What Are The Odds?

I just made a pun and you don't even realize it yet.

I might've learned something "useful" in a class this week. Well, it was in a book, actually: Against the Gods, The Incredible Story of Risk. It's slightly more interesting than it sounds. Slightly.

This week's lesson is about odds. Specifically, odds on horse (or dog, rabbit, turtle, or other raceable animals) racing. Let's say my horse, Brice Lord's Testicle, has odds of 1-to-1 (1:1), and your two horses, Crippleplex and Wendy's Testicle, have odds of 3:1 and 6:1, respectively. Since there's only 3 horses allowed on the track at Brice Lord Memorial Downs at anytime, then my horse has a 50% chance of winning, and yours have 33.3% and 16.7% chances. For example, with 3:1 odds there's a 1/4 chance Crippleplex will win, and with 6:1 odds there's a 1/7 chance that Wendy's Testicle will win. See the pattern? You've learned something already. Anyway, notice how the three horses' odds add up to 100%; this is because some horse must win the race, unless of course they all break their legs.

Wait, it gets a little bit more interesting. At a track that isn't named after me things work a little differently, because they're interested in making money, whereas I am already so goddamned rich I make money from giving it away. The odds at Charlestown Races & Slots for tomorrow are as follows:

Horse, Odds, Relative Probability
1, 5:1, 16.7%
2, 42:1, 2.3%
3, 3/5:1, 62.5%
4, 3:1, 25%
5, 12:1, 7.7%
6, 7:1, 12.5%
7, 53:1, 1.9%
8, 48:1, 2.0%

Right now you're probably thinking, "Brice comma this is boring as shit semicolon go back to writing about the cola wars period" Exactly! The relative probabilities of all the horses in the race does not add up to 100%, it adds up to 130.6%.

So, what the shit is going on here? How can we be 130.6% certain that a horse is going to win this race? Ever notice how attending races is free? No? Never been to a horse race because it's really boring, simultaneously low- and high-brow, far away, and quite possibly cruel to the animals? Well, it's because that extra 30.6% is the house's take. They skim off the top. It's the bookie fee, the Jew's usury, the Cossack's bargain, the what-have-you.

So next time you rush off to the races to see Cunnilingus 2 run around a dirt path twice in a matter of minutes and then forget where you parked remember that your hard-earned recession-proof cash is lining someone else's lined pockets.

By the way, I don't really know anything about horse racing, so if you do and I'm wrong about any of this, please don't hesitate to immediately explain how you know so much about horse racing.

Visited States Update

After another 2 years of aimful (the opposite of aimless) travel, I've created a new visited states map. Note my artful dodge of the central states, which is both incidental and intentional. I've also created my visited Mexican states map, which is somewhat less inspiring.

A comprehensive tally of where I've been in the U.S. of America.

A comprehensive tally of where I have/haven't been in the U.S. of Mexico. Mexico supposedly has states, by the way.

Did Hertz just threaten me?

Is this a promise or a threat...or both?

indisputable

Ever think of something in the shower that seems so clever and illuminating that you think everyone should hear? Me too.

Bill Parcells. Spencer Pratt. The latter is 35 years the younger of the former. Get that?

Perhaps a rain dance next time?

I'm sure the atheist "blogosphere" is proudly abuzz with Georgia Governor George Ervin "Sonny" Perdue III praying for rain, but I'm guessing the old coot thought it worked since Georgia was hit with a violent thunderstorm a day later. Never mind that the same storm blew the roof off of a Baptist Church in Tennessee and injured three school children with flying glass, and that it delivered an inconsequential amount of precipitation. No matter. If I were him, I'd probably plan to pray for rain next Wednesday and again next Friday. Just a hunch.

Anyone ever read A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, by the way?

Oh, email.

I left for Orange County on Friday for a business trip and returned last night. As of Sunday afternoon I had about 9 new emails. When I checked my email this morning I had 54 new messages. Oh, the horror.

My Mom?

Somebody in Arlington was somewhat displeased with my parking job on Sunday. That person is also a Bank of America customer, apparently.

Damn Richers

So I took my little jaunt to Southern California this weekend for work; I got back yesterday evening. The being in SoCal part was good and fine. I took an afternoon drive on Sunday down the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) to Laguna Beach and then turned around and went up nearly to Long Beach. It's a good place to drive, though it can be pretty trafficky, which detracts from the Hollywood image of freely cruising up and down the idyllic Pacific coast in a convertible. Oh, and portions of it are flanked by oil derricks on the right and offshore oil platforms on the right. Pretty scenic stuff.

