Good morning! I’m glad that you could all make it to the workshop today! I’m here to give you some exciting news! Let’s get started!

Who here has a blog? Who doesn’t, right? I know that I do!

What’s the number one problem with owning a blog? Getting people to read it! Am I right, people!? Am I right?

Sure, everyone has a handful of family members and a few friends that are willing to visit their blog on a regular basis – that’s a given! But how do you really get the asses in the seats? How do you increase your traffic up to 40, 50, even 60 hits a day?

Sure, you could start writing interesting content. But with work, kids and housework, who has that kind of time!?

Well, what if I told you that there was a way to take those two or three hits a day and turn them into 20 or 30, all WITHOUT having to go through the backbreaking strain of thinking up and writing something that people want to read?

Would that be something you’re interested in? It is? GREAT! Then let’s get started!

One month ago, I was just like all of you: I had a blog, but no one was reading it! Sure, I would get a hit from a friend here and there, my family would feign interest in my diatribes about mowing the lawn or my special order getting screwed up at Bennigans, but that was it! On a GOOD day, I was getting two or three visits to my blog – I was pathetic! At rock bottom.

But then, one day, all of that changed! Do you want to know my secret? I said, DO YOU WANT TO KNOW MY SECRET? I CAN’T HE-AR YOU!!!

Alright, here it is:

I was trudging along, dumping all of the boring minutia of my life into my lonely, unvisited blog. Then, one day, I noticed that hits had shot up. I didn’t know what to make of it, but I was grateful. The next day, I checked them again, and they had shot up even more! In the span of two days, I had gone from a two or three visit a day loser to a wildly successful thirty-hit-a-day juggernaut!

It was then that I decided to look into this surge in traffic and get to the bottom of it!

The first thing that I noticed was that most of my hits were coming from this specific blog post about a technique I invented in my sleep called “Cobra Kai’n it” – but that’s an entirely different workshop!
I decided to look into it more carefully, so I checked out what search terms people had been using that had directed them to my blog.

What I found was alarming!

There were a few random search terms that scored me a few visits – “Succubus” was yielding about 3 hits per day, “gay porn” was directing about 5 people to my site every day – one lucky soul even found my blog by searching for “dog porn gay” (Let me break the 4th wall for a second here – I swear to God this is true. Other honorable mentions include “emo butt”, “warcraft porn succubus” and about 40 other variations of “gay porn”.)

But these search terms were small potatoes. I was only getting four or five extra hits a day from people mistakenly looking for a good supply of only the hottest dog porn of the gay variety, whatever the fuck that horrible, unspeakable act entails.

But there was one term that was bringing people to my blog in droves. One thing they were searching for that was directing them, time and time again to my rambling, incoherent posts. Do you want to know what that search term was?

I SAID, DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT THAT SEARCH TERM WAS? DO YOU WANT ME TO TELL YOU?! SHOULD I TELL YOU!?

The term, of course, was “David Lee Roth”! It seems like an innocuous phrase, but make no mistake, those three little words are the proverbial milkshake that is bringing all of the boys to the yard, and when I say “boys”, I mean …Actually, I’m not sure who I mean. I had no idea that David Lee Roth was still on anyone’s radar.

That’s not the point, though! The point is that the number one phrase people search for that leads them to my blog, “David Lee Roth”, as of 12:25 today has suckered 1,568 unwitting souls into reading all of my boring thoughts! The next highest search term has yielded half as many hits! On top of that, there are over 20 variations on Diamond Dave’s good name tricking people into visiting this site! “David Lee Roth naked”, “David Lee Roth chaps”, even “David Lee Roth penis”! (Once again, I swear this is true. People searching for “David Lee Roth penis” have been directed to my blog five times. What this means is that if you’re ever on a game show and the host asks you how many times someone has searched for “David Lee Roth penis” on the Internet, the answer, frighteningly enough, is “at least five”.) There are probably at least 100 other hits from the different types of searches for Diamond Dave, or his chaps, or his penis!

I know what you’re thinking: “But Johnny! How do I apply this powerful secret to my blogging to make it successful!?”

I’m glad you asked. I could tell you how, but instead, how about I SHOW you how?

Here’s a typical blog post:

———-
Moby Dick
By Herman Melville

Chapter One

“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.”
———-

Not bad, right? You might even consider it a classical piece of literature, worthy of study years after it was written? WRONG, BITCH! CALL THE SNORE-BLIANCE, BECAUSE THIS SHIT IS BORING!!! Nothing can save this dull piece of crap, right?

