Episode VI

HOW DOWN ARE YOU WITH FAIRY MUNCHING? ... vi

First of all, I guess I owe all of my readers an apology for last week. I didn’t post anything – I somehow thought that because I posted the one from two weeks ago on Monday that nobody would notice if I didn’t post anything.. plus I was on spring break and I was crazy busy trying to find enough hours in a day to hang out with everyone that I wanted to. (I failed in that endeavor by the way, and I apologize to any of you whom I didn’t catch. I promise I tried! But it’s hard to make up for years of absence in 3 days) Anyway, I was operating under the fantasy that nobody would notice.. but I’ve already had one of my friends message me like “wtf homie, where was the blog?” so clearly that didn’t work out so well.

It’s okay though, this week’s episode is pretty fucking great, and it has some amazing links. I’m slowly starting to remember how I used to use the internet for more than facebook and porn.

I CAN’T THINK OF A WITTY NAME FOR THIS SECTION THAT’S NOT HEINOUSLY BIGOTED, BUT IT’S ABOUT A GAY GUY

I was Thrifting [e.g. recreational impulse consumption at thrift stores (e.g. buying shit for fun on a whim because it’s cheap)] in Montrose. Montrose is unquestionably my favorite section of Houston. All the druggies, homosexuals, eccentrics, and artsy people frequent it. It’s home to some scrumptious hole-in-the-wall burger joints, beautiful graffiti, and some of the best people watching available in this country (think airport caliber).

So we’re walking around browsing and minding our own business when some crazy-looking 30+ year old comes up to me like,

“hey man, somethin’ told me that I should come over here and talk to you today”

-“um okay.. what’s the deal man?”

“I just gotta ask you, are you straight or are you gay?”

*an extremely flustered me* -“uhh.. I’m straight dude”

“oh okay, well you musta been curious, cause I saw you eyein’ me”

And then he walked away, while everyone within earshot started cracking up.

Like, woahhh dude, I was not “eyein’” him. I did give him a bit of a glare when I noticed him openly checking out three of my best friends though (which is weird, because they were girls). And I mean openly.. like low whistle under his breath, with head-nodding and elbow nudging. I think I should probably work on my glare a bit.

SNEAKING INTO SCHOOL?

I decided to pull the first legit April fool’s prank that I’ve played on anyone in years. It had its genesis in a conversation on March 31 with Andrew Best. And it’s rather brilliant if I do say so myself. I decided to sneak into my old school. The first part of the plan was to convince the track coach that I was actually a student and get him to let me join his PE class. But the second, subtler part was to be done by Andrew. He would spread word of my coming around the school, but do it in a way made people assume he was attempting to prank them. The kids would then call his bluff, but the joke would be on them when I actually showed up.

Everything went perfectly, until the coach decided to kick me out of class. He definitely believed that I was a current student.. but it didn’t matter, he was like “you’re not in my class – you can’t just come up here on a free period”

Regardless, the look on my friend’s face when he saw that I really did show up was priceless. And I did manage to crash several other classes that were taught by the teachers who actually knew me. One of them told me that my name had just come up in a conversation that he was having the day before. Speak of the devil I guess?

TOURIST MOBS IN SALT LAKE

I almost didn’t write this section.. god forbid that I’m perceived like this stupid UCLA bitch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Johj5WEYzZo

But it’s like my high school chemistry teach always taught me.. “almost” only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

I was sitting in the airport, minding my own business and downloading Black Swan, when approximately 20 Chinese tourists (some of them wearing traditional garb) decided to cluster around my table to ogle the mountains. Honestly.. what the hell? I was sitting on the side of a very long corridor between two terminals. The corridor was almost empty and lined all the way up with windows. Why did they have to encircle my table to ogle their mountains? I would totally understand if the entire corridor was full.. like somebody was going to get mobbed and I look friendly so why not? But that just wasn’t the case. They could have walked 10 more feet and had their very own table! What a novel idea. So naturally I assumed they were a potential threat to my livelihood. It was the perfect scheme – like “okay, we will distract this dumb American while you homies on the other side heist those cookies that his grandma made for him.” But, I didn’t know how to shift my bag closer to me without being rude. I mean, I knew inside that the odds of them actually trying to nab my shit were slim to none.. and you can’t just pull your stuff to your chest whenever some Chinese people get close to you. That’s just so wrong. I decided to opt for the “root around in your bag until you find something that you can pretend you were looking for/discretely move your bag closer to you” strategy. It worked.

