Baseball, We Need to Talk... It's Not You, It's Me.

I wanted baseball to be innocent again.  I needed baseball to be innocent again.  I hoped that baseball was innocent again.  And eventually, I believed that baseball was innocent again.  But this week went and showed me that I had been naive and gullible once again.  I felt a small pang of the loss of innocence coming from Pujols leaving the World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals, a franchise he played his entire career with (including minors), to pursue greener (get it?) pastures in Los Angeles with the Angels.  But that wasn't too much pain for me, because I had already come to the conclusion before that players are not fans, their job is to play baseball and make the most money while they are at it, they are human beings and as we all know, everybody has their selling price.  Pujols happened to find an offer that he felt was best for himself and his future, and human nature would not allow him to give up his personal happiness for the happiness of others.  While I don't want to condemn Pujols for being a human, cases like this show us how precious players like Craig Biggio, Chipper Jones and Joe Mauer are playing their entire careers with a single team, and even going as far to giving their career franchises a hometown discount.  That's not what a player would do, its what a fan would do.

Human nature at it's purest.

But once I got over this and maintained a large proportion of my baseball innocence, last night dropped a megaton bomb on everything I wanted to believe, and the irony of No Doubt's song Ex-Girlfriend playing on my shuffle right now is the perfect analogy of what being a modern baseball fan is.  Being a baseball fan is the same as being a single person in the dating world, you try to keep your hopes high that the worst parts are behind you and that only happiness awaits you, but you can never be completely sure.  Let me explain.   I was a child during the steroid era, an eight year old watching what seemed to be one of the greatest baseball seasons in history as Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire battled for home run dominance over Roger Maris, I remember that summer very well and my naivety believing that the players of my time are truly some of the greatest ever.  I was 14 years old when Barry Bonds broke the home run record once again, once again sitting on the couch praying that I could witness history repeating itself, even though the allegations of PED use were starting to seep to the surface of baseball, and I was well aware of the potential artificiality of what I was seeing.  But there is also one moment of my life that I will remember forever, on my 17th birthday, I sat on my couch watching the San Francisco Giants play, I argued with myself after all my family had gone to bed about how I was going to respond when Barry Bonds broke yet another home run record, his PED use was just about as well documented as it ever would be, yet he hit his 755th home run off of Clay Hensley (who was formerly suspended for PED use in the minors) which made me feel maybe there was a level playing field.  That night I got a birthday present I will never forget, as Barry Bonds hit 756 and my reaction was to run and jump around my living room at 1 A.M.  I woke my parents, I told my father what had just happened, and in the moment it was one of the best things I'd ever seen in baseball (which included the entire 2004 postseason from the perspective of a Red Sox fan).  

Its still a powerful image to me.

When the luster of those moments wore away, I realized that what I had experienced was not completely genuine and I just didn't have enough trust to continue this relationship at the level I was currently at.  This was my first time being alone and without a sport to share my time and life with.  The end of my high school years, I had problems trusting baseball again and while I was able to still like it as a friend, I couldn't find it in my heart to commit myself again, but I was able to dabble around and try all sorts of different things out.  Following soccer for the Euro 2008 tournament was a real good diversion, but it was a hoax, not meant to be real.  I had experienced the equivalent of the first bad breakup through baseball, all the symptoms were there.  But eventually I moved off to college, I was away from home, I was alone, and baseball was there to comfort me. 

I don't want to know which one I was.

I jumped in head first, learning all the new names that I missed the last two years, and remembering all of the good times I had had with baseball in the past.  I couldn't hide it, being a baseball fan is an integral part of who I am.  I was a little hesitant to commit to any specific players again, and was able to get through the PED suspension of Manny Ramirez relatively unhurt.  As the years went on and no notable players were even suspected of PED use anymore, I learned to trust baseball once again, and more importantly the feats of individual players once again.  I was ready to dig as deep into baseball as I ever had before, learning entire team's rosters, tracking standings and league leaders by the day, subscribing to MLB.tvPED use would be regarded for the Hall of Fame as my senior thesis.  Yes, in my mind the Steroid Era was officially over.  

No image could possibly better represent innocence in baseball.

Before this season, I had never been a particularly big fan of Ryan Braun, my best memory of his existence being my disapproval of his being elected 2007 NL Rookie of the Year over Troy Tulowitzki (I really disagreed with the 2007 awards voting).  But I had looked at his statistics over his years and marveled at his consistency, and was starting to be convinced that he was the real deal.  The season went on and Braun continued to show extreme talent and I began to be very impressed with him.  Then came the playoffs, which was the first time I had been able to consistently see Braun play.  He didn't disappoint, in the two series I was able to see him play, he showed me that he had more talent than I had ever imagined, hitting homers that soared distances I would not believe by seeing him, and getting on base at an inhuman rate.  I was completely drawn onto the Ryan Braun bandwagon, I was thinking about buying a t-shirt online, I was researching the periodicity of great Jewish baseball players and I was arguing that he deserved to win NL MVP despite the fact that Matt Kemp's stats were better (but only slightly).  Braun went on to win that MVP award, and I was proud, even though I still had to argue he was deserving a few more times.  Being a baseball fan was great for me, I was identifying talent correctly, I was enjoying the subtle shifts in gameplay since my childhood and the sport was clean.  In other words, I could trust baseball.

I don't understand...

Then, yesterday happened.  It was a textbook time for a breakup to happen, I finally shed my shell protecting me and my feelings to avoid them from being hurt again, I was vulnerable.  Here is how yesterday happened, in play-by-play form.  I received a text message from a friend telling me not to look at anything about baseball on the Internet for a while, so I naturally looked immediately.  Seeing the headline caused me to fall to the ground, stunned.  I didn't know how to respond, so I told all the important people who I felt needed to know so they could soothe me and help me get over it.  I called my brother and told him the news, which was followed by no less than 30 seconds of disbelieving silence, which was then followed by a series of one word sentences.  The next few people who I talked to who had found out on their own brought it up and tried to console me.  The night ended with myself trying to drink it off with some close friends, and myself trying to avoid any analogies to what I had just experienced.  The worst part is that I still don't know how to respond, I'm holding on to hope that it was a false positive, and he will win his appeal and all will be normal again.  I want to defend Braun, I want it to work out and I want this to be a slight speed bump on the road of life.  But in reality, I know I have to acknowledge that it happened and move on with my life.  The part that bothers me the most is how I am having this strong of a reaction to the misfortune of someone I only know of because they are talented at a game.  I guess that is what being a true fan is about, and I wouldn't sell it for all the money the New York Yankees, Miami Marlins or Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are willing to throw at me.  I'll be fine, but I just have to get used to slight distrust of every player in the league again.

If I need to post this picture in a Steroids column again, its over...

My Current State of Affairs

Hello all!  It has been a while since I have last written about almost anything, so I guess now is as good a time as ever to just write about what is going on in my life.  The calendar just turned over to November, and it's becoming that very special time in the college student's life where they start to not care as much about their classes as they probably should.  I can only speculate as to the reasons why I feel like this, one of the reasons is probably the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday (which I have already weighed in my opinions on before), but it can also be due to the fact that most students have been at school for around 10 weeks already this semester, and that is a fair amount of time to be burnt out.  In my case this year, it may be due to the dangerous ailment known as senioritis.

