Good Friday!

I've decided upon proactive action instead of procrastination, which I usually choose, but alas, my dreams of creating a new, and most likely boring, segment for the critically acclaimed blog I have created that barely anyone reads begins to flow from my most creative fingertips through to your brain. I cannot promise the frequency of updates for this new segment, "Good Friday," but I can promise that it is very real, in a legal and binding way. Fridays, better than good in my estimation, reign high among the other days of the week since it marks the end of the work week. However, I will not name the segment "Great Friday" because that name does not sound like the Friday that Christians have named "Good Friday," a day which has the power to make meat forbidden. What a bunch of loonies if you ask me. Go ahead, eat your meat laddies, and read Sycophantic Laughter to support a strange f**k!

Honestly I have yet to put in much thought for "Good Friday," but I do think that I will keep tabs of things that bother me, no matter how much or how little. I don't feel like bullshitting you, so let's dive right in. Most things I have found bothersome lately revolve around work. My "work," or as I like to call it, "the somewhat degrading shit that I'm asked to do," forces me to notice all the little things that bother me. Why? Simply because I'm rather certain I could perform most of my tasks even if I were brain dead. I've been attempting to get estimates for fixing some damage that has been sustained by one of our trucks, but apparently I'd have better luck talking Satan into letting me out of hell when I die. One of the collision repair people I was speaking with on the phone sounded very nice and pleasant. Now that we have been communicating via email, I must say I cannot stand the way this woman converses via electronic mail. All the emails she sends me are one to three sentences and always end with like seventeen question marks. Is that necessary??????????????? Lady, I get it, you have a question. One question mark would suffice. This did not happen in one email, but each and every one that this woman sent me. I know it's f**king stupid, but it bothers me.

With the recent sale of the company that I work with to one that is 3,000 miles away, I've also felt like my role has been reduced to that of the copy room worker in the high school. I make copies of things and then scan them. Given my extensive use of the copy/scanning machine, that thing bothers me, too. Sometimes I have to scan like 1,923,329,854,387,493 documents and of course they are not all the size of normal paper. So instead of just feeding them through the top of the machine so it can do all the work itself, I have to put each one in one at a time. Put the paper in, shut the lid, pres the scan/copy button, take the paper out, don't mix up the paper so shit gets f**ked, and then repeat another 12,439,476,809,914 times. I find myself hating staples because they make my life harder and you don't even want to know how many paper clips I've put through intense labor. And I thought Mexicans got paid shit for the work they performed. Also, remember, I'm not racist, I'm funny. But, yeah, some companies use the strangest size paper for invoices/statements that I have to keep rotating pages and practically make a puzzle to fit the damn things on the correct part of the screen. Damn, I need a new job.

I'm also deeply unsettled by the thought that every time we need something in the office people come tell me about it. I don't want to be an "office manager." I did not go to college, and graduate, so I could order shit from Office Depot. I could have done that when I was eight. F**k my asshole. And don't even get me started on the number of piles of paper I have building up everywhere in my office. Good Joe, my office, inundated with paper, makes it hard for me to find space to actually do anything. I understand why so many companies want to go paperless, I wouldn't even be surprised if the real reason had nothing to do with saving the environment by saving paper, but rather to keep from creating mile high piles of paper. Whenever I need anything I have to go looking through the various piles I have on my desk. Wrong pile, wrong pile, wrong pile, oh here it is!

At least it is Friday though! I'm done bitching about work for now. Basically I want/need a new job as soon as possible. I'm not cut out for this type of job, I need something more stimulating with room for growth and advancement. Hopefully one day. Instead I will turn my attention over to a little social experiment I inadvertently started the other day. I noticed sometime this past Tuesday that I had not sent or received a text message for a while. I looked back in my text log and my last text conversation was from Sunday night. So I decided to see how long I could go without texting anyone or getting a text from anyone. I made it all the way until Wednesday afternoon. I went from sometime Sunday night to sometime Wednesday afternoon without a single text sent or received. I am fairly certain that is my longest stretch in quite some time. I felt like I was back in the nineties or early 2000s when I had to call my friends, or just not speak to them at all. Two plus days with texting though, I don't think most people my age could do that. Go ahead, give it a shot. Speaking of texting, what's up with people not responding to texts? Notice I used one question mark there. Actually, let me clarify. I understand not getting a text back if I send out a general message or something that is not a question. However, if I text a question I expect a response, even if the response is "f**k off asshole." That's a valid response. Sometimes I text my friends a question and they don't respond. What the f**k is that? I think that's like asking someone face-to-face a question and them just blatantly ignoring them. I've never asked anyone to go on a suicide bombing mission or suck my d or anything like that. Tell me to f**k off if you don't want to talk to me, I'm down with that.