THE no longer BAREFOOT FUCKING BANDIT *note: this section is not about colton harris-moore

It’s about some fucking asshole that goes to the gym. So, I decided to leave my socks out while I spent 14 minutes in the sauna.. because it was convenient and I didn’t think anyone would steal my sweaty socks. But, sometime during that 14 minutes, somebody came along and stole my sweaty socks. I have dubbed him the “no longer barefoot fucking bandit” because he was clearly a bandit.. and one can only assume that he was barefoot until he took my socks. For anyone who’s curious, I did look all over the locker room/in my locker/in all my pockets/in my shoes/in lost and found for them – but the socks are gone. Seriously, who the fuck does that?? I mean, it’s not a huge deal or anything, I have plenty of other socks.. but, honestly – everyone I know travels with a pair of socks on their feet at all times. I guess the no longer barefoot fucking bandit didn’t.

IRONY II

I’m just going to make “irony” the perma-name of sections that I can’t post to facebook, regardless of their irony or lack thereof. So yeah, you know the deal – comment or like the note if you want me to shoot you this section. For any wondering, it tells the tale of a tragic breakup.

GOTTA GET DOWN ON FRIDAY

Some 13 year old named Rebecca Black just put out a new song called Friday. It’s fucking awesome. Jklol it’s fucking awful. But, it’s really not as bad as people are saying it is. I’m fairly certain it’s the most “disliked” video on youtube right now. Last time I checked it had 80 million views and 1.5 million “dislikes.”

But don’t take my word for it! Go watch the video for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0

While you’re at it, be sure you check the box that says “enable automatic comment updates” – then you can fully appreciate the 10-20 comments that are posted every second about how the song is a disgrace to humanity and the 1 dude who says “OMG I FUCKING LOVE REBECCA BLACK YOU GUYS NEED TO STOP HATIN.” [edit: the commenting has slowed down a lot since the beginning of the week when I wrote this, but it WAS 10-20 comments every second]

If you get bored with that, you can always prowl youtube for trolls. (a troll is someone who makes heinous youtube comments for funsies. like “Your face makes me want to punch babies.”)

SORRY KID.. I CAN’T BE YOUR FRIEND RIGHT NOW

Before I start, I actually felt really about this situation.. but it totally opened my eyes to the way society works. I went to a Panic! At the Disco concert last Saturday at Discovery Green. Before you judge, I gotta say that they actually put on a decent show.. plus it was a free concert, so I really can’t complain. I went with 3 of my best friends from way back in the day. Like kids that I grew up with that I rarely ever get to see anymore. We were all standing around reminiscing about the good times we used to have before we grew up and got super boring when crazy chick comes up to us all like “hey ya’ll, I just moved to Houston and I don’t really have any friends.. and I love your outfits so… yeah” girl, you couldn’t know this – but it would have been almost impossible for you to pick a worse time to try being my friend. I don’t even live here anymore and this is the only time I get to see my bffls from another life. The last thing I need is some crazy 25 year old tagging along. But none of us were able to formulate that concept into words and explain it to this girl so we all just sorta stood there looking from one person to another and back again until she was like “well.. this ain’t goin’ nowhere” and walked away.

The thing is, I’ve totally been there before.. like in a new town without any friends. It fucking sucks. Unfortunately, my emotional resonance didn’t change the fact that I only get to see my friends a couple times a year. It did, however, make me question the circumstances in which it is socially acceptable to go introduce yourself to someone. I think it’s totally situation-based. E.g. it was okay for comment on the conversation I overheard in the airport because her valet had brought her the wrong car and she hadn’t noticed until she was 100 miles down the road and that’s just hilarious, but it would not have been okay for me to walk up to some random person in the airport like “hey I don’t have any friends zomg will you help me?” And it definitely wasn’t acceptable for me to be like “wait what was that?” to that chick I was playing soccer with a few weeks ago.

