Sean's Random Humor

There Goes Your Phone

2011-07-28T20:22:00.000-07:00

There goes your phone,
again, falling down alone
as you watch in fright
at your baby in mid-flight
you open your mouth to scream
battery life flashing before its screen
and you wonder if just once
it will simply just bounce
but you know that the floor
has never before lost a war
oh, what a tangled web we weave
when our screen the ground does cleave

A Guys Night Out

2011-07-01T20:34:00.000-07:00

I recently went to a peanut-floored establishment with my brother-in-law and soon-to-be-brother-in-law (I had my punctuation supplier on speed dial in case I ran out during the course of the night). We told our wives and soon-to-be-wife that we were going there to get to know each other better as people, connect on a deeper level as brothers, and enjoy some manly fellowship. In reality, those things were all convenient side-effects created by the main purpose of drinking adult beverages (coffee, Pepto-Bismol, prune juice) by the pitcher-full.

In between chugging and quaffing, we also played some games that are of an appropriate skill level for the people who frequent the location. Namely, hitting balls into holes with the ends of sticks, and sliding metal pucks from one side of a table to the other. In other words, games that require absolutely no coordination to play (a small amount is required to play well, but not much). We opted for the shuffleboard for most of the night since the pool table didn't give us its balls unless we gave it money, and our religion does not condone pool prostitution, or whoreballing.

I had never played shuffleboard before, so it took me a few seconds to master it. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't make a fool of myself by trying to eat the substance on the table that looks invitingly like salt. They are actually silicon beads that help to reduce friction (I'll take Wikipedia's word on that one).

It's a great game for the coordination impaired, as even the most inebriated fellow can lean against a table, pass out, and have his head hit the puck, probably giving it enough momentum to reach the other side for at least one point. However, old drunk people should not try this, as it voids their AARP warranty.

Really, the hardest part of the game is focusing on and adjusting the strength of your slide as you become more and more perfect in every way (at least that's what the alcohol tells me). I suppose this is good in more ways than one. It allows for the sort of deep male conversation you hear routinely at fine bars worldwide, like "You guys done with the pool table?", "Where's the bathroom?", and "That's not my vomit, officer!"

The sweet hoppy nectar does more than just loosen the tongue, but it also greases the axles of the rusty male brain that is perpetually driving in first gear if not sitting idle. Conversations happen that are normally restricted (by choice) to the female gender, with topics like birthplace choices, marriage, and personal hygiene. But after a while (read: a few pitchers of beer), these and other topics suddenly are as riveting as playing sports or grilling meat on a BBQ or playing sports while grilling meat on a BBQ (also known as the best day a man can possibly have).

Of course, these topics could also have surfaced out of necessity brought on by the shuffleboard table being used by two couples who were, shall we say, definitely not thirsty. They were chucking the pucks as hard as they could and laughing at the inevitable "PLUNK" as they (the pucks) smacked into the wood on the other side. I don't know who thought it would be a good idea to have only one shuffleboard table at a bar. That's like expecting a roomful of unsupervised two year olds to play nicely and share the one toy in the room. How every night doesn't end in tear-streaked bruises and scrapes and everyone calling for their mommy is a miracle in my eyes.

Turn-by-Turn Innovation

2011-03-15T21:43:00.001-07:00

These days, it seems like every car company is trying to outdo itself and others in the following aspects: safety, reliability, incredibly ugly designs, and obnoxiously conceited commercials...

*cue 30 second spot*
*dim lights*

The commercial opens with artistic shots of a sleek black luxury car gliding along twists and turns in a far-away exotic mountainous region (Chino Hills), while a deep-voiced narrator reads the following:

"Have you ever wanted to become one with the road? Have you ever dreamed of being so attached to your car that it becomes one with you? Have you ever desired to feel the wind beat ripples into the supple fabric of your Armani threads as you soar along the highway, your cares and worries flying from your brow like the beads of sweat on the brows of your subordinates? Well. This is the car for you. Lexus: If you don't already know how good we are, you don't have enough money to buy one."

But somehow, lost amongst the hustle and bustle of innovation, bailouts, and takeovers, oh my, something basic has been forsaken and thrown along the wayside like so many Justin Bieber CDs.

The turn signal.

You may be unaware that the turn signal has been around since the stone age, on the earliest model of the Volkswheel sedentary vehicle. Its purpose was just as it is today: to alert one's intention to turn, as well as to specify which direction. Of course, back then there wasn't much traffic, so it basically only alerted the saber-toothed tigers to let them know which way the food was going.

Now, nearly hundreds of years later, virtually nothing has changed! The turn signal still only lets the person or carnivorous feline near you know that you are either turning left or right; however, in a brilliant evolutionary breakthrough, if you are in an emergency situation, you now have the option to press a special red button that makes both signals blink simultaneously, allowing free reign to do whatever insane maneuvering you want in the name of "emergency".

This sort of innovation is something that has been lacking for the turn signal and its constituents (Light Bulbs Local 863). There is obviously an untapped amount of potential to modify the standard turn signal.

For instance, why is there not a special variation for U-Turns? How many accidents have been caused from some person slowing down to one mile per hour to make an unwieldy 180 that would barely miss the curb on the opposite side, only to be slammed from behind by someone paying less than adequate attention (and in this person's defense, probably not expecting someone to slow down to near-stopping in the left-hand turn lane)?

By my expert analysis and research, a lot. Quite a lot, even. I would quote my sources, but I don't want to bother making them up.

Why not have a setting on the turn signal bar that puts the blinking to half speed or even slower, alerting the driver behind to be prepared to slam on his brakes when all instincts are telling him "that green arrow isn't going to last long, GUN IT!"

And how about a special setting for when you want to merge across two or more lanes of traffic, but you've got some Big Money Wielder (BMW) who sees it as an attack on his masculinity for anyone to merge into HIS lane, and his raging alpha male hormones will make him do everything in his horsepower to keep you from merging, even though you are just passing through into the next lane and possibly beyond.

You know the kind of person I'm talking about. You can picture him now, white-knuckling his leather-caressed wheel, shoulders peaked in tension as a terrifying thought grips him about how there is money in the world that doesn't yet belong to him, top shirt button unbuttoned to keep it from popping off into space as his bulging neck muscles resemble a swollen bunch of celery, shirt sleeves rolled up to just below the elbow so they don't get in the way of his driving gloves. Yeah, that guy. The guy whose motto is "Time is money, so get the $@&!% out of my lane!"

Finally, there should be a setting installed that detects when a turn signal has been on for more than 30 seconds, and automatically changes the shape of the regular intermittent flashes into intermittent flashing question marks, signifying an "eventual left or right turn", which is a legal maneuver for anyone over the age of 65 and means that they might make a turn between now and the second Thursday of next week. So be prepared!

Of course, all this is probably unnecessary, since no one uses their turn signals in the first place, so to expect them to learn new variations and put them to use is as improbable as expecting people to finish their blog pos

If God had a Facebook Page...

2011-02-25T11:05:00.000-08:00

His profile picture would be a burning bush.

He would run out of room in the About Me section of His profile, so it would just say, "For more information, read The Bible".

He would send friend requests to everyone on Facebook, and if you decline it, He would send it again until you accept it.

He would max out His capability to add friends millions of times over.

Religious views would simply say “I Am.”

Political views would say “Theocracy”.

Instead of three pull down menus for the day/month/year of His birthday, there would be two pull down menus that each had one option: Alpha; Omega.

Languages would just say “Silence”.

Favorite movies would be "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", proving once and for all that God does have a sense of humor.

If God poked you, you would feel it.

His wall would consist of people asking “Are you there?”, “Did you get my message?”, and “Did you see that good deed I just did?”

God would always be online to chat. You'd never see a little moon next to His name.

His ad sidebar would consist of the following ads: "Get your halo 50% shinier, or your money back!", "Are your clouds as fluffy as they can be?", and "Watch 'When Popes Attack', a new Fox Special, airing tonight at 8/7 central."

His login password would be the entire book of Leviticus, no spaces. He would type it all in three seconds.

Instead of a “like” button, He would have a “love” button, and He would “love” everything that shows up on His feed.

His status would be permanently set as “Take up your cross and follow Me.”

He would have one event pending at all times. It would be called "Second Coming", and the date would be "Soon". All His friends are invited, but He is still "Awaiting Reply" from all of them.

If He ever edits any part of His profile after joining, His friends would receive the following message in their feeds:

“God changed his profile.”

Christians worldwide would go into a panic, screaming, “CHANGE?? WHAT CHANGED?!?!?”

And finally...

Could God make a Facebook page so popular that even He couldn’t “like” it?

The Cover Up

2010-08-06T21:34:00.000-07:00

During my nine hour stint today at work (official title: Super Accounting Dude), I was playing with some numbers ("Where'd five go? Where'd fiiiive go? Peekaboo!") when someone dropped an expense report on my desk. Expense reports are filled out and given to me for two reasons: One, as a way to document and turn in receipts in order to receive a reimbursement, and two, to explain what the expense was for and how it relates to company business. A coincidental third reason for filling out expense reports is so I can test for basic knowledge of Excel and how formulas work, basic addition and subtraction, and last but certainly not least, correct spelling and grammar.

As someone who has trudged through the public screwl system and graduated college with a fancy degree that I still haven't picked up from the university...

...I was surprised at first to see upper management people and other big titles handing me expense reports with incorrect addition due to poor use of formulas in Excel, misspellings of their superior's last name...multiple times, and other gross typos and grammatical oversights. In some cases, some people seem to be incapable of turning in expense reports at all EXCEPT when a reimbursement is needed. Then they are magically able to find all of their receipts and finish what previously seemed to be the insurmountable task of allocating five minutes to filling out an expense report.

So when the expense report was dropped on my desk, I did my normal professional accounting routine - look for spelling errors. Normally, if that produces no hilarity, I'll then flip through the receipts. Since I'm just an accountant, I don't get to go to all the fancy dinners where clients are schmoozed and expensive bottles of wine are swished and tips are given in amounts that are more than what I make in a day. So I do the next best thing - find the receipts that give a line-itemized account of what was purchased, and live vicariously. It's a glamorous profession, but someone has to do it.

This particular expense report was submitted by a lady whom I know has never had to fill out an expense report before. I don't know how some people feel about submitting expense reports that show in detail what they consumed/enjoyed/partook of/etc... on the company dollar. Maybe some feel guilt at ordering that extra martini; maybe some feel justified in eating that $50 steak; maybe some others do it unabashedly in the noble name of putting on a well-fed face for the company.

Regardless of the reason, the person who submitted this expense report apparently had some issue she was trying to cover up. Admittedly, I don't talk to this particular person at work very much, so I don't know if perhaps she's on a diet, or conscious of her weight, or maybe just afraid of what others think of her eating habits. But I just don't understand why else she would do this:

The first item on the receipt is for a Chocolate Chip Cookie. However, it's not just any chocolate chip cookie - it's a nearly $3 chocolate chip cookie. Imagine the size! It must have been like holding a garbage can lid with both hands and...oh wait. It's from an airport snack bar. It was probably more like holding a quarter with a thumb and index finger and probably tasted similar too.

Regardless of its size, "someone" crossed out "Choc CP Cookie" and wrote "BAGEL" above it. I'm sorry, but how stupid does she think I am?

Sean: *mouth gaping open, with a string of drool reaching from my bottom lip to the desk* "Daaaah, uh bayguhl? Oh ummkay, dat sownds akseptabuhl. At leest it wusn't a kooky."

Besides, I'm not stupid because I'm not the one buying an imported strawberry from Odwalla (where's that? Australia?) for $4.99. Unless it was this one:

Part of me wanted to confront her about it in the hallway or something and ask,

"So, how was your...bagel?"
"It was fine, thank you."
"Oh, was it? Oh, I'm so glad to hear that! Here's your reimbursement check."

Hey, I'm in accounting and sit in a cubicle all day. I'm not one for confrontations. I would probably choose a more subtle route.

Bagel Girl: "Look! Someone brought homemade chocolate chip cookies to work."
Me: "Oh, it's too bad they didn't bring any nutritious guilt-free BAGELS!"
Bagel Girl: "Why are you yelling?"
Me: "LOOK OVER THERE!" *takes the chocolate chip cookie platter and runs*

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a sudden hankering for a...bagel. And an Australian strawberry.

100th Blog Post!

2010-04-07T20:41:00.000-07:00

And it only took me five and a half years! That has to be a record of some sort...

I have an abundance of time to observe the idiosyncrasies of life during my eight minute, two mile drive to work. The recent rainstorm on Monday (net precipitation: -.01 inches) reminded me of my favorite thing about driving in the rain in Southern California: watching the sun-drenched natives react to this "weird wet stuff, like, falling from the sky and making it, like, hard to see outta my window, man".

When I left for work in the wee early hours of the morning (7:45) on Monday, the intensity of the raging storm was somewhere between a mild mist and a subtle sprinkling, not unlike the automatic spritzers which keep the produce wet in the supermarket. It's the sort of torrent that requires you to give your windshield a once-over with the wipers every ten or fifteen seconds or so. One might call it a bum moistener, a ruined car wash, or a reason to rethink your footwear choice from flip flops to shoes.

And yet, this does not stop certain drivers from exhibiting a peculiar behavior which I search for whenever a window wetter of a storm like this hits.

Instead of an occasional gentle burst from the wipers, or even a low intermittent setting, these drivers have their windshield wipers set on "excited dog". They have their wipers wagging on the absolute maximum setting, easily restricting their vision more than the rain could ever do. Do these people know that there are settings lower than "crazed metronome"? If they're accustomed to using the highest setting for the slightest bit of rain, I wonder if they feel that the fastest is inadequate when it actually pours? If they could, they'd probably turn the wipers up so high that the heat generated from the friction of the blades whipping back and forth would actually cause the water to evaporate before it hits the windshield.

Another thing that I notice while driving that seems a little silly to me is those little stick figure decals that people put on their car windows to represent their families.

For instance, a typical Southern California decal set looks something like this:

In other words, you've got typical parents with their socially acceptable though culturally unsustainable 2.5 kids (each pet apparently accounts for .25 in this pic).

When I see decals like this, I think about the "what if" possibility. Like, what if I lived in Utah? Would I see a decal like this?

Or what would you think if you passed by a car with the following decals? I know I would switch lanes.

What I don't get is how unrealistic they all are. I always see these decals being used to portray a fun-loving family where the dad is an athletic surfer guy who is obviously his kids' best friend because he's so incredibly cool, the mom is still a stylish and involved person who can make an applesauce stain look glamorous, the kids are equally vivacious and socially brilliant, and the family pet is the cutest thing since my daughter.

However, in reality, this is Southern California. The dad probably works 80 hours a week to support a lifestyle that he still can't afford or enjoy, the mom probably hires a housekeeper, has the kids in daycare, gets weekly makeovers and the occasional face-lift, and works full-time just to afford these things, the kids are probably fat from a steady diet of no exercise and daily fast food, and they likely get the majority of their parental guidance from sitting slack-jawed in front of the idiot box, and nothing is cuter than my daughter.

Speaking of my daughter (end awesome segue), Emily is seven months old now. We had a father/daughter evening at the park tonight while Mommy stayed home and rested (she's sick with a cold) after a full day of taking care of Emily. We drove to a nearby park at 5:30 after I got home from work, put her in the jogging stroller, and went over to the basketball courts. I put the stroller between the 3-point line and half-court, facing the basket, and shot around for 25 minutes. She enjoyed watching Daddy play, and also entertained herself with her favorite rattle.

She eventually got bored and told me as much. I responded to her cries by putting my basketball into the storage area below the stroller and strolling to the dirt track right next to the courts. I then ran four laps around the track, while Emily provided sound effects. The track is a little bumpy, so Emily would emit a monotone "aaaaaahhhhhhhhh" and the vibration would turn it into "ahAHahAHahAHahAHahAH" She did that for at least half of the time - she loves hearing her voice especially when it vibrates either by her getting bounced or by someone tapping her mouth.

I got tired eventually, and started a cool-down walk. After ten minutes or so, we headed back to my car. An hour had passed, and I figured I would pack up and go home.

But when I picked up Emmy, she was so happy to be held that I decided to head over to the swings for a little while. I put her in the little swing that has the restraint chain and pushed her - she loved it. We did that for a while until Daddy started getting jealous, so I picked her up, sat on an adult swing, put her in my lap facing me, and swung with her.

She was very animated when she swung in her own swing, but she was much more subdued and relaxed when she swung with me. She seemed to like being able to swing a little higher, and she might have liked being in Daddy's warm arms, who knows? After a few minutes, just as I was starting to slow down, her head hit my chest. Less than a minute later, she was asleep on my chest while still swinging. Once we stopped, I half walked, half snuggled her to the car and drove home.

I like being a daddy.

Sick of Being Sick

2009-11-03T22:11:00.000-08:00

It figures that when it's trendy to get the swine flu that I'd get hit with some mundane and boring infection like a sore throat. Sore throats are the nerds of the disease world. They're the wimps that get beat up on the germ playground.

"What can you do, poindexter?" says Hay Fever, pounding one fist into the other. "Make someone puke out their guts? Rupture their spleen?"
"Well," says Sore Throat, "I can make throats hurt just enough to be annoying, but most of the time people forget I'm there unless they swallow."
*awkward pause*
"Get him!"

Now, if you want to talk about a disease that would never get beat up, mainly because everyone would be too afraid to go near it, there's swine flu. And no, I will not be referring to it by its PC name, mainly because that's what Obama would want me to do, but also because this is a downright dirty, filthy, rolling-in-the-mud and eating rotten apple cores swine flu.

Many people don't know this, but swine flu is actually an ancient disease dating back to Biblical times. When Jesus commanded that the demons leave the body of the possessed man and enter the herd of swine, causing the pigs to hurl themselves off of a cliff, this was the first documented case when swine flew.

In that case, all of the swine died, meaning that the swine flu back then killed 100% of its victims, which is just slightly better than the greatest modern killer of all - greater even than an atomic bomb. And that ruthless killer is none other than a Wanda Sykes induced suicide, caused by indecent exposure to her person, voice, likeness, attempted humor, scent, or even an indirect gaze into a mirror in which her reflection is displayed. And how much exposure is indecent you ask? Scientific studies show that just .0001 seconds of indirect or direct exposure can leave the most humor-deaf person foaming at the mouth with the inexorable urge to JUST MAKE IT STOP!

Note: While I do check my facts, there is always room for error from the scientists themselves. For instance, the same scientists who proved the above statistics are also in staunch agreement with the rest of the swine in the scientific community that global warming is a major threat and requires swift and massive action and regulation and taxing by the federal government.

"What'll we do about this global warming, Bill?"
"Well, let's spin the wheel of legislative decision-making and find out!"
*spins*
"Let's see, raise taxes, take bribe, listen to lobbyist, raise taxes, listen to union, raise taxes, raise taxesssss, come onnnn!!! oh! What?!? Listen to taxpayer? How'd that get on there? Is this some kind of joke?"
"Oh, must have been that intern we just fired. Just raise taxes, if it's still around in six months we'll have a caucus in Tahiti to decide whose taxes to raise next."

However, I do wholeheartedly agree that Wanda Sykes is definitely a threat to the well-being of the human race and humor in general, and most definitely should be regulated and taxed and thrown into Guantanamo.

Speaking of pigs, the swine flu is also known by another less common name - the Jerry Springer flu.

"Today's show: Hillbillies, and the pigs who love them. With me today is Cletus. Now, Cletus, you're not here just to tell your wife AnnieBethAnnabelle that you have contracted the swine flu, are you? So, please, tell us how you, shall we say, hogtied yourself to the disease."

"Well Jerry, Lurleen, our prize pig, was a-struttin' her stuff out back in da mud one day, and, well, I-"

"What? What did you do, you self-righteous two-toother?" yells AnnieBethAnnabelle. "Yer thinkin' yer all better than me just cuz I only got ol' chomper?"

*crowd oooohs*

"Well Annie," says Jerry, "let's settle this once and for all. Lurleen? Come on out!"

*camera whips to a pig emerging from behind a glittering curtain. It is wearing pink high hooves, and striking a surprisingly alluring pose for a pig*

*chaos ensues*

So in short, I'll get swine flu when pigs fly.

Wallet Rash

2009-09-23T21:21:00.000-07:00

So I bought my first box of diapers today. Allow me to set the scene.

It was a warm Wednesday. Actually, it was pretty dang hot. So much for the amazing alliteration. The sun beat down on the asphalt as I approached the finest diaper retailing establishment in all of Orange County - Wal-Mart. As I walked, I unrolled the parchment given to me by my wife containing the list of our shopping necessities, stumbling as the other end hit my feet and rolled along ahead of me. I bent down and scooped it up in my arms, as portions of it cascaded over my arms like waterfalls. I peered over the top of the papery mound, found a shopping cart, and threw it in.

I looked at the first item on the list - milk, and went to the food aisles. Two aisles and just as many minutes later, I had already found 75% of what was on the list, and I wondered to myself how much time I've wasted in my life walking through endless aisles in other supermarkets, when Wal-Mart has everything I could possibly need condensed down to a handful of conveniently placed aisles. Where else can you find hot dogs, cheese, cheerios, butter, yogurt, turkey, and milk all within five feet of each other? Nowhere! I'd have to traverse half a mile through twenty different aisles to find all of those items in a normal supermarket. But I also get lost easily, so you might have an easier time of it.

Fortunately, I knew exactly where the baby section was at Wal-Mart, so after surreptitiously ditching the list ("clean-up in aisles six, seven, and eight!"), I sped over to the far end of the store. I say sped, because people in Wal-Mart drive their carts like chickens with their heads cut off. So I Mosey my way through the store as if the other shoppers are the Red Sea, parting dawdling geriatrics ("I spilled my pills!") and hesitant Asian onlookers ("That not very rice!") all the same, while moving faster than either the former or the latter drive their automobiles. I am a non-discriminatory cart driver. I will mow down anyone in my way, regardless of race, gender, weight, handicap, lack of acceptable velocity, personal scent, or inability to be aware of one's surroundings.

I arrived at the baby section, fanning my face as the clouds of burning tile dispersed. I found the shelves of diapers, and peered at the price tags. Now, I've heard what people say about how expensive diapers are, what with the diamond studded eyes of Grover and the gold lined feathers of Big Bird. But I had never physically stood in a diaper aisle and basked in its depressing reality. I nearly had a Fred Sanford heart attack! $19 for 84 diapers? I'm comin', Elizabeth!

I wondered to myself how much that costs per diaper, so I did the mental math, and came up with the answer on the spot: it's freaking expensive! Then I came home and did the actual math on a calculator: nearly 23 cents a diaper! You've heard of the expression being eaten out of house and home? Well, our daughter (aka the Diaper Defiler) could quite possibly cause us to be the first people able to claim the honor of being peed and pooped out of house and home.

Of course, knowing her, 23 cents a diaper is a small price to pay for...security.

This Daddy Business is Getting Interesting

2009-09-12T13:16:00.000-07:00

So I thought that yesterday's blog post would be a fun look at an isolated and unique event that happened twice and would by no means ever be repeated again, especially not later in the day yesterday or today.

How naive of me. Emily proceeded to test the limits of her internal plumbing even further, uncorking two more diaper-filling toots yesterday. And then today, she just kept going! This isn't supposed to happen, is it?!?! For the first few days, diaper changes were not something I approached in fear of what I would uncover. A pee-kissed diaper is a joy to change. A poop-smothered diaper is another story.

So when Emily was lying on my chest this morning, and I felt the jacuzzi jets being turned on and heard the F-18 jet engines rumbling, I knew what awaited me at the ceremonial changing table. I would perform the ritualistic rites of removing the only barrier between me and a delayed backfiring.

Emily has been tipping her hand so to speak lately. She will occasionally put both of her hands together and rub them as if plotting some sinister plan. She started doing that shortly before the first of her monster poops yesterday, and she did it earlier this morning too, so as you might imagine, my mental guard was up. Too bad that doesn't actually protect me from anything...

So I set her on the changing table, still fully clothed. I looked her in the eye, and tried to read her. And what did she do? She gave me the old squinty eye, and then rubbed her hands together.

"Oh crap," I think, literally.

I began to weigh my options. I could let her lie there for a couple minutes and see how long she could hold in her bluff, or just charge in and get it over with as soon as possible. I chose to stare at her for a couple of minutes - something Erica and I have turned into a legitimate hobby. Eventually, my wife gently coaxed me into changing her diaper ("hurry up and do it or I'll rub your nose in it"). I was fortunate in hindsight, because Emily didn't have any ammo with which to reload, so I was able to change her safely without being treated to any additional impressions of Kermit the Frog with bad indigestion, or a duck trying to gargle salt water.

As I finish writing this, one week ago at this time, Erica was just going into serious labor. I can't believe time has passed this quickly. It's funny how I'm doing practically nothing by my usual standards - just sitting around the house, eating, sleeping, etc... - and normally this would make me feel unproductive and antsy, like I'm wasting my time. But now I just watch my baby girl sleep, or kiss her cheek, or hold her and let her head rest on my shoulder, and I feel like I've made the most of my time that I possibly could. There isn't anything more important or productive or beneficial that I could be doing.

It's amazing how things change.

Being stared at...

Snoozin' with Emily

The turtles just make it that much cuter

Little Emily Ruth Is Here!

2009-09-11T16:55:00.000-07:00

Five days old, and already she's bested her dad in cuteness, sociability, and sheer farting prowess, with many more categories to follow, I'm sure.

Her birth was amazing. All three of us couldn't have prayed for a better one. Erica went into serious labor (contractions 1 minute apart) at 10:20 pm Saturday night. Her water broke at 12:30 am Sunday morning. Intense labor followed - I'll leave it up to the imagination save for the fact that it's very hard for a husband to see his wife go through that kind of pain. Fortunately Cybil our doula was instrumental in helping us both through the labor.

She labored at home until 6:10 am, when we went to get in the car. Erica practically ran down the stairs, she couldn't wait to get to the tub. We arrived at the birth center; she was 10 cm and ready to push, so she hopped in the tub and started pushing at 6:35 am. Two hours later, I helped catch our little girl's body as she left mommy's womb and placed her in her mommy's waiting arms. Everyone was healthy, happy, and alert for our first moment as a family together.

Later, I cut the cord - after being reassured that this wouldn't hurt her at all. They gave me this tiny area to cut, right between two clamps. I felt a little like a mayor at the grand opening of a supermarket.

Emily weighed 7 pounds, 10 ounces, measured 20.5 inches, and looked like a doll. Yes, she was cute too, but a few times she was lying down and I came in from another room and saw her, and it took me a moment to realize I was looking at my daughter and not a plastic doll. Man, are they tiny!

Fast forward five days, and here we are now. We've been adjusting to her schedule of sleeping, eating, crying, and being utterly fascinated with the world. And yes, she just started to make some big girl poops today. The first one took us by surprise at the diaper change. Until this point, her poops had been very proper - runny yet well contained within her diaper, and appearing as a mild yellowish-brown color. In fact, most of the time we couldn't tell the difference between her pee and her poops save for the location inside the diaper.

However, we smelled something malodorous this morning, and mentally prepared ourselves to receive our daughter's first generous gift for us upon opening her diaper. It looked like ground beef that had been finely whipped into a paste form, something you might get if Cheez-Whiz was in the can-dispensed beefery business. Several baby wipes later, we laid a new diaper down for her, and started to put it on her, only to have her show us first hand that all facets of her plumbing did indeed work.

