Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Elijah Wood - Numa Numa - Yo Gabba Gabba! Dancy Dance

What happened to Looney Tunes? A Christmas treat from me to you starring your favorite elf from Lord of the Rings.

Monday, December 24, 2007

Headlight Etiquitte

I was driving down Route 57 (like you have any idea where that is) when I passed a very well hidden cop facing the other direction with his radar out. I did the only respectable thing one can do for a fellow driver, which was to give the double brights to my fellow drivers, informing them of impending doom if they don't slow down.

However, my situation raised several questions. For example, how far away do you get before you stop informing your fellow driver? I think I stopped somewhere at the 2 mile mark, and I thought that a bit too far. Also, it raised hypothetical questions. What happens if you're behind someone when passing the cop, and the person in the lead doesn't let the drivers in the other direction know? Are you, as Car #2, morally obligated to do the double brights? If so, can cars going the other direction clearly see the brights action? Will the person in front of you think you're trying to communicate with them? So many questions.

So I then get on the Merritt Parkway, continuing on my journey. If you don't know it, the Merritt is a 2-lane in each direction highway with a narrow grass median and metal guardrails in the middle. The speed limit is 55 but the slow lane regularly goes no slower than 70. It is very narrow, very curvy, and has literally no shoulder on either side. It's awesome.

I noticed, whilst driving, that cars driving southbound (I was going northbound at the time) would have their brights on when no other cars were in front of them. (Did I mention there are also no street lights?) Some cars turned their brights off when they saw the car pack that I was in, and some just left them on. What's the proper thing to do in this situation? It's interesting because on the Merritt, most people left their brights on, while on the Saw Mill (a similarly designed road), most people tend to turn their brights off when they see a car coming on the opposite direction. Peculiar indeed.

Have you heard enough about me going on and on about a car's headlights? I have. Tune in next week for my dissertation on whether zebras are black with white stripes or white with black stripes. Until then.

Saturday, December 22, 2007

Awesome!

There are actually two awesome things that I wish to share with you tonight. The first is the introduction of the awesome* label for posts. It's awesome* because lets be honest, I'm pretty fucking weird and most of the shit I find awesome (sans asterisk) is probably only enjoyed by me. Anyway, onwards and upwards.

Geriatric1927: You've heard of the old man of the sea (note: I really don't care that its really the old man and the sea), well this is the old man of YouTube. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that he was born in 1927, which makes him understandably geriatric. Oh and he's also British. Amazing! His explanation video is short and sweet. He essentially got addicted to YouTube and now has his own video log. It is so easy to just listen to his old man British accent and listen to him explain the world through his eyes. Oh and he's got almost a hundred videos (maybe he has more now) so there's lots of material to keep you (me) interested. Awesome*!
http://youtube.com/profile?user=geriatric1927

Korova Milkbar: So as it turns out, the two awesome* things turned into three. Have you seen A Clockwork Orange, because I have. And I love it. Anyway, somewhere in the first 15 minutes of the film, there is a scene where Alex and his Droogs are at this rather intriguing place called, you guessed it, the Korova Milkbar. I just found out today that it's a real place! The downside is that it's no longer on the Lower East Side, and it's moved to White Plains. Anyway the place sounds awesome and I want to go there.

That's about all that's new and awesome* in my life right now. Until next time.

Friday, December 21, 2007

How Embarrassing

Because it's not particularly self explanatory, this is a predator from the Dateline NBC show "To Catch a Predator". His name is Jay Reffner, and yes I found that out through Google.

The guy is kind of an idiot, and I really don't feel bad for him. I mean not only does he have a penchant for having sex with really young minors, but he has a really shitty screen name. Meat rocket? Why the subterfuge? Just come out and say it. "I have a small penis." I mean that's the only logical reason I can think of why he'd go for underage persons. They just don't know any better.

The Moral of Today's Story: If you're going to molest young people, you've got to have a screen name they can easily understand. Meat rocket? Too clever for a 13 year old. Try something more straight-forward like "DickInHand42". The 42 signifies your age while the dick in hand accurately describes what you'll be doing while talking to these underage people. Also it has the added benefit of having to do with sex. Which will arouse their interest. Pun! Jackpot. Added difficulty: Change your name to Dick. Then people won't be able to make heads or tails of the situation.

So now that the story has absolutely no moral, and we all believe that this idiot is truly an idiot, I'm going to say good day. Good day.

