The Internet is magic.

I’m at my Grandma’s house right now, hanging out with my family and doing Christmas stuff. Despite that, I can still update this thing thanks to the wireless connection. Magic.

The real fun came last night, though. My little sister and I were chatting after everyone else had gone to bed, and an interesting subject came up: Things that scared the bejeezus out of us when we were little kids.

It all started when I saw that they’d just put “The Hitchhiker” up on Hulu. “The Hitchhiker” was this terrible show from the 80′s that appeared to be trying to capitalize on the Twilight Zone and other shows like it. The only reason that I had ever even heard of it was because FOX used to show it at night when I was a teenager, and I would watch it on this crappy black and white television set in my room when I was in high school. I don’t know why I have fond memories of that, but I do.

Anyway, that reminded me of “Tales From The Darkside”, and this episode that I’d seen when I was younger. All that I really remembered about it was that there was this old guy in a neck brace that hated Halloween. He was a dick to some trick or treaters, and eventually a goblin comes to his door and terrorizes him for the rest of the night. I didn’t really remember what happened other than that, or how the episode ended. I just remember that it scared the holy fuck out of me when I saw it for the first time.

Ten years ago, that would have been the end of it. It would probably just be one of those stories I tell when I’m a little drunk where I try to convince everyone how scary the show was and they just roll their eyes and humor me so I’ll shut up.

Thanks to the Internet, that’s not the end of it. After putting a few barely-related search terms into Google, I was able to find the name of the episode (“Halloween Candy”), the original air date (1985), and a copy of it online. I re-watched the episode once I found it on youtube. If you want to too, here it is:

As I watch this again, I notice that there are some pretty big plot holes. They never really explain why the old man hates Halloween so much, or has a neck brace, or can’t just give the kids some fucking candy. I mean, if he’s willing to spend ten or fifteen minutes browbeating everyone that comes to his door, would it really be that much work to just buy a pack of Good’n'Plentys? Then, no one would vandalizes his house, he could save himself a few hours of yelling AND he could really screw the kids over with some shitty licorice candy. He seems fairly mobile, so when he’s on hour seven of being terrorized by a goblin, why not get the fuck out of the house? And what’s the moral of this story? The son is kind of the Bob Cratchet of the story, taking care of his Dad and telling him to quit being such a crotchety old man but despite being the good guy, at the end of the episode he’s looking at going to jail for neglect because his Dad got stuck in a time warp.

None of that is really that surprising, though. Most mediocre (and even some good) scary stories rely on really weird logic gaps and terrible decision making from the main characters, and it’s not as though Tales From The Darkside was some sort of timeless classic. I also didn’t find it especially scary at 30, but I was able to tell that this was the kind of thing that would scare the shit out of me at 13. Once I had found so much information about that episode, I was curious to see what else I could find from my childhood that scared the shit out of me.

The next stop was The Muppet Musicians of Bremen. It was an old VHS movie that my brother and sister used to watch. The animal puppets weren’t especially scary, but the humans scared the crap out of me. They were adults wearing puppet masks, and I remember being terrified of them. Once again, the Internet was more than capable of finding as much information as I needed. Here’s one of the 10 videos, and, I have to say, those adult puppets are still pretty scary to me.

The rest is on you tube if you’re dying to see it, but I think this one video gets the point across. I mean, most of you didn’t even watch it in the first place.

We had a lot of fun going back and watching all of this stuff again. Other than just about anything Jaws related, I had trouble thinking of any other childhood fears, which is funny, because I was afraid of everything as a child, no matter how stupid it was. My little sister was able to come up with the witch scene from A Christmas Story, which I thought was funny because I didn’t even remember there being a witch in the movie. There totally is though, I guess.

So what memories do you have of weird, random things that scared you as a kid? I had a lot more fun looking stuff up last night than I thought I would.

Let me know.

So, I’m in what you might call a financial “pinch” right now.