Another wipe and dry diaper later, and she was all fixed up. A few hours later, all three of us were in the living room. Emily was lying on Erica's lap on one couch, and I was on the other couch. Suddenly, we heard the 2 o' clock train toot its horn, announcing its arrival in town. It took me a second to realize, however, that the nearest train tracks were miles away. I looked at what could have been the only possible source for that caliber of noise. Of course, she denied it and blamed it on the baby, but I still had my doubts, not knowing whether a five day old body could be capable of such violent flatulence.

We took her into the changing room, and sure enough, the bomb had been dropped. I tell you, Japan had it easy. The effect was reminiscent of placing a can of brown paint into a cannon, placing the cannon inches away from a wall, and firing. Of course, with that example, you lose the clarity of texture and consistency, but hopefully you get the picture.

Yeah, she's an amazing baby. I'm sure many parents wonder if their kids will follow in their footsteps. Five days old, and mine already has. And I couldn't be prouder.

Watching closely, taking her notes...

Who, me?

Go ahead, make a crack, I'll clobber ya'

Here's the happy family

Clearing the Tumbleweeds

2009-08-14T12:20:00.000-07:00

I want to start writing on a less regular basis, seeing as how my regular habit has been to not write at all. So I want to break that bad habit, especially with our little one coming in two weeks. I'm going to revitalize this blog; maybe give it a bloglift, a blogicure, some blogoplasty - an all-around major invasive blogery. I'll probably change the template and maybe add a few features to help modernize things a bit since the inception of Random Humor over 5 years ago. Hopefully you'll like the changes, and if I'm lucky I won't mess anything up too horribly, but something definitely needs to be done - besides blogging, of course.

Speaking of blogging...

I went to Wells Fargo to evict a couple of mischievous checks and some noisy cash that happened to be renting some space in my wallet. I just wanted to do a straight deposit, so I went to the drive-thru ATM. I rolled down my window, looking for the envelope box, but didn't see it. I pulled up to the ATM, and tried to open what looked to be a likely envelope-holding drawer, but to no avail. It didn't even open - it was one of those trick drawers that serves no purpose save for the ATM designers to snicker and point when someone tries in vain to open it.

So here I was with checks and cash to deposit, and there be not an envelope in sight. Wonderful. Then my eye fell upon a sign on the face of the ATM, stating that this was an envelope-free ATM. My first thought was, "Oh great, how am I supposed to make a deposit without an envelope?" Then a less retarded part of my brain woke up from its coma and shouted, "Hey stupid! That means there's some newfangled technology in that there ATM that makes envelopes obsolete. You probably just stick your checks into the machine and it takes care of the rest."

The obstinate part of me quickly retorted, "Bugger that, give me my old-fashioned envelope-operated ATM. I don't trust this lack of enveloping one bit."

And that was that. I drove through the drive-thru, made my way around to the front, parked my car, and walked up to the ATMs in the bank's front wall. As I approached an open one, I realized I forgot to bring a pen to write down my deposit amount ($2.53) on the envelope. I was about to stop my progress and go back to my car to get a pen when what do I see but more envelope-free ATMs! Seeing that there was no escape from my familiar ways, this time I gave one of them a closer look to see how it worked.

Apparently, all you have to do is stick your checks and/or cash into the ATM's mouth and it scans the checks and identifies the value of the bills in seconds. It even shows you the scanned electronic version of each check. And that's all it took to convert me. I went from stubborn curmudgeon to drooling technophile with one check.

It's a liberating feeling, really. Knowing that I no longer have to bring a pen with me to make a deposit at an ATM. Knowing that I don't even have to count up my bills and checks - I can just rely on a machine to do all the math for me, and I don't even need to think! Now if only I had a machine I could use to think of a good ending for this blog.

Oh well.

Beestraught

2009-02-03T19:46:00.001-08:00

I posted this on Facebook, figuring more people would read it there than here, but for those of you who haven't been sucked into the social hurricane, here's a little blurb I wrote after an experience I had a week ago...

On my lunch today I went out to my car, opened the door, tossed my keys and wallet and jacket inside, and was about to go in and sit down to read when a bee casually flies in the open door and lands on the back of my car seat.

It was actually kind of hilarious how it happened – I was taking my sweet time getting in the car, and the bee just makes a beeline (excuse the pun) past me and into the car…as if it had a right to be there.

“Excuse me, pardon me, seat inspector here. Hmm, this seat seems nice, I’ll take it.”

And as it flies in (bees in?), I’m just watching it, thinking “did that bee really just fly into my car?” followed by “Oh great, now what? Give the bee a harsh warning, and then count to three?” followed by “I should have done something instead of standing idly by…like hit it…no, like swat at it…no, like stand like an idiot and watch it manhandle (beehandle?) its way into my car while I stand back in a manly and unstung fashion, which could loosely be described as hopping up and down from foot to foot and yelling “ooooh! OOOH!! THERE’S A BEEEEE IN MY CARRR! A bee a bee a bee a bee bee bee bee bee”

Meanwhile the seat inspector starts to crawl around to the back of the seat…and in my normal coherently brave thinking, I think “Should I hit it? Hmm, but then it might get pissed and sting me. Better give it what it wants.”

And so it proceeds around the back of the seat, and disappears. So I do what any man in this situation would do – cautiously stick my head inside to see if the passenger door handle is covered in bees, unlock it, open it, and run away screaming like a little girl.

I’m not sure if the bee is still in my car or if it flew out of its own accord (if the dang bee has a car already, why is it bothering me?). It’s supposed to rain tonight, so I think I might take the chance and drive home with all my windows rolled down just in case it's still in there. Better soaked than trapped in a bee-infested car I always say.

My Meal at Mastro’s, or “Hoi Polloi, Oi!”

2008-09-13T14:44:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the gentle prodding (ouch! You sharpen your tuning forks?) of Yumi, I am making myself finish this blog entry about my first experience dining at Mastro's Steakhouse and Inferiority Complexery, where the dining experience alone has more personality than I do - not to mention more money, class, and pleasant odors. It is a fine establishment where just mentioning the word "ambiance" adds an extra $15 to your bill. Where the waiter will spend 10 minutes dutifully explaining every single item on the menu, including where it was caught (next time you are there, ask about the artichokes...funny story, that), what type of $300 wine goes best with it, and how high of a credit score it requires to order.

"Why, yes sir, this particular lobster was hand fed filet mignon and given regular deep exoskeleton massages (my, your shell is so hard! Have you been feeling crabby lately?) for the ultimate experience in tenderness. A bottle or three of the 1963 Riche Aristocrate would go splendidly with your meal, assuming of course you have a credit score of 2200 plus 25% gratuity."

In other words, it is one of those a la carte fancy pantzy steakhouses where the waiters have the little combs to brush off your table when you are done eating. Also included in the decor are artsy miniature lamps with soul-black shades on each table with actual candles inside that, due to the tint of the shades, give off absolutely no light.

Our table happened to be in the middle of a lifelike recreation of the Arctic Circle, or so the frigidity of the air conditioning suggested. But, knowing how well-catered-to one is at a restaurant like this, I wouldn't be surprised if they had a special waiter kept around with a hammer and an ice pick to break off the nosecicles as they form.

When we were ushered to our table, already sitting on the table were some neatly placed white cloth napkins. When we sat down, the usher seating us asked us both individually if we would like a black napkin. We both said yes, and they proceeded to artfully place a folded black napkin on our laps, and removed the white napkin from the table, presumably to be taken outside and beaten for not being good enough.

At one point, our waiter came up to our table, frowned at our lamp, which had gone out, and went to re-light it. We hadn't noticed that it had gone out because it didn't change the lighting of our table one bit. He re-lit it, and I still couldn't notice a difference. It went out later - again, unnoticed. So the waiter came up, took it away, replaced it with a lamp from another table, and lit the new lamp. This one stayed lit as far as I could tell, and by that I mean the waiter didn’t come back again to re-light it, so I assume it was lit. It was, you guessed it - still as dark as ever.

I almost felt a little guilty when the waiter would come up to re-light our lamp, as if he got paid in direct correlation to how many lamps were lit. Similar to the busboys at less-elegant restaurants like Soup Plantation who seem to be paid on a per-plate-cleared basis.

"May I take your plate, sir?"

"No, I'm not quite finished ye--Hey! Give my plate back!"

*running away* "23 plates! My children are gonna eat tonight!"

Part of me suspected that our waiter thought we had blown the lamp out. It probably takes all the restraint that those waiters have to refrain from shaking their heads while giving you a snide look of disdain and saying “Look what you’ve done.” And you know if you let out the slightest snicker they’ll bust you right in the chops.

“What’s so funny? Huh? My family's been table sweepers for five generations, way back to my great great great grandpa Bissel Hoover, who could sweep a table four times this size in just three strokes, with half of a broken comb! Oh, and then there was my father, Sweepy McGee, who swept his last table with just one stroke. I’d imagine all the shaking and his eventual collapse and death on the table itself did away with most of the crumbs.”

Of course, the best part of the evening was when the food came. And on 7000 degree plates, nonetheless. Our waiter warned us several times not to touch the plates, so naturally I had to touch mine. It actually wasn't as hot as I thought it would be, and the flames that spontaneously erupted on my finger were easily extinguished in my glass of a more modest choice of wine, the Frugale Farte.

I got the 28 oz. Prime Rib, Medium Rare, Dripping and Wiggling. I ended up eating about 20 ozs of it before my stomach threw the white flag, which was quite bloodied by this time. Strangely enough, my steak wasn't super warm, so I ended up pressing most bites against the nuclear plate to warm them up a bit.

When we left, we couldn't just get in our car and drive away. No no no, that would be too easy! Mastro's only offers valet parking (slogan: "As if you weren't paying enough already"). We had to wait for the valet manager to put in a call to whichever guy was currently joyriding around in our car and tell him to bring it back within the hour. Funny how our culture has convinced us that spending money to have someone else park our car for us and then waiting several minutes for it when we are ready to leave is better than parking our car for free and leaving immediately. Oh well, I guess they have to pay those busboys somehow.

Of course, I wouldn't have been able to go if it weren't for Erica budgeting for it and generously offering to take me there for my 24th birthday. Thanks 'Ca. :-)

Are you looking for more? I bet you're still wondering how the artichoke was caught.

Why, by a firm grip around its neck, of course.

My Awesome Godson

2008-05-01T19:06:00.000-07:00

Pascha '08 - Simeon, Erica, and myself. What a cute kid!

"No, not another left jab!"

Is-is that...a steak?

Monkey Torture!!!

You're my WHAT?!?!?

Look at those irises!

All that meat and cheese, and he's content with those.

Attack of the killer tie!!!! ARRGGHH!!!

I want to see less of this camera and more of my mommy!!

I wuv my Godmother!

Maybe I should have offered him some salt.

Garfield minus Garfield

2008-04-18T23:49:00.000-07:00

I've been a big fan of the Garfield comic strip since I was a small child, i.e. less than six feet tall. Recently, David B. (for the sake of his privacy, I will refrain from mentioning his last name) (well, how many David's do I know really?) (I mean anyone who knows me could easily guess which David I'm talking about) (I know, I'll refer to him - nay, him/her as D. Braun) (brilliant) told me about a variation on the classic Jim Davis creation.

It's called Garfield minus Garfield. The premise of it is basically to show that Jon (the pathetic owner of Garfield) is not only pathetic, but without the leading role of Garfield's thought bubbles, actions, and expressions, he turns into a bipolar, schizophrenic loser. There have been better, more thought out descriptions of his behavior, but if you're like me, you'll just enjoy looking and laughing at the comics.

Who Will You Please?

2008-01-09T23:41:00.000-08:00

I started writing what was turning out to be a long blog just to try to get out one thought that came to me in the car on the way to church tonight, and I ended up erasing all of it and summarizing it as succinctly as possible. Hopefully it makes some sense now.

When making a decision, don't just focus on asking yourself if you will be pleasing the right people on Earth - your parents, your friends, your husband or wife, your boss, but rather ask yourself who you will be pleasing by acting on this decision - God or the devil?

You can't please everyone with all of your decisions, so make sure you choose wisely.

How to win me over...

2007-12-31T10:27:00.000-08:00

In response to Erica's latest blog with the same name, here's what she wrote. I suggest you read her blog first if you haven't already to get the background required to understand why we did this.

But in short, this is a cheat sheet of sorts that is meant to be given to someone that has the intention of trying to impress me, like on a first date. However, the trick is that all of the things listed are completely false. So here is how to win me over, by Erica Olson.

...

Oh, so you want to go out with Sean Reagan, huh? Well, you've come to the right place. I will help you win him over.

- First of all, make sure to wear lots of makeup, especially lipstick and lipgloss. He loves it.
- Ask him to watch Pride and Prejudice (any version) with you. Make sure that he stays awake the entire time. He doesn't want to miss a moment, it's his favorite movie.
- He really doesn't like sports, make sure to tell him that you have absolutely no interest in ever playing or watching any sort of sports game.
- He finds forgetfulness endearing.
- He really doesn't like joking around. It may seem like he's telling a joke, but he is completely serious. Make sure not to laugh.
- Do not bring up children, Sean does not want any.
- Suggest to go to a country music concert on your first date or, even better, a punk group.
- Bring him black licorice as a gift.
- Don't worry if you interrupt him or finish his sentences, he doesn't really mind.
- He loves to spend money for fun. Suggest activities that take money.
- He likes deep shoulder rubs. When rubbing his back go as hard as you can.
- His least favorite sport is basketball.
- One of his favorite shows is Desperate Housewives.
- He doesn't like talking about his day.

Baby's First Basketball Game

2007-11-02T00:34:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough to receive two tickets from my work for the opening night of the Lakers vs. Rockets game on Tuesday. Having never been to a basketball game, this was an amazing experience to see the game I love to play being played just 11 rows away from me by players I root for all the time.

Snape Kissed Dumbledore!

2007-10-27T15:47:00.000-07:00

I’m sure many of you have either heard about or read one of the many articles concerning J.K. Rowling’s publicity stunt where she “came out” and proclaimed in all of her authorial splendor that Headmaster Dumbledore, a fictional character in her incredibly popular Harry Potter series, is actually a flaming homosexual. I bet Fawkes was his secret lover.

It’s too bad there’s one small problem with this revelation: there is no direct literary proof. I don’t care who the author is – you cannot dictate anything about your characters that isn’t somehow alluded to in the book. Rowling does cite an obscure reference to Dumbledore’s childhood which she claims to be circumstantial proof that Dumbledore is gay, when in fact the rest of Dumbledore’s literary behavior and character devolpment is completely heterosexual and normal. The way I read it, Dumbledore is written as a heterosexual father figure who is the last person ever to be suspected as gay, and if it weren’t for the advances of the gay movement to infiltrate every aspect of society with their lies and filthy lifestyle and have the audacity to pass it off as normal, there wouldn’t even be a discussion about this.

Rowling cannot interpret the story she wrote for her readers. That is what is dynamic and engaging about fictional literature: it can be interpreted in many different ways by many different people, and in the end, there may be several different correct ways to interpret any given story, as long as the interpretation is built on the solid foundation of literary proof. But you cannot make up an interpretation without sufficient literary proof. And as an author, you cannot tell your readers how to interpret your book if there is more than one way to interpret it.

Seeing as Rowling’s evidence for accusing Dumbledore of being gay is overshadowed by the complete lack of homosexuality in the rest of his character development throughout the seven-book series, coupled with the fact that sexuality as a whole is completely absent from the series due to the fact that Harry Potter was written as a children’s book, I see no other conclusion than this is just another fictional interpretation of a character, and a weakly supported one at that. If she were a literary critic making this remark, (in a sane world, mind you) she would be laughed at for making such a preposterously unsubstantiated claim. So in no way does Rowling have the right as author to tell us that her interpretation is right when it was clearly not in the story.

Barbara Kay, a woman who has written articles about this authorial overstepping of bounds, has a great quote that sums up what is wrong with Rowling’s statement. She said “Once the books are written, the gates of the fictional characters’ lives and their world clang shut. Any post-publication pronouncements she makes about her characters are superfluous and inadmissible, except as a personal self-indulgence on her part, and likely a bid to appear tolerant and liberal.”

She goes on to say that “whatever Rowling is as a person, and whatever her sympathies are for gays in the real world, they are irrelevant to Hogwarts, since she failed to include that component in the stories as written. She is an author of fiction, not a social worker. In a literary work, the characters must be true to the parameters of the fictional landscape in which they find themselves, and in Hogwarts there is – or was - no adult sexuality.”

So what can we learn from this? Well, the fact that Rowling is a sellout to the gay rights movement is overwhelming. It also seems evident to those who know the facts about this story that she has lost her respectability as an author with most people who wish to keep their loved ones away from the destructive and morally degrading homosexual lifestyle which is currently trying to be passed off as societally normal, when in fact it is largely both a cover for attacking Christians and those with strong traditional values and morals as well as an attempt to legitimize and normalize any sort of promiscuity or obscene fetish while at the same time making heterosexual monogamy and the traditional Christian family out to be obsolete and intolerant.

Okay, I know I’ve been pretty hard with the facts so far, so I want to return to the sort of jocular banter I started with in the first paragraph of this blog. I’d like to offer some literary examples that for some reason J.K. Rowling chose not to use during her press conference to back up her defamation of the Headmaster of Hogwarts, or “The Top Four Reasons Why Dumbledore Was Gay!”.

4. He kept his Pensieve out in plain view in his office in the hopes that Harry would fulfill his fantasy by accidentally snooping in the wrong memory, like that one lonely night at “Wizarding Whizbangs and other Magical Erotica”.

3. Maybe someone cast the lesser known Fourth Unforgivable Curse, “Homo Inexplicus” on him.

2. Why else was he called the Headmaster?

1. No wonder he kept Snape around for so long.

Religious Operation

2007-09-16T01:30:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd share a tidbit of conversation I heard at work a few weeks ago. A guy (whom I will refer to as "Chuck") and a girl (whom I will refer to as "Ginger") who sit in adjacent cubicles to me and who typically jabber back and forth to the point where my ears actually fold in on themselves and retract back into my head through a process I don't even want to understand - were shooting the bullet-ridden breeze.

I was busy working, minding my boss' business, when my curious ears must have crept out in their own accord (lousy ears drive a better car than I do) because they caught a few words that made them floor the pedal in haste to reach the headcliff of attentiveness.

Basically, the conversation went like this:

Ginger: "I found a new church."

Chuck: "Oh yeah? What is it?"

Ginger: "It's called the eppis coh pull* church."

*pronounced eppis (like epic with a "s" instead of a "c"), coh (like "co" from the word "code"), pull (like "pull" from the word "pull")

Chuck: "You mean Episcopal?"

Ginger: "Is that how you say it?"

Chuck: (laughs) "You're going there and you don't even know how to pronounce it?"

Ginger: "Well, I don't know. I guess eppis coh pull sounds like a doctor term...like 'Nurse, please pass the eppis coh pull."

Later...

Chuck: "Why'd you leave your old church?"

Ginger: "Well, I feel like I have to put on make-up to go to church when I don't normally wear make-up - it just seemed too 'OC'. That's why I started going to the 'Episcopal' church."

I don't think any further comment is needed, except...

God Bless the Orthodox Church!

Tagged

2007-07-01T00:37:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Aaron, I have something to write about. But I'll be darned if I'm gonna go and play blogtag with other people. Especially if there are tagbacks. Besides, I'm sure between Aaron, Grace, and Erica, most of the people I know have already been tagged.

-Post eight random facts/habits about yourself.

1. I have 47 icons in my room (not including crosses, pins, the church calendar, and pictures of Patmos...diptychs and triptychs count as one).

2. I am currently reading two books (The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett, and On the Divine Liturgy by St. Germanus of Constantinople), and I have 7 books waiting on my dresser to be read (6 Terry Pratchett books and 1 Dean Koontz book). Can you tell I'm in a reading mood this summer?

3. I often fall asleep on top of my covers, with at least one light on in my room. I get a special bonus prize from my mom if I leave the TV on (and blaring at volume 20+, mind you). She loves it!

...this particular prize appears to be a boney fist n' jaw sandwich.

I think my all-time conk-out record is three lights, the TV, and a book open on the bed, all while still fully clothed.

4. I can juggle. And make weird snapping noises with my ears and fingers.

5. I got a new job as an accounting assistant at an advertising business that is about one minute's driving distance from my house, give or take 5 seconds.

6. I wore one black sock and one white sock yesterday.

7. One of my favorite snacks is a bowl full of various berries (straw, blue, rasp, black, etc...) and grape tomatoes. Also, if there are cherries in the house, I will turn into a veritable semi-automatic seed rifle.

8. I think Harry Potter is going to die in the 7th book.

CtrlAltDelete

2007-06-29T01:17:00.000-07:00

This was one of the last poems I wrote for my Poetry 406 class last semester. It has gone through one edit so far, but I'm sure it could use another. Any suggestions, comments, or questions are welcome.

CtrlAltDelete

I will die a gruesome death, on a Monday
or maybe a Wednesday, whichever is
convenient.

My fingernails will be peeled backwards
with a stylus, and my eyes burned with a laser
mouse.

I will be stoned by writing blocks, pummeled
by keystrokes, and backspacing my way out,
I will avoid paying my tab.

I will be beaten in paragraph form, double spaced.
I will be berated by punctuation, the colon
of their jokes:

What did the semi-colon say to the colon?
Mine’s longer than yours.

My head will undergo rigorous testing
to determine the impact durability of keyboards.
iwhneg weewf!

I will bring new meaning to the saying
“This homework will be the death of me”
Poemicide.

It’s Times New Roman like these that
Perpetuates the feeling of Impact there can be
on Poor Richard’s creativity.

There’s nothing quite like being stuffed
inside a 17” monitor and left to die.
Alone, with your blocks.

Kawhy?

2007-06-15T23:19:00.000-07:00

Before you read on, be warned that this blog is a shameless attempt at discerning whether or not I am still capable of writing now that I have graduated from college. It will most likely lack direction, be overly wordy and comprised largely of sarcasm, and will exploit the English language for the purpose of humor (or a vain facimile thereof). So if your face hasn't dropped with boredom like a pigeon hit by a history textbook, read on. After all, it can't get worse, right?

As readers of Erica’s blog know by now, we recently got back from a trip to Kaua’i, in Hawaii. This was all made possible by Erica’s grandma, who paid for the plane tickets for 27 other family members, including a fiancé (Ivan) and a boyfriend (me). (THANK YOU AGAIN ELLIE!!) The families were split up into several different condos, and fortunately, Ivan and I had one all to ourselves.

Fortunately, that is, until we opened the door.

Sure, the condo itself was posh enough with its stained sofa cushions, slanted balcony (so the water from the occasional and non-fatal torrential storms can run off), flushing toilet, and two unmarked VHS tapes underneath the TV which the prospect of watching was more frightening than the freakishly huge brown spider hiding in the closet which Ivan broke a broom clean in half while trying to kill – that’s right, our condo was the height of luxury.

That is, it would have been, had Ivan and I not been two firmly straight men with significant others. In other words, the sight which made the greatest impression on us as we walked in the door for the first time, and which we had been afraid of for days before the trip, was the single queen-size bed which welcomed us with open sheets.

Needless to say, I spent a nice relaxing week sleeping on the luxurious pull-out sofa bed - which made loud clanging sounds as if it were stuffed with rusty cans, when any delicate amount of weight was placed on it. Like my spine. Though oddly enough, it was quite comfortable. Plus, I don't think I'll ever need to go to a chiropractor for a readjustment again.

However, the view outside on the balcony – spectacular. I’ve never seen such a beautiful adjacent condo before in my life. And the obstructively dense trees which prevented any sight past fifty feet – gorgeous. And the forsaken roosters who woke me up at five in the morning every day – vastly underappreciated without a gun nearby.

Perhaps a loosely accurate dialogue which Erica recommended I share would help to understand this better...

Erica says to Ivan (seriously): So I hear you have a nice view?
Ivan: A view of what?
Erica: Well, don't you have a pretty view from your balcony?
Ivan: Well, yeah - we have a very pretty view of a bush.

Speaking of fun, many of us went on a Zodiac tour along the western shore of the island. In order to kill two birds with one stone (splat…splat), allow me to show a picture of a Zodiac raft to both inform anyone who doesn’t know what a Zodiac is as well as to illustrate what it was like to ride one.

Please find it in your heart to forgive my elementary Paint skills. But that picture basically sums it up. Most of the younger-aged people in the family went on the Zodiac raft tour, which really is a lot of fun if you aren’t planning on using any part of your back for the next week.

Basically, the Zodiac involves sitting on the side of the raft and holding onto two sturdily attached (ha ha ha) pieces of rope. One of them sits underneath your thighs and you have to grab onto it between your legs, and one of them lies behind you and you have to twist your arm and most of your body around to grab it. There is also an extra rope to drape over your feet so that you won't be automatically plunged into the depths in case the other two ropes spontaneously break. This way you'll just be hanging humiliatingly halfway out of the boat - your face lovingly embracing the waves as they give a new and painful meaning to the term "Ocean Spray".

Provided you manage to avoid falling out and being devoured alive by flesh-eating sea turtles, you end up sitting in this semi-pretzeled position for about three hours, wondering which of your limbs is going to snap in half first.

But the trip is definitely worth it – because the final destination of the tour is a gigantic reef (a lesser known archaic translation of reef is “ocean hangout for hungry fish with a hankering for pasty-white tourists”). Amongst this reef, we all went snorkeling, which was one of my favorite parts of the trip because you get to float over schools of fish that look like they were left alone in a room with a three-year old and a box of phosphorescent crayons.

All humor aside for a moment, one of the more memorable moments of the trip was when we got to see a full rainbow from end to end, and actually got to see it touch the sandy beach outside of our car. However, I didn’t see any leprechauns, pots o’ gold, or Lucky Charms. Lousy false advertising.

And of course, arguably my favorite part of the trip was seeing the sea turtles. Just ask Erica – she’ll tell you I took about 67,362 pictures of them. We saw tons of them throughout the trip, and we got anywhere from just over a few feet away above the surface of the water in the Zodiac to standing on some lava rocks where waves were breaking and we were able to overlook them swimming in the current right next to the face of the rock.

Here is a picture of one of them giving me the turtle equivalent of the finger.

“Whatcha lookin’ at, punk?”

Here's a picture I have to include because I caught it just at the right time, as this gecko was strutting its stuff, doing pushups on a palm tree just outside the girls' balcony.

We also went on a long and rainy hike that most of the group disliked, probably because it turned more into a muddy Slip n’ Slide than an ascent. Actually, let me clarify that. Most of the GIRLS disliked it. For us guys, we had fun reverting back to the carefree and coincidentally dirtier days of childhood, mucking and sliding our way along. Plus, it gave me an excuse to throw away an old pair of sneakers.

Left Shoe

Right Shoe

The great thing about this trip was that no matter how much fun I make of such insignificant details as the bedding situation or the Zodiac trip (which was worth it just for the turtles alone) or the killer spider that proved firemen don't necessarily have to be fearless about everything (just kidding Ivan), it doesn't change how much fun Hawaii was. It was a total blast. Just ask this happy looking couple:

I actually learned something at school!

2007-04-10T23:42:00.000-07:00

My technical writing teacher told me this during one of his tangents, and I did some research on it myself - even though I should have been doing my homework...but anyway...

The Tooth About Mouthwash

When originally invented, mouthwash had no alcohol in it, and therefore, did not burn the inside of your mouth when used.

