The People I Have Been

This is a piece I have meant to write for quite some time so I think I'll write it now for no better reason than because I want to write and this is the only piece I can think to write.  I understand at this point that by writing this that it may point out some potential social issues I may have, but for now I'm going to assume this is a normal way to act.  Throughout the years of my life I have found myself in many different situations that have caused me to have to tweak my personality to fit some supposed role I have determined for myself.  Every now and then I look back and think to myself about how I behaved in some roles, and wonder what the hell I was thinking.  So without further interruption, here are the roles I of today believe I tried to play in past years.

Role #1 Child (Birth-7th Grade)
This one is self-explanatory, until I turned 13 I didn't really have the mental abilities to understand cause and effects of culture so I existed as is.  During these times I didn't find myself with many long lasting friends, which probably suggests something about who I am naturally.

I really had no choice!

Role #2 Mr, Irrational Confidence Guy! (7th Grade- 10th Grade)
I became this person too early, it would probably be beneficial if I hadn't become Mr. Irrational Confidence Guy until this day and age.  By that I mean I was extremely ballsy in talking to girls, and had absolutely no reason to have been (hence the irrational confidence part), but now that I believe there is an outside chance that I have something to give a woman there is no confidence to be found.  During this time I told a popular girl she was a tall glass of water and I was thirsty (note I was far from popular, likely because of comments like that), bet that I could date a girl only to brag about it semi-publicly like a complete asshat and have that be the reason she didn't date me and even at one point I was very close to dating a popular girl from the grade below me despite my lack of popularity.  What made me feel I was a person who was able to do those things successfully is beyond me, but I simultaneously envy and hate that little prick.  This role mostly coincided with kid who wanted to be popular because I felt a little inferiority complex from having a popular older brother in the grade above me.  I have long since gotten over that inferiority complex and consider it a great lesson toward becoming the man I am today.

I thought I could be cool like Fonzie...

Role #3 Intentional Outsider/Nerd (11th Grade-High School Graduation)
Entering my Junior year of high school I found myself embracing my natural nerdiness/ unpopularity and decided that I should live with it.  I think this is partially because I started taking AP classes so I was separated from the less intelligent cool kids, and thrown into a setting with a lot more people who were more like me.  I found that in these situations I preferred the company of the less popular kids because I didn't seem to have to act as much.  This led me to a renaissance of playing video games (usually spent my weekends playing, including typical 11-3 shifts on Xbox Live with friends) and discovering new music (birthing my love for 90s music.)  During these years I found my number of friends grow exponentially as I found that there was another group of kids in my own grade (including Toninho!) who were a lot similar to my usual group that I hung out with at that time.  Along with that, there were still some residual effects from Mr. Irrational Confidence Guy as I was still much more aggressive in the dating world than I am now, even though that included barking up the tree of the bet girl previously mentioned for a whole year, honk if you are surprised that was a fruitless endeavor!

...But I was always much more Urkell

Role #4 The Kinda Crazy/ Weird Kid (Freshman Year of College)
I was actually called out on acting this role out once, a friend of mine said he hated me when he first met me because I made it out like I did all these crazy things and was a wild person, but never actually did anything.  It was completely true, but I was in a completely new environment and am kind of an introvert, so I needed to adopt this kind of personality to meet people.  And you know what, it was successful!  I met most of my friends in college one fateful day Freshman year when some kids in my hall that my roommate knew found a box and pranked our room by having someone hide in the box and jump out of it to scare me when I answered the door.  I don't remember how (possibly because nobody else wanted to do this prank to people they didn't know) I ended up being the guy in the box as we repeated this prank on other doors across the hall.  I ended up hanging out with these kids a lot over the next few weeks and this became some of the best friendships I've had in my life.  Say what you want, but this was a turning point in my life as this was a month into school and I was already considering getting a transfer due to the environment.  I never followed through with it and am very happy about that in retrospect.  This is the time when Mr. Irrational Confidence Guy completely died out as I was finally able to appreciate how stupid and contrived a lot of my attempts to woo women were, leaving your name and room number with "(insert name here) is cute" on the whiteboard on someone's door is only going to get erased, not responded to.

Chase in the Box!

