Tales Of Younger Me Suffering Absurd Amounts Of Pain - A Miniseries: Part 1

Age: I can't really remember, but it was when my friends and I considered nose-picking and marker-eating to be competitive sports.

The injury: Just a stupid amount of blood loss.

The story: When I was really little, my parents used to dump me off at a daycare everyday - the reason being that my parents had absurd work schedules and couldn't really let their pudgy little toddler waddle around the house on his own. One particular day, my mom had come surprisingly early to pick me up, and I, ever the rambunctious little boy, was more than eager to get going. I bade a hurried farewell to my friends (which consisted of some weird Russian army brat and another kid with, like, 6 different speech impediments) and rushed out to my mom's car. As I was getting in, she said "I need to go inside the daycare and talk to one of the grown-ups for a little bit. You just stay here, ok?" I mumbled an agreement, not really paying attention to what she was saying, and it wasn't until after she was already inside that I realized I was stuck in her car alone.

Now, I've never claimed to be all that bright (considering the fact that every linked word in this sentence leads to another story about my functional-retardation). But even for someone as deprived of common sense as me, I was an exceptionally stupid child, and as such, I was possessed of an attention span that could be measured in microseconds and an unshakable fascination with the inner workings of my nose. After processing the possibility of having to sit still for an extended period of time, I promptly buried my finger into one of my nostrils and staged a small reenactment of the Gold Rush.

Ladies.

I was having the time of my life, when all of a suddenly, I felt a sharp pain somewhere deep within my nasal passage. I was about to write it off as some strange finger-induced phantom pain, except when I extricated my finger from my nose, blood started gushing out of my face. It was like a mix between a fire hose and that scene from The Shining, and the closest I've ever come to bleeding that much since then was...well, this.

Being the little dumbass that I was, it never occurred to me that I should unbuckle my seat belt and take my bleeding outside. Instead, upon seeing the sheer quantity of blood that I was spilling, I had a bit of a panic attack and started crying. I was rocking back and forth, trapped by my seat belt like a rabbit caught in a snare, and the front of my shirt had turned a surprisingly vibrant shade of red. I sat in my mom's car bleeding all over myself for a good 5 minutes before she finally came back. At first she started panicking, as any competent mother would when their only begotten son is drenched in blood. However, once she saw that my nose was the source of it all, she looked at me with what I can only describe as a weird mix of disappointment and complete befuddlement at my total incompetence as a human being. 

I've gotten that look a lot since then. 

Probably My Grossest Post Yet

At the time of this writing, my 18th birthday is tomorrow, which happens to be a Saturday. Fate, being the fickle mistress that she is, has apparently decided that the best way to celebrate my coming-of-age is to beat the ever-loving hell out of me via a bout of the stomach flu. Rather than make a post elaborating on my total incompetence at being an adult, as I originally intended, I'm going to talk about poop. Which, in a way, does more to elaborate on my incompetence than an actual dedicated post could ever hope to achieve.

In my defense, stomach flu-poop is really quite fascinating.

So for the last few days, my stomach has felt like it's been hosting a UFC cage match; one in which everybody is equipped with chainsaws that they're constantly jamming into the walls of my stomach because they hate me (my more devout readers will notice this is the second time in a row that I've used UFC cage matches to illustrate something. I have no excuse other than the fact that it's an effective comparison). I've been violently nauseous and I haven't been able to eat anything for fear of pissing off my metaphorical stomach fighters. But yesterday morning, something felt different.

Something jolted me out of my sleep. It was still dark inside, and all was silent in my house. I wasn't sure what exactly had woken me up; what I was aware of was the fact that my stomach didn't feel like it was on fire. After several seconds of continued non-pain, I sank into a deep cushion of happiness and tranquility. At last, I thought. The war has ended. I smiled, snuggling deep into my pillow. I let my guard down.

That was my fatal mistake.

"YOU GOIN' DOWN, MUHFUCKA."

I felt a subtle shifting somewhere within my lower intestines. Huh. That felt weird. It was unexpected, sure, but I quickly dismissed it as hunger-rumblings due to the fact that I hadn't eaten in a few days. Oh well, back to sleep, I thought lazily. Unfortunately for me, about 3 seconds later, that subtle shifting had evolved into an intestinal earthquake, and I was quickly aware that something was very, very wrong.

Oh God oh God oh God bathroom bathroom I need the bathroom WHY IS MY MOM IN THE BATHROOM OH NO. I was running out of time. I simply couldn't wait for my mom to finish whatever she was doing and, in a panic, I rushed to the downstairs bathroom, my stomach violently protesting the entire time.

Here's the thing. I think that, for almost everyone, there's a room in their house that they just don't like being in. Maybe it's creepy, or it smells funny, or it's where their grandma keeps her doll collection and they all seem to stare at you with their empty doll-eyes the moment you enter the room because you have a soul and they just want to RAPE IT SILLY. 

Ahem.

For me, that unwanted room has always been my downstairs bathroom. It's this dingy little yellowed room with broken tiles and bugs everywhere. I've lived in my house for nearly 9 years and I have yet to use that bathroom without watching a spider or an ant or a goddamn centipede crawl across the floor. 