It was unpopular, because people didn't feel anything happening, therefore, they were convinced that it must not be working. Due to this, it didn't sell.

So someone came up with the brilliant idea to add an extra inactive ingredient that would cause some sort of reaction and fool people into thinking the product was working.

Enter alcohol. Many mouthwash brands have 20-25%+ alcohol, while most vodka has 40%. Once mouthwash had this extra kick added in, it caught on and became a hot seller. People believed it was working because they could feel their mouths burning as they used it - even though the addition of alcohol was completely unnecessary and added no benefit to the effectiveness of the product.

Contrary to what many people think, alcohol in mouthwash doesn't kill germs better, nor does it make your breath fresher. It actually causes more germs and makes your breath worse!

Alcohol dries out your mouth, causing bad breath. The germs that cause bad breath are anaerobic, meaning "without oxygen". They thrive where there is no oxygen, and saliva naturally contains oxygen, so a drier mouth means less oxygen, which means more germs, which means bad breath.

So the brilliant addition of alcohol to a mouth-germ killer actually makes it less effective than it was before, back when people were convinced it didn't work - when it actually worked better than it does today.

Now, since some people don't like setting their mouth on fire, many brands have began to offer "Better tasting" and "Mild on sensitive teeth and gums" types of mouthwash. Guess what? They have less alcohol in them.

A normal bottle of Listerine has 26.9% alcohol. The Natural Citrus flavor that was advertised as being "Less Intense" has 21.6% alcohol in it, as well as SUGAR, another bad breath mongol.

Some companies even offer a breakthrough in mouthwash technology. "Alcohol-free Mouthwash". Amazingly, they have managed to maintain the same germ-killing power of regular mouthwash, without the nasty alcohol burn. They must be geniuses! I bet somebody made a lot of money off of that patent. And I bet those same companies charge more for this "New and Advanced Formula", because people these days are actually ignorant enough to fall for it.

Funny. First, people were ignorant by not believing that it worked, because they couldn't feel it work. Now, we've become accustomed to the burn, been indoctrinated to believe that alcohol is one of the active ingredients, valiantly slaying all bad breath in its path, and that the pain experienced is "burning away the bad breath". These same types of companies that had the novel idea to add a counterproductive ingredient into their product are now profiting from their deceitful marketing technique by being able to charge a couple extra bucks per bottle for this "kid-friendly", "burn-free" formula. And yes, once again, we are ignorant enough to fall for it.

Heck, I'll admit it. I thought the same thing. When I've used mouthwash, I thought the burning was killing the germs, like the commercials want you to believe. "You can handle it, just a little longer, your mouth will thank you once you're done, okay, you're done - BLECH! Whew!" These types of deceptive advertisements fooled me - that's why this made such an impression on me when my teacher told me - I just had to research it myself and pass the info along.

Makes you wonder what else we're falling for by blindly absorbing such ads.

My Personality (No Shocker Here)

2007-02-09T00:26:00.000-08:00

You Are An ISTJ

The Duty Fulfiller

You are responsible, reliable, and hardworking - you get the job done.
You prefer productive hobbies, like woodworking or knittings.
Quiet and serious, you are well prepared for whatever life hands you.
Conservative and down-to-earth, you hardly ever do anything crazy.

You would make a great business executive, accountant, or lawyer.

What's Your Personality Type?

How they managed to pinpoint my secret love of woodworking and knittings I'll never know.

One of the FUNNIEST videos I've ever seen

2007-02-08T23:51:00.000-08:00

Seriously.

I've watched it 8 or 9 times in a row, and I laugh harder each time. I even woke my mom up. She loved that!

It's 24 seconds long, rated sub-G, and you owe it to yourself to watch it at least once to give yourself a well-earned laugh.

Funny Video on YouTube

Need Money? Quit Your Job!

2007-02-07T23:38:00.000-08:00

That's right! Not only am I saying something that you're probably scoffing at right now, I'm also boldly back on the blogging scene! I missed all you bloggers and blurkers so much that I just couldn't bear to be away any longer. Plus, I don't have anything better to do.

So about my absurd statement...I just quit my job at Home Depot this last Sunday. Today, I went to sign the last batch of paperwork and "cash out" for the ~10 hours of work from the previous week which I hadn't been paid for yet. As the manager was preparing the paperwork, I noticed an envelope on the table with my name on it, and a number written on the top right corner that was a lot bigger than 10 hours would warrant. I immediately figured my eyes were playing tricks on me and that the decimal point was just mocking me, but deep within myself the hopeful eyes inside my heart sproinged out of their sockets.

You know what they did?

They paid me for ALL of my unused sick/personal and vacation time. They gave me an official "cash voucher" that explained exactly what I was getting. I received payment for 9.5 hours of regular work, 30.01 hours of vacation time, and 8 hours of sick time. In other words, they paid me for 38 hours that I never even had to work. You know, there are a lot of things that I didn't like about working for Home Depot, but the benefits were never one of them. In fact, just one week ago, I finally got my tuition reimbursement that I had been waiting over a month for. I had been waiting eagerly for it to come, because I had told myself that once it came, I would quit. And I did.

But of course I wouldn't just quit my job for no good reason. In fact, for the last four weeks, I've been working at Oakley doing data entry as a pricing specialist in the sales department. My main duties include creating and maintaining pricing for all sorts of Oakley product for their consumers around the world. So far, the job is great. I work three days a week for a total of about 25 hours, they are completely flexible with my school and church schedules, and I have weekends off! What this all means is I now make more money at Oakley while working fewer hours, 2 less days, better hours, and in a nicer environment than Home Depot.

I can't say I'll miss Home Depot really, but it's only fitting to offer a final farewell to what has been my job for the last 15 months. So I guess I'll just have to throw in my favorite as well as my last Home Depot story, ever.

A few months back, while working at Returns, an Asian gentleman strolls in. He brings in a full box of 12 high theft tubes of building adhesive, which sell for over $25 each. I am immediately suspicious, but I still greet him like everyone else, though he does not return my greeting. I ask if he has a receipt, and he says "no, no receipt." I wasn't surprised. Most stores don't issue receipts for stolen goods.

Anyway, I enter in the items into the computer as having no receipt, therefore making them eligible for a store credit return only, as is the policy without a receipt. After that, I ask him for his ID, as we cannot issue store credit without a valid driver's license.

He hands me a Korean passport, complete with his name and picture on it, which does not qualify as a valid ID, because the driver's license number is actually the required piece of information on the ID - as it is used to track a customer's returns with no receipt.

While I am holding the Korean passport, he takes out a yellow piece of paper from his jacket, unfolds it, and hands it to me.

It is a Court Summons for a DUI, as well as an official revokal of his driver's license. It has his license number as well as his name on it, and he stands there, pointing expectantly, trying to get me to compare the name and face on his passport with his own face, and then compare the name on the DUI papers with the passport and use the suspended license number to issue his refund of over $300.

Shya. Right. So I tell him I'll be right back, and I go call the manager on duty: Dave. I tell him the story real quick over the phone, and he responds with "I've got warm fuzzy feelings about his guy already!" and comes over. Dave asks Mr. DUI where his ID is and where he originally bought the items he is trying to return, and suddenly he is unable to speak English. He stammers for a few seconds, looks around desperately, laughs nervously while trying to speak, while Dave is asking him a second and third time where he bought the merchandise. The man utters a few unintelligible words in English, and Dave responds by logging his return attempt into the computer, and tells the man that he will not be able to return these items at any Home Depot.

Good riddance to a stupid criminal.

What?

2006-11-26T17:48:00.000-08:00

Tonight, as we were in the car coming to my house, Erica and I were about to pick up where we left off in a book for Orthodox Christian couples that we've been reading together. I was driving, and Erica opened the book to where she had marked our spot.

Erica: "Well, we finished the chapter on communication."

Sean: "What?"

Erica: "What?"

We're working on it.

I Wonder How Well This Will Work

2006-10-25T02:09:00.000-07:00

Well, I usually don't go for those meme things all that often, but this one struck my interest, since I love music. I'm a little doubtful at how well it will describe my life, since most of the music on my itunes/ipod consists of varying styles of metal. But we'll see how it goes. Heck, if it sucks too much, I'll just delete it, and you will never read these words.

WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK TO YOUR LIFE BE?
(taken originally after surfing to Annie's blog, from Sara's blog.

This is how it's done:
1. Open your music library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every prompt that follows, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new prompt, press the next button (I skipped one song entitled track 10, for obvious reasons)

Voila! The Soundtrack to your Life.

Let's try it!

Opening Credits: Warheart by Children of Bodom (Yeah, I'm a fighter alright...)

Waking Up: Elizabeth: Fall From Grace by Kamelot (Well, I do stumble and fall out of bed I guess)

First Day at School: Holiday for Strings by Spike Jones & His City Slickers (Ha! Some holiday...)

Falling in Love: Draw Me by Sonata Arctica (Oh geez, this isn't good. It's a sad song about failed love. Yikes.)

Fight Song: Beyond the Ice by Blind Guardian (An instrumental song. Hmm. Well, that's a much more fitting and peaceful description of me than a Children of Bodom song)

Breaking Up: Miracles by Dark Moor (You call that a miracle?)

Prom: Painful Mind Contradiction by Crimson Moonlight (Hmm, well, I never went to prom, so I guess that's a contradiction. This is the "Christian" band that Paige, Eddie, Tim, and Matt saw at the Cornerstone thingy...with the guy covered in blood. His voice sounds like Gollum from Lord of the Rings. Weird stuff.)

Life: On the Coldest Winter Night by Kamelot (Brrrrr!)

Career: Artifacts of the Black Rain by In Flames (I have no idea what this song is about. Just like I have no idea what I'll do with my career. Ooooh, saved that one.)

Mental Breakdown: Hero in a Dream by Ensiferum (What kind of a person do they think I am? Mental breakdown? Seriously? That's just silly-I like cheeseooogaboogarawaRRGGHHH!!!)

Driving: Taken by Pagan's Mind (This would have been good for the Falling in Love prompt)

Flashback: The Real You by Vanishing Point (So, am I flashing back to see the real me, or before I was the real me, or...owww, my head hurts)

Getting Back Together: I Like Marijuana by Mojo Nixon & the Toadliquors (Wow, I really have nothing to add. *backs away nervously*)

Wedding: Dreamspace by Stratovarius (Well, that would be like a dream come true...)

Birth of Child: Planet Hell by Nightwish (Hey! I like kids!...That's pretty funny though)

Midlife Crisis: Can't Stand Losing You by The Police (I can't stand losing my youth either. Waaah.)

Final Battle: Solitude Within by Evergrey (Oh ho! We're getting deep here. My final battle will be one of inner turmoil and isolation. At least I have something to look forward to now...*shakes head*)

Death Scene: Beneath These Waves by Demons and Wizards (No! I don't want to go that way!)

Funeral Song: Devil and the Deep Dark Ocean by Nightwish (Uhhh, this isn't getting better guys!!!)

End Credits: Cinco De Mayo by Reverend Horton Heat (What the heck? You guys are celebrating now that I'm gone? Sheesh. Thanks a lot.)

Final Thoughts: Hmm. A few funny ones. None of my favorite songs got picked at all though. I wouldn't think to play any of the songs that were chosen when I pick up my ipod for a quick listen at the gym. Of course, I have about 1500 songs, so I'm bound to get a few stinkers here and there.

No Boston, no Dragonforce, no Dream Theater, no Edguy, no Fleetwood Mac, no Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, no Iron Maiden, no Metallica, no Queen, only one Sonata Arctica, man. itunes, you've failed me again.

Time to Waste

2006-10-24T16:39:00.000-07:00

I shall say nothing else save that this is my first elegy (a poem about loss) ever written.

Time to Waste

As I struggle to keep the tears within
I know I cannot hold on much longer
The inevitable soon shall come

A little piece of me is lost
Once again, as always before
And each time you leave me
I find it becomes harder to cope

As I strain to keep you with me
I know I will feel better once you leave
But the struggle within flushes my strength
And leaves me feeling empty again

And when you are relieved
To abandon me
You find solace
Within the depths
floating
until you go, washed away
forever

But I shall not despair, no
There will be others like you again
Though I hope next time
I can savor the moment and relax
I didn’t even get a chance to read my book

Don't You Wonder

2006-10-08T19:20:00.000-07:00

I don't have anything else in mind to blog about right now, so I'd like to post my second favorite poem that I've written this semester in my poetry class: "Don't You Wonder".

Don’t You Wonder

Whatever happens when you go to a Mexican
restaurant and they give you chips
and you don’t eat them all
what do they do

Do they throw them away?
Do they feed the birds?
Do they reuse them?
What if they reuse them?

What if someone sneezed on them?
What if someone touched them?
What if someone licked them?
What if that someone was sick?

Maybe they fell on the ground
for longer than five seconds
and got dirty and were stale
so they were put in the toilet to be rehydrated

Or maybe a fat guy was getting hot
and sweaty and all his napkins were
dripping so he used the chips to wipe off
and put them back because he was allergic to flour

Whatever happens when you go to a Mexican
restaurant and they give you chips
Don’t you wonder

Fishy Business

2006-09-22T01:33:00.000-07:00

I'm sure FedEx is a good shipping company. I'm sure they are fast and accurate and careful with their deliveries. But their slogan definitely needs some rethinking, especially for the store in Tustin where, well, I'll let the slightly altered slogan I've come up with speak for itself.

FedEx - "Our service is so bad, you absolutely positively have to stay overnight."

Erica and I went to FedEx with the express purpose of laminating some small index cards, as well as a larger sheet of paper for her school project. Little did we know it would end up being close to an hour long experience.

First of all, the person "helping" us didn't know what in the world he was doing. Personally, I assume that most people are trained to do their job before setting foot on the floor, but I guess that isn't always a fair assumption. It took him over 20 minutes just to figure out how much it was going to cost. At first, he was scanning barcodes tentatively, trying to mask the fact that he had no idea how to charge us for laminating something - as if it was an archaic service that no one ever requests - like ordering a Filet o' Fish sandwich at McDonald's.

"Hi, I'd like one Filet o' Fish please."

"AAAIIIEEEEE! UN PESCADO!!!! VAMANOS AMIGOS!!!"

*frantic scrambling is heard through the microphone as several of the employees search for their fishing rods*

"Uh, it's gonna be like 3 days for that to be ready sir, could you please park around on the other side and wait?"

Then the FedEx guy asks some qualifying questions to make it seem like he knows what he's doing.

"Do you want the cold or hot laminate?"
"Do you want the glossy or non-glossy?"
"Do you want the gold plating or the platinum plating?"

To all of which we replied, "Whichever is cheapest."

Finally, the FedEx guy finds a barcode that seems to satisfy him, though he still appears to be utterly confused. He tells us that it is going to cost $53.

Of course, the first question out of my mouth is, "Why is it so much?"

I am answered with some disjointed babbling as he trails off in mid-sentence, leaving me wondering once again what in the world is so difficult to understand about the process of lamination. You stick a piece of paper in, and voila!, it comes out all shiny and purdy-lookin' - at which point you don't pay $53 for it. What's so hard to figure out?

Eventually, through the combined efforts of three other crack staff members, they realize that $53 is, get ready for this, not the correct price!!! Amazing! How did they figure that brain stumper out? They decide that the real price is actually just under $20 for all of it, which still seems to be a relatively high price to charge for sticking a piece of paper in a machine.

OH! And the clincher was that the big piece of paper that Erica needed laminated was about 4 inches too wide to fit in their machine. Get this:

They offered to cut it to size for $1.75...PER CUT! What in the whole entire universe could possibly justify them charging $1.75 per cut? Do they hire God himself to cut it? Using diamond-edged scissors made from the divine wings of angels? Frankly, I'm surprised they didn't make us put a deposit down when I borrowed their scissors to cut it myself.

So, almost an hour after arriving, and a quarter short of twenty dollars later, we left, tired and annoyed at the blatant incompetence we were subjected to, just to get something laminated for a school project. Hey, at least FedEx doesn't serve fish sandwiches, yet.

The Zipper

2006-09-09T23:37:00.000-07:00

Since I didn't get in my first choice (Creative Writing Non-Fiction), I petitioned for and got in Creative Writing Poetry. This is the first poem I have written for the class so far this semester. Let's just say I had some inspiration to write this which was based "loosely" from a real life experience.

The Zipper

My zipper broke, it was so sad

I felt so helpless, so open

The timing of it all was bad

Standing in front of a toilet,

The zipper stuck, it would not budge

I forced it open, with a fret

No longer would the teeth line up

As much as I tried, no avail

It simply refused to go up

I jerked, I yanked, no luck

In came fellow eager pee-ers

Maybe their zippers won’t be stuck

While I squirm and pull, I can see

them staring at me, wondering

maybe There’s Something About Me

Little do they know, it’s not caught

like that, and to be honest, I

would prefer it to be open

for business than stuck in escrow

WPE! I Can Write!

2006-08-19T06:50:00.000-07:00

Hooray! On July 8th, 2006, after over an hour of standardized testing, on a Saturday nonetheless, I participated in and satisfactorily passed the Writing Proficiency Exam which all students at CSULB are required to take at some point or another. Personally, I didn't take it until I had reached the "or another" period in time, i.e. until they put a hold on my account and prevented me from registering for my classes.

Of course, it's one of those things that's mentioned in the long and arduous orientation marathon that I attended a year or so ago when I first started CSULB. They try and freak you out by telling you all these important things to remember and dates to keep track of and tests to take and where to shovel money into their pockets. Naturally, this was one of those dronings I must have misplaced (disregarded) in my mind.

So when I got the threatening e-mail saying that I have to take the WPE or I'll be dragged out of my house in chains and forced to watch them burn all of my academic records, my future diploma, and my underwear, I finally got motivated.

After I had waded through enough red tape to make a bull keel over in a heap of enmity and overstimulation, I finally got the hold lifted from my account so I could register again, and secured a test date.

On the morning of my test, I arrived at my school, waited to be admitted into the room, had my ID checked to make sure I was me (sure don't want imposters faking someone's proficiency at writing...it's not like their teachers won't find out next semester anyway), and sat down in a room with many other students upset at the waste of their precious Saturday.

The test wasn't any sweat. I was given a topic and had to write an essay about the dangers of misinformation and having too much info localized in one spot, i.e. the internet. The hardest part was keeping from laughing at my two crack test administrators.

They were two black people, a guy and a girl. The girl was the ultimate showcase in spoken monotonism. Her sacred duty was to read the instructions of the test. The sole duty of the guy was, well, I don't really know. All I know is he sat in the front of the room in a desk which was facing us, with his back to the wall, and once the test had begun, he put on a pair of sunglasses and fell asleep.

At one point, I looked up from my furious scribbling to see him, resting his head against the wall, with his mouth totally agape. We were just lucky he didn't have Stuffed Nasal Orifices Resonating in Ears syndrome, or SNORE.

Against all odds, however, I managed to write an essay that I was happy with and with which I felt confident that I would pass without a problem.

Sure enough, a few days ago, I got a letter in the mail verifying that exact thought. I needed an 11 to pass, and I got a 14 out of a possible 18 points.

I'm now officially proficient enough in writing to meet the requirements and expectations of CSULB. Whoopee! I can write, and it's all thanks to this mandatory state examination. Now I've sufficiently proven myself to be worthy of continuing in my studies as an ENGLISH major who already has taken six English classes in two semesters at CSULB, two of them being creative writing classes and five of them being upper division.

I'm sure glad I have the security and confidence of this standardized test under my proverbial belt, so if I ever have any doubts about whether or not I am a good writer, I can just reference my score of 14 on the WPE and be instantly self-assured again. Whew.

Simon Says Yar!

2006-08-14T17:14:00.000-07:00

I had one of those moments.

One of those experiences in life where something happens and you either find it incredibly funny or strangely bizarre and you just have write it down to clear your thoughts and also, of course, to share it with others.

I had just finished putting in my 8 hours at the Home Despot. I had clocked out, and was walking out of the employee break room (the one place in the whole store that the bigshots will actually splurge to have air conditioning in) when I came across a fellow employee who works in plumbing.

His name is Jonathan, and I just discovered a few days ago that his last name is Ray, and that he is a cousin to the Rays at St. Barnabas. He just turned 22 years old, is going into the Navy soon, and goes to church (Calvary Chapel).

So anyway, I run into him, and he begins telling me what he got for his birthday. He shows me a silver necklace holding a kite shield with a cross on the front and a Bible verse on the back, and a brand new camera which he has apparently been carrying in a hip case all day so he can "take pictures of his friends".

Noticing that he didn't take advantage of the incredibly convenient segue presented here, I politely took the hint and withstood the urge to go "afk crying", as he went on to tell me that the third and final thing he got for his birthday was a Sailor's Bible.

Maybe it's my natural seclusion from anything Evangelical that was the root cause of my ignorance, or maybe it's the fact that the difference between a regular Bible and a Sailor's Bible is obscure enough that I wouldn't automatically know how they are different - which prompted my immediate question:

"What, does it have a bunch of swearing in it or something?"

I mean really, how much different can a Bible be translated to merit the title of "The Sailor's Bible". Are the Lo's and the Behold's replaced with Yar's or something?

"Yar, and Jesus said to his disciples, 'Yar, I am with you always, even to the end of the age, Yarmen.'"

Or maybe each Bible comes with a complimentary bottle of holy rum to aid in further contemplating the higher meanings of such verses as:

"And Jesus said to them, 'Yar, follow me, and I will make you fishers of seamen.'"

Or maybe instead of the black silk page marker that comes standard in so many other Bibles, it comes with a little chain and weighted anchor to keep your place.

Another possibility is perhaps the Sailor's Bible makes minor alterations on some of Jesus' parables to make them more meaningful for sailors. For example, the one concerning the traveling man and his three servants:

"Unto one of them he gave five talents, to another two talents, and to the last, who was a sailor, he gave a boat. After this, the master went off on his journey. The first took the five talents and traded with the same, and made five talents more from them. Yar, likewise he who had received two also gained two. But he who was given the boat sailed around the world, claiming priceless treasures as well as several wenches and a solid gold compass for himself. Yar, upon the master's return, he was pleased with the success of the first two servants, but was completely overjoyed at the amazing talents of the third, making him king of the land and giving him all the rum he could possibly drink. The End."

Lastly, maybe the Sailor's Bible elaborates slightly in places where nautical information can be expanded upon.

"Yar, and Jesus got into the boat and crossed over to the other side, traveling three knots per hour, in light crosswinds, with fair sea conditions and waves reaching up to two feet. It was a majestic craft, made from pure cedar. She was easy to steer and she seemed to practically glide across the water. The decks were freshly swabbed and the air was ripe with fish."

Meh, I don't know what the difference is. Do sailors even say Yar? Or is that just pirates? I bet Pontius Pirate would know the answer.

Some Pictures From Hume Lake

2006-08-03T10:05:00.000-07:00

Click to Enlarge!

Erica taking a picture in the car on the way home:

Me taking a couple pictures in the car on the way home:

Miss Erica and Goofy, err, I mean Ivan:

Me and 'Ca:

Teri and Ivan:

The Add-Ults:

Joey Thatcher:

The kids: (From Left to Right: Chris (Jake's friend), Me, Sabina Timothy, Teri, Gabriella Thatcher, Ivan's head, Jake Timothy, Joey Thatcher, Erica's left side, Ben (David's friend), and David Thatcher)

Me with my beard!:

How To Answer A Phone

2006-06-16T13:02:00.000-07:00

I enjoy doing this at work when someone calls my phone. I work at Home Depot as a cashier, and each cashier station has its own phone. So I entertain myself by answering the phone with strange greetings intended to throw the person who is calling me off, such as "Ahoy ahoy", "Hi, may I take your order?", and so on.

Another such greeting I have been known to do in the past is to answer the phone and pretend to be answering the phone for another place of business. I have grown fond of one of these types of greetings after a while. This leads me to the original point of my post.

I have thought of a great name and slogan for a restaurant. Ideally, it would be a small diner situated next to a thriving truckstop where all the road warriors go to stop and peel the squirrels off their tires from their long trip.

When you enter the establishment, you would hear this friendly slogan of greeting, issued by one of the employees, preferably delivered in a thick southern drawl.

"Larry's Roadside Diner: You kill 'em, we grill 'em! How can I be of service?"

No Title.

2006-06-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, Erica and I were driving somewhere in Tustin. Being the constant observer that I am - meaning that I look at everything that interests me, and if I have time, I'll keep an eye on the road too - I saw an interesting sign.

It was one of those large electronic black signs (see picture below) that sits on the center divider or on the side of the road, and notifies drivers of different alerts, such as "Caution, Reduced Speed Ahead", "Construction: Expect Delays from 5/1/2006 until 1/18/2009", "Open Sewer Lids Ahead. Good luck", and "Danger: You Are Now Entering Little Saigon. Anyone Traveling Over 2 MPH Will Be Fined for Speeding".

The function of these signs is to display important information essential for drivers to know as they progress down the streets which these signs occupy. And usually, when there are no alerts, the signs are turned off and left blank.

This particular sign, however, as I passed it, was on. It had two words which were lit up in the middle of the sign, alerting drivers like myself to pay close attention to it.

Expecting an important announcement, I read the sign. It said, "No Data."

I proceeded to go on a loud ranting diatribe to Erica, who was in the seat next to me, about how preposterous this situation was. This happened about a month ago, and I never got around to blogging it until now, so I don't remember it all, but it was something like this...

-Thank you for wasting electricity to bring us this highly important message. We would be at a severe disadvantage if this convenience was not bestowed upon us. We appreciate you taking the time and energy to let us know that you have NOTHING IMPORTANT TO TELL US, when you could have just turned the darn thing off!

I guess the fact that they actually left the screen on without any information and that they were blatantly wasting electricity for no reason whatsoever struck me as bait for ridicule. Either that, or Erica was laughing so hard during my diatribe that I just kept going and her laughter made the entire situation more memorable and humorous. Take your pick.

Hypothetical Question

2006-05-10T15:06:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe all the illegal immigration ruckus going on now - illegals demanding rights they are not entitled to - upset that they don't get the same benefits and privileges as U.S. citizens do, when U.S. citizens would be laughed at if they tried to do the same thing in Mexico as what illegal immigrants are doing here right now.

And we'd be lucky to just get laughed at if we tried this kind of stuff in Mexico - we'd be lucky to evade being locked in prison.

Illegals are trying to get the Star Spangled Banner to be sung in Spanish, they are trying to get free amnesty so they don't have to make a genuine effort to go through the legal process of becoming a U.S. citizen, and they expect the U.S. to cater to their every demand, as if our denying their "right" to have a political voice is an infringment on the entire race of Mexicans. And they actually have the guile to march in our streets, waving the Mexican flag, insisting that we give in to their demands.

You are illegal. You do not have a political voice in our country. Go back to your own country and exercise your rights and your political voice there, and reform Mexico so you can actually be proud to live in your country, and not have to sneak off and expect the U.S. to babysit you while you live off of our tax money, crowd our freeways, schools, and emergency rooms, and expect a mint on your pillow too.

Boy, do I feel better after that rant.

So my question is...

How long will it be until illegal immigrants demand that the U.S. start accepting pesos and other Mexican currency as legal tender?

I thought of this during work today. After witnessing all the absurd political madness currently going on with the illegal immigrant infestation and the subsequent demanding of rights, and the fact that there are actually people in the U.S. sympathetic to their asinine requests, from the liberal media to politicians to who knows who else, and since the state or federal government doesn't seem to be doing much of anything to stop any of this, I would not be a bit surprised.

