Ultraparadoxical

There are times in life where you wonder why you ever waste your time drinking and going out… then your friend makes an ass of themselves and it is all worthwhile.  These are a collection of those incidents…

Top 9 Drunken Moments (In no particular order)

Cabo Cantina, San Diego – 2 for 1 drinks sound like a great deal but it can get ugly fast.  One of my friends was hitting on some blond at the bar and she started to playfully slap him in the face.  In his mind it turned from playful to annoying quickly.  He asked her to stop 3 times and when she didn’t he made her pay the price with a buy-one-get-one-free-corona-douching.  He unloaded both beers over her head… when I looked over I thought they were celebrating winning the World Series – the bouncers did not think it was so funny and booted him. read more »

Dreams are so fascinating to me because everything is so random and logic does not apply the way I use it in every other part of my life.  It is so jumbled and fleeting yet it can compel me to do things or infuse me with real emotion. ”I had the most fucked up dream last night…” usually precedes a convoluted story that makes no sense the the person hearing what the speaker dreamt.  Invariably the story ends with “… I don’t know, it’s hard to explain… but it was fucked up”.  The reason it was fucked up is because interpreting a dream is like translating a language that is different for each individual.

The subconscious contains all of the urges, impulses, intentions, perceptions, thoughts, deductions and feelings we have ever experienced.  Most of this information stays cordoned off in the recesses of our subconscious and may only bubble up as an instinct, idea or at times a rational thought in our waking lives.  Our minds have evolved and developed a rational sense that is unparalleled in the animal kingdom.  Having the conscious and subconscious working in tandem is a uniquely human characteristic and elevates us to be able to think in infinite terms while the subconscious unites us with our instinctual heritage in the animal kingdom.  I imagine when we are able to more clearly determine exactly how animals think that we will discover it is very similar to our experiences in the visceral simplicity of a dream-state. read more »

I spent over 9 hours on a plane or at an airport yesterday!  Wheeeee!  I shouldn’t bitch, I don’t mind traveling at all really – it is a good time to read, think or do things you otherwise I would not do if I was already at my destination.   For the most part I travel with very few complaints but there are a few things that surfaced on this trip that I would like to address.

1 – My ticket said my flight takes off from Detroit with a layover in Kansas City then on to San Diego.  Simple enough, I should only make 1 stop, correct?  “No” said the chick at the ticket counter who looked like she needs a chisel to take off her makeup – “there was an additional stop in St. Louis but I didn’t have to deplane so it doesn’t count as a stop” (then gave me a look like I was the biggest shithead in all of Detroit for even asking her why the flight board at the terminal said St. Louis).  That is bullshit.  That would be like me telling my girlfriend that I was going to stop at Target before I came to her place except in actuality I was going to pick up my ex-girlfriend and get road-head on the way.  According to the airline that is technically not cheating.  To them any stop that does not have me exiting the plane is on some alternate universe and they don’t need to clearly indicate it on the ticket.

2 – Why do all pilots sound like they are stoned when they come over the intercom to talk to the passengers?  “Uhhhhhhhh – we will be cruising at – uhhhhhh – 30,000 feet for approximately threeeeeeeee .   .   .   .  hours – uhhhhh – arriving…”  The pilot always has the same kind of dazed breathy voice that reminds me of someone who I would rather have roll a joint for me than control a few hundred thousand pound aircraft traveling at 500mph.  In any other profession this would not work at all.  If my surgeon was talking like that before he was going to dig a tumor out of my abdomen I would tell him to take a hike.  Pilots of the world my message to you: Either get your shit together when you come over the intercom or pass the bong to the back of the plane.