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Beauty is on the Inside...Right?

I went to my plastic surgeon today to make sure that my leg was still healing well. (Full Disclosure: I have a plastic surgeon.) The good news is that yes, the leg is healing well. Good, great, boring.

While I was sitting in the waiting room waiting to go in, I found myself sitting directly across from a young twenty-something (maybe 19?) girl that I would describe as rather attractive. Good body, cute face, and thin: what is she doing at a plastic surgeon? There didn't seem to be anything wrong with her, so I had to assume that she was going in for purely cosmetic reasons. And with that assumption, I became absurdly vain. As absurdly vain as a plastic surgeon.

So I'm stealing glances at her, trying to remain undetected, and attempting to figure out what she was doing there. Suddenly, I start thinking to myself, well, she's got a bit of under-chin fat, we could suck that out, she's got a cute nose, but I can understand why she doesn't like it, that can change, give her a bit of an eye lift, perhaps some work on the jawline, etc. I briefly considered a boob-job, but she was wearing loose-fitting clothing and the results were inconclusive.

Then, the kicker. Her friend comes out of the door separating the consult rooms and waiting room and she gets up to go. So now I feel like an idiot, she's not really planning on getting anything done. Oops. This poses a whole new set of questions. Do cosmetic surgeons see like this always? Do they get coffee and think, "A few strategically placed botox shots would really improve that barrista's quality of life"?

And what does that say about the kind of person who actually becomes a plastic surgeon? Do you have to be incredibly shallow in nature, or do they teach that in med school? Do they turn it off when they go home? Can they turn it off? Or do they go home, hug their 6 year old daughter, and think "I can't wait until you're 18 so I can give you a better nose"?

That's about as much as I can think about that. Stay tuned next week when we learn just why Peter Piper is so damn obsessed with picked peppers.

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Social Commentary and Light Humor

I'm not sure if this is funny, sad, or both. As always, click on the image for the full sized (really gigantic) version.
P.S. if you look at that and think, "Yeah, I definitely agree with that." Then it's not funny for you. It's sad, and you need help because you have a problem.

Friday, December 07, 2007

Above the Influence

I don't know why, but I've always really enjoyed all those anti-drug commercials. Not that they're good, or effective, or even have decent production values, but its fun to see what the government considers an effective tool to get through to 'todays youth.' Please note the gigantic air quotes around today's youth.

Today, I did something I never did before, I went to www.abovetheinfluence.com. I must admit my favorite part was the "Comebacks" section, where you are presented with different scenarios regarding drug use and appropriate comebacks to such "come-ons". The picture below illustrates quite nicely how much time was put into this particular endeavor.

"I snagged my younger brother's Ritalin. Want some?" "Nah. That stuff is bad"
So what's my point? Really I have no clue. Maybe its that my tax dollars should be going better places, like child health care, or perhaps, oh I don't know a thousand other uses other than an ineffectual campaign that even congressional reports call ineffective.

On a lighter note, actually I don't know about a lighter note at the moment. I think the last time I left my house was Wednesday, which means two lovely days of watching TV, reading, doing crosswords, and getting a cold. Boo colds. Anyway, I've got a Bat Mitzvah to go to tomorrow which requires me to leave the house. More stories tomorrow!

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Oh Connecticut

Here I am, watching more late night TV, which we've already established I shouldn't be doing. Today's choice is True Life: I'm the New Kid in Town. The on screen guide informed me that "Grace and her family move from Connecticut to New Zealand." Obviously the first question all the New Zealand girls ask Grace is where shes from. Her answer, "Basically right outside New York" really justified my existence.

Also, I respect the fact that MTV decided to subtitle half the things these faux-Australians were saying, because really, it just turns into gibberish after a point.

This girl is so awkward. Shes flirting (or trying to at least) with this guy. Shes talking like 200 miles a second and is trying to mock his accent. He's also speaking rather fast, which is difficult because hes incomprehsible.

In other news, I drove my car today for the first time since I got out of the hospital. It was good, and shifting was much less difficult than I had originally suspected. Well the show's almost over and I should really go to bed, so I guess that's the end of this post. Goodbye!

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Should I go to bed? Yes

A perfect example of why I should not be watching so much TV.

