It's completely out of my control.

I don't care how far in the future it is, or how long I have to wait in line. I'm going to see the Simpsons Movie opening night.

There's simply nothing I can do about it.

Homework

I just drove to Bowling Green today to turn in my last bit of undergraduate homework ever. I hope.

My brother has a fu manchu.

It deserves your respect.

Yes, there is a problem and it must be addressed

Zero hero knife fight, schedule of feedback, creatures in the classroom want advanced placement, hepatitis roof mats man your battle stations. Go ahead, troubleshoot, we read you loud and clear, aspirin in the ice cream, commie fluoridation, post-encephalitic rut-stuck metal milk champs take on the army with jump ropes and switch blades. Tin teeth, shin guard, first string rich kids get the indoor soccer flat soles, special needs kids get the medhead puppet show at little round tables with grad school ass holes. We kids sing:
Screw the floor plans
Make a difference
Always do your best
Never ask for help
Head's a sinkhole, a tv trash can, they cut our crust off, now we piss Dristan. Behavior problems, excessive absence...
Oopsa daisy made an unmanned aircraft
Defiant third grade special ed Hercules is at far greater risk of being retained, his diminished activity is one indication that "yes, there is a problem and it must be addressed."

We kids sing steal everything that's not nailed down. Never sell to fascist loan or card sharks or wager on our parents' long shots. Rank and file liars keep their socks on, the slow poke ice age prescribes too often. Know a grown up by its ancient inoculation scarring. Tranquilizer snails build solar sails despite the hammer handed, consequence inflicting flat head community who rule with work-reward Nintendo bribery

We take standardized tests in hyper colors and sweats, two million strong and trying to fly too fast. Modify me? Then delete me. Fuck it, vaccine me while I'm sleeping. I'm a fidgety phill, I am a heretic, I am lazy and rude and manipulative. Hey new age bull dyke haircut dipshit we will not respect your wishes to lock our dicks up in an office full of stuff that makes us nauseous, steal all you want with your fingers on fire, but melt my plastic and have your ass kicked we kids sing out rainbowed, beat down, steal everything and run for it.

PASSAGE - Creature in the Classroom
Album: The Forcefield Kids

I'm awake, I swear

"I was sleeping....you gotta sleep.......robots."

This is what I heard when I attempted to wake up Amy from a nap on the couch.

I stopped.

I left her alone.

Ludicrous

I am looking forward to graduating for two reasons:

1. I can finally tell people that I do have a degree, instead of what I say now: "Almost - I graduate officially in a few weeks. I had to finish up my classes during the summer because my counselors sucked ass. But my classes were in the first session, and I am done with them, so I've moved down here looking for teaching jobs."
That is way too clunky to repeat 7 times a day.

2. I can now delete all of the emails from my inbox that have something to do with my BG News internship, graduation commencement, or anything else to do with BGSU.

A scene from a restaurant

Amy, Nicole, who was visiting for a few days, a friend of ours called Puck and myself went to dinner the other night at a Friday's.

Across from our table, about 5 feet away were two men, one older and one in his thirties, a woman also probably in her thirties, and a baby in a high chair. During the course of the meal, I think around the appetizer or so, and completely out of nowhere, the woman gets up out of her chair and goes "Fuck you, Dad! I'm not gonna sit here and listen to your bullshit!" During this, she is attempting to get her baby out of the high chair, which isn't going so well. This then forces the woman to forcibly remove the baby from the high chair, while the baby is crying because its legs are still stuck in the chair. The woman is pulling so hard that she is lifting the chair off of the ground, baby still attached. Finally, she removes the baby, still crying, and storms off.

The older man, presumably the father, starts rambling off profanities about how he's "not gonna take this anymore," while the other man, apparently the woman's husband and father of the baby, just sits there quietly.

Oh, I forgot to mention the table directly behind the outburst that is filled with three small children and their grandparents, having what was an enjoyable meal, but now a disturbing one.

The woman then storms back to the table, and goes, "No no no no no - don't act like that!" The husband/babyfather begins to stand up, and the woman stops him. She says, "No - I'm not taking you home!" The man quietly sits down, being the enabler that he is (I mean, come on - how do you not react to that?). The rest of their meal is spent with the older man quietly rambling off profanities and complaints while the husband silently listens. From what I heard from the conversation is that the older man is from out of town and is visiting the husband and wife and baby. The older man offers to give the husband some cab fare. The husband, who doesn't outright accept the offer, asks where the older man is staying. "At this hotel," is the reply.

The husband didn't say it, but the message was clear to me. The husband was trying to say, "Cab fare won't do me any good because I obviously can't go home right now. Can I go to your hotel with you, possibly crash there?"