3 – The “no carry-on liquids” rule has to end.  It has to be one of the stupidest things to ever come down from any bureaucracy.  I always just check a bag no matter how small it is because I do not want to have to deal with getting a  travel size for every toiletry that I want to travel with.  The few times that I have accidentally taken a liquid in my carry-on I have gotten it on board only to realize it after the fact.  The semi-evolved retard who looks like an extra from “Deliverance” that operates the x-ray screen is not the sharpest of federal counterintelligence agents.  I understand that everyone wants to be safe but if I was a terrorist I would tape the fluids to my nut-sack rather than put it in a bottle of Head and Shoulders in my carry-on (actually maybe not my nuts – the screams in the bathroom as I took the duct tape off would probably give me away -  I guess that is reason number 2,093 why you shouldn’t be a terrorist.)  My suggestion would be to allow a shampoo here or a bottle of water there but be vigilant for milk gallons of kerosene or other items that could ACTUALLY be harmful.  That is probably a bit easier for our less than valedictorian TSA employees to look for.   For complaining publicly I am probably getting put on a blacklist right now by the government and I am going to be cavity searched the next 5 times I fly – I hope this rant was worth it.

4 – I would like to broker a peace settlement between all passengers in a battle that has raged for decades.  The fight I am referring to is the virtual 38th parallel of passenger aircraft, the armrest.  Just because you sit down first does not mean the armrest is yours and the person next to you must sit in some sort of a contorted yoga pose the rest of the flight.  If someone is being a dick about the armrest and not sharing my usual move is faking an arm spasm to regain armrest superiority.  This bumps their arm off for a second so I can get in a position where the area is shared properly.  The one time that the “arm spasm” trick did not work and the guy next to me tried to take the whole armrest again I was forced to pull out the big guns.  In a loud voice (so the other passengers would hear me) I said “Hey Chief – we are going to have to share this armrest or we are going to have some issues” (that’s right, I gave him the Chief Treatment).  He looked at me like I was a madman but finally relented, muttering that he was sorry and not talking to me for the rest of my flight.  It doesn’t have to get that ugly, don’t be an asshole, just share the armrest.

After all of this aggravation I arrived where I needed to be no worse for wear but the aggravations of flight do not need to persist.  Small changes in everyone’s normal routine can be beneficial for everyone – that way I can bitch about other things.  Is there anything I forgot that pisses you off?

There will be no post on Friday (I know, put away the razor blades and drain the luke-warm water from the tub, I will be back on Monday) because I will be traveling back to my Alma Mater to hang out with some friends.  I have not been back in a few years and I didn’t think I would go back for a long time.  I am excited to go  – even though I am going to feel like an old sack of douche compared to the students (some of which that had been born in the 90’s – *GASP*)  Looking back on my previous posts it is obvious that I had been thinking about college in anticipation of this trip and I think another walk down memory lane couldn’t hurt.

When I was a student and the alumnus would come back I thought that they were the massive tools.  I mean, why  would you come back to campus when you are that old?  Didn’t you have better things to do once you had graduated than get shit faced and act like a complete asshole?  No… the answer is a resounding, NO.  Back then I thought after graduation I would magically transform into an adult.  In reality though, the weight of life after college is slowly dropped on your back - jobs, debts, obligations, marriage and kids are slowly piled on and the sleep until noon and 3 weeks off at Christmas become a distant memory.  Don’t get me wrong – I love my life now – but college was fantastic.  I know I am old – but fuck it – I’m going to go back to school and become the same asshole that I hated 10 years ago.  I have earned it. read more »

In my estimation all women are crazy and all men are bastards.

Don’t ask me how it works - I think It has something to do with Testosterone, Etstrogen or maybe Chlorophyll.  No matter how hard a guy tries there is always a percentage of him that at his core is an asshole and craziness just comes naturally to women (I know these are broad generalizations and I am certainly no relationship guru but hear me out - and if you can’t then go back to work… ok, still with me?  Good).   There is no way around it, thats just how it is.  To make my argument a little clearer it would probably be helpful for me to explain exactly what I mean by “crazy” and “bastard”.  read more »

I work in a salt mine…  Actually, I used to work in a salt mine.  Wait… that’s not true either.

