It's an evolution

I'm a blogger. All I had to do was sign up for an account, and learn how to use a keyboard. That's really the only qualification necessary. That's all you have to do to spit venom across the world wide web. I can reach a world wide audience with no credentials. But it's not my fault that's just the way the world works now.
To reach a world wide audience twenty or even ten years ago, you had to get a journalism degree. Or become a broadcast major, and minor in journalism. You had to learn ethics, and ethics in journalism. To report on something, you actually had to go to the event.
I can understand why professional writers take offense to the blog-o-sphere. Because we don't have to go anywhere. We can sit in our underwear, click on a you tube video and report on any event in the world that we want to. Even if we're doing so from a location nowhere near the actual story. We don't have to do any legwork that we don't want to do.
If another blog, or a commercial web-news site has done the work for us, we can just link to it. We don't even give them credit sometimes.
If you ask anybody over 50 years of age how they get their news they will tell you they read all about it in the morning paper. Anyone under 40 is basically 80% Internet, and the ages between are some mix of Internet TV and newspaper. I understand why professional writers despise Internet writers. Because we're diminishing their medium. We're a bunch of crack-shot amatures who occasionally through nostalgia and dumb luck reach larger audiences than they ever will, even though they happen to be a 15 year veteran of a very popular national publication.
It is because of blogs, that all newspapers will cease to exist in x amount of time. I say ten years, and they're done. By that time, even older people will have made the switch to at least Television, and probably toward the Internet.
I say good riddance. But I say it in the nicest way possible. Those professionals will have to find a way to co-habituate the blog-o-sphere or stand in an unemployment line. Every time there is a new idea in society there are people who are against it, because humans are creatures of habit. If you're used to sipping your coffee and flipping through the morning paper, you don't want to sip your coffee in front of a computer screen.
What does this cultural switch mean for humanity though? If you count on the Internet to get your news, are you really getting it from reputable sources? I have never broke a news story on this blog, because I am not a journalist. But there are bloggers out there who actually think they are a barer of news. Even though they don't understand the responsibilities that being a barer of news carries. And for better or for worse people are reading them more vigorously than they ever read a news paper. Possibly because of the sheer volume of entries that they can read from any one specific blogger. Bloggers are not competing for a limited amount of space, like professionals in news rooms do. When you have a blog, "every thing's in" every hiccup. You're the editor after all, and you love yourself.
This may be un-self serving because I am a blogger myself, but I dread the day when all there will be to read about any subject casually (without buying a text book) will be blogs. There are many blogs that I read, and I'm always looking for new ones, but I always keep these things in mind.

A) Who is this person? What do they stand for?
B) How good is the writing? Is it really that captivating? Or am I just attracted to the color scheme?
C) How did they get this information? Do they really know about the thing they're talking about?
D) Could I be getting this story another way? Is this the only place this information exists?

For the most part I don't read "news blogs" because of these reasons. Nobody who blogs about "current events or headline news" actually went there, or actually knows anything more than a major news network has told them.
And I think that's the exact reason that I like the kinds of blogs that I do read. They're real people writing about the real things that they know about. The things that happen to them, and how that makes or breaks them as an individual. When people drift too far from themselves or from themselves interacting with their own specific reality (be it a political rant, or social concern) I tend to change the channel.
Which is why I think that blogs are getting a bad rap in the professional media. Because professional writers, fail to distinguish between personal blogs, and agenda news driven blogs. A personal blog, deals with the person and their life. And if there are topical issues of debate or "news" that come up in a personal blog, then the reader can easily make the distinction in their head that this is not "news" it's mere speculation by an author they like. Which I think has a valid place not only on the Internet but in society.
Which is why I think there is a place for those professional writers and also a place for us johnny come bloggers. Because it's their job to give perspective on things greater than themselves. But not out of spite, or out of anything, other than their editor. They have a budget, and press pass, and those things still mean something. They're not stuck in their basement all day, they're out there risking things, sometimes even their own life. To give us an unbiased review of what their own two eyeballs have seen.
Let's leave the news to the professionals. And let's keep writing about ourselves. At least for me that's what I'm here for. Is for you. You know; I'm interested in you. Keep it up.

Illegal Couch Activity

I was just involved in a couch dump. If you're not familiar with a good old fashioned couch dump, let's get you up to speed.

You have a couch.

You don't want it anymore.

You don't want to pay to dispose of it.

So what do you do?

Well you dump it somewhere.

A lot of people gasp at that thought. "Well where would I, place a couch?"

It doesn't really matter where you place your couch.




So long as you put it somewhere, where nobody sees you put it there.

