Isn't It Ironic?

Hey, Erin, this one's for you. I hope you enjoy my proper use of the word IRONIC.

So last weekend I bought a new watch because the digital display on my old one stopped working and I need it to time the kids in class (and the workers in the sweat shop I have recently invested in). This week for reasons unknown to me, the alarm started going off on the old watch at 5:15AM everyday like... clockwork (rim shot, please). Usually, this doesn't bother me, but the last few days I've gotten very little sleep and so it drove me a little crazy today. (I know, you're probably thinking why didn't you just throw the watch away, idiot???). Well, clearly I didn't just throw the watch away because I'M AN IDIOT. So, like I was saying, haven't been getting much sleep lately, so I was super annoyed when the alarm went off today. I grabbed the watch and threw it across the room. It continued to beep, but now I could detect a sinister, mocking undertone in the beeping. This led me to grab the watch and put it in a choke hold of Homer Simpson proportions. In doing so I pushed all the buttons on the damn thing at once. There was one final beep (which I assumed to be the watches version of Hell's wind staff) and then thinking I had won, I placed the watch down. A few minutes later I noticed that the digital display on the watch was working again and all it took was for me to buy a new watch and then treat the old one like a red headed step child. Isn't that ironic? Don't ya think? A little too ironic. Who would have thought? It figures... It's like rayyyyyyyyyyyyyy yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnn on your wedding day.

PSA for all my lady friends.

Alright ladies, let's stop beating around the bush. I mean, I'm as big a fan of women going au naturale as the next guy. It's your body, YOU do what you want to do. Ya know, you wanna experiment with drugs, go right ahead. You wanna put it on display and slide up and down a pole? Heck, who am I to tell you otherwise? You don't feel like shaving your legs, I'm OK with that. Hell, you can even let chia pets sprout out of your arm. I'm. OK. With. That. But the line's gotta be drawn somewhere and much like the good Captain Picard said oh so long ago, "The line must be drawn HE-YAH!" Extreme facial hair.

If you've seen me recently or not so recently, you know I'm a bit on the scruffy side. Luckily I'm a guy and I can look as bummy as I want and that's ok. This is America: home of the double Whopper and the double standard. But let's not delve into the deep dark depths of the abyss which is Achan. Not just yet. Oh, no, we still have an ever mounting army of fuzzy faced females we gotta put to bed before we even THINK about climbing aboard the Achan train. Over the past two days I have seen 3 woman with more facial hair than me. This ratio would be unacceptable even to the French.

The first wolf lady I encountered on my way home from dropping a friend off way the fuck off in Norristown. Sorry. You're gonna have to ignore the tone on that last one, it's just that when you drive for like a bagillion miles and it's rush hour and hot, the last thing you want to see is the wolf woman on your trip. I approached the toll and honestly thought I would howl and ask her if she happened to have ever seen or maybe even starred in a lil' 80s flick by the name of Teen Wolf. Instead I kind of gave/tossed my buck twenty-five at here as I drove through. I didn't really feel like sticking around as I had no silver bullets and she looked semi-underfed.

Fuzzy faced female number two I ran into on the way into work today. There were some people doing last minute cleaning and I must say, I might actually give her a pass since the staff spent the first five minutes of the day trying to decide whether or not she was actually a she. We decided to go the democratic route and the majority ruled: female. After which it was unanimously decided that she was one hairy faced female.

The last leg of my odyssey took place on the El on my way home. There was a lady who got on the train (and this one I knew right away to be a lady because she had, like, triple M breast that she was carrying around in a basket because someone told her that bras were out of style. Anyway, this lady was wearing a Dr. J shirt. Maybe you've seen the picture: he's smiling and facing the camera with one hand placed contemplatively on his chin. In this particular flick, the good doctor is sporting a fresh goatee. I looked from the shirt to the lady's face to the shirt and back again before concluding that she must be the world's biggest Julius Erving fan or had been on the losing end of the world's worst bet. Said lady was rockin' (yeah, we're bring 'rockin' back, them other slang words better watch their backs) the exact same style of facial hair as Dr. J. I tried to avoid staring, but of course, as with any good train wreck I kept glancing, which caused her to think I was interested, which caused me to get off two stops early and walk home.

