Broken Wing

My neuroses

• I'm afraid of small animals (squirrels, rabbits, birds)
• I'm constantly whining about trivial problems
• My blog lacks subtlety
• I have no muscle tone.
• I don't know the proper way to tie a scarf
• I am afraid of attractive women
• My shoes are a little too big, so I have to tie them really tight to keep them on, and it looks like I have really skinny feet. Also, the laces are thus too long, so they're always coming untied.
• I don't really like any of the pairs of pants that I own.
• My ability to get a suntan ranks between "dismal" and "piss poor"

Paint the bridge!

So, last week was "Spring Jam" here at the U of M, and thus there were festivities
all week long. One of these activities was "Paint the Bridge!" meaning the Washington
Avenue bridge, which crosses the Mississippi river from the East Bank to the West Bank.
Now, in the weeks prior to this, facilities management types had been stripping old
paint and applying new base coats to the bridge. I thought, "Oh great, they'll let
students paint a bright mural or some such pleasantness." Not so, my naive inner
voice. Paint the Bridge! day came, and guess what? It involved like 5 students
painting over the new base coat with a slightly different base color. Thats
right, Paint the Bridge! day is nothing but a University scam to get already
over-worked and under-drunk students to put a second coat of paint on the bridge
by dressing it up as an "event." Whats next, "Vacuum the Student Union Night!"
Maybe "Wash President Bruininks SUV Day!" If you're not outraged, you're not
paying attention. Or, maybe you are paying attention, but you are just too
tired to work yourself up to outraged. Maybe you aren't paying attention because
you're drunk. It is you I envy.

Conversation

She said: "Why did you do that?"
I said: "Because I was drunk."
She said: "Thats not an excuse."
I said: "Yes, thats exactly what it is."

Prophet or crazy

Today I was thinking about how God doesn't talk to people like he used to. If you talked to god earlier than, say, the Renaissance, you were a prophet. Now, if you talk to god, you're just bat-shit crazy. This may lead many of you to think, "Well, what about Reggie White? Does he really talk to God, or is he crazy too?" However, this led me to think, "How could someone who is so clearly crazy play professional football for so long?" See the difference? He's fucking insane. I can't even comprehend the size of the ego a person would have to have to think that God would talk to them, let alone about issues such as which teams contract offer looks the best. God's all, "Reginald, I think you should sign with the Packers. The other offer is worth more overall, but its all backend money. With the Packers' bonus offer, and assumed annual interest rate of blah percent, it ends up being worth more in the long run." Congratulations, Reggie White, for trivializing your deity more than any non-believer could. If your wife isn't around, do you ask God which belt matches your slacks better? Does God tell you which lane is moving faster on the freeway? If your god really gives a shit about the things you think he does, then you've probably picked the wrong god. You might want to try Shinto or Huyijih (okay I made that one up).

Better idea

I thought of a better idea for the crazy religious fanatics on our campus. First, when I'm walking by minding my own business and they call to me, I'll pretend like I'm surprised and flattered that a stranger wants to talk to me. "Who, me? Sure, I've got time to talk." Then, when they ask me if I've heard the "good news," I'll ask, "You mean about a UMD alumni winning the Pulitzer Prize?" Then they'll say, "No, the good news about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." And I'll reply, "No, doesn't really ring a bell. I'm a first year grad student, though, so I'm always a little bit behind on the news."
Them:"Well, God sent his son, who was actually himself, to die on earth for us."
Me:"Wow! That sucks! So your god is dead?"
Them:"No! It's great! Now, we can do whatever we want, and as long as we apologize for it sometime before death, we're not responsible."
Anyways, I could probably drag this out for a while, but the idea is that I'd gradually let them think that they were converting me. Because this is like their wet dream, right - finding someone who isn't going to heaven and getting him in! Then I'll ask them if I could help by donating money. When they tell me yes, I will reach into my backpack and unfold a giant cardboard novelty check written for $10,000 (Granted, its heavier than carrying around a few tracts, but its a worthwhile cause).