The term salt mine was coined by my brother about 6 years ago when I was working at a shitty call center grinding through my 7-4 shift Tuesday through Saturday slinging Direct TV equipment.  He was visiting me for a couple of days and I let him borrow my car while I was working.  True to form he was about a half hour late picking me up from that God-forsaken hell hole.  Waiting for him on the uncomfortable plastic break room chairs while watching the other call center losers heat up their microwave burritos put me in an especially foul mood.  After reading pretty much everything on the bulletin board (within that half hour I became an expert in the occupational hazard law in California) I finally spotted my jackass brother pull up outside fresh from a surf.  The day had apparently beat me down because as I shambled out to the car (shirt half untucked, head hanging low) he said “Salt mine beating you down?”  I hopped into the car and looked at myself in the mirror.  Although I have never seen a salt miner I swear that I looked like I just clocked out of a 12 hour shift in the salt pit.  That’s how much a bad job can bring you down.  I have long since left that job for greener pastures to a less aggravating job but thinking back on it now it was certianly a true salt mine, but there is a little salt mine in every job.  Even if you love your job there are some days that you don’t want to be there or your co-workers suck.  Every salt mine has a crew of people that you would not normally spend 8 hours a day of your own volition and this Top Nine Friday is dedicated to the douchie-est of these familiar salt mine inhabitants. read more »

Sooo… I have been conducting a little experiment with myself for the past few weeks.  I took my Dad up on a $100 bet and agreed to lay off the sauce for 30 days.  I have about a week left and my sobriety has ranged from a non-issue to a night-ruiner and everywhere in between.  I have not written a lab report in about a decade so I figured I would dust off some of my long forgotten skills I picked up in CHEM 101 and get all scientific for a bit.

*Sidenote* – I learned how to format my labs Freshman year in college from this Asian lady, Miss Chen, who (to put it lightly) had a tentative grasp on the finer points of the English language.  The lab was on Monday morning at 8AM - I spent half of the class trying to decipher her chinglish while pretending I knew what I was doing and simultaneously trying to get in my lab partners pants…  read more »

“Everything happens for a reason.”

I hear it all the time whenever someone talks about things that have happened to them in the past.  Why do so many people believe that to be true?  The idea that events are culminating into some grand plan which will eventually put the individual in some sort of more evolved state or “right” position is part narcissism, part blind faith and 100% bullshit.  In reality there is no “reason” for any of the disparate events that befall us.  There are any number of realities that could have culminated based on actions that we take throughout every second of  life.  There is one reality that we perceive and it did not come into being because of a reason but rather because we took a specific set of actions that led us to our “current state”.  People attach a significance to an event after the fact in order to help make sense of their reality and achieve a more ordered state to their perception of the world around them. It may help people process their current reality and help them feel better about it but it is logically false. read more »

For this edition of Top Nine Friday I wanted to examine a television show that has been close to my heart ever since I was just a youngster playing with GI Joes and avoiding getting my ass beat by my older brothers.   That show is MASH… just kidding, I hate that fucking show.  Just hearing the first few notes of the opening song of MASH makes me wish the Korean War never happened, just so that show was never made.  Anyways, the show I am really referring to is The Simpsons.

I watched that it religiously all through grade school and into high school.  Then it became syndicated and I was able to watch it every day.  This continued through high school and even into college where the 2 hours that the reruns played were dedicated solely to Simpsons viewing.  In college my house would literally shut down during this time of the day.  To be honest though I have not watched a new Simpson’s episode in a few years and disavow all knowledge of any new episodes being created after 2002.    My hours of couch time spent watching this show has given me an encyclopedic knowledge of any Simpsons episode from seasons 3-13 (the early episodes have not aged well).  So in honor of Marge Simpson appearing on the cover of Playboy I will examine the best of the best Simpsons episodes from those years: read more »

I am so happy to be living in the era that I live in right now but there are things about the mechanisms and customs of life that seem to be built solely to piss me off.  I have been accused of being a procrastinator or lazy because I don’t want to get my dry cleaning, buy stuff for the house or change my cable service.  Part of it is laziness but the main reason that I don’t get this stuff taken care of it is because these activities physically pain me.  Talking to the douche-bag at Blockbuster explaining about a DVD they are mysteriously charging to my credit card for or discussing how exactly your reservation at the Luxor was completely fucked tend to be excruciating.  How painful are they though? read more »