Saturday, August 30, 2008

The crazy quirky indie movie that I’m going to write - PART 1

So it all starts in some town in Delaware. Isn’t that cool? That it’s in Delaware? Isn’t that such a totally random state? Who’s ever been to Delaware, right? I sure haven’t.

There’s this guy. Let’s call him Steve. No, wait, Steve’s too normal. Let’s call him Zebz. Yeah, Zebz. You’re probably like: who would name their kid Zebz? Quirky, interesting parents, that’s who! Don’t you totally want to meet those quirky parents? Well, you’re in luck because Zebz just happens to live with them, even though he’s twenty-something years old.

Zebz’s parents are totally hilarious. They’re always making cracks at each other in a really funny, dead-pan way. Like Zebz’s mom will say to Zebz’s dad, “Maybe you should clean out the garage?” And Zebz’s dad will respond, “Maybe you shouldn’t have been listening to the Pixies so loud when I’m trying to work on my novel last night. We all make mistakes.” Pixies: so awesome!

Zebz leads a sad life, but not like there are really sad things happening, but life is just sad for Zebz because nothing seems important. Also Zebz’s mom has cancer. I’m not sure what kind – I don’t know much about cancer except that it’s totally sad! But Zebz’s mom isn’t totally sad. She’s really funny about it. At dinner, she’ll just start eating before everyone and Zebz’s dad will be like, “Shouldn’t you wait till everyone is ready?” and she’ll be like “raise your hand if you have cancer” and raise her hand and Zebz’s dad will sigh and not raise his.

Also, they’re totally poor.

Anyway, Zebz is feeling like he needs to get out of his Delaware town (anyone know any towns in Delaware?) but he doesn’t think he can leave his mom because she has cancer but then she says, “Zebz, sometimes you can’t think about everyone else. Sometimes, you need to do what’s best for you.” But she won’t say it like this. She’ll probably quote some Pixies song that says something along these lines. I’m not sure which one. I don’t actually listen to the Pixies much. But from the stuff I have heard, they’re one of my favorite bands!

So Zebz sets out. On a road trip. To the Grand Canyon. What? A road trip to the Grand Canyon? That’s so uncool that it’s totally cool, right?

To be continued…

Sunday, August 17, 2008

A week of dating website headlines

MONDAY

His - Club Rules: The best things to say, do and wear if you want to pick up women at the club tonight.

Hers - Sleaze Louise: How to avoid sketchy guys who are at the club just to pick you up.

TUESDAY

His - Evading her Evasion: Five essential moves to keep that girl at the club from saying “adios amigo!”

Hers - Get To the Point and Get On With Your Night: Why being straightforward and firmly telling him that you’re just not interested is often the best option.

WEDNESDAY

His - Reading Between the Lines: What she really means when she firmly tells you that she’s just not interested.

Hers - Now You See Me, Now You Don’t: Where to find hidden exits and trap doors in the hottest clubs in the city.

THURSDAY

His - You Can Run but You Can’t Hide: The seven most important pieces of information to get before she bolts, so that you can use the internet and your local police department to track her down.

Hers - Where in the World: Our top ten relocation destinations for when you’re avoiding the weird guy from last night who just won’t give up.

FRIDAY

His - This is your Pilot Speaking: How to find the cheapest flights so you can visit that special someone who barely even knows you.

Hers - Making The New Me: The easiest ways to change your hair color, eye color, name and fingerprints so he won’t even recognize you.

SATURDAY

His - Seeing Through Her: The quick and simple way to build a makeshift lie-detector to see if she is who you think she is.

Hers - The Life of a Hermit is the Life for Me: Choosing the best cave in the best mountain when he’s found you everywhere else.

SUNDAY

His - There’s Gold in Them There Hills: Why taking up hiking or mountain-climbing could be your ticket to meeting the woman of your dreams.

Hers - Reclusive Exclusive: Six fun things to do by yourself instead of going to the club tonight and spending the rest of your life running away the guy that just won’t give up.

It's late, Emily is asleep, I'm tired and sick... and here are some things you might not have known about fish!

- A school of fish is a group of fish, not a school for fish. Within a group of fish, however, there are some lame fish, some nerdy fish, some cool fish and some dick-hole fish. Also some fish are totally hot. In this way, a school of fish is like school.

