BLOGGER BREW

halloween is here. so they tell me. i dont really get into it as much as other people do. one of my friends asked me what i was planning on doing for the big holiday. i said something like "eh, who knows." then she invited me to hang out with her and her roommates. they are going to a party and then bowling. sounds like fun. but i havent a thing to wear!

so we start listing off my possibilites. you see, they are going as fairy princesses (re-living the glory days or something i guess). so with that in mind, my costume may very well end up being a...zombie lumber jack fairy!

ok, so the zombie thing got vetoed, but the rest is still a possibility. should i be ashamed? im mean, a fairy! how the crap did i agree to that?

anyway, we'll see how it goes.

so last friday was the birthday of a girl i know. she had a fondue party and such. after watching "the count of monte cristo" we just hung out. people came and went. one girl who showed up just after the movie has one of the most amazing bodily ... malfunctions (?) i have ever seen.

the birthday girl tells me to make fake gagging noises. not seeing any good reason not to, i accomadate her request. after all, it was her birthday. then this other girl almost pukes on me. tada! she has the most hypersensitive gag reflex i have ever seen (and i have seen some pretty bad ones).

well, in a room filled mostly with guys you can imagine what happened next. 8 guys showing off the acting skills they picked up in their youth. 8 guys...making gagging noises at the same time! euphoria.

she ran out of the apartment screaming that we were all evil people (in between dry heaves, that is) and then had us "read between the lines."

well, about 15 minutes pass and she walks past the front room window and, you guessed it, we did it again through the window! pure hilarium.

just a side note: a month or so ago i entered an art contest for blizzard themed artwork. the results are in. i didnt win. this was my entry. follow the link to see the winners. you will notice that all of the winners had color in their entries...how predjudiced.

http://www.blizzard.com/inblizz/contests/artcontest2006/index.shtml

CRACKED PEPPER WITH YOUR FORTUNE COOKIE, SIR?

lemme tell you about my lunch today. at about 11:45 i realize that i am hungry. quite hungry in fact. the kind of hungry that only certain fast food establishments can satisfy. so i ask a friend on AIM to choose between carl's jr and panda express. she chose panda express because "orange chicken is delicious."

she is right. orange chicken is pretty much the only reason to go to panda express. sure they have other stuff too, but not like orange chicken. so i go there and notice some new items on the menu: "mandarin beef" and "mandarin chicken." i figure i will get the mandarin beef and orange chicken with chow mein. i get my food and go back to work to eat it.

well, the beef was good. but the vegetables that came with it were something else. i dont have anything against vegetables, especially in chinese food. but these werent even normal veggies. it had stuff like mushrooms (i dont really like them. i think it is a combination of texture, taste, smell and anything else that they can do to my senses), green onion stalks (actually they werent that bad, but still not a normal veggie for chinese food), and various peppers (these were normal and good). so i scarf the veggies and beef down and save the orange chicken for last. sort of like dessert for eating my veggies.

and i forgot all about the mushrooms...

now for the actual reason i am writing this blog. everything i just said was filler. no real point. not even really interesting. i just have this thing about short blogs...

i was sitting at my desk talking to people around me while i finished my food and went for my fortune cookie. as i opened the plastic wrapper i said "come on million dollars" as a joke. then i opened the cookie and this is what it said, "you have the attitude of a winner." i just about wet myself.

"SUP GOLLUM" "HEY SMEAGOL"

i am taking a course on "health behavior change." my professor is a quack. i think that he is trying to induce the development of dissociative identity disorder in his students. you know, multiple personalities and such.

each week we have an assignment to read certain passages from a mind and body health book and then write a one page report on our experience with trying the techniques in the book. most of the exercises are typical of a yoga class where you try to control your thoughts and use them to relax your body. things like putting out outside influences and concentrate on breathing and such. i have heard of this stuff but until this class had never really tried it. i dont really get much out of it. but i can see how some people might find it to help relieve stress.

well last week our "assignment" included creating a special secret place in our minds and creating a figure that is an expert with a problem we having in our lives. once the figure is there you are supposed to ask it questions and seek advise with your problem (usually an ailment, like cancer). you are supposed to follow the direction of the figure and ponder its answers to your questions. if you dont want to do that, then you are supposed to create a figure for your "pain" to take shape in. then do pretty much the same thing to it. ask it stuff like "why are your here tormenting me?"

now let me explain dissociative identity disorder. an individual has a traumatic experience. this experience is often violent and painful. in an effort to cope with the trauma, the person develops an alternate ego or personality that they can assume. this personality can be completely unrelated to the person in gender, age, maturity, expertise, etc. if this practice is repeated, over time the secondary personality can actually take complete control of the person for an indefinite period. it could be years before the original personality actually comes back into control.

i dont know about you but i see several similarities between creating a fictious cancer expert to help you cope with your disease and the development of multiple personalities. i pointed this out to my professor in the report and told him i thought the assignment was ridiculous and that he should explain himself during lecture.

i recieved full credit for the assignment and no explanation. i doubt he even read the report.

by the way, dissociative identity disorder is not the same as schitzophrenia. schitzophrenia implies halucinations but not a personality taking over the person's mind. only tormenting it.

DOWN HILL BOTH WAYS

age is relative. i know this. but when talking about old versus young there are certain things that help with those pesky grey areas. for instance, i recently moved from a student housing apartment complex to a house. how this makes me old is that i had lived in that complex longer than anyone else currently living there. in fact it will be a few more months before the runner up catches up to my record.


i recently hit the quarter century mark. not too impressive in the grand scheme of things i suppose. however, not a week after my birthday i discovered a grey hair on my face. this wasnt a hair that had fallen from my head or anything like that. this sucker was 1 inch long and still growing. (i have a beard, by the way. so dont think that i would not notice a hair like that growing out of my face if i were otherwise clean shaven.) since then i have found many other white hairs coming out my face (insert bill cosby voice here).

sigh, girls i dated in high school now have up to three kids. some of them were younger than me.

and the clincher, this saturday my little sister will be married. she is over three years younger than me and she beat me to the punch (no real surprise there, but i have to act like it to protect my pride).

congratulations, melissa. what's his name again?

HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPOPATOMI

so this last sunday we were invited to a dessert party. it was later in the evening and was to be at the house of a bunch of girls. not a bad set up for a party. they had a multi level house and plenty of brownies and cookies to munch on.

as my roommates and i entered the house we were over whelmed by the clatter of "hungry hungry hippos." it was deafening. four full grown adults pounding on the plastic hippo butts as hard and fast as they could. about half way through the 'game' one of the hippos was completely broken off from the base. he lost. so did the hippo. my roommate commented, "yup, this game requires just as much skill as i remember."

we fought our way to the dessert table in the kitchen. ate some very good treats and decided to mingle.

after sliding in and out of a few groups, we all ended up on the front porch by ourselves again. so we started quoting "arrested development" to eachother (very good show, by the way). as we stood there trapped in self-inflicted isolation, we noticed other people were starting to gather around us to see what we were laughing about (i guess we laugh louder than 'hungry hungry hippos'). and pretty soon we found that about a third of the party was outside participating in our outcast conversation.

life is funny sometimes.