"The Universe" is a show on the History Channel, and also happens to be really cool. Right now, they're discussing how time is relative. Apparently gravity affects time. So that the clocks on the GPS satellites orbiting earth run actually slightly faster than clocks on earth. They even did experiments using super accurate atomic clocks in space and on earth.

Now they're discussing paradoxes regarding time travel, i.e. The Grandfather Paradox--what happens if you go back in time and kill your grandfather? Then he would have never had your father who would have never had you, so how could you exist to go back in time and kill him. The 'scientists' on the show then give another paradox. What if you go back in time and meet your teenage mother. And then she falls in love with you. How could you exist to go back in time if she spurned your father and therefore never had you.

Wait just a second. They just exactly recited the plot of Back to the Future. So now there's a solution! Force your teenage dad to grow a pair, get him to start a fight with Biff, the town bully, and woo your teenage mom back! Its almost like Hollywood wrote it.

How bizarre. I mean who decides, one day, to see if time goes faster or slower in space. I mean science fiction aside, time is one of those things I think of as pretty concrete. But now there's a "fabric of time". Does it rip? Can we sew it back up if it does rip? Are Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock actually going to travel back to the 20's or 30's to rescue a drugged, crazed Dr. McCoy? (Yes that is an actual Star Trek episode, and yes I've seen it.) These are questions I must have the answers to!

Final Thought: I love watching these science and history shows. They take these very advanced topics, strip them down to easily digestible theories and then add lots of graphics. If only school was that easy. Let's be honest, I could never do the legwork to see what happens in a black hole, but I can understand a narrator explaining what would happen with an animated visual of an astronaut getting pulverized. God, I love TV.

Monday, December 03, 2007

The Best Feeling

Here I am, in cozy Washington, resting my feet on the desk and watching as it rains cold, ugly rain while Connecticut is experiencing cold, beautiful snow. That one disappointment aside, I am having a great weekend.

I got in on Friday night, where I was welcomed to a surprise party in my apartment. I saw a lot of friends that I wasn't expecting to, and we had good times until the early morning. Also, I found out that there's a Thomas the Tank Engine movie, and that it's On Demand. I watched part of it before deciding I was too tired to go to sleep. The suspense is killing me, I must find out how it ends!

Pike Semi-Formal was on Saturday night, and I had a great time. Having not really told a whole hell of a lot of people I was coming, I showed up to the bar fashionably late. Before I even got a chance to show the bouncer my ID, brothers were already making off hand comments like, "Holy shit, its Jordan!" The bouncer had barely given me a wristband before there was literally a "JORDAN!' chant echoing throughout the bar. I was extremely flattered, to say the least. The entire night, brothers kept coming up to me and telling me how happy they were to see me, and that they were glad I was OK and doing well. Many commented about the appropriateness of me being the one to have a cane. I left the semi at around 1:00am and headed to Kelsey's 21st celebration at Buffalo Billiards. That was also very fun, and once again I got to see more people who were very glad to see me and who had been concerned about my condition. Not that I'm an egoist or anything (disclosure: I kind of am) but it's really just a very warming feeling to know that so many people were behind me and pulling for me. And now that I'm doing well enough to make it down to the District, you all are embracing me with open arms. This sounds corny, but it really means a lot to me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Continuing right along...Sunday began with a bang at noon. I met up with even more friends at Ivory for lunch, and as it turns out, every time I tried to leave, I ran into more people and stayed and chatted in Ivory until literally until around 5:00pm. Hung out with the neighbors for a bit then went to chapter. At chapter, I got a dollar from Galmiche (the highest honor one can achieve in the Chapter Room) for having nasty wounds and everyone (sober this time) was really glad that I was doing a lot better and exhibited genuine concern for my health and well being.

I must be honest, I didn't know what to expect when I got on the train to get down here, but the outpouring of support and kind feeling has been truly overwhelming. It's been great to be back, and although people have tons of work to do, they still made time to see me, say hello, and see how I'm doing.

On another positive note, Camille came back from Ireland on Saturday, so now when I call her standard rates apply instead of exorbitant international rates. Hooray!

I'm out of here on Tuesday, so I'm sure I'll get another post in about the great times I've been having in DC. But seriously, thanks to all of you who have called, or sent me emails, or Facebook messages, or texted, or in any way gotten me through this particularly gruesome experience that has been the last two months of my life. I truly could not haven gotten through it without you.

Perhaps some day, I'll write up the sometimes comical tale of my hospital stay. Until then.