As you know, I’ve been living the glamorous lifestyle of a substitute teacher for a couple of years now – getting worked over by little kids, waking up at a different time every day, never being sure if and when my next job will be – you know, the kind of decadent, frivolous lifestyle that people a tier below public school teachers are famous for. Don’t get me wrong – it’s a lot of work living that lifestyle, but it’s all worth it when you see that paycheck at the end of the month. The day after I get paid, I always immediately go to the bank and start making it rain. Not just at the club, mind you; I do it everywhere. The grocery store, on the can, even in my sleep – If it’s payday and I’m nearby, there are bills flying everywhere.

Then, I decided to go back to school this summer. What can I say? It makes me uneasy when I’m not enrolled in college, throwing money into a degree that might or might not end up paying off. I did it for eight years after high school, and without a few thousand going to a college every semester, my finances were getting dangerously stable.

There’s a slight problem with this, though: college costs money, and it simultaneously cuts down on your opportunities to work and make money. I’ve had fewer opportunities to steal cell phones and break up in-class hand jobs (I wrote about that day on here right? There’s no way I didn’t), and a little bit less cash as a result.

It was tighter than usual this semester (I was only able to make it rain 8 hours a day instead of my usual 24), but I managed to stretch things out just right based on early payment from the school district in December. They pay you on the last work day of the month, which is at the beginning of Christmas break.

Normally.

I got an email about a week into December nonchalantly mentioning that we wouldn’t be getting paid until the end of the month this year. No explanation, no “Sorry guys, there’s no money anywhere in the budget and we really need to invest this cash for another two weeks so we can have a little bit more capital”, just “Happy Holidays! Go fuck yourself! <3 The District”

Again, still not the end of the world. It will keep me from spending my paycheck on frivolous garbage like Christmas presents and health insurance, and when next month rolls around, I’ll get my paycheck AND my student loans. Forecast for January: Cloudy and humid with a 120% chance of… rain.

So why am I telling you this?

As luck would have it, my subscription to my hosting service runs out on December 29th, the day before I get paid. What does that mean for my sweet, sweet blog? It’s hard for me to say, because I’m not really sure. At the very least, it won’t be around on the 29th. I’m going to back everything up and then get some more hosting when I get paid, and I THINK that the domain name will stay the same. I’m about as knowledgeable about webpage design as my Dad is at using…well, any electronic device with more than three buttons on it (It would be kind of cute if it wasn’t so frustrating), so for all I know, It’ll go down, I’ll lose the website, and then my computer will burst into flames. We’ll see. If it doesn’t come back up in a day or two, send me a message, and I’ll let you know where I’ve popped up afterwards, because let’s be honest: I can’t handle the idea of knowing a lot of damning information about myself and others if I don’t have a place on the Internet to put all of it up.

In a way, I’m wondering if it’s kind of a good thing. I think I need to re-evaluate this whole blog thing. I like doing it, but I feel like I’ve kind of crapped out. I’m not updating as much, and when I do, the quality seems kind of low. I feel like I’ve forgotten how to be interesting. I’m not sure what happened exactly; it’s not like I’m not trying as hard or I’ve developed a drug addiction,  but when I look back at my more recent entries, I feel more and more disappointed with the quality of them.

Anyway, I’ll keep things going until then, and when there’s no site here on December 29th, you’ll know why. Hopefully it’ll be back up on the 30th.

This is the point where I embed a video that nobody watches normally, and I was going to put in “I make it rain” by Fat Joe, but then I realized that song is horrible.

Instead, here’s a video of Torchlight, the first game I plan on playing when I can play games again.

GOOD DAY!

Jersey Shore

For those of you who don’t know, Jersey Shore is an MTV reality show that’s basically the Real World, only with nothing but “Guidos” and “Guidettes”. Those two groups, as near as I can tell, are comprised of really tan, good looking, mentally retarded, racist Italian stereotypes. There have actually been protests aimed at the show for portraying Italians in a negative light. On a reality show.

I could say how stupid I think that is, or how awesome I think it is that there’s a guy on there who calls himself “The Situation”, or how I find myself simultaneously repulsed and extremely attracted to all of the women and a couple of the men on the show, but what I’ve been really mulling over since watching it is this: If you were on a reality show and certain groups thought that you portrayed your nationality in such a negative, stereotypical light that they started protesting and companies started pulling their ads, how would that make you feel? The show doesn’t have writers. These goofballs aren’t reading lines and using fake accents when they refer to having sex with someone as “pounding them out” or talk about owning their own tanning beds. They genuinely just look and act like characters from a U.S. World War II propaganda film. They’re crazy people being crazy. If someone were to tape me just doing what I do, and the result had white groups so outraged that they were petitioning MTV to cancel the show…I don’t know how I’d feel. Awesome? Embarrassed? It’s hard for me to say.

