Space Cadet

Lately, I've noticed myself not paying attention at all when people speak, often daydreaming about things people should just not think about. Anyway, because of this, my thoughts may seem a little scattered. Pretending that didn't scare you away yet, I'll just begin.

-The same words can mean totally different things to older people as they do to college kids. For instance, I caddy at a local golf course, and one day a golfer said to another one, “how’s your beach game?” Now, at first glance, I thought he was asking like how his luck was going with the ladies at the beach these days. But then I thought about how the guy was in a sand trap and was just asking how his skill has been out of the bunker lately. Hey, it’s not my fault all we think about it picking up chicks, that’s just the way a college boy’s life is.

-How much does a polar bear weigh? Enough to break the ice…If you ever wanted to hook up with that dorky sense of humor chick that is kinda hot, I just did all the work for you.

-Random fact: random facts are good ice breakers…but don’t make them too random, then you look like a creeper. For example, I'm not quite so sure you're going to have much success when the first thing you say to a girl is, "Snapple Fact 36: a duck's quack doesn't echo."

-One of the only good things to have little nieces or nephews, or in other people’s cases brothers and sisters is because it gives you an excuse when you know something about a “little kid” TV show or movie. For instance, someone once caught me signing the theme song to Arthur. “Why do you know every word Arthur’s theme song?” “Oh, uh, I had to watch it while I was babysitting, damn mini marathons.” Good save Rye.

-Quote of the Week: I'll take this one from my friend Donny Goll, who will probably be a frequent visitor for me for QotW. He is usually full of hilarious quotes which are even funnier because of his Long Island/Brooklyn sounding accent. Another friend was talking about this decent looking girl having a lazy eye, and he was unsure what to do with her, Donny was like, “Hey, it’s just a lazy eye, it’s not gonna kill ya. A lopsided tit, now that’ll kill ya.”

-And finally, I’ve always heard those people say how they can’t text/type and talk at the same time because they start to text/type what they say and vice versa, and I just didn’t get it. I never thought I was one of these people until the other day... The other day, I was making plans online, and wrote “Let’s do it.” Simultaneously, I was asking my brother if my parents were asleep yet because I needed to ask them a question, I accidentally said, “Did mom and dad do it yet?” Enough said. No need to mock or ridicule me, that sounded enough like a plan to everyone else in the room already.

All-nighters, Restaurants, and Cards

With finals approaching and papers due in everything,its not surprising to find out that a few of your friends have pulled the dreaded all-nighter recently, because they thought playing video games and watching SportsCenter till 330am the night before that 10-pager was due would help them clear their minds... I had to endure an all-nighter recently, and there are some things I've noticed about it... the ethics of the all-nighter

1- Once you've figured out you're going to have to stay up till the sun comes out again, you start telling everyone around you.
2- Time legitimately speeds up. First you're screwing around with everyone, kinda getting work done, then next thing you know its 4am, you're at your desk surrounded by 5 Rockstar Energy Drink cans (2 shotgunned), for some reason Bon Jovi is blasting in your headphones, and you've only written another page because you "accidentally" opened up addictinggames.com.
3- Your dorm halls suddenly become a lot creepier. It's like a deserted ghosttown... doors are shut, all musics off, and there's inevitably one flickering flourescent light showing the way. And if you use the hand-dryer in the bathroom, foget about it, you feel like brought in a personal tornado of noise.
4- You sign into Facebook repeatedly and get a little dissapointed every time you don't have a new notification, refusing to accept the fact that its 530 am now and absolutely nobody is online.
5- The next day you again feel like you need to tell everyone you know that you pulled an all-nighter last night like you need some sort of approval or sympathy. It could be completely irrelevant to the situation or conversation, but in your head you're thinking "This guy NEEDS to know."

