Just kidding! – that did actually (maybe) happen to Lebron James right before game 4 of the Eastern Conference Semi-finals.  Allegedly Delonte West, one of Lebron’s teammates, has been “driving the lane” on Lebron’s mom for the last few months and Lebron found out about it shortly before he shit the bed in the playoffs.  Either Delonte West is really into MIWF’s (Mothers I Wouldn’t Fuck) or he wants to become the most hated man in Cleveland.  If this rumor is true he will be the reason that the Cav’s didn’t get a chance at the title and why Lebron will be playing somewhere else next year.  It also will probably make for some pretty weird family dinner’s if Delonte wants to keep dating Mrs. James – something tells me that Lebron may not want his mom getting bottomed out by a guy with neck tattoos 25 years her junior.

So Basically this guy:

“took it to the rack” on this lady:

My first reaction was that I was pissed for not spreading this rumor myself.  It is so juicy and so unbelievable that it just may be true.  That is the key to a successful rumor – make it something that people want to believe.  If someone wants to believe something they will make all kinds of logical leaps in order for the rumor to be true in their own head. Rumor creation is kind of a hobby of mine and can be really funny at times.  The ones that I create are usually harmless yet I take great satisfaction when I hear one of my creations come back to me from someone else who would swear that the rumor was true.  For example, one of my coworkers pissed me off one day so I planted the rumor that I saw him walking his cat on the beach… with a leash.  Childish?  Yes.  A little dikish? Yes.  Effective?  Abso-fucking-luteley.

Flash forward over a year later and I was sitting with a few friends at a bar and one of my best friends who I happen to work with received an email on her blackberry that the “catwalker” was fired.  She proceeded to tell the entire table that SHE had seen him walking his cat on the beach.  I was ecstatic.  It was like I sent myself a gift a year ago and it unexpectedly dropped on my table at that exact moment.  After she finished her story I confirmed that SHE had seen it, then informed her that I made up the rumor – even after another friend sitting with us confirmed that I had made the story up she still wanted to believe it was real.

The “catwalking” story worked because the target of the rumor was kind of a douche and it was so ridiculous that it just probably was true just like this Delonte banging Lebron’s Mom story.  If it is untrue then whomever made the Lebron story up would be the Yoda of rumor spreaders and I want to go to a swamp and learn the craft from him/her.

I know what you are thinking… Mr. Ultraparadoxical is a total asshole, rumors suck and people who spread them are total fuck-sticks.  You are right.  I am an asshole and I would never normally talk shit behind someone’s back but it is pure comedy to see what people will believe.  If I would not have spread these rumors I would have missed out on these fantastic situations:

• In college we spread a rumor that one of our buddies (We will call him PC) walked in on his mom giving his step dad head while he was home on spring break.  This rumor led to another one of our friends who was not in on the joke telling this story to a large group of people and everyone taking it as fact.  PC came back home from class and people started making fun of him for matronly oral that NEVER happened.  When he denied that ever happened I chipped in and said “I would say that too if I saw my Mom giving some guy a BJ” thus sealing the rumor as fact.  Days later we spilled the beans on what we had did and we all got a good laugh… except for PC – he swore his revenge on us.
• Another falsehood we spread had one of our buddies getting wasted, hooking up with his girlfriend and accidentally shitting the bed.  This rumor ended up getting disseminated all throughout our group as well as her friend group.  It finally got back to his girlfriend and she confronted him about it by telling him that he did not need to be embarrassed.  She said that these things happen and he could have told her instead of keeping it a secret.  He was clueless and flabbergasted… I wish I had a tape of that conversation… good times.

Am I a total asshole?  Do you have any good ridiculous rumor stories?

Ontario – “Wait… was that a sign for New York?”

Sophomore year in college I organized a winter formal in Toronto, Ontario.  The main reason was that the drinking age is 19 and anytime I could legally get a drink at the bar I felt much classier when I was that age.  I helped organize the event so I was obligated to go even though I had just broken up with my girlfriend.  I took one of my friends and we had a fantastic time at the party then drinking our faces off in Toronto… until the ride back to Michigan. I was pretty spent from drinking and organizing 40 couples (have you ever heard the phrase “it was like herding cats”?  Getting my drunk 19-21 year old college friends organized was like herding retarded cats… with brain damage… on speed).  The next morning I was a mix of drunk. exhausted and hungover.  We hopped in the car with another couple and started back west towards the Michigan border.