I still love Hand Turkeys!

My senioritis is lying itself on especially thick because this is my last semester of college, in a little more than a month I will be a college graduate, and just like every other grown-up out there.  It is actually a little scary in general, I enjoy being a child and I don't feel like a lot of the things I do on a daily basis work very well with the working adult schedule.  But instead of just regurgitating what has been said before, I will just link to my buddy Toninho's article where he basically covers all that needs to be said.  More importantly than my whiny little tangent there is that I have yet to know what I am going to do once I become a so-called adult.  I have never really had a lot of ambitions growing up, and I've rarely had an answer when people asked me what
I wanted to be when I grew up.  In general, I made math my college major because I felt that I wasn't old enough to decide what I wanted to do with my life, and since I was talented at math I would just do that and it is an open enough subject that I would probably be able to jump into anything with it.  Well, four years later I nearly have my math degree, and I was mistaken when I thought that companies would be excited to find someone with a math background, they mostly think that I know how to program.  Having said that I have found myself stumbling upon what seems to be a very exciting path in life, at the career fair at school I happened to talk to a consulting firm that was very interested in hiring math majors and other problem solvers!  It was very exciting and I even had an interview with them last week!  Hopefully I will hear back from them soon and it will be a positive response, but if not I think I'll manage to come out okay.

Aww shit!  I could have just learned math from this picture!

While waiting to hear back about the job I've found that I have come across two new addictions (well, one is just a renewed addiction.)  The first is that I have found myself watching a lot of Spongebob Squarepants again, I love cartoons and some cartoons just transcend age and continue to be funny and entertaining no matter how old you are, among the ranks of these cartoons are Spongebob, Doug (obviously on those two), Hey Arnold, and Rocko's Modern Life, while the middle two are still good because they spread positive messages in fairly well-told stories to children, the latter two are the finest examples I have ever seen of a show for all ages.  Both shows are capable of hiding little pieces of adult humor seamlessly into their episodes and you wouldn't even know the difference as a child.  Take for example, the episode "Karate Choppers" from the first season of Spongebob.  When I watched it a month or two ago I remembered it as being exactly what it seems to be at face value, a story about Spongebob and Sandy doing karate with each other.  But now that I am more mature, I watched the episode and was surprised to find that the entire episode is a slightly veiled euphemism for sex, I won't go into how it is, you can watch the episode yourself.  But for now you can help yourself to seeing how much subtlety Rocko's Modern Life lacked.

As for my other new addiction, it comes to me directly from Toninho.  For a long while he has been urging me to play Batman: Arkham Asylum, and I have never found the time or a copy to play with, but recently I was able to borrow it from another friend of mine, and it is almost life changing.  Up until this point as far as comic book characters go, I have primarily been a Spider-man fan, and have had a moderate respect for the Batman, particularly from his movies (especially the one from the 60s!).  But I have found that not only is Batman: Arkham Asylum (and it's sequel Batman: Arkham City) a great game, but it also does a great job of giving in-depth descriptions of nearly all of Batman's most powerful villains.  I think that is my favorite part of the game, finding all of the information on the villains of Gotham City and being able to learn about the true story of the Batman.  Playing through the game, I have found that although the Joker is the most popular villain and probably is the most interesting, my favorite one is the Scarecrow.  It is likely that my taste for him comes from the parts he is featured in in Arkham
 


Another big thing that has happened in my life was that my second oldest brother (I have two older brothers) just recently bought a house with his girlfriend and they moved in and bought a puppy!  I am very happy for him, but it does do something to point out a lot how much I am different from my brothers.  They have both stayed around the area where we grew up, for school, for work, and now for living, but as I was getting to earlier, I have no idea where in the world I am going to be in a couple months, it is really weird.  They have also both been in long term relationships (one is married) and then you look at me, its not that I am unbearable to look at (on the other hand, maybe it is) but I haven't had a whole lot of luck with women in recent days.  It is probably been for lack of trying, it has been some time since I have really shown an interest in anybody in particular, and I don't know if its my problem or that of everyone else, so I'm gonna go ahead and blame it on everybody else.  All I have to do is continue to be the great catch that I am and someone will come fishing for it.  Well, I figure that is about enough to talk about for today, hopefully I will be able to blog again more often and maybe even come up with some more good ideas.  So I'll catch you all later.

Get off my property you damn kids!

Return of Project Yancey: Doug En Vogue

To the surprise of myself and likely many other people, the students of the Bluffington School actually do care about fashion (which is obviously reflected in their everyday dress.)  This is shown off by Doug walking by Bee Bee, Connie and Chalky looking at a teen fashion magazine during what is presumably their recess period.  After Bee Bee does her typical insult at Doug for being regular, Doug lets us in on his secret wish of wanting to be more like Dylan Farnum from the hot new teen drama, Teen Heart Street.  The next scene finds all of Doug's wishes coming true as he is watching Teen Heart Street, and sees the heartthrob, Dylan Farnum himself, wearing the same exact green vest and shorts that Doug always wears, and it's all while Judy does some mindless counter-societal blabber that Doug obviously pays no mind to.  As we lose ourselves in Doug's imagination, some fashion show is talking about how cool Doug is and how he is a total trendsetter.  With this perception of his new-found coolness in mind, Doug goes to school planning to not say anything about it, but everybody else is wearing the same clothes and point out how he is wearing the "Dylan Farnum look", obviously forgetting that Doug wears the same thing every day.

Dylan Farnum, such a hunk

 He decides to confide in Patti about his plight, but for lack of a better term, she simply doesn't give a fuck.  As Doug's frustration works it's way toward critical mass, even Skeeter is wearing the Dylan Farnum look.  Since Doug is more than a little insecure, he invites all his friends over to see how his closet is full of the same clothes, but it backfires and everyone thinks he is just a crazy Dylan Farnum fanatic.  We are now interrupted by another awesome daydream, where we see the same scene from Teen Heart Street featured earlier, except with Doug saying all the lines, and Connie and Patti get creeped out how Doug thinks he is Dylan Farnum, and that is because he is a marionette being controlled by Dylan Farnum himself.  Now critical mass has been found so Doug goes shopping for some new clothes, and the guy at the store tries to hook him up with the hippie look, a rapper's outfit and even a disco suit, but Doug hates all of them.  Now things get really interesting, another clerk (looks Jamaican but has a deep Indian accent) comes over and tries to figure out what the deal is then short stubby Jewish-sounding guy comes to help out as well and Doug does his patented "scream and run away" move.  Having decided to fuse elements of all three styles from the store Doug comes out wearing one of the most amazing ragtag sets of clothing I've ever seen (don't worry it will be pictured below) and keeps kicking a soccer ball against a picture of Mr. Farnum on the wall.    Now we find out three more things about Judy, first that she reads crazy magazines where people dress like Doug is now, second that she actually has some understanding about how copying moves things forward, and lastly that she has some soccer skills.  As she runs away to plan what seems to be a performance piece where people get naked and grunt at each other (too young to know what porn is I guess.)  Doug soul searches and realizes he doesn't care if he is trendy or not he just wants to be himself, which is just in time for him to not be trendy anymore because the new style is Skeeter's typical clothes.

