Google Analytics top keywords

Google Analytics lets me know how people are finding this blog. Here's a screenshot of a pie chart of the top 3 search queries used to get here:



Even though I'm a little surprised the word "gay" will get you to my blog so easily, I'm proud that I could inspire such a ridiculous pie chart.

I can't think of many scenarios that would lead to this pie chart otherwise.

Marketing Guy 1: "Okay, so we've taken a poll of homophobic Jewish men who don't want people having sex with their broken iPods. We had them choose between the three things that make them angry."
Marketing Guy 2: "What were the results?"
Marketing Guy 1: "This really fucked up pie chart."

He wrote a rape story, and not even a good one

Last year I was in an advanced creative course and the first day of class we all talked about our creative processes. One guy told us that he liked to write his stories at the bar, and he looked kinda nerdy, so I thought, 'oh, so he writes his Dragonball Z fan fiction while sitting by himself at Good Time Charley's. Good for him.'

That same guy volunteered to have his first paper peer edited that next week and wow, I couldn't have been wronger.

He wrote a rape story, and not even a good one. People got raped and they cried and there wasn't even much of a plot between all the pointless swearing, the Capitalization for No reason and, you know, the rape.

I got competitive and thought 'well, heck, I could write a better rape story than this guy. I'm new to the rape genre, but at least I'd use symbolism and motifs and I'd try to tell a touching story ... about... rape...?'

Yeah, that never happened.

(work.)

Anybody else take a creative writing course and get a classmate like this? And are there any other Creative Writing Classmates you think are recurring?

I'll start:
There's almost always the sorority girl who blatantly adapts her stories from her own life. Every story had a protagonist who looked and acted just like her and, coincidentally, every story was really bland.

Conversations with law students in a loud bar

I'm glad Amy's become friends with some awesome people at law school, but sometimes I feel like always seeing them at the bar and not being a law student too makes the conversation between us not as good as it could be.

(We are in a bar. Very loud music is playing.)
Me: 'HEY GUYS.'
Them: 'LAW SCHOOL?'
Amy: 'OH YEAH, LAW SCHOOL!'
Them: 'HAHA, LAW SCHOOL!'
Amy: 'LAW SCHOOL, AND THEN LAW SCHOOL.'
Me: '...COMPUTERS?'
(pause)
Them: '...LAW SCHOOL? LAW SCHOOL!'

To be fair, all my coworkers and I do is yell 'COMPUTERS' at one another all day, and it's not even loud where we work.

(COMPUTERS!)

Learn about the computer

The other day I saw a commercial that said, 'Learn about the computer.' Yes, 'the computer.' Like it's just one entity, floating overhead, watching you. And now some no-name school can teach you all about it! Go drive the car to our school and learn about the computer today!

I could tell this commercial was made by and for the computer illiterate. Certain phrases are a dead giveaway that you suck at technology.

Right now at work some dudes are repairing our walls. They'll walk by and see me checking my email on my lunch break and say something like, 'These people are computer wizzes.' That's something a mom says about the guy who installs Microsoft Office on her computer at work. 'Wow! Surely you are a wizard, or 'wiz' for short. How do you work this 'mouse' thing you keep talking about? And do I have to feed it?'

(Fixing the all-seeing computer in the sky.)

To be fair, I'm sure these people are much better at doing certain things than me. I don't know my car from a washing machine on wheels, and I churn butter like a n00b.

Experience points on a weekly timesheet

If you grew up playing video games, you may have wanted to grow up to be some adventurer who quests for glory and slays evil on a daily basis. You wanted experience points and gold pieces.

Well, now I'm in the real world, and the experience points are now hours on a timesheet. My gold pieces are directly deposited into my checking account every two weeks. My broad sword is a screwdriver and my trusty steed is a white van filled with computer parts.

Something has gone horribly wrong.

(dungeon crawling from 7:30 to 4:30.)

Super permanent markers, Eccentric Day

Sharpie makes the 'permanent' marker, and I think calling it that is bold. What's even bolder is the fact that they have a 'super permanent' marker. I don't know how you explain that.

'Our old marker lasted forever, but this one even moreso.'

Sharpie Super Permanent marker: 'No, really, we mean it this time.'

I'm in Kalamazoo today, drinking beers at Bell's Brewery in a monk costume. This will be happening all day, so there's a good chance I'll be drunk for the next 12 to 16 hours.

