Here's something I bet nobody knows about me. I suck the old hind tit at College Composition classes. It's not that this revelation is of any particular relevance or anything since my college days are 10 years behind me and I have no desire to go back, it's just a little odd considering I have this wildly succesful weblog that is, according to some "the second coming of the bible, but not in a sacreligious way" or "the dopest shit since Sarah, Plain and Tall'' or even "the culmination of what would happen if a Fire Monster had sex with Godzilla's bigger, less stable cousin and the baby came out and then choked them both to death with his penis and then started writing a blog." Uh.... I got all excited there reading those accolades and forgot what I was saying...
Oh yeah, so I sucked at Comp 101. I don't know why I was thinking about this, probably because I spend 2 hours or so a day reflecting on things that went askew of my plans in the past, and how I would approach them differently if the situation were to ever arise again. My solution usually involves cartoonish violence and/or death, pre-pubescent name calling, and sometimes, a complicated system of levers, pulleys, guy wires and buttresses. In lay terms, my solutions are friggin' sweet.
Anyhow, I even got two separate chances at Comp 101. You would have figured at least one would have gone well. Wrong as usual, you idiot. Didn't you figure that it couldn't have gone smoothly if I was writing about it? What are you, dumb or something? Wait, who am I talking to?
Chance #1 was in Junior College where I went for a year to play baseball. I quickly realized that I would rather be peed on repeatedly by an 80 year old man than matriculate there any longer than I had to. The college in question was filled with 5 types of students as far as I could tell.
1.) Really scary 25 year old knuckleheads and gangbangers whose conditions of parole required they attend secondary institutions, and scare the shit out of everybody there as frequently as possible.
2.) Women of unknown origin wearing full length burqas that showed only their eyes and foreheads. They made loud popping noises occasionally but otherwise were completely mute. I thought they were wizards or something.
3.) Trashy looking white girls that were 50 pounds overweight and brought their babies to class with them. I guarantee you that all those babies are now 15 year olds that know every single ingredient you need to make meth.
4.) Non-traditional jerk off old people who would show up to class dressed like they were going to a job interview (complete with an attache case filled with crumpled up newspapers or something) and then proceed to fuck up the curve by getting really high grades on everything. Hey Dingus, getting 100% vs 90% in Intermediate Algebra at the local JC is not going to land you any better of a job in the real world, but you are very likely to get a serious beatdown by group #1 if you don't quit fuckin' up the curve.
5.) ME.
So as I sat down to my class, it was kind of like prison. Don't make eye contact with the scary gang members, don't sit near the non-trads, so the gang members won't mistake you for one, avoid the wizards so you don't get turned into some ingredient that goes in a cauldron, and stay away from the trashy white women because both them and their babies are squawking incessantly for no good reason.
Anyhow, our first assignment was to write a paper about a book or a pamphlet or something. So I wrote what I thought was something fairly incisive and clever and turned it in. I got my grade back about a week later. 43%. Apparently I had forgotten to follow some rules regarding spacing and margins, and font, and bibliographies, and other shit that we all use A LOT in real life right? It's terrific that most everything I learned ceased being relevant the exact instant I learned it. But whatever, I did it wrong, I could accept that. So the next paper I wrote was done absolutely according to form, correct margins, a works cited page, etc. It was flawless, like a naked lady holding a burrito. I got my grade back. 44%. What?? Even the freakin' white trash babies had done better than me. I was going to fail this class!
Here's where I made one of my uncharacteristic brilliant decisions. Since I already had a good idea of where I was going to school the following year, and since my GPA was hovering right around the 2.0, baseball eligibility Mendoza line, and since the current season had just ended, I quit. I dropped all my classes thereby ensuring my GPA would drop no lower than it already was and guaranteeing admittance to the next school, along with baseball eligibility. I do a lot of really stupid things, but this choice was right on the money. On the flip side, I was embarrased to tell my Mom and Dad that I quit school, so for about 5 weeks I would get dressed and pretend to go to school, but instead I'd just go to Aquila, SLP's version of Rucker Park, and play basketball for a few hours and then come home. I always wondered why my Mom never asked me why I was drenched with sweat when I arrived home from school.