A bunch of guys from the dorm and I decided last Sunday to make a trip to Bob Evans Restaurant(BE). I myself was a BE virgin up until this point, and frankly I don't think I was mentally or physically prepared for the homestyle feast that had awaited me. I didn't know that Chicken-Fried Chicken could exist up until this point. Anyways, to continue...
- Is it just me, or after everyone decides what they want to order, they put the menu down. Then when the waiter gets to you to order, its the clumsiest scramble to open the menu and find what you want to order, meanwhile going "I'll have uhhh uhhhh ummm OH" and you point it out successfully to everyone and shout the name and description of "Chicken Parm."
- Pet peeve- When everyone's deciding what to eat, and you put down your menu and say "I guess I'll have the Turkey Club" and someone inevitably flips out and goes "What wait where? No way show me where that is on the menu I'm pretty sure thats not on my menu I think our menus are different Did we get the same menu Lemme see your menu."
-Why is it so awkward if you ever make eye-contact with anyone at another table besides yours.
- The dessert menu looks like it was assembled by the greatest court of chefs to grace the Earth previous to the start of your meal. But after stuffing yourself with breadsticks and pasta for an hour, the desserts look less appetizing then another hot dog to Kobayashi after the Nathan's contest.

Finally, its Christmas season. Hooray. If you haven't noticed the Christmas music in every store, on the radio, the random people in Santa suits walking around, tons of lights, too many sales, and people-trampling store-frenzies(ala Walmart), families' Christmas cards start arriving to your home. I swear these cards have way more thought put into them than anything...
- I bet most people rip through the stack that comes every day and this is what happens. If its a regular card, you go "That's nice." and put it down in the "No Effort" pile. But if it's a photo card, a whole new process of investigation ensues.
- You see what type of card it is. Just the kids, maybe a pet or two, but mainly, the locale at which it was taken. Everyone hates that family that sends out the Christmas card "Hi from Hawaii!" and they're all sipping drinks on the beach and its 80 degrees out, meanwhile its below freezing and blizzarding outside. Thanks for the reminder that I don't live in the south.
- Ever get a card where the family tried to pull some joke or theme, and you can't figure out what the hell is going on? All you know is that some one kid's wrapped up in christmas lights and the dog's hanging from the ceiling and there's a pile of fruit on the ground.... yeah...



So I just got an e-mail from my mom an hour ago. Title is, "This years Christmas Card!!!" I open it up and what is it?

A picture of my family in California. It was 80 degrees out. Slap.

Food For Thought 2: Sungoations

So since it's finals week, I have been a little preoccupied procrastination in other ways. So besides focusing on a common theme for a few stories I've encountered, here is another version of some things I've noticed recently.

-Before I start, I would like to mention part of my inspiration for this blog, and his name is Aaron Karo, creator of Ruminations.com and author to a few books of the same topic. The thing is, I've started to use this word so much, that I would text it to people for references, but for some reason, even though I added the word to my T9, the word sungoations still comes up everytime I try to write ruminations, so watch me as I sungoate.

-T9 can be frustrating at times, like I know it’s a pretty smart tool, but sometimes it’s a little obvious I just want to pluralize a word, and not just change the entire word by hitting 7. For instance, I said how ruminations is now sungoations…sometimes I’ll just let the person I’m texting figure out what I’m saying, and if they can, it’s usually a sign of a pretty good friend.

-General rule of thumb: If you are telling a story and at the end, you didn't quite get the reception you think your story deserved, and you constantly find yourself saying "you had to be there," there's one of two things wrong. You either suck at telling stories or your life is just not that interesting.

-Has anyone else noticed how the Pringle design is backwards? Garrett and I have discussed many a time how the side of the Pringle that perfectly contours to your tongue has absolutely no flavor. All the taste is on the opposite side and it pisses the shit out of me; it actually allows me to stop once I pop.

-I've talked to more than one person about this, and do you ever notice that for some reason if you have a big bag of Lays Original potato chips, they taste so much better than the "fun" individual size. No clue why that is.

-Speaking of fun size, you know what's more fun than fun size candy like M&M's and Skittles? King Size. There's a serious problem with the names of candy bag sizes...the biggest size should be fun, because if I'm eating that much candy, hell I'm having a blast.