Another note on texting, for those who have iPhones at least. I've noticed that iPhones grant users to turn on this setting that allows people who have sent you texts to see that the text they have sent you has been read. I  would never turn that setting on. What if I was ignoring someone? I would read their text and I wouldn't want them to know about it. I'm waiting for that moment when I ask someone a question in a text message, see they have read it, and not get a response. I can't understand why anyone would want that function on, but there sure as hell are people who use it. I guess iMessage already tells you when a message is delivered to other iMessage users, so you can already tell when some people are ignoring you anyway. So why not go one step further and let them know that you've read it and you still don't give a shit. You know what, burning bridges actually brings up a lot things that I never would have thought of before, so maybe I should be glad that this happens. Though I do find it quite strange because there a few people I used to have very good friendships with that have become very flaky, for lack of a better term. Dodgy or no response to text messages, hanging out with a completely different crowd and simply not really being my friend anymore. What can I really expect, though. I've graduated from high school, I've graduated from college, I should expect I would meet a decent amount of fickle people in my time. How the hell did I get here from discussing texting?

In other news, I think I'm finally going to tackle it. What is it? Hardcore mode on Dead Space 2! Dead Space and Dead Space 2 are two of my favorite video games of all time and I think I want to attempt beating Dead Space 2 on Hardcore mode! What is hardcore mode? Well, hardcore mode is a difficulty setting in Dead Space 2 that grants the player 0 checkpoints and only 3 f**king saves! You die and you go back to your last save, or the beginning of the game if you haven't saved yet. How excruciatingly daunting and cruel! Can I also add that the marketing campaign for Dead Space 2 was fantastic. I loved the trailer with Smashing Pumpkins' "Bullet with Butterfly Wings!" So good! Watch it below!




Who knows if I'll ever actually complete the task, but I know that the reward for doing so, the hand cannon, is so worth it! So I'm sure as hell going to try! I don't know why I enjoy the Dead Space series so much, but I do know that I like f**ked up stuff, and if there is one thing that is certain, Dead Space is f**ked up. I like things that are f**ked up in two different senses. There's Dead Space f**ked up where mauled people for some reason amuses me, and then there's f**ked up in the sense of making fun of people to the extent where it's considered f**ked up. Those are the senses of the phrase that tend to interest me. Dismembering necromorphs and then killing them with their own body parts is just amazingly fun!

Happy Friday everyone and have a great weekend! Be champions, my friends.

10 Spot for the World Record

First and foremost, I would like to give a big up to Aries Merritt for breaking the world record in the 110 meter high hurdles this past Friday in Brussels! The guy ran a 12.80! Absolutely insane! Not to mention the fastest time in the event ever, in the history of anything. Merritt has garnered massive respek with me (unfortunately the word respek has been removed from the dictionary). A gold medal at the Olympics and a world record, what a way to end the 2012 outdoor season. I hope he continues to get better in the years to come, so exciting to think what he could do next! I want to see the indoor hurdle record fall!




I'm a big supporter of track, partly because of the lack of recognition the sport gets, but mainly because I'm a runner myself and the sport has done a wonderful amount for me in my life. Track has been one of those unexpected surprises in my life. I never thought that I would find success in the sport or that it would have such a large impact on my life. The lack of attention the sport gets is absolutely absurd though, and it bothers the piss out of me sometimes. As I mentioned in my post on Penultimate Round Pick (check out our sports blog here!), Sportscenter put Merritt's world record setting performance number 10 on its top ten plays. Those guy's kiddin'? The fact that they put Merritt's performance number 10 is going to bother me for some time, if not forever, it's just one of those things that pisses me off. I don't like to be a bitter asshole, but sometimes, actually all the time that I'm bitter is the direct result of other people's stupidity or things that I cannot control.

Most of the things that bother and piss me off are the small things. Maybe I shouldn't sweat the small stuff, but I do. However, Merritt's snubbing is not a small matter, the guy broke a world record for Joe's sake! The small stuff I'm referring to for example are things like the backspace button on the our former keyboards at work. Holy shit were those backspace buttons way too small! Whenever I made an error and went to hit the backspace key to remove it from existence I would miss and hit the other keys near it and make an even bigger mistake! Now I would have to hold down the tiny backspace button for even longer to correct my latest, larger f**k up. Thank Joe we got new equipment including keyboards that have proper size backspace keys. Maybe they used to make the backspace key smaller to encourage people to make fewer mistakes. Or so that they could make people suffer for making mistakes, those bastards! They probably killed Kenny, too.