Speaking of cars, I saw possibly every major brand and model of luxury car while in and around the 5-star Newport Beach hotel in which I stayed. Upon pulling into the hotel the first night, there was a yellow Lamborghini just sitting there. Next to it was Bentley and a MB SLR McLaren. The next evening there was a Ferrari parked on the curb outside of the restaurant we went to, which is really intelligent since that's the place it's most likely to get hit. But hey, what's a couple hundred thousand dollars? The next day I saw one or two more Bentley's, a Rolls Royce, a Maserati, and another Ferrari. Aside from the superstar sightings, there were, of course, an innumerable quantity of Mercedes SLs, BMW 7-series, Land Rovers and Porche Cayennes. I'm not counting the Orange County Lamborghini dealership (next to a yacht dealership) that I passed, either. I'm not so impressed by the cars themselves but by the amount of money it takes to acquire said cars. Where the hell did these people get so much money, and why are they all in exactly the same place? Should I have answered that Nigerian guy's email afterall? I thought it was a scam!

The people who were driving these cars were a REAL interesting breed of rich douchebag scum, by the way. It looked like were really trying to pull off the West Coast vibe and the Long Island daddy's boy look at the same time. For all their real estate profits I guess they still couldn't afford a decent image consultant. You might have seen some of them featured on Hot Chicks With Douchebags.

So as I pull up into the big fancy hotel lined with big fancy cars in my rental Nissan Sentra whose stated color was "Sparkles", you can imagine what the valets are thinking. On the contrary, however, I gave them $2 instead of $1, except I only tipped them when they went to get it, not when I dropped it off.

Movie Review!!!!1!!!1!1!

I went through quite a long period of movie-less activity recently, which was abruptbptbltpylbluly ended ...god "abruptly" is awkward to type... by watching three movies over the past week or two. They were of varying "goodity", which is a value derived from "goodness" using the "sexy", "guns", and "originality" coefficients. The movies I saw, and my ratings of them, are:

1. Hot Fuzz: &++
2. And the Band Played On: C-
3. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang: H
4. Bubba Ho-tep: R-

Did I say 3 movies? I meant 4. That's how good Bubba Ho-tep wasn't.

Now you might have noticed something peculiar about my grading scheme. Unlike the overgenerous school system, I operate on an extended grading scale that doesn't stop at "F" for "fucking failure" nor "A" for "altogether awesome." I just don't think there's enough gradation in there to properly encompass any movie you might see, from crappy Kazakh hardcore porn to mind-blowing action movies sent back in time to us from the future. My rating scale may or may not bottom out at "Z-----", which is five minuses below a "Z" rating. I'm also not sure where the top of the scale is. In fact, there is no top since it's my scale, but so far Hot Fuzz is close to topping it with an "Ampersand ++." In the future I may need to extend to exponentials and factorials of alphanumerics to properly rate movies, but we'll cross that turtle when we come to it. Movies are also awarded "Awesome Points" for being awesome, and the amount awarded is entirely at my unpredictable discretion.

Now that you fully understand my rating system, here comes the part where I tell you why I rated these movies as such, also known as the "content" of the blog post.

Here we go:

1. Hot Fuzz. RATING: &++ with 180 Awesome Points

Written and directed, and acted, by the same genius British minds behind Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz tells the story of a overachieving London police officer (not policeman), Nicholas Angel (played by Simon Pegg) who is transferred to a small, quiet village in the English countryside which it turns out is vying for the "Village of the Year" award, an honor that is perennially just barely out of its grasp. This is of little consequence as several suspiciously violent accidents start to befall the residents of Sandford and the supermarket manager, Simon Skinner (Timothy Dalton), is the focus of the potentially-criminal investigations. Let me pause here, because casting Timothy Dalton is a brilliant call. Not only does he perform outstanding in this character, but casting one of the worst James Bonds adds a measure of je ne se qua to the film's feel. So, Sgt. Angel's convinced these accidents are perpetrated by Skinner but can't get the homeboy police force to believe him. Angel is, however, joined in his quest for justice by one thick-headed officer, Danny Butterman (Nick Frost). What makes the movie truly stand out is the combination of subtle British humor, wacky British humor, wry British humor, dry British humor, ...wait, I think I can just say "British humor and capture all of this. The movie also makes purposefully obvious tributes to American action movies, particularly Bad Boys 2 and Point Break, which are done so as not to be hokey nor unnecessary. As with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright's previous accomplishment, Shaun of the Dead, the movie is chock full of both subtle and obvious foreshadowing, as well as using self-referential techniques within the film, which make the movie worth watching over and over. All in all, this movie easily earns it's "&++" rating.


