The Bloggy Blogface!

Hi,    I'll cut right to the chase. These things are the WORST - UGH. No, I'm not talking about that slinky denim skirt (which isn't bad), nor those boots (which are, maybe). I'm referring to those goddamn machines she and those other folks are using to purchase things. Who made them, and more importantly, who thought they would actually help with anything?  Where to start with these bullshit machines? Let's start small. Let's talk about the good ones. The good machines that don't have hordes of people lined up to use them. Small stores, like CVS. Those are nice. Simple. Efficient. Red. Sometimes, there's merely one person ahead of me there. Most of the time, THERE ARE NONE. This is important. Also, those ahead of me don't have 4,553 items in their little red basket. Quick check-outs. So, these machines are decent. Kind of. Even in New York City, there's room for one on your own. A brief wait, at best. Additionally, these places of...

Open letter to random message board poster who thought he and his friends would have been drafted for United States military duty during the Persian Gulf War. First, we can dismiss the fact the United States eliminated military conscription (i.e. - the drafting of civilians) way back in 1973. Because hey, why not live in an imaginary world where we might need it again. I don't think you have any sheer grasp of the numbers involving the U.S. military, or perhaps you're just selectively avoiding researching stuff on your own because it helps with whatever agenda you're trying to drive home. At any rate, I'll try to relate things as best I can. Operation Desert Storm occurred for roughly six months in 1990 to February 1991. Without getting into too much detail, the United States sent almost 700,000 soldiers to fight this war. Seven-hundred thousand. Or, about the current population of the city of Boston. That's a lot. We basically sent a major city over there. S...

   A considerable time ago, I vowed to never again watch the Food Network's Chopped. It wasn't because I was bored with it, and it certainly wasn't because I had too many other shows in my rotation. The moment I decided to hang it up for awhile occurred during two specific episodes from a few years ago. I was already growing perturbed by the escalating gladiator music in the background, along with the soul-piercing death stares from the judges (who all seem to have vocations titled  restaurateur. Are we just making up job titles now?) whenever something on their plate wasn't pleasant for them. The first episode that made me question the veracity of the program occurred when a cook simply wasn't able to finish a particular dish in time. What caused him to be unable to "plate" his dishes is something I can't recall, but that's beside the point. When the time came to face the judges, this cook still had to answer their queries.The biggest questio...

Just say no to frozen turkeys.  Colleagues,     I write this from a humble abode in the sticks of western North Carolina. Send help. No, it's really not that bad, I swear. But if you want to send help, by all means, make it cash.  This time of year gets me thinking to the good old days, whatever the hell those were. Thanksgivings of yore. Turkey time in my family was about as mediocre as they come. Not necessarily because of personal family issues, but more so because we had nowhere to fucking eat. I'm not kidding. There are closets wider than the width of our kitchen growing up. Super small. Almost unbearable when the four of us tried to sit at the table, which, by the way, had to be pulled out from the wall so the fourth chair could fit. That's right. And it wasn't even a real dining room table. Might have been a coffee table. Anyway, we'd sit there, eat, and that would be that. Later Thanksgivings, we'd sit in the living room - my sister and ...

There's a television commercial making the rounds recently about some new phone slash tabletty situation that I can't seem to find via Youtube. In its place, I will insert this instead. Equally entertaining - The product in this commercial is some Samsung GTE 5E HGTV LGEH with 7GHBT Technology and 44MPG OMGWTFBBQ something or other. Real important stuff. The ad opens with some kid at a coffee table messing around on a tablet, looking at some random crap. His father, seated a few feet behind him, asks him what he's looking at. The father also has a screen in his face, only a smaller one. The child then gets up, walking to another room, where there's a girl looking at another tablet-like screen. Another scene shows what appears to be a mother, who also looking at a screen.  The purpose of the ad is to show all of the products under this Samsung line, but it is absolutely ridiculous in its approach. This whole family is bonding and spending time at home toget...

An alphabetical review - A: Annandale, Virginia. Don't ask. B: Buzzfeed. I get bored sometimes. C: Chris Bosh Brazzers gif. You'll thank me later. Or not. D: Dispatch.com. I'm super interested in Columbus news, okay? E: ETSU. Who doesn't want to check out colleges in eastern Tennessee? F: Fark.com. My morning news consumption. G: Grantland.com. Sports! Culture! Stuff! H: Hipster. Was just curious, you know. Just...curious. I: Isderrickrosebackyet.com. Was funny. He's back, so now it's not. J: jobs.columbia.edu. I have big dreams, you know. K: Kielbasa-sized fingers. Don't act like you don't have them. L: LinkedIn.com. A place where I can feign importance. M: Metaphor. I got it confused with allegory. N: NY1.com. News, depression. O: Orlando Craigslist. Because why not. P: Push reel mower. I've been thinking about lawns lately. Q: A URL for a political quiz. I guess I'm 60% Libertarian? R: Reddit.com. Yes, I have ...