After we left the city limits I said “I’m going to take a nap for a few minutes – WAKE ME UP IN 20 MINUTES – I want to make sure we are on the right track” and promptly passed out in the passenger seat.  I must have been roofied or something because when I woke up and checked out the clock I saw that I had slept for 2 hours!  I asked her why she didn’t wake me up – she said that I looked like I could have used some sleep. “That was nice” I thought… until I saw the sign that said “Kingston – 20 miles”.  I stared in disbelief.  I am no geography major but we may have taken the scenic route if we wanted to end up in East Lansing, MI:

Since I am so mature my first thought was of “Dumb and Dumber” – “You mean to tell me we drove across 1/4 of Ontario IN THE WRONG DIRECTION?!?!?!”  I tried to be as understanding as possible especially when she started crying in the gas station before we turned around.  “It was only a 4 hour detour” – “I always wanted to see the rolling tundra of southeast Ontario” – “Boy these Canadians sure have fucked up highway markers” I said while secretly cursing her non-existent navigation skills.  As we pulled onto the highway I realized that this was my own fault – she is Asian – she should have been in charge of my calculus homework that I didn’t do, not operating a motor vehicle in a foreign land.  After fending off car-bourne insanity for a couple hours we finally arrived home – 8 and a half hours later.  As shitty as it was I think it actually worked out as a bonding experience and a reason for me to try to fight my car narcolepsy.

[Note: In the spirit of even handedness I emailed my friend before I posted this to get her viewpoint:]

From: Ultraparadoxical
To: XXXXXXXXX
Sent: Tue, May 18, 2010 3:22:59 PM
Subject: RE: Against your best wishes

Yo – I am including a story about our ill fated drive from Toronto on my blog – do you have any words to defend yourself that I can include with the story so you are properly represented?

[And her reply]

It was when you approved the direction of choice when passing the awkward penis sign that forced the innocent Saturn and it’s entourage in the wrong direction…

[Ummmm... huh?  Was that Cantonese?  I always told her to stop sniffing glue back in the day but some people never listen.]

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 piled on and sleeping until noon and 3 weeks off for Christmas become distant memories.  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.

Now that I got that out of the way – whenever you go back to a familiar place you have not been to in a while there is always the possibility of a chance encounter with someone who you have not seen in years and didn’t think you would see again.  To keep things straight I want to make a list; I don’t want to forget anyone.  In no particular order I would like to see:

• The creepy Asian kid with BO who I used to copy off of in Calculus class so I could give him a hi-five. If it wasn’t for him I never would have graduated.  He probably is head of engineering at some bio-tech start-up and hopefully he has made enough dough to buy some deodorant.
• That backstabbing bitch that tried to sell out our entire marketing group in order to better her own grade so I could pour a beer on her. I think she initiated my hatred for all things marketing.  She tried to secretly meet with the professor to say she did the whole project and the group did not participate.  Vintage marketing person – a fake cheery exterior that hides a lazy vindictive skank – she is probably a marketing director by now.  There is no one with less use than the people in the marketing department – take it from me, I’m a marketing major.
• The chick who talked like a pirate so I can watch her speak. It wasn’t what she said that was necessarily pirate-like – it was more how she talked that reminded me of Ahab.  You can even try it at home!  Purse the right side of your lips – now try to ask for a beer.  Presto, you’re talking like a pirate.  One of my buddies once gave her a sandwich to see if she would only feed one half of her mouth-hole.  The test was inconclusive.
• The team of dickheads that worked the graveyard shift at Taco Bell so I could throw a chalupa at them.  Wait… maybe I was the drunk asshole and they were just trying to do their job.  That’s not the point – the point IS – they sucked at life.  The team of service “professionals” over at the Bell would swear at customers at the slightest bit of provocation and once threw a hot sauce packet in my buddy’s face after he tried to return nachos.  The hatred on campus of the employees at Taco Bell was so intense that after the Duke vs MSU final four game when riots broke out  no one touched any of the shops on Grand River Ave. – except Taco Bell – and it was TRASHED.  *Side note* Some friends of mine once tried to steal the gumball machine there and got it halfway out the door before it tipped and shattered all over the ground releasing about 800 gumballs to the “hungry-hungry-hippo-like” crowd of drunken students… classic. *End Side note*
• The guy who rode a bike around campus painted in Green and White so I can give him money for a skin cancer screening.  It can’t be healthy to continually coat your entire torso in heavy makeup every day and ride around shirtless on a bike. When did this sound like a good idea for this guy?  Was he sitting in his apartment one day saying “Hmmmm… I wonder how I can 1 -make an ass of myself 2 – guarantee I wont get laid and 3 – waste away my 20′s?  Thats it!  I can ride around on a bike waving around a flag in the middle of winter!”