2. And the Band Played On. RATING: C- with 5 Awesome Points

Meh, this movie was a bit of a shame. From what my taught Moroccan fiancee, Michael, tells me, the book upon which this made-for-HBO movie is based is fantastic. However, the film obviously doesn't get the adaptation right. In short, the movie portrays the onset of the AIDS blight that struck in the early 1980's and how the U.S. government, including the NIH, CDC, and White House, deftly kept it under wraps, since it was a "gay cancer." Only after about 25,000 Americans had died did President Reagan first utter the word "AIDS." Sadly, all of this is blindingly true, and it's scary because this tragedy could easily repeat itself. For such an important subject matter and one of considerable political tenderness, the movie does a disappointing job of explaining anything in any detail, and ultimately leaves you stuck trying to figure out if you're really watching an Oxygen Channel 2-hour feature or a Dateline NBC special investigation reenactment rather than being perplexed by what went wrong with the AIDS epidemic. The film boasts an "all-star" cast (Ian McKellen hit .315 in the majors) featuring Anjelica Houston, Richard Gere, Ian McKellen, Phil Collins (seriously), Steve Martin, Alan Alda, and a bunch of other people for which you'll find yourself saying "hey, I know that guy from something..." Problems immediately begin when you realize several scenes have been cut for brevity's sake but that leave you wondering what the hell is going on and who the characters are before they ultimately die of AIDS. For instance, Richard Gere portrays a nameless character credited as "The Choreographer," but it's not clear how he knows one of the main characters, who he is, why he's important, or why he's in the movie at all. The only saving grace for this movie, and the only reason I don't give it a "H.5 +", is that the subject matter is worth knowing more about. Although these days it's not particularly unimaginable to think the government is keeping important information from us, but it's valuable to understand there's plenty of awful precedent.


3. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. RATING: H with 35 Awesome Points

As supersexyrawcool as the film noir genre can seem, actually pulling it off is another thing entirely. This is what, in my opinion, doomed Sin City to pointlessness. Similarly, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang misses the mark by 9 letters, getting an "H". I originally rated it "J", but then remember Val Kilmer, surprisingly, did a tremendous job playing a sociopathic gay private investigator. It also gets bonus points for positive "sexy" and "guns" coefficients. However, its negative "Robert Downey Jr. taking neurosis too far again" coefficient drags this back down a bit. Basically, as with every noir, we get a guy, a girl, some faceless bad guys, a big city, and a couple of murders. There's some funny lines in the movie, and some interesting plot twists that, admittedly, I am never able to follow in movies, and a good bit of unrealistic gore and violence. I think that, and the picture [caption: Robert Downey Jr.'s gotten himself into yet another mess] pretty much sums up the entire movie, so I'm done.


4. Bubba Ho-tep. RATING: R- 1 Awesome Point

.......... ............ .......... I'm sorry, I blacked out trying to figure out how many other movies I could have watched instead of this one. You'd think that any movie with Bruce Campbell would have some measure of subculture appeal one way or another, but this movie succeeds thoroughly in this absence. Bubba Ho-tep starts off with some fat old guy (Campbell) who thinks he's Elvis Presley waking up from a coma or something in an East Texas nursing home. Then an Egyptian mummy with a cowboy hat and torn jeans starts walking around late at night sucking the residents' souls out and killing them. Seriously. So Elvis and a black guy who thinks he's JFK devise a plan to torch the mummy using some sort of makeshift flamethrower, but something goes wrong and JFK eats it, but then Elvis ultimately bakes the mummy, but who then comes back to "life" somehow, but then Elvis wins again somehow and destroys it for good. It's all really fucking stupid. There was one funny line though: "Now the two key words for tonight- "caution" and "flammable."" That soft chuckle was certainly not worth 2 hours of my time, nor the 4 awards and 6 nominations it has gotten from such venerable institutions as the Fant-Asia Film Festival. Fuck it, this movie gets an "R-".