Interesting E-mail

2006-04-08T01:22:00.000-07:00

So I got an email from amazon.com yesterday...

I open it, and I see that it is an ad from their Health and Personal Care department. The border of the email is light purple, and the text is written in teal. So I assume they are trying to push some new beauty product or weight loss program designed to help me lose weight - like I need that.

So I scroll down, and what do I see?

Dear Amazon.com Customer,

Since you have purchased extreme sports gear or beef snacks in the past, we thought you might like to know that Slim Jim, Original, Case of 12 15-Ounce Canisters is now available for ordering. Order yours by following the link below.

Okay, I'm sorry. What did I miss here? Amazon's Health and Personal Care department is recommending that I try Slim Jims?!? Why? So I'll be in need of their other products to nurse me back to full health after eating AN ENTIRE CASE OF SLIM JIMS?

And I'm sorry, but I don't believe I have ever purchased extreme sports gear or beef snacks from amazon.com. I prefer to purchase my cliff diving nose plugs and my cow testicles from more local establishments, thank you very much.

Of course, we can't forget the product description.

Product Description:
Slim Jim, the number one brand of meat sticks, is a convenient, one-of-a-kind snack with the intense flavor and snap that people love. It’s a unique combination of spice and attitude, made from beef and real smoke flavoring.

I took the liberty to mark with bold, and in one place of heightened dictional emergency - italics, words or phrases which cause an English major great distress and alarm that something like this actually gets passed off as acceptable advertisement material, or acceptable writing in general.

Let me explain why.

1. "Meat sticks". When a product like dried beef inherently defies a more dignified name, is this really the best they can do to market the product? "Here, try this. It's brown, we got it from a cow, and it's in the shape of a stick. What's that? Oh, yeah, I think there's meat in there, somewhere."

2. "Snap". People love it when their food snaps at them? Do meat sticks snap?

I did some more research on this, and found an excerpt from a product description of the Hot Beef and Cheese Slim Jims: "A "Snap" moment occurs when you reach a physical or personal milestone, even if you don't know if you can do it."

Gee, what better product to keep at your side in order to reach your physical and personal milestones than the incredible meat stick.

Disclaimer: Meat sticks' meat content may exceed fat content. Proceed at your own risk.

3. "Attitude". I'd imagine that it would have to be essential for an obviously poorly marketed product to have some sort of moxie or attitude to avoid the ever-looming depression I'm sure meat sticks everywhere are faced with. "If only I had tried a little harder, maybe I could have been a steak" is a sentence which I'm sure is heard reverberating around the Slim Jim Play-Doh Extruder Factory. (Hey, how else do you think they make them into those little tube-stick shapes, anyhow?)

4. "...made from beef and real smoke flavoring."

WOW! It's made from the real smoke flavoring? That's amazing! If that's the case, where are the "Slim Jim Real Smoke Flavoring Sticks?"

Anyway, here's to your health...

Finally!

2006-03-26T21:28:00.000-08:00

A Home Depot story worth blogging about!

Sunday night, I was working at a register that was adjacent to a soda cooler with various drinks for sale - coke, diet coke, sprite, lemonade, energy drinks, and so on.

As I'm working through my line of customers, the next customer turns out to be an Asian lady with no merchandise in plain view. I greet her expectantly.

Me: "How're you doing, ma'am?"
Her: (In a thick Asian accent) "Hi, I'd like to buy some lemonade."
Me: "Lemonade?"
Her: (nodding) Yes.

I'm trying to think this through in my head. Lemonade. Surely she couldn't be so oblivious as to not see the huge soda cooler behind her, in plain view of the line she was standing in a minute ago. So why is she asking for lemonade? Does she want a whole bunch of it, even more than what's in the cooler?

These types of thoughts were going through my head, as I visibly contorted my face in an attempt to figure it all out.

I continued:

Me: Lemonade???
Her: (still nodding)

Wondering if I'm misunderstanding her, and reluctant to make a fool of myself by saying that there was some behind her, I tried to think what Home Depot could possibly sell that sounded like "lemonade".

I decided to make a fool of myself.

I pointed towards the cooler behind her, and began to say:

"We have some over there..."

But before I was able to finish my semi-coherent thought, a customer behind the lady had a brilliant thought.

"Laminate?" he suggested.

Her: Yes, "lamonade".

(My proverbial language-barrier light finally goes on...)

Me: Ohhh, laminate flooring?
Her: (nodding vigorously now) Yes!

Sigh. I hope there's an equally prestigious place in Heaven next to those who give food to the hungry and give drink to the thirsty for those who give a clue to the clueless. I'm a natural at that.

A Joke...

2006-03-09T23:20:00.000-08:00

...That I made up:

Q. How many fish did the singer catch?

A. Tenor twelve bass.

A Special Night

2006-02-15T01:10:00.000-08:00

My latest assignment: To write a 1 page story containing a flashback. I had to start in present tense, shift to past tense, and revert back to present tense at the end.

Too tired to write anything else about it. Enjo...zzzzzzzzzzzzz...

A Special Night

“Ughhhhhh…” The struggle to open my eyelids seems extraordinarily difficult this morning. They feel as if they are encrusted with some sort of hardened film, or as I like to call them, “eye boogers”. I force my eyelids open and attempt to ascertain my surroundings while rubbing off the gunk that is hanging from my eyelashes.

What is that smell? As I turn over and look at where I am laying, I see piles of large plastic bags, empty cans of food, boxes, a few banana peels, and what appears to be the remains of some long deceased rodent. Suppressing a sudden wave of nausea, I peer over the side of what appears to be a large blue container, about seven feet long and four feet wide. The cement ground is about three feet below my current elevation, and is covered in a large pile of vomit. On the side of the container, I see the words “Rainbow Disposal”. As I attempt to get out of the refuse bin, I become all too aware of the intense pain in my stomach.

How did I get here? Where is here? Why does it feel like my stomach is being pierced with sharp knives wielded by indigestion goblins? These thoughts pervade my brain as I try and remember what could have possibly happened last night to grant me an experience of such agonizing woe.

Let’s see. I was walking down the street, going to my favorite little delicatessen for a late dinner. It was past 10 pm already, and I was quite hungry after my two hour workout at the gym. I stepped inside, and the place was uncharacteristically crowded for this time of the night. As I meandered my way through a crowd on my way towards the bar, I was intercepted by an old friend of mine whom I hadn’t seen for a while -intentionally - the guy’s a tactless schmuck.

“Jake! How’s it hanging man?”

“Shut up Ricky. You know it hasn’t since the ‘squirrel incident,’” spat Jake.

“Hey man, just joking with you. I thought you were okay with it since you got your prosthetic Italian dinner,” smirked Ricky.

“My what?” demanded Jake.

“Your spaghetti and meatballs,” said Ricky, laughing.

“Yeah, real funny, jerk.”

“Hey, come on man. Take a joke. Here, I’ll buy you something,” offered Ricky.

Looking forward to this dinner about as much as a toilet looks forward to its dinner, I tentatively took a stool at the bar next to Ricky.

“Hey, I dare you to get the Special,” said Ricky nonchalantly.

The Special was the least ordered item on the menu, and for good reason. No one really knew what was in it, not even the locals. Even the chefs and waitresses were bewildered and intimidated enough by it to dissuade anyone who wasn’t wearing a full body radiation suit from ordering it. Rumor has it that a curious customer managed to sneak in the back one day, and reported seeing five burlap sacks in the back, which were dated “1856”, and had the words “Special”, and “May Contain Traces of Nuts or Other Genitalia” marked on them.

Against my better judgment, and even against my worst judgment, for some reason, I order the Special. What it looks like, I don’t know. What’s in it, I don’t remember. Whether or not I’ll ever be able to eat again, time will tell.

“BLARRRRRGGGHHHH,” I retch.

A Fair Fight

2006-02-07T00:51:00.000-08:00

Here's another one pager I wrote, this time for my Creative Writing: Fiction class. I basically made it up off the top of my head as I was writing. My original thought for it was that I would start it off with some guy wrestling a buffalo, and somehow make it into an interesting story, but that was a little too far-fetched even for me. I nearly scrapped the whole story, but I was able to work it into this. It's not terribly funny, in my humble opinion, but it was a fun story for me at least. Enjoy.

A Fair Fight

Jeremy was an extremely talented fighter. He had spent many hours sparring with his best friend, Dave, who had two left fists, but who served as a decent punching bag. After each practice match, which usually resulted in Dave lying on the ground, bleeding, Jeremy would always stand tall and exclaim, “No problem.”

So one night, they were sitting in their apartment together, in El Paso, Texas, wondering what to do with the money they had just stolen from the 1st National Bank, about 30 minutes away. They had escaped with over $25,000 before the police arrived at the scene. Unfortunately, Dave had slipped up during the robbery and called Jeremy by his real name, instead of his alibi, which happened to be Snickers - for his affinity towards the candy bar, not for his cheerful laughing. And Jeremy, furious at Dave for blowing his cover, proceeded to tackle him and, amidst the scuffle, dropped his wallet, though that was unbeknownst to him at the time. After thoroughly pummeling Dave, he rose to his feet and exclaimed, “No problem.”

So, realizing that the police could perfectly identify one person in the crime, and could probably put the pieces together and identify the other member without too much effort, they decided it would be in their best interest to migrate down to Chihuahua, Mexico, because it was within driving distance, and it had the funniest name.

During their stay in Chihuahua, they encountered a rather large and dilapidated building with an eccentric-looking yellow neon sign which read “Extreme Mexican Fighting”. The name alone intrigued their criminal minds, and at Jeremy’s suggestion, they decided to go in. He figured that whoever he faced in that building, it would be “No problem.”

Inside, Jeremy expected to see a boxing ring or some sort of barbed wire cage. Instead, all he saw was a large empty room, save for a loud boom box in one corner which was blasting mariachi music, and three Mexicans at the far end of the building, next to what looked to be an enormous steel storage vault.

As soon as they had entered the building, the three men at the far end of the building approached them. The leader, a short yet burly man, spoke first.

“You gringos lookin’ for a fight?” asked the leader.

Stepping up, Jeremy said, “I’ll fight your best guy. Heck, I’ll fight all three of you. No problem.”

The leader laughed. “Yo homes, we ain’t fighting you. Chill man.”

Confused, Jeremy asked, “Well, who am I fighting?”

“You be fighting our luchador numero uno – his name is ‘No Problemo’.”

And with that, the leader pulled out a remote device, pressed a button, and ran out the door with his two comrades. Surprised, Jeremy and his two buddies turned to see what that button did.

The door to the vault had opened, to reveal a huge, angry, seething, and advancing bull. This was not just any bull though. This bull was named “No Problemo”, and for good reason. Mounted on its head was a double barreled shotgun, which was controlled by an apparatus attached to its neck which fired the gun whenever it jerked its neck back.

“N-n-nooo…” stuttered Jeremy.

“BANG!!!” said the shotgun.

Assorted Hodge-Podge

2006-02-05T00:26:00.000-08:00

I've made up these little tidbits over time, but never had a chance to work them in a blog, so I figured I'd just give them a short blog of their own.

A Self-Help Book That Will Never Be Written:

10 Habits of Highly Effective Migratory Vegetation - by Lettuce Leaf

A Book of Modern Innovations That Will Never Be Written:

Yellow Bait - by P. Fischer

Two Random Jokes I came up with:

Q. What did the leprous pimp say to his feet?

A. Yo, where my toes at?

Q. What do you call a Web Browser for those with especially profane mouths?

A. Intourette Explorer.

Cloudy Words

2006-02-03T20:14:00.000-08:00

Wow, mine is pretty stupid, methinks.

After reading Aaron and Sara's blogs, I thought I'd do one to see which words are used most in my blog. It seems it mostly takes into account my more recent posts, but I may be mistaken.

Yeah, so basically, like, one cup of books, in time, doesn't read like two phones in school. My turtle went pee.

Back in School, Back in Blogging

2006-01-30T14:36:00.000-08:00

I hope at least.

I am taking four English classes this semester, three of which are creative writing classes. Therefore, I hope to blog most of my stories and such, as I'm sure many of them will end up being funny.

About myself: I am no longer working at Taco Bell. I now work at Home Depot, and have been for the last 3 months. And yes, I know I need to change my title description...

Unfortunately, there have not been many funny stories of the same caliber as my Taco Bell stories. The only two that even come remotely close I will relate to you.

The first was when an older lady came to my register to purchase a few things. I rung up her stuff, and told her the total. She proceeded to write a check. When she handed me the check, this is what I saw:

The check was made out to "Builders Hardware"
The check was dated "January 14th, 2005"

The problem with the date was the fact that it was actually the 18th, and in the year 2006.

So I informed her where she was shopping and that today wasn't the 14th. She then said, "Oh, the 15th?" I kindly corrected her by saying, "No, actually, it's the 18th. And it's the year 2006."

"Oh", she said. "I guess I'm behind a little."

O RLY?

The second funny thing I came across was when someone was purchasing a sledgehammer. The funny thing about it was the sticker which was located on the handle of the sledgehammer. I actually just finished writing a one-page story for a homework assignment, and I based my original idea for the story solely around what that sticker said. Here is the story:

Hank, a rather portly and uncivilized fellow, whose personal life motto happened to be “More Pork, Less Fork”, never was the type of person who, when presented with a question, answered it in a socially acceptable manner. Hank was what some would call a cerebral sadist. When faced with a question that caused him great mental anguish in obtaining a suitable answer, he tended to strike himself repeatedly in the cranial area until such a response stumbled, slipped, and spilled from somewhere inside the shadowy depths of his pebble-sized brain out through his mouth and whichever nostril had been blown within the last month. Of course, this was contingent on how often he cleaned his cat, Snuffles, between his mucus migrations.

As he made his way through a local hardware store, he stumbled upon a large and rather colorful display. It advertised the sale of several rather hefty and heavy sledgehammers. Each one consisted of a three-foot long yellow fiberglass handle, with the typical black mass of metal formed in an optimally “wrecktangular” shape at the end, which constituted the head, or the thing that breaks stuff.

He picked one up to inspect it closer, and something caught his eye on the handle. It was a promotional-looking sticker, like the ones which are typically found in other retail stores, which read, “Buy One, Get One Free”, “Financing Available”, or “Hands Off You Scum!” This one, despite the inherent logical contradictions, simply read, “Try Me.” Hank, lost in the intricacies of the irony, simply stood there, staring off into space.

“OWWW!!!!!!! SON OF A…TURNIP” said Hank, as a few of his brain synapses failed to connect in order to remind his arms about the heavy instrument which they had just dropped on his feet. After having experienced that initial burst of podiatric pain, several other synapses disconnected, just in time to make Hank forget which expletive he was about to yelp, only to have it replaced with some vegetable-related tangent long forgotten within the depths of his brain.

Not being a huge fan of pain in other areas of the body besides the head, Hank became understandably enraged and unexplainably constipated, possibly adding to his indignation. He proceeded to pick up the sledgehammer and smash everything in sight. Displays of power tools and designer wrenches, cash registers, contractors, hicks, hick contractors, and in a fantastic display of acrobatic ability – the twenty-foot tall drywall ceiling, causing a downpour of gypsum to rain all over the now demolished store.

The next thing Hank noticed after coming out of his savage trance was that his beefy hands were being thrust behind his back in a vain attempt to have them meet closely enough for handcuffs to be effective. Unfortunately for the police, Hank was an average American male, meaning he was an exceedingly large man, whose unnatural girth defied the standard size of handcuffs. Once properly detained, with the aid of 3 consecutively linking pairs of handcuffs, and several rolls of duct tape, Hank was placed in the police cruiser, and approached by two police officers. The first, Officer Jurks, asked, “What’s your name, son?”

Feeling the first premonitions of a head-bashing urge coming, Hank replied, “Steve.”

“How come your license says Hank Banks, then?" asked Officer Suie.

Twitching slightly, Hank answered, “I lied.”

“Oh weeeellll then. We got a scallawag on our hands, don’t we now?” presumed Officer Jurks.

“Seems to be the case. We’ll have to ask you lots of questions to be sure you’re telling the truth once we get back to the station, Steve.” said Officer Suie.

Veins nearly popping out in his head, Hank’s only prevailing thought as they drove out onto the sun-drenched streets was, “If only I still had that sledgehammer…”

CSU Schools Scam Their Students

2005-12-22T15:23:00.000-08:00

Catchy headline, isn't it?

I have absolutely no sympathy anymore for educational activists, politicians, and college teachers who whine about how crappy their schools are and how the government is hindering sufficient funding. All the liberal loudmouths and the students and voters they infect with the mindset that the conservative government is neglecting education are supporting a blatant lie fabricated to mislead the impressionable masses who blindly accept what they are told is correct by these biased and uninformed sources.

If CSU schools are indeed suffering, it is because of poor financial management and spending within the school, not because of a lack of funding.

For those of you who do not know, I am currently attending CSULB, and majoring in English: Creative Writing. And I just sold my books back today. These books, which originally cost me more than $300, were only able to be exchanged for a comparatively meager $53 when sold back to the campus bookstore.

$53 for over $300 worth of books. That's 1/6 of what I paid. Three particularly underbid books were ones which I had bought for the same class, which is going to be identically offered by the same instructor again at CSULB next semester. One book, which originally cost $25, was bought back for $1. Another, which was originally $50, was bought back for $2. Yet another, originally costing $70, was bought back for $4. Seems fair, right?

And what's the lame excuse the guy gave me for offering such a low price? When I asked, he said that basically no one else in the country is using these books except for my professor at this school.

A problem I see with this excuse:

Why would the price go down if the only people using them are the ones taking this specific teacher's class at CSULB? The price wasn't $1 when I bought it, so obviously they aren't having any trouble selling them. Why not be honest and just tell me what they're really going to do? They're going to sell them back at this same bookstore next semester, for an approximate 2500% profit on each book, to each new student taking the exact same class with the exact same teacher.

Now, let's speculate about this.

There are approximately 33,500 students attending CSULB. Each student needs books. How many books depends on the number of classes being taken and how many books are required in each class. From what I understand, $300 is a pretty standard if not moderate cost for textbooks in a typical semester. So let's just assume that each student is going to pay approximately $300 in books, as some students will pay less, and some students will pay more.

Let's do some math.

(And again, this is purely speculative, as there are factors which will affect these numbers, such as those who buy and sell their books via a third party like an off-campus bookstore or from other students. So this serves to show how staggering of a profit college campuses can make through textbook and other sales.)

33,500 students x $300 in books = $10,050,000. 10 million dollars in textbooks each semester.

1/6 of $10,050,000 = $1,675,000. $1,675,000 dollars being given back to the students in exchange for their books.

$10,050,000 - $1,675,000 = $8,375,000. $8,375,000 dollars being earned by the school each semester by selling books at high prices and buying them back at cheap prices.

Of course, this number varies as some people get more than 1/6 of their money back. And then again, the school won't even buy back some books, so who knows what the exact amount is.

Now, we cannot possibly forget other such exorbitant fees being charged to students who attend CSU schools, such as tuition and parking. Tuition at CSULB costs each full-time student $1,432 dollars, and a parking pass costs about $95.

Not everyone drives to school, so for our analysis, I'll be conservative and say that 1/2 of the students will buy a parking pass.

16,750 students x $95 = $1,591,250. That's not including those students who use the metered parking and who buy day parking passes.

Now, for the big money.

33,500 full-time students x $1,432 dollars = $47,972,000.

Of course, this is not totally correct because not everyone is a full time student. Part-timers pay $904 per semester in tuition. So let's say 1/4 of the students are part-time, which would yield 7,571,000 for those students, leaving the 3/4 of the full-timers (25,125 students) remaining to pay $35,979,000.

And what about those in more expensive graduate programs, and those living on campus? Even more revenue for the school. But I won't even speculate on those.

So according to my very crude and very incomplete calculations, CSULB makes around $40 million dollars each semester from tuition alone. Add the $1.5 million from parking, and the $8 million from book profits, they get around $50 million dollars every semester to throw around.

Don't even tell me CSU schools are poor and need funding. It's simply not true. Not with the prices they charge. And especially not with the current wages being paid to teachers. So where is all that money going, anyway?

Do Not Read This Blog On Your Computer. It May Cause Explosions.

2005-10-28T23:34:00.000-07:00

I recently bought a new phone a little more than a month ago, when I switched from Verizon to Cingular.

Now, as you look at this phone, you'll probably notice that it seems pretty normal and harmless right? Wrong! If you happen to read the novel which is the instruction manual, you'll quickly find out this innocent-looking phone could very easily qualify as the most intricate, complicated, high-maintenance, and potentially dangerous object in your entire house, and quite possibly the entire world. And yes, I'm holding it up to my ear, pressed against my head, every single day. Yippee.

What makes this phone such a fright you ask? Well, allow me to quote numerous safety guidelines taken directly from the LG C2000 User Guide, and you can make your own decision on whether or not my life is in immediate danger by owning this phone, or if the technical writer(s) who wrote this booklet were being overly melodramatic.

Safety Instructions

Never store your phone in settings that may expose it to temperatures less than 32°F or greater than 104°F. Exposure to excessive cold or heat will result in malfunction, damage and/or catastrophic failure.

Catastrophic failure? As if malfunctioning and damage wasn't enough? Now you have to subject my fears to the possibility of such an intimidating and vague term like a catastrophic failure? I associate a word like catastrophic to something like the engine of a plane exploding or all four stomachs of a cow ceasing to function...not my cell phone failing to work. "My phone doesn't work! Help! The world is coming to an end!"

Be careful when using your phone near other electronic devices. Never place your phone in a microwave oven as this will cause the battery to explode.

Explode? Explode?!? First of all, who in their right mind would ever put their cell phone in a microwave in the first place? And is this such a common problem that it is necessary to include in the user guide? Do people often confuse their TV dinners or Tupperware products with their cell phones because they look so similar? Maybe some distracted person might put the phone down to warm up a leftover meal and in his ineptitude place the phone in the microwave while sticking last night's pasta in his ear, prompting a completely different canelloni-related (or should I say Canaloni?) problem aside from the recently exploded cell phone in his microwave.

Never place your phone in a microwave oven as it will cause the battery to explode.

What, again? Is it really necessary to tell people this twice? I think we get the point by now. Microwaves + Cell Phones = Things Go Boom.

Do not dispose of your battery by fire or with hazardous or flammable materials.

Oh wonderful. Not only will it explode, or so I'm guessing as that seems to be the common theme so far, but this means I can't make my famous battery acid, gasoline, and dry brush bonfires anymore. I don't think the people who wrote this book ever have any fun.

Make sure that no sharp-edged items such as animal's teeth, nails, come into contact with the battery. There is a risk of this causing a fire.

Fire? From biting and scratching? Hmm, sounds like an obvious case of severe animal-related explosion fires to me. Possibly quite catastrophic.

Store the battery in a place out of reach of children.

Wait. So I have to disassemble the phone and store the battery separately from it in a child-proof, and more importantly, explosion-proof place? That's practical.

Be careful that children do not swallow any parts such as rubber plugs (earphone, connection parts of the phone, etc.) This could cause asphyxiation or suffocation.

(Or explosion.)

In a car, do not leave your phone or set up the hands-free kit near to the air bag. If wireless equipment is improperly installed and the air bag is activated, you may be seriously injured.

Yeah, the one thing that actually can potentially blow up: the air bag. Yet ironically, it only gets two measly sentences of mentioning, though its chance of "exploding" and deploying is infinitely greater than any of these other ridiculous situations.

Do not use a hand-held phone while driving.

No cell phone while driving? Yeah, that could happen. Shya, and exploding cell phone batteries might fly out of my butt.

Do not use the phone in areas where its use is prohibited.

Duh?

Never store your phone in temperatures less than -4°F or greater than 122°F.

Yet, as previously mentioned, I thought the acceptable range was 32°F to 104°F. But I doubt this is really a problem, unless you're either an Eskimo or an extremely sociable sand dune.

Do not use harsh chemicals (such as alcohol) or detergents to clean your phone. There is a risk of this causing a fire.

You're supposed to clean your phone? I guess this just means that if you actually want to clean it some day, you can't ask Jack Daniels to help you.

Do not use your phone in high explosive areas as the phone may generate sparks.

In other words, no using your phone in your local TNT factory or land mine emporium.

Do not disassemble the phone.

I guess if we can't be trusted not to stick our phones in the microwave or clean them with a six-pack, then this disclaimer really is necessary because we obviously can't be trusted to resist the urge to take them apart and see how the infernal devices work...because heaven knows if we can't tell the difference between a plate of food and a phone, we'll never rebuild it into any semblance of what it used to look like without somehow blowing ourselves up in the process.

Only use the batteries, antennas, and chargers provided by LG.

Translation: We want more money.

Only authorized personnel should service the phone and its accessories. Faulty installation or service may result in accidents...

...Yeah, accidents. I.E. Explosions.

Do not hold or let the antenna come in contact with your body during a call.

Why? Will I explode?!?

An emergency call can be made only within a service area. For an emergency call, make sure that you are within a service area and that the phone is turned on.

I give up. If anyone is so utterly ignorant to the fact that your phone has to be on in order to make a call, no user guide on the face of this earth is going to save them now. And you have to be in a service area? You mean there has to be a signal too? My goodness, how complicated these devices are!

Using a damaged battery or placing a battery in your mouth may cause serious injury.

NO KIDDING!!!!!!!!

And then, last but not least, there's my personal favorite:

Do not paint your phone.

Do people actually do this? "My phone is boring. I think I'll paint it red and give it racing stripes so it'll go faster! I...hey, why can't I open my phone?"

So basically, what I've learned from all this is:

You can't do anything right as the owner of a cell phone. Anything you do can and will cause your phone to spark, spontaneously burst into flames, and explode without warning...several times over.

Ah, the joys of technology.

If technology had a motto, it would be: "Live longer. Die faster."

The BIG Change

2005-10-10T23:32:00.000-07:00

The time has come. My days at Taco Bell are coming to a close. Just tonight, I told my manager, Thaddus, that I was quitting, and he was very supportive and said that he would miss having me around.

Why am I quitting, you ask? Taco Insurrection? Bad Gas? Finally had your fill of stupid people?

Not yet. Often. Yes.

Actually, the main reason I am quitting Taco Bell is because I have been offered a job at Home Depot. It pays $8.75 an hour to start, goes up to $9.25 an hour after 90 days, while at the same time, my benefits will kick in. My benefits include full life, dental, medical, animal, vegetable, mineral, not to mention lots of others which I probably will never need. However, the most significant is something called "Tuition Reimbursement". Basically, Home Depot will pay for 50% of my school tuition/fees/books as long as I am working for them and going to school and am in a major which can potentially help my job skills. And, as an English major, I qualify because it is such a broad and versatile major that covers so many different aspects of learning.

So it all seems very exciting. I have to wait for my background check to be finished before I can start training. Also, I had to go take a drug test today, which was interesting. For those of you who haven't taken a drug test before, what it basically consists of is you going into a medical facility, them handing you a plastic cup, and you going into the bathroom and attempting to pee into the seemingly undersized and uncomfortably thin layered cup. It is a very uncomfortable and unnatural situation, because essentially, you no longer have a large porcelain bowl to pee into. Instead, it is replaced with a plastic "toilet" which has seemingly shrunk to minuscule size.