WRONG AGAIN! Take a look at this spiced up version. See if you can spot the difference:

———-

Moby David Lee Roth
By Herman “Diamond Dave” Melville
Chapter Lee Roth

“Call me DavidLeeRoth.

Some years ago – never mind how long precisely – having little or no Diamond in my David Lee Roth Penis, and nothing particular to interest me on David Lee Roth Chaps, I thought I would David Lee Roth about a little and see the Livin’ in Paradise part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the Just a Gigolo, and regulating the did I mention David Lee Roth. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the David Lee Roth penis; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my Chaps; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before Van Halen warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper Diamond Dave Penis of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the Dancin’ In the Street, and methodically knocking people’s chaps penis Van Halen off – then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for David and Lee Roth. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his Buttless Chaps David Lee Roth Dog Porn; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. David Lee Roth, David Lee Roth, David Lee Roth. Dog Porn Gay”

———-

It’s a subtle distinction, but can you see the difference in the two posts? Look carefully, it’s there! How many more hits do you think my blog would’ve gotten from the original post?

None, right? Right!

Now, how about the Roth’d up version of that post? God only knows! I’m am being completely honest with you when I tell you that I am completely terrified to see what kind of sick, depraved people come to my website looking for David Lee Roth engaging in unspeakable sex acts. I can hardly wait to find out how many hits a day I will receive from people searching for things that will make my stomach churn – churn with the satisfaction of knowing that I tricked someone into visiting my blog!

So there you go! You know my secret. To recap my recipe for success:

1. Write a post.
2. Fill it full of out of place, inappropriate references and photos of VanHalen frontman David Lee Roth.
3. Sit back and watch your hit counter accelerate to speeds you previously only dreamed of as people show up to your site, realize that it’s not at all what they thought it was and then immediately navigate away, disgusted that you would have the audacity to waste their time with a webpage that doesn’t have a single picture of David Lee Roth fellating a German Shepard.

I’d like to thank you all for coming out today, and wish you the best of luck in your Internet writing adventures!

Here’s one more picture of the Rothman to get you started:

Now get out there and get some hits!!!

Goodnight.

As you all know, I like to joke around on this blog. Exaggerate a little bit, maybe say some outlandish things to get a chuckle, put my home address in a post on accident – anything for a laugh.

Right now, however, something is weighing heavily on me that I kind of want to talk about. I apologize for the somber tone, but some things just can’t be taken lightly:

Assuming that it exists, I need to get scrotum rejuvenation surgery.

Allow me to elaborate.

All things considered, I’m doing pretty well. My heart has been steadily beating for almost three decades without missing a beat. My brain works well enough that I can remember things that happened to me 25 years ago. All of my tissues and organs have done their jobs without any real complications for 28 years and without a single moment to rest. That’s 245,280 hours of continuous use without a single malfunction. How many things can you say that about? My laptop made it 12 months before breaking. My car is 18 years old and only barely runs thanks to thousands of dollars in repairs.

But I’m not getting any younger, and the signs are showing up more and more frequently. I’m fighting a losing battle with a body that, little by little, is starting to atrophy. My face is starting to show the first signs of smile lines and crow’s feet, my left achilies tends to get sore after running, my right knee gets sore sometimes, instead of burning it off instantly, my body turns food into fat if I don’t exercise – I’m still young and hopefully have a few more years left in me, but I’m getting more and more of those little reminders that I’m not 18 anymore, and haven’t been for over a decade.

On the top of that list of reminders is my sack. For those of you that don’t know, the scrotum is that sweet little pouch between your legs that your balls are in. It helps you regulate the temperature of the seed in your nuts by regulating the distance from your body. When it’s hot outside, it stretches out to distance your balls from your body to keep them cool enough. When it’s cold, it contracts, pulling your boys in towards your body.

At least, that’s what it’s supposed to do. One of two things has happened:

Either my scrotum, much like an old sock, has lost all of it’s elasticity, or my seed is now incredibly sensitive to heat, and the best place for my balls to be at all times is as close to my knees as possible.

And that is why I want to go under the knife and get my scrotum back to an acceptable position.

Now, this isn’t a vanity thing – granted, there’s nothing that women want and men envy more than a firm, perky sack, but it’s not something that bothers me enough to warrant surgery, unless of course I got a surgeon to completely remove it and replace it with a tiny ming vase…(note to self: ask surgeon about the possibility of replacing scrotum with tiny ming vase).