- How do fish breath under water? Simple. Not being able to breath underwater is just a rumor that spread and now everyone but fish believe it’s true.

- There was this game for Sega called Echo The Dolphin and I could never get past the first level. This game is meant to be a metaphor for what it’s like to be a fish.

- When fish stay in the water too long, their skin does not get all raison-like. But then again they have scales and that’s pretty gross.

- Fish enjoy being eaten by people. This is because our bodies are ninety-percent water so eating them is just like giving them another place to stay if you really think about it.

- How many fish does it take screw in a light bulb? An infinite amount because they don’t have hands. More importantly, why are you putting a light bulb in a large body of water? That’s really dangerous.

- Many people were fish in past lives. You can always tell if someone was because they take really long showers.

- Many scientists believe that if you go deep down in the ocean there are all of these other weird kinds of fish. But the truth is, if you go really far down in the ocean you just end up at the top of the ocean again, like in old Mario games

- When fish were evolving, some of them started growing to be the size of dogs, sprouting fur all over their bodies like dogs and making dog-like noises. This group of fish moved on to land and still exists today. We call them dogs.

Friday, August 8, 2008

Some tips for dealing with a broken leg

As a person born with legs you’re probably thinking, “I’m one of the lucky people in this world.” But all great things like legs come with great risk. One such risk you run as a person with legs is breaking one or both of them. Here’s some advice for when that happens.

1. Make sure you’re clear about what happened. Where are you? What were you doing? Who else is there? Take in as much detail as possible. Maybe even take some notes. Recite the whole thing to yourself once a week even after you’re all healed up. This way, if you’re at a party and a bunch of cool people are exchanging that-time-I-hurt-myself-really-bad stories, you can contribute and get popular.

2. Choose the right ambulance service for you. Just because you’re crying and in a great deal of pain doesn’t mean you need to settle for whatever crappy ambulance the hospital tries to send you. Log on to Google. Do some research. Read some customer reviews. Who knows when you’ll have another chance to ride in an ambulance. Make the most of it.

3. Get some thinking done. Are you a woman? Are you not enjoying the pain that your broken leg is causing? Are you thinking about having children at some point in your life? Well, I’ve got some bad news for you. Child birth, from what I hear, hurts too. And it comes with a baby you need to take care of for a while. Think about this: what if, when you broke your leg, a baby popped out of it? If that thought makes you uncomfortable you’re probably shouldn’t have kids ever.

4. Relax and enjoy yourself. Doesn’t it seem like you spend all of your time thinking about others but no one ever wants to know how you’re doing? Well, guess what – by breaking your leg you just bought yourself an express ticket to complete, undivided attention-ville, unless you broke your leg by stepping in a pothole while competing in a three-legged race. Then there’s a good chance that someone else is in the exact same situation as you and will take some of that attention away. If this happens, ask your partner how bad their leg hurts and then one-up it.

5. Practice leg abstinence. One-hundred percent of all leg injuries happen because people who have legs think they need to use them. The only way to avoid breaking your leg is to not use your legs at all.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

5 Real Things

1. At the grocery store I found guacamole flavored dip. Not guacamole but guacamole FLAVORED dip. I was so excited because I love guacamole but I’m always like, “man I wish I could dip stuff in this.” Hopefully soon they’ll start making salsa-flavored dip or hummus flavored dip or French-onion-dip-flavored-dip.

2. I found a place with a deal where you get a chicken sandwich, fries and a fountain soda for $2.99, so I went. Then, while I was waiting they brought me chips and an assortment of dips for no extra charge. I left a two-dollar tip and thought, that’s right, I’m the guy who tips sixty-six percent.

3. I needed lime for something I was cooking so I went to the grocery store. They had a deal – 20 limes for a dollar. But I thought, twenty limes was too many. So I bought ten. Two weeks later I threw out nine and a half limes.

4. On the bus I passed a Thai Restaurant with a sign that said “Beer, Wine, BYOB.”

5. I rode the train to the Wrigley Field stop on a Cubs game day. Two middle-aged guys standing behind me were talking about sports. At one point one of the guys said, “You know what really helps baseball? A high definition television.” Another thing he could have said to make the same point is, “You know what sucks? Me.”

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Job Application Supplement – Scenario Questions

Please describe how you would act in the following hypothetical situations.