So I go to the pee place, fill out a small form unrelated to pee, and sit down and wait in the lobby. Eventually, an Asian man calls me in. He has me sign something not dissimilar to a specimen-permission-slip, basically allowing them to take my urine on a field trip to see the Space Needle in Peattle, Washington, or possibly to see the capital in Washington P.C.

He then hands me the proverbial cup, and directs my attention to the side of the cup where there are increments in milliliters, and instructs me to fill the cup to the 50 ML line. He says that I can fill it more if I want, but that it needs to be at least 50 ML. I look at the side of the cup, and determine how much of the cup I'd need to fill in order to get 50 ML of urine. The line looks to only be about an 1/8 of the way up the cup.

So I proceed to the bathroom with a purpose in mind: To pee into this cup to the best of my masculine ability.

As I enter the bathroom and lock the door, my self-confidence flies out the window. All of a sudden, my head begins to be filled with question after question of things that could go wrong.

Do I set it down? Do I pee directly into the cup while holding it? Will it splash? What if the stream is so powerful that it knocks the cup out of my hands and it gets all over? What if I pee on my hand? What if I get the sudden urge to pee really badly and I fill the cup up so much that it begins to spill over the edge? What if I drop it on the way back? What if...what if I get thirsty...?

And these questions were coming from someone who many years ago as a lovable yet ignorant child had to do a urine test for some reason or another. I remember back then thinking that peeing into the tiny cup was ridiculous, so I thought of another method. Basically, I ended up peeing into the toilet and scooping out the urine from the toilet into the cup, thinking that I was doing it the correct way. Needless to say, I got the results back as being heavily diluted. So I knew that today, I was going to have to conquer my fears and pee directly into the cup.

It is a very humbling feeling to know that you are holding a cup filled with your urine and the only thing separating it from you is a mere thin layer of plastic.

It didn't take me long to realize that it wouldn't be hard to get the required 50 ML of urine. So I did what any guy would do: Fill it up as far as I could. Most guys are not overachievers in anything. However, all guys are overachievers at peeing. (Case In Point: I used to sleep over at my friend David's house when I was younger, and every day when I'd wake up, I'd go to the bathroom and pee for the better part of the morning. And every time, David would be amazed at my endurance and thought it was so cool that I could pee for longer than he could). Anyway, if a guy is asked to pee in a container that holds 16 ounces, yet he is only required to provide 1 ounce, your typical guy sees it as a challenge to fill up all 16 ounces. Most likely he won't fill it all the way, but as long as he surpasses the measly requirement, he can rest easy at night knowing that he has surpassed the requirements necessary to maintain his manhood. Either that, or guys are just afraid to try and make the difficult transfer in midstream back to the toilet. Guys can't aim. Ask any guy. He'll tell you. And for that reason, I was frightened to trust myself to pee in this little cup and ONLY in this little cup.

However, all turned out well. I managed to return back to the Asian man without falling and/or spilling. I greeted him with a big overachieving smile on my face as if expecting a friendly male congratulation, like, "Hey, nice effort", or "It's so warm!" He took it from me rather nonchalantly, and told me that he was going to pour it into a vial and seal it in front of me, I guess to ensure that he wasn't going to swap it with his own pee or something...or to prove that he really wasn't as thirsty as he looked. Once he finished that, he told me that the test would be completed in 2-3 days, and then he bid me adieu.

So I walked back to my car, thinking about how much of a goof I must have looked like earlier, carrying a cup of my own pee around. In retrospect, it would have been funny to try and offer a complimentary glass of warm lemonade to unsuspecting people in the lobby area.

So yeah, I made P-Dripple proud today. I peed in a cup successfully, without turning my shorts into Wet Side Slacks.

Essay? What Essay?

2005-09-22T01:16:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so, as always, I leave things to the last minute.

I've known I had a 3 page essay due today (It's past 1 AM right now, Thursday morning) for several days now.

So I figured I had better take a look at the prompt and get around to writing it pretty soon, seeing as how it's due in 10 hours, and I'll need to sleep for at least 6 of those hours, and spend a few more of those hours driving and vainly attempting to find a parking spot in the "parking" (And I use the term loosely) lot at CSULB.

So lo and behold, I crank out a three-page essay which takes me a grand total of about 30 minutes. This is surprising for me at least because I had no idea what I was supposed to write about until I looked up the prompt online, and I even spent some of that time looking up quotes for a movie we had to write about. (The movie is entitled, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum", which is a hilarious movie made in 1966, which also happens to be quite sexual and dirty, unfortuntately. But besides that fact, the dialogue and characters are brilliant and it was a lot of fun.) The essay was about how the movie and also a play which I mentioned in my last blog, "The Braggart Soldier", are self-referential, among other things. I dunno, I wrote it in 30 minutes, I didn't have a lot of time to memorize the prompt.

Yeah, so being an English major at CSULB rocks, as long as you a) get there before the cars in the parking lot are so tightly packed together that they are stacked on top of each other, and b) you don't get stuck in traffic.

Today, a drive to school that normally takes about 25 minutes took 55 minutes because there was a completely isolated accident in the carpool lane on the northbound 405 freeway, the side I was on. Not only was our traffic stop-and-go, but the other southbound lane was slowing down and becoming bumper-to-bumper, even though the accident wasn't even on their side! So basically, thanks to everyone killing their cats, traffic was completely slowed down so these curious *coughnosycough* people could absentmindedly gawk at an accident that didn't appear to be more than a fender bender.

And of course, as soon as I passed the accident, traffic speed went from 15 MPH-30 MPH to 65+ MPH. It's amazing what idiotic gawking can do to a perfectly good freeway.

Reminds me of people who don't have the multi-tasking skills necessary to drive and maintain their speed and stay at or slightly above the speed limit while yakking on their cell phones about who cares what. I honestly don't understand how some people cannot have the basic foot-mouth coordination necessary to keep their lead foot pressed on the gas while at the same time talk about how Aunt Sally's cookies don't taste as good since she moved next to the pet cemetery. I don't care. Seriously. Are they so caught up in listening to their own voice that all other bodily tasks cease to function? I really don't get it. If you can't handle talking and driving at the same time, if idle chatter takes up such a substantial portion of your mind that you can't pay attention to what is going on around you, do us all a favor and either hang up your phone and throw it out the window or sell your car and burn your license.

Yeah, I'm tired and I spent too much time on the road today. I'm going to bed. More sarcastic blogs on the way...

Books, Books, and More Books!

2005-09-16T02:37:00.000-07:00

I promised myself I'd do this "book meme" thing that Aaron (Wow! You've been mentioned in two straight blogs! Aren't you proud? Aren't you??? Goochie goochie goo! Who's the big boy? Who's the big boy?!?!? Youuuu areeeee! Wheeeeeeeee!) "infected" me with about thirteen years ago. So who's ready? Memememememe!

1. Total Number of Books I've Owned:
Hmm, including school textbooks I've saved and the books I had as a child (Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, and Hardy Boys books anyone?), probably about 125-150, give or take a bunch or two.

2. Last Book I Bought:
The last book I bought for personal reading was Small Gods by Terry Pratchett, which I will talk more about later. Technically, the last book I bought was for school though, and I bought a few: Plautus' Four Comedies, Machiavelli's Mandragola, and Emile Habiby's The Secret Life of Saeed.

I read "The Braggart Soldier" by Plautus, which is a play, and it was pretty humorous and witty, which surprised me as Plautus lived from 254-184 BC. I guess I just expected that people who lived that long ago didn't have senses of humor or something, because when I found myself laughing at this play, I was almost caught off guard. Of course, it is translated for a modern audience, but I was impressed at how well it adapts to a modern audience.

I haven't finished "Mandragola" yet, but I'm about halfway through it. So far, my conclusion is that even though I'm sure Machiavelli was an outstanding thinker in his time, this play just proves the fact that just because you're well learned doesn't mean you're inherently funny too. The dialogue and overall setup of the whole thing is so pretentious I can hardly keep myself from skimming through it half-heartedly. It just seems to be following the common cliche of that time involving a treacherous love story with plenty of conniving, back-stabbing, lying, and cheating. Hey, that's what "The Braggart Soldier" was about too, but at least Plautus has some wit and sarcasm in his bitingly fast-paced humor, unlike the slow crawl that is "Mandragola". But hey, I've still got 20 pages left, there's still hope. Right? RIGHT!?!?!

3. Last Book I Read:
For Fun: Small Gods. To be honest, the reason I didn't do this blog topic when I was first "infected" with it was because the last book I had read at that time was A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, and I had just written an essay about it and I didn't really like the book all that much, so I didn't feel like putting it down as being the last book I had read. I wanted to be able to mention a book that I could be proud to proclaim as being the last book I have read. And this book, my friends, is worth all the praise worthy of being called the last book I have read. For fun, that is...

For School: Heart of Darkness. I read this book once before, in my last semester at OCC. We had about a month to read it, so I happily took just about the whole month to plow through it, reading a few pages a day. That's probably why I wasn't too fond of it, because I didn't really give myself a chance to get into it. So this time, I read it in two days, and I enjoyed it much more since I knew what to expect this time and I was looking forward to getting to some of my favorite parts. Plus, my teacher only gave us a week to read it and I left it to the last two days.

Procrastination is an amazing motivator.

4. Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me:

(In no particular order)

a) Small Gods by Terry Pratchett - Finally, I get to talk about this book. First, some background:

I had recently finished reading The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, which was, at that time, probably one of the funniest novels I've ever read. I wasn't really looking to get a new book at the time, but Erica and I went to a Barnes and Noble anyway. As we stepped in, I remember just letting the book store floor plan do with me what it would, and it took me straight to the science fiction section. Looking for nothing in particular, I was looking at various titles of books, seeing if anything struck my interest. After about 5 seconds, I saw a picture of a turtle on the spine of a book. My reptilian instincts kicked in, and I was immediately drawn to it. I picked it out, and looked at it. It boasted a picture of a smirking turtle with a black eyepatch over one eye, and it was entitled, Small Gods.

As you can see from my previous blog, I will buy anything with a turtle on it. If someone manufactured a Scratch N' Sniff that smelled like week old underwear, marinated in sewage-covered roadkill droppings, but there was a picture of a turtle on it, I'd buy it in a second.

Back to the story. At this time, I had no idea who Terry Pratchett was. I had no idea he was a British writer similar to Douglas Adams, with quite a reputation and an entire ever-growing series of books. So the turtle intrigued me. Now it was time for the book to win me over with its content. As we walked through the store, I read the first few pages, laughing out loud more than once, reading select parts to Erica to gauge her reaction to make sure it wasn't just me being partial to its humor due to the fact that there was a turtle on the cover. And sure enough, she laughed too. I think she sensed that if she didn't put in a good laugh for the book, we'd be there all day trying to decide if I should get it or not. So I decided to take a chance and buy it, and let me tell you...best $7 I've ever spent.

I really can't do this book justice with a short and/or concise plot summary, because I'd be leaving so much out. Lets just say that I've never laughed so much or so hard at any book in my life, ever. And it's not just funny in certain parts either. It is hilarious throughout the entire book; there's never a dull moment.

My favorite character (of course!) is the turtle, who happens to be the great god Om, who accidentally manifests himself into the form of a turtle, and is then too weak to change himself back into a more prestigious creature to inspire his believers. So he's forced to see the world through the eyes of a turtle for three years, until he meets a young yet rather dense worker who believes in him, and the story expands from there, and I won't go any further into it because it's such a fun story that I wouldn't want to spoil it for any potential readers.

Om is the funniest character in the book. For anyone who has seen the show Family Guy, think of Stewie the baby, take his biting sarcasm and wit, remove his swearing and sexual innuendo, place him into the feeble and slow body of a turtle, and increase his comic capability by about 300%, and you have the great god Om.

I could go on and on about this book, and I hope some of you go and read it, especially if you like/love/appreciate turtles and their behavior and mannerisms, as some of the funniest parts are playing off of the fact that this once-powerful god is now shamefully imprisoned in this pathetically weak turtle's body, and the frustration that emanates from these situations is laugh out loud funny.

I have to say it is one of my top three favorite books, if not my favorite. I'll have to read it another time probably before it can claim that prestigious spot.

b) Sphere by Michael Crichton - I promise the rest of my book explanations won't be that long. I first read Sphere back in middle school I think, probably around 6th grade. I have since read it 5 times, and it has been my favorite book for a long time now. It basically got me starting to read other Michael Crichton books and exploring the fiction/science fiction genres. I like Michael Crichton's other books, and I want to read State of Fear when it comes out in paperback, but Sphere's incredibly fascinating story still stays strong in my memory after all these years.

(By the way, don't ever watch the movie version of Sphere. It is horrible. I fell asleep.)

c) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, by Douglas Adams - These first two books in the Hitchhiker's Guide series opened my eyes to great British authors who can write a fun and interesting story while keeping good-quality humor a constant and ever-present force in the novel. Ever since reading Big Trouble by Dave Barry, I was of the impression that most humorous novels have some funny parts scattered throughout the book, but having something funny on every page, oftentimes more than once a page, just was too much to ask for and didn't happen. And I was disappointed with Dave Barry, as I love his columns and other non-fictional books which are mostly his columns in book version, with some original exceptions, like his famous guides to guys, travel, and so on. But his novel just didn't cut it in the humor department.

Enter Britain. Enter writers such as Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett and I'm sure many others whom I have not heard of yet. Douglas Adams made me realize that humor can happen on every page, and Terry Pratchett accentuated that fact by making me laugh even harder on every page. Yes, the first two Hitchhiker's books are hilarious, but I personally am of the opinion that Small Gods beats them both in terms of overall hilarity. But it's a very close call, mind you.

d) Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra by C.S. Lewis - Why not the trilogy? That Hideous Strength just took too long to develop for my tastes. After what seemed like 200-300 pages, they're still slowly building up to the climax, which admittedly, is a fun read, but the trip to get there just was too drawn out for me. But the first two books are fictional/fantasy masterpieces, filled with wonder and exploration and action and fun. I really enjoyed reading them, and I'm sure most everyone has read them at one time or another, so a long explanation isn't needed.

e) The Impatient Turtle by Janette Oke - Yeah, so what? I'm obsessed. I admit it. This was one of my favorite books to read when I was a kid, and was probably part of the reason why I love turtles so much now. It's one of the few books from my childhood that I insist on keeping in the house while almost all of my other childhood books are stashed away in the garage. To be honest, I haven't read it all the way through in a while, so I don't remember the story too well, I just have fond memories of it as a child. And turtles rock.

f) Honorable Mention: Dean Koontz, and pretty much any book he's ever written. I've read probably at least 15 of his novels, and I've enjoyed every single one. He's a fantastic storyteller who usually has some kind of a positive moral at the end of his stories, even though some horrific things can happen to his characters along the way. But the reason he isn't up on the list is because it's 2:30 AM and I don't feel like trying to remember which book of his is my favorite, but it didn't feel right to leave him completely out. So here's to you, Mr. Koontz.

5. People I Will Infect With This Meme:
I don't think it's necessary to infect anyone else on purpose at least. If reading this blog inspires someone to do one of their own to try and make theirs longer than mine or something, then go ahead. Be my guest. And be sure to stop by your local bookstore and pick up a copy of Small Gods by Terry Pratchett. The power of Om compels you!

Flippin' Floyd

2005-09-10T20:05:00.000-07:00

I am forcing myself to blog. I have lots of other things I could be doing at this moment, but I've decided to spend some time trying to fix my "broken blog" as Aaron so candidly put it. I'm curious to see if I remember how to form a complete sentence without succumbing to the frivolous temptation of slamming my fist down on the keyboard for no particular reason.

jhymnjhymn.

Nope.

And before any of you smart alecks contest the fact that I have, in fact, completed two sentences already before battering my keyboard with a barrage of brutal blows, stop thinking so hard.

Erica and I went to the Greek festival over at St. Paul's yesterday because she had to write a report about a specific culture for her anthropology class. Of course, there are the typical booths you see at any festival, carnival, or restaurant with an exceedingly corpulent clientele. We went to those first to look at all the crosses and ornate jewelry they were showing off. As we progressed along one side, I looked across the way to a booth where there were dozens of what appeared to be small rectangular fish tanks. Since Erica already has David IV and I've had my fill of sushi throughout the years, I passed along without giving it much regard.

We continued along, looking at various food, clothing, and jewelry booths, watching a Greek dancing exhibition, and wondering where the games and carnival rides were that the brochure promised. Giving up my hope of finding a bounce house, we headed back towards the entrance to look at the things we had missed on the other side. As we approached the booth where the aforementioned rectangular mini-quariums were, my attention perked when Erica exclaimed, "Sean, look! Turtles!"

As I helped up the poor unfortunate people I plowed over in my attempt to instantaneously place myself from my former turtle-deprived position to a more advantageous turtle viewing point next to the newly christened "Turtle Booth" with utter disregard to the basic properties of matter, namely, that two forms of matter cannot occupy the same space at the same time, I glued my eyes on what were now manifesting themselves in front of my very eyes as tiny turtles!

(For those of you who do not know, turtles are my favorite animal.)

There were dozens of them! Tiny red-eared sliders, no more than two inches in diameter, each in their own colored mini-quarium with gravel and a little plastic plant for decor/exercise. Of course, I was intrigued. But, seeing as I already have Floyd, who up until today has been hibernating...in the middle of summer/beginning of fall...I was reluctant to impulsively buy one. However, contrary to my usually indecisive ways, there was one little guy who stood out immediately to me. He was climbing up his little plant, which is about 3 inches tall, and he made it to the top, and just sat there for a bit, basking in his triumph.

This reminded me of Floyd, who once climbed up to the top of some books on the first level of a large wooden bookcase we have in our house. Some of the books are anywhere from 6-12 inches high, yet somehow, Floyd managed to climb his way to the top of them, only to look around imploringly, wondering who would get him down from this precarious spot.

So naturally, I was immediately drawn to this little turtle, this natural climber. But I still wasn't sure if I should buy one yet. However, after much deliberation, I finally decided that this was going to be the water turtle I've been wanting for a long time. As we walked back to the car to temporarily store my new friend, Erica decided she wanted one too. So we went back, and she picked out a female who happened to be climbing up her plant also, and the next thing I knew, there were two tiny turtles in the car waiting to get to their new homes.

And right now, little Flip the Red-Eared Slider is hanging out between his plastic tree and a flat rock I gave him to bask on, waiting for me to go to a pet store and get him a bigger place so he can have even more glass to bang his shell against in a vain attempt at liberation.

And what does Floyd think of this new addition to the family? He's asleep in my closet.

Floyd and Me In 100 years

2005-07-01T11:26:00.000-07:00

(Floyd is my Russian Tortoise for those of you who don't know)

TORO!! TORO!!!

Err...I mean...

TORTUGA!!! TORTUGA!!!

A Fun Day At Work

2005-06-30T23:54:00.000-07:00

What? Another loser? Trying to scam at Taco Bell? No!

Well, fortunately, not when Sean is working.

Some guy came through the drive-thru in a run-down white-trashish-looking van with 2 other adults in the back, one male, one female. All three individuals appeared to be rather seedy, sprouting seeds of deception and deceit. The driver had a very nice mullet going on, he enjoyed off-handedly telling me crude jokes, and most likely did not have immediate possession of all his "permanent" teeth. His other companions looked equally distrustful and had the appearances of people guilty of a crime they were just about to commit, watching and wondering in anxious anticipation if it would work.

So the driver casually orders three number nines (Supreme Pizza, Breadsticks, Large Drink). I tell him it will take seven minutes for the pizzas to cook. He says that's fine, and decides that he might as well get three chicken quesadillas to eat while they are waiting. So he orders those, along with two...no...four tacos. And that's all. The total comes to over $25 dollars.

He comes up to the window and hands me a credit card. I look at the name, as I always do, mostly for the sake of my own amusement, as I like seeing people with funny names, like Dolly Dalowitz, Robin Moore (Author of the best-selling book entitled "Advanced Shoplifting"), and Ann Drew (Author of the controversial book entitled "Tale of a Transexual Transvestite").

Anyway, the name on the credit card which the guy hands me is Maria Hernandez. We are not required to check for ID with credit card purchases, but whenever someone hands me a credit card for a person of the opposite gender (and in this case, a completely different race too), I get a tad bit suspicious. This situation was especially fishy because the order was so pricey and they seemed to spend without any regard. Plus, no one in the car was Hispanic. I bet none of them have even been to Hispanica before.

But I went ahead, against my better judgment, to slide the card and punch in the amount. The credit card machine went through its duties, and when it got to the part where it says either "Approval" or "Denied", it gave me a big fat "No Stairway!"

So I tried again, in case there was a mistake. Same deal. Both times, I had classified the transaction as "Credit", so I decided I would try "Debit" for kicks, which requires the cardholder to enter his PIN. So I did that, and extended the PINpad out the window, explaining to Mr. Mullet that the credit card machine was rejecting his credit card, so I was trying it as a debit card, so please enter your secret PIN. That shouldn't be a problem, right?

His response was a dismissive one, mumbling that he didn't know what his PIN was. Right. So he says take off everything except the pizza combos. The total still comes to $15+, and by this time, the quesadillas and tacos have already been made. I try "his" credit card again, with the same results. He then says to take off one of the combos and try again. No difference. At this point, I'm pretty convinced this card is stolen, but I'm willing to try one more thing. I tell him that I'll try charging one cent onto the credit card, because maybe, just maybe, Maria is just really low on money. But, as I intuitively suspected, not even one cent could be sucked out of that ill-gotten plastic card.

So I tell him the unfortunate news about poor Maria's card, and he says that it's fine, and that they'll just go to another restaurant. Yeah, good luck. Maybe you'll find one with no credit card security features.

There was one nice thing about all this. It happened after I had already gone on my break and eaten my first dinner. Since the cooks had already finished making the quesadillas, I got to eat an after-dinner-celebratory-farewell-to-the-Apostles-Fast-chicken-quesadilla. Mmmm, heavenly.

The Best Part of Waking Up...

2005-05-23T17:32:00.000-07:00

...evidently isn't all that great unless certain people get their breakfast burritos.

Something needs to be set straight. Just because Taco Bell serves burritos doesn't mean we cater to every type of burrito need. I guess some people just don't know that. Apparently, it's a common misconception that our Taco Bell carries breakfast burritos when in fact, we don't.

1. Last Saturday, I was working from 9-5, and at around 9:30 or so, the first drive-thru customer of my day came, and asked me the following question:

Customer: What do you have for breakfast?
Me: The Taco Bell menu.
Customer: Do you have breakfast burritos?
Me: No we don't...(While I am saying this, he interrupts me and says...)
Customer: I don't see them on the menu.
Me: *rolls eyes*
Customer: Ok, I'll take two breakfast burritos.
Me: We don't have breakfast burritos.
Customer: You don't have breakfast burritos?
Me: No we don't.

And he leaves.

2. The VERY NEXT customer comes through a short while later, and asks the following:

Customer: Do you have breakfast burritos?
Me: No, we don't...

And he leaves.

3. The VERY NEXT customer after that, a woman this time, comes through and asks:

Customer: Do you have coffee?
Me: No we don't, sorry.
Customer: Ok, thanks.

And she leaves.

4. The next customer orders something we actually sell, so that was nice. But the next car to come after him, two ladies, come a-ordering:

Customer: I'll take a small raspberry iced tea and a medium pepsi.
Me: Ok, anything else?
Customer: No thanks.
Me: Ok, $2.35 at the very first window please. Thank you.

So naturally, after my very clear directions, they proceed to drive past the very first window without even glancing at it, so I shout, "Hey! Right here!" The driver stops, backs up, looks at me innocently and says, "Oh, I didn't see you there."

NO KIDDING!! That's what happens when you a) Don't listen to directions, and b) Don't open your eyes and look where you're going. The line, "Oh, I didn't see you there" has about as much validity as saying "Oh, I didn't know that was yours" to the Fire Department after using one of their truck's fire hoses to play with a Slip N' Slide. If I had a nickel for every time someone drove past my window without paying, I'd have enough money to fix a few of the transmissions which will probably retire at an early age due to excessive gear shifting.

I Don't Get No Respect

2005-05-14T20:27:00.000-07:00

No respect at all.

Ever since I've had to say, "Hi, how are you doing today?" to the customers at my Taco Bell, I've gotten the feeling more and more that no one listens and/or no one cares about anything I say when I'm working the drive-thru.

Me: Hi, how are you doing today?
Customer: Just one taco.

Me: Hi, how are you doing today?
Customer: *silence*

About 15 seconds passed, and then apparently the lady in the car rolled her window down because I could now hear the end of what seemed to be an extremely important phone conversation the significance of which I was not worthy or important enough to comprehend at that period of my life and which obviously couldn't be put on hold for half a minute just because she was at the drive-thru. She was most likely confirming her pet Poodle Champion of the World's hairstyling and fecal deodorizer appointment or some similarly illustrious daily chore. The lady in the car said her goodbyes to her equally distinguished counterpart, and then impatiently turned her exceedingly important attention to the order menu, and uttered an indignant "HELLO?!?" as if suddenly I was the one at fault and I was making HER wait.

So I gave her a questioning-as-if-to-say-why-are-you-giving-me-an-attitude? "Hi...?", and she proceeded to dictate her order to me in a condescending manner. So I made her a special burrito, and you'd better believe this one wasn't deodorized.

Of course, not everyone is snobbish to me. Some people do listen to what I say, but just don't have the presence of mind to form a coherent and articulate response.

Me: Hi, how are you doing today?
Customer: Hungry is how I'm doing!

And then some people are too irritable to take a joke.

Me: Hi, how are you doing today?
Customer: Do you have fish tacos yet?
Me: No, sorry, we don't.
Customer: *Assorted grunts and groans* Ok, I'll take a steak taco, no, make it two.

At the window, I jokingly teased him and said in a very lighthearted voice:

Me: Steak is almost like fish!

This customer was quite a surly looking fellow who didn't look like he'd shaven for a few days, and had a cigarette hanging out of one side of his mouth. He looked like the kind of guy who experiences excruciating pain when he smiles, so he maintains a poker faced frown at all times. And apparently, my silly comment that attempted to chip through his hard-nosed exterior into his gooey and potentially-hilarity-filled innards failed, and bounced off only to hit an innocent bystander three miles away, causing him to break out into a fit of laughter and fall down into a nearby busy intersection, causing a chain reaction pileup injuring thirty people, decapitating a very confused and disoriented-looking giraffe, and stubbing the big toe of the very conveniently placed "World's Biggest Foot" Man.

But that is beside the point.

Getting back to the story, his resentful response to what I said was:

Customer: No it isn't.

At that point, I pretty much figured it wasn't worth my time or effort to try and make this guy crack a smile anymore, so I just let the joke die, right next to that poor misplaced giraffe.

Don't Forget to Flush

2005-04-26T12:45:00.000-07:00

Recently, at Taco Bell, we not only have had our automated greeting machine disabled, but we have been given a general rubric of what to say to the customers. Now, we are supposed to say something along the lines of, "Hi, how are you doing today?" to every customer that comes to the drive-thru. I suppose this is nice and all, but does the average customer really care if some random cashier asks how they are doing? Most customers don't even listen to what the drive-thru person says, especially since most of the time they are asked if they would like to try some promotional item that they really don't want. I think I prove my point with the following quote that a customer said to me:

Me: Hi, how are you doing today?
Customer: No thanks.

On a school-related note, I was assigned to write a 14-line sonnet for one of my Brit Lit classes. It has to start with the line "Shall I compare thee to...", and the rest is up to me. I figured that since I haven't been able to have much creative leeway in my assignments this year, that I'd let out all my frustration from having to write "serious" (translation: "boring") essays and reading responses by being completely random, silly, and disgusting for this assignment. Enjoy!