It’s not a fertility thing either. I’m what someone who is studying for the GREs and temporarily knows a lot of stupid useless words, a character in a Kevin Smith movie or a high school kid who’s trying to sound smart (or all three) would call myopic – I’m far too short sighted to even consider the reproductive ramifications of a poorly heated set of balls.

It’s about comfort. You are aware of my running difficulties, but lately, it’s been getting hard to sleep. That thing is all over the place, exploring places that it doesn’t belong and getting pinched or rolled on to in the process, and it’s starting to piss me off. I’m getting closer and closer to the day when I wake up, feel a little bit uncomfortable, and then realize that while I was asleep, my scrotum twisted its way around my throat and is now lying next to my face on the pillow.

I’ve had enough of this foolishness. Fortunately, in this day and age, I believe that a solution is available. As I’m sure most of you know, there is a procedure called vaginal rejuvenation. I looked it up on the Internet, and the procedure boils down to this: You pay them between four and five thousand dollars, they give you some local anesthesia, they perform some horrible, gag-inducing surgery on your vagina, removing a little here, tightening a little there, until you’ve got the vagina of…I’m not quite sure. An 18 year old? A 17 year old? A 12 year old? I don’t know what you shoot for with something like that.

That’s not the point. The point is that a scrotum is a whole lot less complicated and in the same area, and I’ll bet that for five grand, I can go to sleep at night knowing that I’m not going to wake up with my balls perched neatly on my shoulder. Hell, I’ll bet that I could get it done for cheaper. It’s not like it would be as delicate as a vagina. You could probably just cinch the thing up a few inches with a staple gun….hmm…

…I’m going to go try something real quick. Be right back…

…alright, something came up, and I need to take a quick trip to the emergency room. Have a pleasant day!

I know that everyone expects really prompt posting from me. So sorry. I have an excuse this time.

But first, let’s spice this post up:

There. It’s getting better already.

Yesterday morning, I opened up my laptop and pressed the power button. Rather than turn on, it made a series of loud beeps that I can only assume were Morse code for “fuck you”.

That was all that it would do. After doing some cruising on the Internet, it became clear that something was very broken in my laptop that was beyond something I was capable of fixing. I spent some time with tech support, and it turns out that the solution to my problem is to pay them three hundred dollars and mail my laptop to them.

This is one of those parts of life that pisses me off: Paying a large sum of money to maintain the status quo. As I’m sure you remember, I feel the same way whenever I have to get my car repaired. If I take my car into a shop and then pay them nine hundred dollars, I kind of want it to do something that it didn’t before – shoot flame out of the tailpipe, take turns on two wheels like Kit in Knight Rider, something like that. Instead, it’s exactly the same, and the only perceivable difference in things is the decrease in my bank account. It just feels like I’m going along, doing my thing, and then the Bone Fairy magically appears and is like “Welcome to the ‘Bone Zone’, bitch! If you want things to stay the way they are, it’ll cost you five hundred dollars!” I mumble, give him the money, he cackles, yells “You’ve just been boned!” and then disappears in a cloud of smoke.

I guess that the good news is that everything was backed up on an external drive, so I didn’t lose anything EXCEPT THREE HUNDRED FUCKING DOLLARS…I’m going to be cool about it.

Maybe I’ll even luck out and they’ll do something extra to my laptop as a way of saying “We’re sorry that the thing you bought from us only worked for one year before breaking for no discernible reason.” I’m hoping they airbrush a wizard shooting lightning out of a staff at a dragon onto the top of my laptop.

In the meantime, I’ve dusted off my desktop computer and I’m using it. It’s probably for the best; I was planning on putting it together to use for playing games so I could stick to writing on the laptop anyway.

There is a problem, though.

My desktop is far enough away from the router that I would be looking at 80 or 90 feet of ethernet cable to connect it to the Internet, so I went out and bought a wireless networking card. It’s pretty cool. At least, it should be. There is one small problem, however: I’m getting speeds averaging about 5k/sec and random disconnects. It’s…frustrating. I’ll keep fighting with it until it works, I suppose. I wouldn’t anticipate a lot of embedded video or pictures until the laptop is running again, though. Until I figure out what’s wrong with my network, I’m using the Internet 1996 style, and that means that accessing anything that’s more than 45k is out of the question.