Bottom line: if you’re going to introduce yourself to me out of nowhere you better a) be really attractive, b) be really fucking funny, c) be a likable, charismatic person OR, d) have an accent. Sadly, crazy concert chick didn’t fit any of these criteria. That’s probably why she has no friends.

…….YOU GOT ME

I’ve been travelling a lot in the past week or two.. interacting with TSA reps on an almost daily basis. I gotta say.. TSA has a lot of haters, but a lot of the guys that work there are actually pretty cool. Like this one guy who had to do “additional screening” on my bag. He took it and did his thing while I took off my belt and did my thing. Eventually he comes back with it like:

“hey man that’s a really well packed bag.”

--“oh, thanks!”

“yeah, your mom packed that for you didn’t she?”

-- *laughing*“….you got me man, she did.”

“yeah.. there was no way you packed a bag like that”

It’s true… whenever I visit Houston, my mom still packs my bags and makes me lunches. I dunno what the moral of this story is, but I thought it was funny.

MY NO BOOST.

This section is not about me. Weird right? I decided that some of the things that happen to my friends are worth writing about too. Especially this one – it’s great. Will (one of my friends) was also travelling last week. He had a 40 minute layover in Salt Lake and they delayed his flight to by 80 minutes. 40 – 80 is not a positive number. That means that he would be missing his flight in SLC. That would be a bummer! But, he didn’t give up and start crying like the lady who missed a speech that she’d been planning for two years because of the delays. He found a Delta representative and got a voucher for a taxi ride to a nearby airport that had a flight that was leaving right at the 40 minute mark. Then he sprinted out of the terminal and flagged down a taxi. Generally it takes 35 minutes to get to from one airport to the other.. but that wouldn’t really work out very well. 5 minutes to get checked in/through security/to your gate? No way jose. So he told the drive his deal and was like “check it, if you get me there in 20 minutes I’ll pay you $10 extra on top of this voucher.” He got there in 20 minutes.

Once there, he also manipulated the Delta agent into printing him a first class ticket like “hey, you should probably put me on first class so that I can go in the premium security line and actually make my flight.” He ended up making all of his flights on time and flying first class. G status right there.

Plus, now you know what to do next time you’re in NYC and your flight gets delayed. Don’t just sit there and cry – get your ass on another flight and make damn sure they give you a first class ticket. Actually, that’s a good life lesson – don’t just lay down and fucking die when life deals you a wrong. Get you shit together and then brag about how awesome you are for succeeding against all odds.

THE WEB

MUSIC

Freestylers - Cracks (flux pavilion remix) - amazing song... i think jizzed a little the first time i heard it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5ZeukLrD74

Pitbull - Hey Baby (drop it to the floor) - this is like the junk food of music. i fucking love it.. it's ear candy. but subject matter/message is pretty shallow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LefQdEMJP1I

Mimosa - Pandora - just do it. i initially liked it because of the name.. but it turns out to be an awesome song too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2aHgHox5Lo

rebelution - from the window - frat boy reggae ftw! [somebody convinced me that ftw meant fuck the whore for about 4 months once] this song <3 <3 (e.g. this song is pretty great and makes me <3)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX4BYsH3eek

WEB

http://www.superbad.com/ - just go with it. it's this awesome artist dude who makes some ill web-designs and links them all over the place. some parts of the site are actually narrative - like they tell a story but you have to click the right links to find it all.

space painting - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY1Lr-yGtd8 - the library is closing soon so i have to hurry but just give it a chance. it looks like it will suck but it gets crazy.

illusions - http://www.dougmoran.com/collections/optical-illusion-pink-dot-circle.html

this is a rareity - an illusion i'd never seen before. its a really cool one too. the dots disappear. legit.

before i die - http://candychang.com/before-i-die-in-nola/

what would you put on that list?

Episode V

THE COLORING BOOK... v

^ that's the first hit on an image search for "happy friday". how awesome is that?

also, if there's a sentence/paragraph that doens't make sense.. comment about it. the paste kept fucking up for some reason. i think i sorted it all out but im not positive.