Amy was sitting on the inside of the booth, and it was a good thing because she was obviously perturbed by what was going on, since she is a licensed social worker. She was appalled at the mother ripping the baby out of the high chair. I would've been pissed if I were the grandfather of the three small children directly behind the table.

Eventually we finished our meals and I felt that we were lingering too long, having paid the bill (or rather, Amy paying my bill because although I now have a job, I don't get paid until next Friday, thus rendering me still broke until then.) and gotten the receipts back. I hinted several times that I was ready to go, because the place was filling up and we'd already been sitting there post-bill for 15 - 20 minutes. Puck then jokingly goes (quietly, of course, as the participants of the scene were still there), "Fuck you, Dad." We all laugh a little and then he goes "I should just pick Jeff up and storm out." And we all laughed really hard.

The moral of the story is: The Sizzling Chicken & Shrimp dish is excellent.

Gem Sweater

Discussion-based class causes issues - Opinion

Here is my last week's column from the BG News. Hopefully, the one I wrote for this past Wednesday's paper will be up soon. Peace honkies.


Discussion-based class causes issues - Opinion

No longer financially insufficient

As it happens, I finally got a job, after about a month of not being able to.

Where is it? It's at this place. It's called Whole Foods Market, and it's a large grocery store that focuses on organic foods. It also has small restaurants inside, which has to do with what I'll be doing. I'll be in the prepared foods area, starting out in the pizza place. I'll be standing by an oven baking fancy pants pizzas. I'll be moving around to different areas, as well, so there's a good chance I may learn how to make sushi - which would be neat. And it's $9 an hour, and I get to wear one of those chef coats.

I found out that I had gotten the job on an outing to this place on North High Street right across from the OSU campus. I was trading many things I didn't want anymore, and with $57 of trade credit, I got the following CDs:

Imperial Teen - Seasick
Spoon - Girls Can Tell
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Broom*
Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds*
Say Hi To Your Mom - Impeccable Blahs*
Karate - Unsolved
Q And Not U - No Kill No Beep Beep
Palace - Arise Therefore

*The purchase of these albums was influenced by this fellow beard enthusiast.

Anyways, I was walking to my car, which was illegally parked in a commuter lot on the OSU campus, when I got the call that I had been hired. To celebrate, I ate hot dogs for dinner and drank this , which I had purchased immediately following my interview at Whole Foods, as a reward for a particularly good interview.

Furthermore, any days I bum around and do nothing are no longer days during which I consider myself a useless piece of junk for doing nothing, but rather I just refer to them as my days off.

:The Musical

Evil Dead

Fox is a bunch of fucking idiots.

So, as we all know, "Arrested Development" is one of top 3 shows ever. And, as we all know, Fox cancelled it near the end of its third season. However, to show that Fox is retarded, here is a list of Emmy awards that the show was nominated for recently, despite its now nonexistence:

Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Comedy Series: "The Ocean Walker"
Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series: Will Arnett
Outstanding Comedy Series
Writing For A Comedy Series: "Development Arrested" (Series finale)

Well, at least Fox still has "The War At Home" to fall back on.

The Listening Post - Wired.com

Everyone go check this post out, especially before posting anything on YouTube.

YouTube's 'New' Terms Still Fleece Musicians

I read a lot of books

The following is a list of books I've read since January. Some of them I've read for the first time, others multiple.

Ender's Shadow - Orson Scott Card (I taught this one to over 100 10th graders during my student teaching)

The Shrowd Of The Thwacker - Chris Elliott

America The Book: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction - Jon Stewart, et al

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis

Less Than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis

Bright Lights, Big City - Jay McInerny

Ransom - Jay McInerny

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

I Got a "D" in Salami - Henry Winkler (this was for a class, dammit)

Will Standards Save Public Education? - Deborah Meier (another one for class, slightly more enjoyable than the other one)

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Douglas Adams

The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead - Max Brooks

Currently reading: Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams

Save for the Henry Winkler book and the Standards book, you would enjoy all of these readings.

The benefits of cable television

One of the reasons I love cable is that you get to see commercials for local television ads. There are three in particular I've seen in the recent past that I'd like to explain.

1. This is for a local car dealership. It's shot in this weird black and white tone, and it's a guy and a girl talking about how much they'd like to buy your used car. However, the man has an acoustic guitar strapped around him. Now, in no way whatsoever does he refer to the guitar or make mention that he has one, or gestures with it. It's just supposed to be apparent that he digs the guitar.