If I can just run into one of these people i will consider my trip a success… scratch that, if I get wasted and one of my friends makes a huge ass of themselves then I will come back with a big smile on my face.

Do you have any people from your past that you would like to meet up with again?  What would you like to do to them?

*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… 

Anyways, one hazy, hungover Monday morning Ms. Chen looked me dead in the eyes and asked ”Did you get any ass?”.  I froze – what the fuck did she just say?  I dropped what I was doing and looked at her like she had just taken a shit in chapter 17 of my chemistry book.  Apparently she sensed my confusion and reiterated her question “Did YOU get any ASS?” and crinkled her brow behind her oversized protective goggles.  “Uh… Wha… Wha… What?” was all that I was able to sputter out as I took a few sidelong glances at my lab partner who apparently heard the same thing as I did.  Was this the first ever recorded case of a chemistry TA cockblocking someone the middle of  a lab?  Did she see me at that party on Linden with those Pi Phi’s?  She was obviously an insane stalker.  For the third time she pointed over my shoulder and said once more ”DID YOU GET ANY ASS?”.  I turned around and saw the rest of the class grabbing dried ice out of the coolers behind my lab partner.  Ice… not ASS… ICE! *End Sidenote*

Determining Effects of Alcohol, Drug and Tobacco Deprivation on Humans

Statement of Problem: What are the effects on a 29 year old single male abstaining from any mind altering substances for 30 days?

Hypothesis: The subject in question will grow to hate all of his drunk friends and not make any bad decisions (IE – have fun) for that 30 day period.

Materials: club soda (no vodka) – car (designated driver duties) – patience (dealing with shit-faced friends) – Blockbuster Video card (renting movies because going out is not what it once was)

Procedure: Carry on through normal social activities without the aid of drugs or alcohol.  This includes but is not limited to happy hours, Taco Tuesdays, football Sundays, birthday parties, bar crawls, Columbus Day, Monday afternoon, going away parties, screenings of  The Wall, work functions, concerts, weddings and any other social engagements that may require a reasonable person to tip back a few cocktails (read: all of them).

Results: I have almost completed this experiment and there are a few things that I have noticed:

• My friends are MASSIVE douche-bags when they are drunk.  I can not understate this.  MASSIVE.  This is not to say that I don’t suck when I’m drunk, because I know I do.  Something about viewing things through the lens of sobriety makes pissing on the side of the bar seem like not such a great idea - just sayin’.
• Meeting chicks at the bar can be excruciating.  Some tramp with her top half falling off - breath smelling of Red Bull and Vodka – trying to get me to take a picture of her friends pretending to smack each other on the ass loses a bit of its charm when I’m sober.  It’s a wonder anyone hooks up.  It is like letting lose a gaggle of retards and watching them randomly bump into each other until they pair off for no discernible reason.
• Everyone needs to comment on my non-drinking, it is non-stop.  If I have another shithead ask me if they can buy me a shot when they know I can’t drink I give them the “Rhianna” treatment.
• When I am driving at 2AM without a drop of alcohol in my system I am invincible to any Cops.  Since almost everyone else on the road is a little buzzed I feel like I can drive like I’m “Tokyo Drifting” and if a cop pulls me over he will HAVE to let me go since I am 100% sober.  Probably not true but whatever.
• Every event involves at least a little drinking.  I have been looking for a 30 day window to fit my sobriety into where I didn’t have any “mandatory” drinking activities that I couldn’t miss.  I was unsuccessful until now and I have been waiting since March.  Even taking that into consideration I still have been to tons of events that I would normally be drinking if it was not for my self imposed sobriety.
• Despite all of the negatives, I feel great.  I am more alert.  I take less naps.  I have more productive weekends.  The physical aspect of this has been so apparent that I may continue some aspects of my self imposed ban even after my 30 days is done…

Conclusion: Sobriety sucks – I am getting shitfaced the day after my 30 days is up.  I don’t hate my friends I just want to be drunk enough that I don’t care how dumb they/I are.  Bottoms up!