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If I changed my name to Oprah, would people take me more or less seriously? When answering this question, keep in mind that my current name is not yet Oprah.  Last night (and into this morning), for the first time in a couple years, I got sick from drinking a bit more than what was necessary. And yet...more alcohol always SEEMS so necessary at the time, doesn't it? Regardless, at around 3:30 a.m. last night when my body finally decided that the mountain of good times and unbridled ridiculousness could be climbed no higher and that the only way back down was sliding face-first against the rocks, it became extremely obvious that the last 4 or 5 drinks had been not only unnecessary, but also incredibly stupid. By some strange force from the hangover gods, and with the help of a piece of white bread (eaten over the course of 30 minutes) and a Pepsi (drunk over the course of 2 hours), I made an unprecedented quick recovery and rebound by noon today, to the point even that I was willing to do it all over again right at that moment. Only once before have I recovered from such a bad hangover/drunken sickness so quickly, and the following story was not that time: Junior year of college. August; end of freshmen orientation. Peer Counselors (of which I am one at the time) put together a big party for the frosh before all the upperclassmen return for the fall semester. It's a dry party, except for peer counselors, who have a private stash of vodka the whole time. Several drinks later, I'm wearing green streamers around my head and telling people I love them. (Always clear signs of drunkenness.) Empty vodka bottles later, 2ish a.m., I return to my dorm where a friend of mine is staying for the night and already sleeping on the floor. Not for long. This is also the semester of a certain botanical experiment in my closet, which needs tending to every night...even nights on which I can barely stand. This is somewhat of an issue considering I need to do so on a chair in order to reach the upper portion of that closet, dig underneath layers of light-blocking cloth and ducktaped cardboard and remove a 30-pound piece of wood in order to access my budding little beauty, all in complete darkness. One step at a time, the tasks are completed successfully, except for the part involving the 30-pound piece of wood, which I somehow drop extremely close to my friend's head. It doesn't hit his head, though the sound of the crash is loud enough to pierce my ears even though mine aren't the ones within inches from the impact. But the wood DOES hit a can of lysol on the floor, busting the plastic cap into pieces and breaking off the nozzle-button thing, causing the lysol can to emit its contents automatically without a way to stop it, none of which I can see happening in the dark room. I am, of course, terribly intoxicated and cannot for the life of me figure out what is happening. I am, however, freaked out of my mind by the hissing sound coming from the bottom of my closet. For all I know, I somehow ruptured a gas pipe which could ignite at any second, burn down the dorm, cause my expulsion and arrest warrants. But ah...sober friend thinks to turn on a light...sees the can...takes it out of the room and puts it in a trashcan in the middle of the hallway. But a stranger putting something hissing in a dorm trashcan at 3 a.m. is not something that makes passing freshmen particularly comfortable, or so says my distorted logic at the time. I go into the hallway and assure my residents, "Don't worry, it's not a bomb or anything." Residents send back questioning glare. I return to my room and apologize to my friend that I almost crushed his head while drunkenly working on my drug operation. A bit later, I close my eyes in an attempt to sleep, and suddenly being dizzy is no longer fun. And so begins a long night of trips to the bathroom, a shower at 4:30 a.m., an awful, awful following morning...and afternoon...and evening. Was it all worth it? Umm, no, I'm thinking definitely not. Though no one will care, I felt necessary to post this because this same news was the lead story in my newspaper this week. This is interesting to me because perhaps never again will the main story in my newspaper, which covers East/West Norriton and Lower Providence, Pennsylvania, be the most popular story on CNN. More versions of the story can be in publications around the world. That's just weird.  (Some of the info in the CNN story is wrong, including the suspect's home town.)    1:54 AM Tonight, among various topics of discussion at a diner next to the Willow Grove Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base: me: "How long do you think it would take for us to get shot if we jumped that fence and ran in there with machine guns?" * doyle: "I'm thinking about 14 seconds." Personally, I was thinking more like a couple minutes, but you never know. And now I'm thinking: How long before I have government agents at my door for the things I have just posted here? It's all very interesting. *This question and the conversation that surrounded it were by no means serious, truthful, and/or literal. It was, instead, an acknowedgment of the fine talent of our country's military and a hypothetical query of the logistics and probabilty of a breach to our national security. (Can't be too careful.) It's the Wednesday Post-Work Blog Update everybody! Put yo hands in the air and say OHHHHHHHH! 'OHHHHHHHHHH!!!' Ya know, I really wish I had readers that were so committed that they really would sit there and yell aloud for the hell of it. Let's try an experiment. For those of you reading this alone in your apartments, bedrooms, or wherever (or for those of you who don't mind looking like fools in front other people) follow my instructions. Seriously, don't just read. PARTICIPATE. You will feel better about yourself afterwards. 1) Put both you hands above your head. No slacking ... stretch your arms up high. 2) Now, say aloud (however loud you want): "My hands are above my head, and frankly, I am happy about this." SAY IT! 3) Now put you hands back on the keyboard (or wherever you keep them when you're sitting there reading this), and say, "My hands are no longer above my head. And yet, I am still happy. I am also not a vegetable. But if I were, I would be a beautiful head of broccoli." 4) Now, slowly take a deep, deep breath through your nose, and hold it for 3 seconds. <1> <2> <3> 5) Now, Exhale through your mouth slowwwwwwwwwwwwwly. 6) Do what you want. Walking over to the pick-up counter at my favorite sandwich chain while on break from work: "Hey Mike, how's it going?" Male. Early 20s. Tall. Definitely not familier, and because of that, I paused (yes, it was an awkward one) and hoped that he was maybe talking to someone else, such as the invisible man to his right. But the pause continued. "Hey, how ya doing?" I said right to his face, but for the life of me, there was still no recognition. "Same junk, another day," he said, turning away, and I knew there was no saving it now. I had no idea who he was and he knew it too. Reaching for my sandwich I noticed he was wearing a uniform, and luckily for me, the shirt had patch with his name on it. PAT. Pat. Pat. Pat. Nope. Not so lucky after all. Standing before me was someone from my past whom I didn't remember at all, not even with his name printed on the front of his shirt. This is exactly the type of situation I have been fearing since I graduated college. I could do nothing but put my sandwich in my bag and leave the store without saying anything else. If I had some real juicy stories to tell about all sorts of interesting people, I would be writing about them right now. But since I don't, I will speak more about my cell phone. It came back to life. Yes, for some reason, yesterday when I plugged it in one last time before I was about to buy a new one, it displayed the 'charging screen,' and later, when I hit the power button, it turned on for the first time since the little disaster last week. So, of course, I made many calls and sent plenty of text messages to people telling them all about "Johnny," the little cell phone that could. Then he died. I left him alone while I went downstairs for a few minutes, and when I returned, my little Johnny was again dead, and the same attempts to bring him back to life have been fruitless ever since. Every night for the past week or so I've been having dreams about people I knew in grade school. People I have forgotten about completely have managed to find their way back into my life while I am sleeping. I don't know how I feel about this. Hypothetical question of the day: What would be the ramifications of imposing hefty fines, or perhaps even arrests, for those with sexually transmitted diseases? Somewhere around Jamaica, my girlfriend is living it up on a cruise at this very moment. Meanwhile, I just finished a wonderful 12-hour day of work, and now I'm about ready for bed. Maybe I'll take a bath and play with a toy boat, and then I too can be on a magical cruise, or at least pretend to be. - On another note, Survivor (tv show) and Dune (book) have been changing some of the ways I look at humans. I'm really figuring out some new stuff here, folks. I'll have to share it with you sometime. Really I will. After you're all dead! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Right. Yeah, disregard the dead part. That has nothing to do with what I've been 'figuring out.' - A friend and I recently watched a bunch of commercials from the 80s that I had on VHS. Drunk. Needless to say, that was a good night. - A bath does sound nice. But that would require motivation. Well, as is still known to happen every once in a while, and usually at the most annoying times (of course, though, it would always seem that way) Blogger has eaten my post. This was, by the way, the first time in literally months that I did not copy the message to the clipboard before hitting the good ol' post & publish. For that one second that my paranoia waned, the gremlin creatures of another dimension stepped in and fucked that all up. Let us have a moment of silence please, because I know at least I am mourning a loss here. A true tragedy. - - - - Okay, anyway, I will say only this: Pepsi over coke. McCartney over Lennon. Cats over dogs. Clouds over sun. And right now, sleep over wake...ful...ness...thing. Today was almost a great day. I woke up to find an email in my inbox from a woman whom I had sent my resume Saturday. She asked me how much I was making and how much I would require for the open position. A few emails later, at which point I am at work, she asks me if I would like to come in for an interview. I reply and tell her I'd love to, but 'because of the distance' (the job is outside of boston), I could really only come on a Friday. She replies and tells me she didn't realize I was out of state, and therefore, in so many words, it wouldn't be worth it. That moment may very well have been one of the most frustrating in my life. And, yes, the cell phone is still dead. Cell phone update (and conclusion): Let's just say, doing my laundry sure did cost me a lot of money tonight. Donations are now being accepted for a new phone. Thank you. Have a nice day. 4:11 PM Well, I'm officially a moron. Remember that new cell phone I bought in October? No? Well I bought a new cell phone in October. And unless it is somehow resistant to being washed with my laundry, then it looks like I will probably have to buy another phone pretty soon. Stay tuned. Apologies to those whose calls I am not returning. Because guess what. I don't know any of your numbers without my phone. There's just so much more of a purpose in life when there's baseball. 8:34 PM By the way, had I fully defended Howard Stern a few posts ago, I most definitely would have said many of the same things posted here. Thankfully, this person saved me a lot of time. (As did the person who linked to that site, thereby causing me to find it in the first place.) - So, I hesitate to speak more about jobs, but today I (sort of) wrote yet another cover letter, as it looks like I have begun to search for different work earlier than I thought. At this point, I am trying very hard to cross over from copy editing to copywriting, a big difference actually for those not in the know; the former usually associated with journalism or publishing, the latter being almost exclusively advertisement/promotions writing. This has long been the plan actually. Last spring (and summer), when I was searching for work, about half of the jobs I wanted were copywriting, but such a field is more difficult to break into, at least for me, considering I had practically no ad-writing experience. To this day, I still don't have that experience, but I'm hoping that by having worked SOMEWHERE, I will have a bit more credibility. We'll see about that. - More and more, I have been writing entire posts and then deleting them before publishing because I am unhappy with them. I don't enjoy doing this, but lately I've been struggling with the purpose of this weblog, not in some cliche philosophical sense (because after all, EVERYONE philosophizes about weblogs), but in the sense that I feel I spend too much time discussing the mundane. Yet, that is what I enjoy the most about other people's blogs. The challenge, as it has always been, is taking the mundane and making it semi-entertaining for at least somebody. This is what I have tried to do for quite a while, striving to create a similar--but unique--style as some of the blogs listed on the left side of the screen there. But then I create posts like the one you are reading now. Complete nothingness. I'd be surprised if anyone is still reading this far into the post. But, the fun of it, really, for me at least, is that I don't care incredibly much. I have said all along that this is not a diary, but a means of giving some others SOME type of boredom-curing antidote in times of need. But really it doesn't bother me if I know I'm not writing anything exciting. I usually don't fault other bloggers for that reason either. I just keep reading. Then again, you don't know close I was just now to deleting this entire post. I have to stop that. - Here's a site that has apparently been around for a while, which I had never seen until recently. For first-timers, I recommend going straight to the 'characters' section. Each short animation gives you a fairly accurate idea of each character's role and personality. Then, go to 'SB emails' (Strong Bad emails). The list of short toons there is updated often, and they're all pretty decent. Some are absolutely hilarious. - If you're still looking for something different, here