   I've been coming across quite a lot of stories about people feeling the urgent need to honor their sense of privilege through various - and mostly idiotic - methods. Like the someone attacking crying about a coach for bullying because their son was on the losing end of a lopsided high school football game . Or maybe this story about parents suing a school because their precious snowflake went from getting A's in 8th grade math to D's in an honors (read: advanced) math class the very next year. These stories take me back to the good old days, when parents really didn't give a shit about their kids. Well, I guess that's not entirely true. They cared. Just not enough to sue. Getting my ass beat in a football game builds character, they would have told me. Makes you humble. Going from A's to D's in the same subject at the next grade level meant I just had to stop fucking around and actually work . Not like my parents were going to help me with my homew...

It's Tuesday morning, and he refuses to wear pants. In part because he doesn't know where they are. In part because they may or may not have a hole in the crotch. He didn't check as they were flung off in the haste rage that ended his night. This one's curled up on the bathroom floor, the top of her head resting snug against the cool ceramic toilet. All through the night, she was coughing, maybe crying - he couldn't tell. Someone made coffee. He yanks a mug from the cupboard, reaches for some sweetener. He cringes for a bit as the cold barstool connects with his wafer-thin boxers. The coffee's a cheap hazelnut mix he didn't buy, but enjoys anyway. The kitchen immediately overlooks the living room, where the usual accessories are strewn about - boxers, bra, condom wrapper. Must have gone at it right there, on the couch. That's alright with him, sucking on his shitty coffee.  The sequence of events leading up to right now seem fuzzy, as usual. There may...

The booze scene in this town is, if anything, fairly entertaining. More important, it's very cheap, compared to what I've been used to the last few years in New York. But that's not to say it's not without moments of abject misery. JERKS. Don't get me wrong, booze laws here aren't as downright ridiculous as some other states - hello, Utah - they're just enforced sort of differently. And by differently, I mean cops. Lots of them. All over. There's always a story about them - checkpoints, arrests, hanging around bars just waiting for some drunkard to follow and yank over within minutes. Sure, that's their job to do such. And it keeps everyone around drunkards safe. Thanks, cops! But Jesus tapdancing Christ, they are all over the place. And the stories about their conquests are even more daunting. Some folks vehemently refuse to drive downtown if they're going to drink, because they're never going to make it back home without seeing th...

So the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards occurred over forty days ago now, and the world is still crapping the bed over a particular event that went down that evening. I guess I'll chime in with this: Great. Now with that out of the way, I suppose the rest of this will make me look like a hypocrite for talking about it. I'm only doing this because I feel oddly compelled to, just like everyone capable of typing something has for almost a month and a half. Practically anyone with internet access has chimed in with their two cents. Recently, Sinead O'Connor tried to, and now she's apparently engaged in a TwitBook (Twitter+Facebook) pillow fight with Miley. Because hey, when you're a celebrity and have access to people who can get you things like other celebrities cellphone numbers or email addresses to achieve something that might accomplish more privately - the most logical thing to do of course is pen an "open letter" for everyone on the internet to rea...

"We don't sell alcohol on Sundays..." "We do in Georgia." The small plastic clip locking the two cooler doors fell to the floor as I walked past this exchange between a kind, informative gas station cashier and some dude wanting a Coors tallboy for his ride Sunday evening. We're just outside Greenville, South Carolina, filling up and hopefully avoiding any talk with the locals. Roughly an hour away from our destination, I'm not drunk enough and wondering just how a three hour driving distance somehow turned into an almost ten hour production. Our adventure took us right through downtown Atlanta and its seventy-lane highway that wasn't scary as hell at all. Luckily, I was in the back seat - too consumed with imbibing and keeping my eyes peeled on the fabric directly in front of me, instead of that sucker in the passenger side. The rapid braking and glow of red lights became more and more frequent the further we drove to some suburb twenty minut...

...with you, bloggy blog, is just getting too overwhelming for me. I can't take the trouble you've been putting me through for years and years. Make one, delete it. Make another, delete it. Over and over again I beat a dead horse in trying to keep this love alive. Over and over again, you disappoint me. We go all the way back to Myspace, that bastion of glitter pics and ever-critical top eight friend lists. I tried to blog there. It's such a silly word. Bluh-ogg. Kind of like blah. Something that comes from the gut. Vomit. Puke. BLARGH. It all comes out in the wash. Useless words on computer screens and now cell phone screens to placate all our free time. You sit there and antagonize me so. Why? Why would you do that to me? I thought I could trust you. Throw my thoughts at you. Dreams, visions, complaints. You were my easel. My canvas. What went wrong? Let's start from the beginning. Not Myspace, but back much further than that. Let's go back to the dawn of ...