So then I went out to South Dakota for school, and did pretty well, so my cumulative GPA got up a little over 3.0, but the whole Comp 101 debacle still sat in the back of my head like a dirty secret, so I totally avoided taking it. Finally my 5th year of school, I decided I'd have to buckle down and take the class. I was being openly mocked by my friends because of my class schedule. I had 4 upper level business school electives.... and Comp 101. I even had to mock myself a little.
The first thing I noticed when I got to this class was that for basically everybody but me, this was their first college class. There were girls shrieking and giggling and pushing their desks together and writing their first name and then their boyfriends' last name and stuff like that.
The second thing I noticed was that the TA (listed as TBA on my schedule) was actually a year younger than me, was somebody I knew, and was a friend of mine's girlfriend. Or to put that another way she was a girl that he had dated once. Or to put it another way she was a girl that he had gone on one date with. Or to put it another way she was a girl he had had a sexual relationship with frequently and had taken her to Burger King to feed her once because all we had in the fridge was beer and empty ice cube trays. Or to put it another way, she was a girl he would call at 2:30 in the morning after he had drank 20 beers and eaten a giant vat of fettucini alfredo and was too bloated with food and booze to pass out yet and then would hide in the morning in the hopes that I would break down and drive her back to her sorority house and he wouldn't have to see her.
So with all this newly learned information I was practically ejaculating with anticipation for this class. So the TA/redundant one night stand comes in, and not only does she appear to have been shopping at the Lilith Sternin-Crane House of Style for her TA uniform, but she's also become an incredible hard ass.
Her: There will be no speaking out of turn, no talking without raising your hand. If you're late by 1 second it counts as a tardy, if you get 5 tardies your grade drops by a letter. Unexcused absences drop you a letter grade, etc etc.
Me: Um.... you left your underpants at my house last May. But you can't have them back. Thanks to you I now have a canopy bed. Oh, and come get your bike. It got all rusty cuz it laid outside all summer and I can't ride it to parties anymore and the landlord tripped on it.
It was weird. I had 4 senior level business school classes, and 1 high school class. And of course, while I did just fine with the 4 business school classes, my grades in Comp 101 were consistently D's and F's. I was barely hanging on to a passing grade that was inflated because of my spotless attendance that we got points for.
In my business school classes, if I had gotten a poor mark on something, I would generally go in and speak with the teacher about it, and we'd have a very congenial argument on the merits of my work which would generally result in an upwards revision of my grades, but in the Comp class, it seemed weirdly unconfortable to go talk to someone who was younger than me and whom I knew. I just figured she was going to get some sort of passive aggressive revenge on my buddy with me as the conduit by giving me poor grades. I had accepted this as fact when she asked to meet with me after class one day. I figured I was going to get harangued because Lisa Jo Johnson, the 18 year old from Sioux Falls with the sparkly purse and braces was doing two letter grades better than me. What I got was this:
Her: How do I get him to like me again?
Me: I don't think he really ever liked you in the first place.
Her: OK Mr. D Minus, thanks for the advice.
The lightbulb flickered on in my head. Then I got an idea. An awful idea. The Brian got a wonderful, awful idea. I'm not going to divulge what my idea was, but sufficed to say it involved my friend and her "making up" thanks to some really serious treasonous lying on my part, and I wound up with a solid B in that class.
So I got through the holy hell that is Beginning English Composition, but I still don't understand why I sucked at it so bad. Maybe I'll never know, or maybe it's as simple as a quote from a very wise friend of mine. "Sometimes you suck at stuff because you do." I like simplicity. I hope that's it.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Brian Dislikes Baseball Practice
Baseball practice started yesterday for me. That's a sure sign of spring, so it always makes me happy. A few of us get together and we throw the ball around, and we hit. Then we leave. It doesn't take too long, and it always reminds me of one thing, the fact that I am extremely thankful that I don't have to endure daily baseball practices anymore.
Although I love baseball itself, baseball practice is right up there with wading penis-deep into a pool of electric eels. There may not be a more boring sport to practice, especially in the winter, in the North.
Baseball practice in the winter in the North means that you have to find a dome or a fieldhouse or something to practice in which is dumb thing #1. You can't throw as far, you have to hit in a cage so you can't watch the balls fly, and there are invariably other sports teams practicing near you, so you're constantly squeezed for space.