I just found my Halloween costume!

It seems kind of strange that I would choose this episode, but stick with me because I have some interesting things to say about both the world of teen dramas and the world of fashion, so enjoy the ride.  The first topic I'll touch are the hilarity of teen dramas.  The trendy and cool kids would watch all kinds of these shows when I was in my younger days, but i was neither trendy nor cool, so I never was able to get myself inundated in the worlds of such shows as Dawson's Creek, Seventh Heaven or The OC.  I found myself preferring to stick to cartoon and typical sitcoms that would be conveniently timed when I got home from school.  This does not mean that I never watched and enjoyed a teen drama, because that is completely false.  I am a lifetime fan of the show Boy Meets World, but rather than having watched it when it was a new show, I got into it when it was syndicated years later.  It would be easy to say that being able to connect to the geeky little brother Corey Matthews was the reason why I was able to get into the show (mainly because I am, in fact, a geeky little brother).  It would also be easy to say that I like the show because Mr. Feeny is the Atticus Finch of television.  Yet, neither of these were the reason I found myself so interested in the show, the truth is that I watched nearly every episode of the show because I am in love with Topanga Lawrence.  She is a geek's dream girl, she is very smart, can hold a conversation, is very attractive yet approachable and to tell you the truth the weird name thing kinda turns me on.  We would just have to do something about the whole saving herself for marriage thing.

Oh Topanga, you tease...

The next topic to touch on is fashion, which shouldn't be too long of a discussion as I am still daydreaming about Topanga.  My typical day-to-day dress isn't very flashy, I would usually be found wearing a tee shirt with the partially zipped or unzipped hoodie, jeans and my trusty Adidas sneakers.  I've recently found myself taking a little divergence between given days, for some cases I have been starting to attempt to look nicer and wearing collared shirts more than typical (I'm still not "cool" enough to pop the collar), but have also found myself delving into looking at and even buying some more geeky tee shirts.  My favorite geek shirt was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt I was able to get for $10 at www.teefury.com, which has become one of the sites that I make sure to check once a day.  Other than that I really haven't noticed any particular fads in fashion as of lately, everything seems to just stay the same all the time without any drastic changes.  It isn't like what you are wearing sets you apart as much as people make it seem like, the real world isn't like The Warriors where you obviously know who knows who just by a quick look at their garb (for the record I would choose to be in the Baseball Furies if I had to choose, sorry Warriors, you are the best but leather vests aren't my style.)  So, that is that, I am going to go back to fantasizing about Topanga Lawrence now.  Until next time.

The Furies in all their face paint and glory.  Watch this movie.

Alternative Universes

A week or two ago I was watching The One with Jet Li, on the whole it was a pretty crappy movie with a few kinda cool fight scenes, exactly what I was expecting to see.  The best part of the movie though was that the premise revolved around the existence of alternate universes, which is a topic that always seems to find itself running through my head often, usually in humorous ways.  An alternate universe can take on all sorts of different personalities or traits, for example one of my friends is always very proud of his creation of the "Sombrero Universe" in which everything is exactly the same, except everyone is wearing a sombrero.  So I will continue to talk about some of my thoughts on alternate universes.

Only in the Sombrero Universe!

My first creation of an alternate universe myself was to imagine what all the people I know would be like in this alternate universe where everyone's personality is the complete opposite of what it is like in real life.  The perfect example of this came when I was talking with a friend about a professor, we were discussing her getting help from him at his office hours, and how in general he was just a fantastically nice guy.  I started asking her how she would respond if instead of being his own nice self, when she went to his office hours he all of a sudden became a total sleazebag who makes awkward sexual advances toward all the girls struggling in his class for improved grades.  This is when his alternate universe alter-ego was created, he still would become a professor, but he would be a horny bastard who has a reputation for a lenient policy on extra-credit.  It is left to assume in this alternate reality he gets all the dirty student-teacher sex he could ever want, but enough about that, lets see who else exists in this alternate reality.  Jennifer Aniston is still America's tough-luck sweetheart, but its only because she is a massive whore, and Angelina Jolie is a complete sweetheart who just happened to find her true love in Brad Pitt when he was with slutty Jen Aniston (oh what a twisted web we weave).  But by far my favorite character in this alternate reality is alternate reality me, who actually writes quality material (other than bullshit about sexually deviant alternate universes), and gets loyal readers.

For your extra credit assignment you must play with my dingaling.

I also had a dream about a lost Chappelle's Show sketch.  The idea of the sketch was about how our cultures came to be the way that they were, and how weird the world would be if things were only slightly different.  The most prominent difference in my dream was the change that would occur in a Chinese Food Restaurant, nothing would be aesthetically different except instead of serving the same delicious MSG-packed Chinese food we are used to, all Chinese restaurants are instead, burger joints.  It truly was entertaining to watch all the Asian people standing in front of grills and flipping burgers and putting limitless amounts of ketchup and mustard on everything while yelling in their native language.  The only problem with this dream was that I am unsure if they also served french fries, and would have loved to hear them ask if I would like fries with that.

My thoughts exactly.

Thinking up different alternate universes can be tons of fun, and also finding what people would be like in the opposite world alternate reality.  The possibilities are endless, we could have an alternate reality where everyone is a surfer dude, so all the anti-society people would rebel by saying they prefer to ride small waves over the giant swells, and apparently there will be no such thing as a vegetable as all of the good farmland is a lot further from the ocean than any surfer would ever want to be.  There could also be the awkward silence universe, where everybody is expecting everyone else to speak next, so every time you converse with someone it is just a long awkward silence while you wait for the other person to think of something to say while they wait for you to think of something to say, and the length of these awkward pauses contain some kind of meaning in themselves so things can get done.  There are infinite possibilities of alternate universes, so if you have any good ideas comment with some good ones, and if I like your ideas I may expand upon them in a future post.  I'll leave you now with this interpretation of an alternate universe, courtesy of Mail Order Comedy, who now make the show Workaholics on Comedy Central.

Return of the Prodigal Son! (Again)

Hello all of my faithful readers (read: Toninho), I have taken a short hiatus from blogging for about a month, and there is so much I have learned!  Actually, not really, I have just stopped blogging because I had better things to be doing with my life than sitting in front of a computer discussing the better things I could be doing with my life instead.  So let us get busy describing and going into gruesome detail about the month that was.  This video will give you a good idea.


