Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Halloween Walk of Shame

In the spirit of Halloween, I figured I would repost a funny anecdote from last year's Halloween which had me both scratching my head and holding back my laughter. Nothing really much happened this year, so I figured I would once again share this story for those who didn't get to read it last year.




What, you thought going to costume parties, dressing up, and going trick or treat were the only things happening on Halloween? Well, think again!

On an episode of How I Met Your Mother, it was explained that Halloween also has what is known as the "Walk of Shame." So what does this consist of and why am I plugging one of my favorite shows? Simple.

I now have my own "Walk of Shame" story to elaborate on, and can now confirm the reality of this tradition. First off, this event needs a definition:
When you emerge from a guy's house wearing the same Halloween costume you partied in the night before reeking of booze, sweat, and maybe pumpkins- all in good fun from the night before. And unlike the normal walk of shame... you cannot hide in your halloween costume.
So there it is, a clear definition to the "Walk of Shame." Now then, off to my story...

My dog wakes me up at roughly 6am, normal time for the little guy to tell me to take him to his outdoor toilet. So I go to the elevator and catch a ride down. But suddenly, the elevator stops a few floors below and I quickly begin to wonder. "Who would wake up this early on a Sunday morning? Perhaps other dogs needed to take a dump this early too. Maybe someone works early today."

And then I see the person walking in. A girl more or less in her early 20's, I would say. She entered dressed in a cat dress, but it looked rather trampy. I quickly noticed the painted whiskers were almost done, by sweat I assumed. Not just that, but she had a look on her face that can only be described as shame and disappointment. She just looked at the floor, not even recognizing my dog's awesome cuteness.

The elevator opens at the lobby and she quickly walks towards the front gate. As she makes the trip, I realize she isn't a resident at the building I'm living in since she's got no key. That's when the episode from HIMYM came to my mind. And in seconds, I realized I was witnessing a "Halloween Walk of Shame." She walks out the front gate and just wanders off into the next street, no car noise or anything to indicate how she vanished. But I know this, she walked away shamefully as my dog took a piss on a car tire.

I wonder how many more flooded the streets in their costumed shame...

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Frankenstorm

Alright, so I finally manage to get back to this blog after a week's worth of recovery from the surgery (which sucks because all the pain kicks in late), suddenly to realize there's a super massive storm headed our way. Now, I'm no stranger to storms or hurricanes (being from the tropics might have something to do with it), but there's something about what they are calling a "Perfect Storm" that is causing some worry.

For one, I've never been through a so called perfect storm (despite witnessing hurricane Hugo and Georges in the early and mid 90's) and the thought of one outside my own tropical environment does worry me a bit. Secondly, there might be snow. Anybody who knows me knows that I cannot stand snow. So there's that. And thirdly, if it's a perfect storm, where the heck is George Clooney?

One thing that is tickling my funny bone through all this is the fact that they called it "Frankenstorm." We get it, it comes around during halloween. I would like to know who had the nerve to give it that name, because you know what? It works! It's a storm that comes during halloween! It's a crime not to call it anything other than Frankenstorm. So kudos to the person who came up with the title, because it's quite amusing.

It's alive!

But still, storms are nothing to be taken lightly. Take it from someone who knows a thing or two about them. So for my readers in the east coast (wait, I'm there too!) make sure to clean up your yards and everything, because chances are that your loose stuff will be sent out flying like a drunk missile doing its halloween walk of shame. Most of all, stay informed and don't panic.

I should be back to blogging in my normal capacity this week, especially since my side effects of the surgery are winding down. However, let's hope Frankenstorm doesn't prevent me from getting back again.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Bad Wisdom

Oral deuchebags, these wisdom teeth are.

That's right, it's that kind of wisdom. Tomorrow will be my turn to get my wisdom teeth removed. I swear, those little suckers are like ninjas. You don't know they are there, but suddenly they sneak up on you and kick your ass. Lucky for me, they are still just lying in wait, but I was advised to get them removed before they strike.

It's kind of funny when I think of it. Teeth that somehow go rogue and just want to mess with the rest. I keep thinking of the class clown when it comes to this. They joke around and get a pass, but there comes a time when they need to get knocked out. So I'm just happy I'm gonna shut the clown up before he pulls out a prank (and why did I just assume my wisdom teeth were all male?).

The one thing I'm not looking forward to is looking like a chipmunk. I was told I would look a bit swollen after the procedure, so I just hope I don't look like I'm packing nuts in my mouth. Yes, take your time laughing if you found my comment to somehow be wrong. Are you done? Good. Don't worry, I laughed too when I found myself saying it too.