OK. I'm bored of this silly little thing now. Plus the rant's basically over. And it's Thursday, so there's good TV on NBC again. Weird, huh? Seacrest OUT!

Super Bowl, Tecmo Style

This morning I woke up and had a crazy, cracked out urge to play some football. That's right. Football. N. F. L. Not the pansy-shamnsy stuff they play in Europe and like, um, 90% of the world. I'm talking about REAL football, as only the Americans and Tecmo can do. Now, I know there are some out there who are wondering WTF I'm talking about. But, if you're a child of the 90's there's no way you could NOT remember Tecmo Super Bowl. Matter of fact you'd have to have been a total vegetable throughout the 90's to not know what I'm talking about. Or Amish. If you're Amish you might have missed it. But then again, if you're Amish, chances are pretty good you're not reading this anyway. What with your backwardness and all. Silly Amish.

Anyway, I played Tecmo Super Bowl online for like an hour and you know what? I'm ranking it right up there with the best season of Madden in terms of fun factor. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love technology. Hell, I keep hoping I find a girl whose parents were crazy enough to name her Technology just so I could fall in love with her, get married, and have an army of nerds. I'd go around telling people how much I love Technology and I'd keep pictures in my wallet to show them all the great technology I possess. Then there'd be times when we'd be on the outs, and I'd be all like, FUCK TECHNOLOGY!!! I fucking HATE Technology. But, you know, eventually I'd get over it and we'd be a happy couple again... but I digress. Anywayyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Super Tecmo Bowl. One of the greatest of all time. And I bet everyone remembers the best part about this game. That's right: Bo Jackson. Way before Jack Bauer and Robo Vick, there was Bo Jackson. The man was a monster. Nee, he wasn't even a man. He was a god in 8-bit black and white and would rain down fear in the hearts of all those who lined up against him. With the help of Bo I was able to post a 56-0 win in a game I haven't played in years. For those of you that never got a chance to check out the brilliance that was Tecmo Bo, here's a little something to remind you of how deprived your childhoods were:

Greatest Touchdown EVER

Yeah. Now that's what I call football. Long live Super Techmo Bowl. Long live Techmo Bo Jackson.

Happy (belated) birthday, America

Sigh.

You know things have been a bit iffy when you start a monologue with a sigh. That's hardly a good sign. That's the way the near death/dying hero or heroine starts their final, well written and carefully crafted words in any death scene worth it's salt. I, however, lacking a team of writers or a really creative editor to tell me how to not make my writing suck (or to at least make it suck as little as possible) begin with a sigh simply because that's how I feel at the moment.

It's July 5, 2007. America just celebrated her 231st birthday and, is it just me or is she starting to show her age? A few days before the big 2-3-1 our president decides to commute the sentence of Scooter Libby, who up to this point was the only tangible evidence of this administration holding themselves accountable for any wrong doing of anything. Ever. Now, I have two problems with that. The first is that no grown man should go by the nickname "Scooter". Especially if you're expected to hold a position of power. You know what, fuck that, name one profession where if you found out the person you just hired was named Scooter you wouldn't immediately check all his references before conducting your search for his replacement. The only grown people who should be aloud to refer to themselves and have other refer to them as Scooter work for Vespa. That should be a law. Scooter. That ranks up there with grown ups who never drop the "ie" or "y" endings from their names. There are exceptions, but not many.

The other thing that bothers me is that on September 30, 2003 George Walker had this to say, and I quote,

"If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of."

I guess he meant taken care of in the old boys club "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" sort of way. But then I was never much for political science, so what do I know?

Also, the 4th of July got rained out in Philly and all along the east coast. I guess it was only fitting, right? Maybe it was just America weeping. I prefer the image of America peeing on the Constitution and burning the Magna Carter. But, like I said, she's getting old. I guess most of the fight has gone out of the old girl, so the rebel imagery probably doesn't hold anymore, now does it?