I do know this: This is compelling television. The Real World has never really pulled me in, because I’ve always known that crazy people exist. Watching them drink and fight just irritates me. This is different. I had no idea that people like this were real! It’s like MTV discovered alien life and I get to watch a documentary on it! Are there really men out there who spend thirty minutes on their hair, own their own tanning beds and talk in a way that makes Mario and Luigi’s accent seem incredibly subdued? Apparently! How do these people function in the real world? I can’t imagine ANY of them holding down a real job or even making it through grade school! Why have I never seen them before? Who the fuck calls themself “Jwoww”, and how hard would it be to get her to make out with me?

Furthermore, Two hours of watching Jersey Shore has vindicated every high school actor I ever had to watch during a forensics meet doing what I thought at the time was a shitty, completely over-the-top Italian accent. So, to all of you goofballs that I judged so harshly ten years ago: I-MA SOSORRY!

Community

I think this show is funny. It almost always makes me laugh when I watch it. And yet, I’ve watched it with a few other people now who’s sense of humor I respect, and they don’t seem to find it as funny as I do, so maybe I’m wrong. I guess that it boils down to this: If there’s a Spanish teacher named “Senior Chang” played by the Korean guy from The Hangover, you have a guy mistakenly believe that the word “Tardy” is an accusation that someone is retarded and a 60 year old man shows up to a Halloween party dressed as The Beastmaster, I’m in.

As an added bonus, the chick that plays Trudy Campbell on Mad Men is in it, and I want to make out with my TV whenever I see her on it.

Am I crazy? Is this show actually not funny and I just think it is? I don’t know why I’m even asking. It’s not like anyone is going to be able to change my mind.

Parks And Recreation

Whenever I watch this show, I walk away from it thinking to myself “That was pretty funny”, but when I try to think of a specific moment that made me laugh, I always come up empty. I don’t know what that means.

House

I will probably stop watching house once I can play video games again.

As formulaic hospital dramas go, I think house is probably pretty good. It reminds me a lot of Law & Order; it’s essentially the same show every week, but it’s also a winning formula that’s impossible to look away from if you watch more than ten or fifteen seconds of an episode. House is a dick, they bring in a sick patient, nobody knows why the patient is sick, they try to figure out, House sprinkles in just the right touch of sass, the patient starts bleeding out of an inappropriate orifice, they try something else, it doesn’t work, House suggest a treatment that will endanger the patient’s life if he’s wrong, he’s not wrong, they throw in a touching moment letting you know that House has a soul, roll credits. It may not be the most mind bending television, but it kept me entertained and kept me from playing video games. For that, I thank it. That being said, when January rolls around, House will probably be replaced by Torchlight and Civilization.

It’s Always Sunny In Philidelphia

I’ve never actually seen a second of this show. All I know is that everyone loves it and suggests it to me whenever I ask about television shows that I should be watching. I’ll probably never watch it until it gets cancelled, like Arrested Development.

All in all, I liked TV more than I thought I would. It had some thoroughly enjoyable moments. I haven’t decided which shows I’m going to trim out of my viewing schedule yet, but I found some stuff that I wouldn’t have known was around if I hadn’t emptied several hundred hours of previously booked time out of my yearly schedule. I’m not sure how much of a role that TV is going to play once I’m back on games, though. I like it, but I rarely feel like I’m getting something out of it. It’s nice for when I need to fold laundry or do some other chore where I need to be entertained by a timely zinger from Greg House M.D, though.

I guess that there’s a reason that people spend so much of their lives watching TV in America.

My New Year’s resolution to give up video games for a year is finally winding down – I have 21 days left before I can pick up a controller – and I’ve started to take a look at the things that I’ve done over the year.

As I’ve mentioned before, one of those things is “Watch a lot of television”. I honestly hope that I find a good balance between TV and games when I can do both, although I could see myself having to enter rehab after failing out of school, losing my job and getting dangerously dehydrated because I have to play games AND catch the season finale of House.