YOU DON'T BELONG IN HOUSES CENTIPEDE. GO AWAY. 

Unfortunately, I was in a desperate situation, so without hesitation, I hurdled into the bathroom, slammed the door shut and sat myself down on the toilet. This is normally the part where I describe, with the use of colorful adjectives and brilliant imagery, exactly what it felt like when I finally unleashed that most stupendous of bowel movements upon that poor, unsuspecting toilet. In this case, however, I feel that less is more, so I'll try to say it as succinctly and concisely as possible:

I shotgun-shat christmas colors.

Seriously you guys, I could cut my arm off and it wouldn't be as bloody as my poop was. After 10 minutes of agonizing geyser-shitting, the inside of my toilet looked like one of Hannibal Lecter's more disturbing wet dreams. To take your mind off of that disgusting imagery, here are some unrelated pictures.

Haha! I'm just kidding. They're all related.

Why We Don't Do Thanksgiving At My House Anymore

My family has always reminded me of the family in the TV show Roseanne, in the sense that just about everyone I'm related to is fat and none of us like each other. Now my goal isn't to speak ill of my family, because obviously I love everyone I'm related to...kind of. That being said, it shouldn't surprise anyone in my family when I say that most of us are dysfunctional jackasses who have a really hard time doing anything effectively.

It's like looking in a mirror, except minus the part where my mom lost her friggin' mind and ruined the whole series.

Case in point: we used to do Thanksgiving at my house. My mom's siblings would all fly in from Chicago, my grandparents would drive down, and the holiday would usually be spent watching football and stuffing our faces with enough food to render us clinically comatose. It was a fine process that seemed to be going swimmingly, at least until a few years ago.

See, I only have two aunts and one grandma. Well, I did. Grandma's dead now.

"Alright Johann, thanks for making this awkward."

You're welcome!

So at the time, I had two aunts and a grandma, and I wish I could phrase this any other way but they all hated each other's guts. I mean, I love them and all, but good lord did they despise each other. Anytime these three were in the room, it was a given that whatever conversation ensued between them would be rife with snide insinuations and backhanded compliments. We - that is to say, the rest of my family and I - had all gotten very good at ignoring these awkward spiteful interjections, and it was an unspoken rule that, should any bickering ensue, we would simply let them have at it until they tuckered themselves out like little puppies. Hatred puppies. 

As is usually the case with most family feuds, this thinly-veiled antagonism could only gain so much pressure until it finally exploded. I was young and don't remember all the details, but I'll do my level best to give a factual account, being sure to take only as much artistic license with the story as I want because I'm the author and shut up. First, a bit of necessary back story.

My two aunts (we'll call them Red and Blue) wanted to murder each other. Red is the daughter of my grandma (we'll call her grandma) and Blue is related by marriage. Blue had taken quite the disliking to my grandma, which is one of the main reasons why Red hated her, as Red generally got along with my grandma fairly well. End back story.

By the time the Thanksgiving dinner was ready, the air was already thick with tension. Blue had been taking potshots at my grandma throughout the afternoon, and Red (who's never had much restraint to begin with) was ready to take a hatchet to her skull. Grandma, who I remember fondly as being quite the badass, was also fed up with Blue, and it was only a matter of time before the family dinner turned into a three-way UFC cage match. In addition to all this, my mom's brothers (who were perpetually annoyed by Red) were getting sick of what they perceived as Red's increasingly flighty and stupid behavior. My mom was doing her best to keep things calm, but there's only so much one woman can do to combat years of dysfunctional family issues. Everyone was ready to explode, and it was simply a matter of who would fire first.

Imagine enjoying a nice Thanksgiving dinner with five of these at the table. 

The straw that broke the proverbial camel's back came when Blue made some particularly nasty remark about grandma. Red, who had been stewing throughout the day, just lost her shit. I mean...goodness gracious. A mightier bitch has yet to be flipped as the one that she flipped that day. Grandma and Red engaged Blue in a verbal battle worthy of song, and my uncles seemed to decide that they might as well start screaming too because why not. 

After much cussing, accusing and slander, everyone sort of left. Grandma and grandpa drove home early, Red and Blue were about to slit each other's throats, my normally jovial uncles were fury incarnate, and my mom was in tears. Truly, Thanksgiving was in shambles. Everybody filed out of the house, leaving my dad and I sitting awkwardly at the table by ourselves. We watched everyone leave, we looked at each other, and then we looked at the table. What we saw looked a lot like this.

My dad, ever the fountain of wisdom and knowledge, grabbed his silverware and exclaimed "hell yeah, more of us! Dig in kid!"

Dinner was ruined, but my dad and I feasted like kings that day. It was a real bonding experience.

Naked Fat People on the Internet

So boobs, right?

That's a relevant introduction, I promise. This picture, however, is not.

Awhile back, maybe a couple years ago, I was at my local library. This library has a lot of Mac computers in it, and while nearly all of them require a library membership in order to access them, there's always been one lonely little computer in the corner that, for whatever reason, has never required any sort of login or membership. This computer has always been the favorite of people who just can't be bothered to join the library or (in my case) can't figure out where the hell their library card went.

