a little differently-- don't worry, I'll still monger the fear--I want to talk about what might go on to be a future Hall of Fame Object Owned By Me indictee.

I'm talking about the MUSTARD YELLOW CARDIGAN I BOUGHT MYSELF FOR CHRISTMAS!!

I'd take a picture of it but I'm too lazy AND I'll paint you a picture with my words so you can use your poor, starved imagination for once!

It is horrendous. But in the best possible, I-murdered-somebody's-grandpa-and-raided-their-closet-cuz-that's-how-thrifty-I-am kind of way. But what I'm really excited about is...and thumbs up to you if you've already thought of this,

do you know what you called a mustard colored cardigan...?

that's right.

A tardigan.

If saying that word doesn't bring a special kind of joy to you, then I'm sorry but you're made out of some crazy kind of evil that I don't even know about yet. And I like evil. I'm a fan of moderate amounts of evil. But you're not even the fun kind of evil. You're just...cold and probably Russian.

That wasn't supposed to be racist. I just imagine Russians don't enjoy word play as much as others. Prove me wrong.

Anyway...um...yeah...I'm a....I'm kind of a hipster...just a little bit. Not that this is new. But, yeah.

Let's talk about evil some more.

NEW POST SERIES ABOUT EVIL COMING TOMORROW OR WHENEVERS!!

Keep the Faith. Evil Faith. Keep it.

Concluse!

TRUE MEANING OF WINTER BREAK CONCLUSION!

but first this:

I have this really vivid memory, I don't know how old I was, of my parents talking about pills and prescriptions. What I see in my head is this collection of pill bottles that they had left over and my dad was like, "Yeah, I guess I could still take some of these. And some of these." In my mind they were just making these cocktails out of leftover drugs.

I think I even said something like, "Aren't you not supposed to do that?"

That didn't really deter them. But it stuck out in my head as something wrong.

Until today, when I decided that I'm giving up on the crappy cream I've been using for over a month and I'm going to use that OTHER fungal infection cream I was given over the summer when they wouldn't give me my freakin' antibiotics because I had Lyme disease! But I still have that cream and it actually goes into my skin. Take that, younger me!

Just to be clear...my parents weren't abusing prescription drugs...that wasn't the point of the story.

Okay. Cool.
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Meaning of Winter Break.

I've thought a lot about this. I've come up with a lot of cop-out answers. But I think I've got something I'm happy with.

When I think back to the Fall semester of my Junior year, specifically the end of it, I think about the time I went to a classroom, drew a chalk-drawing of a giant hummingbird and stared at that hummingbird for at least an hour. In a classrooom. By myself. Completely and honestly mesmerized by my chalk-drawing of hummingbird. I even remember what was so great about it, it was the curvature of the head. It was this beautiful flowing line from the beak to the crown of the head to the neck to the body.

That's called being burnt out. When you are fascinated by a chalk drawing of hummingbird, you are burnt out. You will do anything to get your mind off tests. But I don't hate exam week. I don't hate being burnt out.  Once you hit exhaustion then you know you're really doing stuff. That's when it gets interesting...

I think I was still sick at the time too. So that might have had something to do with it.

But the point is, college is all about tests. Not just the tests you're assigned. Exams and papers. But the tests you impose on yourself. The goals you set to grow and challenge yourself.

And to me, Winter break is the opposite of tests. It's anti-test. It's a void. Nothing is expected of you. Don't expect anything from yourself.

BUT

at the same time,

how do you keep yourself from going crazy?

Winter Break is all about filling the void. Making something out of nothing. I think that's just as valuable as learning to deal with the pressure of school. Free time can be a dangerous thing. It's empty time. It's dark. It's cold. It's a lot like Winter. So in that way, Winter Break is kind of scary.

But good things come out of fear. Wisdom comes out of fear. Quirks come out of fear. Sometimes even pee comes out of fear.

I don't think Winter Break is about being happy. I don't think it's about being productive. I think Winter Break is like...

Winter Break is like someone sat you down at a table with two marshmallows on it. And you've been really stressed and you're really tired and you're in this quiet, relaxing room. And you're told, "Okay, for the next month, I want you to pick up this marshmallow then put it down. Then pick up this other marshmallow then put it down. Then pick up the first marshmallow, and put it down. Then pick up the other marshmallow and put it down. You just keep doing that. The door is locked from the outside."

And the guy doesn't even stay to watch you.

