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Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Happy Holiday!

So my favorite holiday is Leif Eriksson day. Now, when I tell most people this, they just laugh and assume I am kidding around. Well, they don't usually laugh, because, were it a joke, it would be a lame joke. Why would I choose such an obsure holiday as my favorite? Well Spongebob did it, and anything Spongebob does is okay in my book. Well, not everything. That creepy thing he does with the arms and the dancing. And the absorbency. Anyways, Spongebob is not the reason I love Leif Eriksson day.
Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, Hanukkah these are all among people's favorite holidays. But on these days, there is so much stress, to make sure everything goes right, to live up to expectations set by holidays past. Not to mention the stress of seeing relatives who you may or may not be on good terms with. Except Halloween, I guess that only applies to theother ones.
Unless you live in a place where Leif Eriksson day is widely observed (Minnesota) there are no established traditions for celebrating it. Hell, no one is really even sure how to spell the last name correctly. As a result, there are no expectations to live up to! You can have a shitty time and it won't matter, because you don't really expect it to be different from any other day!
Now, some people might bring up some other pseudoholidays with similar properties. Memoprial day, Veterans Day, Arbor Day, MLK day. These holidays are great. Sometimes you even get to take off school. But they all have catches. It's hard to have a good time on Memorial day when yo uare supposed to be cherishing the memories of the fallen. Or caring about the planet. Or the civil rights struggle.
Sure, you can remember Leif Eriksson's brave, sort-of accomplishment. He was the first European in America, and then he left, leaving little to no lasting impact. Not much to celebrate, but not much to feel bad about. He really didn't do much, and neither should you on his day!
But what about St.Patrick's day? Most people don't even know who St.Patrick was, or what he did, they just use it as an excuse to get drunk. I suppose this is a pretty good holiday, if you like binge drinking and vomit. And there are still silly traditions like pinching people who aren't wearing green. What the hell is that about?
Don't even get me started on Valentine's day. If you are in a relationship, it is one more chance for your relationship to be disrupted if someone doesn't get a gift. If you're single, well, then it's basically an entire season devoted to making you feel like a pariah.
Plus, Leif Eriksson day is one of the few legitimate excuses to wear a Viking helmet.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Carl's Jr. and Exercise do not mix.

So today I went to my favorite Carl's Jr. It is the one by the festival center (the place with the Target and the Chipotle) and I got the new Six-Dollar Cheeseburger, which is inaccurately named, as it was only $2.95 or something. I realize that they are not supposed to be six dollars, and it is a play on words but due to inflation, many of the Six-Dollar burgers actually cost more than Six-Dollars (if you get the combo). Anyway that is beside my point.
If you are wondering why that particualr Carl's Jr. is my favorite, well, they are friendly and have excellent service. I bet you though I had some wacky explanation for liking it didn't you? Or some profound experience that happened to me at that Carl's Jr? Perhaps some shared memories of a better time spent with forgotten friends? Well, not really, they are just very good at their jobs over there. But this is also beside my point.
My point is that the food at Carl's Jr. is not very good for me. This is pretty much common knowledge to everyone, but I just thought I'd throw it out there. The thing is, this will, in no way, stop me from eating at Carl's Jr. The food is just too damn delicious. Especially the Breakfast Burger and the Six-Dollar Cheeseburger I was talking about several paragraphs ago. Well, two paragraphs ago. It was in the first sentence. Anyways, when I am eating them, I feel great, but then, in as little as five minutes, I feel awful. People often throw around the phrase "that food item disagreed with my stomach" except replacing food item with somethign relevant. Carl's Jr. food does not disagree with my stomach. Carl's Jr. food is violently opposed to my stomach's oppressive, able to hold food, regime. When it gets down there, it is outraged that it has been consumed and vows to prevent this fate from befalling any food ever again, or at least for the next several hours.
After I ate the six-dollar cheeseburger, I made the mistake of working out (hitting the heavy bag in time to "You're the Best" by Joe Esposito). Afterwards, I got the sudden urge to simultaneously vomit and pass out that I can only assume was the culmination of a sinister terrorist plot by the Six-Dollar cheeseburger to prevent me from eating dinner and/or end my life. Well, I foiled him. I had Subway for dinner and it was delicious.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Movie Love