So I was at the computer, probably checking my Facebook or something, when all of a suddenly, a little email notification popped up in the corner. Oh dear, my inner good Samaritan said. Someone must have accidentally left their email open. I'll just mosey on in and log them out. I clicked on it, feeling a modicum of satisfaction in the fact that, in this tiny little way, I was benefiting someone somewhere in the world.

Imagine my surprise when, after I clicked it, a giant pair of boobs appeared and dominated the whole screen.

Is it dinnertime already? 

I mean, don't get me wrong, surprise boobs are cool and all. Should any female types decide that I'm lacking in my annual mammary exposure, then far be it from me to stop them from rectifying that. However, these boobs were a little unwanted in this particular scenario for two reasons.

1: I was right in the middle of a public library, seated at a computer whose screen was visible to any and all casual passersby. 

2: The unfortunate-looking woman attached to said breasts was...well, kind of...bigger? In the stomach/everywhere area? I wish I could put it nicely, but...good lord you guys, this chick was chunky. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with hefty women, but geezus nobody wants to see you naked like that. Ugh. 

As is usually the case in my life, my sense of decency was quickly overridden by my morbid curiosity, and I began creeping through this mysterious email account. I was absolutely astonished at the sheer number of emails from this mysterious woman (we'll call her Chunky, because I'm a judgmental prick), virtually all of which contained either a picture or a brief attempt at erotic literature. While these hot and heavy little excerpts were apparently intended to excite and arouse whoever owned this account, they all fell a little short, mostly due to the fact that Chunky's level of literacy was only slightly higher than that of a giraffe and reading her work was comparable to ripping out my own teeth.

WHY DOES TV SCREEN TASTE LIKE TINGLES??

When I tired of Chunky's failed literary endeavors, I began looking through the Sent folder, wondering at the nature of Chunky's lover and whether he reciprocated her libido-fueled methods. After poking through some of the sent emails, I noticed that the anonymous email user had also sent their own little erotic snippets, which somehow managed to accomplish the miraculous feat of being more difficult to read than Chunky's. I saw that they had also sent pictures of their self, which allowed me to finally attach a face to the individual whose privacy I was shamelessly violating (to be fair, I was 14 at the time and he was the one who left his email up. This was inevitable, really). The man was in his early twenties, with a pockmarked leathery face and a straggly dirty-blond goatee. For some reason, he had sent her dozens and dozens of pictures of him just...sitting in the library. 

Staring at the computer. 

In the exact same chair that I was in. 

Suitably creeped out, I promptly logged out of his email and did my best to repress yet another memory. This effort was doomed to failure, because about a month or so later, I saw Chunky and her facial-haired beau crossing the street. I wish I could convey how unsettling it was seeing these people in person. Since I can't, I'll let the internet do it for me. 

If you're planning on logging into your fat-boob-filled email account in a public place, for the love of God sign out before you leave, otherwise you get dickheads like me who lurk through your stuff and then wish that they hadn't. And as a general rule of thumb, don't take naked pictures of yourself. Especially if you're chunky. 

Especially if you're Chunky.

Hey I'm Back

I don't feel compelled to apologize for my absurdly long hiatus. The fact is, I am (at the time of this writing) a 17 year old male who's ridiculously prone to ignoring things like his blog. Let's talk about nipple piercings instead.

And the winner of the "Weirdest Segue of the Year" award goes to...

A while back I was at the gym, working out with a friend of mine. While my core audience is comprised of incredibly photogenic sex symbols who simply can't be bothered with petty trifles like weight lifting, I myself exist at the opposite end of the spectrum, right next to the guy who has sweat stains on the back of his shirt. Actually, I'm lying. I am that guy. 

My shirts aren't the only things that get moist when I touch them. 

Anywho, I was at the gym, pumping about as much iron as a perpetually sedentary internet-dweller can be expected to pump. All of a suddenly, a guy and a girl whom I can only assume occupied the unfortunate station of his girlfriend came in. The man looked to be in his early twenties, muscular in some weird places and...just pretty oddly shaped in general, really. After entering the gym, the man proceeded to flit about from one machine to the next, spending about 5 minutes on each one and doing nothing in terms of productivity and not-being-a-dickheadedness. His girlfriend just kind of sat on a bench and played quiet music from a portable speaker she had procured from her Cars backpack. Kind of a weird couple. Upon reflection, the guy looked like a misshapen potato. 

Women. The other things were women.

The weird couple eventually established a pattern where they would hang around the gym for 15 minutes or so, leave for a bit, then come back and do the exact same thing as before. I was too preoccupied with lamenting the abysmal state of my muscles to really pay attention to them. Then something terrible happened.

The guy took off his shirt, which was problem number one. People get sweaty when they work out, and nobody takes off their shirt in the gym because they get sweat all over everything, and that's gross.

Problem number two arose when the guy turned around and provided me with a very clear view of his nipple piercings.

...

Ew.

I wish I had something witty to say to this, I really do. Unfortunately, I don't. I don't care if you saved a limbless orphan baby from a freak electrical fire while being chased by a cruise missile and a lion. I don't even care if you did it with a broken leg and a severe case of asthma. If you're a male and you have nipple piercings, I hope you died in the aforementioned electrical fire. Male nipple piercings are for the emotionally malformed and the intellectually challenged. 