But I digress. What I really wanted to do was share one of my new favorite poems. It's by a guy named Brian Dykstra. He seems like a solid cat, at least from what I gleamed from googling him. Who knows, maybe we'll hit it off and I'll ask him to be my myspace buddy. If you like stalking as much as I do you can start at his official website

www.briandykstra.net

The name of this poem is Pushing Bush, and it goes a little something like dis:

I wish to push Bush on his tush.
George Walker,
Not much of a talker.
Raised in his cushy nest in Texas.
Earning nothing; discerning less than.
His mess with Texas distress
Concerning our yearning for returning this country to peace
And earning some relief from his intelligence spurning.
He’s just another Bush we’d be better off burning.

I wish to push Bush on his tush
And beat on Rumsfeld like drums on a battle field
Of which he prattles and wields nonsensical deals
Of unarmored vehicles from the comfort of home
Where he answers to nicknames like “Rummy,”
Proving once and for all that his chummy
President boss and his white house of whores isn’t the first and last dummy.

I wish to push Bush on his tush
And stir in the sleaze of Condoleeza,
Our dreaded in over her head
Secretary of fake.
So that with this burning Bush, it might be twice as nice
To stir in a spicy side of hot, sizzling Rice.

I wish to push Bush with a knife
In a rainy day drained with Dicky Cheney
Who can’t wrap his brain around what it’s like to be a detainee.
So Geneva gets the stick
While the troops get sick
Of dreading beheadings.
It’s sick how quick these tricky oil men fancy themselves slick
When the truth is everybody knows that Cheney’s a dick.

When push comes to shove Bush is too dumb to love
Let’s stop saying he isn’t stupid. Everybody, enough:
He believes in Santa Claus.
“If I’m the right kinda Christian I’ll get better stuff.”
I wish to push Bush on his duff.
No, that’s not it.
I’d like to slap him senseless with a Crawford caught bass.
Give him a transfusion of at least second-class.
Explain the relationship between critical and mass,
Blur the one between crude oil and gas.
Ponder if there exist even one test he can pass.
Choke him to death on his own Texas sass.
In short: I’d love to shove Bush up his ass.

Well, there it is I hope everyone had an enjoyable 4th of July.

New Cell Phone Rings

So, we're just chillin' in the office when Konrad's new phone begans to ring. Not such a big deal as there are no kids around and we're all just pretending to work anyway. I mean, it's the end of the year for Pete's sakes. What, you want us to EARN our paychecks? Ha! I think not. Besides, it ain't like we do a lot of work anyway. I'm just kidding. We work like African immigrants fresh off the boat. Anyway, apparently Konrad doesn't know how to do anything with his new phone so we all have to be subjected to crazy random rings.

That's when I get my Great Idea. Yeah, it's such a fantabulous idea that it gets it's own name. My Great Idea. It's like family or something. "You know what?" I ask the room. After about thirty seconds of random guessing (it was sort of a rhetorical question, be tee double you) I unleash my Great Idea upon the rest of the 3-1-2.

"I'm gonna invent a cell phone ring that's just a person sneezing or coughing. That way instead of people getting pissed and telling you to shut it the fuck off, all they're gonna do is look at you and say 'God bless you.'" We took a quick vote and decided that this was, in fact, a Great Idea. I had even made plans to tender my resignation so I could devote all of my free time to making this happen. Little did I know that my hopes and dreams would gonna come crashing down harder than a meth addicted mom at the Betty Ford Center. That analagy made WAY more sense in my head than it did once I actually got it out of my head.

"Check this out," Konrad says to no one in particular. He then proceeds to play what sounds like a cross between a baby great white shark choking on a smaller, less menacing animal and a chainsaw. It turns out somebody already invented the cough/sneeze ringtone. I mean, they already invented it if you happen to sound like a 107 year old woman with emphasima when you cough. Which I don't. But if grandma's looking for an inconspicuous ringtone for her telegraph machine. Well, it's out there. Anyway, good thing I didn't resign. I guess I'll just keep teaching till a stroke of genius comes along. Or till a stroke comes along... whichever comes first.

I'm a raving idiot... no, really.

