Rooster's Banjo

This place is so country and full of rednecks, that I'm already wondering if it affects more than just humans. For example, we all know how a rooster will sing as the sun rises. However, in here I'm starting to suspect it might be a bit different.

I wake up and look out the window to see a rooster getting ready to sing. However, once the sun rises, it brings out a banjo and starts to play. No singing, just a banjo playing rooster.

It's morning, bitch! Listen to my banjo!

Perhaps I'm starting to lose it already...

Thinking of banjo playing roosters and whatnot. I need a vacation.

Polar Bears

During my many months here, I've been trying to understand the local culture (and a reason why I'm having trouble fitting in with the people here). And so, a fellow co-worker was able to explain a few things in detail.

First off, he explained why I'm having such a difficult time with the ladies. At first, I thought the ladies in America would be interested in foreign guys. After moving to PA, I have realized it's only in other parts of the states where most cultures mingle. And since I've located to a place where the melting pot is barely existent, I've learned that the ladies here tend to go for Polar Bears. To sum up what it means, polar bears are a term he used to define the bigger caucasian fellow. So if you're a big white guy, come into my town and you can have any lady you want!

Of course you do, you ladies man!

At least, that's how it was explained to me.

Random Conversations #3: Redneck Phone Call

This little conversation was an odd one. It took place a few days ago at work when a customer called in to the store to check a few things. Instantly when I picked up and told my name, he didn't understand it. So of course, I had to give him a different version. But it wasn't until he spoke that I had a feeling where this was going...

Sounded just like him, but only this one could barely make sense.

Me: What can I help you with today?

Customer: Well, I got some pants.

Me: Ok. What happened with the pants?

Customer: They don't fit. My ass don't fit in these pants!

Me: So you want to return them or just exchange for another size?

Customer: They don't fit my ass!

Me: Ok

Customer: Can I return them?

Me: Of course. Just as long as you have the receipt and the tag, you should be fine.

Customer: The what?

Me: Receipt and tag.

Customer: Tag? It aint got no tag! I put it on and it don't fit my ass!

 Me: Well, just bring it here with the receipt and you should be fine.

He hung up after finally understanding, but I could barely understand him during the entire conversation. So out of this conversation, there was probably lost dialogue somewhere amongst his redneck jibber jabber. I blame the phone line for being so unclear. Either way, it was rather hilarious!

Out The Window

I've been observing the crowds at the mall from the inside of the store, and I'm starting to see something wrong with that image. Something is lacking. I was trying to put my finger on it. So I continued to see who crossed by and analyzed the data.

Time to investigate!

Let's see...we got:
-Black, asian, indian, white couples/families
-Redneck couples (inbred or not, who is to tell?)
-Extra large couples (or chunky lovers as I call them) and families
-Dogs
-A lost pigeon

And that's when I realized what was missing. Where the heck are all the hispanic people? I can't be the only one here! There have to be more of my kind here!

After noticing that pattern, I started feeling like I was on some kind of alien planet. Or perhaps, I'm the alien. The latter actually makes a lot of sense.

Well, I guess it's time to learn how to make my finger glow like E.T.

Walk The Kid

I was sitting at the train station one day, just waiting for the bus to take me home. And before I dozed off, I noticed a woman and her child exiting the station. The child was on a leash. Only one thing came to mind after seeing them.

"Is she taking the kid out for a poop?"

I don't know why, but that's the first thing that came to mind. Walk your kid like you walk the dog. For some reason, I just imagined the kid squatting down next to a tree at the station entrance.

I saw them come back a few minutes later to get a snack from the store. I guess he must have been a good boy.

Relaxation Time

So far, I've been working over 30 hours every week. I had no idea how exhausting it has been, despite the breaks and all. However, this week is a small blessing in disguise. I've got 4 days off, since they decided to give me a bit of a break. And that's fine by me.

I realized I needed this break to recharge my batteries. Not just that, but it feels damn good to sleep until whatever time I want. Problem is, I still wake up early. No worries, though. At least I have more free time. Too bad I don't have much to fill it with yet.

