1. I find it disturbing that every time I fly, I'm increasing my odds of dying in a car crash.

 

2. Flight attendants have gotten way too out of hand with their liberal use of the word, "stow."  Stow this...stow that...stow yourself in your seat...it's a little much.  How 'bout you "stow" that mic back in its proper place so I can go back to sleep?

 

3. Do electronics really have an "off position"?  Aren't they just "off"?  When it's safe, do we turn them to the "on position"?  A lot of words could be cut out of their speeches; someone needs to go in and edit that stuff in the training.

- I love how sitcoms are continually supposed to portray "The American Family" in some form or another, yet in only a select few can you see the television.  They always have the family room set up with the couch facing the studio audience, and there's no TV present.  That's annoying.  What "American Family" sits on a couch facing nothing?  Obviously, I would never want to watch a show where the actors were watching TV...but there should at least be a TV to watch.  Otherwise, it's just completely unrealistic.  How am I supposed to relate to characters who don't even watch TV?  Furthermore, isn't it ironic that a "TV family" wouldn't watch TV?

- Have I said this before?...Peanut butter & jelly sandwiches should be made with strawberry jelly.  Man, strawberry jelly kicks grape jelly's ass.

- I think that doctors and nurses can do away with the cutesy nicknames for genitalia when determining the sex of a baby during an ultrasound.  I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure if there's a pregnant woman and her husband/boyfriend/whoever standing there in the hospital, they're already fairly familiar with the human anatomy.  Sugar coating it is just patronizing.  Butterfly?  Turtle?  Ultragross.

- It's kind of weird to say, but I think that the most panicked I ever get is when I have a runny nose and I can't get to a Kleenex right away.  Maybe I'll have something in my hands at the time, or I'm searching for a tissue, whatever the case may be, I get overwhelmingly agitated and can't function until I blow my nose.  It's silly, I know.  What's the worst that would happen?  I get a little snot on my lip?  Who hasn't?  I just find it odd that out of all the things going on with our bodies, that particular thing is what freaks me out.

- At what point do girls and boys start learning about different things?  Everybody is basically learning the same thing in school, so where does this differing knowledge come from?  Perhaps it's just what you expose yourself to in your spare time, but it's almost as if there are separate text books for "Things a Girl Should Know" and "Things a Boy Should Know" that are required reading outside of school.  Maggie has thrown out a couple of words lately that I've never even heard before.  At what point do girls learn about ruching and boys learn about ineligible receivers?  I don't remember reading "Things a Boy Should Know," but I don't remember reading a lot of books I've read.

- Can someone please explain to me the purpose behind Cable TV advertising for Cable TV ON Cable TV?  If you are watching the ad, I'm nearly positive you already have Cable.  Maybe they just want to remind you how awesome Cable is with really low-budget commercials.

- In Chicago, the city did a good job of cleaning it up in most areas, but there was still a decent amount of graffiti.  Since moving to LA, I've been impressed by the varying styles as well as skills present in the local graffiti.  However, one thing is exactly the same about both cities' graffiti: I have no frickin' clue what it means.  Allow me to generalize a little bit here...I graduated high school with honors...I graduated college (should have graduated college with honors but I'm lazy)...I'm decently intelligent.  I would say that the average person spray painting graffiti on a wall has maybe graduated high school, but certainly hasn't gone through college.  How do they know what the heck the graffiti says and I only see some alien letters & symbols?  If there exists a graffiti interpretation class, I'd take it in a heartbeat.  How awesome would it be to walk down the street with a friend, see some graffiti, and be able to read what it says?  Then after getting the graffiti joke, you could turn to your friend, laughing, and say, "Man, that's sooo Carlos!"

- I know that this movie touched a lot of people, but when we recently received Knocked Up from our Netflix Queue and watched it, not only did Maggie and I feel that 2 hrs 13 mins of our lives were cruelly wasted, but we also were really, really upset.  I know you can't get too caught up in "dumb funny" movies like that, but for me, it was so unfunny that it completely pissed me off.  I hated it so much that I wanted it out of our apartment and in a mail box to go back to Netflix immediately.  Yet, everyone I've talked to said how much they loved the movie...to the point that they were going to buy it.  Buy it?!  Is there such a shortage of actually funny movies these days that Knocked Up is being considered "comedy of the year?"  Furthermore, 2 hrs 13 mins?!  That movie could have had an hour cut out of it and you wouldn't miss anything except a few more pot jokes from Seth Rogan.  I know we're in the minority here, but come on...you don't have to think a movie is funny just because other people think it's hilarious.  Is anybody with us?