busy week = mind melt

As the title implies, I've been pretty busy at work. My work isn't interesting to read about---or anyone's work for that matter, unless you're Batman---so i'll spare you...for now. Random thought, but what in the hell ever happened to Pacey from Dawson's Creek? I'm not sure what his name was (past tense is indeed appropriate here), but the last movie I remember him being in was The Skulls, which I think came out in 2001. I wonder what's worse, being a jobless Dawson graduate (Pacey) or being a jobless Dawson graduate AND having your career driven into a ravine and being impregnated by a inculcating madman (Holmes). I guess I answered my own question. If you can't tell from the sharp rise in multisyllabic words I've been using lately, I've been studying for the GRE and putting a lot of time (read: 2 hours per week) in what I call WordBlasting. WordBlasting is where you take a list of several hundred words, intravenously-introduced Peruvian blue cocaine, 7 minutes, and a cool, damp cloth. It works wonders, believe me. I'm planning on asking for my $565 back from the USDA Grad School where I took test prep classes recently. The only problem is that I tend to pass out for about 6 hours after WordBlasting, but when I wake up, boy do I know my vocabulary. Sure, I'm usually bleeding from one ear and have a mysterious amount of change in my pockets when I come around, but it's imperative that I improve my GRE English score. I mean, it's not just because I need to do well on the GRE, who doesn't need to know words like "prolix" and "interregnum?" I can't tell you how many times Tony Cornheiser has described The USC Trojans' uniforms as "incarnadine," and Anderson Cooper has referred to Iran's nuclear program as "sub rosa." MathBlasting is a little different because it tends to involve things like the quadratic formula and the rhombus. These godless machinations require artful square root signs and articulated spatial relations skills, so I have to make sure my head's a little clearer. Nothing's worse than dropping blotter acid while MathBlasting and winding up with two parallel lines shooting straight out of my chest. Want to know the 12th power of 2? It's 4,096. What about the hypotenuse of a triangle whose legs are 9 and 40? It's 41. Do you know how I know that? Because I have to for the GRE, and because I get emails all the time from ETCW! fans demanding that I make simple calculations in my head for them. I don't get it either, but that's how useful all of this is in real life. No matter how much drugs I do, nothing can prepare me for the two essay questions, one of which fools me every time with deceptively cogent logic like, "Garyville is a small town with a big factory. Because it has a big factory, it absolutely must have a man who owns a saddle. Unicorns don't allow men with saddles to ride them, so it is unquestionable that no unicorns own more than 1 acre of property in Chuckton, the town 10 miles down the road from Garyville." Honestly, for the life of me, I just am unable to identify the logical flaws in that argument. By the way, have you ever wondered what would happen if you secretly walked up behind someone at their computer in your office and blew an airhorn? Or threw a brick at their head? That would make for some good, incarcerative YouTube. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that someone keeps stealing my staple remover? I'd staple it down to my desk, but then how would I get it off? I bet Confucius wondered the same thing at some point. Actually, I bet he didn't, not because there was no such thing as a staple remover back then, but because I'm way smarter than he will ever be. "Man with hand in pocket not always playing with coin." What the fuck Confucius? You fucking pervert. I'd better lock up my daughters around you. Wait, maybe this has something to do with why I always end up with coins in my pocket when WordBlasting... uh-oh.

Mindless Entertainment

Yet another piece of evidence that Tokyo may be overpopulated. Apparently this is a wave pool, but there's a lot of Japanese people in the way so you can't see the water. It actually looks kinda cool once the waves get going. Yeah, I know, "whatever."

It must be July ...

Now, I'm not a huge sports fan, but I enjoy watching my share of football (college and pro), March Madness, NBA playoffs, and the odd Orioles game and soccer match now and then. But, come summer, we're all hung out to dry in the sere desert of mid-season MLB baseball. The problem here is that by the all-star break there is absolutely nothing happening in any sport except baseball. The NBA and NHL playoffs are over, both drafts (NFL and NBA) are finished, and even golf is lukewarm. There's Wimbledon, but the matches are played in the middle of the day and I'm not exactly going to take 2 weeks off of work to watch British people clap supportively every time the chair judge repeats that flash photography isn't permitted because tennis players wear all white and there's a chance the extra light rays might stain their clothes. This would all be fine and dandy if the MLB were gearing up for the quadruple-fortnight World Series, but at this point it may as well be another 8 years away.

The unique majesty of baseball's World Series is only 5 short months away.

Mid-season baseball is boring. By now we all know who's good and who sucks. The Red Sox are good. The Yankees suck. The Mets are good. The Cubs suck. The Nationals suck. The Orioles suck [of course, we're never really given an opportunity to wonder if the Orioles will suck or not because they have been thoroughly consistent in this aspect for the past decade, largely thanks to an opprobriously egomaniacal owner]. And we're only at the fucking All-Star break for god's sakes, of which its Home Run Derby is as big a joke at the NBA's dunk contest---not to mention that Barry Bonds opted not to enter the homerun derby, which is bewildering on 10^5 levels (sorry, I've been taking a GRE test prep class). By the way, to call this period a "break" is hilarious to me. The only people on a baseball field at any time that ever actually do anything are the pitchers and the ball boys/girls, so having a "break" is pretty unnecessary. Well, maybe we should count the fans who occassionally interfere. Even the baseball commentators are obviously bored right now. There could be a game-winning inside-the-park grandslam hit by a wheelchair-bound, terminally ill 10-year old girl in the bottom of the 9th inning and the announcers would still be talking about how they're continually amazed at the number of bugs there are buzzing around the stadium lights.