I'm sorry, I just can't do this. This story doesn't get any resolution, I'm upset and I have to stop writing.

Ugh.

Uuuuuuuuugh.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh.

The Great Gatsby Induces Stupidity

Right. I don't post a whole lot. I get that. That's mostly because I try not to make a habit of posting unless I have something worth talking about, and that hasn't been the case lately. I would apologize, if I was sorry. But frankly, the last thing I'm gonna do is bore my irresistibly charming and unquestionably intelligent readers with something that I don't feel is worth discussing, so I stand my ground. That being said, I'm writing this post because something has managed to wake me from my deep authorial slumber. This something is a book; a great literary classic that has withstood the test of time, and is now championed amongst literary circles as a veritable avatar of masterful story telling and use of symbolism. As a matter of fact, at the time of this writing, we are currently studying it in my American Literature class.

That something is The Great Gatsby, and I'd like to tell you a little bit more about it. Specifically, we're going to look at the mind-numbingly retarded behavioral patterns that this book has elicited from my classmates.

In my class, a common method that we utilize in discussing books is something called a fish bowl. I won't bother to explain in-depth what a fish bowl is, partially because fuck fish bowls and also I hate them. For those of you too debonair and suave to be bothered with clicking on that little link, all you need to know is that a fish bowl is a form of dialogue that allows large groups of people to discuss a topic. It's a dreary event, marked by awkward pauses and some terrifically inaccurate insight that always leaves me baffled and fascinated.

Imagine those fish as awkward teenagers who spend 45 minutes rephrasing the same thing.

Class started, we rearranged the desks to accommodate the seating patterns mandated by the fish bowl, and we began our discussion. It started innocuously enough, with the discussion leaders presenting their questions while discussers (of which I was one) bantered and said nothing of interest.

Now in my American Lit class, there's this guy. And try as I might, over the course of the school year I've come to despise every facet of his being. I could spend much longer than could be considered healthy elaborating on his big stupid face and how big and stupid his face is. Because seriously, this guy's face is infuriating. This guy (we'll call him Hotdog) prides himself on his (entirely fictional) level of intelligence; listening to him talk, you can practically see the condescension and subtle allusions to his 'superiority' dripping from his big stupid face like liquid butter. He may not necessarily think others are beneath him, but it's entirely obvious that he considers himself to be magnitudes of intelligence higher than his peers. To him, his opinion isn't just worth hearing; it's the only correct one. Other students need his guidance and gentle spirit to guide them through the complexities of literary analysis, and while their feeble attempts are cute, they'll never quite reach his level (and he's also an annoying asshole). While it may be entirely possible that I'm exaggerating most/all of his bad qualities, it's also entirely possible that he's a big stupid jerk.

Look at that face. That stupid face.

Hotdog was a discussion leader in this particular fish bowl, and he was ready for some hardcore analyzing. Specifically, Hotdog felt the need to whore out vague symbolism to every Goddamn thing in the book. Everything came under his scrutiny, from the color of the window of a building that was only mentioned once to a character trait that was mentioned two chapters ago and hasn't been mentioned or displayed since. Now I understand that, when it comes to The Great Gatsby, acknowledgement and understanding of the symbolism plays a huge role in one's understanding of the book as a whole. However, by its very nature, something can only be a symbol if it's a recurring thing that makes repeated appearances throughout the book.

You know where we are in the book right now? Chapter 2.

You know when it's borderline impossible to deduce what will and won't be a recurring thing, and therefore possibly symbolic, in a book? When you're only in the second chapter.

You know where Hotdog saw symbolism? Fuggin' everywhere. 

You shut your whore mouth; I can TOTALLY argue for a concrete answer to an inherently subjective and easily misinterpreted literary device!

Eventually, the whole class began to follow Hotdog's example, abusing the concept of symbolism until it was left a whimpering, bloodied mess in the corner of the room. After listening to the never ending stream of garbage, my passive-aggressive side spoke up.

"Hey guys, I know this book is supposed to have a lot of symbolism, but we're in the second chapter. We have no way of determining the symbolism of anything yet, so can we please quit acting like everything has to have a deeper meaning?"

The whole class stopped and looked at me like I had just suggested mass suicide as a fun after-school activity. After returning their collective look of incredulity, I started to feel a little afraid. Without missing a beat, Goddamn Hotdog decided to voice the class's opinion.

"Look Johann, the teacher even said that there's a lot of symbolism in this book; obviously we're gonna look for it."

This rock symbolizes Fitzgerald's regret over being an alcoholic, because shut the hell up. 

I got a bit defensive. "Well I'm not saying that, I'm saying that we've spent the past 5 minutes discussing the color of the windows of a building that was only mentioned once. Can we move onto something...you know, relevant?"

It was a fruitless endeavor. So now, I refuse to talk during fish bowls, opting instead to doodle into a notebook and count the minutes until the whole sordid ordeal is over.

