School

Nothing is more depressing then spending hours and hours during two weeks to prepare for an exam and then score well below what you had anticipated. Do professors take joy in creating tests that are almost impossible to do well on? I think yes. They say that for every hour in the class room you should have a two hours of study. So for my accounting class, I should have had about 4 hours of study which I doubled easily the two weeks prior to the exam. So...why is there no correlation between study time and performance? is my study time not effective? do professors hate students? why didn't the dog in the dorito commercial break the glass? These are questions I have.

Superbowl XxPXXKVIII or whatever number it is

I wonder how much money is made by the NFL every year by the superbowl. I noticed that they try to get just about every demographic to watch the game by bringing in bands like the Black Eye Peas, people like Christina Aguilera, and whatever her name is from that horrible tv show glee. Im pretty confident that guys who watch a lot of football don't like those things. Pretty sure.

Talking in sleep

Sometimes my wife will talk in her sleep. Normally its just mumbling and I can't tell what she is saying. I never thought that I talk in my sleep, but I guess you never assume you do anything strange. Apparently last night I groaned and then said, "i needs to jump". Whatever that means. I dont remember what it was about. I guess I needed to jump. Somewhere.

Floggers vs. Emo kids - An Essay

A Flogger (pronounced flow gur) is a "photo logger", a person that uses a social networking site called "photo log" in Argentina. It pretty much is a facebook where you just put pictures of yourself and is a term that they use in Argentina to identify a certain group of people. I tried and tried to rap my head around the concept but it's a very strange phenomenon. The typical picture is where you take it of yourself by holding a camera above your head, tilting your head to one side and trying to look as pitiful as possible. This is how you identify a flogger. But there is much more to a flogger than this, much more. Floggers typically have what we would call an "emo haircut", believe that smiling makes you look weak, wear balloon pants, and video themselves dancing what looks like river dance and posting it to their social networking site. Apparently, a Flogger isn't just someone who vainly takes a bunch of pictures of themselves, during my time in Buenos Aires I came to realize it's a lifestyle.

Emo kids are a strange phenomenon that we have in the states. Most emo kids that i've known have similar backgrounds: 1) they come from white middle class families, 2) have loving parents, and 3) live in some delusional world where they believe they weren't hugged enough as a baby or that their parents hate them because: they bought them a car, feed them, give them money to do stuff with their friends, and don't impose a curfew.  Point number 3 must be the legitimate reason that explains why their hair only grows in the front, their headphones are an integral part of their head (except for when they take their bi-monthly shower), and they feel like regardless of their gender they must wear their mother's jeans. And black make up.
So hug your babies. Hold them so tight.

The one thing that floggers and emo kids definitely share in common is how much attention they try to bring to themselves. Every day is the worst day of their life, no one can possibly understand how hard their white middle class suburban existence is, and their unrequited love life is so sensationally depressing that every weak attempt at poetry or song lyrics are based on that one moment that they perpetually live inside. The ironic part of all this is although they say, "I just want to be left alone," and "nobody understands me," they 1) spend a lot of time with their other emo friends who look just like them and make the same ridiculous claims, and 2) spend a lot of time on social networking sites dropping hints every ten minutes that they don't believe in love, or make sure to post as many pictures of themselves frowning as they can so that we do understand that they are "so sad, so very very sad".

To an emo kid or a flogger you are only as cool as you are depressed. Thus, depression is not a psychological problem, but the only way they know to pick up chicks. Their profile picture changes constantly because there are an infintismal number of ways you can frown at a camera and be convincing enough that you're still hurting over that boy or girl back in second grade who took your heart and your colored pencils and moved overseas, ruining your childhood, and forbidding the back of your head to grow equal lengths of hair with the front.

So there you have it. Take my advice: if you see a group of floggers or emo kids standing, lounging, or sitting in your path as you make your way down the halls at your local high school or on the sidewalk outside the mall, step with caution. You may slip in a puddle of their tears, unblock the sun so that it shines on them, or simply remind them what normal people look like. You don't want to end up as a bitter lyric quoted in the caption of their next photo shoot for their wall post, do you?