Kevin Garnett remains seriously concerned about what everyone is telling him that he's thinking.

So except for baseball dragging us along, what are we left with to entertain us while hiding inside from the brutal summer heat? Well, as far as sports news goes right now, there's three huge, earthshaking stories I absolutely need to follow closely right now. First, we can all vapidly gossip about whether or not Bud Selig will end up sitting down in a baseball stadium when a chemically enhanced titan hits another ball over a wall. Second, that little Asian hotdog eater got beaten by a three-hotdog margin by an American named after a yuletide nut. And finally we can continue to follow the neverending carnival of rumors about Kevin Garnett being traded to the Boston Celtics (June 19), Phoenix Suns (June 25), LA Lakers (June 26), Charlotte Bobcats (June 28), Chicago Bulls (June 30), Dallas Mavericks (July 5), Golden State Warriors (July 9), and the Miami Sound Machine (July 10).

An acute visual representation of my wasted time.

Smartly, the hosts on the only sports show I enjoy, Pardon The Interruption, have taken vacations for what feels like a month, and so I'm left with listening to the possibly unintentionally self-deprecating humor of Dan Le Betard and the pacifist verbage of J.A. Adonde, whose dialogue together leaves me feeling like I just ate a pound of feathers without knowing it.

Fortunately, it's just under 2 months until college football kicks off and I can begin worrying about Michigan coming back in the fourth quarter of every game rather than worrying about the Orioles struggling to tread above a .450 win record.

Oh, that's right, I printed something one second ago!

I am now 100% absolutely goddamn sure I just printed something.

You know... I'm not really sure how to begin, but I'll preface by saying that sometimes technology rubs me the wrong way. Not in a suicidal Radiohead-OK Computer kind of way, but maybe more in a Rage Against the Machine way.

For instance, those water-saving smart toilets that supposedly know when to flush are truly a fantastic accomplishment of human ingenuity. They sense when you're done doing your thing and then do you the courtesy of sucking down your poo without you needing to touch anything. That is except that they tend to flush 4-5 times even if you're in there for only 20 seconds just to adjust your shirt tuck. How "smart".

Computers are particularly frustrating. Microsoft Windows is especially good at pushing those tiny buttons in my brain that make me pound the table and mutter things like "Holy shit I swear to motherfucking Christ fuck I'm gonna fucking kill something this is fucking ridiculous oh my god i fucking hate this piece of shit you asshole bastard fuck fuck FUCK (with table pound and continued muttering)."

That friendly, bug-eyed Paperclip that pops up every time you do anything in Word is also a fun one. I almost feel bad for it, it just wants to help, but Microsoft just made him fucking annoying. It's like that pudgy kid in middle school who was reeeeally friendly but also reeeeally dorky, dorkier than you (me) even, and so you always blew him off just in case any of the cool kids might catch you being seen with him. That kid was the Paperclip. Shit, that kid probably created the Paperclip.


Worse than poorly programmed human-computer interface psychology experiments like the Paperclip are the little itty-bitty things that just make your life slightly more difficult. For instance, take the following scenario:

1) I'm working on a document, "List of Hot Men.doc", and want to print it.
2) I click the printer icon to print the document.
3) The printer right-fucking-next-to-me starts printing "List of Hot Men.doc".
4) After it's done printing, up pops a little balloon in the bottom-right of the Desktop telling me extremely useful information such as:

• "This document has been sent to the printer"
• "Document name: 'S:\trkn.xerxes.smi.\230GH-I70\Proje..."
• "Printer name: \\PS09\M913-LJ43KT"

Okay. That's all completely necessary information. What is it I'm supposed to do now, thank the computer? It sure seems like it, because that helpful little balloon won't ever, ever, ever go away until you hit the tiny little "x" to close it. If DC was ever attacked with nerve gas on like a Wednesday morning, the Feds would need to put together a special task force just to go floor-to-floor throughout the city in order to close these balloons.

Microsoft: please, please, please stop doing these things. Please.

Still not sure why I care, but...

It's like almost midnight, and the stupid Warriors/Jazz game is only at half-time. This comment is weird for two reasons.

1. I don't really like basketball, especially the NBA.
2. I've never even been to Oakland/SanFran nor Utah (or "ni...ni..." for you Spanish-speakers)

So why should I care so much about whether or not a team from a town I've never been to that I've admittedly never heard of until the playoffs wins or not? That's a horrendous sentence, I'm sorry. But not as sorry as you were when you clicked on that Hammer Bros. link in the Pop Quiz #2 post, sweet jesus.