Role #5 The Playful Older Guy? (Sophomore Year)
I really don't know what to call this guy, a lot of weird stuff happened over the course of that year, and I found it to be an emotional roller coaster.  Before the school year started I spent a lot of my time flirting with girls at the grocery store I worked at to slight success at best (I've written about this in multiple posts before so I'm not elaborating).  This year I spent a large amount of my social energy on trying to meet Freshman girls at school, I was older and that had an effect on girls at that age.  I can't remember how I spent my first semester of that year, but it was the first semester I had ever spent as an undergraduate TA for a class, and I had a student start making moves on me as the semester came to a close.  I thought that was going to be a great thing for me, but somehow before coming back to school for Spring she ran into her ex-boyfriend, and needed time to "think" apparently texting "what's up?" fortnightly, is pressuring so she decided to make me aware of this by never speaking to me again.  I don't get subtle messages born of idiocy very well so I asked her about it and she told me so.  It was dumb, and she transferred out of the school at the end of the semester due to said idiocy (yes, I'm bitter.)  Later a girl I knew and her boyfriend broke up and she talked to me to get over it.  I started to become fond of this girl because of this (guys are made to be attracted to emotional vulnerability I suppose) and followed through with this feeling.  I even got blessing from the ex-boyfriend whom she completely hated at this point (a former student of mine and a damn fine kid at that.)  She was apparently never that interested and nothing panned out save for a date.

I also watched the Prisoner!

Role #6 The Random Information Guy (Junior Year)
I had a weird housing designation for this year, I was living in a single a mile or so from the rest of my friends, and often found that leaving my room was burdensome.  Needless to say I spent a larger chunk of that year than usual by myself, and even created this blog during this time.  I'm sure my personality in my writing is different if you contrast then with now (2 years strong), and back then I was definitely more spontaneous and weird than I am now.  When I was around people I was typically getting dinner with my friends and one of their girlfriends and sometimes some of her friends.  For some reason since she was the only new person I was getting used to I found the part of my personality that she enjoyed was the part that came out the most (because I apparently can't deal with being disliked) and that part happened to be the part of me that comes off as a weird sexual deviant.  You mention one too many things you read on Urban Dictionary, and some people will actually think you do this stuff.  As time went on I'm fairly sure she got to know the more mundane me, but the weird kid kind of took precedence for over the course of that year.  Overall, the year was pretty uneventful save for the death of my car, which I still need to blog about at some point.

Foolproof way to make friends!

Role #7 The Laid Back Senior (Fall Semester Senior Year)
This semester was a great time of my life, I wasn't taking overly difficult courses, I was graduating at the end of the semester, I was over 21 for the first time in my life and I was living off campus with some awesome guys.  I didn't go out nearly as much this semester as I had in other years because I had no reason to, I could have all the fun I wanted to have in my house with my friends.  In this semester I played a lot of video games and drank a lot of beer.  There really isn't much else to say about this person, he had his fun and did what he wanted to do, except for the fact I didn't really try to date anybody at this time due to the short window of time.

Role #8 The Manchild (January 2012-Now)
This was a trying time for me, I was unemployed, graduated and had no idea what I was doing going forward.  I also had no car, and had no friends nearby that weren't consistently busy.  I spent nearly all my time bouncing between my Xbox and computer.  It was probably one of the worst times of my life for the first month or two, but eventually I got used to it and managed to pass the time (Mass Effect, Arkham City and Fifa helped) and after a short time, a few failed job searches, I got my Grad School acceptances in and decided I was going to continue to be a manchild for a few more months and then go back to school.  During these months I reinvigorated my love for Spongebob, watched a lot of cult and B-movies and then went back to my house at my old school for a month before the graduation ceremony.  This phase is directly responsible for my recent shift in movie and music tastes, gaining a taste for "so bad it's good" films and indie rock.

If you Insist!

Role #9 To Be Determined Dude (Now)
I'm in a new setting and, as I always have, I am going to have to assume a new role.  Usually these roles come organically and I don't need to consciously decide what person I'm going to be next, so lets give it time and see what I will think of current me next year.  This probably sheds a decent amount of light to people what it is like to be me, I still don't know if this is normal, but it's my normal and I'm just trying to be myself.

New Setting, New Life

Hey all, since the last time I wrote I have been completely busy making a new life for myself!  By that I mean I have finally began the graduate school that I have been alluding to for a few months now!  It has certainly been a different kind of world for me these last few weeks and I was thinking that instead of writing another piece about Dan Uggla's arms (which are still huge), I should actually tell you all about how I feel about this new life.  First of all, being a graduate student is fantastic.  You get to kind of live like an undergraduate except with more work and responsibilities, which is fine because in my case I have been given an office to share, so rather than kill time between classes and during the day, I have a place to return to and do some of my work.  I have also been notably more of an adult, going to bed before midnight and waking up in time to go to my office early and get my mind sorted out before classes start.  One thing that has really surprised me is that I have been consistently spending most of my weekdays in the math department for regular working hours, yet by doing this I have been able to have free weekends and am even going to be traveling over this coming weekend to hopefully see one of my favorite pitchers become the MLB's first 20 game winner!  I'm sure these free weekends will become a luxury in due time as classes start to pick up and homework becomes abundant, but I have been enjoying the ones I have had thus far.  