-Calling a guy that gets with a lot of girls a pimp kind of makes no sense. A pimp is just a networker, we don’t know what or whom he’s doing.

-Quote of the week comes from my friend Fran who was talking about how some kid she didn't like was a dick. My friend Pops was in the room, and he was like, "yeah, but I'm a dick to you, too." That's when Fran uttered back to Pops, "yeah, but you're a dick that I can take." And yes, we have been giving her shit for it for days.

-This next one is from my friend Jill: you know when you see old people go to the beach just to sit there with like hats gloves and 73 blankets like they look like they are on the verge of freezing to death. What's up with that?

-And finally, I'll end with a story from the other night. So after a long night of bar hopping, a group of me and my friends almost fight this one kid at the bar because he was all over this girl that was our friend. So a bunch of us are in fighting moods when we get to the subway, and there this seemingly homeless guy talking about Obama. He was saying things like, "I crossed the train tracks from that side to this side for Obama, BITCH!" He was clearly just looking for a fight and of course one of the kids we were with was a huge McCain supporter, so shit got very heated with endless threats. We eventually get to our stop, and we walk out the turnstiles. At this point, the guy couldn't come close because he couldn't afford the 2 dollars to get off then get back on. Out of desperation, he decides to throw his hat on the ground towards us. I turn around to walk away when all of a sudden I feel something hit my calf. He threw his ladies speed stick deodorant at me...like wtf? I'd say it almost got me mad enough to want to fight him, but you had to be there.

Campbell Soup for the College Soul

Hey everyone, I'm Garrett, and I'll be joining the blog as a co-author/poster. I'm another partner-in-crime to Ryan, and together we both usually come up with useless/extremely amazing ideas. We knew it would work when he asked me if I wanted to join and I just responded without thought "Slap." So I'll be contributing as well and we'll probably end up bouncing stories off of each other since that's what we normally do. To do a small intro, I'm at the University of Notre Dame, I'm studying to be an engineer as well, and I'm on the crew team.

Right now I'm in a 401 person engineering lecture, and i believe 380+ laptops are open. 99% of them are on Addicting Games. Ironic that these kids are going to be the next engineers programming/designing the space shuttle and inventing the future car.

Also, a recent pet peeve of mine: wind. Seriously. For those of you that don't know, Notre Dame is in the middle of nowhere. South Bend, Indiana. This little gem of a town is composed solely of restaurants and giant stores(Wal-Mart, etc) mean to cater to the college student and football-weekend-alumni. It's flat. Coming from New York, the temperature was usually true, since it really hilly, and although Long Island is.. an island, if the weatherman says 32 degrees, its usually 32 degrees, since there is no wind. Here it's a different story. Recent post from weather.com. "Temperature: 20 degrees. Feels like: 2 degrees" Stupid wind. Some farmer could sneeze on his farm 150 miles west of me and by the time it gets to me it's a tornado of frozen icicles.

Anyways, I'm glad I joined, stay tuned for more.

Cell Phones: Sobriety Required*

Cell Phones have been a great advance in technology, and subsequently, has affected the way each and every one of us lives. As good as this invention is, much embarrassment follows if you get a DUI - Dialing Under the Influence.

-As I mentioned, one thing that’s almost always a bad idea is drunk dials; however, they do usually provide a great story the next day, provided either: one of the people taking part in the dial is sober, there’s someone in the room at the time who is sober to recount the situation later, or it’s recorded via voicemail. For instance, after one particular night, I was in the same room as my brother Kevin who wanted to call his friend Dan. He calls someone who says they’re not Dan, and I hear my brother repeatedly say “who is this?” about 30 times until the person on the other end of the line goes, “This isn’t Dan, it’s Dad, D-A-D.” Then about a minute later, my dad walks downstairs, laughs at my brother, asks if he needed a bucket in which to puke, then waited till next morning to relay the story.