A few days after the last time I posted anything to this site I took the GRE (Graduate Record Exams), the test was more or less a repeat of the SAT and was just as easy.  After breezing through the entire test and likely doing just as good as I knew I should have, I was able to officially enter the life of a true adult.  And this new life as an adult meant beers, beers, beers, golf and beers.  It was a deliciously fun time for the next week or so, as I was not only trying as hard as I could to enjoy my life, but I was also preparing to move back in for my last year at college!  Instead of the packing that it is usually expected to be, my preparing was saying goodbye to all of my great friends back home and trying to follow through with as many fake plans as possible.  But time truly flies when you were having fun and the next thing I knew I was back in my parent's car getting a ride back to school (my car died so I couldn't drive it).

We there yet?  My Teddy has to pee!

This year is much more special than any other year of college though, because this year I am living off campus with some friends of mine and do not have a meal plan, so in short, I am responsible for not letting myself die.  To do this I have had to learn how to cook, and how to eat smaller portions because I don't have the money to feed my fat ass (I am actually quite thin).  This is going surprisingly well as I have yet to go hungry for a day since moving in!  But it also has the unintended consequence of limiting my blogging time (frowny face) because for some strange reason, survival takes precedence over sharing my life with millions of strangers via their computer screens.  Hopefully, I will become so adept at not dying that I will be able to return to form and put a few sets of ideas out, and I also have office hours for a Calculus on Tuesday's and since I don't expect many visitors I will try to get some writing done during that block.  Living on my own has been a blast, I have continued my trend of drinking a moderate amount every night that remains from the week after the GRE, which sucks because it is costing me a lot of money, and I am not exactly made out of 20 dollar bills.

Currently in my fridge.

I have also found myself becoming obsessed with video games that were made over a decade ago.  The recent three games I have been playing since moving back into school are Banjo-Tooie (remake on the Xbox 360), Jet Grind Radio (DREAMCAST!) and the original Metal Gear Solid.  I think video games are much like music and art, the new stuff is good, but there are many times when you need to look into the past and experience what came before to get a true appreciation for how things were meant to be (especially for video games since the technology of games directly influences what they are able to do.)  I am planning on following this paragraph with a few images you need to see, the first will probably be some picture from Jet Grind Radio, and the latter will be a video display of the psychic powers of Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid.

On the next episode of Gangland we look into the GGs of Tokyo-to 

So, I am sorry there really wasn't much of a logical train of thoughts going into this post, it was really me just typing random things as they came to my mind so I could get back into the habit of blogging again, and to say things.  There are more things that I need to say that I hopefully will be able to get off my chest within the next few weeks.  But until then, enjoy my ideas and thoughts and appreciate the fact that this post was just me trying to waste an hour.

Talking to Walls

For some reason it took me this long to realize just how interesting the dynamics of arguments are.  Over the last few days I have found myself observing a few disagreements (political, personal philosophies, etc.) as well as over the course of my life.  Watching arguments from the third person is one of the most interesting things there is in life, because it can go on for hours without going anywhere.  Lets discuss...

First the methods of which people use to make others see their way in civil arguments are nothing short of hilarious.  My favorite of which is the method of raising your voice in order to intimidate(?) your opposition into adopting your mindset, this does nothing but anger and annoy them instead, although it does work when you are about 7 years old and you win the argument solely so you will shut up.  A close cousin of this strategy is the sarcastic agreement in which every response is a prompt "yup, yup, yup.  You are totally right!" before the person is capable of getting a quarter of their argument out.

Whatever! Just shut the fuck up now!

Another great method of argument is to go on the offensive, but rather than make any comments that are relevant to the topic at hand, you insult the other person.  This is a close second place because I don't understand how most people take this route despite how utterly irrelevant and ineffective it is.  Do you really ever expect that someone will agree with your logic that their viewpoint on fiscal policy (for example) is incorrect on account of their unattractive bodily features.  Most people are ugly and unfortunately for the people who adopt this style of debate, there has yet to be shown that there is a direct correlation between being ugly and being incorrect on every topic.

Sample Argument: Abe Lincoln's hat is stupid, ergo slavery isn't wrong...  See my point?

The last offensive strategy is to give precise logical arguments, possibly with evidence.  This would seem to any educated person to be the most effective of the three strategies I have mentioned, but those educated people would be severely mistaken.  This leads me to my title "Talking to Walls" because no matter which of these three methods you would choose to wield in your argument against the obviously incorrect opinion of your opponent, your opposition will maintain the same bullheadedness about their opinion that you hold for yours.

ACCEPT MY ARGUMENT NOW!

The result of this is things such as Carl Everett (I did love him on the Red Sox) denouncing the existence of dinosaurs on the grounds that there is no direct reference to their existence in the Bible.  His main argument against fossils are that they were created by scientists to confuse people, and I must agree seeing that creating rocks with intricate bone patterns that are the same across the world is a lot less trustworthy than a book which is taken to be true in some parts of the world to the same extent we find The Cat in the Hat to be true in America.  I'm not attacking the Bible or Christianity/Catholicism at all, I would probably be very comforted to find either to be true, but I just don't see why dinosaurs would be relevant in a story of guidance to humans who never simultaneously existed with humans.  I also could guarantee that the Bible makes no reference to the platypus, and I would like to hope that's not more smoke being blown up my ass either.

"The Flintstones wasn't real!"

Sorry about that rant, I found it a little funny.  It gave me a perfect example to show that both myself and Carl Everett would be mostly unmoved on this issue, and it shows the structure of a typical argument.  It also gives me an excuse to mention that according to Wikipedia he recently held a gun to his wife's head while she was wearing a Barney costume.  It also illustrates that arguing with people is fucking useless and I'm going to try to avoid doing it, it won't get anybody anywhere.

Lets hope Jurassic Carl doesn't wipe the smile off this young lad's face 

I Got Some New Digs

Check out the revamped page for I Sometimes Call Myself Chase Robertson (or ISCMCR for all you cool kids out there), they always say you need to keep up with the Jones's but in this case I'm keeping up with the Tonino and I didn't want it to look like I put more effort into Retentive Gibberish (even though it is fantastic and you should bring yourself over to that link which is now conveniently on your left!)

Oh, I'm keeping up Fox!

The first change you should notice is the vomit-inducing pattern in the background, it is a series of bullseyes something, but I liked the way it looked and it sure beats the plain black.  I have also changed the fonts for a few things, both the font for the blog title, and for each of the post titles have been changed from generic-brand font, to looking like it was written by a 7 year-old.  I also set up a new right-side and left-side design so you don't have to strain yourself to scroll down a little further to see my massive set of labels on the right.  My last big change is adding a little excerpt about me in case if you are one of those people just discovering this awesome page now and don't want to read all the nice autobiographical posts leading up to this moment.  Well I just wanted to show and acquaint you with my new look, and don't be scared of change, most of the time its only superficial, just like every one of you out there!

I did this for you sir!

Only In Dreams

Hello all.  Once again I'm going to talk about sleeping trouble and general weirdness, possibly due to my lack of sleep as compared to my normal schedule.