Have you ever run to catch a fly ball and smashed into a track girl running hurdles? I have.
Have you ever hit a softball player in her ample buttocks with an errant throw? I have.
Have you ever tripped over the Associate Athletic Director while running sprints and then yelled at him to "get his fat ass out of the way" and then been punished by having to run more sprints until your legs felt like they were going to fall off and you felt like you were going to take a big involuntary diarrhea in Lane 6? I have done this as well.
All this makes me very glad that I don't have daily baseball practices anymore. You know what else I won't miss?
-Practicing at 6:00 AM and having a fly ball hit me directly in the head because I was still a little loopy from the bar the night before.
-Practicing at 10:00 PM and not being able to get to sleep until 2 in the morning and then stumbling into class at 9 AM looking like I'd stayed up all night shooting meth rectally with Courtney Love.
-Running stairs at the DakotaDome. This was a form of conditioning, and also a way to keep us from smashing into other sports athletes because nobody else practiced on the stairs. Usually about once a year somebody would trip and fall into the row of seats below and get a really big bruise. That was the highlight.
-Other forms of conditioning. I never understood why we had to run so much for baseball. Isn't 360 feet the farthest we'd ever have to run without stopping? Apparently, we were training for the time when we had to play in a desert with no fences that sloped downwards for 4 straight miles. Some of our players couldn't hit a ball more than 25% of the time, but they could sure post a great 10K.
-Constantly deferring to the women's basketball team. I know they were the revenue sport and we weren't but still, I could have assembled a team that would have beat them 100-4. I shouldn't have to wait for anything for anybody I could whoop that bad at anything.
So thank you to the Gods of things that are fair and just for not making go through baseball practice very often anymore, because it's very likely that I would have sawed off the head of some unsuspecting athlete by now, and that just ain't how I like to roll.
Although I love baseball itself, baseball practice is right up there with wading penis-deep into a pool of electric eels. There may not be a more boring sport to practice, especially in the winter, in the North.
Baseball practice in the winter in the North means that you have to find a dome or a fieldhouse or something to practice in which is dumb thing #1. You can't throw as far, you have to hit in a cage so you can't watch the balls fly, and there are invariably other sports teams practicing near you, so you're constantly squeezed for space.
Have you ever run to catch a fly ball and smashed into a track girl running hurdles? I have.
Have you ever hit a softball player in her ample buttocks with an errant throw? I have.
Have you ever tripped over the Associate Athletic Director while running sprints and then yelled at him to "get his fat ass out of the way" and then been punished by having to run more sprints until your legs felt like they were going to fall off and you felt like you were going to take a big involuntary diarrhea in Lane 6? I have done this as well.
All this makes me very glad that I don't have daily baseball practices anymore. You know what else I won't miss?
-Practicing at 6:00 AM and having a fly ball hit me directly in the head because I was still a little loopy from the bar the night before.
-Practicing at 10:00 PM and not being able to get to sleep until 2 in the morning and then stumbling into class at 9 AM looking like I'd stayed up all night shooting meth rectally with Courtney Love.
-Running stairs at the DakotaDome. This was a form of conditioning, and also a way to keep us from smashing into other sports athletes because nobody else practiced on the stairs. Usually about once a year somebody would trip and fall into the row of seats below and get a really big bruise. That was the highlight.
-Other forms of conditioning. I never understood why we had to run so much for baseball. Isn't 360 feet the farthest we'd ever have to run without stopping? Apparently, we were training for the time when we had to play in a desert with no fences that sloped downwards for 4 straight miles. Some of our players couldn't hit a ball more than 25% of the time, but they could sure post a great 10K.
-Constantly deferring to the women's basketball team. I know they were the revenue sport and we weren't but still, I could have assembled a team that would have beat them 100-4. I shouldn't have to wait for anything for anybody I could whoop that bad at anything.
So thank you to the Gods of things that are fair and just for not making go through baseball practice very often anymore, because it's very likely that I would have sawed off the head of some unsuspecting athlete by now, and that just ain't how I like to roll.