Johann: Vending Machine Master

Recently, I've become something of a theater kid. I'm not as eerily flamboyant as a conventional theater kid, but since my casting in the last play I've been much more involved with the Theater department. On this particular day, I was slumming around the theater after school, when I overheard a conversation. Some girl was really hungry, but couldn't really leave rehearsal lest she risk the wrath of the Theater director. Now, it's a common practice for theater kids to take someone's money and buy their food for them, because students are frequently unable to leave the theater and rehearsals can drag on for hours. I offered to get her food and she handed me a dollar. When I asked her what she wanted, she vaguely replied "I dunno, something that will keep me awake. Skittles or chocolate or something."

Upon arriving at the vending machine, I inserted the girl's dollar and typed in the button code for a package of Skittles. The machine started to dispense the Skittles...then it gave up. The candy just sat there, staring me down and saying "Hahahahaha fuck you."

Oh, you paid for me? That's cute.

I stared at the machine in disbelief. I couldn't exactly return empty-handed; the girl expected her candy, and I was determined to see it through. I left my bounty, silently muttering "This isn't over...candy." I tracked down a janitor and asked if he was capable of opening the vending machines. In a voice slightly tinged with a Mexican accent, he replied "No, but you could probably try the front office." When I went to the front office, a woman with an absurd hairdo sat at the front desk. With a shrieking shout-like noise where her voice used to be, she yelped "Hi! How can I help you?" She drew out her 'hi' for a good 3 seconds. Wincing from the pain of hearing her talk, I said "Yeah, I paid for something from the vending machine, but it's not working. Is there any way to get it open?"

"Well, what you have to do is go to the Guidance center, talk to Ms. Lou, reserve an appointment with Mr. Brass and wait until he gets back from coaching soccer practice. He should be done sometime within the hour."

"...It's a bag of Skittles."

She heaved an exasperated sigh and said "Well, I actually do have some money here. How much do you need?"

"Eighty-five cents."

She opened a drawer and pulled out a roll of quarters. I watched uncomfortably as she struggled to open the roll. Finally, she got pissed and smashed the whole thing on the desk. Quarters flew everywhere, much to the surprise of her and absolutely nobody else. After retrieving my money, I left her to her quarter-grabbing and returned to the vending machine. I figured that, if I re-bought the bag of Skittles, then I could probably get another bag for free. I inserted the coins, entered the code...and watched one lonely bag of Skittles drop from its shelf.

"No!" I thought to myself. "I want those Skittles, damnit!"

After casting a furtive glance to make sure nobody important was watching, I chose what I believed to be the best course of action and tackled the vending machine (side note: apparently a lot of people are crushed to death by vending machines. Who knew?). Much to my dismay, the Skittles stayed firmly in place. However, a completely different bag of Mini Ritz crackers was dislodged and fell down instead.

Whaddup.

Satisfied with my display of dominance, I retrieved the spoils of my brief war with the now-defeated vending machine and walked away. I spent the rest of the day basking in the kind of glory that one can only get from tackling an inanimate object that is fully capable of crushing the life out of you at a moment's notice.

Crosswalk Buttons

So I went out to lunch with a friend of mine during school today. We were waiting at a crosswalk, making idle small talk, when suddenly, I encountered what must have been the most retarded girl in recently recorded history. Before I go into the grisly details, I'd like to preface the whole terrible story by explaining how crosswalk buttons work.

That was sort of a lie, because most crosswalk buttons don't technically 'work.' Sure, at some intersections, they'll activate that little white guy which signifies that you're safe to cross. But for the most part, crosswalk buttons are installed simply for the sake of giving the impatient and the idiotic something to mash while they wait for a light that couldn't really care less whether or not they're pressing it. By and large, crosswalk buttons do nothing to affect the speed at which a light turns from red to green. It's also important to point out that crosswalk buttons generally come with a huge sign or sticker that enlightens the reader as to what direction the button corresponds to. This is an important detail, so remember it.

Idiot-proof instructions. Except not at all.

When the aforementioned girl came within the vicinity of the crosswalk (which had not one, but two buttons), a look of apprehension and terror crossed her face for a brief moment. She appeared to be in the midst of some intense decision making, and I was very curious as to what she was so confused about. My unspoken inquiry was answered rather quickly when she started mercilessly smashing both buttons while screaming to her friends "OH MY GOD, I NEVER know which button to press! It's sooo confusing trying to remember which button goes which direction!"

Her friends apparently shared her hardship. "Oh God, I know just how you feel. I just let somebody else press it for me."

I tried to watch the entire exchange, but after a few seconds my brain cells began committing mass suicide due to the sheer stupidity of it all, so I opted instead to look onward and did my best to begin repressing yet another memory. 

Don't ever let somebody tell you you're stupid, because with a minimum of effort, I guarantee you can find somebody who doesn't know how to operate a goddamn button.

Mike the Headless Chicken

Sometime in September 1945, there was a little chicken named Mike who lived on a farm in Fruita, Colorado. One day, Mike was strutting nonchalantly when, much to his dismay, his master grabbed him and promptly removed his head via an axe. Shortly thereafter, Mike regained his wits and went about his day, sans head. This isn't uncommon, as poultry are known to continue kicking around for a while after their heads have been removed. Mike's owner apparently didn't think too much of this and left him alone. The next day, the farmer found Mike, and I quote, "sleeping with his head under his wing." The farmer decided that, since the chicken had apparently forgotten how to die, he would do his best to keep the thing alive. The farmer proceeded to use an eyedropper to drip feed milk, water and bits of corn into the tattered end of Mike's esophagus.