2. The second one is from a local mattress salesman. In this one, the man uses his children as a cutesie factor. Unfortunately, any cutesiness has been completely removed for the simple fact that the man has superimposed his mouth over his children and is speaking for them. Except, he's not trying to sound like a toddler. He still sounds like a mid-40s white man. At one point, both children, a boy and a girl, sing the jingle. You see the mouths moving, and two instances of his voice singing the jingle in terrible unison. It's hilarious.

3. The third commercial is one I saw a while ago in Bowling Green, but that stuck with me ever since. It's presumably from a home alarm company, though the name is lost to me. It's a man singing while playing an acoustic guitar this hushed melody over scenes of breaking-and-enterings. Though I can't remember the entire lyrics to the song, I do remember one line, sung prettily with the acoustic guitar: "Someone could be iiin your house right now..." I laughed and laughed, but unfortunately never saw the ad again.

So please, local businesses, please keep making lame-brained, absurdist, disturbing television commercials for my amusement. If you're lucky, I may even remember the name of your company.

Advances in technology

Probably my favorite technological advancement is the advent of the home video. It allows people to videotape themselves doing whatever the hell they want and, combined with my other favorite technological advancement, the internet, can show that video to whoever the hell they want wherever the hell they want.

Go ahead and go to Youtube right now and click on anything and laugh at how funny it is, or how terribly unfunny it is.

Someone please buy me this

Suspect News Broadcasts

The Zombie Survial Guide has caused me to look at current events in a different way. I am going to transcribe an entire section of the book in order to illustrate what I mean, and then explain a current event I just saw on CNN and how it might have really happened. The following excerpt can be found on pages 25-27 of the book.

"Detection:

Every undead outbreak, regardless of its class, has a beginning. Now that the enemy has been defined, the next step in early warning. Knowing what a zombie is will not help if you are unable to recognize an outbreak before it's too late. This does not entail a 'zombie command post' in your basement, sticking pins in a map, and huddling around the shortwave radio. All it requires is looking for signs that would slip by the untrained mind. These signs include:

1. Homicides in which the victims were executed by head shots or decapitation. It has happened many times: People recognize an outbreak for what it is and try to take matters into their own hands. Almost always, these people are declared murderers by the local authorities and prosecuted as such.

2. Missing persons, particularly in wilderness or uninhabited areas. Pay careful attention if one or more of the search members end up missing. If the story is televised or photographed, watch to see what level of armament the search parties carry. Any more than one rifle per group could mean that this is more than just a simple rescue operation.

3. Cases of 'violent insanity' in which the subject attacked friends or family without the use of weapons. Find out if the attacker bit or tried to bite his victims. If so, are any of the victims still in the hospital? Try to discover if any of these victims mysteriously died within days of their bite.

4. Riots or other civil disturbances that began without provocation or other logical cause. Common sense will dictate that violence on any group level does not simply occur without a catalyst such as racial tension, political actions, or legal decisions. Even so-called 'mass hysteria' can always be traced to a root source. If none can be found, the answer may lie elsewhere.

5. Disease-based deaths in which either the cause is undetermined or seems highly suspect. Deaths from infectious disease are rare in the industrialized world, compared to a century ago. For this reason, new outbreaks always make the news. Look for those cases in which the exact nature of the disease is unexplained. Also, be on the alert for suspicious explanations such as West Nile virus or 'mad cow' disease. Either could be examples of a cover-up.

6. Any of the above in which media coverage was forbidden. A total press blackout is rare in the United States. The occurrence of one should be regarded as an immediate red flag. Of course, there may be many reasons other than an attack of the living dead. Then again, any event causing a government as media-conscious as our own to clamp down merits close attention. The truth, no matter what it is, cannot be good.

Once an event has tripped your sensore, keep track of it. Note the location, and its distance from you. Watch for similar incidents around or near the original site. If, within a few days or weeks, these incidents do occur, study them carefully. Note the response of law enforcement and other governmental agencies. If they react more forcefully with each occurrence, chances are that an outbreak is unfolding."

Now, the news event that caught my attention was the random house in New York that blew up a week or so ago. Today on the news, a follow-up report had stated that the person that had caused the explosion, the owner of the building, had died in a hospital. Apparently he was tampering with the gas line in the basement and that caused it to explode. It then stated that the cause of the person's death was undisclosed. This was the red flag for me. Why would the cause of the death be undisclosed in the case of a building that had been ostensibly blown up and burned down? What cause could possibly have occurred other than severe burns or trauma from the explosion?

Here is an alternate explanation, far-fetched though it may be. The owner of the building had died and then...come back to life. The other people in the building, recognized what had happened and locked him in the basement. Eventually and accidentally, the owner had "tampered" with the gas line, causing the explosion.