It's good to sit at home for a while and not have to worry about customers shoving you away. It's good to sit back and let your feet rest. Then again, it's days like these where work could inspire me to write. I'm mostly on automatic when I'm working, that my mind just has time to think of new things to write. Damnit, I need work to drive my writing! Well, only when I'm working alone.

No wonder I come up with good material after a shift where I'm alone. Oh well, time to keep sleeping.

The Geek Problems

I'm realizing that now more than ever, it's gonna be harder to make friends in my area. With Diablo 3 out, all potential friends with geek tendencies are gonna be locked away with their computers for the foreseeable future.

Potential friends, neutralized by Diablo 3!

So then I thought, perhaps if I find out when Comic Con comes to Pittsburgh, I can go and make some friends there. Sounds like a good plan, right? Well, it would have been...had I not found out it took place about 3 weeks ago.

And I got to miss Stan Lee.

A little part of me died inside because of that.

The Road Ahead

All my life I have heard that college is the best time of your life. And it isn't until now that I understand why. As I approach my graduation (even though I technically graduated a few months ago), I am realizing how much I miss college.

Things were easier then. Now that I've finished, everything seems to be on the other side of a burning lava pit. Friends, jobs, and happiness all seem to be out of reach. No wonder people drink like crazy after they graduate. They know it's only downhill from here.

And if the road ahead is just down hill, then let me just let go of the brakes and go full speed yelling "weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

White Ranger For A Day

Despite not remembering most of my childhood, there is one day I will probably never forget. This might have taken place somewhere between 1994 or 1995, but I was in first grade. That much I know. Either way, I was just a little kid.

As a kid, I was obsessed with the Power Rangers and the Ninja Turtles (little did I know that Spider-Man and Batman would enter that category shortly after), so of course we would take our favorite teams during playtime at school and pretend to be them. During my escapades as a kid, I would often take to being the Red Ranger, since he was my absolute favorite. My friends and I (don't even remember who I played this with) would just go about and fight the villains in the vast world that was our playground. And after a while, I was the Red Ranger.

Oh yeah!

Author's note for today's youth: a playground is an outdoor place where kids used to play pretend and do physical activities for entertainment. No iPads or technology allowed. Seems barbaric now, but it once used to be the best thing ever. Kids today...anyways, where was I? Oh yes, end long parenthesis!

However, once the White Ranger came into the show, I quickly wanted to be him for a day. But then again, sometimes we shouldn't go outside our comfort zone. Either way, I was picked to be him for a day and I was finally gonna have my chance at beating the bad guy. But there was one problem, the shenanigans were getting out of control and it turned into a game of tag for some reason. We were kids, what do you expect?

When I was finally nearing my foe, I tripped and landed knee first on one of the stone steps in the playground. Little did I know, I had broken my leg. But being a kid, I just shrugged off the pain. I was the White Ranger, damn it, and I was gonna get the bad guy! We agreed to end the game because of my injury, but I claimed to be fine and went through the pain. So I did what any kid with an injury would do...

I should have taken a seat and stopped playing. But what did I know?

I tried to do some shenanigans on a swing and went knee first into the ground, going back to the injured leg and scraping it further. So then, it was game over for sure. I was down and out. I was taken inside and sat down while I put a gauze over my knee. Nothing else was done. But my leg decided to remind me how injured it was and decided to twitch knee first into the metal bars under the desk.

Yeah, if my leg wasn't broken then, it had to be at that moment. That was the last day I ever played as the White Ranger in my life. And once I was recovered, I was demoted to the Blue Ranger (the nerd of the group). Little did I know, that the his nerd title would follow me for many years.

Facepalm Moments #3

This particular moment took place during my years living in Jersey, so it was somewhere in between 2006 and 2007. I was taking a literature of comedy course (one of my favorite classes of all time and the one that made me jump into humor writing) and the professor (whom I would really thank if I remembered his name) was assigning a presentation for us to do.

The concept of the presentation was to take a book written by a comedian or humorist, and then analyze it. Or something like that, I kinda forgot along the way. That was also the day where I would unexpectedly realize that it is indeed true what they say about blondes. However, I do note that not all of them are like this, but it's times like these where the stereotype is dead on.

Blonde in front of me raises her hand to ask a question. "What program do we use to make a Power Point presentation?" she asked.

