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.