Either way, I think I’ll be watching a lot less TV in three weeks, and I thought I’d look back and say goodbye to some of the shows that I watched during the times when it was especially hard not to fire up my gameboy.

Glee

I had high hopes for this show. When it started, I loved it more than a straight adult male should probably like a show about a high school Glee club. Nonetheless, I was a fan. The show had plenty of moments that made me chuckle. When the cheerleading coach went to visit the recently fired choir teacher and he showed her his giant doll collection, her response was “Isn’t this just lovely and normal? The only thing missing from this place is a couple of dozen bodies lying and rotting in shallow graves under the floorboards!” Kurt, the extremely gay member, got a job as the kicker for the football team, but could only make kicks if he listened to “Single Ladies” while dancing up to the football. In one episode, Sue told a student “When I heard that Sandy wanted to write himself into a scene as Queen Cleopatra, I was aroused, then furious.” Even the musical numbers, which I normally hate, did alright – it was pretty awesome when they performed ”Push It” for the school pep assembly.

Then, about three episodes in, it seemed like they fired the original writing staff and focused less on cracking me up and more on pissing me off. The jokes got fewer and far in between. They ramped up the dance numbers, but crapped out on the music choices (Really? 13 fucking episodes and you couldn’t do one, SINGLE Iron Maiden song?). Finally, they ignored everything else to focus on a stupid, implausible pregnancy plot that wasn’t funny, wasn’t interesting, and felt like something out of a bad soap opera.

About halfway through the season, I realized that even though I wanted to, badly, I didn’t really like the show anymore, and that the only reason I had been watching it for the last few weeks was the strength of the first few episodes. I had a similar reaction to the Matrix sequels, the newest DJ Shadow album, and most of Weezer’s new CDs. (I’ve caught some heat for badmouthing Weezer in the past. If you can look me in the eye and say “I would own a copy of the Green Album or Maladroit even if the cover of the album didn’t say ‘Weezer’ on it”, I will redact my statement.) It’s a shitty feeling, listening to a record or watching a show, through clenched teeth, wanting it to be good, even though a small voice that keeps getting louder keeps telling you “This sucks.”

I kept watching Glee all the way through, and even later on in the season it had it’s moments – the scene in the judges room when one of them said ”Okay, I’m just going to come out and say it – this is a SINGING competition. I don’t know how those deaf kids got in. They weren’t singing, they were, like, “honking” and everyone was crying and I was like ‘get off the stage, you’re terrible, and you’re making me super uncomfortable’” had me laughing, but I think it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll be tuning in next year unless I get that Maiden number.

Dexter

Dexter is kind of ridiculous, but it’s also a lot of fun. A serial killer who kills serial killers!? I’m in! Dexter is supposed to be a sociopath, and he does a lot of things that make him a much more likable that a sociopath wouldn’t do, and there have been some pretty convenient coincidences this season (A reporter who just randomly starts dating a police officer working on a case that she suddenly realizes involves her absent father, or the way the villain magically disappears when Dexter is saving a boy he just dumped in concrete), but I always have a good time watching it, and I’m sort of crapping my pants waiting for the season finale to air this Sunday. As an added bonus, this years villain, the Trinity Killer, is played by John Lithgow. After seeing him in play a lovable father figure in Harry and the Hendersons and 3rd Rock From The Sun, it’s a little bit jarring to see him bludgeon someone to death with a hammer.

I’ve never thought of this before, but Lithgow is, as far as I know, most famous for a movie where he adopted a sasquatch, a television show where he played an alien, and now a show where he murders people in very specific, cyclical patterns. Oh, and he was the Reverend in Footloose. That’s an interesting resume.

30 Rock

Everyone on that show is good, but I always forget that Alec Baldwin is really funny, even though he hasn’t had a major serious role that I know of in years. Schweddy Balls? Canteen Boy? That man brings the heat.

The Office

I’m convinced that I don’t like The Office anymore. SO WHY DO I KEEP WATCHING IT?

Oh, I remember now: RECYCLOPS.

Recyclops will drown you in your over watered lawns.