There was a moment of silence, followed by a loud thud. That thud was my face slamming against the deck as what can be described as the single most painful reaction I have ever had to something. You probably would have heard of the facepalm before (if you haven't, then let me welcome you to the interwebs), but this was a facedesk (feel like a hipster since I did it before it became a gag). It was either slamming my face into the desk or blatantly laugh and fall backwards.

Either way, the end result was going to be painful. But by not laughing at her, I managed to remain a gentleman and hold on to my composure. But to be fair, I did silently laugh like a maniac once my face was on the desk.

Stand-Up Comic

Ever since I discovered my funny bone in college, I have been hearing from a lot of people that I should do comedy. While it's a very tempting thing to do, I'm not sure I can just go into an open mic night and kill. I mean, I've had some good comic influences growing up (Jim Carrey, Robin Williams, John Leguizamo, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, to name the biggest ones), but I've always found one big problem when it comes to being a stand-up comic.

I'm afraid I would forget my own comedy routine the minute I enter the stage.

This is mostly because my comedy routines are just improvised. But when I get a good enough topic or story, I'm on a roll. This is why I've transfered my comedy to the written forms, to at least have a way to get my routines and stories out there. And if I ever did want to get on stage and perform, then perhaps now I should have enough content.

And with all of that, I still find myself getting cold feet. With this year being a rough one, I'm tempted more and more to giving the stand-up comedian thing a try. After all, it's the only thing I haven't tried yet. And since I know I'm gonna forget my material on state, I'm gonna use that as an opening joke for my comedic persona.

I can imagine it now, walking up on stage and suddenly looking nervous. I would start out with something like this:

"Well, this sucks. I can't believe I just forgot my whole routine for tonight. And even though this was free, I get the feeling some of you are already wanting your money back."

I dunno, perhaps something along those lines. I guess this might be the year I give it a shot.

Sliced Bread

The other day, I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep and a random thought came to mind. Whose idea was it to say "something is the greatest thing since sliced bread?" Out of all the things in all of humanity you can take, why sliced bread?

I'm the best thing in the world, and I don't know why!

Perhaps it holds powers I'm not aware of. Of course! It's probably gotta be its ability to hold cheese, meats, and other things together into the sandwich. But then again, not all sandwiches are with sliced bread. So there's probably more to it.

However, sliced bread has got some nerve thinking it's the single greatest thing in all of existence. I'm guessing fire, the wheel, or even air didn't get the memo. None of those things matter, just as long as we got sliced bread.

Gotta give it up to sliced bread. I don't know what shenanigans it did in order to achieve this prestigious title, but perhaps humanity isn't ready for the answer.

The Basketball Fundraiser

Some say that during high school, you only get a few chances to make an impact or leave your mark with a definite memory. You only get one chance to do something you never though before. In my case, none of these apply.

Our class was holding a basketball tournament as a fundraiser (if the title didn’t give it away, I don’t know what did) so we could have enough funds for graduation. While everyone was quite anxious about the event, my friends and I weren’t all that into the idea. We were still submerged playing card games in the physics lab. Why the lab? It’s the only place geeks can be safe from public humiliation at the hands of bullies.

One day, during one of the class meetings, the group was deciding the order of which groups would play which and to make sure all the slots were filled. But be it Murphy’s Law to always ruin even other people’s plans, there was one empty space left. Now, here’s the problem. Hugo (my bully at the time) was organizing the teams, considering he was going to lead his all-star group of jocks/bullies to what seemed victory for them. So what did he do? Simple. He looked at my general area where I was playing a card game with Buddy and Charles (the only student lower than me on the food chain. He was teased a lot more than I was, but that still didn't save me).

“I think I found a way to fill that last empty void,” he said. The smile on his face was as evil as there could be. Without a doubt, he was going to find a way to humiliate us even more. But how, we did not know yet.

“What do you want to do?” asked the class president.

“I say we have one team from this class fill the void for the tournament. A team that will go up against us in the first round, and they don’t even have to win. How about…” he said as he slowly gazed at our general area. “The three of you will do. Lets see if you can do more than just play a simple game of cards.”

We all looked at each other, wondering what they had just gotten us into.