"Gurgle glub glub splutter." - Whatever was left of Mike's larynx.

Mike slowly became accustomed to life without a brain. There was a bit of a grace period, during which his movements were rather clumsy and awkward (on account of not having a goddamn head), but eventually he was strutting about like normal again. Unfortunately (and again I quote), "His crowing, though, was less impressive and consisted of a gurgling sound made in his throat, leaving him unable to crow at dawn." Mike's owner apparently looked at this pathetic neck-stump chicken zombie and decided that he could probably make some money off it. A week after Mike's beheading, the farmer packed his gurgling ass up and took him to the University of either Utah or Colorado (different sources cite different universities.). There, it was determined that the axe used to behead him had somehow missed his jugular. A clot had prevented him from bleeding to death, and he even had most of his brain stem and an ear left over from the ordeal. 

The farmer would tape the chicken's head on and pretend to be mortified every time it fell off. He was an asshole.

Mike's fame was eventually established and he found himself living the kind of life that most chickens can only dream of (Mike's own dreaming was somewhat hindered by the absence of his goddamn head). Mike was both valued at, and insured for $10,000, which in today's currency is a hell of a lot more than a gurgling stump chicken should ever be worth. Mike soon got a manager and embarked on a nationwide tour that saw him in almost every major city in America. Inspired by his fame, other farmers throughout the country decided to get a piece of the headless chicken fame pie, and proceeded to do so by beheading a shitload of chickens. Unfortunately, none of the chickens survived for more than a couple days. 

At some point in his nationwide tour, Mike and his crew stopped at a motel in the Arizona desert. In the middle of the night, Mike began choking. Unable to find his feeding and cleaning syringes, the farmer and his wife could only look on in horror as the life slowly drained out of their gurgling little money maker. Mike lived an astonishing 18 months without a head, and managed to gain around 4 and a half pounds in the process, which is absolutely hilarious in a deeply disturbing kind of way. 

Every single detail of this story is both incredibly wrong and incredibly funny.

Sources: 

http://www.miketheheadlesschicken.org/story.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_the_Headless_Chicken

http://farm-animals.factoidz.com/mike-the-headless-chicken/

Where I Used to Think Babies Came From

Like most people, when I was little I had no idea where babies came from. The question never concerned me much because, as an only child, I didn't come into contact with a whole lot of babies. My mom decided that churning out one crying meat lump was more than enough for her and never had a kid afterwards, so I didn't have any siblings whose origins I could ponder. That being said, I did devote some time to considering one of life's baser questions, and the theories I came up with were pretty solid (at least until they tried educating my 5th grade class about sex, and shattered my sanity by explaining, in gruesomely intimate detail, where babies actually come from). The theory had two slight variations.

Theory 1: Baby Trees

I was thoroughly convinced that babies grew on trees. Generally, babies only have hair on the top of their heads, and I reasoned that it was because this was the remains of their stems, which was very similar in construction to an apple stem. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, I thought there was a baby farm. Little baby buds sprouted on tree stems, slowly growing until the baby became too fat and it fell to the ground. Migrant workers would presumably pick the babies before they fell, gathering them in bushels and sending them to be cleaned and sanitized before they were shipped out to the masses via delivery trucks. I think at this age, I was confusing babies with human trafficking. 

There also could have been baby vineyards. I liked to keep it open to interpretation.

Theory 2: Potato Babies

Very similar to the first theory, except that babies grew out of the ground instead of from a tree. Much like the leafy bits on a carrot, the babies' hair grew out for...well, I never really figured that out. Come to think of it, I still don't know why carrots have leafy tops. 

?

Anyway. Much like carrots, the farm hands would grip the babies' hair and use it to yank them out of the dirt, once again gathering them in bushels or baskets and sending them off for cleaning. 

The end.

Aww, he's got his mother's malformed noodle arms!

Videogames Make Me Violent

If asked, most of my really close friends could easily identify the quintessential videogame that practically defined their childhood. One guy may have fond memories of Super Mario 64, while another may experience waves of nostalgia at seeing old screenshots of Diddy Kong Racing. They could easily recount every shortcut, every glitch and all  the little tricks that permeated their respective game because, due to the amount of time they devoted to playing it during their younger years, it's practically become embedded in their DNA. I myself am no exception. When choosing the videogame that defined my childhood, I'm conflicted between Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. In my opinion, they're both unforgettable and timeless classics that I would absolutely love to play through again. So imagine my surprise this past weekend when, through a series of unusual circumstances that I won't bother to regale you with, I ended up with my very own Nintendo 64 and a copy of Ocarina of Time.

Clear the way; shit's about to get real.

When I acquired the game, I was in the company of my friend Javier. As Javier was the only one out of the two of us who owned an N64, we quickly made our way to his house to play it. Bursting with excitement, I eagerly inserted the game and started the console. The N64 logo flashed for a second, then faded into the beloved Hyrulian landscape that I knew so well. The opening musical notes were concentrated beauty, burning through my thick layers of sarcasm and cynicism and reminding me of a time when the entire world was a brighter place.