An Ode To Poop

Shall I compare thee to a soggy log
Floating in the murky depths of a porcelain lake?
Thou art slender as a rocket
And as chunky as peanut butter
Thy colors art ever-changing
From breakfast, lunch, and dinner
How refreshing it is to hear your victorious ploop!
And feel the inevitable splash of cold water that follows
Thy aromatic smell flirts with my nostrils
As it wafts its way all throughout the room
Inviting me to look down…
And thus, I must ask this question:
Is that a fecal gold mine, newly born?
Or have I just been eating corn?

What? Blog Up! I Can't Hear You!

2005-04-05T21:35:00.000-07:00

Here is a Taco Bell story that happened a couple days ago at my work. I was hanging out at the first window doing the usual (nothing) when an order came from the drive-thru.

First of all, let me preface this by sharing a terrible situation that happened recently. You know that automated message that some Taco Bell's and other inferior drive-thru restaurants have that asks you if you would like to try such and such an item? Of course you do. Wonderful! That makes the story so much easier to tell. Anyway, we have had that convenient machine ever since I've worked at TB, but just a few days ago, the boss of my boss told us we can't use it anymore, for the ridiculous reason that she wants us to communicate with the customers on a more personal basis.

So the days of having an automated female voice greet you in some foreign tongue which only a few lucky souls who happen to be well versed in the tongue of jibberish can understand, only to have your order taken (hopefully) by someone of a completely different gender and race, are over at my TB. Now, the person doing drive-thru has to greet each customer as soon as he or she or it arrives at the order menu. This is opposed to the normal method of letting the automated voice greet them, and then playing the waiting game to see how long it takes the customer to start ordering before I get bored and start slinging boiling-hot grease from the fryer at them. (I think a cool name for a Catholic-themed restaurant where you give alms instead of paying a tip would be The Deep Friar)

Anyway, back to my other story. A guy had just pulled into the drive-thru with his expensive beemer, and he was driving a nice car too. Miguel, at the second window, greets him over the speaker, and asks what he would like to order. This is what happened:

****Let me preface this by saying that Miguel's headset was working perfectly.****

Miguel: How's it going? How can I help you?
Man: *silence*
Miguel: *waits* Go ahead when you're ready.
Man: *silence*
Miguel: ...Hello??
Man: Hello?
Miguel: Can I help you? *waits* ...Hello?
Man: *silence* ...I'll take 2 grilled stuft burritos with no tomatoes, onions, or peppers.
Me: *thinking* Peppers?
Miguel: Ok, do you want steak, chicken, or ground beef?
Man: ...Hello?
Miguel: *speaks louder* Do you want steak, chicken, or ground beef?
Man: *silence, and then, in a tone that made it seem like he had not heard the question* ...I want 2 grilled stuft steak burritos with no tomatoes, onions, or peppers.
Miguel: Ok, I have 2 grilled stuft steak burritos with no tomatoes or onions.
Man: *silence* ...Hello?
Miguel: Yes, anything else?
Man: *silence* ...Got that?
Miguel: *flabbergasted* Yes sir...
Man: *silence* ...Ok, thanks.

The man then proceeds to drive to the first window. This whole time, I've been crouching down in the doorframe of the office, laughing hysterically, and realizing I would be blogging about this incident later. I get up and walk over to the window while trying to maintain some semblance of composure as the guy says to me, "You can barely hear that thing!" Meanwhile, I'm thinking, "Well actually, I can hear it perfectly well, and so can every other customer that has come through the drive-thru today..." He looked like one of those trendy people who like to listen to rap in increments of 100's on the decibel scale. So he can't hear. Too bad. Turn down your radio next time. We don't need to hear your crappy music from 13 blocks away.

I leave you with a silly joke I thought up while my creative juices were flowing during the writing of this blog:

Why did the tortilla cry out in pain when it ran into a wall?
It stubbed its burrito.

Some Silly Taco Bell Stories

2005-02-22T23:29:00.000-08:00

Must...Get...Back...Into...The...Habit...Of...Blogging...

So here we go!

Impressive

I was taking orders at the second window, within earshot of Thaddus and a few other employees who were making the food. The customer wanted two separate orders, so I took both of the orders, repeated them back to ensure accuracy, and then said,

"It'll be $5.05 and $6.65 respectively at the second window."

The next thing I heard was the sound of Thaddus' jaw dropping as he exclaimed,

"Whoaaaaaa!!! Big word!!"

As I was saying the word "respectively", I was feeling proud that I used a word that added to the sentence so well, but I wasn't expecting any special reaction from anyone really. So the fact that Thaddus practically went into shock over hearing it made me feel like I had done something truly impressive, plus all of the employees who were nearby were amazed and in awe at my exemplary knowledge of the English language, probably because most of them only know a small handful of words in English (Break, Home, What, No, and to a lesser extent, Passport)

So my sarcastic response to Thaddus' remark was,

"I'm not an English major for nothin'!"

There's nothing quite like impressing someone with your extensive vocabulary only to follow up with a nice double negative. P-Dripple would be proud.

I...Uhh...

Customer: Do you have taco salads?
Me: Yes, we do.
Customer: Do they have lettuce in them?
Me: (Thinking to myself) Yes, hence the word "salad".
Me: (Aloud) Yes, they do.

Sometimes I wonder how much trouble I'd get in if people could see me while I'm taking their orders. I'm surprised my eyes don't roll right out of my head sometimes.

You Gotta Wonder...

A customer comes up to the drive-thru, gives his order, I take it and tell him to come to the first window. Naturally, he passes me and goes straight to the second window. One of the other employees over by the second window collects a $20 bill from the customer and brings it back to me, I make the change, and the employee brings it back to the second window only to find that the customer had left with his food already, minus his $8.01 in change. Hellllllooooo?!?

Too Much Information

Lady: (Orders some food for herself) ...and an order of nachos without cheese.
Me: Ok, so you just want a side of chips?
Lady: Yeah.

After I repeat her order and tell her what her total is, she drives up to my window, greets me, and says,

"The chips are for my dog."

I look at her, try my best to act mildly fascinated with this totally unnecessary piece of information she has just given me, and wonder who in their right mind would feed their dog tortilla chips from a fast food restaurant when you could just eat the dog and kill (pun intended) two hunger problems with one stone.

Too Much Information, Part Deux

A week or two ago, I stuck my head out of the drive-thru window and saw a moving truck illegally parked in about 4 parking spaces outside of the store. On the side of the truck was written the name of the business:

"Dungs Moving"

Needless to say, I was glad to hear it. I don't like being constipated either.

Random Humor Test Results

2005-02-11T22:05:00.000-08:00

Thank you all for taking my test and putting up with my absence from blogging. I'm taking three literature classes this semester, 13 units in all, so I haven't had a lot of spare time to devote to blogging. But now I shall commence with the grading of the tests, and rest assured, I have some Taco Bell stories in mind for future blogs.

First of all, here are the correct answers to the test:

1. When was my first blog entry published?
a) January 23th, 2004
b) January 23rd, 2004
c) January 23nd, 2004
d) You have a blog?

2. What is the name of the famous caveman mentioned in my first blog entry?
a) Blog
b) Fluffy
c) Blarg
d) Shaquille O'Neal

3. When is my favorite time to start writing a blog entry?
a) As soon as I wake up, bright and early in the morning.
b) As soon as I wake up, bright and early in the afternoon.
c) After the sun goes down, ensuring that I don't finish until the wee hours of the morning.
d) Whenever the rubber chicken tells me to. (This is a trick. He doesn't tell me when to blog, I tell him when to blog. I'm just the pretty face behind the scenes. He's the real brains of this operation)

4. Who is my favorite superhero?
a) Superman
b) Radioactive Man
c) Mucus Man
d) That little Japanese Guy who can eat over 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes.

5. Choose the correct answer to this sentence: "Hi, would you like any hot or mild sauce?"
a) Yes, please.
b) No, thank you.
c) Yeah, I want a LOT of sauce.
d) Gee, your hair smells delicious.

6. Have I ever actually hit anyone with a tire iron?
a) Yes
b) No (Not yet...)
c) Once, but he deserved it.
d) Who hasn't?

7. What was my favorite TV show when I was a little kid?
a) Seseme Street
b) Sewing with Fran
c) Static
d) Wheel of Fortune

8. What is a "River Snake"
a) The name of a river.
b) The name of a snake.
c) Poop.
d) A special ingredient that rude customers get in their burrito. (Just kidding...or am I?)

9. I have never lost money from people trying to scam me at work.
a) True
b) False
c) All of the above
d) None of the above

10. I have been known to wear a piano at formal occasions from time to time.
a) True
b) False (I can't find one in my size)

11. Do monkeys really have pockets?
a) Yes, stupid.
b) No.
c) Of course, they need to put their Ex-Lax somewhere.
d) Yes, otherwise they wouldn't be able to use this pick-up line: "Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"
All answers are acceptable.

12. Fill in the blank: What is my tortoise's name? Floyd.

13. Fill in the blanks: Shya! And monkeys could fly out of my butt.

14. What is the most carbonated mountain range in the world?
a) The Rocky Mountains
b) The Himalayas
c) The Appalachians
d) The Sierra Nevadas

15. BEEEEEEEEEEEP?
a) BEEP! (Loosely translated: What?)
b) BEEEEEP! (Loosely translated: What did?)
c) BEEEEEEEEEP! (Loosely translated: What did you?
d) BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! (Loosely translated: What did you say?)

16. Fill in the blank: What is the absolute coolest rap persona ever created? P-Dripple of the Wet Side Slacks.

17. Which of the following is NOT an actual comment I received from one of my fellow college students about my story, Darkside?
a) I like how it is so suddle.
b) I like the honesty you can tell this character isnt completely sain.
c) Best...Story...EVER! (Though this would have been a cool comment to get)
d) I came in late to class and only herd 1/4 of it. and new what this story was aimin toward. Awsome delivery soft and the begging hard punch in the middle and smooth drive at the end.

18. What is that thing with the sauce on it?
a) Your guess is as good as mine.
b) The Quesadilla.
c) The Bean Burrito.
d) The Chalupa that one of the employees sneezed on. (One of the employees actually did this, and was about to try and cover it up and use it anyway, but I was appaled at that and made him throw it away and make a new one)

19. How old am I?
a) 4 (Mentally)
b) 15
c) 20 (Physically)
d) Whatever age my fake ID says I am.

23. Extra Credit: What number am I thinking of right now?
a) 3
b) 157
c) 1117
d) WRONG!!!
Congratulations to Isaiah for giving the best answer to this question, but he called me an idiot, so his answer is nullified.

So, according to my calculations, these are the results:

1st Place: Erica
2nd Place: Aaron
3rd Place: Isaiah
Most Creative: Beniy
Most Anonymous: Scot
Honorable Mention: Grace (Hey, you got 2 out of 2 right, you got a perfect score!)

Congratulations Erica!!! For your prize, you get a cookie. However, you must collect it from the "Keeper of the Cookies". Good luck getting it from him, I don't think he'll be very keen on giving it up...

Celebrating One Year of Random Humor

2005-01-24T20:22:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, January 23rd, one year ago, was the day I started this blog with the main purpose of sharing some of my best writings-to-date. Little did I know at the time that it would develop into something that I would spend countless hours "working" on. However, once I started running out of previously written essays and stories, my blogs started getting more and more sparse, because I wasn't sure what to write about. There was even one time where I didn't blog for a month and a half.

But little by little, I started thinking of new things to write about, to the point where I would start having at least 5-6 fairly large blogs per month. I started writing about things that happened in my own life, from experiences at my job at Taco Bell, to getting my wisdom teeth pulled, to my studly tortoise, and many things in between. I began to realize this wasn't something I was just going to use to regurgitate old essays on, I was actually going to have to write and be creative on a regular basis! This threw a proverbial wrench in my normal schedule of writing creatively, the frequency of which fell somewhere between the range of "Never" and "Only When Forced".

But I have immensely enjoyed writing all 43 of my blog entries, this being my 44th. Looking back, I would never have imagined that I could have written all that I did. A few weeks ago, I went through and read all of my previous blogs, and thought of a potentially fun idea: Make an interactive test about the content of this blog where readers can use the comments section to take the test. It could have multiple choice, true/false, short answer, and fill in the blank questions, but knowing me, it wouldn't be your average test. So I put together a 22 question test, including one extra credit question for you overachievers, and without further ado, here it is...

Sean's Cumulative Examination, Measuring the Retention of One Year of Random Humor.

Directions:
-To take the test, click on the Comments link at the end of this blog, choose the answer that you think is correct for each question, and be sure to leave your name so I can recognize the people who do the best on my test in a future blog and possibly reward them with large cash prizes, and maybe a cookie! Oh, and by the way, just like any other public school test, cheating is not only condoned but recommended, because that way you have an excuse to read some of my classic blogs in order to find the answers. Good luck!

1. When was my first blog entry published?
a) January 23th, 2004
b) January 23rd, 2004
c) January 23nd, 2004
d) You have a blog?

2. What is the name of the famous caveman mentioned in my first blog entry?
a) Blog
b) Fluffy
c) Blarg
d) Shaquille O'Neal

3. When is my favorite time to start writing a blog entry?
a) As soon as I wake up, bright and early in the morning.
b) As soon as I wake up, bright and early in the afternoon.
c) After the sun goes down, ensuring that I don't finish until the wee hours of the morning.
d) Whenever the rubber chicken tells me to.

4. Who is my favorite superhero?
a) Superman
b) Radioactive Man
c) Mucus Man
d) That little Japanese Guy who can eat over 50 hot dogs in 12 minutes.

5. Choose the correct answer to this sentence: "Hi, would you like any hot or mild sauce?"
a) Yes, please.
b) No, thank you.
c) Yeah, I want a LOT of sauce.
d) Gee, your hair smells delicious.

6. Have I ever actually hit anyone with a tire iron?
a) Yes
b) No
c) Once, but he deserved it.
d) Who hasn't?

7. What was my favorite TV show when I was a little kid?
a) Seseme Street
b) Sewing with Fran
c) Static
d) Wheel of Fortune

8. What is a "River Snake"
a) The name of a river.
b) The name of a snake.
c) Poop.
d) A special ingredient that rude customers get in their burrito.

9. I have never lost money from people trying to scam me at work.
a) True
b) False
c) All of the above
d) None of the above

10. I have been known to wear a piano at formal occasions from time to time.
a) True
b) False

11. Do monkeys really have pockets?
a) Yes, stupid.
b) No.
c) Of course, they need to put their Ex-Lax somewhere.
d) Yes, otherwise they wouldn't be able to use this pick-up line: "Is that a banana in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

12. Fill in the blank: What is my tortoise's name? ___________

13. Fill in the blanks: Shya! And _______ could fly out of my _______.

14. What is the most carbonated mountain range in the world?
a) The Rocky Mountains
b) The Himalayas
c) The Appalachians
d) The Sierra Nevadas

15. BEEEEEEEEEEEP?
a) BEEP!
b) BEEEEEP!
c) BEEEEEEEEEP!
d) BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!

16. Fill in the blank: What is the absolute coolest rap persona ever created? _______________________.

17. Which of the following is NOT an actual comment I received from one of my fellow college students about my story, Darkside?
a) I like how it is so suddle.
b) I like the honesty you can tell this character isnt completely sain.
c) Best...Story...EVER!
d) I came in late to class and only herd 1/4 of it. and new what this story was aimin toward. Awsome delivery soft and the begging hard punch in the middle and smooth drive at the end.

18. What is that thing with the sauce on it?
a) Your guess is as good as mine.
b) The Quesadilla.
c) The Bean Burrito.
d) The Chalupa that one of the employees sneezed on.

19. How old am I?
a) 4
b) 15
c) 20
d) Whatever age my fake ID says I am.

20. Short Answer: What would be a good name for the Rubber Chicken that sits on my desk?

21. Short Answer: Out of all of my blog entries, which one(s) is/are your favorite(s)?

22. Short Answer: What do you like most about my blog?

23. Extra Credit: What number am I thinking of right now?
a) 3
b) 157
c) 1117
d) WRONG!!!

Taco Bell Stories Aplenty

2005-01-09T21:10:00.000-08:00

The last two days at work have been rather enjoyable. And I can think of only two words to describe why: Happy Hour. I...uhh...oh wait. Wrong job. What I meant to say was: Crazy Customers. That's right. Those two little words can make the difference between a fun day at work and a boring day at work for me. Anyone can be a normal customer at a drive-thru restaurant. But few customers are actually worthy of earning the title of "Crazy Customer", for it takes a special type of person to be able to set dignity aside and make a fool out of himself for my entertainment. And if they are lucky, they are bestowed the honor of having their story immortalized into eternal blogdom. And now, enough with the formalities, lets get to the stories!!!

Taco Bell Story #1 - "Clueless"

I am at the first window, collecting the money for an order. A truck pulls up to the menu, and Miguel takes his order at the second window. As I finish giving the change for the first order, I look out the window and see the truck stopped about 5 feet farther than he should have been. The driver is yelling his order at the speaker which is several feet to his left. Then, amazingly, when Miguel reads his order back, the man cannot hear Miguel very well, probably because the speaker is pointed at his rear tire.

So after Miguel repeats his order in vain, the man pulls up to my window, and asks me to repeat his order. So I comply, and the following conversation begins between us...

Note: The words in parenthesis are the thoughts which are going through my mind as this conversation progresses.

Him: Can I add a drink?
(No.)
Me: Sure.
Him: Iced tea?
(Here we go...)
Me: We only have Raspberry iced tea, is that ok?
Him: Oh, is that flavored?
(It's uhh...raspberry flavored. Duh?)
Me: Yeah...
Him: Oh, well give me a Diet then.
(Because you're a pansy?)
Me: Ok. It's $11.14.
Him: *Starts to drive away to the second window*
(Oh good, he's leaving, I...wait a second...)
Me: *Yells* You pay here!!

At this point, he had already driven forward about 5 feet or so. He tried to back up, but another truck had already placed an order and was behind him on his tail. So he sat in his truck for 20 seconds or so getting his money out, and finally opened his door, walked over to my window, and said...

Him: Here's $11.05. Keep the change.
(Gee, I'd love to, if you had given me more than the actual amount you owe!!!)
Me: Uhh...Ok, whatever.

At that point, I really didn't care about losing 9 cents. It was a small price to pay to get him out of my drive-thru.

Taco Bell Story #2 - "Listening Skills"

Again, Miguel was taking an order at the second window, and when the customer seemed to be done with his order, Miguel asked:

Miguel: Anything to drink?
Customer: No, just a medium Pepsi.

Taco Bell Story #3 - "Nice Try"

Last Friday, Miguel was joking around with me and he asked if I wanted to join the army since one of our former employees left to do just that a few months ago. I said, "No, that's ok," and he laughed and stopped asking me shortly thereafter.

Later on in the night, business was slow, so I was talking with Miguel to pass the time, and into the dining room come three army guys dressed in their military attire. Miguel and I just looked at each other and laughed. Miguel made some comment like, "They're here for you!"

To make things easier, these three guys will be called Guy 1, Guy 2, and Guy 3.

So I take Guy 1's order while trying not to laugh too much, and sure enough, as soon as he finishes, he looks at my name tag and says:

Guy 1: So Sean, you ever thought of joining the army?
Me: *In a casual, nonchalant tone of voice* No, not really.

When I said that, Guy 2 burst into laughter. Guy 1 looked back at Guy 2 and gave him an incredibly menacing look as if to say, "Shut up! My commanding officer says I need 4 more recruits or else I'll be a test subject for an army experiment entitled "The Human Pincushion".

Guy 2, recoiling from the look Guy 1 gave him, replied, "What? That was funny!"

They didn't ask me if I wanted to join the army anymore after that. Lucky them.

Taco Bell Story #4 - "An Odd Fellow"

This time, I'm taking orders at the second window, and another cashier, Tony, is collecting money at the first window. I take a man's order, he pays, and comes to the second window. He is a fairly regular customer, and is quite eccentric and loud. His wife/girlfriend is sitting in the passenger seat, and is usually with him when they come through the drive-thru. I give him his food, he asks for more sauce, I give him more sauce, and he asks me what my name is. I tell him my name is Sean, he gives me some generic compliment, and takes off.

A couple of hours later, I am still taking orders at the second window. I take a man's order, but I cannot see who it is. When he is done ordering, the man says:

Man: Hey Sean.
Me: *confused* What's up?
Man: Hey, you're doing a great job, keep up the good work.
Me: Uhh, thanks...

I have no idea who it is, so I go over to the first window thinking it's one of my friends, and see that it's the same guy as before. I greet him by saying:

Me: Back already?
Him: Yeah, I brought my other girlfriend.

So being the curious person that I am, I looked in the truck at the person sitting in the passenger seat, and saw someone different than the lady who was there 2 hours ago. In fact, he looked quite different than before.

Now, I realize that the driver was most likely joking, and I thought it was pretty funny that he had just called another man his girlfriend, and that the "girlfriend" guy had a rather nervous expression on his face when he heard his "friend" call him that. So I went with it.

Me: Oh! She's quite a looker!

Both of them laughed at that one, and I was so deafened by my own wit that I didn't really hear what he said in response to that, but drawing from my past experiences of taking that guy's orders and talking with him, I'm pretty sure I didn't miss too much. At least he didn't ask for more sauce the second time around, because I forgot my tire iron at home. (If you get this joke, congratulations! You are a Sean's Random Humor Veteran! If you don't get it, looks like you've got some studying to do before the big test that's coming up...that's right, you don't think that this blog is all fun and games, do you?)

Warning: Do Not Read This Blog

2005-01-04T02:02:00.000-08:00

First of all, a formal belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all. And if any of you don't celebrate Christmas or are Chinese, my humble apologies, but get over it. I'm not politically correct.

For Christmas, one of the presents I received from my parents was an iPod Mini. For those of you who don't know, an iPod is a fancy MP3 player (If you don't know what that is, you're probably Amish, so what are you doing using a computer to read this blog in the first place?) that is made by Apple Computer. Yes, I know what you're thinking, and no, amazingly, it doesn't suck. It can hold up to 4 GB of music, or in layman's terms, more music than any normal person could ever want to listen to. And that's just the mini version. The regular iPod holds as much as 40 GB of music, or in layman's terms, you'll go deaf before you listen to all the music you can put on it.

So the iPod is revolutionary in the sense that it can hold so many songs, is relatively hassle-free, and costs about a hundred dollars more than it's worth. Plus, you can buy some really laughable accessories for it, like an iPod holder for your car cupholder. Now all of your troubles are over! Instead of just harmlessly putting your iPod in the cupholder itself, you can spend $39.95 and place this device in your car cupholder, set your iPod on it, and spend the rest of your time staring at the stupidest purchase you've ever made.

I have around 400 songs on my iPod Mini right now, and it's only half full. And I have to say I'm very pleased with it so far. Though honestly, I was a little wary of it when I first installed the iPod software on my computer and read the disclaimer:

"THE APPLE SOFTWARE IS NOT INTENDED FOR USE IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SYSTEMS, LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES OR OTHER EQUIPMENT IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF THE APPLE SOFTWARE COULD LEAD TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE."

Wait. So what they're saying is this thing costs $250, and you can't even use it to operate a nuclear facility?!? Great, just great. And what good is an MP3 player if you can't use it to power a life support system? Oh well, money buys less and less nowadays it seems.

But seriously, how litigious are we if a company has to write something like that on a disclaimer for a device that solely plays music? What idiot would use an MP3 player to operate air traffic control? I suppose I could see them being used as a last resort by air traffic controllers instead of those little flags since the iPod Mini comes in lots of different colors, like blue, green, pink, orange, strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, tutti-frutti, oh-rutti, a wop bop a loo bop a lop bam bam. But besides that, I see no reason to write such an insane and irrational disclaimer. Just say, "If you use this device for anything other than playing music, and something goes wrong, we are not responsible for your ignorance, stupid."

And this isn't just specific to Apple Computers either. Not even close. My mom bought one of those incredibly soft and comfortable pillows with the miniature beads inside of them, and it had a tag on it. On the tag, the very first line read:

Warning: Do not use for sleeping.

And then, a few lines down, it said:

For decorative purposes only.

Again, maybe I just don't understand the retarded mentality behind this, but it seems to me if you buy an incredibly cozy pillow for $10, you aren't just buying it for its looks. Most people don't buy pillows just to set them aside and stare lovingly at them, wondering what it must feel like to rest their head on it. You buy a pillow to sleep on it for goodness sake. What happens when you're really tired, and the only pillow nearby is the pillow of forbidden sleep? Will you be brave enough to defy the almighty tag and willingly refuse to heed its dire warnings? Or will the suspense be so great that you must succumb to its will and put off slumber until you can find a non-decorative pillow that is actually designed for sleeping?

Who cares? I'm going to sleep.

Breaking News!!

2005-01-01T20:32:00.000-08:00

Over the last couple of days, Southern California has been fiercely hit by the most dreaded duo of natural disasters: Long Waiting Lines to Return Unwanted Christmas Presents, and The Realization That California is Going to Slowly Sink into the Pacific Ocean If We Don't Get in Shape After All The Food We Ate During the Holidays. Wait a minute, those are man-made problems, and trivial ones at that. Actually, SoCal has been recently battered by this catastrophic couple: Rain and Wind.

That's right, once again it has rained in California, causing great discomfort and inconvenience to the locals who just took their Urban Onroad Hummers to the car wash. And not only was there rain, but it was accompanied by its good friend, wind, which caused several innocent branches and leaves to dismember themselves from their tree sweet tree and to all be hurled seemingly on top of my car. I guess the next time the only available parking space lies below a dirty tree, I'll just park in the middle of the street. That'll teach those trees to thoughtlessly trigger their tree trash to tumble. (WooHOO!! 12-word alliteration extravaganza!)

Actually, by California's standards, we're experiencing some pretty heavy rain and strong winds. However, by the rest of the world's standards, we're just experiencing some light sprinkling and a slight breeze, also commonly known as "God's Sneeze". I saw on the news that a tornado actually touched down in Inglewood a few days ago. They were classifying it as the weakest type of tornado possible in terms of size and intensity, yet it was still the top story on the news today. In the rest of the country, it would most likely be dismissed by most people and classified as a "Drip N' Draft" or a "Bad Hair Day".

I think this is California's way of trying to feel sorry for itself, because we don't have any real problems to complain about. Even our earthquakes are usually nothing compared to some of the big ones throughout history in Japan and especially the recent disaster in Asia. In fact, California has absolutely nothing to worry about. The only natural disaster we have hanging over our heads is the fabled big earthquake that is supposed to happen anytime now. It's supposed to be the earthquake to end all earthquakes, the biggest one in California's history, so naturally, it was given an extremely clever and momentous name: "The Big One".

If you ask me, I think that "The Big One" is just an elaborate scare-tactic used by seismologists in order to keep their jobs in demand. They know there's no huge earthquake coming anytime soon, so they just make up a bunch of information like "seismic readings" and "scientific facts" and pass them off as the truth. And each time they predict that "The Big One" will occur, they are always wrong and they get one step closer to becoming as unreliable as the weatherman.