Tonight, we put it behind a building, no wait let's call it a church because that's what it was.




And felt that it was such a good hiding place, we stuck a mattress there too.

The best part about couch dumping is the conversation after you're done. All of the justifications for doing what was done, are being discussed.

"Well.... at least someone will get it"

"Well it's just a couch, and a mattress, how much trouble could I get in?"

"Hey the city comes 5 times a year, to take their big trash."

"Yeah the city!"

"fucking city rules bro."

"I'm afraid you're mistaken my friend..."

"Odoyle Rules"

"Indeed they do."

Could Somebody get Marlon Brando a condom?

Seriously, I think he needs one.

I watched Mr. Brando's biography on the biography channel the other night. He had a whole two hours devoted to him. And they had to cram a lot of information in there. I bet it could have been two more hours.

One recurrent theme in his life stood out above all the rest. The dood wasn't into pulling out. He never was. He has like 14 children that he will admit to. And there are rumors of dozens more. And after watching this bang-o-mentary I wouldn't doubt that I'm his child now. If you ever want to make a list of the women he's fucked, save yourself some time and start with the people he hasn't fucked.

Alright we'll call this a blog combo.

Does anyone remember Lisa Bonet? From the Cosby show, and the movie High Fidelity. Would a picture help?

I'm being completely honest when I say this. I would never ever ever go black. But for Lisa, I would never, ever ever go back.

I used to play Dungeons and Dragons

I was talking to my brother a few nights ago, and we were talking about Brian Bean. Which got me thinking about things a few days later that me and Brian used to do together. Which made me think of a story so funny, that it just had to be blogged about.

Actually there are a few stories here to be told. And to make the story relevant I'm going to have to reveal something rather embarrassing about myself. I used to play Dungeons and Dragons. A lot, all the time, anywhere I could. But I figured to really tell this story, I must first discuss how much of a geek I used to be.

I suppose my geeker-dom was born in 1987. Until then I was just a kid. Played with my toys, did my chores, said "yes sir" and lost teeth every once in a while. Then I got a Nintendo. And me and Mario went on a wild ride. At some points I would imagine that I was Mario, that it was really me on the screen, dishing out fireballs to the gumba troopers.

Then I got a game called Bard's Tale. A completely horrible game by today's standards, but a great game in its day. You got to pretend you were a party of four, and you didn't have to be a human, you could be a dwarf, or an elf, and the game had levels. Not only were you a dwarf or a half-imp but you were a level of dwarf or half imp. And sometimes when you hit things, you didn't just hit them you critically hit them. Causing double the infliction adding gasoline to the addiction.

I had a friend named Matt growing up. He was the first role player that I ever knew. We met at school, and I was probably talking a little bit too much about my party of heroes on Bard's Tale, when he asked me if I wanted to play D&D. I was like...."What's D&D?" And when he explained it it basically sounded like Bard's Tale, but Bard's tale in real life. And that's how I got hooked. I went to the first meeting, and I could tell that I was going to be there a while.

Brian, Matt, myself, and JR all met up on a weekend, to play D&D. I didn't even know what to bring. They said bring some dice, so I raided Grandmother's Yhazee. When I got there, I emptied all of my dice out, and they laughed and laughed. They were laughing because while I did have 6 dice, all of them were six sided dice. Apparently, I needed all kinds of sided dice, ranging from D (dice) 3 to d(dice) 20. When I saw a 20 sided dice for the first time, I was pretty impressed. They let me borrow some for the first meeting, and I got my own set of oddly shaped plastic fate changers at a later time.

Then we made my character. Which is the most important day of your life, when you're role playing. It was on that day that Fargle Fire Dwarf was born. He had the class of a warrior, and the intellect of a dim light bulb. You see I rolled a very high score for strength, and a very low roll for intellect. At times I would need an Angel of Understanding to explain things to me. Some would say of Fargle after he roamed through their nook, "Now that deaf dumb mute, could sure swing that ax."

And so I was this undernourished mind, for the next three summers. And I kind of was a spaz when I was 8-10, so I think everyone enjoyed me playing the part of the retarded Dwarf, because I would always respond to questions with a harpooned stutter.

We campaigned for years, just the four of us, in the basement of Brian Bean's house. And some good and bad times were had. Sometimes, when you're role playing, people become very very stubborn. Because they're all imagining, and trying to tell a story, and a lot of ego's get hot and heavy.

I think when we all got into the Eighth grade we realized that maybe we were growing out of playing Dungeons and Dragons. Girls were growing breasts, something called The Play Station was coming out in September, and there was a lot more shit going on in our lives than a few years prior. We had to stop, and I think everyone could feel it in the air.