Friday, March 12, 2010
The Cat Poop Dilemma
I'm sad to report that both of our dogs favorite food is cat poop. I'm pretty sure that they would rather eat cat poop than steak or burglars or whatever. This presents an obvious problem considering we have a cat. If we didn't have a cat they'd never know how tasty cat poop is, because it's not like I could go buy cat poop at the grocery store. I don't even think they sell that at Aldi.
Anyhow, we have a cat, she poops frequently, and then the dogs, especially stupid Polo, sprint down to the catbox and hungrily gobble up poop. Then he runs back upstairs, giddy with delight, with fecal remnants stuck in his gums and tries to lick us. Fortunately it's easy to tell when he's done this because the entire room he's in begins to quickly smell like a train station men's lavatory if a homeless person died in it. So usually I spend the next hour actively avoiding Polo and attempting to shame him into never eating cat poop again
Me: Polo, you're such a moron! What kind of animal eats something that comes out of someone's butt? You should be ashamed.
Polo: Arf
Me: I mean seriously, we paid good money for you, is this any way to repay us?
Polo: Woof
Me: You're a gross idiot!
Polo: Bark.
Then I say this poem to him that I made up to really illustrate the gravity of constantly eating turds:
If you eat cat poop from downstairs
I will not get annoyed
I'll simply take you to the pound
And I'll have you destroyed
You'd think all these threats would really make him think twice about indiscriminately munching crap. After all, it works with the kids. But you'd be sorely mistaken, because it keeps happening. Seriously, why are we so lenient with our dogs? If my wife ate my poop we'd be divorced. After the first time she did it. No marriage counselor in the world is going to help reconcile that.
So I came up with this great idea to buy the cat a fancy new catbox with a cover on it. The cover had a little hole in it so that cat could sneak in and poop and Polo wouldn't be able to get his big stupid head in it. The problem was solved and I was a genius for figuring it out. I felt a little like Sir Isaac Newton when he invented gravity and people no longer just up and floated away.
But of course, since I'm an idiot and not a genius, my foolproof solution became anything but that. Yes, the cat figured out how to crawl in the hole and poop, but, unbeknownst to me, she doesn't like to pee where she poops. With no other bathroom than the poop hole box, she had no where else to pee but in the deep crevices of the furnace room, where I'm certain a hobo once squatted, and also on top of the poop hole box. It's pretty frustrating, especially when you're feeling all smart, to come down to clean the catbox and find a big stinky yellow river floating on top of it and dripping into the poop hole.
So, my solution was to go get the old catbox out of the garbage, and fill it with litter, and then she'd have a separate place to pee. I felt really super smart again, like Ken Jennings smart.
Me: I'll take "Really Smart, Awesome People with Gigantic Heads" for 2000 Alex.
Alex Trebek: "This guy is the smartest, most innovative man in the world in terms of cat bathroom issues"
Me: Who is Brian?
Alex Trebek: Right.
The cat messed up my delusions of grandeur. Since the old catbox had been the catbox she pooped in, she now just continued peeing on top of the new catbox and pooping in the old catbox which was easily accessible to Polo's mouth. So I'm right back where I started plus I'm out 40 bucks for this deluxe catbox with crystal clean litter inside of it and cat pee flowing on top of it that gets rave reviews on the internet. Suck my butt, internet reviewers, you have no brains.
Basically, I'm going to have to either kill the cat, or the two dogs, or just start a urine emporium in my basement. This is retarded.
Anyhow, we have a cat, she poops frequently, and then the dogs, especially stupid Polo, sprint down to the catbox and hungrily gobble up poop. Then he runs back upstairs, giddy with delight, with fecal remnants stuck in his gums and tries to lick us. Fortunately it's easy to tell when he's done this because the entire room he's in begins to quickly smell like a train station men's lavatory if a homeless person died in it. So usually I spend the next hour actively avoiding Polo and attempting to shame him into never eating cat poop again
Me: Polo, you're such a moron! What kind of animal eats something that comes out of someone's butt? You should be ashamed.
Polo: Arf
Me: I mean seriously, we paid good money for you, is this any way to repay us?
Polo: Woof
Me: You're a gross idiot!
Polo: Bark.