Yes.

That in my mind perfectly encapsulates Winter Break. I'll leave you to cogitate on it.

Kepp the Faash!

Kriegsminister!

Ahhh! I can't do this anymore Blogger! You're running me ragged. This will be my 29th post in 29 days!

I'm gonna be honest with you, I've been slipping lately. This stuff isn't coherent anymore!

Last night my mom was making fish and I saw the fish thawing in the sink and voices just started talking in my head! I got on my laptop and just started writing stuff! No, it doesn't make any sense. How could it make sense?! How could I know how to communicate with people when I went four days without leaving my house except to run. And running makes it worse! Do you know the kind of weird things I think about when I run?! Today I thought about making a show about superheros except it would be an edgy comedy but simultaneously a kid's show. I had a dream I was playing foosball and my body tensed up like I was actually playing foosball!

I spent several hours trying to learn the words to 99 Luftballons! The German version. I got the first verse memorized.

Hast du etwas Zeit fur mich
dann singe ich ein Lied fur dich
von 99 luftballons.
Denkst du vielleicht grad'an mich
dann singe ich ein Lied fur dich
von 99 luftballons
und dass sowas von sowas kommt.

Do you realize the effect all this blogging has on someone with virtually no social life? Very little! It in no way interrupts my life! How can I put on the pretension that I'm too busy to blog while I'm blogging if I'm actually not busy enough to blog! blogblogblogblogblogblogblog!

Also! I got this freakin' Russian spam website that keeps showing up in my viewing statistics and now I have no actual way of tracking the meager amount of people that come here. Stop staring at me Russian website. I'm not gonna click on you again!

The point is, Blogger, the people in my head have mandated that I make one more post because to stop at 29 would be insanity and tear the fabric of the universe asunder. So once I make 30 posts in 30 days, I'm gonna be taking a break from you. I'll still make enough posts to average once every other day for this month but I need human interaction. OR! I need to completely shut myself off from the rest of the world and write crazy poems about death set to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song. You'll find out my decision soon enough.

Keep the Faith.

Also, WHY ARE THERE NO  CHIPS AND SALSA IN THIS HOUSE?! WHAT HAPPENED TO THAT SEVEN LAYER DIP! I KNOW YOU ATE IT ERIN! I SAW THE BAG OF PITA CHIPS IN YOUR TRASH CAN! DON'T THINK YOU CAN HIDE FROM ME!

Fish Thaw

We stared at their pale, frozen bodies lying in the sink--soft, morbid slabs of meat. I had just finished brushing my teeth and was looking for the nail clippers when I walked through the kitchen and saw them. You joined shortly after.

I said, "Do you want to go outside?"

You said, "There's freezing rain."

I said, "Do you want to go to Goodwill? We could buy really big clothes and really undersized clothes. We put on the big clothes before bed and when we wake up we pretend we've shrunk in our sleep. Then we go look for an antidote at Wal-Mart and wake up the next morning wearing the undersized clothes. Then we say, "Oh no! We took too much!"

"I think one of the fish moved."

"I'll get a knife, just in case."

I got the big knife.

I said, "This makes me think about how I've never vanquished any of my enemies."

"What enemies?"

"Exactly. What's the point of having enemies if you can't vanquish them? I just wish I had a reason to ruin someone's life."

"I punched a kid in middle school. Just to watch him cry."

"I bet I could I vanquish you. If you gave me reason to."

"You couldn't vanquish me. You can't even open a bag of cereal without sending half the bag flying everywhere."

"Are you saying I couldn't vanquish my way out of a plastic bag? I could enroll in a group-training program. Like Weight-Watchers for murder."

"I'd just join too and make more friends than you. Then you'd have to join a lesser-known off-brand group that lacks proper funding and organization."

"You hurt my feelings. I'm going to stab this fillet of fish now."

"BOOP BOOP BEEP BOP BOOP! WE ARE ROBOTS!"

"I AM A FRENCH ROBOT! OUI OUI OUI FROMAGE! BEEP BOOP BOOP!"

And that's how the Fish Overlords came to absolute power.