So until we get hit by "The Big One" and finally receive our time in the disaster spotlight, we have to make a big deal out of a little rain and wind - meanwhile, the rest of the world is laughing at us for being wimps, while they are being swept away by a 50 foot tidal wave which was started by an earthquake that measured 16.7 out of a possible 1-10 on the Richter Scale and which is propelled by a hurricane consisting mostly of air, water, smallpox, and several rusty chainsaws...while walking uphill through 40 miles of snow...AND THEY LIKED IT DAG-NABBIT!!!!

After such an occurance, for example, the Indonesian news would probably casually mention towards the end of the newscast that there was a small oceanic disturbance earlier today which was caused by a slight shifting of the crustal region accompanied by some minor drizzling, modest winds, premature pimpling, and minimal loss of limbs.

On a typical Californian news channel, that exact same event would be the tragic top story. It would look something like this:

Anchorman: Our top story tonight: A tidal wave of death and destruction wreaked havoc today. It was caused by the biggest earthquake in the history of mankind, which opened up great gaping chasms and swallowed innocent civilians alive. Those who managed to not be swept away by the tidal wave or kept from being eaten alive by the earth were carried up into a massively powerful hurricane which was believed to have the ability to cause your body to break out in festering sores and had the superintelligence to manufacture heavy yet shoddy machinery. The end is near people! You must listen to me!! We haven't much time!

Speaking of listening, I am reminded of something that happened at work a few days ago in the drive-thru. I was ready to take the order, but the lady wanted to ask me a question first...

Lady: Do you have bottled water?
Me: No, we don't.
Lady: Ok, I'll take 3 of those.

Obserlizations and Generavations

2004-12-23T01:14:00.000-08:00

After having worked at Taco Bell for over two years now, I feel like I am pretty well qualified to make some generalizations of certain types of customers that I have noticed. Please remember that I mean no harm by these and that they are simply for entertainment purposes. If at any point you find yourself being insulted by my words, please punch your monitor in anger and get over it.

There are at least four major ethnic groups that come to Taco Bell. I'm sure there are more, considering the fact that Southern California is home to what seems like approximately 20 billion different races, most of which have either eaten or worked at McDonalds. You know it's getting bad when you pull up to a drive-thru restaurant and see things like "Baba Ghanoush" or "Khau Kalash" on the menu, and you are asked if you would like some hummus with that.

The four major ethnic groups that I see in the drive-thru are:

White
Black
Asian
Mexican

Let's start with the whitey-tighties. White customers span a broad range of the social structure, from rich to middle-class to poor to Wal-Mart Employee.

Many times, white drive-thru customers are distracted by many things, including kids, cell phones, driving, eating, putting on makeup, trying to find the location of their wallet/purse, trying to remember to ask for more mild/hot/fire sauce than they'll ever use, etc...

Cell phones, however, seem to be one of the main distractions for most white male and female customers, as you can see by this fictional dialogue of a customer pulling up to the drive-thru:

Customer: *talking on cell phone* Yeah honey, I'm on my way to pick up your industrial size pantyhose...I'm at the drive-thru right now...I'm at Taco Bell...No I didn't pick up Timmy yet...No I don't think you look fat...Honey, really, I've gotta go now...I have to order my food...No I'm not getting you twenty tacos...What do you mean it's just a light snack? That's enough food to last me a week!...Yes, I know it's glandular...Ok, I need to order now...BYE!

Me: *sleeping*

Customer: Hello? Hellllllo? Hello?!?!

Me: Hi, welcome to the Taco Bell Phone Booth, how can I help you?

Next, we have our black customers. One thing I've noticed that is almost always true about them is that they love anything that is not good for them. They will ask for extra meat, extra cheese, extra sour cream, extra everything. Sometimes I think we should offer little packets of Crisco instead of taco sauce for those people who just aren't getting enough cholesterol in their diet.

Also, black customers will often ask for fruity sodas, like Fruit Punch, Hi-C, Lemonade, Orange, Purple, OranguTang, and other sugary drinks. So basically, black customers will typically order the most unhealthy, cholesterol-filled, and/or sugary food they can get their hands on.

Coming in at number three are the Asian customers, or should I say, Asian customer. For some reason, many Asians do not pronounce the letter "s" when it used at the end of a word to show plurality. This can make it especially hard for the person taking their order, because on top of the lost "s", Asian accents are not the easiest accents to understand sometimes, so this oftentimes results in some greatly botched orders.

Fictitious Example:

Customer: I want two taco, three burrito no onion, two cheese "qwessadilluh", and two coke.

Me: Ok, what size Pepsi's did you want?

Customer: No Pepsi! Coke!!

Me: We don't have Coke.

Customer: Ok fine, two medium Pepsi.

Me: Ok, so I have a taco, a green burrito with no onions, a quesadilla, and two medium Pepsi's.

Customer: NOOO!!! Two taco, three burrito, two quesadilla, two Coke...or Pepsi!

Me: Ok, would you like any hummus with that?

Last but certainly not least, we have our good friends, the Mexicans. Oftentimes, Mexican families are very big and have a lot of mouths to feed, so they come to the drive-thru looking for a lot of food, and even more hot sauce. And since they are coming to a Mexican restaurant, many times they are under the false impression that the drive-thru order taker can speak fluent Spanish. Take myself for example. I can speak enough Spanish to take most orders, but when they start using really complicated vocabulary and phrases, sometimes there can be some problems.

Customer: Me da tres burrito supremes sin cebollas, un taco con crema, dos tacos suaves con pollo, y dos Cokas medianas sin hielo. (Give me three burrito supremes without onions, a taco with sour cream, 2 chicken soft tacos, and two medium Cokes without ice.)

Me: Algo mas Senorita? (Anything else Ma'am?)

Customer: Yo soy un hombre!!! (I'm a man!)

Me: Lo siento Senor! Me encanta su perro! (I'm sorry sir! I love your dog!)

Customer: Mande?!? (What?!?)

Me: Me gusta bailar. (I like to dance.)

Customer: Da me mi comida! Andale! (Give me my food! Hurry up!)

Me: Salud! (Gesundheit!)

Lastly, I have one pet peeve that I have come to realize over the years, and it isn't specific to any particular race of customers. I hate it when people lick their fingers in order to separate their money. I mean, I can understand how it does help, and it's fine if people can do it while controlling the amount of saliva they are spreading around that dollar bill which I am going to have to touch. But what I hate is when people generously lick their thumb, as one would do if there was some spilled BBQ sauce on it, smear it all over the bill, and eagerly hand it to me as if they think I'm just waiting to touch their dinero drool.

In fact, I'd prefer that they smear BBQ sauce on the money instead. At least that way I could have something to eat while I'm waiting to go on my break.

How To Age 5 Years In 5 Seconds And Still Look Young

2004-12-15T21:18:00.000-08:00

Last Tuesday, I was talking to one of my bosses at work, Reyna. I don't remember what we were talking about, but at one point, she asked me how old I was. This is how the conversation went:

Reyna: How old are you? 15?
Me: *raises eyebrows*
Reyna: 16?
Me: *blank stare*
Reyna: 17?
Me: *blank stare*
Reyna: 18?
Me: *starts to laugh*
Reyna: 19?
Me: *shakes head*
Reyna: 20?
Me: Do I look 15 to you?
Reyna: *laughs* Well, I don't know.
Me: I'm 20.
Reyna: *looks surprised* Really? You look younger.

Maybe that's why kids seem to be magnetically drawn to me, because I look so young that they think I'm one of them. I even took out my wallet and showed Reyna my driver's license, because she didn't believe I was 20.

I guess I should be flattered, but I'm just confused as to why she started at 15. Taco Bell doesn't even hire at 15, unless they are illegal aliens with fake IDs, then it's fair game.

In fact, other people at my work have asked me what high school I go to. And when I tell them I'm in college, they are surprised that someone as wacky as I am at work can sit still long enough to even attend clown college.

Speaking of college, did I mention...?

THE SEMESTER IS OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SCHOOL IS OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!! PARTY TIME!!!!!!!!!!!! EXCELLENT!!!!!!!!!!! WOO WOO WOO WOO WOO *PICK SLIDE*

Illiteracy For Dummies

2004-12-13T18:55:00.000-08:00

Let me preface this by saying that I love to read and write. I taught myself how to read at an early age, and though I haven't been reading as much as I would like lately, I still enjoy the experience of reading a book cover-to-cover, which is the style nowadays. I've enjoyed writing since 11th grade, when I wrote the poo-flinging monkey story, and I've been writing more seriously ever since I started this blog, which was nearly a year ago.

I guess I just have a knack for reading and writing. I don't know how else to explain it. All I know is, I must have something at least remotely special, because from what I've seen in my creative writing class this semester, reading and writing does not come naturally to a lot of people.

Take for instance our good friend, who will henceforth be called Evian. Or should I say, evïaN?Evian's writing talent has been mentioned on this blog once before, in my "The Grammar Police are on Duty" blog. He is a bright young man in my class who wrote the following educated comment about my short story, Darkside.

He wrote: "I came in late to class and only herd 1/4 of it. and new what this story was aimin toward. Awsome delivery soft and the begging hard punch in the middle and smooth drive at the end."

So when I heard that Evian was going to have his own short story read in class, I simply couldn't wait. And believe me, it did not disappoint. Well, grammatically, it was a travesty and an insult to the entire English language and all things sacred, but in the terms of being nonsensical and absolutely laughable to read, it did not disappoint.

Before I get to the main point of this blog, I just wanted to share some actual quotes from Evian's story, and analyze them. Rest assured that I have proofread these and they appear on this page exactly as they were "written" by Evian.

"We awoke in the morning so tired from the week we woke up at 12:00pm we went to hike up to a mountain that was only 20 minutes from the cabin and we toke two roles of Film in each camera we had two."

"We awoke in the morning so tired from the week"
OK STOP!!! The sentence actually makes sense up to this point, and is grammatically correct, more or less. Actually, compared to the rest of the story, this is a Pulitzer Prize quality sentence. But no, Evian had to continue on...

"We awoke in the morning so tired from the week we woke up at 12:00pm"
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but since when did 12:00 pm, AKA "noon", become "the morning"? I was under the impression that 12:00 pm was the start of a time of day called "the afternoon", also known as when Sean prefers to wake up. Personally, I don't think that the day should start until 12:00 pm, to ensure that all us night owls get enough sleep every night. But like I say, sleep is for the weak.

"We awoke in the morning so tired from the week we woke up at 12:00pm we went to hike up to a mountain that was only 20 minutes from the cabin"
It is unfortunate that poor Evian had to type this masterpiece on a computer that was made before punctuation was invented. Otherwise, this essay might actually make an itsy-bitsy, teensy-weensy, itty-bitty, teeny-weeny bit of sense.

"...and we toke two roles of Film in each camera we had two."
First off, if you write like that, film isn't the only thing you're toking. I guess all that talk about film and cameras made Evian confused and thought he was talking about movie roles for a second. And why he took the time to capitalize Film when the rest of the sentence is already beyond repair baffles me.

Although I am impressed that he stayed in the past tense throughout the entire sentence. I'll give him that much.

As if that sentence wasn't bad enough, it is time for quite possibly the most ambiguous sentence ever written, courtesy of Evian.

"The wolf made a weird growl like two snowboarders around November I knew it was close to Christmas."

I love this sentence. Let's take a look at this as it is literally written.

First off, we have the wolf. The wolf made a weird (very descriptive word choice there, Evian) growl. The growl sounded like two snowboarders. Not only did it sound like two snowboarders, but it sounded like two snowboarders during the month of November, implying that snowboarders make different growling noises depending on what month it is. Because the narrator knows what the weird growl of two snowboarders in November sounds like, he is able to discern that Christmas is close, because he is also equipped with the knowledge that Christmas occurs sometime around the month of November.

Believe it or not, Evian wrote a 7 page double spaced story, with sentences just like those. What's even more amazing is that he actually figured out how to include double spacing in his paper when he can't even figure out how to use a comma.

Which brings me to my point. How can people get so far in school and yet be so ignorant when it comes to writing a simple sentence that doesn't contain glaring errors such as these? So I thought about it. I think the reason is that they goofed off too much in their earlier years of education, so that if and when they actually get to college, they are so far behind that they are actually more ignorant now than they were several years ago. So I think I may have come up with a solution.

Continue teaching English classes in junior high and high school for the few students who actually come to school to learn. But, in addition, for the less motivated students who maybe don't do as well in their English classes because they don't take the time or effort to do the work and learn the material, require them to take a class in the ever-growing field of Illiteracy. In this course, students will be taught how not to read and write, and they will be assigned homework requiring them to not read or write at all.

Now, you may be wondering what my reasoning for this is. As you know, students hate homework, just like cats hate dogs, fat people hate stairs, democrats hate republicans, ignorance hates knowledge (What? I didn't mean anything by putting those last two sets right next to each other! How dare you suggest such a thing!), and so forth. And if you are a fat democratic teacher who loves dogs, I'm sorry, but no one likes you.

Anyway, my reasoning for wanting courses in Illiteracy taught in school is that the students who don't do their work in school will be totally thrown off by this class. Their rebellious nature will become so confused because they want to do the exact opposite of what the teacher wants, but in this case, the teacher wants them to learn poorly and do nothing, so what are they going to do? Naturally, if they truly want to keep their rebellious allure, they'll have to do the opposite of what the teacher wants. That means they have to learn the correct way to read and write, and to practice reading and writing outside of class since their assigned homework is to not read or write.

Because you see, teenagers, for the most part, are idiots. And seeing as how I'm now 20, I can finally say this without insulting myself. I hated being associated with the word teenager, because it had such negative connotations that I didn't follow, like hating your parents and doing drugs for example, and I didn't like being blindly put in that generalization since those things didn't apply to me.

But anyway, back to my plan. Since teenagers are too busy trying to act cool, and since rebelling is cool, they'll get so caught up in rebelling that before they know it, the semester will be over and they'll have done more homework and learned more in their Illiteracy class than in all previous grades combined. It's almost too simple.

And for the people who don't feel the need to rebel in order to be accepted, they can continue on taking their normal classes and learning their way to college, so they can be the ones laughing at the "cool" rebellious kids who have suddenly made the awkward transition into "stupid" young adults. I'm so glad I'm not cool.

Adolescence

2004-12-09T21:56:00.000-08:00

Last Tuesday, my two plays that I wrote were acted out in front of my creative writing class. "Meet the Blogs", and "Adolescence". I have never heard my teacher laugh so hard during the entire semester as she did when "Meet the Blogs" was read and acted out by a few of the students. She was laughing uncontrollably during a few parts. She said that she loved the Volkswheel part, and she really cracked up at the "stoned" part. Gee, I wonder why? At the end of the Blog play, the whole class let out a long, "Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwww".

The entire class really enjoyed both plays, and I had several students come up to me during the break and after class to say how much they enjoyed them and how good they were and how funny they were. One of the girls who acted out the Blog play told me how easy it was to read.

So, before I say anything more about my second play, Adolescence, here it is.

Adolescence

While walking around the grounds of a local middle school, three friends are talking. Fred, Billy, and Wayne have known each other since elementary school, and have hung out with each other nearly everyday for the last several years. They are still at that tender age where they are trying to figure out how to be cool and accepted by others, especially girls, yet, like most teenagers, they don’t have the slightest clue about how to be “cool”.

Billy: So…what did you end up doing with all those goose feathers?
Wayne: We chased down that Johnson kid when he was riding his bike home and glued them on him.
Fred: Stupid nerd. He got what was coming to him...Always wearing those stupid glasses.
Wayne: Yeah seriously, we should have made him eat the feathers instead.
Billy: Why do you guys always pick on little kids like that? What did he ever do to you?
Fred: He breathes my air, doofus. I don’t share my air with nerds.
Wayne: Yeah, he’s a little punk, he wouldn’t let me copy his homework today, so Mrs. Bungmeyer sent me to detention for not turning in my 17th straight assignment.
Fred: And I saw him eating an apple the other day. An apple! Give me a break, I’m surprised his mom doesn’t follow him around school so she can change his diaper too.
Billy: What’s wrong with apples?
Fred: Apples are fruit. Fruit is nerd food. If you eat apples, you are a nerd. Do I need to draw you a diagram?
Wayne: Hey look, there’s Donna!
Fred: Oooooh, she’s wearing that red shirt again.
Wayne: Are you ever going to ask her out?
Fred: Oh come on Wayne, she isn’t the type of girl you just ask out.
Billy: What do you do then? Wait for her to ask you out?
Fred: No dingwad, if I just went up and asked her, she would probably say no. She doesn’t know me well enough to understand the Fred Charm.
Billy: The Fred Charm? Are you kidding?
Fred: What Billy? You think you can get a date with her?
Wayne: Billy couldn’t get a date with a calendar.
Fred: Haha, burn!!! High five!
Wayne: Shya!

Billy: You guys don’t think I could get a date with Donna?
Fred: Billy, let’s put it this way. Donna is a majestic blue ocean, and you’re pond scum left over from a rainy day.
Wayne: Whoa Fred, where’d you come up with that gem?
Fred: It’s the Fred Charm baby. Whenever it kicks in, it makes my vocabulary…bigger…by…a lot.
Billy: Uh huh…
Fred: What’s your problem Billy? Just because I’m a super stud doesn’t mean you have to be jealous.
Billy: How can you be a super stud if you’re too much of a pansy to ask out Donna?
Fred: Who’re you calling a pansy? You’re just a stupid dinglewuss know-nothing.
Wayne: Hey now, let’s keep the profanity down to a minimum here guys, no need to get all excited over nothing?
Fred: Billy’s dissin’ my manhood dude, he called me a pansy.
Billy: Oh get over it Fred, Donna doesn’t want to date a crybaby.
Fred: Don’t make me beat the snot out of you Billy. You know I can too.
Wayne: Come on Fred, anyone can beat up Billy. He’s half the size of anyone in sixth grade. Even the girls push him around sometimes.
Billy: Can we just drop it and move on?
Fred: Once you say that I am a super stud.
Billy: (sarcastically) You’re a super stud.
Fred: You didn’t mean that!!! Say it like you mean it, or I’ll give you a dreaded Rear Admiral.
Wayne: *gasps*
Billy: You wouldn’t dare.
Fred: I’ll do it if you don’t say it.
Billy: Y-Y-You’re a s-super s-s-stud.
Fred: Scream it at the top of your lungs.
Billy: YOU ARE A SUPER STUD!!!!
Wayne: Fred! Donna looked over!
Fred: Oh crap, act cool, act cool. Be calm…
Wayne: Dude, she’s coming over here.
Billy: What’s the matter super stud? Got your panties in a bunch?
Fred: Shut up, durfwad.

Donna: Hey guys, what’s up?
Wayne: Hey.
Billy: Hi.
Fred: H-H-Hiiiiiii…
Donna: *looks at Billy* So, I hear you’re a super stud.
Billy: Wha? I…uhh…
Fred: NOO!! I’m the super stu…I mean, uhh, hi, my name’s Fred.
Donna: *keeps looking at Billy* Uh huh. So, what’s your name?
Billy: Billy.
Donna: Billy? I like that name. I’m Donna.
Billy: That’s a nice name too.
Donna: Thanks! You’re so sweet.
Billy: I, uhh, like your shirt too.
Donna: Do you?!?! Red is my favorite color! Say, do you want to come over to my house after school and hang out for a while maybe?
Billy: Sure, that would be cool.
Donna: Ok great, I’ll meet you outside in the amphitheater after lunch.
Billy: Ok…bye.
Donna: Bye bye Billy. *leaves*
Fred: *mumbling* You piece of monkey puke…
Wayne: Way to go Billy!!!
Fred: …kill you and your stupid name…
Billy: Thanks Wayne, I can’t believe that just happened!
Fred: …rip off your arm and shove it…
Wayne: So what do you think you’ll do at her house?
Fred: …twist it so far you’ll have to have it surgically removed…
Billy: I dunno, maybe watch a movie, go get something to eat.
Fred: …never walk the same way again…
Wayne: That’s so cool dude!
Fred: …dogs will look at you and run away whimpering…
Wayne: Fred! What are you mumbling about?
Fred: Oh, nothing.

Billy: He’s just jealous. Don’t mind him.
Fred: Shut up turdmeister.
Wayne: Billy and Donna sittin’ in a tree…
Fred: Shut up dorkwang.
Billy: Well, looks like I’d better get ready to go on my DATE with DONNA.
Fred: I’m gonna beat you so hard…
Wayne: Ok, bye Billy, have fun man.
Billy: See ya Wayne, farewell Fred. Don’t wait up. *leaves*
Wayne: Don’t worry Fred, there will be plenty of other girls for you. You’re only 13.
Fred: Only 13? You mean, I’m already 13 and I haven’t even had a girlfriend yet!
Wayne: I’m 14, and I haven’t had a girlfriend.
Fred: Yeah, but I’m a super stud, and it’s different, and…*trails off*
Wayne: Life goes on Fred.
Fred: But why does my life always have to suck though? I hate being a teenager.

My class actually liked this one more than I expected. I wrote this play rather quickly. I basically just came up with an idea and started writing, and in less than a couple of hours, I was finished.

They really laughed at the whole "apples are nerd fruit" part, Fred's uncharacteristic metaphor, and Fred's mumbling. When Donna ended up ignoring Fred and going for Billy, a few girls in the class gasped and got all excited. And at the end of the class, if you remember my blog about the comments I got from my Darkside short story, the "Flaming Cross" guy stood up and said, "Sean is busting out this drama stuff...A+ for that man!"

I guess you could say...

*In a Garth voice* "I like to write."

Meet The Blogs

2004-12-02T21:27:00.000-08:00

It is finally finished. My first screenplay, written for my creative writing class. It will be acted in front of my class this coming Tuesday, and I will make a blog with reaction from my classmates when that happens. This took way too long to write. I hope you enjoy it!

Meet The Blogs

Narrator: After a hard day working in the local cavern, Blog the caveman returns to his cave. He lives in prehistoric times (the Stone Age to be exact) with his wife, Blogerella, and their daughter, Blogetta. Blog is of less than average intelligence, Blogerella is his overly critical and nagging wife, and Blogetta is their talkative teenage daughter. The scene begins as Blog enters the cave…

Blog: Hullo dear.
Blogerella: Blog!! Did you wipe your feet before you came in the cave? You got mud all over the dirt!
Blog: Blog sorry, Blog step in doo-doo.
Blogerella: Well, get the broom and clean it up.
Blog: Yes dear.

Narrator: Blogetta enters the cave.

Blogetta: Hi Daddy, hi Mommy, I…eww, what’s that smell???
Blogerella: Your father stepped in a brontosaurus burger.
Blogetta: Ohh Daddy, not again!
Blog: Blog no fall in this time.
Blogetta: Eww, I remember when that happened. Mom wouldn’t let you in the cave for two weeks! Your stench withered the plants in the garden!
Blogerella: Not to mention scaring half of our neighbors away.
Blogetta: I know!!! How was I supposed to get a date when my dad was sitting outside the cave, covered in dino dung?
Blogerella: There there honey, you’ll find someone soon enough.
Blogetta: Yeah right, I’ll probably end up with that guy who throws rocks at pterodactyls for fun…what’s his name?
Blog: Bloggo, he have good aim. Blog try to throw rock one time, but Blog miss and hit neighbor’s Volkswheel.
Blogetta: That’s nice dad. Anyway, I’ll see you guys later. I’m going to a rock concert with my friends and afterwards we’re gonna go get stoned.
Blogerella: Excuse me young lady?? What do you mean by “get stoned?”
Blogetta: C’mon Mom…Getting stoned is slang for a game I play all the time with my friends where one person has to avoid being hit by small rocks that are thrown by everyone else. It’s not like we have any good games to play – it’s the Stone Age. Why? What did you think it was?

***************

Narrator: Later that night, Blog and Blogerella are sitting at the dining room rock, having an argument.

Blogerella: …and if you don’t clean up that mess right now, when I’m done with you, you’ll need to see a roctologist to remove all the boulders from where I’m gonna stick them!!!
Blog: Yes dear! Blog go clean up now!!

Narrator: Blog leaves the room. Blogetta enters the cave.

Blogetta: Guess what?? I have a boyfriend!
Blogerella: You have a boyfriend???
Blogetta: Yeah!!! Isn’t it great?!?
Blogerella: Who is he?
Blogetta: I…uhh…well, he’s really nice, I met him tonight.
Blogerella: Uh huh, and what is his name?
Blogetta: His name? Well, umm, his name is…umm, Flog.
Blogerella: FLOG?!!?!!?
Blogetta: Yeah…he’s really not as bad as you think…
Blogerella: Not as bad as I think?!? Flog is a rocksucker! He beat my pet saber-toothed kitty with a stick and then drank the mammoth milk I put out for her.
Blogetta: Well, he is a little immature at times, but…
Blogerella: At times? I saw him moon a triceratops once! I’ll bet he learned his lesson after that one though. That poor dinosaur’s horn got lodged in so far that it nearly broke off when…
Blogetta: Oh Mom!!! That’s disgusting!
Blogerella: I know it is honey, that’s why I don’t think you should be dating him.

Narrator: Blog enters the room.

Blogerella: Blog! Our daughter wants to start dating Flog.
Blog: Blog no like Flog. Flog throw rocks at Blog all the time. Bad Flog.
Blogerella: Yeah, see? C’mon Blogetta, you can do better than Flog.
Blogetta: I knew you guys would act like this. Just because he’s a little different doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.
Blogerella: He’s more than a little different. He has a boar tusk nose piercing! He even braids his armpit hair for crying out loud!
Blogetta: Yeah well, so he is a little eccentric…
Blogerella: He eats raw woolly mammoth eggs, shell and all.
Blogetta: Eww, really?
Blogerella: I even saw him drinking out of the tar pits once.
Blogetta: Hmm, maybe you’re right Mom…
Blog: She always right.

***************

Narrator: The next day, Blog goes outside to go hunting for dinner. As he hunts, he chants this prehistoric song to himself.

Blog: Blog go hunting for triceratops
So family can eat dino chops
Blog run up to try and hit it
Blog no look and fall in a pit

The pit wasn’t so bad per se
Except for the spot where Blog lay
Piles and piles of dung
This’s where it gets flung

Blog escape from pit and decide to go hunt brontosaurus
Less chance of ending up with a horn wound and a sore ass
But Blog realize brontosaurus are big
They make Blog look like a little twig

Maybe Blog will go hunt something smaller
Instead of hunting something much much taller
Blog better hurry up and get something fast
Then maybe Blogerella will be happy at last

Narrator: Blog returns home to his cave after the sun has set, carrying something indistinguishable in his arms. He is greeted by Blogerella. Blogetta is also in the room.

Blogerella: You stupid Neanderthal! What could you have possibly been hunting that it took you all day?
Blog: I bring many tasty stones for you to cook your famous Rock n’ Casserole.
Blogerella: And it took you that long to bring home a few measly rocks?
Blog: But…Blog…
Blogerella: But nothing! I have had it up to here with…
Blogetta: Mom, why are you always so hard on Dad? He always tries his best and I think that you should be more understanding of him and less critical and negative.
Blogerella: Who asked you? This doesn’t concern you!
Blogetta: Yes it does Mom, I’m a part of this family too. And there are better ways to solve problems than yelling and criticizing.
Blogerella: I don’t have to listen to this. I can’t believe it, my daughter is telling me how I should live my life. Since when did you become Miss-Know-It-All?
Blogetta: I’m just saying you’ll get a better response from Dad if you stop yelling at him. I don’t even remember the last time I heard you say “Thank you” when he did something for you, or even a simple “I love you” from time to time.
Blogerella: That’s because he never does anything for me besides screw things up!
Blogetta: Come on Mom, you know that’s not true. Look, all I’m asking is that you’ll try to be more positive with Dad. Congratulate him instead of criticizing him. If he does something wrong, help him learn the right way to do it, instead of yelling at him for being ignorant.
Blogerella: (Sighs) Okay fine. Blog, I’m sorry I yelled at you. I’ll try to be more understanding and positive with you in the future…I…love you.
Blog: Blog love you too.