Moving on, you know that I hate the heat. I have a long, convoluted story about that. Two weeks ago, I filled up my gas tank. I drive a ’91 Camry. It cost me $50.01.

Now, I’m doing my best to appreciate gas prices where they are, because they’re shooting up so fast. How long ago was it that everyone was shitting their pants because gas was two dollars a gallon? It was only something like three years ago if I’m remembering this correctly. If you saw gas for two dollars a gallon now, you’d shit your pants all right, but you’d also be squealing into the station to fill up the tank. I’m trying to remember this, because barring OPEC falling apart, China and India getting nuked, Russia deciding to be “cool” and a discovery of a few billion gallons of previously undiscovered oil, I foresee myself wistfully remembering the summer of 2008 and those halcyon days of four dollar a gallon gas.

That being said, fifty bucks is enough money to go on a date, buy a video game or pay 1/6th of the cost of shipping your broken laptop back to the pig-fucking pieces of shit that couldn’t build it right the first time. I don’t really want to spend that money on gas when I could be lining the Bone Fairy’s pockets with it.

So I whipped out my bike. The bike’s movement is fueled by me, and I’m fueled by food. Most of the food I eat is cheaper than 4 dollars a gallon, and I get the added enjoyment of eating it. A vehicle powered by nachos, malt liquor and corn dogs? I’ll take three! Throw in some needles full of Insulin, and I’ll be unstoppable!

Before embracing the bike, my Dad suggested that I take it to the shop for a tune up, which I did. I picked it up yesterday, and as I was paying for it, the guy at the counter was telling my Dad that he was out riding yesterday, and it was just fucking hot. My Dad said that he never felt hot on the bike because there was always wind when you were riding. I pointed out that wind in an oven just turns it into a convection oven. The bike shop owner agreed.

Later that night, my Dad was talking about the conversation he had with the owner earlier that day.

“I can’t believe he was letting the heat affect him! It’s not very zen to let the weather get you down like that!” He told us.

I didn’t pay a lot of attention to this. My Dad is usually a really calm, low key, supportive guy, but when it comes to physical activity, he tends to transform into that super competitive, overbearing Dad that never thinks anything is good enough. Pretty much any activity you engage in, he always needs to mention that if you were actually a man you would be doing it longer, faster or harder. I’m lucky I have the genetics I do, because I pretty much avoided physical activity at all costs growing up, not only as a middle finger to him but because I got sick of exercising and then hearing that if I wasn’t such a pussy I would be running faster or riding farther or whatever. I think that one of the biggest reasons that I like weight lifting is because my Dad doesn’t. He’s one of those guys that thinks that there’s a legitimate possibility that you might accidentally do a few butterfly curls and then wake up the next day with biceps that prevent you from wiping your own ass.

Anyway, my Dad followed up with “Women are always sensitive to temperature, but it’s because they don’t exercise!”

This was a little bit above the normal craziness I expect on subjects like this. It was a powerful one-two punch. First of all, “Women are always sensitive to the heat” is a pretty bold statement. It’s hard to make a claim about half of the earth’s population that’s true with no exceptions, especially in relation to preference. Also, in my experience, women love heat. I don’t know why you would ever enjoy a sensation as unpleasant as a 95 degree environment, but almost all of the females I know prefer it to being cold. notice how I prefaced that statement with “In my experience”? That’s because in the entire course of my life, I’ve come into contact with…I don’t know. probably a few hundred or a few thousand people? A lot less than “all of them”. That much I know.

Second of all, “Because they don’t exercise”? What? I don’t even know how to respond to that. Suppose that the first part was true, and all women really are sensitive to the heat. Just pretend that you’re willing to concede that point. Isn’t it obvious that at least some women do exercise? Every high school has female teams, you have the WNBA, really competitive women’s soccer and hockey teams for USA, and let’s not forget roller derby, jello wrestling and foxy boxing! I mean, how about the fucking Olympics? Half of the athletes there have vaginas.

It’s also worth noting that during the winter, my Dad is almost always bundled up in several layers of clothes “getting warm” (aka napping) on the couch.

And that’s my story about the heat. When I told you I had a story about the heat and my bike, you thought I was going to bitch about how hot it is riding my bike around town, didn’t you? Well, it is. But with all this money I’m saving on gas, I’m too fucking rich to care!

That’s not exactly true, but it’s close enough.

Well, it’s about dinner time. If I’m going to be able to make it to my girlfriend’s house tonight, I’d better fill up the tank. This calls for some french fries and JuJu Bees.