Hapnabber

These are some thoughts I had lying around. I don't need them anymore so I'll throw them up here for you to take:

I used to come home from college and just sleep on top of my comforter with a blanket. Freshman year in college I got rid of my comforter all together and just slept on my sheets with a blanket. That's how I sleep at school. This year at home I took the comforter off my bed and did the same thing. The other night I tried sleeping with just the comforter. It was warmer than usual. Then it got too warm. I've gone back to just the sheets and a blanket. I've tried out other people's beds since going to college and I guess I've come to the conclusion that comforters aren't so useless but they're not something I want to sleep under by myself.

I don't think any of the qualities I'm most proud of are born out of anything inherently good. They're just flaws, perceived inadequacies, neurotic made-up rules, and abnormalities that I've learned to love.

Lately my life feels like it's being governed more and more by routine. It's not really a bad thing. I haven't felt bored in a long time. That's not to say I actually do things. I'm just a lot more comfortable with doing nothing.

I think smell is the funniest sense. Someone needs to invent smell-comedy. Smell is also the funniest word of the "sense-words". Touch is the creepiest. Taste and hearing are aptly named. Sight or his twin cousin, Vision, are just...there.

I have a hard time believing language is arbitrary. Words have relations to their meanings. Crazy relations.

I love mixed nuts. I love anything that can be best enjoyed in fistfuls.

I haven't had real human interaction outside my house since Friday. It doesn't bother me. But it probably should. At least I'm still showering.

I think wind is amazing. It can be very annoying but it's also amazing. It's just a colossal mass of air moving around. It's huge. It's bigger than states, it's usually bigger than most countries. It's just this bignormous thing that's passing over you all the time. You have to pluck things from it. You have to take things from the wind, a little bit at a time. Just breathe and hydrate.

I've started using the phrase "Keep the Faith" because of this song. Pluck stuff.

I'm really disappointed that Ferris Wheels haven't become the future of transportation. That's why I don't go to fairs anymore. They're just standing there, so stationary. It's all a big tease.

I wanna live a really long time, mostly for the wrong reasons. And a little bit to be like Bill Murray. Bill Murray is doing it so right.

Today I was reminded of the song, "On Moonlight Bay". Remember? From Hey Arnold? I don't know why I thought of it but I looked up the lyrics and sang it to my dog.

 I've never been very good at planning or envisioning my future. Like, long term. I've started to, though. It bothers me. I try to avoid it.

If I were to write a bildungsroman it would be about a boy that talks to himself, then he learns to talk to other people the way he talks to himself, then he would die in a sailing trip and his body would be cremated on the beach like Shelley.

Keep the Faith.

Bill's Roman Dumps AND Lyrics Explained

So I was reading Paradise Lost earlier, and that got me thinking about a much more important poet. A poet of our times. Arguably, a poet of all times.

Kanye Omari West (duh.)

And I was thinking about a lyric in one of his more provocative songs, Can't Tell Me Nothing.

I would like to explain it to you. Because I care about you. Let's have a very special blog post.

So he says in Verse 2, Stanza 1, Lines 3 and 4,

"I know that Jesus died for us,
but I couldn't tell ya who the side was"

OR! I've also seen it interpreted as

"I know that Jesus died for us,
but I couldn't tell ya who decide wars"

And they're pretty much saying the same thing. Kanye is expressing his confusion and cognitive dissonance based on the fact that even though the Sacrifice saved humanity, according to his perception of reality, e'rybody in the street be gettin' screwed all the time. GEORGE BUSH DOESN'T CARE ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE! Are we really saved? How can we know as people or Americans that we're truly righteous when all this terrible stuff keeps happening?

So he's troubled, to say the least. Then, and this is where it gets good, in Verse 2, Stanza 2, Line 1,
he resolves this conflict by saying, "So I parallel, double-park, that muthaf****r sideways."

And I've heard this line dozens, if not hundreds,of times but today I finally really thought about what he's saying.

First he's gonna parallel park. (Picture time!)


 So Kanye is going to park between that Red car and that Brownish car. (the squares are cars. Just go with it)

But he's not just going to parallel park. He's going to DOUBLE PARK!



that means that there is already a car in his prospective parking space, (the blue square) but regardless of this fact, he's going to park his solid gold Other-Other Benz right beside it! How's that blue square gonna get out?! Kanye don't care.

But it doesn't stop there! Because Kanye parallel, double-parks, SIDEWAYS!


That means he parks with the nose of the car facing the blue car, and the butt and body of the car taking up the entire right lane of the street!

SO NOBODY CAN USE THAT SIDE OF THE STREET!



The squares are out of control!!!!!