In Cest We Trust

2004-11-28T15:40:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I forget whether I live in Huntington Beach, California or Hicksville, Louisiana.

Case in point, I had a customer come through the drive-thru yesterday and order a chicken grilled stuft burrito with nacho cheese in it. He came up to the window and said the following to me:

"You gonna put that nacho sauce in there right? I like the cheese, I just can't have the chips because I ain't got no front teeth."

First of all, I'm loving that double negative. Second, after he said that, he opened his mouth and flashed me a very disturbing smile where he gave me a front-row view of his toothless upper gum, as if he thought I didn't believe that he ain't got no front teeth, or maybe he thought I needed further visual aid in order to get his dilemma across to me. In any case, I'm scarred for life. You would be too if you had this leering at you a mere couple of feet from your face.

I done seen you starin' at mah tooth!

The Grammar Police Are On Duty!!

2004-11-23T21:57:00.000-08:00

About a week ago, I wrote my first attempt at a "serious" short story for my creative writing class. It is entitled Darkside, and you can read it if you haven't already by scrolling down past my last two recent posts. Today, it was read out loud in class by a girl who volunteered, since my teacher doesn't allow the authors to read their own story in class. I had to make 25 copies of the story so each student could have one to read along with and make comments on.

We spent from 11:30 AM until 12:10 PM on it. The girl read it, and then the teacher and my classmates discussed it and made comments about what they thought of it. Afterwards, everyone gave me back their copies so I could read the comments they wrote.

First of all, while it was being read, the class was pretty much silent while they listened and jotted down comments on their copies. Everyone was pretty much engrossed in the story as far as I could tell. And then we got to the part where the main character sat down to watch some television.

At first, with the Jerry Springer excerpt, only a few people chuckled, because not everyone was fully aware that this whole half of a page was put in as comic relief to give the reader a chance to relieve some tension, or to wake up and yawn, whichever. Then the soap opera excerpt drew a few more people into laughter, as they realized what was going on. And then the knife infomercial excerpt was read, and the whole class just became unglued. My teacher was laughing so loudly that the girl who was reading the story was drowned out, and she had to stop reading for a second because she was laughing too hard also.

So yeah, it is a "serious" story in that its overall plot is serious. But because I wrote it, it can't possibly be 100% serious. And I guess my class liked it, because they were discussing and praising it for nearly half an hour. One older student came over to me and said, "I thought yours was the best one of all the stories we've read." And there were just a whole lot of good things said about the story in general, and I really enjoyed hearing all their different perspectives.

Now, on to the more personal comments that my classmates wrote on their papers. Please bear in mind that this is a college level English course, therefore I assumed that most of the students enrolled in the class have at least a decent grasp on basic English grammar, and the English language in general. I had no idea just how wrong I was.

These are actual comments written by actual students on the actual copies of my actual story. I have meticulously copied everything exactly as it was written by the students. Have fun.

"I came in late to class and only herd 1/4 of it. and new what this story was aimin toward. Awsome delivery soft and the begging hard punch in the middle and smooth drive at the end."

"Dude, I loved the story. I loved the ending even more. Its hard to write about things using the first person perspective, bravo. Crazy to think something like that can actually happen. But yeah great dialog and once again awesome ending. Jesus Rocks." (And then he drew a picture of a cross with flames shooting out of it from all sides)

"I can see his point of view. Good persceptive."

"Good Beginnig"

"Your writing is very witty and I like that. This story scares me though! That this could happen maybe even from drugs - A lot of other people never even think of that - I like your message of awakeness." (Awakeness?)

"I've been waiting for a person to say all this! Thank You!" (Someone wrote this next to my TV excerpts part)

"it was a good story it was unicue and creative I hope their is no truth in it. I liked it :)"

"I like how it is so suddle" (Nice phonetic spelling...)

"The story leaves people wondering about wether or not such a possibility is possible + about the important things in life...which is the sign of a good story!" (Hmm, a possible possibility...)

"I like the honesty you can tell this character isnt completely sain"

"Does street monkey pay very well?"

"Right f*ckin' on!" (A girl underlined street monkey and wrote that above it, except it wasn't censored. Then, at the end of the story, she drew 2 crosses and in the middle of them wrote, "AWESOME". She must be a sweet and moral Christian girl...)

2 students underlined the part where I wrote "cherry-red Porsche" and wrote "Nice car" next to it. Yes, they were both guys. In fact, they were the same two guys who wrote the first two comments above (The guy who came to class late, and the "Jesus Rocks" guy). Great minds think alike, no?

Also, the girl who read my story out loud (and I must say that she did a really good job too) wrote this on her paper at the end of the story:

"I wasn't expecting that @ all. I love your story and the weirdest thing...recently, I found out what my "void" was as well. =) "

Taco Bell Stuffs, and Things to Come

2004-11-21T22:52:00.000-08:00

If you know me, you know I like to see people ask/do/say stupid things, because it makes me laugh, and I like to laugh, hence the reason I write this blog. And tonight at my work, a customer took the proverbial cake for the Taco Bell Award for:

Winner of the Award for the "Stupidest Question Ever Asked"

I was at the first window tonight where I collect the money, juggle rolls of paper, twiddle my thumbs, and sleep. My manager, Reyna, was at the second window, taking orders. A lady came through the drive-thru, and was looking at the menu, trying to decide what to get. I could hear some inaudible whispering going on as the driver was talking to someone else in the car to try and figure out their order. After 15 seconds or so, the lady pipes up and asks Reyna a question.

"What's that thing with the sauce on it?"

As I peel myself off of the ground from laughing, I realize Reyna has finished taking the order, so I collect the money, and turn around to see Thaddus, my other manager, walking towards me. I meet him halfway, look him in the eye, and ask him, "What's that thing with the sauce on it?!?!?!!?" He just laughs and says, "That's half our menuboard."

If you ever want to make a drive-thru restaurant worker's day, stop by and make a total fool of yourself so we can laugh at you. C'mon, what was that lady thinking? Anything? Could she possibly have been anymore vague? Can anyone ever top that level of ignorance? I suppose only time will tell...

_-^-_-^-_-^-_ (Nice topic break, eh?)

At Taco Bell, we have tray liners which are pieces of paper that cover the dine-in trays to avoid contamination or something. I mean really, is a thin piece of paper going to protect you from anything? If there's some big ugly germ festering on the tray, it's not going to be deterred by a flimsy piece of paper. It will just laugh at you as it seeps through, jumps on your food, and makes its home in your intestines for the next month.

Another thing, that piece of paper gives people the impression that the tray is no longer just a convenient plastic barrier between your food and the table. It is now a trough with a replaceable covering that gives them implied permission to toss all manners aside and go nuts. Not only that, but the entire restaurant turns into a squalid farm where you can finally fulfill all your piggish fantasies. Suddenly, you become too lame to find one of the 7 trash containers in the store and are forced to throw your trash on the ground, or leave it on the table next to you thinking no one will be the wiser. You leave spilled taco sauce, soda, burrito squirtings, half-eaten food, and other inhuman messes for someone else to clean up. You begin to enjoy wallowing in your own crapulence, you notice a curly tail sprouting out of your behind, and you discover that the only audible sounds you can make are "Oink, oink, OINK!!!!"

Anyway, here's an interesting tidbit about the tray liners. They advertise the steak soft taco and have pictures of some of the ingredients that come on it. And there is a slogan in Spanish written on the lower right-hand corner of the paper. It reads, "No solo de pan vive el hombre". For those of you who don't remember your Spanish too well, or were foolish enough to take one of the joke foreign language classes in school, like French, Pig Latin, or Geometry, it means "Man shall not live by bread alone".

Now, I know Taco Bell means something else by it, but when I first read it, I thought about how interesting it was to see that at my work. Too bad they didn't finish it..."Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Matthew 4:4). So Taco Bell is using it as a slogan to try and get more business, oh well. Maybe someone like myself will read it and be reminded of the Bible verse it comes from and be inspired by it.

_~-~_~-~_~-~_

Lastly, my story, Darkside, has not been read in class yet. Hopefully it will be this coming Tuesday though, and I will update with how my class liked it. Also, I am in the middle of working on a 3 minute play for the same class. I had a writer's block while trying to work on it, so I decided to come blog. Go figure. I will post it here when I am done with it in a day or two. I don't want to give too much away (considering I haven't gotten too far on it yet anyway), but lets just say it involves our good prehistoric friend, Blog the caveman. It will also be read outloud in class. I can't wait.

Who Needs Drugs?

2004-11-17T02:59:00.002-08:00

So today, an hour before I went to work, I had a big slice of double layer chocolate cake that my mom made during one of her routine cake-making celebrations. These usually fall somewhere between her brownie-baking bashes and her pie-cooking parties. In other words, almost never.

But that's understandable. She has to work 12 hours days, which in the nursing world, means from 7 AM until a) All your patients have either died or escaped, or b) It's getting close to that time where the hospital has to pay overtime, so you'd better get your butt outta here...I don't care if you're in the middle of giving that old man a sponge bath, you can bathe our elderly patients on your own time if you care that much! What do you mean he isn't a patient?

Anyway, I had that piece of chocolate cake. And for the first time in quite a while, I was reminded of the simple joys of a sugar high. I got to work, and I was practically running from place to place, my hands were shaking, I was jumping up and down, bouncing off the walls, whistling, talking loudly, and just being extremely hyper and happy. I had the energy of a four-year old and some to spare. Not that I'm not energetic normally, it's just that I felt like I had my personal energy tank filled with Liquid Schwartz. But, just like there's a downside to every Schwartz, no sugar high lasts forever. (By the way, if you haven't taken the hint already, go watch Spaceballs. Right now. Well, after you finish reading this.)

So it occured to me that sugar could be the answer to many of life's problems. Don't get me wrong, I have lots of fun at my job, but having that extra energy boost really made things a lot more enjoyable during the couple hours I had my sugar high. Maybe you should try it sometime. Just eat a bowlful of sugar before going to work and see how much differently you act.

Something else I don't understand...when I was a kid, I ate candy like there was no tomorrow, and never got a cavity. As I got older, my candy eating days grew shorter and less frequent, especially when I got too old to go trick or treating anymore. I loved to go trick or treating, but I used to hate it when some little old lady would answer the door and ask you some smartass question like, "Aren't you a little old to be trick or treating?" But hey, that's why God made toilet paper, eggs, and fragile pumpkins.

But somehow, even though I ate less candy than when I was younger, I still managed to get my first cavity a few years ago, as my little diagram illustrates the progression of events:

Increase in Age ---> Decrease in Candy Intake ---> Baby's First Cavity

My mom said it's probably because my teeth don't have the same protection from cavities as they used to when I was younger. Personally, I think my diagram holds the real answer. The reason I got a cavity was because I ate less candy, so my teeth were not able to build up a candy-based cavity-immunity from other harmful cavity-causing substances, like celery and spinach. So to all you soon-to-be parents out there, let this be a lesson to you. Learn from my mistakes. Never let your kids stop eating candy or sugar, unless you want them to have poor cavity immunity. Season your food with powdered sugar, stuff your Thanksgiving turkey with Milk Duds, spread icing instead of butter on your bread, make a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup and Jelly Sandwich, and never ever drink milk without chocolate syrup. Just be creative. Soon you'll be confectioning like a pro. Be sure to invite me over for dinner.

Oh, and speaking of sweet... (Check out the nice Paint editing)

Happy 17th Birthday Erica!!!!!!!!

Darkside - A "Short" Story

2004-11-15T21:59:00.000-08:00

This is a short story I just finished writing yesterday for my creative writing class. It will be read outloud in my class by a volunteer (The author is not allowed to read his own paper) either Tuesday or Thursday. Once that happens, I will update this post with the reactions I receive from the class. Until then, enjoy the story. It is my first real attempt at a "serious" short story, so it was a real learning experience for me.

DISCLAIMER: This story is 8 pages long when double spaced, so if you have a short attention span, please take this opportunity to set aside the next 5 minutes of your life and glue your head to your monitor so you will not get distracted while reading it. I appreciate any comments you might have since short stories are new writing territory for me, and I can use any advice I can get. I hope you enjoy it...

Darkside

“Good night Anna.”

“Good night Dr. Stevens. See you in the morning.”

Anna is a good secretary - very organized, prompt, and reliable. She was the only one who didn’t make a pass at me during her interview. I do all the job interviews myself, seeing as how I’ll be working with them five days of the week, and considering how this is my own practice – Dr. Russ Stevens, Psychiatrist. That’s right, I’m a head doctor. My job is to deal with all the loonies of this world and somehow alter their self-perception to the point where they swear I’m a genius and practically throw their pocketbooks at me. I’ve always liked helping people, even if they are stark-raving mad. In fact, that just makes it more fun. I’ve always been proud of being level-headed, rational, and sober-minded, and I think that rubs off on my patients and is part of the reason my practice has been so successful.

I am 29 years old and have been told I am rather physically attractive, but I am not married nor am I looking. After having to listen to so many stories of heartbreak and ruined relationships in my six years of practice, I am of the belief that having a significant other just isn’t worth the emotional baggage.

I get into my cherry-red Porsche and drive away towards my house. I live alone in a nice neighborhood in Southern California, in a gated community. My house is big enough to comfortably have another person live in it besides myself, but not big enough to make it seem lonely or empty. I park my car in the middle of the 2-car garage, and enter the house from the adjoining door. I look at my watch. It reads 8:37 PM. I am not physically tired, just mentally tired from having to converse with so many patients today. Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to have such an easy job. All I have to do is listen to and talk with people. But what if I had some ball-busting-manual-laboring-type job, like a construction worker or a street monkey? Although I suppose even those jobs have their upsides…I could go on disability the minute after I break my legs from falling down an open sewer, or possibly after getting hit by a wrecking ball, and never have to work again. Ah, the tough decisions we have to make throughout our lives. I decide to grab a bite to eat, and go to bed.

As I lay in my bed, I think to myself. I think of myself as being a rather witty and smart person, always using humor to my advantage to get the best of any situation. But there’s a part deep inside of me that just feels empty, like I’m missing out on something critically important in life. I’ve been trying 29 years to fill that void with alcohol, drugs, women, work, school, anything - I’ve tried it all, and nothing has filled it for more than a few fleeting moments before it empties out and makes the void even deeper. Sometimes I wonder how I ever made it as far as I have. Sometimes I feel like I should be the one lying on the couch listening to the psychiatrist, instead of the other way around. Don’t get me wrong. I am a happy person. I enjoy life and am generally a nice person; it’s just that everyone has a dark side to them.

******************

I wake up, drenched in my own sweat; my heart feels like it’s trying to rip itself out of my chest. I look at the clock that sits on the nightstand next to my bed; it reads 11:57 PM. I have just been disturbed from my sleep by a recurring nightmare that I have been having at least once a night, without fail, for the last eight years…

My older brother Jason and I went to a local club, the Drug N’ Chug, to celebrate my 21st birthday. It was his idea. I didn’t know at the time since we were never very close, but Jason was dropping acid and doing other dangerous drugs on a regular basis, and he brought some acid with him to the club that night. Jason and I both dropped the acid together. This particular trip, combined with all his previous brain-alterations, caused his brain to short-circuit as he freaked out at all the excitement and activity inside the club. He pulled out a knife and just began slashing at anything, and anyone, within reach. The last thing I remember before passing out was seeing my brother being restrained and beaten to submission by the club security. I don’t remember much else about that night, but I remember waking up in a hospital bed, my shirt and jeans covered in someone else’s blood, and having a nurse tell me that my brother was dead. It was at that moment that I decided I would never try to fill that void inside of me with drugs again.

The recurring dream I have been having that has just woken me up again tonight was a short reenactment of that moment, only I am the one wielding the knife. And the part that scares me the most is that I have this leftover feeling of bloodlust and rage each night I wake up from the dream, and I really enjoy the feeling, even though I know I could never do something like that in real life. I wipe the sweat off of my brow, and return to sleep.

“Aggghhhh…”

A painful groan escapes my lips as I roll over onto my side to look at the clock. The luminous red lights say that the time is 8:13 AM. It’s too early. I roll back over onto my back, and in the process, I discover that not only am I exhausted, but my entire body is aching. I try to sit up but a sudden pang shoots through my abdominal muscles, encouraging me to stay right where I am. I place my hand on my stomach and discover I am wearing a T-shirt, even though I don’t remember putting one on when I went to bed. As I feel the shirt, I notice that it is a little damp on the front. As I lift off my covers to inspect it, I let out a scream.

The entire front of my white T-shirt is dark red, saturated with what looks like blood. Momentarily forgetting about my soreness, I quickly jump out of bed as if it had suddenly burst into flames, and discover that I am fully clothed – with a bloody T-shirt, a pair of jeans also complete with blood stains, and a pair of my old tennis shoes. I lift up my shirt to see if the blood is my own, but I have no lacerations that would constitute that amount of blood; however, I notice several bruises on my stomach, and as I inspect myself further, I find many other bruises and small cuts along the length of my body. Baffled, I try and remember what happened last night. I think back to my haunting nightmare, and wonder to myself if just this once, somehow, it hadn’t just been a dream.

******************

Unable to accept the notion that somehow I may have done the unthinkable last night without even having the slightest memory of it, I stumble out of my room into the living room, and plop myself down onto the couch. Still dressed-to-kill so to speak in my bloodied attire, I turn on the television to try and take my mind off of my worries and suspicions, not to mention my aching body.

“…walked in on mah girlfriend and I done saw her getting’ it on wit’ mah cousin, and…”
Jerry Springer, what a load of crap. I change the channel.

“…right Chet, we need to tell Bubbles that she is carrying your child…”
Soap operas. Seriously, who watches that crap and thinks up those names? Those writers need to be fired. Next channel.

“…demonstrated, this revolutionary knife can cut through shoes, bricks, telephone poles, bowling balls, and even this slab of cement! Watch how easily it *SNAP* …oops. Bill, is it supposed to do that?”
Idiots. I could sell elephant dung in bulk better than those numbskulls could sell that flimsy knife. I never realized how much daytime television really sucks. One more channel.

“…police say they have obtained the license number of the suspect’s car from a witness and are in the process of tracking him down. Witnesses describe him as being a white male, in his 20’s or 30’s, of average build and height, wearing a light-colored T-shirt and jeans. The name of the bouncer who was murdered at the Drug N’ Chug has not been released to the public yet.”
I turn the television off and set the remote down on the couch. It couldn’t be. It must be a coincidence, a horrible coincidence. My head starts to spin and I become disoriented. My head suddenly feels extremely heavy, as if my neck can no longer hold it up, and I rest it on the back of the couch. I wish I had someone to talk to.

******************

I am awakened by a loud rapping at my front door, and I hear someone yell, “Police, open the door now!” This is not happening. I pinch myself to try and wake myself up from this dream, but the very real pain greets me as I realize that in fact, this is no dream, but is surely a real life nightmare. I am still wearing my bloody shirt and pants. I’m as good as convicted if I open the door right now. I decide my only option is to get out of sight, and quick. I run as fast as my body allows me into my room, open the closet door, squeeze in amongst my formal suits and shirts I have to wear everyday, and close the door.

Seconds later, I hear a loud crash as the wood that used to be my front door shatters. My heart races as I hear footsteps pounding their way through my house. I hear voices shouting to one another, but I am too scared and confused to make any sense out of them. Soon enough, I am able to catch the tail end of an exclamation, “…out, we will release the dog.” Oh great, just what I need - bite marks to go with my bloody clothes and bruised body. I figure I’ve been through enough today, so I open the closet door, stick my hands in the air, and surrender myself voluntarily.

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak with an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand your rights?”

“Yes sir,” I replied to the officer who had placed the handcuffs on me.

“Do you know why you are being placed under arrest?”

“No sir, I do not.”

“You don’t? Well, why don’t we ask your shirt?”

“I don’t know where that blood came from.”

“Probably from the bouncer you murdered at the Drug N’ Chug last night.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know what you did.”

I didn’t. I don’t remember a single thing about last night besides the dream I had. I’ve read of people experiencing altered states of consciousness where they are awake but are unaware of their actions. But most of those people are druggies or mentally retarded or both, and I am neither. Could it be that my job is finally getting to me? After hearing so many stories of things that have gone wrong with other people’s minds, has my own mind lost its grasp on what is reality and what is fantasy? Being a construction worker doesn’t sound too bad right about now.
I arrive at the police station a short while later. After what seems like an eternity, I am brought into a small room presumably for questioning. A short and stocky man enters the room a few minutes later. He introduces himself as Lt. Perkins, and says that he will be conducting the questioning.

“Mr. Stevens, where were you last night at 2:10 AM?”

“In my bed, sleeping.”

“Is there anyone who can verify this?”

“Just myself.”

“I see. And how do you explain the blood stains on your shirt and pants?”

“I…can’t explain them. I don’t know how they got there.”

“Oh, well let me enlighten you. According to the police report and witness testimonies, you were seen at the Drug N’ Chug last night at 2:10 AM. Apparently, you drove there, parked your car in front of the club, walked up to the bouncer standing at the door, and stabbed him with a knife repeatedly. In case you don’t know where all those bruises on your body came from, you apparently took a pretty good licking from the other bouncers who were trying to restrain you, before you were able to get in your car and drive off. Fortunately for us, a witness remembered your license plate number, and we tracked you down in no time.”

“If you’re so sure I did it, why am I being questioned?”

“It’s standard procedure. If you’d like to forego the questioning and proceed right to jail, be my guest.”

And so I did. I was sent to jail for a murder I have no memory of ever committing. Some quack later diagnosed me with a neurochemical imbalance thereby supposedly explaining my altered state of consciousness. It seems like just yesterday I had everything I could ever want – A good job, a big house, lots of money, a fast car. It amazes me how fast it was all taken away from me on that infamous night. It made me think of how fleeting life is, and I started wondering if all those material things in life were really worth wasting 29 years to get when they could be taken away in an instant. I began to wonder if there was more to life than just pleasing oneself. And then it dawned on me. I remember one of my patients telling me once that she was a devout Christian and that whenever there was something wrong in her life, she would pray a certain prayer, called the Jesus Prayer, and it would fill her with hope and help her through her daily struggles. That concept has baffled me up until this point in my life, but I think I’ve finally found the thing that I’ve been searching for to fill that void in my life with…

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Good Ol' California

2004-10-30T22:38:00.000-07:00

Well, Summer is over, Fall is here, and Winter is just around the corner. This means the start of the dreaded California Rainy Season. For those of you who are unfamiliar with California's weather, it does not rain very often here, and when it does, it usually means that I don't have to wash my car for another couple of weeks.

California's rainy season really isn't much of anything compared to the states that frequently experience hurricanes and tornados and blizzards and giant tarantula attacks. Ah, the things we miss out on by having our infernally temperate weather. All we get are the occasional wimpy earthquakes that don't even wake me up from my sleep at night. We're getting jipped!

But I think it's funny how the news media likes to try and inspire fear in us whenever they get the chance. For instance, it rained a couple weeks ago for the first time in several months, and it dropped a couple inches of rain, yet all the local news channels had breaking news stories about the "torrential downpour". And they all had unique ways of describing their ongoing coverage of the storm, like Storm Track, Weather Watch, Storm Watch, Weather Track, and other equally original ideas.

And then they would describe the storm as being extremely powerful and dangerous and capable of killing small children and the elderly in one swift blow. They would also give the storm names that classified it as dangerous, such as Death Torrent, Class 5 Kill Storm, Deluge of Destruction, Savage Showers, and things like that. Because they know perfectly well that an inch or two of rain isn't newsworthy, they have to Hollywoodize it and make it into a big deal. Meanwhile, every other state is laughing at us for being such pansies because we can't stand a little bit of rain.

It reminds me of a joke my Poli Sci teacher likes to tell. "One day God shook the Earth on its side, and all the fruits and nuts ended up in California." I guess that would explain the reasoning behind why I keep seeing so many commercials on TV as of late about these male-enhancing drugs on the market now. Drugs like Cialis and Viagra where on the commercial it shows this happy couple enjoying life together without a care in the world as a direct result of the man taking a pill. And then it goes on to list the side effects, including nausea, diarrhea, permarections, stroke, paralysis, Spastic Spleen Syndrome, oily discharge, and other lovely benefits.

Isn't anyone content with being who they are anymore? Why are we always bombarded by this constant striving to be the "perfect" person? We have shows like The Swan where women get complete plastic surgery makeovers because they just can't stand the way they look anymore. Oh cry me a frickin river. Maybe they shouldn't compare themselves to the standards of actors in Hollywood where you aren't beautiful until you have at least 5 pounds of silicon in your body somewhere. Maybe if they actually put some effort into staying fit and healthy, they wouldn't think so poorly of themselves later on in life.

Sometimes I wish I didn't live so close to Hollywood so I wouldn't be so directly affected by the mentality it tries to teach people, especially women. The Hollywood mentality basically tells girls and women that they should:

Have the skinniest body with the least amount of fat regardless of how much you have to starve yourself to make it happen. And don't worry. If it gets too out of control and your butt and boobs get too flat, our good friend silicon will come to the rescue yet again.
Wear as much makeup as possible to cover up any visible imperfections that may surface on your face. By all means don't let anyone get the idea that you are any less than perfect in any way. Cover every zit, wrinkle, and freckle up, because movie stars never have any visible imperfections, and your main goal is to strive to be like them in every way. Girls, don't be stingy with the lipstick and lip gloss. The more that gets on your glass when you drink, the cooler you are. It's not unattractive! No, not at all! Wearing lipstick doesn't make you look like a clown! Heavens no! Oh, and don't forget. You are in direct competition with every other girl on the face of the planet. If you ever see a girl who you think is prettier than you, imitate her in every way possible.
Dress in revealing clothing, and flaunt yourself around wherever you go, because no guy will ever be interested in you if you don't. Always wear perfume to cover up your body scent, because no guy will want to know what you smell like normally.
Never settle for someone who isn't the best looking guy in the world. So what if he lacks a personality, is an egotistical jerk, has nothing in common with you, and treats you like garbage? At least he's cute. And if worse comes to worse, restraining orders and divorces are becoming even easier to get nowadays. So don't worry about a thing.
Remember that when you finally hook Mister Right, always tell him what he wants to hear. Lie to make him happy. Never tell him the truth if it endangers your relationship. Hide secrets from him when you don't know how he'll react to them. If he asks you about something you don't feel like sharing, avoid the question at all costs and change the subject, or pretend you didn't hear him. Honesty and openness in a relationship is a recipe for a break-up.

Gee, it's a wonder that so many marriages end in divorce. This whole charade couldn't have anything to do with it could it? You marry someone thinking you know who they are, and all of a sudden that person decides to stop pretending, and you see who they really are.

The moral of the story? Be happy with who you are, no matter what...To conform is to fail to be yourself...Honesty is the best policy...An open book will be read and understood while a closed book remains shrouded in mystery and suspicion. Maybe I should change my blog from Sean's Random Humor to Sean's Random Humor n' Wisdom. Or maybe I should continue the adventures of the poo-flinging monkey. Eh, either way.