Blind people are hard to offend

As I was walking back home through the campus today, I noticed some people were pretending to be blind, wearing blindfolds, using the canes, and having an assistant to help guide them. This is probably a useful exercise in some way, though it currently escapes me in which way. Anyways, the "blind" people weren't taking it seriously at all - they were all laughing and smiling and making a game of it. I thought, man, that must be offensive to blind people, that these schmoes are walking around like being blind is a big joke. But then I thought, who the hell cares? It's not like the blind people can see this at all.

More alarm clock laziness

I have one of these alarm clocks where to set the time, you can't go backwards. You can only go forward slowly or forward quickly. But it takes a long time to go backwards like 2 minutes, because you have to go forward 23 hours and 58 minutes to get there. So this is my all time lazy story: One time the power went out, so my alarm clock reset to midnight, and I didn't want to have to hold the button down until 5:00 PM, so I just waited until midnight. Mind you, I usually go to bed earlier than that (at least I did when this story took place). Can you beat that for laziness? Feel free to e-mail me with any stories documenting your laziness thus.

Alarm clock

Have you ever woken up like 2 minutes before your alarm clock is set to go off, and instead of just getting up, decide to savor those 2 minutes and just roll over? Okay, silly question, everybody does that. But, I have an alarm clock that also has the seconds available if you press the giant button on top. Should this matter? Well, I'm here to tell you it does. I had to get up mega-early today to get to the breakfast at the Computational Neuroimaging Seminar. At 6:29 I woke up, but still tired from a late night of studying, I pressed the giant button to see how many seconds I had left. 14. I turned back over. Speaking of alarms, the alarm on my cellphone is useless. It rings once. This thing wouldn't wake up the princess from "The Princess and the Pea." Okay, thats a weird reference, but the point is her sleep is easily disturbed and well, nevermind.

Fat guys

I saw a guy wearing a "Big Dog" t-shirt today. If you're not aware, this is a clothing line for tubby men (well, its mainly just shitty t-shirts). The shirts might as well read "I'm a big fat guy," because that is what my brain registers when I see the phrase "Big Dog." If its not bad enough that these lard-asses are wasting the earths resources by being fat, they are also dumb enough to have their tubbiness exploited by a company surely founded by an evil skinny genius. The pride that this clothing instills in fat men just encourages them to keep getting fatter. It is a way of saying, "It's okay to be fat as hell." Unfortunately for these butter-chuggers, it is not okay. Stop wasting food resources. Stop eating when you are full. Stop treating food like it is medicine for your pathetic, unfulfilled life. Stop filling up idle time with food - get a hobby instead. I recommend huffing or driving motorcycles really fast without a helmet on balance beams.

Chair smashin' fun

Last nite I went to bed around 3, only to be awoken a few minutes later by loud yelling and smashing noises. It sounded like it was coming from our backyard, which we share with another house, so I looked out my window to see what it was. Our neighbors had about 10-15 people outside, and some of them were just smashing the shit out of this plastic chair. By the time I bothered to look, the chair was already in pretty rough shape. The main smasher was holding it by two legs, which were barely connected by a thin piece of cheap plastic. I wasn't pissed, but I was tired, and I figured they were done, so I went back to bed. To my surprise, the yelling and smashing sounds continued on for at least another 15 minutes. I was thinking, how tiny must the remaining plastic shards of that poor chair be that they're smashing? Don't you reach a point where further smashing is no longer fun? I guess not for these guys. It is not possible to break this chair into smaller component parts without electron microscopes and some kind of nanotechnology.Here is a (rather dark) picture of the wreckage I took tonight (a day later - chair shards are white).

Vegetarian hot dogs

You may have heard me rant about this previously. I saw they have vegetarian hot dogs in the natural foods section of the store I shop at. My question is, do they really think this will lure in more vegetarians? Was there a whole segment of the meat-eating population out there saying, "If only they could make a food that looked and tasted like hot dogs, without meat, I would become a vegetarian?" Because I hate to break it to those people, but hot dogs are really not that great. The only good reasons to eat a hot dog are a) If you're in college, living hand-to-mouth and buying groceries using plasma-donation money, b) you are homeless, c) you are on your sixth PBR in the parking lot of a baseball stadium, with a grill going full bore, and nary a brat or hamburger to be found. Even then, it might be preferable to grill the stuffing from your carseats. Not much flavor, but it has a sort of cotton candy-like consistency.