Flies are another thing that are extremely annoying. I'm almost 100% positive that two flies landed on my shoulder that were doing it. They were definitely getting busy, I've never seen a fly on top of another doing scandalous things that I will not mention here. I love all of nature's creatures, that's why I love to kill 'em, but I couldn't this time. I could only merely shew them away. I also wish I could come up with my own funny phrases instead of stealing other people's great work. I do thank you, Monty Python. Now you probably expect me to say that I came to kick ass and chew bubble gum, but in fact I have not, but I do believe that we sleep while they live. Merging is another little thing that bothers me. I have probably already mentioned this about 4 times, but so many people are terrible at merging onto the highway.  Some people unnecessarily (I finally spelled that word right on the first try!) slow down when no one is coming, and sometimes even come to a complete stop! Although, I have to admit that getting on the highway from a dead stop is extremely fun! There are many complaints about driving, and even stopping, like how people don't know how to park.

I've actually strayed quite far away from the point that I was going to make, but I'm not surprised, this is where my scattered thoughts have lead me. I did mention my point earlier though. By nature I take life in stride and I'm generally happy and believe it or not, I think that most people are actually this way. But damn are there some things that just piss people off, and usually rightfully so. I'm not going to go into specifics and I'll just end there.

A great thing that's right around the corner is Fifa 13! I don't really play video games much anymore, but I can find some time to play the latest installment or a legendary franchise. Ultimate team is also one of the greatest sports video game innovations ever, too, so I will definitely want to do some of that. The Fifa 13 demo was just released today and I have to say that I liked the tuning they have done from the game play. The game actually made me realize that there is a difference among players, some actually seemed better than others in terms of controlling the ball. I think this will make for more balanced game play and make it less about pure pace. The defensive control was also much better, I could actually steal the ball away from high and low profile opposition!

This is one of my all time favorites! And I have Apple products.

I'm also excited because I was contacted by a former teammate of mine who is still running track now asking how I am doing if I have any plans on continuing my track career. He mentioned joining the club that he belongs to as a potential opportunity. I have mentioned that I don't think I'm quite done yet. I would like to have the chance to compete competitively while I still can and as of right now, I feel great physically! Enough about me, let's speak about you. Oh yeah, no one reads this, so never mind, I'll just continue going on and on about things that maybe two other people will read, three if I'm lucky. I think I lost one of my readers from all my social network bashing, but I'm straying away from that and I'll let her know. I'm going to focus on my take on certain experiences, completely biased views on sports, the occasional rant, and my stupid thoughts. When am I going to finish that post about life and Mario Party? I think I started that on December 5, 2011 or something. I was banging that shit out, but then I had to "study" for finals.

I just asked myself a question in my own blog. I'm going to end there, but I will leave you with this:

Happily Annoyed

In a recent post, maybe even the last one, I commented on how I haven't gone on a rant in a long time. Well, I'm not necessarily going to rant and rave like I have about how dumb social networks are, but I am going to take a look at some things that bother me to various extents. I'll start with a letter I received from the college I just graduated from. A week or so ago I received this letter and immediately opened it because I was interested to see what they could possibly send me now. The letter was a damage report for the townhouse I lived in the past year. While I didn't have any damage to pay for in my personal room, there was a charge to everyone in the house for a missing end table. I'm also very certain that the amount of money charged to each person for this end table would total to a value of much more than the end table could possibly be worth, but that's not the part that really annoys me. I don't mind paying for something that we somehow lost, or had stolen (how the hell do you lose and end table?), because it is property that we do not own and we should be liable for it. What bothers me is that the school, and it's not only this school, it's all of them, doesn't hold itself to the same standards. When class is canceled the students, or whoever is financing the education, does not get back the money invested in that particular class. That's wrong, if a service is not provided, then it should not be paid for. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to figure out the cost of each class based on the tuition paid.

I do understand that it might not directly be the college's fault that class did not take place, the professor is usually the reason a class is canceled, but I didn't lose the end table either. I have no idea what happened to the end table, but I do know that the sliding door in the back of our townhouse did not lock and it took facilities weeks to come fix it after we filed a request. Students are liable for the items in their dorms and the school is liable for providing an education. Canceled class should be reimbursed, there's no way around it.

