Random Day!

I do not know a whole lot of internet slang or acronyms. I’ve looked up what meme is at least five times. The acronym that always tricks me is “lmao.” I always think it’s a capital I and then try to figure out what it could mean. Itching my ass off. Icing my ass off. Imitating my ass off.

Then I think, why would the I be capitalized while the rest are lowercase. Oh yeah, a lowercase l is the same as an uppercase I.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Email from my wife this morning (slightly edited):

Morning, Jutah!

Fyi, my paycheck did go in last night.  So you can pull out your spending money whenever you want.  That Whataburger should have been part of your spending money, buddy. ;)

I’m a stalker….

Love you.

(I went to Whataburger at 8:30, and this email came at 8:54, before I returned.)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I finally got my boots yesterday, and I couldn’t be prouder. Now all I need is some cut off jean shorts, a paisley kerchief to tie around my neck, and a mai tai with an umbrella, and I’ll be ready to go!

Yee-haw!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My wife and I have had pasta for almost every meal for last 2 weeks. She’s Italian and I feel like she’s really perpetuating stereotypes here. Well, what about perpetuating the stereotypes of my heritage? I’m… er… American. We need more American food in our diet. For example, did you know the first Americans ate fried chicken, hot dogs, and Freebirds. It’s history – look it up.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before I go to bed every night, literally as I am about to go into shut down mode, I have this vision of myself hitting a homerun. This is odd because I never played baseball in my life. Furthermore, I throw like a Carl Lewis. Look it up on youtube.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That’s all for today. I hope everyone has a nice weekend. My wife is going out of town and I can feel the paranoia building.

Ms. Light, Can You Hear me?

Yesterday, I drank an absurd amount of Crystal Light because we didn’t have any Coke Zero – the beverage that makes up 99.9% of my daily fluid intake. When we ran out of the Zero, I didn’t want to go all the way to the store, so it was either water or flavored water – not really a debate. I made a 2 liter jug of Crystal Light fruit punch and then proceeded to drink it for the next 4 hours as I half-ass drafted fantasy baseball teams and whole-ass watched cartoons. So, (read this in a Jerry Seinfeld voice) what’s the deal with the dye in Crystal Light? What are the people there thinking? Why do we need a dissolving powder drink that contains commercial, textile factory grade dye? Seriously, I could use Crystal Light fruit punch to fix the underarm stains on my red t-shirts. When I woke up this morning, my tongue was still red from drinking Crystal Light the day before, and I swear I brushed my teeth thoroughly the night before – I even went through the alphabet twice!

There has to be a reason for this. Why in the world would Crystal Light want her company to accidentally dye our stuff? Doesn’t she know that more dying agent is more expensive than less dying agent? Maybe Ms. Light wants to leave her mark on all of her drinkers. Maybe it’s a marketing campaign. “Oh, your tongue is red. What were you drinking? Crystal light? Is it good?” Boom! New customer.

Also, most of the Crystal Light flavors are way too strong and sweet. I can hear Wilford Brimley in my head warning me of the dangers of diabetes.

Crystal Light, won’t you just make a flavor that doesn’t taste like anything and is clear?

Thank you.

I'm Watching You

Before I start, here's one of the bands we're going to see at Lone Star Jam in Austin next month. It's some nice reading music. If you don't like country, don't start it. 

Amongst the several  weird idiosyncrasies I possess, staring seems to be the one that gets me in the most hot water – or at least what I perceive to be hot water. I doubt the subjects of my staring really care or even notice, but I get anxious because I think, oh, I hope they didn’t notice me staring for 5 seconds too long. For example, the other day I caught myself looking at a student in the hallway, who is neither in my class nor do I know (other than in passing), thinking to myself, she got a new haircut. Then the next thought is, Oh God, how long was I looking at her hair? Did she notice me staring at her hair? Look away. No, not at the other kid! The ground. The ground, you moron!

The worst time to be a starer like me is in the gym. There aren’t even any attractive women (or any women for that matter in my gym), so I could at least think, well, I’m staring at women. My gym is the opposite of Curves gym – they should call it Straights all male gym (hmmm… something about that sounds weird). Anyways, I watch men work out constantly. I’ve caught myself counting another man’s exercise reps out loud before. I could really creep some people out. “Hey bud, I was counting your push-ups using the reflections off the mirrors. Yeah, that’s how I knew how many you did even though I wasn’t facing you. Great form, man. Just damn fantastic.”