It started about a week ago on Sunday night and I had to go to sleep to wake up early on Monday morning, but this was made hard by the fact that I slept rather late that morning so I wasn't tired at a normal hour to wake up at 6:25 without feeling like absolute shit.  When I decided that I was tired enough to try sleeping, I quickly found that I was wrong and fell into one of those situations where you try to sleep but get riddled with thoughts about what you should be doing instead (whether at that moment or in general).  If I am the only one who comes across this situation quite often please tell me because that probably isn't a good thing.  Eventually after about an hour and a half of hating myself for stupid things I've done in days past and telling myself that I'm going to partake in some new endeavors with my life I fell asleep.  That is when the real fun began.  I had a dream about some sort of really weird alien epidemic (possibly induced by playing Dead Space: Extraction earlier that night) and it started with a first person perspective of a woman being woken up, and in the shock of her change of state she punched the person who woke her right in the face. Once we established that that was her default response to being woken up, we met some other girl who spent her days laying in the middle of her pet Giant Venus Flytrap (now were getting into the weirdness) and that there is an epidemic that turns people into angry killing zombie-like aliens, but it can be kept in check by some measures.  This is when the first lady catches the epidemic but she is kept in check so she is a semi-alien but can still act coherently like a normal human.  This is when we hit the interesting part of the story, the infected lady gets woken up and reacts as she normally does by punching the other in the face, and this is when Giant Venus Flytrap Girl defensively grabs the infected woman and unleashes her pet upon her, the results were not pretty.  This freaked me out and woke me up, I was freaked out to the extent that I tried to rewrite the dream.  I don't know if I rewrote it correctly because I didn't dream again before being abruptly woken up for work (I didn't punch anybody).

That's some scary ass shit.

The next night I once again battled the same battle with my brain before going to sleep, but that is nothing to discuss at the moment because I once again had a survival-horror dream.  This time rather than an alien epidemic and fictional characters, the antagonists were light-fearing zombies and my siblings and I were the main characters trying to survive in a two-level warehouse I have never seen before.  This dream wasn't nearly as vivid as the last to me but from what I remember we had one light in the warehouse and were standing in it because we knew it was the only way we would be safe from the incoming horde.  It contained a lot of dialogue and I retained exactly none of it, but some action finally came as one of my brothers decided that our barricades were insufficient and decided at the last minute to run out into the darkness and down the hall to fix them, the dream then ended with my starting to venture off after him to help.  The world may never know if we found the light.

Imagine this with only one light bulb and complete darkness otherwise

This was strange to me in that it was the first time in a really long time that I have had notable dreams on consecutive nights, and was also notable in that I usually needed more than 2 hours after waking up to be vaguely useful.  The third night I tried to avoid the typical thinking myself to sleep by just staying up later until I was ready to sleep, which worked to some small extent.  That night I know that I had a dream, but I didn't retain any of it at all, all I remember about it was there was no setting, no purpose, no people and no words.  The dream was just a sequence of images being thrown at me randomly and the worst part is that I don't remember any of what they were.  I feel like something interesting happened in writing about this so I really hope that you enjoyed hearing about my dreams and maybe I'll try to tell them more when I have them.  Enjoy the song I named this after.

New Endeavors

As I hinted at in the article I wrote yesterday, a friend of mine and myself were thinking about collaborating to make a new blog that would contain pieces from both of us.  Today, we got together and along with a couple other friends, we made that a reality!  So for anybody who happens to read me, be sure to take a look at Retentive Gibberish and read a few exclusives I will write for that.  Thank you, and enjoy.

Top 100 Modern Games? I may beg to differ.

Being the video game nerd that I am, I have made looking at random articles on IGN.com one of my daily activities even though I tend to disagree with them on nearly everything I have read.  To make the disagreements even more incredible they have recently released a "top 100 modern games" list, considering modern to be the current generation of home platforms and PC games since the release of the Xbox 360 in late 2006.  This was tailor-made for me to disagree as I have no interest in FPS's and consider myself to be a devout retro game fan. So without further delay I will look at this list and make comments on the games I have played and what I think.  (Note the numbers will jump quite a bit because a good half of them I have never heard of).

#99 League of Legends
I have never played it but a lot of my friends at school do and I have watched it played before.  Pretty high for a free game and it looks like it could be worthy of the ranking but I am not much of a strategist so I'll continue to pass on playing it.

#95 Kirby's Epic Yarn
Haven't played this game either but it looks cool as hell.  I'm happy that it was taken seriously enough to get on the list from game critics who I'd have imagined would look at the different art style and written it off as a "little kiddy game."

#93 Angry Birds
I don't get the appeal in Angry Birds, I guess I'm weird or something.

#92 Tom Clany's Rainbow Six: Vegas
Here's a game that I own.  I was particularly a big fan of it because I'm not good at shooters and the spacing between checkpoints is like 40 minutes of playtime.  This game taught me two things, grenades are powerful and playing the same 40 minutes of a game over and over gets old really quick.  But I understand it's placement because the gameplay was good enough for me to buy it after playing the demo.

#83 'Splosion Man
Yeah this game is really cool, and it is a 2-D platformer so it was right up my alley.  It didn't do anything that really blew me away (pun intended), but it had an incredible sense of humor and was very enjoyable.  And I do love doughnuts!



#82 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction
If you have read this much you might guess that I like Tom Clancy games, but I really just like the Splinter Cell series and bought Vegas that once.  So as you might guess now I think this game should be higher.  This game was a fantastically done and I did not disagree in any way from them changing the Splinter Cell formula from the past games (I still think Pandora Tomorrow and Chaos Theory were better though).  I enjoyed almost everything about this game, the story was quite fantastic, the co-op was very fun, the game itself was really fun, and it rather than punishing you for not being stealthy as in the last Splinter Cell games, it rewarded you instead  for being stealthy.  This was one of my favorite games of the current generation, and I actually may go play it soon after finishing this article.

#76 Brain Age
How do you compare this to real games?  Not a shot at Brain Age because it is entertaining, I just wouldn't be able to compare it to other video games.

#67 Donkey Kong Country Returns
I have always been a fan of Super Mario's unforgivably difficult half-brother of a platformer, the Donkey Kong Country series.  So I was extremely happy that in the wake of other 2-D platformers that were getting a rebirth that Donkey Kong and Diddy were not left in the chasm of time.  The level design and difficulty of this game were both top notch even though some of the boss fights were a little weak.  I'm also going to say this should be higher because it gave me a lot of lasting value and a trip down memory lane.

#65 Mega Man 9
While were on the topic of brutally hard retro platformers why not talk about the king of classically difficult games, Mega Man?  Capcom's decision to revert back to NES-style 8-bit graphics and sound for this game in 2008 is a statement in itself that you don't need all these fancy graphics and high polygon counts to make a game look nice, you just need to make a game look nice.  This game also came out at the perfect time because 2008 was when I entered college and in my first year of college a couple of my friends and I had a period where we tried to beat all of the classic Mega Man games, and never ended up beating Wily's Castle on any of them.  I have downloaded this game and made it to the final boss (who I have never beaten), and if I remember they kept all the things I liked about Mega Man games of old intact so I was quite pleased.  This game was ranked too low.