Your supervisor says something that makes you feelo uncomfortable. You bring it up with a few of your coworkers and they feel the same way but they don’t want to bring it up.

Its dress down day and your supervisor wears a Hawaiian shirt and baggy plaid shorts, giving you a clear insight to what kind of person he is when he’s not at work. Then he asks if you want to hang out some weekend.

Your supervisor keeps talking about how he really wants a Chalupa from Taco Bell. Then he gives you a mysterious twenty-minute break and the keys to his car. That’s when you realize that twenty minutes is the exact amount of time needed to go to Taco Bell and come back to work.

You think your supervisor might have an eating disorder.

It’s the weekend and you’re out at a bar. You see your supervisor there and, making casual conversation, you ask him what he’s up to. He says his band is playing at the bar tonight. You stick around to find out his band plays punk-rock covers of Charlie Daniels Band songs. On Monday, you go into work and a coworker asks, “How was your weekend?”

The Internet seems really slow at work. You go in to tell your supervisor and see that he’s using the company’s network to host a huge online poker tournament. He says that if you don’t report him, he’ll split his winnings with you, fifty-fifty.

You’re on the roof of the office building at night. There are two of your supervisor, both claiming to be your real supervisor, but you know one is a robot clone. Also, you have a gun. The supervisor on the right says, “Hey man, it’s me. Your old buddy, the supervisor” and you think, that doesn’t seem like something my supervisor would say.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

What I hope people on the street are thinking when I sweat through my shirt just walking around

1. Man that guy must be on a swim team or something because he is soaked. I bet he just got out of the pool and didn’t have time to dry off after training for hours. He probably did eight hundred laps and is a pro swimmer. It’s guys like that that make me want to work out more. I should lead a healthier life style. Also, I rob banks and set fires and seeing that super motivated swimmer guy makes me think, maybe I should stop doing both of those things. That guy has turned me away from a life of crime.

2. Wow that’s weird. The sky is blue and the sun is out but it looks like that guy just walked through a rainstorm. Everyone around him is dry which means, either that guy is really sweaty or, more likely and what I will choose to believe, there was some crazy wild downpour and while all these other wimps ran to seek shelter that guy walked on undeterred by nature’s fierce attempts to stop him. He is the very picture of perseverance and since I work for a company called Perseverance, I’ll secretly take his picture so I can put it on all of our ads and then I’ll send him a million dollars.

3. That guy is sweating like he’s jogging but it doesn’t look like he’s jogging. It looks like he’s just walking around. Unless, of course, he is practicing that ancient Japanese form of jogging that appears very slow but is extremely calculated and requires more skill, concentration and endurance than any other exercise in history. I read somewhere that this unnamed exercise was traditionally practiced in sandals, which explains why he’s wearing sandals. Also, he’s drinking an iced coffee, which they probably did in ancient times as well, to keep their energy up. Let me pause before crossing the street and observe this beautiful display of precision for a moment. Whoa. That’s weird. Had I not paused I would have accidentally stepped in front of a bus and died. That guy just saved my life.

If I Were (part 2)

A Pair Of Eyes
If I were a pair of eyes I would tell the nose to get his fat ass out of my line of vision.

A Man From The Future
If I were a man from the future I would wake up every morning in my hoverbed, get in my laser shower, use some nuclear shampoo, get in my hover car and go to my weird futuristic job in a big building that looks like a spaceship because it is, in fact, a spaceship. I would sit at my hover desk all day and fill out laser reports and hyper fax memos to my office mates, some of whom would be human while others would be aliens or robots.

A Math Book
If I were a math book I would have pornographic word problems.

A New Haircut
If I were a new haircut I would try and find a way not to make my owner look like he’s fourteen again.

An Octopus
If I were an octopus I would be better at multi-tasking.

A Mountain
If I were a mountain I would be walked on by everyone but would still find a way to be intimidating.

A Piano
If I were a piano I would be out of tune and put in a public place that a lot of people pass through. A lot of people who would not know the first thing about playing me would see me sitting there and would assume that they were a regular Horowitz and sit down to play a few sporadic keys that hurt everyone’s ears. I would hate my life.

A Woman’s Bureau
If I were a woman’s bureau I would be able to look through women’s underwear all day and never need to worry about someone walking in and catching me.