I love complaining. So I’m going to.

First of all, I love feeling clean. Hopping out of the shower and knowing that my skin is mostly sweat, stink and oil free is fantastic. Throw in some deodorant and a pair of clean underwear and I’m ready to seize the day. Throw in some pants and I get angry, but that’s not really the point.

During most of the year, I can shower once a day and feel this way for 24 hours. Obviously if I work out or something I have to shower, and I’m usually starting to get kind of gross by the time I hop in the shower again, but not out of control.

Except during the summer. Those of you who have never met me and haven’t ever come into contact with me at all even once before reading this blog post might not know this, but heat turns me into a sniveling bitch. Anyone who’s spent even enough time around me to remember my first name knows that as soon as it gets hotter than 70 degrees I start whining and moping at anyone that will listen.

Part of the reason that I hate it so much is that it reduces the duration of that “clean feeling” I enjoy after a shower. October through early May, I get about 24 hours, like I said. During this time of year, my clean time is drastically reduced. I enjoy about eight or nine minutes before there’s a nice hearty bowl of ball soup cooking in my underpants. I just went running, and after showering off, I’m already starting to feel like maybe I’d better take another shower. Thank God I don’t live somewhere that’s actually hot. I got a facebook message from a girl I went to college with that mentioned that it’s 115 in Arizona, and she wishes that it were 5 or 10 degrees cooler. Oh well. I’ve still got August and early September to complain.

Second of all: I suck at chess.
This statement is always true, but is even more accurate when I’m playing computer chess. My friend Brian started playing again recently, and I’ve been playing against with him. When we’re playing against each other, I’m good enough to play one game where I lose but don’t embarrass myself. That one game always fries my brain, and in the next game I lose in two turns.

I’ve been having a good time with him, so I looked for some chess games for my gameboy. There are a few really really shitty ones that have a very strong “Programmed in somebody’s basement in 1996″ flavor to them (Think lots of lens flare and crappy midi songs), and then a pretty decent one called “Chessmaster: The Art of Learning”. I love learning, and I have plenty to learn about chess, so I downloaded…bought, I mean. I bought it, and started playing around with it. There are some good aspects to it. There is some pretty good instruction on forking, spearing, pinning, discovery…crap that I didn’t know anything about before I got my hands on the copy of the game.

Unfortunately, the game has one minor flaw, which is that I am way too retarded to play it.

After spending a while playing some minigames to learn some new techniques, I decided to play a real game against the computer. There are three tiers of players, so I chose easy, and from the list of easy players, I picked the easiest one. It was someone named Ben. Ben is an adorable 7 year old Asian kid with an elo rating of 500 (an elo rating is apparently a number that helps identify how good you are at chess, and after doing a little bit of googling, I can now say with confidence that a rating of 500 is abysmally low).

And so, my tiny Asian friend Ben, sporting a wide grin and a sparkle in his slanty eyes, with his elo rating so low it is typically reserved for animals, zombies and the mentally handicapped, played me in a game of chess.

And that tiny mother fucker whipped my ass.

I played him again. Same result.

I’ve been playing him ever since, and that little shit mops the floor with me about eight out of ten times. It’s infuriating.

First of all, it pisses me off to lose on the easiest level 80% of the time. Second of all, the easiest level is personified by a seven year old kid, further rubbing salt in my wounds. I know that the picture is probably just some stock photo that the game makers used to give their “Chess for retards” level of their game a more human feel, but the more I lose to him, the more smug his grin looks. I can almost hear him taunting me.

“You embarrassing yourself, roundeye!” Ben laughs gleefully as I sit and stare at the chess board. “I pray against dog that put up more fight than this!”
“You shut the fuck up or I swear to God I’ll cut your throat!” I hiss under my breath at my gameboy.
“Whatevah! Than you just roose to corpse!” He laughs.
Covered in sweat, I move my rook.
“You sure you want to do that?” He is still grinning just as widely as ever at me.
“Yes. I think so – yes. Shut up!” I am trying to sound tough, but my voice is cracking.
“You tha boss! Checkmate! A HA HA HA!!! You roose again! I can’t berieve it!”

And so on and so on.

Even on the rare occasions that I do win against Ben, it’s a shitty, hollow victory – I just beat the easiest level of a chess game that’s personified by a toddler. Am I really entitled to feel proud of that? That’s not a rhetorical question; the answer, of course, is “no”.