What's really interesting here is that Kanye has negates his own statement within itself. To parallel double-park sideways is no longer paralleling parking at all. It is PERPENDICULAR parking!

This contradiction mirrors the earlier contradiction between knowing the love of Jesus and being unable to interpret the nature of good.

Kanye is lost! He abandons all logic and takes up the yoke of chaos!

And now you see the full implications of Kanye's words. The question we must now ask is, "Why, why Kanye?"

Well, as he told you before, HE'S CONFUSED ABOUT GOD AND STUFF HOLMES!


Keep the faith.
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I was also going to plan out a coming-of-age story, a bildungsroman, in this post. But I think you've had enough for one day. Rest your weary head.

Informatic Static

I can't think of anything crazy to talk about like I did yesterday so I'm just gonna tell you about my recent obsession with a pair of pants.



Well, they're tights. They're tight pants. But they're aren't just any tight pants. Oh no. This company, Skins, that makes these tights, the RY400, found a way to make pants so tight that they actually heal the muscles in your legs faster! Faster than looser pants or no pants. It's supposed to increase circulation or something...

But really, they're just tight pants.

Tight pants that cost one hundred and forty dollars! $140!

I've been telling myself for the past, I don't know, four days now that I'm not going to buy them. But here's the thing, I am going to buy them. I have to buy them. Because the seeds have been sown. And now those seeds are being relentless nourished by the heaps of manure that are banner ads that I see on every single website I go to. I can't escape these pants! I literally think about buying these ridiculous pants before I go to sleep at night.

That brings us to logic. It's logic's job to stop me from buying things I don't need. You know that scene in Black Dynamite where he's in his dojo and he wails on all those Asian guys for no apparent reason? They run at him only to get utterly destroyed. Those guys are logic.
.
And my compulsive urges are about to roundhouse kick them to the floor.

But let's see what logic has to say.
1. They cost $140! Could you really stand to live with yourself if you bought a single pair of pants that cost that much? That's not the way. That's not the way it's supposed to be!
2. They probably don't even make that much of a difference. Are you even going to notice?
3. You have to walk around with these tights under your clothes and its recommended that you sleep in them. You can't sleep in tights.

Yes, that's all very well and good logic. You made a strong case. However, the simple facts remain:
a) I want them.
b) Christmas money.

Well, if I want them so bad why don't I just buy them and shut-up about it?

Because look at them! They're so stupid! And I'm not even that fast. Not fast enough to have running determine the pants I wear when I'm NOT running. It's already taken almost everything else.

So yeah, not going to buy them...for now. But these freakin' banner ads won't let me forget about them! Now I'm just not going to buy them out of spite. If I see a pair in real life, I'mma steal them. That's what the Internet has driven me to do. Everyone heard it here: the Internet made me do it.

Keep the faith.

Condition Normal

You know when you stand up and all the blood rushes out(?) of your head? You start blacking out and you ears start ringing?

I got a name for that; I call it: The Greggening. (that's Greggening with 3 g's and a ŋ)

It's called that because I figure one day I'm gonna get up to go to the kitchen to get some jalapeno peanuts and I'll get that feeling. But instead of my vision returning, the  Greggening will progress further and further until I enter into total Gregg. It's like my senses will just flip over to this other dimension ruled by the demi-god known only as Gregg.

He'll be all the time squatting and have a little cane thing and a raggedity purple cape that he likes to sniff the corners of when he thinks no one is looking. But everyone is totally looking. Other than him it'll just be like a dark void with wispy swirly stuff going on in the background and you want to touch it but you know it's probably evil and will send you back in time where you'll inadvertently become your own aunt.

Anyway, Gregg will be scrunched up like a medium-sized evil prune and instead of talking to you he'll just wave his hand and three boxes will appear before you. There's a big box, a little box, and uh...Residential Advisor box. The RA box is always trying to hold events in the social lounge that no one attends. And then I show up after the event fails and eat all the free cookies!

Anyway, creepy Gregg is like, "Choose a box carefully."

And I'm like, "Well, obviously I don't want the RA box. But other than that, how is this a situation that requires care? I only know the size of these boxes. Size doesn't tell me a whole lot about the properties of what they contain. I mean, in terms of danger the little box could contain a plague of roaches, wasps, cherry-flavored cough syrup. Any number of terrible things. While the big box could be filled with several boxes, each of which get smaller in size and ultimately contain the same thing as the little box."