SO MUCH CHILDHOOD

A bit of background information: Javier has 2 younger sisters, one of whom is 6 years old. The other sister's age is of no real significance because she's in middle school and, as we all know, every middle schooler's status as a real human being is temporarily revoked on the grounds that they've been scientifically proven to be the worst things in recently recorded history.

Don't look into its eyes, that's how they eat your soul.

Anyway. Javier and I had a nice set-up in his basement, in which the N64 was hooked up to a massive flat screen TV and I was comfortably situated in a nice little rocking chair. It was surreal because the TV's high-quality features only served to amplify the ugliness with which the game has aged. Javier's 6 year old sister (who, for no discernible reason, will be referred to as Doorknob for the rest of the article) had been throwing a fit and, at some point, ended up crossing in front of me. Unfortunately, Doorknob's foot got snagged on the wire of my controller. Suddenly, the Nintendo console came crashing to the ground. The AV cables became disconnected and, for a brief moment, I thought that Doorknob's carelessness had just wiped away the last hour of my gameplay. After recovering from my shell shock, I turned my gaze to the little girl who had come so close to destroying my game progress. Still pouting, she said "Johann should watch where he puts his wires."

Whether she was trying to be funny or not is irrelevant. The fact is, I have never been so close to hitting a 6 year old in my entire life. 

She interrupted my childhood. I ended hers.

At the time, the console had been sitting in a rather precarious position on the rocking foot rest when it was knocked down. With all the delicacy of handling a newborn, Javier and I gingerly moved it to the top of a much more secure table and resumed our gaming. The console came crashing to the floor again half an hour later when Javier's dad came in to vacuum the floor and carelessly knocked it off the table. By this point, I was absolutely paranoid and ready to eviscerate anybody who came within spitting distance of me and my game.

The next day, I took the N64 (Javier had given it to me) and my copy of Ocarina of Time and brought it all back to my house. They now both reside in my room as a monument to all the hours I sunk into it. It's been over 10 years since the last time I owned a Nintendo 64 and, despite all the time I spent playing it, I've never actually beaten Ocarina of Time. It is now my life goal to remedy that.

Basically, the first 7 years of my life can be summed up by an aging fantasy adventure game that I nearly killed a 6 year old over. Life well spent.

Idioms

I've always thought idiomatic English expressions were always a bit random. Sure, they usually make sense, with a few out-of-left-fielders, but for the most part they're relatively sane. For example, a shot in the dark is a random guess that you're making with very little to no prior knowledge. If someone is taking a shot in the dark, then they're making a haphazard guess about something completely outside their experience. This makes sense because, if you were to actually shoot a gun in a dark place, you could hit a puppy or a child, and then people would wonder why you're senselessly brandishing a firearm in a dark room full of cute things that really don't handle bullets very well. That actually doesn't do anything to prove why it makes sense. Moving on.

My wildly irresponsible guess work ended in disaster. For the love of God, don't turn on the lights.

As another example, shooting fish in a barrel is a relatively easy thing to do. Fish don't generally do much outside of water, and if they're trapped in a barrel, they are limited to twitching and the occasional gasp for breath. This makes it fairly easy for you and your gun-toting self to senselessly blow them to little fish chunks and back to whatever aquatic god(s) they believe in. So the phrase easy as shooting fish in a barrel makes sense because it's relating the ease of your current task with that of slaughtering Nemo and all of his friends and family. 

That gimpy fin isn't a birth defect, it's a God damn war wound.

The point is, I've always thought English idioms were a little odd. I usually wonder what must pass through other peoples' minds when they're unfamiliar with English and they hear some of our quaint little expressions for the first time. 

Until the other week, when I was Skyping with a friend of mine who lives in France. I had informed him that I had gotten a new guitar for Christmas, and he jokingly replied "ca dechire sa tante la cochone qui mange des frites le mardi!" 

When I saw the sentence for the first time, I got a little confused and asked him for a translation, because I didn't think I was reading it right. I awaited his reply, slowly trying to puzzle out the sentence. He replied "that's as cool as your aunt the whore who eats fries on Tuesdays."

It was at that moment that I decided American idioms really weren't that bad. And the French, just like in every other story they're ever involved in, proved without a doubt that they're irrevocably insane.

Marlin was horrified to see, on returning from his vacation, a slutty middle aged woman dining on all his friends and family in the form of fish fries while she used a darkened daycare center as a firing range to shoot children whom she had trapped in a barrel

I Hate English

English is simultaneously both a very efficient and woefully moronic language, and the more I learn about it the more conflicted I feel about it. We'll do this in 2 parts.