I'm exhausted from working a 12-hour day, so I'll conclude by saying that the world should all work in the same time zone even though it would mean those wacky arabs and asians working in perpetual darkness just so that I could catch the end of this game instead of finding out tomorrow morning that the Warriors blew the game with their a) missed free throws b) sloppy ball-handling or c) awesome haircuts. That is, of course, if my computer is able to load ESPN.com's usual video and advertisement orgasm. I blame the lingering ghost of Kenny Mayne's smugness for that, by the way.

Anyway...uhh...Go Warriors!

UPDATE: GOD DAMNIT!.

PLAYOFFS !?!

I rarely write anything about sports...in fact I never do...nor do I ever really think about sports, especially when it comes to the million-dollar baby league known as the NBA. But, I found 8-seed Golden State's 4-2 series upset over the 1-seed Mavericks, a first in NBA history, compelling enough to root for the Warriors and watch about three quarters and half of overtime during last night's game, even though it means not seeing any Mark Cuban highlights for the next 9 months.

Maybe I like Golden State because they don't have any big names and therefore no expectations nor outrageous egos, or maybe I just like rooting for the underdog. I saw Baron Davis do the Five Good Minutes segment on PTI last week and he convinced me that they're the team to root for. Also, every time I hear Stephen Jackson's name uttered by the announcers I giggle because that Ball State sportscaster somehow managed to say "Stephen Jackson's Stephen" during his historically awful segment.

Watching them play last night was actually entertaining. They have the energy of a Final Four college team and their ability to pass the ball (entertainingly) has clearly made a difference in the playoffs. I'm not too knowledgeable about basketball strategies, but on offence their penetration near the board was lacking, and they were often spread way to far across the court with random picks thrown here and there, which probably resulted in the poor penetration. I think the wild passing may have confused the Jazz but not enough obviously.

The real letdown came when Mickael Pietrus missed two free throws with like 20 seconds left that would've won the game for the Warriors. After that the Jazz took over and won in OT convincingly. Oh well.

And for my own entertainment, here's Jim Mora yelling about the "PLAYOFFS!?!"

My awful, awful jobs, Part 1

Last night I was out at a bar posing as a Law School grad so I could get free food and beer---which, incidentally, does not come close to the subterfuge at hand when my British alter-ego, Simon, makes a late-night appearance---where I started talking to some girl, which eventually led me to bring up this really awful job I had. I'm not sure why my friends think it's so funny to walk up to people on the street to sell them hair salon packages, but my last post made me realize how many bad jobs I've had over the years.

I'm going to start this as a list of bad jobs but I'm pretty sure it'll just end up being stories from not-so-bad jobs since they're funny. Maybe I'll make another post for them, maybe not, but I'm sure as hell not going to go back and restructure everything for your convenience. Onward, in chronological order!

1. Gibby's Seafood Restaurant. I worked as a busboy for one summer at this popular, somewhat expensive, neighborhood seafood restaurant (as implied by the name: Gibby's Seafood Restaurant). It was the first "real" job I ever had, having only ever cut lawns and rented Godzilla movies out of my backpack previously. It was the first time I had had coworkers, a boss, a schedule, and an hourly wage.

I'll start with my coworkers. There was Rob, who trained me. Rob was a conniving 18-year old (I was 16) who looked like he was 25 and had no intention of going to college. Busing at Gibby's was all he needed. Rob also smoked a lot. The nicer female waitresses warned me to make sure Rob didn't try to skim too much off my tips while he was training me, which he did. That was my first experience with graft. This was also my first experience with people using smoke breaks to take unscheduled breaks they otherwise wouldn't be allowed to take.

About a month in a new busboy, Dave, showed up. Dave was 40. I learned in the first 5 minutes that Dave was a recovering crack addict. A decade on now, I wouldn't be too surprised about that when I met Dave---what with his glassy eyes, vacant stares, and unflagging utter confusion---but at 16 I was pretty freshfaced when it came to the ravages of drug abuse. He was a nice enough guy, but surprisingly, Dave vanished a couple weeks later. Godspeed Dave, whatever seafood restaurant you ended up at.

There were the dishwashers, who at any restaurant are by far the most jovial but also the ones you don't want to cross. One of them would always comment on my "pearly whites" (teeth). I guess those G.I. Joe PSA's really hammered home that point on brushing your teeth.