"Shut up. Just pick one.""

"I pick the big box. And if Audrey Hepburn is in there, she better be alive. A dead Audrey Hepburn would be most unpropitious."

(that means unfavorable, y'all! Second vocab word of the 2012!)

And then I open the big box and there's a giant glass of orange juice. Suddenly! I'm in the orange juice! And the top's been sealed off with a sheet of cafeteria-grade aluminum foil.

Gregg is like, "Looks like you'll have to drink your way out!"

And I'm thinking, I've been preparing for this my whole life!
So I drink a third of my body weight in orange juice and that snaps me back to reality.

In conclusion, make sure you keep your blood sugar up and always stay hydrated! 

Everything Repeats

Let's do another one of these.

True Meaning of Winter Break Part Nine

Waking up at 8 in the morning to go to the dentist and then around noon having dreams about your parents dying and a coffee maker bludgeoning a hockey player to death.

That's...that's more just what I did today. Not so much the True Meaning of Winter Break.

I don't think any universal message can be salvaged from that. Except, maybe, don't get your teeth polished and then take a nap. Your subconscious will be all topsy-turvy from your excess oral hygiene.

But it does lead me into something I'd like to talk about: Flossing.

I don't floss. Never picked up the habit. It doesn't have the soothing freshness of brushing or the invigorating sting of mouthwash.

But I did decide today that I will begin flossing the minute I lose "dental". Which I'm guessing stands for dental insurance, or some sort of dental plan where your job lets you get the "dental". I've only ever heard "dental" so I don't know what the full name for the concept is.

Anyway, until someone's mom (cuz they're always moms) is no longer able to go in my mouth with a tiny spike and scrape all the plaque away. I'm not flossing. Every six months I just get their professional cleaning and that carries me through.

When that stops happening though, I'm gonna be on my teeth like a fiend. Like a fiend! Like a toothy fiend! Cuz I'm not paying for mouth stuff out of my own pocket. It's expensive and painful. Expensively painful. And painfully expensive. I'll buy like a mega-sized spool of minty dental floss and keep it where my toilet paper holder is. And then I'll just put the toilet paper on the top part of the toilet. Like the lazy people in my suite-bathroom at school do! I'll eat lots of apples too. Because apples clean teeth.

Yeah, and I'll probably take lots of Vicodin too. Yeah...Cookie Crisp and Vicodin...

Flossing is important...let me rephrase that. Flossing is important when you don't have someone's mom to clean your teeth and nag you about flossing. If you've got that going on, what are the moms going to do when you go to the dentist? They'll have nothing to say and no plaque to scrape off and collect in a tiny plastic bag that they keep hidden under their sleeve.

And they take the scrapings to a back room where they empty it out on to their own little pile. Those little piles rest at the foot of the head Dentist-man's throne chair and all the nurses/moms compete to see whose pile of teeth-scrapings can reach a meter in height. The first person to do that wins their key to freedom. And they get one of those cool robo-chairs installed in their living room.

That's how I imagine dentistry works anyway...

TRUE MEANING OF WINTER BREAK!  

This is the Thing!

Hey kids! Tired of all those boring applications for your computer phones?

Course you are! Don't sass me!

You need the APPL.DE.APP APP!

That's right! Now your favorite member of the Black Eyed Peas is on your smartphone to steer you through life.

By drawing from the vast volume of Appl.de.app's insightful lyrics, the APPL.DE.APP. APP can handle any situation!

Young Person with Terrible Sense of Direction: APPL.DE.APP APP, how do I get myself to the hair cuttery?

A.D.A.A.:  Let's walk the bridge. To the other side. Just you and I. (just you and I)

Young Person: Thanks APPL.DE.APP APP!

It can liven up any party!

Young Persons: This party time music is terrible. Let's see if the APPL.DE.APP. APP has any suggestions.

A.D.A.A: She does the two step, and the tongue drop, she does the cabbage patch, and the bus stop, she like Electro, she love Hip Hop, she like the Reggae, she feel Punk Rock, she like the Samba, and the Mambo, she like to Break Dance, and Calypso.

Get a little crazy, get a little stupid!

Young Persons: Okay! We will do all of those things. In order! Fun achieved!

It can...do other stuff!

Business Man: APPL.DE.APP APP, what's the weather supposed to be like tomorrow?