I love movies. But if movies have taught me anything, it has mostly been highly inaccurate. This is especially true when it comes to romance. First of all, I'm not even going to get into how ridiculously attractive every god damn person in existence is in movie world. That has been brought up many times. It makes me suspect some sort of horrifying eugenics program is going on in these versions of reality. To be fair though, there are some movies that do depict normal people or even *gasp* relatively unattractive people (though these are usually male). However, what seems to hold true in almost every movie to feature relationships (or television show for that matter) is how unbelievably easy dating is in their world.
In television shows, 90% of the women encountered are single, despite being very attractive (again, so is evewryone else). In reality I have found that the ratio seems to be nearly the opposite. Though, to be fair, this is based on the "Random Assumption" method of research, and to me, "Not paying attention to me" is the same thing as "has a boyfriend". Still, even my friends who aren't shallow, cynical, narcissists havbe trouble finding single people. In many shows, even someone who has been characterized as having an incredibly distracting or off-putting personality quirk can always manage to find a date in under 24 hours.
I realize that actually showing the main characters of shows never actually suceeding wouldn't be entertaining (well, except to me), but still, they shouldn't make it look that easy.
In movies, while the women aren't always single, the person they're with is almost always a blatant jackass who doesn't apreciate them. While I'm sure this happens in real life, I've never actually encountered it. Well, I have, but I'm not naming names. On aa semi-related note, I always sort of feel bad for the "bully" character in those movies, who has his entire life ruined by the end of the movie. Sure, he was a jerk, but still, harsh. This is especially true in sports movies, where the reigning champions, who spent a lot more time and hard work training to get to where they are, are defeated by a misfit band of underdogs who spent more time engaging in wacky hijinks then actually practicing. Sure, they were a bit arrogant, but they kind of had a right to be.
Right then, what was I talking about... dating! Another thing that seems to happen a lot is that if there is a girl, and there is a guy, even if they spent five of the six hours that consisted of their time together, filled with unrelenting hate for one another, they will end up together at the end of the film. In fact, if there are male and female secondary characters, who may have spent even less time together than the main protagonists, there's still basically a 50-50 chance of them also hooking up with each other by the end of the film. Real life doesn't work that way. You don't marry someone you have known for all of two days!
This brings us to my own problem. As some of you may know, I am not exactly a ladies man. This is because my primary source of information about relationships has been movies and television. Now, I considered myself a smart young lad, and from an early age, I wrote off movie romances as nothing but bullshit. I think that perhaps this was my problem. There probably is something useful to be learned about relationships from the media, as, after all, they are based on real life experiences. After all, everyone else grew up watching the same bullshit as me, but they learned how to form relationships and such. Unless of course, there was some sort of seminar that I missed in high school or something.
So, in conclusion, if I ever make it big in Hollywood, chances are it will not be in the romantic comedy genre.
-Michael "James" Armor

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Dolla Dolla Bill Ya'll

As the Wutang clan put it, cash rules everything around me. Now, those who know me probably know the story of how I saved up a ridiculous sum of money throughout high school. Today I will tell you how I did it.
Contrary to popular belief, I am neither a drug dealer, nor a male prostitute. I am actually a sort of combination of the two. No, nto really, that was a lie to make myself seem more interesting. The real answer is Warhammer. What is Warhammer? Well, it is a ridiculously expensive tabletop minatures game where you build, paint , and fight with vast armies of soldiers either from a fantasy or sci fi (Warhammer 40k) setting. Now, you're probably wondering, "If they are so expensive, then how did you save up so much money?" Jesus Christ you ask a lot of questions. I am in the middle of explaining this to you, so stop interrupting me with your stupid questions. You see, by the time I entered high school, my Warhammer days had already begun to fade. Sure I still bought a platoon here and there, mostly because I enjoyed building and painting them. However, when I did play Wathammer, it taught me a valuable lesson: Money equals power.
In middle school I would have Warhammer battles against my friends quite frequently. Normally, battles are made fair by the official rules by assigning points values to each unit and setting a limit, however, we were rebels and did not use this point system, instead favoring a "field every availible unit you have" system. This made it fortuitous for me to simply buy more or better units than all of my friends. This is when I learned how to make and save money, by doing chores around the house, odd jobs, and saving all my money from birthdays and christmas. I stopped buying things that I didn't really need (ironic since I was saving up for the equivalent of plastic crack). The more money I had, the better stuff I could buy, and the more likely I was to win. I was a very competitive child. As we gradually began to have fewer and fewer battles (mostly because they became too onesided, what with the vast horde I had assembled) I stopped buying stuff, but continued to save, just in case we started up aghain or something. As a result, I made several thousand dollars by the time I graduated. All thanks to a silly little game.
Since then I have forgotten some of those frugal lessons I had learned, but these days my primary source of income (interest from lending those thousands of dollars to family members) is drying up, I must once again turn to the old ways of makign money, so that one day, I can afford to buy Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.

I Started a Blog!

This post goes out to all the people who said I couldn't do it. "Dr. Thunder, you are not nearly smart, talented, or allergic to peanuts enough to start your own blog! This sort of endeavor should be left up to professional writer-type persons and skydiving instructors, as they are the only two groups of people whose lives are interesting enough to read about." Well, hypothetical naysayer, despite your obsession with skydiving instructors and peanuts, you have some good points. However, it occurred to me that literally anyone can get a blog if they figure out how to. There's no rigorous application or training process, you just sign up and they give you one. IT is the same with radio shows at Titanradio (www.titanradio.org) They're just givin em out to anyone who shows up. So by Odin's Beard I got myself one of them. Perhaps someday people besides me will read it.
So, I now have a blog, and wil ltalk about upcoming events in Sophisticobra Productions (www.sophisticobra.tk), and, since there are never any upcoming events, random bullshit I feel like talking about. For example: Roman Numerals piss me off. If Roman numerals are so good, then why are all the Romans dead? Because they were too busy trying to figure out what XXCMLXXCVIXVMMQ means and a Visigoth came up behind them and lopped their head off with a big sword. So I say we get rid of them. If we want to use the numeric system of a dead race of people, why not use the Aztec one? It's the one with all the bars and dots. Hell, you wouldn't even have to make a new system for blind people becasue it's basically braille. Sure, it would be hard to type that on a keyboard, but I say suck it up! If Arabic numerals aren't good enough for you, you deserve to be beaten to death with a sack full of Victorian-era bicycles.