My bosses were a curious crew, too. The guy who hired me was a family friend, his name was Roger or something. Roger was one of two managers, the other was Steve, who was a prick. The owner, Mr. Gibby, was a bigger prick. They all had moustaches. Mr. Gibby got really upset once because his friend who came to the restaurant couldn't get buffalo wings since they had run out (in restaurant world, "we ran out" means that the cooks just don't want to cook it anymore), but then he found out that the cooks had made me a heaping plate of wings. Those wings were delicious but maybe not worth it. The real kicker came one day when I found out that Roger had been fired because he called out Mr. Gibby and Steve when they had been found at the restaurant late one night liquoring up some younger ladies and shenanigans had ensued. That was a pleasant atmosphere for me, all around.

Then there were the customers. I remember two customer "situations" vividly to this day. The first was a big fat whale of a woman who complained when I accidentally put water in her glass that was apparently Sprite instead. How could I be so foolish? She moaned about how stupid I was to make that mistake and demanded a free Sprite. I guess all the fat in her brain made her forget that refills were free, so I punched her in her fat face and slit her throat.

The worst nights I had there was when I was on crab deck duty. The crab deck was a big concrete block with a shitload of tables where people ate steamed crabs, and where people put all their trash on the ground and laughed at me on the way out because I had to clean up their fucking mess. One night, after cleaning up the whole deck (which took about an hour) and just before closing, a flock of about 20 Iranians flooded in, mostly children, to eat crabs. The mess these fuckers made in 30 minutes would make Jesus Christ cry. AND, if that wasn't bad enough, while I cleaned up the biological hazard they had left, the local radio station, 98 Rock, decided to play the entirety of Rush's latest album Test for Echo. Oh my god, I think I ground away half my teeth that night. I also vowed mortal vengeance on Geddy Lee, which will be exacted come Hell or high water.

Note: When looking up "busboy" and "crabs" in Google's image search, be very, very careful.

Of course someone else on the Internet has already thought of that

Sometimes I'm just amazed by the internet. If you think you're the first person to think of something, you can immediately prove yourself wrong. And, if you're like me, you enjoy having silent arguments with yourself even though you somehow manage to lose them more often that not.

So after receiving a poorly phrased email one day, I thought it'd be funny to have a day where everyone talks like Yoda, or "Talk Like Yoda Day." It wouldn't really be funny, but when you're at work for 9 hours a day just about anything can be amusing. The feeling of blinding boredom and monotony itself can even be amusing in that sort of hopeless put-your-head-in-your-hands way.

Surprisingly, but not really, it took me 5 seconds to find www.talklikeyoda.com. I like to think that I'm a pretty random individual, but the internet showed me otherwise. It was pretty foolish of me to think that I had been the first person to become so bent of mind at work to conceive of Talk Like Yoda Day. People have been bored at work for centuries, who am I to be the big shit? What gall. And not only does TLYD already exist (as a website no less), its warped creator went so far as to pick a day: May 21. Why May 21? Who the fuck knows.

"Wu-Tang must watch a lot of TV"

That's an understatement.

I've been listening to a lot of what's considered now to be old school rap, predominantly by members of the Wu-Tang Clan. I just downloaded Liquid Swords, GZA's original side project, and have been cruising through the day at work. The Wu's pretty much perfect for doing work, the beats are repetitive, calm, and the flows are the same; that is, unless Ghostface starts talking about how his shoes talk when he shrooms or ODB busts in with some half-sung line about "the poonany splash".

The problem is that when you get a good rap song in your head you can't say it out loud. This morning I was washing my hands in the "pantry" (coffee room) and was caught saying "What? What? Ya'll!" to myself by our Division Executive Director. Oh well. Now he knows I'm down AND fresh, and so not to be messed with.

In addition to being known for their merry-go-round incarcerations and incestuous side projects, Wu's famous for sampling random old kung-fu movies. Most of their albums are driven by these themes, for whatever reason (probably weed-inspired). They even put out a "movie" where they rap over a concatenation of these movies. A bowl and a starter 1/8th is included in the box set.

But this begs a question. No, not "why?" Asking why would only lead you into the mental equivalent of quicksand. What I wonder is where the hell they found all of these fucking movies? My friend Diesel, a German bodybuilder who works on the line at the Volkswagen factory in Königslutter, and who is obviously way ahead of me in rap I.Q., answered this question as stated in the subject of this post. They must watch a lot of TV.

Anyone who saw the MTV Cribs episode in Wu's house can verify this. Aside from the hilarity of seeing random Clanmen... hmm, maybe we should use "Wu-Tangers" instead... wandering around a huge mansion in Beverly Hills, Methodman was passed out on the couch with a PS2 controller, like 4 remote controls, and a bag of the sticky next to him.

Anyway, I came upon this pretty awesome list of movies that Wu-Tang samples in all its albums. It's not entirely complete, but anyone who's dedicated enough to put something like this together is probably too deeply invested in the Wu-Tang philosophy to properly finish it off. Enjoy.