#61 Alan Wake
I just finished this game about 5 hours ago, and I completely loved it, enough that by finishing the game I meant finishing the game and all of it's downloadable content.  This game was incredible to use a single word, being a big fan of Remedy's Max Payne I was really pleased with their storytelling prowess as the story moved forward at a perfect pace without any needless side stories (I'll be back on this topic later, just wait) and the subtle Max Payne references scattered about.  I would like to recommend this to anybody and everybody because it is one of the top arguments for video games as an art, it was a great experience and so far outside the mainstream that it's lack of sales saddens me because every good unique title never gets enough profit to warrant other companies to take chances as well (Jet Grind Radio anybody?)  This is a top 5 title for me.

#58 Wii Sports Resort
I didn't know that game critics liked fun!

They think it should be higher.

#50 Battlefield: Bad Company 2
I've never played this game and don't have any opinion on it, I would just like to point out this game marks the halfway point so "this deserves to be higher" is probably going to turn into "this should be a lot lower."  A few people I work with play and like this game a lot though.

#49 Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2
I only played the demo of the first one, and that game is awesomely addictive.  Simple shooters like this tend to keep my attention, and that ignores the fact that this game's imagery is incredibly beautiful and trippy.

#47 Super Street Fighter IV
Mortal Kombat's release in April reminded me that Capcom fighters are overrated.  Not a bad game at all, but I'd prefer a Mortal Kombat any day of the week.

#43 Tetris DS
Tetris is timeless fun.  Probably the only good thing Russia had survive the Cold War.

Oh shit!  The Commies!

#37 Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
I don't have a PSP so I never played Peace Walker, but this is representative of the MGS series as a whole and I did play Metal Gear Solid 4.  I am a big fan of stealth action and a big fan of intriguing boss fights, the Metal Gear Solid series is a master of the two.  It also contains way more cutscenes than most gamers would prefer to see, but it is an effective way to tell a story and they do a fantastic job of making them look movie-worthy so I actually see that as a positive.  I dare anybody to play any of the MGS games and not remember a single boss fights, some of the best ever, so this deserves to maybe be a little higher.

You will never forget this fight.

#36 Shadow Complex
A great game made in the spirit of the old Metroid games, but there was one thing that I didn't particularly like about it.  That one thing was that every second I played Shadow Complex, I just wanted to play Super Metroid which I don't think was the complete intention of the game.  It was a really good game, but it didn't have the same spirit so I think this was a fair place on the list for it.

#35 Borderlands
Loved this game.  The only way to make a FPS more likable for me is to add RPG elements to it (which is funny because I'm not really an RPG fan either), and that is exactly what Borderlands did.  The mechanic of doing these missions for newer and better guns and a chance to upgrade your abilities was insanely addictive, and they even added a little humor into the game.  When you also add in a post-apocalyptic environment into the mix you have me hooked.  This game is great and probably belongs in the top 20, but it wasn't as good as another post-apocalyptic fusion of RPG elements with an FPS style that I know I will be talking about a little later.

#34 LittleBigPlanet 2
Another game that I didn't play but represents a series in which I played another title.  The first LittleBigPlanet was tons of fun and a nice breath of fresh air to have a lighthearted game in an era where almost every big name game is guilty of taking itself far too seriously.  I find this to be a fair ranking.

#33 NBA 2K11
The controls were really blocky and foreign to me, but I did have fun playing this game in a friend's room.  It was a good basketball game, but in general I don't think I would call it a good game in general.  Maybe the franchise modes and other of that sort were phenomenal, but I thought this was too complex to be a pick-up and play game like sports games should be (See NHL Hitz.)

#31 FIFA 11
Quite possibly the best sports game ever created.  If you understand and like soccer you need to play this game, I didn't have the money to purchase it so I have gone the entire year playing it at a friend's house and waiting for FIFA 12 to come out in hopes that it will be better and in knowledge that it will be a great purchase.  Since Americans are stupid and hate soccer and some dorks don't like sports, this is probably the perfect place to put this game on the list.

If you take the effort to make Mesut Ozil look realistic, your game better be good.

#29 Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
I own this game, and unfortunately never gotten too far in it.  I can never give it the attention it deserves, because every time I play it I realize it is a great game and wonder why I don't play it more but then I find another diversion and realize I don't have the time necessary to spill into it.  Maybe one day I will play enough of this game to know whether it deserves to be higher or not.

#28 Forza Motorsport 3
You know what I don't find any fun in at all?  Racing simulators.

#25 Mario Kart DS
You know whats more fun than a racing simulator?  An arcade-style kart racing game that fuses undeniable fun with tight controls and a logarithmic-style learning curve so people who try to be good at the game can always get better.

#24 Rock Band 2
Music games had their time, it came and went, and Rock Band was probably better than Guitar Hero except for the fact that their original guitar controller sucked.  I am past my phase of music game addiction, but I do look back at the times of playing them with friends and remember how they were undeniably fun.  I also discovered some good music in the process so all was not lost.

#22 Gears of War
I have such a nostalgic fondness for this game more than any other that will be on this list.  My junior year in high school and the following summer did not see a single weekend night that I was not online with my friends playing this game until around 2 in the morning.  A lot of our inside jokes and bonding moments were born in the Gears of War lobby, and this game single-handedly justified my purchase of the Xbox 360 over the PS3 (until the recent hacking of the PSN).  This would be a top 3 game on my personal list, and I would've liked to see it higher on this list.

Baird, with that hair you had it coming..

#20 Dead Space
It's Resident Evil for those who don't like Resident Evil!  I really need to play this game, I borrowed it from a friend and played a little so I know that I like it but much like Metroid Prime 3, I was never able to play it consistently to give it the attention and time it deserved.  This is likely a good place for it to be.

#19 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare
Whew, this is a lot lower than I thought it was going to be.  Let me introduce you to the game that ruined all future FPS's for me.  I will admit that it was an extremely good game for it's time, but it quickly annoyed me with even though the upgrade system online was really good, it was just taken way too seriously by most of the people online.  I don't know about everybody else, but video games are like golf to me, I want to do well and improve myself, but at the end of the day it is just something I do to have fun.  So I would appreciate it if you stopped correlating my performance at a video game with my sexual persuasion, and claiming that you have in one way or another partaken in sexual activities with my mother, thanks.  Also I would like to point out there have been 3 new Call of Duty releases and another one coming soon in the just under 4 years since this game was released.

#15 New Super Mario Bros.
I didn't play the DS version, but I played the one they made for the Wii, and much like every other title in this recent retro revival is a great breath of fresh air.  Adding co-op multiplayer to the Super Mario series worked much better than I expected, mainly because they made it just as easy to play while sabotaging as to help each other.  I would love some more of these titles.

You still look Goofy

#14 Halo: Reach
I already stated that I'm incredibly bored by all these FPS's coming out and Halo is no exception to the rule, which is sad because I loved the first one and playing the second one split-screen at a friends house was the only thing that pulled us away from Gears of War in high school.  But the new generation came around and nothing seemed to change at all in the Halo universe, which annoyed and bored me.  I will say that I'm happy they chose Reach of all the titles because it did add a little more to the formula.  And also for those who may be thinking I'm "hatin" on Halo and CoD because I suck are probably right, but this is my blog so my opinion is what you are going to read.

