6-28-01

I recently watched a movie called Stigmata, which is about a woman who is suffering from some sort of Jesus disease that causes her to receive wounds for no apparent reason. After receiving these injuries, she usually runs into a busy street and starts screaming like a maniac before one of her friends tackles her and drags her to the sidewalk. This cycle of being wounded and then running into traffic repeats about four or five times throughout the movie before some guy finds an old scroll written by Jesus and then she stops receiving mysterious injuries resembling the crucified body of Christ. I didn’t really understand this movie, but I did think it was funny that she kept running into traffic. “Ah! My face is bleeding for no reason! Now I have to go run into traffic!”

None of this is truly relevant to anything, but I wanted to mention it because it reminded me of how I’ve never really been physically injured in my entire life. This is my greatest regret. Occasionally I’ll see somebody with a cast over their arm, or somebody hobbling along on crutches, or somebody strutting around with a black eye, and I’ll just get really jealous. In my entire life history, I’ve never gotten wounded in any way. I’ve never broken or even sprained a single bone and I’ve never needed stitches, and in fact the last time I was the patient of a hospital I was being born. I’m either very durable or a big wuss. While not receiving injuries may sound like a good thing, you must consider the fact that I have no stories to tell about fantastic bicycle accidents, or about falling off of trees, or about having knife fights in the street. The single scar I have is a small one on the side of my right hand, but that doesn’t count because I was only a small baby when it happened. Apparently, as I was still learning how to keep my balance while standing up, my parents thought that it might be a good idea to let me run around the room with a glass bottle in my hand, and eventually I fell down and the bottle broke. I’m currently looking into whether or not this incident can be considered a form of child abuse, but I do know that it doesn’t count as a viable injury.

People with injuries really piss me off. They’ll hobble up to you on crutches with their leg all up in a cast and just look at you, waiting for you to ask what happened to them. Then you have to just roll your eyes and say, “OK, what happened?” They’ll say, “Well, I was skiing in Vermont while you weren’t doing anything cool at all, and then my leg broke while I was being awesome. Want to sign my cast?” It’s like, alright, you went skiing in goddamned Vermont and were being extreme. Do you have to rub it in with your broken leg? I’d really like to kick these people’s asses.

I’m very bitter about this. If you ever see me on the street, feel free to sneak up behind me with a baseball bat and bash my shoulder. That would be sweet.

By the way, I'm just kidding. Don't really do this. I'm going to be very angry with you if you bash my shoulder in with a baseball bat.

6-21-01

I used to hate when people said something was “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” I was always like, “Sliced bread? What the hell’s so great about bread that is cut into slices? You take some bread, and then you slice it. Big goddamned deal.” Then I actually had some sliced bread, and let me tell you, I take that all back--it’s some good shit. With this “sliced bread,” you can have sandwiches, toast, French toast--you name it. The entire bread world is opened up for your dining consumption. In my opinion, nothing will ever be greater than sliced bread. Now I know why ducks are so into it.

Saying “this is the greatest thing since sliced bread” is but one of the many old sayings that people use in their every day life. What many people don’t realize is that almost all of these old sayings are really retarded. As proof of this, I will now list several of them and rate them on a scale of one to five dollar signs, with five dollar signs being the least retarded.

“Never look a gift horse in the mouth.” Since I’ve never personally received a gift horse, I can’t say whether or not this is good advice, but it sounds pretty solid. Horses would probably bite you if you looked at them in the mouth, or maybe spit on you. I really don’t know that much about horses. Rating: $$$

“The proof is in the pudding.” This one doesn’t even make any sense. Where is this magical pudding of theirs? And what proof are they even talking about? I’ve never heard of a lawyer saying to a judge, “Your honor, to prove that Timmy didn’t murder Sam, I’d like to call my first witness: A batch of pudding.” Rating: $

“Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” I’ve noticed that the earlier I wake up, the more money I have and, additionally, I tend to be smarter on those days. However, it burns when I pee no matter what I time I wake up, so I don’t think it makes me healthier. Either way, this saying gets an extra point for rhyming. Rating: $$$$

“A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.” Apparently, the bird exchange rate is very confusing. What I want to know is, if you have a bird in your hand, but your hand is in a bush, approximately how much is your bird worth? Also, what makes you think I even want a little bird? I’d rather leave it in the goddamned bush. Rating: $$

“The early bird gets the worm.” This statement is probably pretty true (unless the bird is trapped in your hand), but you’ve got to think that the early worm is just going to get eaten by the early bird. However, my real problem with this saying is that I think many birds are taking the advice. There’re outside my window every morning at about 4:30am, keeping me awake with their musical chirping. I’m always like, “Seriously, guys, chill out. They’ll be worms at 1pm. Get some sleep.” Rating: $$

“A picture is worth a thousand words” I think this statement was first made by painters who were going poor because nobody wanted to buy their stupid paintings. They started going up to people and saying, “Oh, look at my picture! Did you know that pictures are worth ... about, uh, one thousand words?” That’s good and fine, but how much is a thousand words worth? They don’t tell you. This saying should have been, “A picture is worth ten thousand dollars.” Rating: $

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” This saying means that, if you throw an apple at a doctor, he won’t go near you. I’ve never tried this, but since it rhymes, you know that it has to be at least partially accurate. If you want to attempt this, I recommend throwing the apples at their eyes to blind them, and then running. Rating: $$$$$