You just turned this into a ball joke. Feeling proud?

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

The Night The Sky Exploded

I believe this was back in 2009, but this is a story that takes place in the very middle of the night. Normally, I'm the kind of person who goes to sleep extremely early. However, that was the night I turned nocturnal for most of it.

As I was sleeping soundly, I suddenly felt a door shut and dismissed it as just minor. Seconds later, my best friend, Ace, calls me at 1am yelling at the top of his lungs.

"What do you want?" I say as I'm waking up.

"It's the end of the world! There was this big explosion, and the sky is on fire!"

"If it were the end of the world, why the hell would you wake me up?" I replied.

"You got to believe me! There's this big ball of fire, and it's a mess everywhere. The sky is burning up!" he continued.

If I were awake, I would have noticed something was odd about this. Not because of the big fireball burning in the sky, but the fact that he was speaking clearly. For you see, my best friend stutters often when he speaks. His level of fear was so intense, he didn't stutter a single time. But sleepy me didn't notice it.

"Go look at the window," he said.

I stood up and walked towards it. "I will bet nobody is outside," I said as I opened the window.

"Odd..."

"What?" he said.

"There's people pointing at the sky."

I walked out of the house and stood in the middle of the street as I looked up at the sky, realizing there was a giant fireball up there.

"The sky is on fire. Who knew?" I said, oblivious to the situation. And right there, I woke up.

What I think my face looked like when I discovered the fireball.

That's when I realized what was going on. I quickly hung up on my friend to check up on everyone else and make sure they were fine. Not many answered, but my buddy Johnny did pick up.

"Go see the sky," I said.

"Why?"

"It's on fire! You gotta see this!"

"I don't believe you," he replied.

"Would I call you in the middle of the night to tell you the sky is on fire just to get some laughs? I'm serious."

He stepped out of the house, keeping silent for a few seconds. When all of a sudden I hear him taking a large gasp on the phone.

"I stayed behind!" he yelled, thinking he got left behind in the rapture.

"It's not the rapture, you fool," I said. "There's been an explosion and I'm just making sure everyone's fine."

The real cause of that night's "Armageddon."

He hung up as I heard him begin to yell in paranoia. Turns out, there was an explosion at an oil refinery nearby and the entire area woke up due to the massive blast. But of course, none of us knew that right away.

As for me, I spent the rest of the night calming both friends. Both thought it was the end of the world, and I had to convince them otherwise. What a night it was...

Friday, October 12, 2012

Sick Week

I don't know why, but for some reason I just had to get really sick this week (hence no posts). Normally, I can just shrug it off and move on. But this time it was different, I was out cold for days. Even at work I kinda seemed like a zombie (with an allergy problem instead). However, now that I've recovered most of my energy, I have blogged to show I'm still alive (and no longer under any "quil" medication or sleeping like a bear).

Three hours? Try a week!

I do feel a bit bad that I couldn't do any posts because I was so sick, especially once I realized today was Friday. So I thought of a story I could tell that related to me being sick (hence the topic of the week), and I just managed to remind myself of one just as I'm writing this (no joke, I just came up with this now).

This is the story (or pseudo story) of my strange habit of getting sick the last day of a geek convention my friends and I went to back in 2007. The convention ran from Friday to Sunday, so we all gathered up money to get a hotel room and make sure to be there for the entire weekend. We didn't want to miss any of the festivities, after all. However, Sunday morning was a bit different for me. I look out the window to see everyone leaving, packing up their gear, and closing shop. Everything on the convention market was on sale, the last activities were closing up, and everyone was going home. And for some reason, it made me sick (literally, I got nausea that morning).

I was also quite dizzy from the nausea.

It's kind of funny to see everyone all sad leaving the convention and you can't join them because you're too busy trying not to vomit on the hallway for some reason. I have no idea how it came about, but I was the only one waking up sick. Everyone else seemed fine. That's what really confused me the most. And yet, I managed to recover after paying a visit to a few restrooms (both from hotels and Burger King while we were picking up breakfast). And once my insides were empty, we all went home and my insides were back to normal.

It's kind of funny that exactly a year later, it happened once again on the last day of that year's convention too. Everyone kind of expected it, for some reason. Guess it made a lasting impression.

Friday, October 5, 2012

When I Was A Mexican

It was about mid September 2006, I had just gotten into a university in Jersey. I was practically new to living in America, having spent all my life in the island of Puerto Rico. My English is pretty good, so I blended in with the crowd because I had no accent. But one day, I began to learn of a certain stereotype placed on us Hispanic people. That we are all Mexican in the eyes of Americans, why exactly? Who knows. But this did not bother me, until I began to talk to a certain classmate from my math class.