I could go on, but I’m at 1100 words, and I don’t think anyone is actually willing to read a blog post much longer than 700, so I’ll bust this thing in half and put the rest up on Monday.

See you then.

I think I have attention deficit disorder.

It’s finals week for me, and I was in class today, taking a test that was just two essay questions.

I hate essay questions. I like writing, and I can usually come up with decent essays, but there are two key conditions:

1. It has to be on a word processor, so I can edit, re-organize thoughts, immediately recognize by the red line under a word when I’ve misspelled it, and, most importantly, get my ideas written down at a reasonable rate instead of the glacial pace that I write at when it’s by hand. As an added bonus, I’m left handed, so I have to put a piece of paper under my hand to keep from smearing my writing.

2. I have time to organize my thoughts. I’m terrible at extemporaneous speech and not very good at thinking on my feet, and so it takes me some time to piece together something readable. Otherwise, the results are a disaster. When I took the GRE, I ran out of time, submitted a partially finished essay, and was ranked in the 37th percentile. Awesome. I’m not William Faulkner, but I’d like to think that I’m at least good enough at writing essays to be considered average.

Unfortunately, when I’m taking essay tests, I get neither of those luxuries. I have less time to gather my thoughts and write them down coherently, AND the medium I’m using is about ten times slower than what I’m used to. It’s the perfect combination to force me into coming across as autistic. If my professors were to get a third party to grade my essays, I can only imagine that their reaction would be something along the lines of “Who is this gentle, retarded boy who’s taking your Electoral Politics class? It’s so sweet that the college lets this disabled kid sit in on your class! And make no mistake, he is clearly, profoundly disabled!”

The point is that when I have to take essay tests, I need to focus, so I can get as much smudgy, misspelled trash smeared into the blue book as I can before time is up.

So there I was in class this afternoon, my slow, pudgy, bumbling fingers desperately trying and failing to keep up with my train of thought about the UN General Assembly and its structure and global influence, and all I could think about was a story that a friend had told me the night before:

(To avoid confusion, I’m going to give everyone a name, so it’s not just “this girl” and “this other girl”): About a year ago, a girl I know named Steven moved in with another girl I’ve known since high school, Wang Chung. It was clear to…well, to everyone that moving in with Wang Chung would be a bad idea. At least, clear to everyone but Steven. So, a year later, my friend Stingray and Steven hung out, and she was telling Stingray that Wang Chung smelled like a water bison and ate approximately as much food as…well, as a water bison might consume in the same period of time. All things considered, it’s entirely possible that someone kidnapped her roommate, replaced her with a water bison in a wig and no one has figured out yet. She was beginning to think, she told Stingray, that moving in with this girl may have been a mistake.

…Is this a story that’s going to get me in trouble? I feel like this story is going to eventually get someone mad at me. We’ll see, I guess.

Anyway – today’s exam. While I was trying to organize my thoughts, I kept finding myself chuckling about Steven beginning to second guess a decision she made that shouldn’t have required a first guess. I kept coming up with what I consider to be equivalent situations, like “You know, I’m beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, fucking that horse was a mistake”, or “Look, I made a call, and I stand by it, but sometimes I wonder if there might have been another way to handle that dog crap in the street besides smearing it in my eyes.”

My train of thought works about like this most of the time, and it can make my life difficult when I’m around people who don’t know me very well. I’ll start giggling, and the people around me will wonder why, because we’re doing something unfunny, like taking a final exam in an International Organizations class. It’s hard to make up excuses, because there’s nothing going on that I can possibly pretend made me laugh (“I was just thinking about when Kofi Annan endorsed Amnesty International – he’ll do anything to get the laugh!!”), but I also can’t really tell them that I was imagining someone fucking a horse unless I provide the 30 minute back story that brought me to that thought, and even if I do, I still sound kind of crazy.

…Is this a story that’s going to get me in trouble? I feel like this story is going to eventually get someone mad at me. We’ll see, I guess.

Either way, I managed to hack out two passable essays and make it out of the class without embarrassing myself too much, and now I never have to worry about another international organization again. One m0re final, and I’m done for the semester, allowing me to do what I really love: share boring, yet still embarrassing stories about my life on the Internet.