-One of my first weekends at MC included a crazy night. I was at this one bar having a great time, but there's one thing you need to know about me while intoxicated: I am both very open to persuasion and get confused very easily. Before I know it, I find myself in the front seat of a cab going to another bar about 20 blocks down from where I was (which was about 10 blocks from my school). Anyway, I get to this other place, and I don't know anyone plus all the girls are basically preoccupied. I decide this place isn't for me, so I walk outside and call my buddy Deeds. My friend Steph answers the phone and is in desperation that I need to come back to the first place cause Deeds is in trouble. All I know is that both these places lie on Broadway, so all I have to do is walk north. Paint the picture: a confused me walking all alone in the Bronx to go find my unconsciously drunk friend. I decide to call my friend from back home, Garrett, and I don't remember the conversation, but here is what he relayed to me a few days later. Basically I had mentioned to him that I had this theory that I was a lot less likely to be confronted/get shot/get stabbed if I looked busy. He said I was like, "people see me, and they're like oh I want to hurt this kid, but then they see me on the phone, and since he's busy on the phone, it's not worth it." So I talked to him for the better part of 20 blocks in the BX until I got back to my friend. Supposedly I talked about a lot other crazy shit that's for another time, but in the end my buddy Deeds got back all right after one of the most adventurous 10 block walks back to school I've ever had. Hey, at least my theory on people ignoring me while I was on the phone rang true, 'cause I made it back home in one piece.

-My friend Jill visited our friend Erin at URI one weekend. I vividly remember a drunk dial I had received the night she was there. You know if it's a random night and you somehow know a friend has been drinking, you get a phone call from that person at like 1 or 2 AM and you're like, "Yes, hilarity ensues." Well, here we go. Not confirmed by her, apparently Jill is a very confused drunk because she calls me and immediately mentions all the people she knew when she went to some party and how she has no clue where any of them were. She's walking around this house that she was in, describing literally everything. "I'm sitting indian style in a room, it has red paint, there's a wooden dresser in the corner, there's a blond guy making out with some girl, what the hell?" Somehow I lose connection with her, and I'm left with the idea that she is completely lost in this house that is pretty far away from URI, and she has no clue where anyone that she knows is. About a half hour later, I get a call from Jill, who is now with Erin...obviously she was under the decked porch. That is also another thing that drunk people do, they assume that you know the most random things, like "dude we went out, YOU DIDN'T KNOW WHERE I WAS?!? Like the whole time I was in they alley shotgunning beers with the homeless guys, how did you not see us?" Obviously...

-As I said, both people cannot be drunk in order for a DUI to be recorded. A classic example is of when both me and my friend Brian called each other. Not only did we speak, but we each left a voicemail that we each listened to that night, and we both deleted the messages. Needless to say, nothing other than that was remembered, who knows what the fuck either of us said.

-The morning after a successful DUI, I'm notified by the friend who I called, and they inevitably mention that I'm a very distracted person on the phone. I think the thing is, a lot of the time I forget that I'm on the phone, so when someone in the room asks me a question, I start a conversation, but then I realize there's a phone on my face, so I continue the phone call I was having. I'm always told it's an entertaining event because I say some pretty fucked up shit, especially when taken out of context in the fact that the person on the phone can only hear me talking about that fat chick my friend took back home with last night. Live to serve baby.

-Finally, drunk texting is something that is both noticeable and very memorable. Clearly someone is drunk texting when a sentence looks like either this, "oyoo whtta yupoou to tnhgti??" or this, "these are roof got chicks her tonighhgiht." In the first case, it's someone with a QWERTY keyboard, and the second case is the fucked up user of T9 texting. Either situation involves hilarity; I love reading my texts from the night before because I come up with stupid shit like, "YOOO saturated saturdays are the best!" Not only did I come up with saturated saturdays (a play off thirsty Thursdays), but I spelled the entire thing correctly with subject verb agreement.

Food For Thought

While many of these posts may have a common theme or a background story, lately I've been wondering about a lot of little things in life, watch me go.

-Taking a shit is a confusing term. I mean like I get why we say drop a deuce, you're literally leaving a number two in the flush bucket, but where did "take a shit" come from? Like, has anyone actually tried to literally take a shit? That's effing nasty.