A.D.A.A: Honey got me runnin like I'm Flo-Jo. Signs her name on my heart with an X-O. Love's so sweet got me vexed though, I wonder when she write back like presto, yes.

Business Man: No. The weather.

A.D.A.A: Meantime I wait for the next time, She come around for a toast to the best time. We LOL back
and forth on the text line, She got me fishin' for love, I confess I'm--

Business Man: WEATHER! TOMORROW!

A.D.A.A: Something bout her smile and that combo, got me high and I ain't comin' down yo. My heart's pumpin' out louder than electro. She got me feeling like Mr. Roboto.

Business Man: You are the most useless person alive!

The Boss Man: Johnson! Why are you yelling at your terrible music? You're fired!

Business Man (smashing phone): Piece of--

Yes, the APPL.DE.APP APP, for all your vague direction and terrible dance move needs, just ask the guy who barely gets to do anything in the band.

Also, check out the APPL.DE.APP autobiographical audio book APP.

A.D.A.A.B.A: And then I told will.i.am and Fergie about my plan to do a song where I write the chorus, and make the beats, and get more than one verse. And they just laughed and laughed...

The APPL.DE.APP APP, which one is he again?

____________________________________________________________

The biggest joke here is that the lyrics I used are from Taboo. The other person that no one knows about in the Black Eyed Peas. I got most of the way through this and realized I was quoting the wrong guy. But then I thought to myself, "Who will know the difference?! BAHAHAHAHAHA"

Heated Mattress Pad

I like having the house to myself. The lone college student with no responsibilities!

I watched Hot Rod and took a dump. Dumbest movie I've seen in a long time. I loved it.

There's that danger of having the house to yourself. Who's there to stop you from doing acts of unspeakable evil? You might give in to your darkest desires and do something crazy like turn on all the TVs and turn the volume all the way up. You might take all the Activia pro-biotic yogurt and put it in the bathtub.

But then you realize that bathtubs are really big. And you only had two cups of yogurt left out of the six pack. So now you just have a weird mess.

 The older I get the more I feel like I'm becoming elementary school me. And moving away from what middle school and high school me wanted and was worried about. It's like those teen years were a weird diversion and now I'm getting back to my eight-year old priorities.

Which were to be awesome! That's what I was thinking about today. I was thinking about how the "shmo/average guy" has been idolized. That's our generation's male-persona. The average, awkward, lazy guy.

I don't really have a problem with that so much as I dislike that excellence in anything isn't celebrated. It's almost a negative. People can be "too smart". Obsessions are "unhealthy". (How can I be the best at looking at digital clocks if I don't spend 18 hours a day looking at digital clocks!)

And that brings me to Kanye West. Because Kanye West does dare to be excellent. And it occurred to me today that that's why I genuinely like him. He do it better than anybody you ever seen do it.

Yeah, he won't shut up about it, which I guess you could call arrogance, but at least he wants to be the best at something.

And that brings me to Pokemon. When did we lose sight of Pokemon? When did we stop wanting to be the very best, like no one EVER was?

So to tie this whole thing up, I guess I'm going back to the mindset of when I played Pokemon, but without the Pokemon.

I want to be the best comedian/writer-guy and runner that  I can be! And that's it. Well, I guess I might as well continue being a good student. And...have friends and stuff. But other than those things, I hereby don't give craps about anything else!

...I need to learn how to cook. What am I going to feed myself with?!

end. (tomorrow's will be better. promise.)

Pah-poing-boing

I was driving in my car to Keith's house, listening to "Like a G6". I drove through an intersection and, having passed through said intersection, a brilliant white fox jumped out of some bushes and stopped directly in front of me. I slammed on the brakes. The fox remained completely still. I was compelled to get out of my car.

I stood behind the open driver's side door and the fox said, "I can show you many wondrous things in the land of the silver sun."

To which I replied, "That's cool. I was just going to play cards."

And then uh...kinda...ran out of steam on that one...

The point is, you can only romanticize your life so much. Like, you can't just walk around acting like magical things happen to you all the time when you're just going to your friend's house to play Capitalism for four hours.

But at the same time, you can't just lie about petty stuff either. I couldn't be like, "I was listening to 'Like a G6' and busting incredible dance moves in my seat." Because, you know I'm lying. And if even if I wasn't, you wouldn't care.

So what you gotta do is realistically lie and then extrapolate awesomeness from that.