“When it rains, it pours.” This statement is the stupidest thing that anybody could ever hope to say. I mean, it isn’t even true: What if it rains lightly? What then? It would be raining, and yet it wouldn’t really pouring, which neatly disproves the whole idea. This saying would be similar to somebody stating, “When it’s 80 degrees, it’s 100 degrees.” It’s like, no it isn’t. Rating: $

“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” I’ve never really owned a basket, so this advice doesn’t really apply to me. However, if I did own a basket, and if for some reason I had a strange compulsion to put eggs in it, I probably wouldn’t put all of them in. It would just get too heavy, and some of the eggs might fall out of the basket. I’d buy a few extra baskets just to be safe. Rating: $$$$

“Don’t count your chickens until they hatch.” This was probably made by the same guy who said the egg/basket thing. My objection to many of these statements is that they’re so negative. I mean, I can’t count my chickens until they hatch, I can’t put all my eggs in a basket, I can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. It’s like, what the hell can I do? Can I go downstairs and eat a Pop-Tart right now, or is that against they rules, too? Is there some saying that says “Don’t eat Pop-Tarts on Thursdays”? Screw that. Rating: $$

6-18-01

This past week I went to Florida, which you might remember as being the state that ruined the entire country during last year’s election. Florida is also home to the fire ant: nature’s asshole. These are ants that, in addition to being stupid, have also developed the ability to be extremely mean, thanks in no small part to natural selection. The human equivalent to a fire ant would be somebody who walked up to everybody they saw and just punched them right in the face. Fire ants don’t care whether you pose a threat to them or not, they just want to bite you. It’s their favorite thing to do. I’m not OK with that.

According to recent studies, Florida is also really, really hot. This makes it an ideal place to go to, as you don’t have the energy to do anything but go swimming all day. I much prefer this to the cold winters of Michigan, because being cold gets old real, real fast. Snow’s pretty cool when you’re about seven years old and want to make a little fort, but after that you don’t have the patience for any that nonsense. There’s nothing cool about being cold.

6-09-01

Congratulations to everybody who graduated from high school this past week. Now instead of going to classes and taking tests in high school, you’ll be going to classes and taking tests in college. It’s way different. To give you some hot college advice, I’ll refer to my “Been There, Should’ve Done That” college tip book which I received at orientation last summer and have been keeping in pristine, unread condition. According to the author’s advice on choosing courses, you should “sit in on a class the term before or stand outside the classroom and talk to students as they come out.” Actually, don’t do this. You’d probably just embarrass yourself and waste your time. Good luck!

Speaking of high school, I was reflectively looking over my senior yearbook the other day. For some reason, not only do I look like I just woke up in every picture that has ever been taking of me and put in a yearbook, I also look like I’m about to kill somebody. While it is usually true that I just woke up, I’ve never planned to kill anybody during the taking of any of these pictures. So what the hell’s wrong with me? It’s like, Christ, at least you could smile for two goddamned seconds.

These days, I have a new policy of smiling for every picture that is ever taking of me from now on. Since this is a personal webpage, I’ve taken the liberty of including a new example. Also, I’m still trying to justify having spent $800 last year on a digital camcorder that I never use.

Here's a picture of me demonstrating a zest for life. Inset: Godzilla.

6-03-01

Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I’m just like, “What the hell kind of dream was that? Am I really stupid enough to have thought of that?” My dreams make David Lynch’s movies seem like an abridged version of Dick and Jane, and I can never figure out what the hell is going on in them. It’s frustrating, because there I am trying to get a decent night’s sleep, and all of a sudden I start seeing insane images of people I know occupying bizarre, surreal settings, and everyone’s talking in retarded riddles. “Go not to the cave, Eric! Heed the words that were written in stone!” In the dream, these things all make sense to me, but then when I wake up, I’m confused as hell. It’s like, wait a minute, wasn’t I flying around in a police car with TV’s ALF? Then how the hell did I end up in what appeared to be a castle/factory hybrid looking for stolen jewels? And why do I always get violently murdered at the end of my dreams by a darker, twisted version of myself, only to wake up in a cold sweat with a pounding headache?

You know, dreams wouldn’t be so bad if you got to choose what you dreamt about, but you really don’t. It’s not like I’m laying down on the bed before I go to sleep and thinking, “OK, tonight I’m going to dream about bowling with a talking metal penguin and my 8th grade algebra teacher, only instead of using bowling balls, we use dictionaries. Oh, and we’re in outer space.” Yet, sure enough, there’s the talking metallic penguin and Mrs. Miller, and we’re bowling with dictionaries in outer space. Call me crazy, but I think that I should have control over my subconscious.

Also, I demand to know who came up with dreams in the first place. I want to know who said, “Alright, let’s have the subconscious take a bunch of fragmented ideas, choppily edit them together, toss in some random characters from one’s past, and then let people watch that while they’re sleeping.” I mean, it’s not like dreams mean anything. A lot of people like to sit there saying, “OK, let’s see, the Jello represented my struggle battling adversity, while the cast of UPN’s Moesha was a metaphor for--” No, I’m sorry, there’s no meaning to any of that nonsense. And if there is meaning to it, it must be some kind of dumb, ridiculous meaning that doesn’t make any sense. To be perfectly frank, I don’t have time for that.