Nobody talked about this trade enough...

To deserve my office, I have been given the responsibility of being a Teaching Assistant (or TA for you folk who love their acronyms) for a class in the department.  For obvious reasons I am not going to mention the school name, class name, student names, my name nor anything vaguely identifiable about this course.  All I will let you know is that so far I have loved having this responsibility and have enjoyed every interaction with my students.  I guess I can also use this time to brag about how good I look in a blazer, believe me when I say that I am a rather handsome fellow to have teaching you math.  I have found the other people in the department to be welcoming, which I always appreciate seeing that meeting people has always seemed like an odd thing to me.  It is amazing to me to wonder what causes people to meet, since everyone seems to have no interest in other people when you see them walking down the street, and even when meeting someone, what causes you to want to see them again?  Social commentary/awkwardness aside, I've found a solid foundation of people to talk to when I need help or just to entertain myself for a little while without having to stray too far from my office!  But enough about work, how about we discuss a little bit of playtime, because all work and no play makes Chase a dull boy!

Don't forget frozen!  Dull and frozen.

As I mentioned, I have been able to spend a large amount of my weekends worry free, and even some of my weeknights!  For being more or less a stranger to everybody moving into my house a few weeks ago, I have found my living arrangements quite comfortable and don't believe I have a single thing to complain about in that department.  During the weekdays I tend to spend my off time at my house, and have rarely found myself bored.  My small sample size of weekends here has proved to be better than my undergraduate time, where I have yet to end a weekend without something to ponder or a story to tell.  I've had a few former students that I have known come up on the weekend and show me the ropes as well as introduce me to some people whose company I have found to be entertaining.  But even when I am not trying to have fun, I have been able to find enjoyment out here, such as walking from place to place.  As I have noted before my undergraduate school was predominantly male, which may even be an understatement, and this school is a lot closer to 50/50, if not more female!  So when I am walking from place to place as my schedule dictates, I am often presented with something nice to look at as I walk, which I appreciate very much.  I am not even exaggerating that I feel like Psy (watch this video and enjoy it, it is perfection) every time I walk somewhere.

ASSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

Unfortunately this great gift is not without it's costs, because on those same walks where I have so much to look at there is one thing I can't help but notice, that being how miserable everybody looks.  Listen here kiddies, I don't care if its 9:00am on a Monday morning, if you are walking around on a college campus in this day and age and you are not even pretending to enjoy yourself, you are a truly sad person.  Maybe it's only because I have been on the other side and seen what it is like to be out of college and then return at a young enough age to be able to take full advantage of returning, but it seems to me these spoiled kids have no idea what a great time of their life they are just moping away!  Ladies and gentlemen, this is what college is, you are a young person in the prime of your life thrown into an environment filled with other people your age, where almost any action you take part in can be rationalized by saying "I'm in college, now is the time to try it," you are physically able to perform nearly any action you will ever be able to do in your life, and if there is anything (no matter how strange) you would ever like to try, you are probably no more than a mile from someone else who shares this desire and would probably partake in it with you.  Reread that last sentence and find any reason to be sad.  I know some of you are thinking "Hey Chase! You are clearly forgetting to mention how hard classes are!"  To those people all I can say is, I'm a grad student, my classes are much more demanding than anything undergrads are doing, and to tell you the truth, it is much much easier and enjoyable than anything you will be doing in the real world.  If you need any more reason to believe that college is the best place on Earth, remember this, Jamarcus Russell was successful in college!

I used this guy and successful in the same sentence, without using "not"!

So long faithful readers, and don't worry undergraduate school, I will always have a soft spot for you and your students, but I'm gonna go have the time of my life now.  More on the way!

Who Am I!?

Sorry to everybody who reads this title and thinks that I am going to write about the Jackie Chan classic by the same name.  To make it up to those people I will give you this video (Editor's note, the video is gone!)

Oh my that is quite the awesome fight scene!  Almost as good as the fight in They Live!  But I digress, the point of this post is not Jackie Chan or fight scenes, or anything even remotely close to that.  The point of this post stems from my curiosity the other day when I looked at the stat pages for this blog.  I saw that I have views from all over the world and a decent amount of views on the whole, which is cool even though I think a vast majority of the views are people looking at pictures then leaving the page.  I don't think that I have many readers outside of Toninho (link to his blog, Sycophantic Laughter, is always present on this page) and by that I mean I misplaced an m and meant I don't think I have any readers outside Toninho.  But that day I looked at the search results that have brought people to my blog, and I see this list.