- I was pretty disappointed that nobody took me up on my attempts at a Letter Writing Revival, so I'll throw it out there again.  Getting actual mail is one of the best things in the world, so if you send me a letter, I promise to write back promptly:

[I originally had my address up here, but realized that since my profile is public, that's probably not the smartest thing to do.  So, if you'd like to participate in the Letter Writing Revival, send me a quick message and I'll give you my address.]

- Some of you have asked, and as far as the LA Update is concerned, I was just waiting for worthwhile things to write about...which I now have...so expect that shortly.

- As a kid, I cringed at the notion that I'd ever want to, much less tolerate, eat green vegetables.  I'd hear that eventually, I'd grow out of that phase, and then I would soon learn to love the disgusting plants placed on my plate.  I didn't believe my parents.  I would pretend to eat the broccoli, or asparagus, or peas, and then spit them into a napkin...or spread them out around my plate so it looked like I had eaten something...or sit there at the table staring at my untouched food until dinner was over so that my parents would give in an say, "Just take one bite."...or...my favorite...eat the inevitable baked potato that was served with most meals and then hide the vegetables inside the potato skins.  Flash forward about 15-20 years, and of course, I actually like and want to eat vegetables.  I bring this up because I think that certain foods work in reverse as well.  For example, I think that there's a certain element of the human makeup that makes people absolutely despise the smell and notion of tuna fish as they grow older.  For the record, I still like to eat tuna fish, but I must admit that the odor has gotten to me recently.  I seriously have come across several people in the past couple of months alone who claim to have loved tuna fish as a kid but can now no longer tolerate the concept of its ingestion.  Are there other foods that work in reverse as well?  Probably.  However, I highly doubt that black licorice would make that list.

- I've flown (on planes) a decent amount over the past few years, and one thing that I'll never understand is how when the plane arrives at the gate and the captain removes the fasten seat belt sign, everyone on the vessel stands up as if that will give them the advantage in getting off of the plane quicker.  Like clockwork...the "Bong" of the seat belt sign relinquished...and then about a hundred seat belts clicking and people shuffling in their seats and standing in the aisle; antsy to get off the aircraft.  These same people who were comatose throughout the flight are now all of the sudden completely claustrophobic and need to exit immediately or else they will suffocate.  I just thought that it was understood that getting off of the plane is like getting out of church after a wedding.  The first row goes, followed by the second, third, fourth, and so on.  You can't skip ahead a few rows just by standing up quicker; that's not how it works.  I guess I'm just sick of getting looks from the person next to me in row 26 basically saying, "Why are you just SITTING there?!  Don't you know that in 10-15 minutes we're going to be able to get down the aisle and get off of this death machine?!"  

- Is there anything worse than a toe ring?  Yes.  Yes there is...it's called a toe tattoo.

- What is the function exactly of old people putting tennis balls cut in half on the bottoms of the legs of their walkers?  I mean, don't they already have rubber ends to cushion the impact as they set the walker down?  Those things are designed to dissipate the stress of the old person walking.  So, did one old dude one day say, "I really need something softer..." and then every other old person followed suit because that's what the popular thing to do was?  And why tennis balls?  Isn't there something better to use?  I can't help but think that the conversation of the initial TB user went something like:

Man: This walker is hurting my arms.
Wife: I told you to buy the extra pads that came with it.
Man: That's nonsense.  I can just cut up a couple of tennis balls...it'll save me money and do the same thing!

- Does anyone remember how valuable loose leaf paper was in junior high and early high school?  All of the sudden, the teacher would say those seven words: "Take out a sheet of loose leaf," and everyone started scrambling to come up with the request.  Some kids had loose leaf sheets handy constantly - you knew who they were, and there was inevitably one of them sitting within one desk in some direction.  Some kids had the notebooks which had perforated pages which they could tear out, but that was a risky endeavor because they would impatiently rip the page and not fold it both ways properly.  Some kids only had spiral notebooks and then they would have to cut the fringes off with a scissors for the teacher to accept it.  Over the years, I found myself in every situation, and one thing I learned is that loose leaf is like the currency of grade school.