THE BOXING RING THAT MOVED

Last Friday (like a week ago Friday) – I volunteered to help this guy named Phil Moore move a boxing ring because he’s a really cool guy and he was coordinating the only “golden gloves” in this part of the world. He told me to meet him at the gym I always work out at – it’s called SBGI (Straight Blast Gym International) as soon as I was done at my job. So I did.. or I tried to. He’d said that he would definitely be there because they had to load up the boxing ring, which is no small feat. I got to SBGI at about 1:30 – which was well within the time frame that he gave me, but when I went inside, there was no Phil. What’s more, there was no ring. I guess it just decided to walk out on its own or something? I dunno, so I was asked one of the other guys that works at SBGI where Phil was and he started laughing, like

“Dude you missed him, he already took it over to the Outlaw Inn, you could probably still help him unload it though.”

-- Okay, where is that place? I’ve never heard of it before

"oh, it's by Rosaurs"

-- um.. where is Rosaurs?

“it’s sorta over that way, you can’t miss it” *and he gestured here something between a point and a wave*

Thanks man, super helpful. Especially since main street spits into two different streets – North and South. And of course I managed to forget the name of the place I was going to while I was running *that way* -- so there I am, running in sorta the right way, with no idea what the place was called, looking off both sides for a place that I couldn’t miss. Eventually I realized that I was not going to find it. And that if I kept running I would definitely just miss it and have to turn around. So I was like “shit, what the hell do I do now, I can’t go back to SBGI, they would just tell me the same thing they said last time, and it wouldn’t really help at all. I surveyed my surroundings and decided to try a gas station because I remembered seeing a guy borrow a phone from a gas station on TV once. Sure enough, they had a phone that they didn’t mind me using – so I called and found out that I was literally across the street from where I needed to be. Figures. Oh, and the best part is that after I’d hung up the cashier lady was like “oh, are you going to the golden gloves?” and I was like yeah.. and she was like “oh well I could have told you where that was.

THE REGS (REVOLUTION EVER GROWING STRONGER)

So I thought I’d throw some links in here and ask anyone reading this (as a favor) to check it out. If you don’t like it, so be it. But if you do, then tell everyone you know about it. Can you do that? Please? Like actually, think about it – how often is it that you have the chance to actively help someone else pursue their dreams? You’d probably get on santa’s nice list.Okay, so I thought I’d do a bit of a special section this week because one of my friends got together with another couple of my friends and made a band. The crazy thing is that they’re actually good. They just made a demo with 17 tracks on it and threw it up on youtube and are trying to get a label.

Here’re some links to my favorite songs. check ‘em out:

Animosity – far and away my favorite track – it’s about his ex http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DA4envdCkg

It’s evil if you make it (why we fight) – my other favorite track.. the beat is ill, and his lyrics are awesome

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3knr7OqRVA

The Riot Act – Raymond, I love it when you play piano. What is love but genuine lust? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIGqvvxywgE&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Worriless man – kind of a jazz/blues feel to this track, but still good

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4yQ_r8N8bI&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Hip Hop Apocalypse Remix – gotta say, molly has a great voice. I think this track needs to be reworked a little bit though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iYpiS4pN8M&feature=BF&list=ULJaZV4riERW8&index=5

HOW TO EXPAND YOUR MUSIC TASTES

While I’m on the subject of music that’s awesome – I thought I’d throw in a little section on how to expand your music tastes so that you can listen to all that awesome stuff in your itunes that you’ve never listened to before. (and that you really can’t remember how the hell it even got into your itunes). Anyway, I developed this technique recently, and it’s worked pretty well for me. Step 1: delete everything on your ipod. It’s not that bad, just throw all your playlists onto itunes so that you can resync it later. Step II: fill your ipod up with music that you have never gotten around to listening to (like all that awesome reggae you got from somebody last year) Step III: take the time to go through and slowly listen to all the albums that you just threw on your ipod, or just put your ipod on shuffle. And yeah, you’ll find a bunch of songs that you fall in love with that you didn’t know existed.

Or, there is an alternative option if that doesn’t sound like you’re style. You can always just listen to the REGS and tell your friends about them. That would certainly help expand your music taste.