It is more than obvious from the top 7 results of those 8 that those views are people searching unrelated things and stumbling upon pictures I have featured on my blog before.  But the last one gets me a little excited, if I can say myself.  To you, Mr. or Mrs. or Ms. Curiosity-Pants, if you are searching that on Google, you have read my blog enough to know that I try to hide who I really am to not have any personal backlash, although if you know me personally, it would be a little obvious.  So my question to you is, why did you think Google would give you this information?  I also want to know why you would think that knowing my real name would make any difference from knowing my pseudonym?  Lastly I just feel a little sad that you would ask Google who I am, when there is a comment box at the bottom of each of my posts  that I would love to see filled with your questions!  So if whoever you are that searched that, and you see this, make use of the comment box and I'll try to write about anything you want to know.  I do ask that you allow me to keep this curtain of anonymity, if it wouldn't be too much to ask.

Fill that thing up!

I'll try to give you some help by consolidating some of the information I have thrown about on this blog before.  I recently graduated college and am going to graduate school for an applied math masters.  My real name is not Chase Robertson, and people have been redirected here by searching "Chase Robertson Houston" and I would like to apologize to Chase Robertson from Houston if my blog using his name as my fake name is a problem, I would see what I could do to change the name of the blog and use a nickname instead.  I am mostly a kid at heart and still have a fondness for Spongebob Squarepants, Doug and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  I enjoy cult movies, I like video games (that aren't online first person shooters) and apparently Jackie Chan.  I am a huge baseball fan (particularly the Red Sox and Braves, and since the middle of last year I've added the Nationals to that list.)  I guess that is a lot of the personal information I have given over the time, feel free to dig through the archives to find what I forgot I wrote.  Anybody who reads this, I urge you to make use of the comment box, especially since I haven't had a whole lot of ideas to write about lately, and I would love to have enough questions to do some sort of mailbag.  Since my reader(s) has (have) been so kind to me, I will grant you a single picture of myself.

Who doesn't want to know more about this guy!

Top Ten Spongebob Episodes

So as I pointed out a while ago, I am a big fan of Spongebob Squarepants.  I personally find it to be one of the most consistently funny shows ever made, and unlike other comedic cartoons (I'm looking at you Family Guy and South Park) the show doesn't often have to use "adult" situations (sex, politics, obscure references, violence) to create humor which I find to be a hallmark of good writing.  If you haven't seen it the premise is simple, a sponge named Spongebob lives in a Pineapple under the sea and goes about his everyday life with other characters that are ostensibly based on the 7 deadly sins in some manner.  But it is most likely you have seen it, but not to the extent I have, so let me present to you my top 10 favorite episodes, which I ranked in an unbiased way by giving each story a rating from 1-10 by going alphabetically down the list, then combining it's score with it's sister story (as it is a children's cartoon episodes are usually cut into two 11 minute stories) and basing my ratings off that.  I also want to point out that I was only familiar enough with the first 5 seasons of the show (as much as Netflix has) so those episodes are the only ones included so for seasons 6 and on, you are on your own, which is a pity because I think A Life in a Day/ Sun Bleached could have been a dark horse for the top 10.  So without further interruption, here are the episodes I think you need to watch.

10: Nasty Patty/ Idiot Box (Season 3) 17.4 Rating
Nasty Patty is likely a better episode watched as an adult than as a child, as it's premise is a spoof of the typical "body movie" where cohorts in a crime are trying to dispose of a body.  It is a pretty dark episode as the premise suggests, Spongebob and Mr. Krabs believe they have killed a health inspector by giving him a Krabby Patty that they sabotaged thinking that the health inspector was a fake trying to get free food.  It's highlights include the invention of the term "schmeckledorfed" and an increasingly insane Mr. Krabs telling the police that ice is a myth.  On the other hand, Idiot Box is a much more lighthearted episode based around the childish imagination of Spongebob and Patrick as opposed to Squidward's lack of imagination.  Spongebob and Patrick order a big-screen television solely for the purpose of playing in the box, and the whole time Squidward starts to feel like they are mocking him in the box.  This one is consistently funny and if I had to choose a highlight it would be the rainbow that appears between Spongebob's hands as he says imagination on multiple circumstances.

See! It even became a scarcely used meme!