Part 1 - What's good about it: Efficiency

The efficiency of English is due in no small part to a little something called the Saxon genitive. Here's a small example: a kid named John has a bike. In French, if we were to express this bike in a phrase, it would be le velo de John, or "the bike of John." If we were to describe his bike, we would say something like le velo de John est un piece d'ordures, or "the bike of John is a piece of garbage." This sounds rather weird to my fellow native English speakers and I. Were we to describe his bike, we would simply refer to it as John's bike. That little 's at the end of John is used to denote his owner ship of the bike, and does a great deal to shorten phrases. The 's, or Saxon genitive, is an incredibly useful linguistic tool that is used to decrease the amount of time explaining something. While other languages have similar morphemes, most of them are expressed as a different conjugation of the word, whereas English speakers are fat and lazy and prefer to just tack a 's or ' on the end of everything (a simple ' would be used if the subject ends with an s, such as Francis' bike or Jesus' teachings). English has all sorts of little tricks like this that make it terrifically easy for speakers to express ideas in a clear, succinct and precise manner.

If you wish to express the phrase "the tank of Phil has turned into a terrifying bird of death," you might want to reassess your priorities and focus more on running away from the thing.

Part 2 - What's bad about it: Everything else

This poem pretty accurately illustrates why I don't like English. Because English lacks accents or any indicators of pronunciation, the way you pronounce words is based largely on completely arbitrary rules that will randomly get up and leave depending on what word you're using. We have nothing to indicate which syllable to emphasize, whether it's a hard or soft c, if a word ending with the suffix 'ain' is pronounced like curtain (sounds like kerten) or pertain (which actually sounds like it's spelled). A thousand different kinds of problems arise because whoever invented English decided to be a trendsetter and chose to omit the accents that were becoming all the rage with other languages. This was a terrible idea on their part.

This next problem is more of a personal irritant than anything else, but English is decidedly more difficult to rhyme than other Romance languages. Take Dante's Inferno, for example. Were one to read Inferno in its original Italian tongue, they would probably find that it contains a pretty consistent rhyme scheme. That's because just about every word rhymes with each other in Italian. However, when reading an English translation, the rhymes are infrequent and completely optional, because one would really have to stretch in order to express all of Dante's ideas while maintaining a rhyme. English' nature is that of a very blocky and efficient language, one that excels at expressing ideas and couldn't give less of a shit about artistic endeavors or foreigners who are unfortunate enough to try to pick it up as a second language. Hell, I think most English-speaking rappers should get an award for linguistic proficiency because they are seriously using one of the most ill-suited languages ever to convey complex ideas and tell a story, all while preserving a consistent rhyme.

Hauling around 3 and a half pounds of metal on his teeth can't possibly make his job any easier.

So yeah. I don't actually have a way to end this post...but here's a picture of Ralph Nader.

Yo.

Sopapilla

Apparently, my school's network went down today. This didn't sit too well with most of the students.

While I didn't mind it so much, many of the students were more than upset and devoted a good deal of speculation towards trying to deduce exactly why the network was down. I overheard several people discussing the problem, and was doing a good job of tuning them out, when the following exchange took place.

"Dude, it's because of that internet censorship thing."

"No way, really?"

"Yeah bro, I read about it. It probably got rid of the school's network."

I was absolutely infuriated. I felt an overpowering need to cry, vomit and hit things. "But why?" you may ask. Well, dear reader whose mouth I'm putting words into, it's because I'm becoming more and more convinced that humanity as a whole is slowly but surely regressing back down the evolutionary chain. Here's what was wrong with the students hypothesis.

Problem 1: It's not about censorship.

 The "internet censorship thing" in question is a reference to the recently proposed SOPA/PIPA acts, or "sopapilla" as I've come to think of them (if you've never heard of either of these bills, then you probably haven't been anywhere near an internet connection in the past month or so. Either that or you're a dismal failure when it comes to being even remotely aware of current events). Neither of these bills have anything to do with censorship at all. They are not, as most people have come to believe, an attempt to crush the creativity and innovation of the internet. Rather, they are written with the intent of putting an end to piracy, hence the names "Stop Online Piracy Act" and "Protect IP Act." Granted, they are both written with an incredibly clumsy word choice and give an inordinate amount of power to copyright holders. And yes, the majority of supporters for both bills are people who are still trying to figure out what that "newfangled intertubes thing" is. But it's not about censorship. Many people believe that the bills, if enacted, would result in the death of the internet as we know it, with rampant censorship being one of the many unfortunate byproducts.

Problem 2: Neither of these bills have been enacted yet. 

The school network went down on January 18th. Several students were blaming it on the aforementioned "internet censorship thing." The issue is that neither of these bills have been passed yet. PIPA (the Senate's version of SOPA) is facing a vote on January 24th, and SOPA has been pushed back to February following the immense opposition it has faced on the internet. Some of the more astute readers will notice that both January 24th and the month of February come after January 18th. If you noticed this, give yourself a pat on the back.

Problem 3: I'm fairly certain it can't shut down a school network.

SOPA and PIPA would give copyright holders the ability to take down entire websites based on the smallest of copyright infractions. Now I'm not a technophile by a long shot, so I may be in the wrong here, but Wikipedia defines a network as "a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information." Again, some of the more astute readers will notice that a website is not the same thing as a network. As in, companies do not have the ability to remotely shut down a school network.

If my classmates are to be believed, an internet censorship thing that technically doesn't even exist as more than a grim possibility yet has gained the ability to remotely shut down an entire school network that apparently needed to be censored.

Yeah.