(the drunkening.)

The Devil gets lazy

I think being the Devil must be really hard sometimes. Someone asks you for something and you have to find a way to twist it into something terrible. Like if some guy asks for the world's fastest car, you have to give him a car that's so fast he'll undoubtedly crash it.

But you ever think the Devil stops caring?

'Wow, the Devil, you made me the richest man on the planet, but where's the cruel irony? Wait a minute...am I gay now? Is that it?

...That doesn't even make any sense. That's not ironic. That's just lazy. You can't just make people gay when they ask for something.

You're losing your edge, the Devil.'

(work.)

Yep, I'm running late, so that's why that was so stupid.

Also, this post got me thinking about the devil, evil genies, and leprechauns all share a propensity for cruel irony. Well, I've used the word "propensity," so I'll stop now and end on a smart note.

No idea if this vase is any good

Tonight I discovered that it's impossible for me to form an opinion about vases. Amy and I were looking at vases online to get for my grandparents for Christmas, but try as I might, the closest I could get to an opinion about vases was 'yep, that one holds shit, too.'

Sometimes I get so far as 'that one holds shit and has shit painted on the side of it, too.'

Eventually I picked out a vase for us to get my grandparents. The card for it will say:
'Dear grandparents,
I have no idea if this vase is any good, as I can't form opinions about vases, but I can assure you that it cost a decent amount of money. Plus, it holds shit.
Merry Christmas,
Henry'

(bed.)

The card actually said something like, "I love you." I am such a pussy.

It's called an "away message"

Yesterday I got this message:
SouthPOLEZ: Duuuuud
SouthPOLEZ: Duuuudie XD
SouthPOLEZ: Dude
SouthPOLEZ: How are you online yet not online?

SouthPOLEZ, it's called an 'away message.'

An away message is a message you put up to let everyone know you're not at the computer. While simply signing off does the same thing, an away message lets people know you're not there while still providing you the illusion of participation.

If you're in class or doing laundry, all of your friends will know this critical information, as will that guy you haven't talked to since middle school and some people who don't even know why you're on their buddy lists.

Did that answer your question, SouthPOLEZ?

(work.)

If you're not on AIM, you may learn something. If you are on AIM, this probably bored you, which is fine, because reading about how much you're at class all the time is pretty boring, too.

Man, away messages are dumb. And so are blogs about them.

I'm sad now :(

Young love tastes like mustard

8th grade was a dumb year.

I had a crush on a girl in one of my classes (the girl with the biggest boobs, coincidentally) and I showed my love for her by writing 'I <3 (her initials)' in mustard whenever I made a sandwich.

This meant that not only had I found a dumber way to express myself than poetry, but I was putting a shitload of mustard on my sandwiches, too.

This meant that every sandwich I made tasted like mustard because I liked some girl in my class that won the pubertal lottery. That's stupid.

(bed.)

I wonder how that girl would feel if she knew that I'd been ruining my sandwiches because of her.

Me: "Hey, when I make sandwiches, I write your initials in them. In mustard."
Her: "Why?"
Me: "Because I like you."
Her: "Why didn't you just tell me instead?"
Me: "I really, really like mustard."
Her: "Really?"
Me: "No."

Facebook bananas, two-dimensional biases, and bastard children

Facebook lets you post notes and share internet links. But you know what I can't post? Physical objects.

I'd like to post a banana to Facebook. Where it would normally say 'click here for the full story' when I post an item, this time it would say, 'We're sorry, you can't click it. It's a banana. Bananas aren't clickable. You just eat them, or put them in bread, or paint them if you're an artsy little shit like that.

'...why a website like Facebook has so much information on bananas, we'll never know.

'We'll let you get back to stalking that girl from your 8th grade math class. Carry on.'

Love,
Facebook Team'

(work: rain edition.)

I won't even attempt to explain this. I think I was really tired when I wrote this and I got mad that Facebook shares (websites or videos shared online) are so gosh darn... two-dimensional. This led to me suggesting that Facebook should let you post three-dimensional things like bananas and then things pretty much went downhill from there.

Still, I ended on a non-abstract note with that bit about you stalking that girl from your 8th grade math class. And here's a fun fact: If you look for a girl from high school and she's not on Facebook, then she probably never finished college. She probably dropped out or never went at all and got knocked up instead. In fact, she's probably giving birth out of wedlock right now.