To make matters worse, I have a strange habit where I use my bottom lip to push my top lip up to my nose, like I’m getting ready to plant a huge kiss on someone.  I think this habit formed from being paranoid about my breath in middle school and doing it in an attempt to smell my own breath. I don’t think I do it for that reason anymore, but I still do it without thinking and realizing I’m doing it. Well, I do this in the gym more than I would anywhere else. I guess there is something about the sweat on my nose and upper lip that makes me do it. Who knows? I DO know that staring intensely and making kissy faces at other men as they work out is somewhat unsettling. I wonder how many times someone at my gym has referred to me as that big, gay dude.

Fortunately, I will say that my mind has been trained to look forward in the gym locker room – I have far too many images of old man junk burned into my subconscious from the college locker room. So, yeah, that’s a win for me.

P.S. If you have time, watch Waiting for Superman. It’s about the crisis in our public school systems. The movie is inspiring, appalling, motivating, and hopeful all at the same time. Good stuff.

An Open Letter to Scurriers

An Open Letter to Scurriers-

I see you walking out of the grocery store. I’m traveling at a daunting 2 mph pace and waiting to pounce at any moment as I approach from over 100 yards away from you. My slightly saggy front bumper indicates that I hit something; maybe I hit a flat-topped, middle aged lady pushing her shopping cart somewhere between the HEB exit and her car, or maybe I was backing out of my driveway and cut my wheel to fast making my low profile bumper scrape against the curb. No one knows. Ultimately, you only have one option so that I might spare your life. You must wait for me to stop and give you my benevolent approval. I will waive my hand in a broad sweeping motion signifying I have decided to let you pass.  The only payment I want in return is for you to walk nervously across the street in front of me as you imitate a panicky squirrel, checking across your shoulder four or five times to see if I changed my mind and decided to run you over. Mwahahahaha!

Scurriers, you are right to be nervous. This world is full of monsters, and one day, one of us will run you over. It’s not a matter of if but when.

Sincerely,

The man who feels embarrassed because you hurry across the street so nervously – like you fear for your life. I mean, come on. Do you really think I’m just going to gun my car all of the sudden? Geez.

It's Called The Perfect Storm

I’ve noticed this weird phenomenon over the years, and I wonder if it’s a common human experience. Do terms from crappy movies (or even movie titles) get used to describe things in your life? One I’ve noticed myself using quite often is The Perfect Storm.  If you’ve never seen the movie, don’t bother. It’s not a bad movie; it’s just not a good or seemingly memorable movie. I remember the actors (George Clooney, Diane Lane, Mark Walhberg, and I think John Candy had a cameo) and the scene where the weather man (the bad guy from Billy Madison) was using Doppler (I guess) to show these three storms coming together. He utters to phrase, “We call it the perfect storm.”

 (Go to 1:22 for the stirring line!)

My point is that I use this phrase on a daily basis. I didn’t activate my debit card, and the perfect storm of problems occurred as a result. I used it yesterday to describe my shitty dietary habits. I had a greasy bar hamburger Thursday night, Popeye’s chicken for lunch and dinner the next day, and a Freebirds burrito the next day: it was the perfect storm of fatness and a not-so-certain stomach.

Another term that I use is cave troll (from Lord of the Rings. Oh and nerds, sit down. I’m sure they exist in D&D and things like that, too). Anyone who is big and dopey is a cave troll. There is an ex-pro basketball player named Popeye Jones (Hey, I used Popeye twice in one post!) who looks exactly like a cave troll. 

 (He might look more like an Orc, but I'm not here to argue semantics)

When I say it, I don’t even think of LOTR. It mean something else to me now. I’m aware that’s this is ultra-nerdy – mainly because I don’t think I’m even referencing the movie anymore. I know what a cave troll is, and you’re a cave troll!

Some of these terms from movies have obvious roles in real life. For example, if you play golf, the movie Tin Cup will invariable come up when playing a round. The most famous scene in the movie is where Kevin Costner’s character uses all of the balls in his bag to make a certain shot because he knows he can do it. I do this all the time when I play because I KNOW I can hit the ball in bounds and not on the street next to the course into oncoming traffic. I tin cupped it!