-I don't understand why when we say "That sucks!" it means the exact same thing as "dude, that blows!" Apparently any movement of air due to a change in pressure, no matter what direction, signifies something unfortunate went down.

-Speaking of that, what’s the difference between "stuff went down" (meaning like what has happened), and "what’s up" (what's going to happen). Who decided to think of a timeline of things where stuff in the future is up, and the past is down. That may sound silly, but you tend to think of things in the future as "down the road," and that just fucks everything up.

-Usually when someone starts out saying something with "No, offense," some sort of offense usually entails.

-Furthermore, if you do a favor for someone and let them know you're accepting their gratitude with "no problem," there was probably some sort of problem or hassle.

-I was at a bar the other night with a karaoke station. With maybe ten people in the bar (it was early on), a girl decided it was time to karaoke. I feel like there's got to be a certain amount of people the bar needs to attain before karaoke can start, because when I make that loud obnoxious joke, there's a good chance the singer will know who made that loud obnoxious joke. All I ask for is anonymity damnit!

-Entourage should totally be an hour long, it's just one of those shows. And by the way, while season 5 was really good, but had totally let us down...the finale was amazing.

-And finally, I hate 24, the show. Not because of the show itself (I hear good things), but because the other day, I had a really great food for thought for this column. So, I usually text them to myself or my friend Jill to remember (pad and paper? no). However, my phone was in my room charging. Of course at that same time, my roommate was watching the premier of 24 with the sex lock on because he couldn’t be interrupted. In the end, I forever forgot that thought, and instead gave you this little tidbit. Fuck you, Jack Bauer.

Nerdy or no?

I've recently been faced with the dilemma I personally face of whether or not something is worthwhile enough for me to be nerdy. It sounds silly but let me explain...

-So this all started out when one night me and my friend Dave were coming back from a bar on a particular night in which we were trashed. There was this reflector light we found on a construction site belonging to our school. Long story short, we stole it (for our dorm room of course) unknowingly with the guard booth no more than 10 feet away. So that's the basis...we got "written up" by the security guard.

-10 days later we find ourselves in a meeting with our RD, and basically we end up being coerced into a spelling bee of our building. Somehow I win. This left me with the dilemma of partaking in the school-wide bee where a $75 gift card to Amazon was on the line. I was pretty sure I could win, so my "nerdiness" was worth it. I guess I didn't factor in that I got lucky, wasn't actually a good speller, and just embarrassed myself by sucking and getting knocked out in the first round...fml.

-Fuck My Life... one of the many abbreviations for me that I use so much so that I now end up actually saying the letters FML when talking. A few others (some of which I made up, others I didn't) include: dwai (don't worry about it), cte (care to elaborate), LTD (living the dream --> it's pretty famous around my friends), pf (party-foul --> i often say pf flyers for some reason), and obviously slap (sounds like a plan...which is the only one besides fml that I actually say out loud). Some are shortened words such as: buff chick pee, buff chick dubs, choc chip cooks, choc chip pee, choc chip dubs, B and E with Chee, etc.

-Slightly off topic, but it will bring us back to am I a nerd...remote controls. I think the infrared technology in them is pretty cool, but imagine if they shortened the wavelength in those bad boys a little, and used LEDs of a visible spectrum. Think about it, you're changing the channel and lasers flying around, that's pretty cool. Also, you'd know if your battery is dead cause you couldn't see the laser (I'm a nerd so I know you can check it now with a digital camera that can see the IR beams). So, keep in mind visible LEDs for remotes...boom.

-Speaking of boom, that's a great fucking word. I say boom all the time, often coupled with the suffix -sauce. Sauce is a great suffix when played as the following: calling a friend noobsauce, saying boomsauce when something good happens, seeing what you're eating with your pasta (tomatosauce if you didn't get that one).

-So, this has been pretty off tangent, I think of stupid ass shit that not many other people would, does this make me a nerd?...you tell me.