I will never forget this conversation, for it was going to be the first of many I was going to encounter here. We just left the last class, having found a common interest in Japanese animation, we began to chat about certain series we both like and all that. The conversation went smoothly until he asked me where I was from. I immediately told him I was Puerto Rican, and yet, in his eyes I could see a sign of small confusion. I was hoping he would know where it was. Sure it’s a small island on the Caribbean Sea, but its not hard to find. And without a moment’s hesitation, he belted out the response I would soon become familiar with, “so how far from Cancun is that?” I began to look confused, as though he wanted to know how far the island was, but I continued on. “What do you mean how far from Cancun is it?” I asked.

“You know, how far from Cancun is Puerto Rico?”

“Very far” I replied trying to hold my anger inside.

“But aren’t you Mexican?”

Please, señor, learn your geography!

I quickly decided to play along, just to see how far I can go until he realizes that I’m making up a story. So I decided to give it a shot, and with one simple answer, it began. “Yes, I am Mexican.” I said. And so, I began to tell a story from the top of my head, wishing he would catch on to the fact I was going to make this stuff up from now on.

I began to tell him on how I lived in Puerto Rico with my brother Jose, my cousin Jesus, and my friend Ernesto. We lived in the “Mexican city of Puerto Rico”, you know, right next to the cities of Cancun and Mexico City. He just kept nodding, listening to my story. So far, he bought it all. So I continued. My brother and I wanted to look for jobs, but I also wanted an education in English. We all set out with my cousin Chewie, that’s what we called our cousin Jesus, and our friend Ernesto. I was the only one who spoke the best English in the group, followed by my brother and my friend Ernesto. Poor Chewie had little English experience.

So anyways, we set off from Puerto Rico to go up north to America. Of course, we made our way up north to the border. On the way there, my friend Ernesto began to wonder what we were going to do.

“Hey, how are we going to get past La Migra?” he asked.

“Simple my friend,” I continued, “we run fast, you know, just like the other Mexicans on the television.”

“So we just try to run like on Cops?”

Exactamente!

And halfway through it all, my cousin Chewie got all confused in our planning. “Oye, que pasa?” I quickly ran the directions by him, having my brother explain the whole thing to him in Spanish.

I took a break from the story to check up on how my classmate here, understood the story. He looked a bit confused, but still believing my story. So now that I had him hooked, I just had to reel him in for the finishing move. I was going to begin to stretch it in a way I never have before. This is where my improvised storytelling was going to take place. I wanted to make it sound so surreal, so extremely fictional, that he would have to realize that being Mexican and being Puerto Rican are two completely different things, to make him have the idea of same race, different nationality. So here I went, with nothing to lose, I decided to go overboard with my storytelling.

It was finally time to cross the border; there were the troopers and guards guarding the gigantic gate. We grabbed some straws and swam all the way across until finally arriving in American soil. The guards did not know of our escape, at least not until cousin Chewie hurt his leg while running, letting out a loud cry that echoed everywhere. “Coño! Mi pie!” he screamed. And with that, the guards quickly were on to us. We were running as fast as we could, almost like the Road Runner. We had La Migra on to us like the coyote, as we continued to foil him with cheap ACME products. So there we were, trying to outrun the border patrol. We all ran really fast, trying to reach a faraway train station that lead to the northern states. The guards were almost near us, we could see them flinging the handcuffs in the air. They were all dressed in black, like white ninjas swinging the nun chucks of migrating justice. I could smell hamburgers, the foods we only dreamt of eating. American cuisine.

We got on the train, sneaking into the carts through the windows. Finally, we were free. We have left Mexico and gone to America. And now we have found jobs, and finally found the universities we wanted.

My classmate had a face reflecting the confusion upon my story. I think he was finally on to me, he realized I’m not what he thought I was. “Fine, you’re not a Mexican, sorry for the assumption” he said. I finally smiled, extending my hand in a gesture of friendship. Obviously, he got the joke and didn’t feel offended, but before it was over he belted out another question. “So what part of South America is Puerto Rico in?” he rudely asked. And right there, I quickly knew it was going to be a long day.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Ace Shenanigans

Ever since I moved to Pennsylvania, all the silly stuff has now been happening to Ace instead of me. I swear, I will eventually have to tell all of his stories because I'm not getting any new ones on my end (just old ones I'm trying to build).

Maybe this was his plan. Realize that silly stuff is no longer happening to me and now he can be the main character.

Touche.