You could be like, "I rolled down the window and stuck my head out into the icy wind and defiantly opened my eyes against the burn." (which is something I totally be doing all the times) And then you could talk about how that reminds you of high-school, when you'd have to drive to school as the sun was coming up and you'd take the back roads and go flying over the hills and through the twisty turns and it shocked the sleepiness out of you. Or how'd you go and get a giant slurpee and finish it when there was still snow on the ground. Because instead of fighting the cold you just internalized it, or you held it in your clenched fist and squeezed until everything went numb.

And then you could say something about how you can't accomplish anything great by suppressing your self. You gotta do you. In any condition. And the greater the struggle, the greater the...good...stuff...is brought.

Then you gotta undercut it by saying something like, "Unless you're tired. Which there really isn't anything you can do about. Just cover yourself in blankets and fade into the warmth until real life is far away."

I want to sleep on sand. Warm beach sand. There's nothing I would like better than to press the side of my head into some warm beach sand right now. I can feel all the little granules. So warm. Icy grass is so cold. Boo icy grass! Eat at Del-Taco, icy grass!

Frequently Stupendous

I fell asleep in a sleeping bag for about 3 hours, woke up, scraped the frost off my car, and drove home. It was a good New Year's. I crashed, recovered, and kept on moving...then I took a nap about four hours later. But I felt like I had momentum, you know? Like I kicked off the burning, sinking ship that was 2011 and onto the sweet sweet non-flammable cloud ship of 2012.

Which leads me to the title. Frequently Stupendous. That's the goal of the blog for the new year, to be that. Frequently Stupendous.

Frequent- as in prolific or overwhelmingly growing! The content of this blog will multiply so rapidly that I'm bound to crap out something special in the avalanche of mediocrity I will assail my readers with. Prepare yourselves for much separating of the wheat from the chaff. So much CHAFF.

(Mediocrity and avalanche aren't words that readily combine. Mediocralanche? Avalocrity?)


Stupendous- as in better than an oatmeal cream pie. I discovered last night that the standard for stupendous is an oatmeal cream pie. The oatmeal cream pie is just on the edge of stupendous. There's literally no space between oatmeal cream pie and stupendous; they're that close. If you add something to the oatmeal cream pie, like chocolate, then it becomes stupendous. And surprisingly, if you take out the cream, leaving just an oatmeal pie, you also achieve stupendous. So it is my intention to make this blog better than an oatmeal cream pie.

And maybe next year we'll try to be better than oatmeal pie. BUT I DOUBT IT!

So that's like that.

Also, gonna try not to swear this year. We'll see how that goes.
___________________________________________________________________

Everyone knows self-improvement is dead. Science has already told us that, without enough money and reality show appearances, major lifestyle changes are pretty much impossible .

But just for fun, let's tie up the corpse of self-improvement and drag him down the freeway from the back of my bumper! Maybe he'll get airborne!

Obviously you want to improve your life by fixing up the fleshy mound of soggy meat you call a body. Look at yourself. It's like an eight-year old molded you out of paper-mache. Don't worry, whatever your body-type, you're hideous. Here's some all-encompassing wondertips to change that.

The first thing you're going to want to do is go get some vitamins. It's winter so you're probably deficient in Vitamin D, that's why come you're so cranky and your hips look so weird. I prefer the cheap, generic gummy vitamins. They don't actually contain a lot of healthy stuff that you wouldn't normally get from food. That's why you gotta super-charge them.

Grab a big ol' fistful of them gummy fruits and turn it into a big ol' faceful of gummy fruits. Mash the vitamins a little bit to increase their absorbency but before you swallow, spit them all into a blender. Then take an aggressively-named energy drink and a number-themed energy shot and poor those bad boys in there to liven things up. Blendilate at high speeds and then chuggerate at ignominious speeds!

(that's a word I learned from Paradise Lost. It means deserving or causing public disgrace or shame. Great, right? You're learning!)

Now you're ready to face the day just like when you were four! You haven't felt this young in a long time. Your heart is pounding like a jackhammer and the vitamin overdose has turned your pee neon orange!

Walk around flex-spasming and send people pictures of your bright new toilet bowl. You'll command so much respect that you probably won't have to pay for stuff no more. I mean, you're basically riding the line between a super villain and a superhero that can only work under the cover of night. You definitely aren't daytime material. But instead of committing to those risky businesses, you should enjoy the free stuff while living the life of a freak.

This is how healthy people feel all the time!