The last time I played a little D&D was the last time. And we didn't even play. Everyone wanted to do something else. But what? We ventured outside and found out something about Brian's house. We had been going over there for over 3 years, but had never noticed this before. He lived on the top of a Giant gorge. It was at least 800 feet to the bottom of it. And because we had been playing that shitty game, we had all never seen it before. There was a giant hole in the earth, that we never ever knew about.

JR and myself start rolling down the sides of it, about 50 feet at a time, not caring what we ran into. Everyone started doing that, after they saw how fast we could get going. Then after we were all just laying on the side of the hill, breathless from actual physical activity, we saw something else. There was a trail that we could go down.

We decided to walk it, and see where it lead. We were still a party of four weren't we? So off we went. Not as dwarfs or Imps, but as tweens. And we may have not been the coolest or the hippest kids around, but we were the only ones headed somewhere down that dusty road at that moment in the united universe. In fact we were about as un-cool or groovy as you could possibly get. We were role-players, and little did we know it, we were about to become ......well cooler than role-players.

It's a very steep slope the trail is on. It looks as if it goes down the entire giant hill. While we walk it we find that it's nearly impossible to just walk, without falling. So one of us gets this Bootsy ass idea to start running. The rest of us who were either too scared to be left behind, or viscerally chasing after him, started running too. When you run down this hill you are like a Cheetah without gravity. Only the twinkle-toes of your feet touch the ground, as you zoom. And you don't know what's ahead of you, if you had to stop you couldn't, and you don't care. Because for once in your life you don't care. You've never ran like this before.

And as we make our way racing toward the finish line, we see it in the form of a cliff. There was a little place at the very last second that if you really thought about turning off you could. But you still might break your legs if you do that. There wasn't much of a choice, in how you got to be punished. Reckoning would soon follow. The only decision that we got to make was how we faced it.

There were those of us that sped up near the cliff's edge and those of us that didn't. I don't want to call anyone out, but I sped up. And while other's stood huffing and puffing, at the top of the cliff, I spent if barrel rolling, summer-saluting in time. I landed on a nice little tree, one the perfect size to break my fall.

As I lay there feeling the pain of a slightly sore shoulder, I couldn't stop laughing. I haven't looked at a dice since.

It was shocking

I work with electricity. I've never been afraid of it. It's probably the most dangerous thing that I work around. I'm not an ax man or an ice road trucker. I don't have to worry about real hazards. Electricity usually works how it is supposed to, and so after a while you stop worrying about it.
Yesterday I had an encounter with electricity, which was rather interesting. I was parking a scissor lift, and plugging it into to a 12ov circuit to charge it. While doing this, I had the ac chord in my right hand, and with my left one, I completed the circuit against the metal lift. When you are working with electricity, it is generally a good idea, to only use one hand. That way what happened to me, won't happen to you.
Your body is 70% water. Water is a great conductor of electricity. Anyone who has ever committed suicide with a toaster, in the bathtub, could tell you this. If only they could talk. Water molecules are very stringy and they always stick together. There is practically no resistance.
So as I touch the metal lift, with my left hand, while holding a broken ac chord in my right that just happens to be plugged into a 120-v 20amp circuit, my body was a perfect conductor of electricity. You may think I'm an idiot for doing what I did. The truth is, I've done this a million times before, because as I stated earlier electricity always works the way it is supposed to, so you stop thinking about it.
So I wasn't thinking about it, I was thinking about the next thing I was going to do. As I look down, at my hand a rather bright arcing bolt of electricity reached out and "tagged" me. Luckily for me, I hadn't plugged in the lift yet. There would have been 10-12amps through my body if I had. Amps are what kills people, not volts. Luckily I just had around 120-volts go through me quickly, for like 2 seconds, until I moved my hand away. It didn't even really phase me, and I kept doing what I was doing. I guess it takes electricity a few moments to attack.
About 5 seconds after the arc left my body, I fell to the floor. I just sort of lost control of myself for what I think was a few seconds. I just collapsed. And then I came to. I was really weirded out. It is hard to explain, and I still cannot wrap my mind around the sensations I was experiencing. A co-worker that saw what had happened, and who had heard the "pop"ran over to me with some water.
When you get electrocuted, you need about 25 minutes to recover completely. Unless you're dead. Then even after 25 minutes you'll still be just a fried corpse. 120-v is nowhere near fatal. Actually you can have many thousands of volts in your body, and be fine. If a couple of amp's sneak in though, you could die. Like I said before the amps are fatal.
It was a little scary at first. Only because it had never happened to me before, and I was feeling really out of sorts. After I calmed down, it was all better. You know that phrase "I was scared shit-less?" It is a cliche thing to say, but it actually has real meaning. After I went to the restroom, I felt much better. :)