is a sketch comedy group at my old alma mater, Bard College. I personally recommend the Snapple video and 'Dave's day.' But if you have the time, almost all are worth watching. I wonder often: Of the many many times that I spy on the loud, eccentric man that is my neighbor across the street, how many times is someone from within that house spying back. So, after about 7 months since I started working at the newspaper, today I got out the old stack of 24 lb., watermarked resume paper with matching envelopes and I applied for a new job. I don't expect to get a response, but it was a way for me to get back into the groove of applying and to prepare for the months ahead when I plan to, once again, send out resumes like a machine. And with the resumes, which I have been steadily revising and updating for the past few weeks, I also wrote my first brand-spanking new cover letter since last May. Having to sort through resumes from freelance writers at work, I think I've learned even more ways to BS my way into a job that I don't really deserve, but by golly, sometimes that's the only way. This just reminds me ... a few weeks ago a girl sent in a cover letter that said something funny. I wrote it down so I could later share it here ... now the question is, will I be able to find it? Ah, yes, through the miracle of writing, you didn't have to wait while I just looked for the quote. And yet, looking at it now, it really wasn't worth the hassle. Regardless, what the girl said was: "A river of ink runs through my veins." It's still pretty funny on a few different levels. Anyway, I didn't write anything quite so ridiculous in my new cover letter. However, I am trying something new by speaking frankly with the employers for a brief few lines. Basically, in so many words, I'm saying to them, "Listen up, biznatches. You want the shit; I got the shit. Hire my ass and we'll be tight. Fuhreal." I think it might work. We'll see. In other news, today is a dreary Thursday off of work, but the clouds have a tendency to relax me. As a certain artist (whom I was once fascinated by) once sang: "I only smile in the dark. My only comfort is the night gone black." Notes to self: 1) Stop posting while intoxicated. 2) Stop being intoxicated. 3) Watch more episodes of Cops. 4) Be nicer to Mom. 5) Go to the beach as soon as possible this spring. Notes to other self: 1) Shut up. 2) Don't be gay. 3) Buy a new car. 4) Sell your soul. 5) Seize the day. Note to third self: 1) Pay more attention to your third self. 1:05 AM   In case you were wondering, yes, I suppose I do have time for such a ridiculousness waste of energy (albeit a few minutes' worth). But even if I didn't, I'd make time. - Quick! Let's do a word assosication game! Read me and think: -80s teen-popular television star- Well, who did you think of? For me, no question. Michael J. Fox. I mean, let's face it. Family Ties back in the early years, even for some of you '81 kids. (I have MANY a time had a conversation that '80 kids and '81 kids are slightly different. '81, of course being 1 year younger than myself,and also a bit cuturally impaired. Many a discussion, I assure you, and therefore, it is the truth.) But let me continue. Obviously, Back to the Future. For me, and some of you out there, this movie was the start of an epic. In many ways, I'm sure this movie has contributed to who I am today. Or at least I hope so. That's how great. Teen Wolf, of course, excellent. To some, a ridiculous fabrication of the '80s teen entertainment industry. To me, a masterpiece. And then there were some great Michael J. Fox movies on cable all the time. Though they often had humor that some of us 7- and 8-year-olds didn't fully understand, we knew it was great nonetheless. Michael J. Fox. If it weren't for him, some of us 80s kids would have turned out a whole lot less cool. - On a side note, now that this post is coming to an end, I can honestly say I had NO intentions of posting a ridiculous picture of myself and writing about Michael J. Fox when I sat down at my computer a bit ago. It just happens. Don't know how. - By the way, Michael J. Fox was in his mid-twenties when he did Back to the Future. In fact, he was older than I am now. This shows: 1) That's weird. 2) Michael J. Fox couldn't possibly comprehend any of this. |
Late night snacks. Bite-sized ramblings. Old-fashioned eats, served fresh daily. Open 24-7.  Other blogs Fireballs and Tsunami JeffreyDavis.net Mismatched Parentheses NimbleSixpence One Tortured Soul Palpably Inadequate Picnic, Lightning Pony Legs, Temporarily Supernouveau Wander Lust In my DVD player Archives June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 Other stuff Homestarrunner One Slime DeepDiscountDVD Olde English Sketch Comedy Live Music Archive Copy Army Copywriting Service Love & Radio This One Time Email me mmjunior / at / hotmail   
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