Girl Talk @ Terminal 5

So, I've been listening to Greg Gillis' music, better known as Girl Talk for about a year and a half now. Just yesterday, I got the chance to see his work live at Terminal 5, and let me tell you, it was off the hook. Some things I noticed:

-How come when anything is thrown from a stage, now matter what it is, everyone (myself included) feels the urge to go after it like it's the fucking golden ticket. For instance, they attached toilet paper to the end of a leaf blower, and everyone needed the toilet paper. Fake money: needed it, glowsticks: needed it, giant blow-up random shape: needed it. That's just our culture, I guess, anything you can get for free, just go for it. I myself left there with a balloon and two glowsticks...worth it.

-Moshing is the dumbest fucking thing. The reason why it happens: alcohol plus the pathetic guys attempting to hook up with girls in a space of 1,000 people where maybe at most 250 should be. More than that though, I'm a pretty lanky kid at 6'4" and 185 pounds, so if I'm in the middle of a "mosh", there's a decent chance I break in half. Not to mention, I lose everyone I'm with who can move under the crowd. People just grab onto my shoulder to leverage themselves forward. What I'm trying to say is, if you're built like me, tight crowds aren't for you because although you can see over everyone, which is nice, you're going nowhere in that crowd.

-Even with my physical limitations, I made it to the 3rd or so row of people, making me about 10 feet away from Girl Talk himself, which was amazing; he goes apeshit when he's up there, and that's what I like to see. By the way, they so illegally packed that place, that I think the reason they let 100 people on stage during the show is so people don't die of suffocation, that and because Greg Gillis is the man.

- The end of the show was ridiculous with the different songs he mixed; I forget exactly what it was, but I do remember going apeshit crazy. Anyway, after the show, me and my friends met Greg for like a minute, but more importantly, I got a picture with him, and I shook his hand. All in all, I'd say it was a great night.

The Start to a New Era

So it's been about a full two years since I last posted a blog, and I wouldn't want to completely copy Mr. Karo, but I have noticed some things over the past few years, that I'd like to "ruminate" about.
I am currently a freshman at Manhattan College located on the border of Bronx and Riverdale, NY. This allows me to observe both city life and rural college life, so without further ado.

-There are some pretty crazy people you "meet" in the city. For instance, I take this class where 10 of us venture into the city, and our teacher speaks of the politics involved with the creation of many of the more important structures of Manhattan. So, in order to get there, we take the subway. One particular Thursday, a few of us are talking, trying to remember the name of a sandwich was in New Jersey (random, I know). When all of a sudden, this guy in his mid 40's a few seats down, just interrupts and shouts, "Hoagies!" Ok, guy. We're like, uh thanks, but then he proceeds to tell us why they're called hoagies, and segways into his profession, how much money he makes, and how we'll never find jobs because of the economy. What a random.

-A few of the interesting things I have learned in the aforementioned class include the following:

-Back around when the world was at war, my teacher spoke to us of the sailors that would be gone for several months at a time, alluding to the fact that they'd have no "satisfaction". So, when the New Yorkers came back, they went through this port in Manhattan that physically looked like a hook, located along the lower east side. Anyway, there would be women around this area who felt it was their obligation to satisfy these sailors because they were serving our country out at sea. Hence, the term...hookers.

-When the Brooklyn Bridge was built, it started to bring alot of traffic around the area in the early 20th century. So, at that time, it was pretty much the only way to get from Manhattan to Brooklyn, so there would be a flood of cars that really had no respect for people walking around. Pedestrians in Brooklyn became known for their astute ability to dodge cars in the middle of busy intersections. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Brooklyn Dodgers.

-People amaze me about how much they subtlety try to propagate their ideas at you. Take for instance my physics professor, a visiting teacher from the University of Moscow, who was teaching us the concept of conservation of mass. He explained that if he closed the door, collected everyone's money and passed it out again equally, there would still be the same amount of money in the room. That's not conservation of mass, that's redistribution of wealth,
Dr. Marx.

-That's it for now, college has many stories, and I wouldn't want to flood you with everything that's happened to me over the past 3 months, so next time sounds like a plan, or SLAP.