GLOVE SAMPLES

I’m slowly starting to realize a couple of things about life. First of all, I’m learning that I need to learn discretion sometimes. I was walking through the grocery store with a friend of mine this past week explaining the irony to him that everyone who attends FVCC is stupid. It’s ironic because the school is called flathead valley community college. Like they all have flat heads because they’re stupid. (credits to Andrew Best for noticing that irony by the way – he pointed it out to me and I promptly told all of my friends about it). Anyway, I was explaining this irony to him when a girl who looked to be 19 walked by carrying a child. Kalispell is quite renowned for 3 things: its quirky, granola, telemark skiers, its meth-heads, and its underage, pregnant girls. I swear that something on the order of 60% of girls over the age of 18 have children. It’s honestly depressing, most of the girls my age already have kids. We actually play a people-watching game sometimes called “mom or sister?” the gameplay is pretty intuitive. So that night in the store, I turned to my friend and was like “hey man, you know why I hate Kalispell? Because that’s her kid” and he thinks that she heard me.. she gave us a look and walked away. She probably heard me.

That same night at the grocery store taught me another life lesson – what you put out to people determines what you get back. For example, if you are very open about how much you enjoy the free samples in grocery stores and joke with the people working the sample booths about how you’re going to trade clothes with your friend and then come back for more so that they don’t recognize you, sometimes you get extra samples. This one old lady, bless her soul, actually told me to take all of her samples. She was like “go ahead, fill up your pockets” then, when I came back around later she gave me a plastic glove (not the gross latex ones) to use as a little baggy and pack full of samples to take home with me. Then, and this is the best part, she asked me to put the baggies in my pocket and keep them out of sight. Somehow, I think I actually may have managed to get a worker to help me shoplift. And all I was doing was being honest about how awesome free food is. Since adopting this mentality of openly scavenging food, I’ve been tipped off about free cake, free popcorn, more free cake, and free scones. I highly recommend it for anyone who likes food, but doesn’t like paying for it.

THE COLORING BOOK THAT YOU ANTICIPATED LAST WEEK

Maybe you noticed last week that I titled the note “in anticipation of the coloring book” that’s because I knew I was going to be writing about the coloring book this week, and that it was going to be fucking awesome. And I am. And it was. My roommate and I have been contemplating/developing a new style of beard for approximately 2 months now. We dubbed it the “coloring book” because you shave the inside part of your beard but leave the outside lines – it ends up framing your face like lines that you’re supposed to color in. it also ends up looking absolutely repulsive. Like heinously so. The best part is that I kept it for a day and went out in public.. nobody said anything to me about it, although one guy did start a conversation with me at the thrift store about clothes. I guess I looked gross enough to be one of his kind. Anyway, we took some pictures of it and a video of people’s reactions. i’ll put the pictures up, but the video is not legit to post.. somehow there was nudity. Like it definitely wasn’t my intent, but I guess my face blew their fucking clothes off? Or maybe one of my friends just doesn’t know how to close the door when he goes to the bathroom.

profile picture status. but not really.

METH. NOT EVEN ONCE.

Across the street from us there are these apartments. We collectively call them “Meth Row” because everyone in Montana does meth, especially the kind of people who live in Meth Row. Well, last week after dinner, I was standing in the kitchen when I noticed some grizzled old man come out of his meth den and walk across the street to stand on our sidewalk. He stayed there for about 30 seconds.. or maybe a minute before walking back into his house. Then he came back out another minute later with two shovels (clue I that he’s a tweaker), walked back across the street and started shoveling the snow berms next to our sidewalk. Berms are giant mound-build-ups that are created on the side of the road (but not on the sidewalk) by the snow-plow machine. Nobody ever shovels them. Ever. It’s a complete waste of time because they only ever occur in space that’s not used for anything. Moreover, even if you were to shovel them because you’re a crazy meth head with nothing better to do, the plow would just build them back up the next day. It’s the Houston equivalent of taking a bucket and trying to get all the water out of the gutters on the side of the street in the middle of a rain-storm. Normal people just don’t do that kind of stuff. Anyway, I told everyone in my house about the crazy guy shoveling our berms for us and we all stood around watching him until he looked up and noticed us. Then Hunter (being the southern gentleman he is) saw it fit to go talk to the guy. Well he seemed nice enough like “yeah, I dunno man, I just get bored sometimes so I thought I’d shovel your walk.” ß clue II. Then I went outside and was like “well that’s awful nice of you, wanna come over for dinner on Wednesday at 6 PM?” and said sure. 6 o’clock Wednesday came and went but the guy didn’t show and we haven’t seen him since.

