My Brief Foray Into Politics

I was voted in as the student council representative for my class back in grade 7. Sounds more impressive than it actually was; I was sick at home on the day that the person was supposed to be chosen by the class, and so I suspect that I won as some sort of joke played on the keener that actually wanted the job by a class that had little interest in student politics or school spirit. Imagine my surprise to return the next day and find out that I had won the election for something that I hadn't even known about. Never having been voted for anything before, I was like... pretty surprised.

I was a terrible student council rep. The job only involved having to attend meetings every few weeks and then make sure that my fellow classmates were aware of the stupid activities that were perpetually being organized, and I managed to fail spectacularly at these no-brainer responsibilities. It wasn't that I didn't want to do a good job, or that I didn't try, but I was such a space-cadet that I was completely unable to find any of the meetings in question. I had an aptitude for showing up to the wrong room on the wrong day at the wrong time, and then sitting there quietly for half an hour wondering where everybody was. And as for the whole issue of ensuring that my classmates were aware of all the Hawaiian Shirt Days and Hot Dog Lunches, my whole MO back then was to remain as inconspicuous and invisible as possible, so there was little chance that I was ever going to get up in front of all my classmates and feign interest in a bunch of retarded activities that nobody in their right minds cared about.

After I managed to miss the meeting where the student council gave shit to the kids that kept missing meetings, my homeroom teacher got mad and and assigned another kid to be co-rep and "help" with the responsibilities. And that was essentially the beginning of the end of my brief foray into politics.

I don't know why I'm talking about this. I haven't thought about this stuff in years.

Pass The Kleenex

I think that I had a stuffy nose for the entire time that I was in high school. Seriously. The total number of days where I was able to breathe through my nostrils is most likely equal to the total number of girls that I have ever made-out with in the backseat of my parent's station wagon (read: zero). And that's not just a random comparison; I'm thinking that those two things are far more closely related than I ever could have imagined at the time.

It's a tough realization to deal with, but the fact is, I was pretty gross back in high school. Snot, bleedy noses, braces, zits... you name it - take any sort of teenage social handicap that you can think of, and I was most likely afflicted with it to some varying degree. I'm okay with it now, because acceptance is a big step on the road to recovery... or in my case, becoming less gross. The next step is to curb my dependency on lip balm.

I Need To Find A New Grocery Store

I was at the grocery store yesterday and I dropped the hugest jar of pickles onto the floor. It was awful. There was glass and pickles and pickle juice and shit everywhere. It reeked.

I'm ashamed to admit it (FYI, this is one of those brutally-honest type of blogs), but I let out the stupidest little squeal when the jar slipped from my fingers and so the entire store looked over at me just in time to watch the spectacular pickle explosion. I was just standing there empty-handed like an idiot, being all like "Uh, there's something wrong with my pickles."

I'm pretty sure that the pissy 15 year-old with the mop and the attitude called me a "retard" under his breath when he came to clean up the mess (or possibly some sort of variation, like "dick tard"). I need to find a new grocery store.

Drunken Friday Night Post, Part II

Fuck, I love Fridays. They are by far the most the most liberating day of the week. And the most liberating thing to do on the most liberating day has so far involved liberating the contents of a bottle of Cranberry Finlandia.

Fridays are not liberating in the sense of a group of college kids singing "Baby Got Back" at karaoke night at the campus bar - no, they're liberating in the sense of a Pontiac Solstice commercial. Really liberating.

Don't ask me what any of this is supposed to mean. I'm a little too liberated.

According to tonight's itinerary, it's now time to play Metallica in Rock Band until my upstairs neighbor complains.

I Am The Worst Blogger On The Planet

I know, I know... I totally suck at updating this thing. But it's not just that I'm incredibly lazy (although I really, really am). No, instead I come before you tonight to tell you that I have found true love. Unfortunately, in my world true love is never a girl, it's usually just a video game.


I wish I could say that my life from the past two weeks has amounted to more than just a series of puzzles, monster battles, and fetch quests in a survival horror game, but sadly I cannot. A game called Obscure (and to a far lesser extent, its sequel Obscure: The Aftermath) has turned my life on its ear, and I'm still reeling. It has been a long time since I've gotten this involved in a game (such that I find myself playing it into the early hours of the morning, arriving at work incredibly late, and then spending a good portion of my day checking online walkthroughs to ensure that I've collected every last item in the areas that I've completed) but I am loving it. Who needs aspirations when you've got a Playstation?

Some might point out that Obscure is not considered a very good game by most standards. And others might even mention that it was released to somewhat mild reviews and poor sales. But! It is a horror survival game that is based on teen slasher flicks (surprisingly, the only one of the sort that I am aware of) and it is incredibly cheesy, making it my absolute favorite game of all time. Seriously, it is the best game ever.

I'm sure I'll be back to talk about this more later, but right now I'm running a little low on ammo and I need to strategize how to get out of the mess I've gotten myself into with a few genetically engineered killer plants...

I Am The Worst Jaywalker On The Planet

I am absolutely terrible at jaywalking. It falls under the category of one of the many "practical" skills that I never properly learned (there should have been a class offered in high school called "Life Skills For Morons", where I could have learned things that most people instinctively know, like how not to get hit by cars when crossing the street or how to pee in a urinal without getting your pants wet).

When crossing a street, I regularly have very close-calls with automobiles. Drivers are constantly pounding morse-code into their car horns telling me that I'm an idiot and/or that I am seconds away from getting a bumper to the spleen. Making matters worse is the fact that cars seem to be attracted to me like moths to a flame, and that the natural reaction most drivers have when seeing my sorry nerdy ass is to hit the gas. Typically when trying to jaywalk, I'll make it about a third of the way across the street before cars start veering towards me from all directions and my survival instincts kick in, resulting in a screaming mad dash back to the safety of the sidewalk (followed shortly by a slow defeated march to the nearest crosswalk).

Part of the problem is that I was hit by a car while walking home from school in the second grade, breaking my arm for the first time in what has been (if I do say so myself) a spectacular legacy of my limbs being broken. I haven't quite looked at oncoming traffic the same since, and hence my "survival of the fittest" approach to being a pedestrian.

But what can I say? I live dangerously.

The Post I Started To Write Last Night, But Then Went For Fajitas Instead

Because nerds like numbers, here are some statistics (these are a little gross, so be warned):

-Number of times I've woken up to a neighbor banging on my front door as a result of me having passed out on a Friday night with Appetite For Destruction playing loudly on repeat: 1

-Percentage of my sneezes that result in a bleeding nose: 5%

-Average ratio of cans of Coke that explode in my face when opened to cans of Coke that do not: 1:3

-Total number of people that are quieter than me, according to my coworker: 1

-Ratio of number of times that I was sick with the flu and farted a little bit of poop in my pyjamas to the number of times I really, really hoped that I hadn't just shit myself: 1:1

-Number of times that I've forgotten clothes overnight at a laundromat: 2

-Approximate percentage of my life that has been spent battling constipation or diarrhea: 15%