#8T Dying for Pie/ Imitation Krabs (Season 2) 17.6 Rating

I really must be a dark person, the first two entries in this top 10 list are two of the very few episodes to acknowledge the concept of death.  Dying for Pie starts with Employee Brotherhood Day and Spongebob is all about it while Squidward has no idea that it existed, as Mr. Krabs requires Squidward get a gift, he buys a pie from a group of pirates conveniently in the parking lot, except they don't have actual pies, just bombs that look like pies.  As Mr. Krabs and Squidward believe Spongebob to have eaten the pie, a remorseful Squidward tries to give Spongebob a great last day.  My favorite part of the episode is Spongebob's gift to Squidward, a sweater made from his eyelashes.  Imitation Krabs is one of (if not the) best Plankton episodes where he makes a robot to replace Mr. Krabs in the Krusty Krab to trick Spongebob into giving him the secret formula.  Here's a classic highlight from the episode.

#8T Sleepy Time/ Suds (Season 1) 17.6 Rating
There is always a bit of nostalgia to the first season of any long running television show.  Sleepy Time is a great episode, and one of the few to make use of a majority of the main characters in the show, as Spongebob finds himself able to invade the dreams of his friends for a night and causes problems for each of them.  I love the concept of the episode and think each character's dreams are perfectly fitting for their personalities, it also stuns me that they were able to do this episode successfully in the first season.  My favorite part is Patrick's dream, it's so empty!  Suds addresses the concept of sickness as leaving the fridge open overnight causes Spongebob's house to freeze over and he catches the suds (a sponge's version of the cold), he tries to get medical help from Patrick because a mixture of reading old magazines and a cold stethoscope scares Spongebob away from wanting to see a real doctor.  When Spongebob actually sees a real doctor at the end, it creates a great scene that I believe was one of the first times Spongebob is shown as a real kitchen sponge in the real world.

This is seriously part of it..

#7 The Secret Box/ Band Geeks (Season 2) 17.7 Rating
This episode is one of my first memories of moving into my apartment last August, there was only one of my housemates with me for the week and we both loved Spongebob and I remember we watched this episode because he said it was one of his favorites.  The Secret Box revolves around Patrick having a secret box that he won't show Spongebob, and the rest of the episode is Spongebob trying to see what is in the box.  Not meaning to spoil it, the end of the episode is the best when Spongebob sees there is only a string inside the box and walks away thinking Patrick is an idiot, but then Patrick shows if you pull the string it opens a secret compartment that has an embarrassing photo of Spongebob from the Christmas party, but we never see the photo.  Band Geeks is simply one of the best storylines the show has ever run, this is a foregone conclusion that makes this episode worth watching alone.  Squidward's high school rival Squilliam returns to Bikini Bottom and is much more successful so Squidward lies about having a top-notch band and Squilliam allows the band to play in his place at the Bubble Bowl.  The rest of the episode is Squidward trying to make his untalented friends a band and hilarity.  Watch it, here's how it ends.

Secret TV Channel!

#6 Arrgh!/ Rock Bottom (Season 1) 18.1 Rating
We just took a big jump in ratings to get to this which I find pretty surprising given how good the last episode was.  Arrgh! is a great episode for both Patrick and Mr. Krabs, where on a slow day at the Krusty Krab, Spongebob and Patrick play a treasure hunting board game and invite Mr. Krabs to play, who then gets way too into the game and invites the other two to help him search for a real treasure.  There are many good parts from this one, Patrick mistaking east with "weast", Spongebob's "You're good" as Patrick scrapes up the boat, and PLASTIC!  Rock Bottom is a wacky episode.  Spongebob ends up getting stranded in a strange town, and I really cannot do this episode any justice with words.  Just let it be known that it caused the following poster (which I wish I could own) to be made and watch it yourself.

LOVE IT!

#5 Texas/ Walking Small (Season 1) 18.2 Rating

Believe it or not, this was the episode released immediately after the last one, the writers hit a really good streak down the middle of season 1 as I will point out later.  Texas is the first episode on the list that centers around Sandy as she becomes homesick and plans to leave Bikini Bottom to return to Texas.  Despite the fact that this episode mocks and entire state, it is a classic and features some great jokes.  Walking Small is another Plankton episode as he tries to get Spongebob to help him clear land for a new Chum Bucket by teaching him to be assertive.  The difference between being assertive and being "insertive" is one of my favorite parts of the episode, but probably one of the best Spongebob moments is when due to Spongebob's blissful ignorance of how to be mean he helps a stranger find buried treasure and offers to tie his shoe even though he is wearing sandals.  