But it’s not all doom and gloom.

The good news is, I just saw “Hot Rod” for the first time. Most of you probably don’t remember that movie. It came out…last year, I think? It had Andy Sandberg in it? It didn’t look very good in any of the previews and it bombed with critics and moviegoers alike? No? Nothing?

Doesn’t surprise me.

What did surprise me was how awesome the movie actually was.

I won’t tell you everything about it, but here’s a little taste. Those of you that are familiar with “Footloose” will recognize it. The video even starts with Kevin Bacon tearing it up in the warehouse in a fit of rage. My girlfriend’s roommate described this scene as a combination of “Rocky” and “Flashdance”. She did that because she’s never seen “Footloose”. It’s even the same fucking song, for Christ’s sake. There’s not even any metal in it. Just watch it.




I need to go take a shower.

So, my ten year high school reunion was last night.

I spent a lot of time trying to decide if I was going to attend. At first I was strongly against it. I yelled about how I had kept in touch with everyone that I was interested in keeping in touch with from high school, that I hadn’t really known that many people in my class anyway, that only losers did that shit, etc.

Then, I said “Fuck it” and went anyway.

Part of the reason was that I’ve been coming to terms with the fact that I’m not quite as much of a loser as I used to think I was. Starting at about the time that I would’ve finished college if I’d done it in four years and ending about three months ago, I’ve been constantly down on what a failure I am, how I’ve squandered my life, how I will die alone and penniless and so on and so on.

I’ve realized recently that that’s not quite true. It might not work for some people, but despite my belief that happiness is impossible to achieve without finishing college in four years and then making at least sixty grand a year, I seem to be happy. So I’m going to try to just keep moving towards the goals that I currently have and spend less time worrying about doing it the right way. As long as it’s fun for me and sustainable, I think I’m actually probably doing things right.

The reason I’m going all Tony Robbins on you and telling you this is because, when I’m being entirely honest with myself and not rationalizing, a large part of the reason that I didn’t want to go to the reunion was because I was kind of afraid and ashamed of how the last ten years have gone. I had these vague images in my head of showing up at the reunion and having all of my conversations go something like:

Me: Hey, how are you, Beatrice?
Bea: I’m good. I make, like, one hojillion dollars a month, because I have a PhD that I got in 4 years. I live in France and am married to John Elway. I’m really really hot and when I take a dump, fresh, hot rice crispy squares come out instead of poop. (Presents a plate) Care for a square?
Me: Awesome. These are really good!
Bea: I know. So what have you been up to?
Me: Well, I’m a substitute teacher-
Bea: -and I’m unimpressed. The fact that you don’t make a lot of money negates any respect I had for you. We are no longer friendly acquaintances. Good bye.
Me: If you don’t mind, I’m just going to follow you around and hold a basket under your ass. Those rice crispy treats are really good.
Bea: I do mind.
Me: Damn it.

Strangely enough, this was not the case.

First of all, the trip to the reunion reaffirmed my belief that I’m probably not a complete loser. There were plenty of people there doing things that were more or less equal in pay and dignity to what I was doing. I would say that if you were to plot all of us out, I was probably a little bit to the right of center on the bell curve. Second of all, no one gave a shit. One of my old buddies from high school who is now apparently an investment banker and married to what appeared to be a pretty awesome girl was still interested in catching up even though we have differently sized bank accounts.

It was also interesting to see people that I had forgotten about, or people that I hadn’t been friends with in high school that are pretty cool now. That one should’ve been obvious to me, because two of my close friends who live in town are people I went to high school with but didn’t become friends with until after graduation, but it never occurred to me that some of the other people that I went to high school with might be awesome too. Lesson learned.

I don’t remember much else about the night, because I was kind of uncomfortable and so I got pretty wasted. I think it went well, but I always think that things are going well when I’m drunk, even if nobody else does when I’m exposing myself to the Creed cover band and screaming out requests for Slayer and Warrant as loud as I can in between every song. for all I know, I may have taken a dump on one of the tables, and it was probably not like rice crispy treats.

I guess that I won’t know until the 20 year reunion.

Final Verdict: The 10 year reunion was kind of weird and uncomfortable, but it was for everyone that went, not just me. Guilty. Of being far more painless than I originally expected.

I know that this is the first time I’ve blogged in something like 3 months, and that this is a pretty weak way to make my return, but it’s gonna have to do. I probably don’t have any more readers now anyway.

See you in three more months.