Before you think of a comment or an example, your movie has to be crappy/lame. LOTR fans I’m with you; they are great movies, but they’re nerdy. Making a LOTR reference is nerdy.

Keep Your Facebook, I'll Keep My Mixed CDs

I’m continually amazed by and possibly jealous of the cool gadgets kids have these days. I’ve noticed myself uttering the phrase when I was a kid… all too often these days; I’m making myself feel old. For example, I was telling my students the other day about gasoline prices and how, even as recently as 1998, they used to be less than a dollar. The look in their eyes was asking me if my 1912 Stutz Bearcat got more than 3 tobacco tins of petro per 100 paces back then.  This feeling of being an anachronistic character from The Great Gatsby occurs on a daily basis. One of the lame background characters, too – not Gatsby.

The students I teach right now were born around 1992-1993 – I was 13 when they were born. There have been some many crazy technological advances since then that I DO probably seem like a toothless, turn-of-the-century prospector to them. I could go on and on about all of the changes that have happened since I was their age, but there is one change that makes me happy to have not gone through. I am SO happy that Facebook and MySpace didn’t exist when I was in high school – and college for that matter. Well, MySpace did but I wasn’t computer savvy enough to use it.

I imagine that I would have posted the dumbest, most embarrassing comments. I think about all of the just idiotic things I said to girls over the phone because I wasn’t face to face with them. I can’t imagine what I would have done or said if I didn’t even have to SAY these things. I bet young, impulsive high school boys are getting in trouble on a daily basis for leaving long love notes on girls’ walls, and then are being ridiculed when all of their friends see these asinine comments. I’m not even talking about cyber-bullying – I’m talking about cyber-dumb-ass-ery for everyone for all eternity to see.

I imagine there is quite a bit more of this happening in college. Boys aren’t any smarter then. Tell me that this scenario isn’t plausible: College boy goes out with his buddies to a local college bar. He drinks a few drinks and meets a girl. He is charming and she is interested. Girls leaves. Boy stays out with his buddies. Inebriated boy gets home and posts that he found his future wife on her wall (“Jsst wantedd tooo said heyy to me future wife. Holllla at cha boy!”). Girl makes a point to never cross paths with this pathetic, over-eager misspeller ever again. Next weekend: same thing, different girl (“Babby, you’re a firrwrrks! Yoo compete me1 Holllla at cha boy!”).  

This has to be happening every night, all over the world, right?

I’m happy that I was able to avoid this hornet’s nest. My wife just gets mixed CDs filled with Bone Thugs and Harmony and Lou Bega (his b-sides, not even Mambo No. 5) when I want to let her know I truly love her.  

The Delicate Balance of Marriage

The recipe for a good marriage includes a division of labor. This division might not be an agreed upon, spoken deal, but if both agree then things work smoothly. For example, I cook dinner, fold and hang up our clothes, and do the yard work. I also lift heavy things and open difficult jars. My wife has the hardest job in our family unit: the finances. She does a fantastic job of putting money away for savings and allocating the proper amounts for groceries, bills, birthday presents, etc.

The main problem with her controlling the finances is that she knows my every move. This conversation happens at least once a week.

Wife: What did you have for lunch today?

Me: Uh, you know. The usual.

Wife: How was that Whataburger?

Me: Uh, what?

Wife: You went to Whataburger for lunch today, right?

Me (looking over my shoulder for spies or possible floating cameras a la the Mojoverse for X-Men): Uh, how did you know that?

The Mojoverse!

Wife: I saw it on the computer.

Me: Uh, your computer sees me?

Wife: The bank account.

Me: Ah.

I imagine how you could see the problem with this. I can’t be sneaky. She knows my every move. New shorts. She knows. Fast food. She knows. Gummy bears. She knows. This is also affects me for non-selfish reasons. We just had our anniversary, and I wanted to buy her some flowers. There is no sneaky way to do this without outright lying. I could say I needed $60 for new compression shorts, but she would have told me I am wasting my money because I already have three pairs. I’m not crafty enough to think of anything else. Any other excuse would just sound completely made up. “Uh, I need $60 to buy… some… banjo…uh… strings.” Just doesn’t work.

Ultimately, I had to tell her that I need money to buy flowers for her. I guess that kind of takes the romance away for the whole situation, but at least I picked out the flowers and had them arranged myself. Half romance is better than no romance.