- "Eye-rack"..."Eye-rock"..."Ear-rack"..."Ear-rock"...shouldn't we first learn how to pronounce the country that we're going to illegally invade before we invade them?  That's just insulting.  Imagine if a country took over the United States of America, and to add insult to injury, they consistently referred to it as "the United Stoots of America."  Oh my God that would make me mad.  "Dudes, seriously, that's not even how you pronounce our country!  Come on!  You have to be able to at least get that right!"  It's one thing if ignorant rednecks continually say, "Eye-rack," but our LEADERS and journalists are also saying "Eye-rack."  Hey...maybe we're attacking two separate countries by mistake?  For the record, make sure you say, "Ee-rack" next time you're defending whatever position it is you have on the fake war.

I'm fully aware that I've been pretty lax the past few weeks when it comes to updating my MySpace blog; for that, I apologize.  For anyone who actually cares about the absurd details of my life, hopefully you'll let me slide a little when you read about the happenings of late.  For anyone who doesn't know, I've been planning on going to LA for months, and yesterday was D-Dday.

- You know when you meet someone for the first time, and just by the look of them you think you know what their smile is going to look like?  Then, when they do smile, sometimes it's nothing like you'd expect?  Maybe they're less attractive than you thought...maybe they're more attractive...maybe they just look weird.  Anyway, I love that.

- Spring is upon us.  Summer is around the corner.  New smells are filling the air...but sometimes they aren't exactly welcome.  Why does new mulch smell like poop?  Don't we have the technology to remedy this?  I know that it makes your lawn look more attractive and cleaner, but it smells like somebody took a dump in your yard. 

- Remember taking a foreign language in high school and inevitably there was a kid in the class whose parents were from the corresponding country?  Everyone would assume that the kid would get an easy 'A', but somehow they usually did poorly.  "I can understand it, I just can't speak it," was the classic excuse.  What?  This concept baffles me.  How can you understand what your mother is telling you in another language, but you don't know what words to say back to her?  Even if they did speak the language better than the average classmate, there were daily challenges to the teacher - "We don't say it like that."  Oh really?  Well, maybe your parents aren't using proper grammar.

- It amuses me when people make declarative statements about their likes/dislikes that probably 95% of people would agree with...as if they are giving you a window into their soul.  "I looooovvvveeee weddings!"  Really?  You love going to a ceremony where everyone is dressed in their best attire…watching a couple in love recite their nuptials…and then heading off to a reception where you'll be able to eat food, dance, get drunk, and possibly do karaoke?  Wow.  I never would have guessed that about you.

- Last night I went to the Modest Mouse concert with my brother, Sean.  His friend had two tickets and couldn't use them, so we snagged 'em.  The show was at The Auditorium Theatre - a huge, old, beautiful building that at one time housed the Chicago Symphony as well as the Lyric Opera.  Being an old theatre that still has operas or other shows periodically, there are assigned seats.  We were in the balcony, listening to a very mediocre-to-awful opening band, when finally Modest Mouse came on.  Everyone in the front row of the balcony started to stand.  Now, I know I'm going to sound like an old curmudgeon saying this, but I really don't understand this phenomenon.  You have a seat…you're in the balcony…you're virtually looking straight down at the stage...why are you standing up so that everyone else behind you has to stand up to see?  It's not like they were getting up to dance; the only movements were tame head-bobs and slight swaying.  Regardless, it's not like there is any room to dance anyway.  I totally get why someone would want to stand if they are on the floor; but when you're in the balcony looking down at the band, I think it's rather unnecessary.  We have seats…let's use them.

-  I lost my wallet.  I was in St. Louis two weekends ago for a wedding with Maggie, and during the reception I put my wallet in her purse, but forget to tell her.  Afterwards, we were heading to a bar to meet up with people sans wallet.  There were no charges on any of my credit cards, so either A. Someone stole it solely for the 20 bones it contained and then threw it away, or B. It's still laying somewhere untouched.  Is there a worse feeling than losing your wallet? 

…Getting pulled over by a cop?

…Finding out you have herpes?

…Having a bad dream about forgetting to write a paper even though you've been out of college for years?