First Jesus, and now HYDROX

You probably well-remember HYDROX; that inscrutable, non-capitulating rival to the beloved Oreo, which mysteriously vanished from grocery store shelves sometime in the somewhat-distant past. Like me, you probably can't pinpoint when you realized HYDROX were gone, in fact you probably didn't even realize it until just now, but somehow you already knew. It's not like figuring out when "Black Hole Sun" was popular. I can link that song to stalking an ex-girlfriend of mine; we weren't yet dating--proof that stalking DOES work (try it kids!).


But with HYDROX, I can only remember the feeling of confusing disappointment when I would open the kitchen cabinet, see what I thought was a thing of Oreos (it's not really a bag), but then see that it was instead HYDROX. I kinda remember thinking, "Okay, well, they're pretty much Oreos, right? I mean, Mom still loves me, maybe she's just too busy to realize she bought HYDROX and not Oreos, or maybe they were on sale or something. They're fine and all, but maybe I forgot to bring it up last time we got HYDROX instead of Oreos. Do I even care? I do care...I think."

Some of the more offbeat families were the HYDROX families. It was pretty clear upon stepping into a house that you were going to find HYDROX, in addition to other weird brands like Oh Henry!, generic Safeway "Froot Hoops," and those offputting pink coconut things. HYDROX families were typified by frantic, tightly-wound parents and kids with multiple siblings and no restraint for declaring possession. HYDROX were plentiful and frequent mainstays at these homes.

I've spoken before about the destruction and dessication caused by the Cola Wars, but what to make of the muted struggle between cookie manufacturing juggernauts Keebler (HYDROX) and Nabisco (Oreo). Sources close to Keebler will say that it decided to pull HYDROX out of the competition because of dragging demand due to the notion that the cookie contained poisonous chemicals ("hydrox" happens to be a popular molecular binding agent), but it may surprise you to learn that the Jews killed HYDROX. Yes, first Jesus, and now HYDROX.

Until the late 90's, if they wanted to enjoy a scrumptious creme-filled cookie snack, kosher Jews were relegated to eating HYDROX since the ingredients and processing of Oreo cookies did not lend itself to kosherness; maybe it was the Yellow #5. For years, all parties were happy: Sunshine Biscuits (original maker of the HYDROX) had its captive market base, the Jews had their kosher cookies, and RJR-Nabisco had its insurmountable lead without having to pander to a bifurcating vocal liberal religious minority. Things changed when rival Keebler managed a lunchtime hostile takeover of the Sunshine Biscuits corporate headquarters in late Fall of 1996, and act which forced RJR-Nabisco's hand and forever changed the face of creme-filled cookie eating across the U.S.

In retaliation at such audacity, and foreseeing a violent marketing push for HYDROX on the horizon, RJR-Nabisco's food engineers (read, "chemists") hurriedly reworked the Oreo formula to fit into kosher standards, and thus flanking HYDROX's devout market base. Ignorant of the corporate D-Day taking place, Jewish children everywhere thankfully ate up their new kosher Oreo snackfoods, just happy to be part of mainstream kid Oreo-eating society.

The move crushed HYDROX in a matter of months, leaving the elves at Keebler reeling; Keebler stock fell almost 25% that quarter, and Keebler magic plummeted 70%. Not long after, Keebler rose the white flag and pulled HYDROX off the shelves and out of production forever. Nobody noticed.

And that's how the Jews killed HYDROX.

sigh

I'm helplessly exposed to an unhealthy amount of pop culture and celebutantery in my daily life. I hate it. I hate it I hate it Ifucking hate it. And nothing pisses me off more than the pop culture socialites. The shit I took this morning had more interesting things to say than Paris Hilton.

Yeah, you bet that's Pauly Shore.

When I first heard of a "Paris Hilton" I was utterly confused. I asked, what's going on with the Hilton in Paris? Was it bombed by Al-Qaeda or something? I was mistaken. Somebody did actually name their child after a hotel. Then I asked, "oh, what does she do? What [movies, TV shows, syndicated daytime talk shows] is she in?" To my surprise, the answer I got was a flat "nothing." She doesn't do anything. She does nothing. Nothing at all. She doesn't have a job, she doesn't work, she doesn't write amusing blogs like this one, she doesn't do anything productive whatsoever. Yet, she's famous and fabulously wealthy. Is my hatred out of jealousy? Would I like to be in her position of unlikely riches and irresponsibility? Maybe, but then I'd have to be a vapid, uninteresting party favor whose utiliy won't outlast my mid-20's. So I guess I'm alright where I am.