Then I say this poem to him that I made up to really illustrate the gravity of constantly eating turds:
If you eat cat poop from downstairs
I will not get annoyed
I'll simply take you to the pound
And I'll have you destroyed
You'd think all these threats would really make him think twice about indiscriminately munching crap. After all, it works with the kids. But you'd be sorely mistaken, because it keeps happening. Seriously, why are we so lenient with our dogs? If my wife ate my poop we'd be divorced. After the first time she did it. No marriage counselor in the world is going to help reconcile that.
So I came up with this great idea to buy the cat a fancy new catbox with a cover on it. The cover had a little hole in it so that cat could sneak in and poop and Polo wouldn't be able to get his big stupid head in it. The problem was solved and I was a genius for figuring it out. I felt a little like Sir Isaac Newton when he invented gravity and people no longer just up and floated away.
But of course, since I'm an idiot and not a genius, my foolproof solution became anything but that. Yes, the cat figured out how to crawl in the hole and poop, but, unbeknownst to me, she doesn't like to pee where she poops. With no other bathroom than the poop hole box, she had no where else to pee but in the deep crevices of the furnace room, where I'm certain a hobo once squatted, and also on top of the poop hole box. It's pretty frustrating, especially when you're feeling all smart, to come down to clean the catbox and find a big stinky yellow river floating on top of it and dripping into the poop hole.
So, my solution was to go get the old catbox out of the garbage, and fill it with litter, and then she'd have a separate place to pee. I felt really super smart again, like Ken Jennings smart.
Me: I'll take "Really Smart, Awesome People with Gigantic Heads" for 2000 Alex.
Alex Trebek: "This guy is the smartest, most innovative man in the world in terms of cat bathroom issues"
Me: Who is Brian?
Alex Trebek: Right.
The cat messed up my delusions of grandeur. Since the old catbox had been the catbox she pooped in, she now just continued peeing on top of the new catbox and pooping in the old catbox which was easily accessible to Polo's mouth. So I'm right back where I started plus I'm out 40 bucks for this deluxe catbox with crystal clean litter inside of it and cat pee flowing on top of it that gets rave reviews on the internet. Suck my butt, internet reviewers, you have no brains.
Basically, I'm going to have to either kill the cat, or the two dogs, or just start a urine emporium in my basement. This is retarded.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Olympic Memories
I spent parts of the last 2 weeks watching the Winter Olympics, because my wife likes them and I broke the remote because I got angry at a basketball game so we're pretty much stuck with whatever is on since I'm too lazy to get up, walk over to the TV, and change the channel. If we were watching a show about old ladies knitting booties for charity, and a naked lady gymnastics competition was on another channel, and I didn't have a remote, we would continue to watch the old ladies forever.
Anyhow, I watched a lot of the Olympics by default, and here are just a few random things I noticed.
-Figure skating is really boring. I understand very well that I can't flip around 3 times in the air, or even stay on my skates for more than 30 seconds, and I also can't pour myself into a tight, faux-fur laden, sequiny ensemble without looking like Elton John on a really bloated and extra gay day. That said, it's still boring, and the programs are way too long. The skaters spend an inordinate amount of time skating around vogueing and flapping their arms, and not enough time flipping and spinning in 4000 circles without getting dizzy somehow. And the top American competitor, Rachel Flatt, looked like Jim Valvano. Couldn't we have gotten somebody less atrocious looking?
-Dick Button has to be 80, but he looks very young, and speaks very eloquently, not the slow, slurred version of English that many 80 year old's talk. But why was this young acting, fast talking, intelligent old man wearing gigantic black shoes? The soles had to be a foot thick. It looked like the shoes they give to those people who have elephantitis of the legs. What's up Dick? Why are your shoes so frigging huge? And do people make fun of you because the first two syllables in your name are Dickbutt? Dick Butkus never got over that.
-Biathalon is a make-believe sport. I think a crazy person came up with this idea. Let's ski down a hill and then shoot stuff with a rifle, and then, do it again. One time, when I was 10 I came up with this game where I would pick up my cat, throw him over the shower curtain, and then sprint outside as fast as I could and make three baskets. My record was a little under 25 seconds. I think that if Biathalon can be an Olympic event, then Cat-Fling Basketball should at least be sanctioned by some governing body somewhere.