3-WAY STOPS

To anyone who reads this on a regular basis.. do you remember the section I did on how I caused a traffic jam? Yeah? Well, I did some more investigating, and it turns out that it wasn’t really my fault. Kalispell just simply does not understand the way that traffic works. 3 way stops on a 4-way street do not work. They make this happen:

That thing in the middle is an accident. I didn’t know how else to draw it. Anyway, the intersection that I caused a traffic jam at always seems to be jammed up. So I decided to do some casual snooping in order to determine the real cause of the perpetual gridlock. Turns out that it is only has 3 stop signs. Every time I go past the intersection, I always double check.. thinking that I must have missed something.. that maybe one of the streets is one way. Or even that one of the streets gets significantly more traffic than the other three combined. But none of those things are ever true.

PARTY AT THE HALFWAY HOUSE

Last Friday, a bunch of the kids from my house went to some kind of dance/performance at a local coffee shop with over 100 people at it. (that’s a LOT of people in a small town.. like its actually about 1% of the entire population for miles around)anyway, one of the kids from my house that went decided to invite over a couple girls that we’ve been hanging out with lately.. and somehow the word got out that there was a party at our house. Which is weird because it’s a halfway house… So at 10:45, 15 people show up on our doorstep. We can’t have people over after 11, so any partying was going to be a bit short-lived. Eventually, we got rid of them, but no sooner do they walk out the door than some other guy that we’ve never even met before shows up like “heyyy, I heard there was a little ‘get together’ here” we told him there wasn’t really anything, but he persisted like “oh, well can I just come in for a second” and we were like “dude everybody else is gone already. Get outta here” he left after that. I guess word gets around in a small town. Parties are big news, even when they’re at the halfway house.

THE WEB

Movies.. if you want to watch them go here. I found this site a while ago and I’ve had really good luck with it thus far

http://www.letmewatchthis.ch/

possibly the best commentary that I’ve found this week.

http://www.reddit.com/r/nihilism/

Music

THE REVOLUTION EVER GROWING STRONGER. LOOK UP IF YOU DIDN’T READ TO GET THE LINKS.

Imogen Heap – Hide and Seek

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYIAfiVGluk

Kid Cudi & Rich Hill – won’t you tell me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWsa_jVdZkk

Ziggy Marley – Love is my religion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8oAGvFxevw

i sorta look like i have a gnarly double chin don't i? this picture honestly makes me want to throw up.

much love amigos.

Episode III

Hey.. so its been a while since I’ve posted anything. Go figure. I knew that was going to happen actually. I’m really bad at writing on a regular basis – I tend to just write when I want to. And sometimes I don’t want to for weeks at a time. But anyway, welcome back to my followers I guess? And to my stalkers who read these but never post on them– hey, you don’t have to pretend like you’re not actually reading this you know. I’m not that judgmental. It’s only weird when you bring up something that I wrote about when I had no idea that you were even reading it. Then I tend to be like “wait.. how do you even know about that?” like when the kids I work with at the Montessori school are perpetually bamboozled by my knowing their names. Some of them ask me every day.. “How do you know my name?”…. uh you introduced yourself yesterday.. and the day before.. and actually the day before that too. Maybe you should get that checked out or something.

On a similar note, I’m fairly certain that I creeped out a girl that I was playing soccer with a few weeks ago. She let out this weird noise.. it sounded kinda like a dog whimper – I think she was afraid that somebody was going to run into her. But anyway, whatever the case – I was like “wait, what was that?” I was being sarcastic. I forgot that sometimes when you’ve never talked to people before it’s a bad idea to be sarcastic. She definitely thought I was serious, she was like “oh.. nothing, I just made a noise.” I said “oh.. yeah, I know” and walked away. I didn’t talk to her for the rest of the game.