This is my new blog

You've probably been reading my Myspace.com blog, or you're a close personal friend of mine, if you're reading this anyway. So I won't waste your time with introductions. You know me. And if you don't there isn't much to me anyway. Just a few house keeping details and then you can get onto the blog.

a) This will be the blog from now on. It will be here. Not "there." Let's all make commitments to never go "there" again.

b) I've uploaded a few of the best of the best from "there" to tide you over until I write more for "here".

c) So sit back and enjoy a few laughs from the past. Oh yea and welcome to my new blog fuckers.

Barber Shop Blues

I've got to look corporate for my interview tomorrow. I've been letting the hair grow to a nice hippy mop, and I was sad to see it go. So I find this little barber shop, and sit there and read Men's Health as there's no penthouse forums to browse.

This barber is fucking slow, but after waiting for a half an hour, was I really going to leave?

Years pass, governments are formed, generations of mankind pass before my eyes. I'm reading relationship advice, from guys who obviously have no clue. I hear razors clipping in the background.

I'm reading about how to survive a break-up. My strategy for the longest time has been to avoid relationships at all costs. Apparently if I were to meet a girl, and we were to become a hot item, and then she dumped me (no fuck that it's my blog I dump her) I should completely erase her from my life. Take all of her belongings down to good will or have a mutual friend take them back to her. And I shouldn't let her talk me into "being friends" because if she wasn't cool with me, after all of that time, then I should move on. I should erase that desktop picture of us in Costa Rica, and look up other hot girls in bikinis on the Internet. I should get out and go to the gym, and not drink my problems away. I should get on with my life.

Who are these men that need to read this article I'm wondering? How small is there cock? Why do they feel they need to define themselves through women? Girls are great don't get me wrong. I've always been a big fan. But how close can you really get to someone? Don't they know that they're going to die alone? You can't become one with another person, and I'm pretty sure that love doesn't exist. Don't they know this? It seems to me that this magazine is pretty girly. Maybe I should be writing articles for a similar publication. Telling men to not let women claim them. To not let the upswing from the women's movement sweep them from their throne. To eat raw meat sometimes because it's good for you. To do some fucking push-ups. To continue being men like our fathers were and their fathers were. To walk tall and carry that big stick. To stop taking penis enhancement medication, and how to impress girls with the giant bulge that is your ego and your confidence. Tell them that being completely buff and ripped isn't how men are supposed to look. That self image starts in the mind, and that when you break up with a girl, that you obviously were co-dependant on, that you should bang her sister and or room mate.

Then I read yet another article giving advice on how to meet that girl. The girl that just broke your heart on page 49. Well we find out how to meet her on page 67. There was a lot of good advice in that column, if you want to trick a girl, make her think you're a man, and then wonder why girls always leave you. I've got an idea as to why they leave you, because you put out this big front, but then you're not a man underneath it all. Because men don't read magazines to get advice on meeting women. Because the only time real men ever read a magazine without centerfolds is when they're in the slowest barber shop ever. How much hair did this guy have when he came in I wonder?

So I finally hear the clipper stop in the background. And 7,000 scissor clips later, it's my turn. I wonder if I've already missed my interview tomorrow as I sink into the chair and get tucked in. For the entire time I was waiting for my "world's longest hair-cut" not a soul had entered the shop. As the barber starts slicing my mop, this dark skinned "male" enters. He sits in a chair very close to the one I'm getting my hair cut in. And he, just sits there. I want to scream at him, "hey dood it's going to be hours maybe you ought to pick up one of them there magazines." But what does this Nancy Boy do? He sits there the entire time, and watches me get my hair cut. Which was kind of weirding me out. Then to make matters worse the barber keeps turning my chair towards his. And this flint won't stop locking eyes with me. It was getting very awkward, except not for him. As if my hair cut was the most interesting thing he had ever seen. I'm obviously, to anyone who understands the subtleties of body language telling him to fuck off. But he just kept staring. I mean come on dood.

Am I un-normal? Would that weird anyone else out? Having to sit there three feet from somebody, who's staring at you get a hair-cut? Even if I was the best looking thing in the world to him, that still wouldn't be normal would it? And if he was seeking my number, he was going about it all the wrong ways. (ha)

Anyway somebody get back to me with a similar story to make me laugh or something.