-The USA women's skiers are a bunch of teary-eyed, soap opera sluts. Geez, what drama, and I'm not talking about skiing. Lindsey Vonn is a prima donna according to her teammates. Julia Mancuso is always crying. Vonn's husband is accusing the track makers of designing the track so it would favor their home country skiers. Either have a big fight at the bottom of the hill, or make out with each other at the bottom of the hill, or just ski, or do all three, I don't care.
-Skeleton is for crazy people. The death of the Georgian kid notwithstanding, going down the hill on a tiny sled that looks like it was built by elves on heroin at 90 miles per hour does not sound like a good idea to me, even for a gold medal. I think I would rather run naked through a village of Penis Cannibals. (Side note: I'm not sure that Penis Cannibals exist, but I still worry about them)
-The closing ceremonies were remarkably dumb with the exception of the giant inflatable beavers, which I thought were aptly pointed out and appreciated by Bob Costas. Everything else was pointless. William Shatner was not funny. The mom from Home Alone?? That's the most famous Canadian you could get to speak? And Michael J Fox must have been on some serious Anti-shaking drugs, because you could barely see him twitch, which is one of his coolest attributes, if you ask me.
So now the Olympics is over but Channel 11 is still on because I haven't worked up the energy to turn the channel yet. Maybe I will someday, or maybe I'll just hire a giant inflatable beaver to do it.
Anyhow, I watched a lot of the Olympics by default, and here are just a few random things I noticed.
-Figure skating is really boring. I understand very well that I can't flip around 3 times in the air, or even stay on my skates for more than 30 seconds, and I also can't pour myself into a tight, faux-fur laden, sequiny ensemble without looking like Elton John on a really bloated and extra gay day. That said, it's still boring, and the programs are way too long. The skaters spend an inordinate amount of time skating around vogueing and flapping their arms, and not enough time flipping and spinning in 4000 circles without getting dizzy somehow. And the top American competitor, Rachel Flatt, looked like Jim Valvano. Couldn't we have gotten somebody less atrocious looking?
-Dick Button has to be 80, but he looks very young, and speaks very eloquently, not the slow, slurred version of English that many 80 year old's talk. But why was this young acting, fast talking, intelligent old man wearing gigantic black shoes? The soles had to be a foot thick. It looked like the shoes they give to those people who have elephantitis of the legs. What's up Dick? Why are your shoes so frigging huge? And do people make fun of you because the first two syllables in your name are Dickbutt? Dick Butkus never got over that.
-Biathalon is a make-believe sport. I think a crazy person came up with this idea. Let's ski down a hill and then shoot stuff with a rifle, and then, do it again. One time, when I was 10 I came up with this game where I would pick up my cat, throw him over the shower curtain, and then sprint outside as fast as I could and make three baskets. My record was a little under 25 seconds. I think that if Biathalon can be an Olympic event, then Cat-Fling Basketball should at least be sanctioned by some governing body somewhere.
-The USA women's skiers are a bunch of teary-eyed, soap opera sluts. Geez, what drama, and I'm not talking about skiing. Lindsey Vonn is a prima donna according to her teammates. Julia Mancuso is always crying. Vonn's husband is accusing the track makers of designing the track so it would favor their home country skiers. Either have a big fight at the bottom of the hill, or make out with each other at the bottom of the hill, or just ski, or do all three, I don't care.
-Skeleton is for crazy people. The death of the Georgian kid notwithstanding, going down the hill on a tiny sled that looks like it was built by elves on heroin at 90 miles per hour does not sound like a good idea to me, even for a gold medal. I think I would rather run naked through a village of Penis Cannibals. (Side note: I'm not sure that Penis Cannibals exist, but I still worry about them)
-The closing ceremonies were remarkably dumb with the exception of the giant inflatable beavers, which I thought were aptly pointed out and appreciated by Bob Costas. Everything else was pointless. William Shatner was not funny. The mom from Home Alone?? That's the most famous Canadian you could get to speak? And Michael J Fox must have been on some serious Anti-shaking drugs, because you could barely see him twitch, which is one of his coolest attributes, if you ask me.
So now the Olympics is over but Channel 11 is still on because I haven't worked up the energy to turn the channel yet. Maybe I will someday, or maybe I'll just hire a giant inflatable beaver to do it.
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