Toninho or Mark?

Today marks the passing of another monotonous day filled with mundane tasks, some which are quite menial. Thus is my life at my temporary assignment. I get really bored at work all the time which prompts me to think some very strange thoughts and conduct some social experiments that are probably only amusing to myself. I have been at this job for about five months, but it was originally only supposed to be an assignment lasting a few weeks. The main point is that I have been there for almost half of a year now. The reason that I am bringing this up is because one of the people that works at my place of employment calls me Mark. I realize that sounds a lot like my actual first name, but there is a sign outside my office that says you have to check in with Toninho (it doesn't say Toninho, it has my real name, but it would be funny if it said Toninho) if you are a visitor or you're delivering some shit. So I'm not going to say anything. I'm going to let this continue until she either realizes that my name is not Mark or I move on to another job, whichever comes first. I'll take bets now on which will come first.

During the hours of the day when I lack much to do I get to thinking ludicrous thoughts. I've been contemplating penning a book titled There and Black Again, a title playing off good old Bilbo Baggins' There and Back Again. My tale would not concern a Hobbit, though, rather it would be about the adventures of a black man in the wonderful United States of America. This story would paint an astonishingly bright picture of a black male in our current world dealing with economics, successes, failures, triumphs and downfalls, but mostly stereotypes and racism. I'll give a brief synopsis here of this tale that I will never actually write, but I'll certainly think about it very hard. The main character would be named Lamichael, who was raised in hood with his younger sister Shaniqua by their single mother, Lafonda. After a rough childhood, Lamichael excels on the football field and manages to get a free ride to Arizona State University where he neglects attending class and leaves for the NFL after his second year (but he was still at freshman standing). He makes it in the NFL garnering a lucrative contract with the Oakland Raiders (welcome to Oakland, bitch!). However, this is when tragedy strikes, Lamichael's career is ended after four years when he tears his ACL.

Depressed about losing his athlete status and ability to support his little sister and mother, Lamichael tweets nonstop, thinking people care about what he has to say. Lamichael gets into recreational drugs and begins drinking in an effort to drown out the pain of his lost career and his sister turning into a whore. The recreational drugs and alcohol lead Lamichael into harder drugs and he's addicted. Lamichael uses all his money on drugs, alcohol, and helping Tyler Perry create more shit until one day Lamichael is back to the hood with nothing. Nothing to show for his once wonderful football career. There and black again.

In other news, I was proposed to today. I brought a Sobe beverage to work today for consumption during lunch. When I opened the plastic bottle and glanced at the cap, it read "MARRY ME?" I pondered the question for a little while before coming to the conclusion that this could never work. I respect the bottle cap's straight forward question and enthusiasm, but I think we are two incompatible pieces of this world. I declined respectfully and will remember the day for all of eternity. In the end I took my happiness into account as the largest factor in this matter, and I think I can do much better. Speaking of love (well, sort of), a few posts ago I shit on Green Day for the release of their song "Oh Love." I ripped the song and said that it sounds like modern Green Day so I wasn't really surprised. I am happy to say that most of Green Day's new music from the albums Uno! and Dos! is actually pretty good and reminiscent of what Green Day used to sound like. Hooray for Green Day for making fun, catchy music again! I like this type of Green Day much better than the Green Day that produced very political music during the 2000s. The explicit, unedited versions of both albums are the way to go, I don't like edited music, f**k that shit.

While I'm on the subject of music, how about Fifa soundtracks? I think they are fabulous and Fifa is my favorite way to discover new music. Go listen to The Naked and Famous and Youngblood Hawke now, both brought to my attention by Fifa 13, which is a great game by the way. I'm still struggling to decide if I should purchase Black Ops 2 or not, but I must say there have been some very good games coming out lately.

I am aware that Halloween has passed, but going off what I have mentioned about Halloween over the past year, I found a video that backs up my thoughts. How fitting that this video should come to me courtesy of 30 Rock, a truly spectacular show which I consider my favorite at the moment. Feel free to view the video below.

You know what's coming up that I find exciting? Sycophantic Laughter will turn two years old in less than two weeks! I can't believe that I've had this blog going for that long and managed to garner so many readers! Get it because not many people actually read any of this? Just got to keep sucking until you suckceed. Maybe one day one person will stumble on this blog and get some marginal entertainment, but probably not. Now that I think about it, this blog is basically what I've gone through in my "adult" life since I created it shortly after my 21st birthday. A birthday that we can agree marks adulthood since by this age you can drive, vote, buy cigarettes, buy porn, gamble, and drink legally. I would like to thank all my friends that are still with me at this point, they are all important to me. Recently I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to take a Dennis Eckersley approach to people that fail to add any value to my life, "f**k 'em."

One last random interjection that has nothing to do with anything else I've written of in this post. Let's talk about Twitter. Twitter is a social media site that doesn't really bother me because the whole thing is basically bullshit. By that I mean that it's just a status update machine, because we really needed one of those. I like Twitter though because it limits the amount of pointless stupid status updates on Facebook, something that seriously needed combating. Also, most of the accounts I follow are run by people I don't know, so I don't see as much useless shit that I don't understand or care about. What I do notice about Twitter, in regards to people that I follow that I actually know, is that most of the communication on Twitter goes back and forth between people that see each other every day. Most of the people I know on Twitter tweet things that pertain almost exclusively to the people they live with at school or see all the time, and then the people that these tweets pertain to are usually the only ones who respond, favorite, or retweet the tweet. So, in my opinion, I think that's useless. Why not just talk to them or text them? Just an observation of mine. I think Twitter makes people feel like they have a voice, so hopefully that helps them sleep at night. I know it helps me sleep.

Yeah, f**k 'em

Lucky you, I'm done now. Thank you for spending, maybe even wasting, a few moments reading. Be champions.