So. Here I am. Lazing around on my couch, pretending to work on the IEP that’s been open for the past hour or so. Maybe if I tell myself “I’ve been working hard” enough times I will believe it. But really, does that work with anything other than “I’msopretty, I’msopretty, I’msopretty”? Probably not. Though, it never hurts to try. I guess all I’ve really been doing for the past hour is admiring the bargain curtains that I put up, which look simply SMASHING hanging from the faux brass shower rods in my living room. The Taj Mahal ain’t got shit on me!

Aren’t girls great? Whoa, where’d that come from? One minute you’re staring at drapes, the next minute you’re thinking about girls. One would think that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but since I’m doing the thinking and not this One fella, I guess it doesn’t matter what One thinks. Anyway I like girls. I like drapes. They both make me horny and um, I guess they both turn a house into a home. Yeah. Drapes and girls, they go together like Fox News and unbiased reporting. Back to my earlier statement: aren’t girls great? Well, ok. Let’s amend that: some girls are great. Some girls are great at making life suck. Those girls aren’t great. Then again, maybe you’re, like, some tortured Goth teen in such for the perfect girl to make your life suck. In which case, those girls are great too. So I guess it’s unanimous: girls are great.

Jeezus Christ on a popsicle stick. What the hell am I talking about? I guess I really don’t want to write this IEP. Maybe I should say something coherent before I wrap this up. In keeping my streak of most-consecutive-months-as-the-world’s-coolest-person in tact, I decided to watch the national spelling bee last Thursday. Aside from learning there’s some strange sect that manages to produce bigger and bigger dorks each year, and that spelling bee parents are only slightly less crazy than pre-teen beauty pageant parents (by the way, you know what would be the best reality show ever? If we filmed the parents of a bunch of beauty pageant contestants and the parents of a bunch of spelling be contestants and made the audience guess who was who. I mean, wouldn’t that be at least as entertaining as the show about the 5th graders? See, this is why I should move to Cali… but I digress). The other thing I learned is what is quickly becoming my new favorite word: kakistocracy. Kakistocracy – n – government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power. Has this word been around forever? Why am I only hearing about it now? Personally, I blame the public school system. I think I’m going to call it a night. With all these crazy thoughts in my head I’ll probably dream of a great girl or an inept government. Either way, it promises to be entertaining.

Sorry, Peter. Wendy doesn't live here any more.

Growing up, growing old. That’s how I feel. Time to put childish toys to bed. So I spent most of my afternoon in bookstores. Looking at books. Browsing. Inhaling their aroma, if you will. And I ended up buying Wicked by Gregory Maguire, I Love You, Beth Cooper by Larry Doyle, and 28 Days Later: The Aftermath by Steve Niles. Ok, so maybe one of those IS a graphic novel, but the operative word here is NOVEL.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Achan is one sexy mofo.”

Stop, you’re making me blush. Seriously, cut that shit out!

Ok, so maybe you’re not thinking that. You’re probably thinking something along the lines of, “Since when did buying books make you grown up?” Well, apparently since I said it did. There. But really, it’s what goes along with buying the books. About six months ago I retired my PS2. At the time I figured I’d just unplug her and free up some space in the living room. But since she’s been away I’ve been reading WAY more. So, yeah, while my reflexes and hand-eye coordination may be suffering slightly, I’m feeling just a tab bit more worldly and mature.

Well, actually, I unplugged my PS2 because I was planning to buy a Nintendo Wii. Pronounced “wee” as in “this is so much fun! WEEEEEE!!!!!” Either than or, “Thinking about the amount of money I just spent on another video game system makes me want to wee my pants.” I’m sure one of those applies. So I was supposed to be saving money for this game system, and every time I buy a new book I can hear my inner child muffle a scream.

“Why don’t you love me anymore,” is what Inner Child Achan said to me today as I took more Wii money and put it towards books. I was feeling a little guilty at the way Inner Child Achan was looking at me, so I made him go to his room, sans dinner. Problem solved.

Also, if you’re at all into what the Apocalypse might be like if it were to be handled by somewhat less than capable Satanists, demons, and angels, might I suggest you pick up Good Omens by Neil Gaiman. Seriously, the end of the world has never been so hilarious. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go beat my inner child into silent submission.