When I come to think about it, most of the things that annoy me deal with how people act and money, sometimes both fit together nicely for a deluxe annoying package. I was at a bar the other night with some friends when one of the bartenders told us that no one was going to serve us because of the tips we were leaving. Yes, we probably were leaving shitty tips, but what the hell do you want me to do, I'm a recent college graduate that doesn't have much money. She told us that the bartenders only get paid $2 per hour so they need tips. Now there's the problem, the part that annoys me. How is it legal to pay people $2 per hour?  To understand my point, I think tips are bullshit. Not because I don't think people who have jobs that are reliant on tips shouldn't get paid, but because I don't think is a fair method of payment. I'm aware that in some places in the world receiving a tip is considered an insult. I think these places have the right idea. Employees' pay should be the responsibility of the employer, not the customers. I think it's bullshit that employers can pay employees ridiculous wages such as $2 per hour. Again, I don't understand how that is legal! They made some bullshit law about how that's ok if the employees are allowed to receive tips. That's just wrong. As I see it, that's just another stupid law that allows the company to make more money at the expense of the people who keep that same company in business. It's bullshit!

Speaking of stupid laws, what about the liquor store industry? I don't understand why some states protect liquor stores. I like the states where you can by alcoholic beverages in the supermarket. The ability to buy alcoholic beverages in the supermarket allows for one hell of a great convenience. But there are still states that prohibit grocers from carrying alcohol. What I don't understand is why liquor stores should get this type of protection. Who cares if they go out of business, that's how business works. I don't see any laws getting instated to protect Blockbuster from Netflix and Redbox, and there shouldn't be. It's bullshit that liquor stores get protection, that takes away competition. And I agree with Steven Wright, it bothers me that there's only one company that makes the game Monopoly.

I guess since I've been using bars and liquor stores for examples, I'll go on to the subject of alcohol straight up. Alcohol bothers me because it's a legal drug you don't need a prescription for, you just have to be a certain age to purchase it. I'm not a huge fan of alcohol because of what it does to people, but I think a legal drinking age is bullshit. I don't think there should even be a drinking age. If alcohol is not deemed illegal, then anyone, regardless of age, should be entitled to consume it. Let's not pretend that people don't drink before the decided upon legal age either. If someone doesn't drink alcohol before the legal age, I think it's very unlikely that they will just pick up the habit when they reach that magical age. Basically, the legal age is stupid because practically everyone is going to drink before it is deemed legal. I don't like those bullshit arguments like "if you can die for your country at 18, then you should be able to drink at 18, too." That's just stupid because they are two completely unrelated things. You can get your drivers license when you turn 16, do you want them to be able to draft you into the army at 16, too? It's the same type of stupid comparison.

When I come to think about it, it's not really alcohol that bothers me. What bothers me is how people use alcohol and that there is an agreed upon age when it is all of a sudden ok to consume alcoholic beverages. I think what the law is going for is to prevent people from drinking until they are mature, which is a great idea in theory, but it doesn't work. Drinking in excess, which is an activity for people above and below the drinking age, is already an act of immaturity in itself and brings a person to do immature things. So anyone should be able to purchase and consume alcohol whenever they like. There are already a bunch of alcohol related deaths, but those people are only doing the world a favor by eliminating themselves from the gene pool. Maybe not as many people believe in the survival of the fittest anymore, but there are way too many dumb people, we could afford to lose a few...million of them.




When I started penning this post, I did not intend for it to go in this direction, but I've found myself on the topic of drugs, so I'm going to go with it because drugs do bother me. So on we go. I've never consumed enough alcohol in one short period to get drunk. I'm not interested in doing this because it doesn't sound appealing to me. Anything that is described as getting shit faced, obliterated, getting f**ked up, plastered, or hammered sounds like something I don't want to do. Sometimes you throw up, don't remember what happened, can't walk straight, can't stand up, and do things you regret, like contracting an STD. Again, more things that don't interest me. I don't understand the fascination with achieving this state. I'm also aware that it's really bad for your liver because you're actually poisoning yourself. Tolerance for alcohol is not a good thing, it means that your body is getting accustomed to getting poisoned. Don't get me wrong here, I'm not against alcohol. I have alcohol on occasion, I just don't understand why people drink in excess. I think it does more hurt to a person than good. Alcohol also tends to lead to things that people regret. Regret sucks and is another reason to take it easy on the drinks. I only have a few regrets in my life, but at least none of them have a thing to do with alcohol.

About a couple of months ago I began a post titled "The Implications of Being Me," where I was going to touch on the subject of alcohol and other thoughts I have about life and how I lead mine. I'm not sure if I'll ever actually post that, but the previous passages are a little insight into what that post would have been like, but I'll continue now with one of the topics that bothers me most: social networking. I've decided that I will include some social networking annoyances here. Technology is great and I think it really has advanced the world for the better, but there is one part I strongly dislike, social media's presence on smart phones. Of course it's a great idea to allow people to access social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter from their phone, but holy shit is it annoying. Social media annoyed me when Myspace was popular which is why I terminated my account after about two years, and that was before you could access social networks from the phone.