Realistically, it's not that big of a deal; things could have been much worse.  However, it's still just such a hassle.  Let's say for the sake of argument that someone did in fact steal my wallet.  I would pay them an extra $60 on top of the $20 they stole just to give me back the rest of the wallet so I didn't have to cancel all of my credit cards & reissue them as well as get a new ID. 

- I was driving past my high school last week when I saw something that bothered me.  On the football field, a gym class was playing a game of soccer while some of the girls from said gym class were doing the "Period Walk" around the track.  Not familiar?  Illinois is the only state that still requires physical education K-12.  In high school, girls are supposed to be allotted 3-7 days a month to sit out of gym class due to the general pain associated with bleeding from their vagina.  Instead, they have to walk around the track/gym/pool, depending on what the class was supposed to be doing that day.  I am by no means saying that this is a bad idea, but girls regularly took advantage of the Period Walk.  I'm talking about girls who would sit out of class for two whole weeks out of the month.  Are you telling me that you're cycle is only two weeks long?  Are you an alien?  Do you also have a 4 ½ month gestation period?  If our society is all about equal opportunity, than I think that the boys in high school should get 3-7 days to use at their discretion as well.

-  It's been about six years...I think it's about time girls stopped doing Charlie's Angels poses at any given photo opportunity.  Everybody cool with that?  Alright.

-  My dad is one of those people who can figure out how something works if it's broken and fix it.  He basically rebuilt most of our home.  He's an engineer now with a firm where he's responsible for checking all of the specs on blueprints for several different contractors...stuff I can't understand, nor do I really care to.  So why does a smart guy like my dad have no concept of how much time to put something in the microwave for?  He'll toss in some leftover pizza, "How much...three minutes?"  Sigh.  "No, dad...like 40 seconds."  The only thing he gets right consistently is when he makes popcorn, since it has its own button.  Probably explaining why he has popcorn almost every night.

-  Why is it that humans love the smell of a neighbor's grill...or of a restaurant as we pass by?  The aroma of meat being cooked.  Flesh burning over a fire.  This goes for deep-fried foods as well.  It could be anything...deep-fried "whatever"...and most people would love the smell of it.  I wonder, is this an instinctual thing; a tie to our more primal ancestors who would cook their kill over an open flame?  Or rather, is it a learned behavior, where we recognize the smell as something we've had and enjoyed previously?  Either way, I love the smell of meat cooking.

-  Since I bought my new car last December, I've passed a couple of milestones and completely missed them.  The first was when I was driving and I noticed that I only had seven miles left until I hit 10,000.  I told myself that I wanted to remember where I was when the odometer clicked over to the fifth digit.  I dazed off.  I looked down when it was 10,008.  Dang it.  I was driving two days ago when I saw that I was at 11,109...just 12 miles away from a very good wish opportunity.  I next looked down when it was 11,113.  Crap.  The next time my odometer is going to read all the same digit is 22,222.  I could be dead by then.

-  This happened about a year ago, but I was reminded of it the other day.  I was in a crappy local bar; the kind with people from your high school who you never care to see again.  While I was there, I was cornered by this guy whom I didn't know.  He came up to me as if he had something extremely important to say and asked, "Do you believe in time travel?" 

I didn't know how to respond, nor did I care. 

"'Cause I was watching this special on some cable channel.  Man, it's awesome!  Think about what you could do if you could time travel!  You could rule the world!"

Me - "Yeah, pretty amazing."

"Dude, if you went way back in time, you'd know about the technology, so you'd be the most powerful man on the planet!"

Me - "Yeah, but you wouldn't be able to do much.  There wouldn't be any cities built.  It would be pretty boring."

"That's why you'd bring a bunch of scientists with you and engineers and stuff...they'd build the city and you could just rule over everybody."

Me - "But why would they let you rule over them?  Couldn't one of them just kill you and take over power?"

"NO WAY DUDE!  'Cause they'd be totally cool with you.  You'd just bring cool people."

Me - "Ok."

"So, would you go back in time?"

Me - "I don't really know."

"Come one...you'd be the most powerful man in the world!"

Me - "I don't really care about that."

"DUDE!  Tell me you wouldn't go back in time!!!"

Did I mention that I didn't know the guy's name?