Is that stupid or Texas?

#4 Grandma's Kisses/ Squidville (Season 2) 18.4 Rating

By now my more observant readers should be noticing that most of my favorite episodes come from the earlier part of the show, and that is completely correct.  From season 2 Grandma's Kisses introduces Spongebob's Grandma, and after visiting her and forgetting to wipe off a kiss mark on his forehead, Spongebob feels the need to grow up and stop acting like a baby.  While Patrick tries to help, he sees the benefits of behaving like a child and takes Spongebob's preferential treatment from his Grandma.  I plan to show you how to be an adult after this paragraph.  Squidville is the famous episode where Squidward gets tired of being neighbors with Patrick and Spongebob and moves to Tentacle Acres, a gated community for Squids.  This episode becomes increasingly funny as it goes on, but I will never forget how great it is when Squidward finds "Canned Bread" at the grocery store and the can has a caption that claims it is "Best Thing Since Sliced!"

#3 SB-129/ Karate Choppers (Season 1) 18.5 Rating
We have made our way over to another one of my former housemate's favorite episodes, he was always quite animate about how he believed SB-129 to be his favorite episode.  The episode revolves around Squidward again as he tries to evade Spongebob and Patrick and finds himself on a quest through the past, future and nowhere, before finding himself back in the same spot he began.  I can never fail to laugh at the part where Squidward discovers that everything is chrome in the future.  I have mentioned Karate Choppers in a previous post where I pointed out that I believed it to be a euphemism for sex, but upon watching it again it is equally likely to be about sex as drugs, so watch it and make your own opinion about what Spongebob and Sandy are doing in secret.

Future!

#2 Chocolate With Nuts/ Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy V (Season 3) 18.6 Rating

This episode could very well be the best ever, it really is nearly flawless.  Chocolate With Nuts is the story of Spongebob and Patrick trying to get rich quick by selling chocolates door to door and features some of my favorite Patrick moments along the way.  If you don't know the highlight of this episode you have never seen the episode.  The fifth Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy episode is my personal favorite use of the duo, where Barnacle Boy gets fed up with being treated like a child and decides to join with the Dirty Bubble and Man-Ray to create Every Villain is Lemons (E.V.I.L).  The episode goes on the spoof comic book groups such as the Justice League and Avengers, and brings along a little more adult humor than normal.  It is truly a great one.

#1 Prehibernation Week/ Life of Crime (Season 2) 18.9 Rating

I have an admission to make, I rigged the voting so that this one will win.  It was the only episode I knew would make the top 10 and I knew it was my favorite episode.  Specifically Prehibernation Week, in which Spongebob and Sandy partake in dangerous sporting activities before Sandy has to hibernate, but Spongebob can't deal with the games and hides.  This episode contains at least 3 of my favorite jokes the show has ever made, and prominently features Pantera as background music, it is a gem.  My housemates and I even made up a drinking game to this which didn't last long as it was too taxing.  Life of Crime is a solid episode as well, where Spongebob and Patrick steal a balloon, and when it pops, go on the lam.  It spoofs movies and TV shows about convicts as well as instills the morals in children that stealing is wrong. It also has this.   

Rig a voting?  Uhhh, I can explain.

Frivolities

- #4 and #1 were consecutive episodes in season 2.

- #3, #8 (Sleepy Time/ Suds), #11 (Valentines Day/ The Paper), #6 and #5 were all consecutive episodes in the first season.

- All ten of these episodes were made before the movie.

- Whale of a Birthday/ Karate Island was the best episode from season 4 and ranked #23

- The Krusty Sponge/ Sing a Song of Patrick was the best episode from season 5 and ranked #35

- The pilot episode (Help Wanted/ Reef Blower/ Tea at the Treedome) ranked at #17.

- Christmas Who? was the top ranked 22 minute story and was #28

- The top 5 stories were Prehibernation Week (10), Rock Bottom and Shanghaied (9.6), and Chocolate with Nuts and Survival of the Idiots (9.5).

- Despite Survival of the Idiots being in the top 5, it's pairing with Dumped has it outside the top half of episodes.

- The only other episode I thought would make the top 10 before rating stories was Wet Painters/ Krusty Krab Training Video, which ranked 14th.

I have been planning to write this post for a while now and it took me nearly 2 and a half hours to write, so I hope someone finds interest in this, cause I need to go to bed.  As always, stay tuned.

Tangents With a Purpose!