#13 Pac-Man Championship Edition DX
I like Pac-Man fine, but I really don't understand how this game could be THAT good, what does it do that previous Pac-Man games haven't done before?  I guess I'll have to check that out sometime.

#12 Half-Life 2: Episode 2
I didn't finish this episode but I did finish the other ones, and I like this series.  The story isn't quite as good or well told as people make it out to be, but there is always something appealing about being a revolutionary and shooting your way to change.  I also love the way they were able to vary the experience enough to make different levels of the game feel like completely different titles in themselves, Ravenholm was a gaming experience I don't think I would ever forget.  Again I will say this is at the right spot on the list, maybe a little bit lower, maybe.

#11 Grand Theft Auto IV
GTA games have always tended to bore me after a few hours, and I have never liked the weird weight you always feel in every Rockstar game.  I never played this title itself, but I'm pretty sure I would think it is an overrated game if I got around to it.

#10 Super Smash Bros. Brawl
The reason I bought a Wii, and one of the few reasons I don't regret that purchase.  The only reason I feel like I should try to say something bad about it is because it is so good that a lot of my friends in college played this game so much that I got burned out from it.  Its been a good while since I played it last so it would probably feel both comforting and foreign to start playing again.  A great game and very deserving of a top 10 spot, shout out to anybody else who had Olimar as their primary character!

#9 Batman: Arkham Asylum
I never played it, but it seems like a good excuse to leak that I may be collaborating with a friend of mine Toninho on a new blog, and he absolutely loves this game.  You can read his opinion on the game on his "Exciting Developments" article.  End of Advertisment.

#8 Assassin's Creed II
I owned the first one, and thought it was not bad, but expected a lot more from it.  This one supposedly was what I expected from the first one, but I never played it.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't worse than the first one.

#6 Fallout 3
Before I played Borderlands I fell in love with Fallout 3, this game would be my #1 if I was making this list.  The story was good enough to keep you pushing through the main quest, but the real lasting power of this game was in the side quests, the Capital Wasteland, the people you could talk to in the game, and the atmosphere created by fusing a post-apocalyptic wasteland with upbeat 50's hits on Galaxy News Radio with Three Dog.  Between this game and it's semi-sequel Fallout: New Vegas I was able to pour in at least 120 hours and never sat down to play for less than 3 hours, I was able to get so drawn into this game to a point where I would forget time existed and would even willingly miss meals to keep playing.  Forget modern games, I would consider this to be in the top 3 all time games, but not number 1, I have a whole article to write about that love affair.

This game gets a big thumbs up!

#5 Portal 2
I chose to buy Mortal Kombat instead on the it's release date.  While I wouldn't disagree that it must be a great game in it's own right I haven't ever regretted that purchase.  What I liked the most about the first Portal game was the dark sense of humor they put into it, maybe one day I will give Portal 2 a try for the laughs I would likely get out of it, still think the rating a little too high though.

#4 Super Mario Galaxy 2
The first Super Mario Galaxy game didn't blow me away as much as it did for most people, it seemed more like a dumbed down version of Super Mario 64 than the groundbreaking title the media claimed it was.  I have been wanting to give it another try, and have been wanting to give it's sequel a try as well because of the inclusion of Yoshi!  As like with many other games this high on the list I'm going to say it is too high until further decision, and I want Yoshi to get his own Wii game, I feel like Yoshi and Star Fox were made to use the pointer controls.

#3 Red Dead Redemption
This game was really good, so good that I was able to forget that I hate the controls in Rockstar games.  But having said that I still think while this likely is a top 10 game of the generation I would personally take at least 11 of the previously mentioned game over this one.  The world around was great but there was nothing that rewarded your for exploration the same way that Fallout did, the storytelling was okay but way too slow paced and (like I alluded to in my discussion on Alan Wake) Mexico dragged on as we had to save some Mexican girl's family like 18 times in a row in what turned out to all be completely useless time-wasters that Rockstar added in there to give the game more longevity.  I did like the game enough to buy the Undead Nightmare expansion for it, but I never got too far into it because it also suffered from bad pacing and random time-wasters which wouldn't be as bad if it wasn't a story based game.

#2 Bioshock
I'm obligated to say something since I said something about everything else in the top 5, but I never played enough of Bioshock to have any opinion on it.  Of my friends that bought it, about half have liked it enough to finish it, and their opinions are very polarized.  From the demo I played it seemed like a good enough game, but seemed like if you got far enough into it you would either think it was the best game ever, or it had it's head so far up it's own ass it was trying to chew its way out of its esophagus.  I won't complain for lack of knowledge.

#1 Mass Effect 2
Boom, I've made my way through the entire list and sifted through all the shit they had to say (or at least all I could sift through.)  I played the first Mass Effect and was starting to get really into it, but then Mortal Kombat came out (thats Mortal Kombat reference #3, guess what game I thought deserved a spot) and I got really sucked into that when it came out.  I will return to Mass Effect later on and try to play the second one, which is apparently the best game of the generation.  I have a friend who owns it and played it and he basically swears by it, so I would imagine it is probably good enough to be in the top 5, but I think Fallout is #1 no matter what.  And thats all folks.

Games I would have liked to see: Mortal Kombat (who would've guessed), Crackdown, Heavy Weapon, and I guess thats all.  Thanks again for wasting your time reading my ramblings!

Totally overlooked...

Things I Want (Because I'm Needy Like That)

I want to have more time and more ideas to write on this blog with.
I want to have more free time for myself as I have all of these hobbies and projects that are in progress and I never have time to get around to all of them.
I want to get a time machine that will send me back to the early to mid-90s at the age I'm at now, it sometimes feels like I'm an anachronism.

Oh Hell Yeah!!!

I want music to come back to the way it used to be where the artists put their heart into it and you could hear and feel it.
I want video game makers to stop taking the fun out of games, either that or just make Nintendo and Remedy make more games (Bethesda and Ubisoft can come too).
I want to like money as much as the other people that are out there, I just don't see the point in working so many hours when you have no leisure time to enjoy it, and I don't even have a girlfriend or anything better to do with my time.
I want to know what the appeal is to sexting, at no point in my life have I considered a picture of my penis to be either a fitting or appealing response to any text message.  Maybe it's a rich people thing.
I want to try doing stand-up comedy at least once in my life, Dave Chappelle just made it look like so much fun.

Man mastered his craft like nobody ever can or will.