Conversation with Jon

i see
how intriguing
so what did you say after he licked the table?
uh huh
hmmm
wow, how utterly disgusting
no, i never claimed to have been abducted by aliens
that's preposterous
no, that fact that i used the word 'preposterous'
i didn't think it would come to that
now that you mention it though, he does look like an aardvark that sniffed cocaine and swallowed a mouthful of lemon juice
not that i've seen one, of course
well, not lately anyway
but there was this one time, at the zoo when some monkeys threw poop at us
it was simply traumatizing
can you imagine? the horror? i had nightmares for years
no, i really did. and what made it worse was when Michael Myers from Halloween tried to kill me while i was eating applesauce
turns out, he doesn't like applesauce
that and i think jamie lee curtis was inside my applesauce
oh, hello jaime lee, how the heck did you get in my applesauce?
you little bugger, get out!
and by that time I realized that i was just another mustard seed dusted pretzel in a plastic bag of doom like everyone else
waiting, yes, waiting to be lodged into President Bush's gargantuan esophagus.
i don't know, i think it's a species of ape
which reminds me, why didn't you send me a post card from the moon?
i sat by my mailbox for days
i ran out of money because i didn't go to work
i had to sell my body
no, not like that
sicko
i sold my plasma
day after day, though i know it's unhealthy
what could i do?
and then the legos started to arrive
they came one brick at a time
at first i didn't understand, but then i knew
Justin Bieber hated me
was it my hair? it could have been
was it that i went through puberty first? signs point to yes
so i started building, day after day i built with those legos
pretty soon i finished, and there it was before me, a giant replication of a bollweevil
it came naturally, of course, my thoughtless mind constructed it ever so easily. too easily. that's what i was told anyway my first time at disneyland
they told me, if you eat that much cotton candy, frozen bananas and deep fried twinkies you'll regret it
turns out i did, several times
but by then i had stopped caring, because i was a turtle
i didn't know when i first became a turtle
but i had a bad taste of mustard in my mouth.
the end

Groundhog's Day

Nothing is as unfortunate as the name Punxsutawney Phil. And people wonder why he hides out all year long. I can't imagine how he must have felt in grade school; never learning how to properly spell his name, let alone pronounce it. This morning when P. Phil stuck his nose out of the hole and took a look around, the whole country held it's breath whether they knew it or not. And the verdict? P. Phil did not see a single Zombie. It isn't conclusive at all if the Zombie Apocalypse will be this spring or not, and lamentably Punxsutawney does not have the budget to pay P. Phil to stick his nose out more than once a year to tell us all what our own eyes can see. Could it be that P. Phil can psychically see into the future with those beady little eyes of his? Some traditions just don't make any sense.

Weird Smells

So I smell a lot of weird things on my way to, during, and from school. Generally the smells are on the bus. Yesterday morning I got on the bus and my first instinct was, "wow, it smells like mushu pork." and indeed it did. I looked around me but there was no sign of Chinese food, unfortunately. On my way home from school, I got on the bus and the first thing I thought of was "ugh, it smells like a gerbil cage." gerbils have a pretty distinct smell. I've had rats, smelled ferrets and hamsters, but nothing is as distinct as gerbils. It's been years since I've had gerbils, but a nose never forgets. I wondered if it was the guy sitting next to me, but nope, turns out, it was the whole bus. Today at school I sat in the business building and the whole floor smelled like the pipes had exploded in the walls and raw sewage was everywhere. After awhile the smell wore off, and it smelled like a dumpster that hadn't been retrieved for a long time. I think I need to invest in some nose plugs.

Shooting

Today I went with my friends Scott and Tyler and we shot an old tv to bits. I should have snapped a few more pictures when we were done, 'cause we took a .22 rifle and a 9mm handgun to it quite a few times. Also we found Cheap Trick's Greatest Hits and I put a few holes in it from 100 feet back. It's been a good six years since I've shot a gun, good to know I've still got it. It was about 29 degrees F outside, and I didn't bundle up quite enough. After about a half hour my hands were pretty numb, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to hold the 9mm. The mud was frozen solid so that was nice. Tyler still managed to get all dirty though. Looked like he'd been standing in diarrhea or something.

I got home and my wife had a fever of 101.6, that soon went up to 102.8 and got us really worried. It's really cold outside today, so I bundled her up and we sat outside on the porch for a few minutes which really helped. I said a few silent prayers, and last I checked on her it was down to 101.2 which is a relief. Hopefully she'll get feeling better.

Busy Busy Busy

I haven't had a whole lot of time this week for anything but homework. Yes, I have gotten behind on some of my tv shows (gasp!), haven't played my guitar in weeks, haven't been able to read my book I'm currently reading, or continue writing the book I'm currently writing. I've been working working working on homework, and the sad thing is, I don't think it's even going to pay off. I spend so much time reading, taking notes, reviewing, but in the end nothing sticks and I've got three tests next week. We'll see what happens. My gnomes are all staring at me. I guess I should name the newest addition. The majority on my facebook poll said his name should be Gene, the rest said Carl, and no one voted for Kyle. It's my gnome, and his name is Kyle. So ha. Suck it, bookface.

New Gnome addition

Huzzah! my wonderful wife got me another gnome for my birthday! Right now on facebook the discussion is not heating up about what his name should be, and names are not "bouncing around the internet like a beach ball at a Nickleback concert"! The options are Kyle, Carl, and Gene. If you exsist and are reading this, feel free to add your thoughts. Otherwise, continue to be a nothing that is not reading, has no thoughts, and no opposable thumbs.