I noticed the other day that despite the fact that we basically build our blogs off of each other's, Toninho and myself write our blogs in very different styles.  I tend to write my posts with a purpose in mind that I have previously planned on talking about, where he seems to sit down and write anything that comes to his mind.  I admire how when I read his posts I never know where it is going to do next as he always goes on entertaining tangents that sometimes I don't even know where they came from.  I don't go on tangents as often (and when I do they are usually single sentences thrown in parentheses like this one now) and maybe I should start doing that more often, just writing whatever comes to mind and only finishing my posts when I decide they are finished.  So lets go off to lovely Tangentland!

Not to be confused with tangent planes.

I was browsing my blog the other day and realized that it has been a while since I have spoken anything about my personal life, according to my label "dating" other than my one about interactions with people I haven't really posted anything that was even remotely about my personal life since my personal favorite post where I compared my relationship with being a baseball fan to a real world relationship because of Ryan Braun's positive test for PEDs.  I am happy that for one reason or another he didn't have to serve the suspension and is responding to the nay-sayers by having another fine season thus far.  But back to my personal life, my lack of writing about it has simply been because I have no current prospects and haven't for nearly a year and that saddens me.  But it is hard to meet people when you spend a few months living home alone in what Toninho and myself have referred to as a "wasteland for young adults," so since not many strangers (male or female) stumble into my bedroom I didn't meet many people over that span of time.  Then I went back to school for a month before my graduation ceremony to see my college friends again before we all go away to our respective places, and since my main focus was to give my friends proper goodbyes, I didn't concentrate on meeting new people for a month-long fling.  Then after graduation I started working the night shift at my family's shop so it would be creepy if I met anybody there since it is a family business and even if it wasn't, it's an industrial setting so anybody there is a total yuckfest.

My sentiments exactly

Since loneliness kinda sucks, I gotta find out what I am going to do going forward.  I am going to be going to a new school in the Fall, one that doesn't have a male dominated student body!  So for now I'm going to hold out and hope that people there are more compelling than the ones I've already met, but that doesn't mean there aren't people I have already met.  My sister mentioned that someone she knew that just graduated was going to the same school and doing math, but there are multiple things massively wrong with that.  First, the age difference is way too large at this point in life.  When I was just entering college I was a much different person than I am today, I wanted to do different things, had a very limited set of opinions and intelligent thoughts, was just starting what I want to call my second childhood (currently starting what is probably my third childhood) and my lifestyle was a lot most improvised since it was my first taste of independence.  Second, it is very possible that that girl would be in one of the classes that I am going to be a TA for, and that is just wrong on multiple levels that I don't even have to explain (or I've tried dating a former student before and it wasn't a great experience.)  There are other reasons but I really don't want to keep listing them and keep going on.

I know how she can get an A!

 I've also had two people tell me that the girl I went to junior prom with transferred into the school as well.  I don't know why they felt the need to tell me that since I haven't spoken to her in over 4 years, and I wonder if people are telling her that I'm doing grad school, but I think that is unlikely.  I hadn't thought of trying to rekindle that in those 4 years since I last spoke with her, but I guess it wouldn't be a terrible idea if it came about naturally.  Speaking of girls I have had vague romantic interest in over my life, when I think back on who they were there are a few that I can't recall what I saw in them which makes me feel bad because it suggest that I am not at all sentimental about the people I've met (which I am) and that I have no consistent desires in my life.  So right on cue I reach the part of the Childish Gambino album when this song plays (Editor's note: This used to be a link to the song "Heartbeat").


I think that is probably the best song on an album that I found to be surprisingly good, especially as it takes a certain type of hip hop for me to like it.  But the best part of the album is that it is made completely by Donald Glover, who I always knew of through his work with Derrick Comedy, and knew for a little bit that he was an actor on the show Community (which I've never seen) and a writer for 30 Rock (which I have watched an like a lot), but just discovered his stand-up a few months ago.  After seeing two of his stand-up specials I was convinced he is the first comic that I have really liked since Dave Chappelle.  For the most part, even though I love the craft of stand-up comedy, I have not liked any of the popular ones in recent days.  I know that he has started to get popular recently, but I hope he blows up because he is a talented individual to be able to do all these things successfully.  I would really like to try doing stand-up someday but I don't think any of the bits I have thought of so far are too funny, especially since when I try to tell people them they don't seem to laugh much more than just a chuckle, but in reality most of what stand-ups say isn't much more than a chuckle if you took them out of the pressure situation of being on a stage in front of strangers.  So since I have never had any problems talking in front of a lot of people, maybe I would be good at it.

Speak for yourself.