I want to find a stroke of good luck, it seems like its been quite some time since Lady Luck has smiled at me.  To quote Max Payne (game, not movie),"Sooner or later it was going to catch up with you...You'd find that Lady Luck was really a hooker, and you were fresh out of cash."
I want to track down the person who first suggested that you don't write how you speak, it is just a plain stupid thing to say, let my writing be living proof of that.
I want to know why only writers, musicians and artists are allowed to have muses, a math muse would kick ass and probably help.
I want the rest of the world to enjoy weirdness as much as I do, there is plenty of it and you really need to enjoy it.
I want everyone to stop taking themselves so fucking seriously, the world is a scary place as it is, why do you have to keep making yourself miserable being so serious?
I want to point out that I enjoy peculiarities, I tend to like things that people don't expect me to like.
I want to hear some news on whether or not there actually are going to be sequels to Sin City, I loved that film.
I want to stay a child, my short time with being semi-grown up isn't what its cracked up to be.
I want to want more things but I suppose this is all I want.

What do YOU want for Christmas little boy?

Random Thoughts (I'm Not Tired Yet)

I should be asleep at this time, but I am not tired.  Working a full-time job on the summers is murder on your sleep schedule when you are in college, at least 75% of the year is spent in a situation where I would be able to consider midnight an early bedtime and 10am a typical waking time.  The last couple weeks since I've started working I have had to be in at work between 7am and 7:30am, this means waking up around 6:30ish and to get enough sleep to be functional on the next day I'll have to get to bed well before midnight and even 11pm seems like a late bedtime.  That brings us on back to our current time of 10:21pm, and my bedtime rapidly approaching.  The only problem is as you all can see is that it is Sunday night and I still live the college schedule on weekends.  This isn't a new problem as I have already stated it has been several weeks since I have been working this job, but the difference that makes me write about it tonight is the simple fact that Netflix is not working for me at this particular moment so I stumbled back upon this blog and realized it has been a really long time since I have contributed anything to it.

2894328423032

To continue the monologue until I get tired enough to attempt to sleep I figure it would be nice to think back on my previous job at the local grocery store and see what I was able to take out of that.  I was a bagger or a sacker depending on what you wanted to call me on any given day, and I worked there for a solid 4 years at least, so let us examine how much different every year was for me.  The first year was by far the worst of it, I was a newbie (no0b) and I also couldn't drive so not only did I not work a lot of hours because of that, but I also had to get a ride to and from the store every time I did have to work a menial 3 hour shift.  To make matters more interesting that year was the only one that I worked with my brother, who had already worked there about a year and a half and he basically set my intentions at work as keeping to myself and doing my time.  This was terrible advice as I didn't really make any friends in the store and time goes by a lot slower when you are just alone with your own thoughts.  That first year really was unnecessary and only helped to accentuate what was at that time an awkward stage of my life.

Paper or Plastic  Mother Trucker?

Six months in found me a Senior in high school, and I was able to drive and my brother was gone from the picture.  This is around the time that I met my first good friend from the store, but not through the store itself, but rather from a mix of mutual friends and a shared journalism class in which I feel we became really good friends and still are to this day.  At this point things started to change for the better in my world, as not only did I now have a good friend to kill time with in the store but also through him and my overall change of attitude I became more outgoing and made the right friends to help me get by at work.  I started to have friendships with most of the people I would have to deal with on a regular shift, but I also found myself befriending the Assistant Managers and from that I was given some of the easier jobs and overall just made my life easier (Note: I did not make friends with them to make my life easier, it was just a side effect from them being good people).  Towards the end of my high school career I was good friends with a good portion of the people I worked with and even had a girl really flirting hard with me but I was eventually repelled by a friend of mine telling the story of she and one of his friends having "relations" by simply asking me if I have ever seen The Descent, when I eventually realized what he was getting at things changed and mostly stayed similar for the rest of year 2.

I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

Break to a full year of college under my belt (nothing notable happened in that month I came back during the winter) and I returned as an elder in the store.  As an elder I pretty much had the right to abuse my friendships with the Assistants and I have always thought, girls are attracted to older men, so I felt I was a little bit of a novelty as the college student to the high school juniors and seniors (more on this later?).  So things became slightly different not only because of this but also because things always change over the course of a year, I was broke and needed money so I worked a considerable amount of hours more than I did when I was in high school, and I had friends who I hadn't seen in months so there was a lot of catching up and storytelling to do, and there were also a whole new wave of new employees I had yet to meet.  One of which was more or less my replacement as far as my in-store clique went, and I don't disagree at all, when I finally met him it turned out that we were very much alike, mostly that he was who I wanted to be when I was his age.  We went on to become friends and he was the man I had previously mentioned in a Project Yancey story (for the record I have more or less scrapped the idea of finishing Project Yancey :( ).  It was also a shame that my great friend who helped me open up in the store had since moved into the deli so I rarely saw him while working, but we would have times when we would have our breaks together, most notably the one where we ate an entire package of Hoodsie Ice Creams in 15 minutes.  This summer followed along in a similar vein as what I have already said, and included a night where I couldn't sleep and wrote about the summer in a J.D. Salinger-esque form, but I don't think that will be posted any time soon.  Since I figured I was going to be halfway through college by the time the next summer came along I wished all my friends the best wishes going forward as I would likely not see them much in the future.

I just learned Hoodsies are a regional thing

Fast-forward to the next summer and I was wrong.  After a little original ribbing from a few friends about how I wasn't supposed to be there anymore things went mostly back to normal.  This summer was once again quite different from my other spells at the store, and I worked a lot more morning shifts which is a completely different crowd as it is the adult workers rather than the teenage wasteland the store usually is at nights.  It was also different when I would work the nights because instead of going out of my way to become friendly with almost everyone in the store I tried to ignore the younger kids, although I would still take my time to make friends with all the attractive ladies in the store.  I was coming off a situation with my personal life which didn't pan out for one reason or another, so I was actually quite eager to throw myself back into the mix and that became the most of my interest.  As the older kids ended up banding together into a posse, we had our fun when we could even though I don't believe that I hung out with anybody outside the store save for a "retirement party" at a local Chinese restaurant/bar, when I noticed something that I still need to follow up on (and should soon).  I went all out to make sure that this time it would be my last hurrah, and even went as far as asking if I could get pictures from the security cameras as I walked out on my last day doing my traditional punch-out derobing (unbutton that shirt and put the tie hanging halfway out of your pocket).

Sorry, not clever enough

The next winter I had enough money to take an entire month off and manage to get through my spring semester, and I also grew a beard as another excuse to stay away (rules say no facial hair).  Even though it was not easy and I thought I would have to go back I ended up having my current job fall on me and I am very happy about it.  In retrospect, as much as the work was monotonous and I disliked it, I liked the people I met and I still make appearances to go in and catch up with those who remain at the store (there aren't many).  I also realized one other thing, I spent those last two summers almost exclusively flirting with girls, and unfortunately due to the fact I am in my own way a very shy guy, I didn't jump on opportunities that I am very sure were there and maybe this should be a lesson to me.  I have now killed over 40 minutes reminiscing over 4 years at a grocery store, and I am beginning to get tired enough to try to sleep.  I hope someone learned something of benefits in some way from my stories (maybe one day I will get more in depth with specific stories and moments and make a comedic screenplay or something... Not likely).  Goodnight folks.  

Sums it up!