At least, for 21 more days, until I can play video games again. The closer I get, the more suspicious I am that being able to play games after giving them up for a year is going to be a disaster. We’ll see, I guess.

How was everyone’s Thanksgiving?

Mine was probably the crappiest one I’ve ever had. As much as I would love to go into the gory details, part of my new strategy for maintaining a blog that doesn’t result in google searches for my name that A) yield negative newspaper articles and B) bitter, barely-coherent rants about what a cocksucker I am requires that I leave out delicate personal information that I wouldn’t want family members to see. Let’s just say that not only did I have to spend Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday hanging out with different parts of my family, everyone I’m related to that isn’t immediate family is having a crisis of some sort in their life that resulted in the kind of Holiday that had me thinking things like “I wonder if anyone will notice if I fill my water glass with Wild Turkey, because this glass of Wild Turkey I’ve been drinking just isn’t taking the edge off like I need it to” and “I really need to get a job as a line cook again before Christmas so I can tell everyone that I have to work over the holidays.”

It reminded me of something.

When I was, I’m going to say 19, maybe 20, I had a brown ’85 Audi. You know that already, because I mentioned it. I have a few very vivid memories about that car:

1. It had a cool smell. It wasn’t “old car” smell, or “car-that-10-years-of-my-Mom-leaving-banana-peels-and-rotten-apple-cores-in-now-smells-like-the-bottom-of-a-restaurant-dumpster” smell (a particularly popular scent with most of my family’s cars). I don’t know what it was. It just smelled cool.

2. I’m not a mechanic, but with 5 cylinders in it, whatever the fuck that means, it was, by far, the most powerful car that I’ve ever owned.

3. I had a Slipknot sticker that I put on the back window. This was back when I loved Slipknot the way that Tom Cruise loves Katy Holmes, which is to say that if you asked me about Slipknot, my subsequent reaction might lead you to believe that I was on PCP. My early 20′s were actually pretty much defined by  me picking a few things (this one girl, metal, the Internet, Starcraft, Tekken 3, inappropriate pictures of my roommate) and then developing a completely irrational level of enthusiasm for them that I will never be able to feel for anything again. You could throw me in Auschwitz for six months and then bail me out and give me some warm clothes and a sandwich and I still wouldn’t be as excited about it as I was about Slipknot when I was 20.

To be fair, Those first two albums still hit pretty hard. I should listen to one right now. Oh yeah, that’s nice. What were we talking about? Right. My old car.

4. It had a tape deck, and this was right at the tale end of cassette tape’s lives. I have very fond memories of cassette tapes.

My last memory is kind of strange. One Christmas when I owned that car, we celebrated the holidays at my Aunt and Uncle’s house, which was about three hours away from my place. Everyone was going down for a few days, but I had to work (see what I mean?), so I had to drive down after a shift on Christmas eve and then drive back home in the afternoon the next day so I could be back at work the day after Christmas.

And honestly, it was really fucking awesome. It was good to see everyone, we had a really good time, it was about the right amount of time to be there, and after 18 years of having to wait for Mom and Dad to be ready to leave for me to go home, hopping into my own car whenever I wanted to and driving down the highway listening to all of my sweet mix tapes made me feel like a man in a way that very few things have since. It was a pretty great Christmas, and I’ve always associated it with that Audi, probably because I spent a lot of time in it driving to and from the celebration.

Now, things are different. That car is sitting in a junkyard somewhere. My aunt died in a car accident the following year, my Uncle is recently divorced, my Grandma is 89 going on crazy, my cousins are dealing with monumental ADHD and depression, and my brother is isolated and lonely which is slowly turning him into kind of an asshole (apparently all it takes to get me to break my “Don’t air personal dirty laundry” rule is about 500 words).

And I think that’s partly why I have such good memories of that car. It was pretty badass in and of itself, but it also kind of reminds me of my family back before they started falling apart. I know that doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it seems to be the case.

Here’s a song that I’m pretty sure that I was listening to back then too. It reminds me of the same period. I’ll tell you something about the kids, too: they don’t like techno. At all.

Anyway, I hope you had a good Thanksgiving. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Christmas is only a few weeks away, and I have to start drinking now.