I've had a Twitter account since sophomore year of college. Initially I created one as a joke during the summer after freshman year just to see what Twitter was. I found that it was actually a really great source of information so I made one under my actual name for myself. I still have this account, but continue to use it mainly as a source of information. I do follow some friends and some friends follow me, but I don't really use it as a communication tool. I use it to get updated information on things I'm interested in. I barely ever tweet on my personal account. I tweet much more often on the account I've setup for this blog because the blog is a place for my thoughts and whatever I feel like doing with it. I still have a Facebook account somehow, too. I rarely ever access it from my computer anymore because honestly I don't care. I do have the app for Facebook on my phone which I check every once in a while to see if anyone has summoned me to communicate with them, which is very infrequently due to my lack of use of Facebook. So there you have it, I have just laid out for you how I use social networks. I'm not a very active participant and will very likely deactivate my Facebook sometime in the future as it serves almost no purpose. The only reason I keep my Facebook around is for the off chance that someone I have known in some capacity needs to get in touch with me. That's about it.

With the introduction of smartphones and apps, people have access to their social networks everywhere. This is a nightmare. I get annoyed with the constant updates about where people are, what they're doing, and the general need for attention. I'm going to keep it that plain and simple... for now at least. I could go off on a huge tangent, but I have kind of already done that in this post, which is about how status updates are dumb, but that's mainly what smartphones are used for, so I think it's about the same thing. Another thing that annoys me about social networking that I think (to the best of my knowledge)is specific to Facebook is how people are starting to change their names. Sometimes when I'm actually logged into Facebook I'll see someone in my friends list and I'll think "who the hell is that?" Then I click on their profile and realize who they are, noticing that they just changed their name. Usually it's their last name, they'll change it to their middle name or something. I just look at it and think, really? What is on there that you have to change your name? And I'm sure that there are people clever enough to figure out that the profile still belongs to you if they really need to know.

I don't want to spend too much time complaining about social networks, that's old material for me. To put it simply, I think social networks are overused. I want to discuss speech now. Language is an absolutely wonderful tool, but there are a few things that rustle my jimmies when people speak. I'll begin with the use of the word "mad." I don't like when "mad" is used in this sense: "that food was mad good." The word mad means mentally disturbed; deranged; insane; demented. The secondary meanings of mad mean enraged or greatly provoked or irritated; abnormally furious or affected with rabies; extremely foolish or unwise; or wildly excited or confused. So saying "I'm mad bored" or "the food was mad good" or "I'm mad tired" makes no sense. I also don't like the overuse of possessiveness. For example if someone says "I'm going to take my shower" or "you can watch your movie." I think it should be "I'm going to take a shower" and "you can watch the movie." I think I still do this when I speak, but believe me I beat myself each time I do, but not really. For some reason it just mildly bothers me. It's one of those things where if I'm in a lousy mood it will really bother me for some unknown reason.

Using a foreign language for isolated words is at the top of my list of annoying speech. It drives me crazy, at least most of the time it does, when people say something like "I'm going to the bano." Just say "I'm going to the bathroom." Then they'll come back from the bano (I don't know how to make the accent marks, but there is supposed to be one over the "n" in both banos) and say "where's my lapiz?" You mean your pencil? I took it and I'm going to shove it up your culo (vulgar way of saying ass in Spanish) if you don't stop saying sentences all in English with one Spanish word!

Actually, I've been contemplating for a little while to start responding to any text-based message in Elcor speak. Basically Elcor's cannot express emotion through speech so they begin every sentence by clarifying if it should be received as excitement, anger, sarcasm, etc. I think that would be a nice way to avoid the annoying "lol" and "haha" in text driven conversations. So if someone makes a funny comment on my wall or photo, I would respond with something like "laughing: yeah man, that's pretty funny." Or if someone invites me to an event or something I would respond "sarcastic: yeah, sign me up."

So I might do that, but who knows. I thought I just lost this whole post for a split second, so I had mini aneurysm, but not really. But I really did think that I lost the post momentarily. Well, this has been fun and all, and sometimes boring, but it's been real and maybe you agree with me on some of these thoughts, but if not, then... I don't really know what, but at the least hopefully you found some marginal entertainment. I'm still waiting for some random person (can't start with unrealistic goals) to stumble on this blog and maybe even read a word or two. But it's been over a year and to the best of my knowledge that has not happened. You also have a small guide on how to mildly annoy me, so go ahead and have fun with that. I'll definitely think of more things that annoy me and add to this very limited list. Good thing these things bother me or else I wouldn't have anything to say. Thanks for reading, and make Jose "The Special One" Mourinho proud and be champions.