TRAFFIC JAMS

Kalispell drivers kind of suck. Some of them actually don’t know how to drive. But more than that, they just have no concept of street etiquette. I mean it’s super nice of them to stop and let me cross the street and I appreciate the gesture, but it tends to just make me feel weird when they stop at a green light to let me cross in front of them, especially when the people in the other lanes don’t stop. It used to make me feel obligated to jog across the street in order to get out of their way more quickly – but lately I’ve adopted a new policy. I cross streets blindly. I just assume that people are going to stop for me because they always do. Well, my policy didn’t work so well once – I caused a bit of a traffic jam. There was a 4-way stop at a busy intersection and somehow it happened just right so that nobody could go anywhere for the entire time that I was in the intersection. By the time I got all the way across there were 8-10 cars waiting to go about their ways. I’m not sure what’s worse – that I inconvenienced 16-20 people or that I don’t feel bad at all about it. It was still better than the “wave battles” that ensue if you try to insist that a car should not in fact stop for a green light.

BROWNIE SHENANIGANS

I’ve been trying to send my team (e.g. the kids that I lived with on campus in the middle of nowhere) brownies for about 2 months straight. I make a batch of brownies almost every week, and almost every week I manage to rationalize eating them all myself. Actually, that’s not quite true – one week I did manage to not eat any. I made them on Wednesday night and was sending them out on Thursday. I only made enough for each person to have one brownie and I carved their initials into them to make it more personal. If I ate any I would know who I was stealing a brownie from and feel like shit about it. Then, when I go to get them.. 2 are gone. And of course nobody ate any.. there’s not a single guilty man in Shawshank Prison. I literally asked about 25 people if they’d had any brownies and not a one of them would admit to it. I still haven’t sent brownies to my team. If you’re reading this.. sorry guys. Ill get them to you eventually.

MONTESSORI MISADVENTURES

This is a fun section.. as it always is. Lately I’ve been playing a wide variety of different versions of “tag” with the kids. Their two favorites are zombie tag and glue tag. Zombie tag used to be the best – basically it’s tag, but whenever somebody gets tagged they become a zombie and help tag everyone else. They always make me “it” so when we play zombie tag it’s super easy because I just tag one person and then stand around and watch them play. But then one day the kids realized that zombie hunt was more fun than zombie tag. It all started with a mischievous little 6 year old named Mason. I tagged him but he refused to yield. He rallied all the kids in the playground against me like “guys, we don’t have to be zombies, we can fight back!” oh did the kids love that.

They all came running up jumping on me/pummeling me with their tiny fists. I ran away for a while.. but then I got tired so I decided to divert them (all kids are ADD) – I was like “guys.. let’s make snow angels! Who wants to see me make a snow angel?” and they all forgot to attack me.

After that incident, I tried to stay away from zombie tag – so we all started playing “glue tag” which is what the kids are calling Freeze Tag these days.. I guess it’s just more fun to say “you’re glued” than “you’re frozen”

WHAT THE F*CK COPS? (YES I WATCH PHILIP DEFRANCO)

A couple of weeks ago, one of my friends was jogging down the street – running late for an engagement that he had and minding his own business when he was tackled by a cop. The cop literally pulled a gun on my friend. Apparently he matched the description of a runaway-suicidal kid. I still can’t figure out how pulling a gun on a suicidal kid is going to help anything. “GET DOWN…. I’ll shoot.. I’ll shoot” chalk it up to small-town cops. They get bored.

MY NEW HERO/Links to Awesome Stuff

So, some dude managed to steal a $238,000 from the wicked capitalists. He complained of bowel pains on a flight that he somehow knew was transporting 1.6 million dollars and spent the entire flight in the bathroom. he sounds like another barefoot bandit. i wish they could get together and like find 9 other guys and make colton's 11. gotta bust him out of jail first though.

Check out the story for yourself

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2684553/posts

oh and Philip defranco is my other new hero.. he’s probably the funniest vlogger I’ve ever seen. Check it out – I promise you’ll laugh. He’s talking about condoms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqCJc6cvjec