This would most likely explain the fact that he did not die from the original explosion, but rather a week later in a hospital under undisclosed causes.

Unexpected change of plans

Last night Amy and I went to the apartment complex pool. It was very cool and relaxing. There were some kids there splashing around. Afterwards, we decided to go to Blockbuster and then for ice cream.

I pulled out of the parking lot to our apartment and my car made a very brief grinding noise. Odd, I thought. I began to turn left onto Main street and heard the grinding noise more prominently, and I decided that the muffler had become unhinged yet again and was now dragging underneath us. I pulled into the Jolly Pirate, a local donut shop, and called AAA. I called and was on hold for more than 20 minutes. Meanwhile, Amy also called and got in only minutes after she dialed. What the fuck?

She talked to the dispatcher and was given an estimated arrival time for the service truck of 11:14 p.m. It was just 10 p.m. So we waited for a minute in the car and decided to go in for some donuts. I had a peanut butter filled dount and a strawberry slushie. It was delicious.

Eventually the service truck arrived, probably a half an hour before the estimated arrival time. I explained to the man what had happened and how it had been fixed last time - the bolt holding together the bracket that held up the muffler had fallen out some time ago, and my brother and I used a wire hanger to reattach it. It had been holding the muffler up for upwards from 6 months. It apparently had fallen out. The service man seemed impressed and said that he unfortunately did not have a bolt to fix it with, but that we could, in his words, ghetto-rig something. Rather, we jacked up the car and left it, and the service man gave Amy and me a ride back across the street to our apartment so Amy could get another wire hanger and a pair of needle-nose pliers. While the man and I were waiting in his truck, we were talking, and he told me that this is merely his night job and that he has a B.S. in Criminal Justice and a M.A. in Human Services. His day job is a fraud inspector for a bank.

Amy returned a few mintues later with two hangars, an adjustable wrench and a pair of wire cutters, stating that she could not find needlenose pliers. We drove back to my car still jacked up in the Jolly Pirate parking lot. Amy mocked surprise at the fact that my car was untouche by vandals or thieves. I replied by saying that no one would steal a car that was jacked up and left in a lot.

The man and I then began to try to fix the muffler. He suggested that he hold up the muffler and I feed the hangar through and put it back together. For an instant I thought, "Shouldn't this be the other way around," but I then immediately thought, "fuck it," and continued unwrapping the hangar.

We sat for about 20 minutes, him holding up the muffler, me trying to put it all back together. Finally I said, "fuck it, this is fine until I can get it fixed properly." The man said that it looked like it would work, and then that this was the easiest call he'd had all night. I said thanks, and it was nice to meet him, and we drove back home.

I looked at my cell phone after we got out of my car at home to see what time it was, and noted that it was not yet 11:30 p.m. "Hey, we didn't miss 'The Soup' yet."

"It's not 11:30 yet?" Amy asked.

We went up, I washed my hands and she turned on the tv. "The Soup" was a repeat, but it was still very funny. They made fun of Tom Cruise and Katie Holme's alleged child Suri.

Something Amy said

"I don't want to watch the Sci-Fi channel. There's bound to be something sci-fi on."




Tip your waitress. I'll be here all week.

Separate schools not equal but stupid - Opinion

At this point, you can mostly tell that I'm writing about education a lot. It happens. In fact, it has happened for the past 4 years. Small wonder I can't get education out of my head.

Separate schools not equal but stupid - Opinion

Protecting the galaxy isn't what it seems - Not News

This one I wrote because I thought it'd be a funny idea. And even though the Not News editor has never seen any of the Star Wars movies (blasphemous), he thought it was funny enough to be published.

Protecting the galaxy isn't what it seems - Not News

The United States of 'Huh?'-merica - Opinion

Kids are dumb.


The United States of 'Huh?'-merica - Opinion

Facebook has become a stalker's playground - Opinion

In your face, Facebook.

Facebook has become a stalker's playground - Opinion

There's no music in Music TV - Opinion

I'm sorry you're getting annoyed with this. There are still some more to come.

There's no music in Music TV - Opinion

Plea to combat obesity in kids - Opinion

Here is another one. The picture is awful and child-molester-like. I promise that it's not true.

Plea to combat obesity in kids - Opinion

Celebrity gossip: Waste of your time - Opinion

This is a column I wrote. More to come as I go through the website and find them all.

Celebrity gossip: Waste of your time - Opinion

Way too many

There is a disproportionate amount of Cash Advance businesses in Reynoldsburg, Ohio.

Booty-shaking Beats

The Ying-Yang Twins have made a career of making half-songs.