Since no natural tangents came to mind I'll talk about baseball, this was my response to hearing the Mariners traded Ichiro to the Yankees.  It saddens me to see him leave the team he has spent his entire MLB career with and I can only wonder what is going to become of him now, is he going to be a starter after this year?  Is he going to get 3000 hits?  Is he going to get the World Series ring he left Seattle for?  Is he going to use this change of scenery to get his OBP back above .300?  Only time can tell what is going to become of him, but this has been an entertaining baseball season, and maybe I will be able to get back to writing for Penultimate Round Pick soon to talk about some of my favorite stories of the season.  I am not very good at tangenting, I have the urge to revisit all of the topics I just talked about in a lot more detail, it is just the way I write.  So I'm going to leave it at that, expect to see me return to form next time and keep on a set topic the whole time.  Here's a video to celebrate my attempt at writing in tangents.

Interactions With People

Once again I am here trying to create a post on my fancy smartphone, this time while I'm sitting by myself on break. For some reason I am interested in writing about some strange interactions I have had with other people in my life. I have often had a habit of being a little socially awkward in front of new people and have had a long history of making terrible first impressions, in fact I've had multiple friends tell me that they hated me when they first met me but grew to like me when they actually met me. I find this to be an interesting phenomenon in my life and especially strange given the fact I am a pretty good public speaker. But anyways here are some interesting instances that come to mind.

Here's another thing I did at work!

When I was a freshman in college I lived across the hall from some lax bros. They mostly kept to themselves in the building and you would only see them either bringing some slut back or going out to smoke. But one time I saw one of them in a much different circumstance, he was pacing the hall talking on the phone. From the short bit that I heard he was complaining about the people at the school, saying most of the students are socially awkward nerds and complaining about how nobody ever seems to acknowledge other people as they walk by. I remembered this and thought that maybe I could help him feel better about the school so the next time I saw him I was sure to give him a head did and say hello, simply trying to be friendly. The damn kid ignored me completely and kept walking! What kind of douchebag complains about people ignoring each other then proceeds to ignore the kid who tries to remedy the situation. Maybe the kid really just missed ignoring people he thought he was cooler than like back in high school, no matter what his problem was he is an asshole in my book.

Not sure if that is him or not.. Same thing conceptually.

Another time I found funny was when I was in my phase of coming up with fake names and background stories to tell people, or as my friends know it, before I learned to exile Chase Robertson to the internet. I was at a party with two friends, one of which just came off of a long relationship and we were trying to cheer him up. The other friend decided to not care who he was dancing with so he started dancing with a sumo. When he noticed the gargantuan proportions of hiatus dance partner he tried to change his situation the best he could, by dishing her off on us. The recently single friend didn't see it coming so he was forced into a dance but spent the whole time giving me the most sad looks that just said "save me." Next would have been my turn but somehow I managed to get her to sit and talk as she wanted to dance with the first friend again, who I claimed to have never met before. I then proceeded to introduce myself as Patrick McGoohan (a spy fiction actor from the 60s) and said I could not dance with her due to my relationship with a girl back home in Vermont (not where I'm from at all but it wasn't a total lie as I was involved slightly with another girl at school.) My intentions hereto get everybody out of this situation with their dignity intact, but it took a strange turn when this girl started to tell me her life story, and I heard at least one story I had no interest in hearing. Eventually I found a way to get out of it myself and left the party to play Starfox.

Then there was an entire semester with a lab partner that shared my intentions of not mentioning the elephant in the room. I had only met her once before through a mutual friend, once again at a party, and even though I really didn't try to talk to her much her eyes were piercing through my for a little while. She had nice eyes so we danced and eventually started doing the most two people can do in a public area without anybody finding it lewd or offensive. The problem with this situation was that it took me until then to come to the realization that she was also the same girl one of my friends met at a party two weeks earlier and they left to enjoy each other's company. Not only that but she had been trying to get him to commit to a relationship since then and my job was likely to unknowingly get his attention. Months later we found ourselves in the same class and he only two people without a lab partner for the semester, so we partnered up and made believe we knew the other from elsewhere. In the end I got to know her and she was pretty cool, and nothing like you would think from just hearing that story. 

Fortunately I'm not that awkward

Since the last two stories have been about parties I'll switch to a decidedly different setting, the grocery store I used to work at (and blogged about last year.) One day I was minding my own business mopping up something some moron spilled when two of my friends.came over to me. I could tell by their expressions that they had something odd on their mind but nothing could have prepares me for the exchange that was to come. The first one came over and proceeded to ask if she could ask me a question, which always means something is going to happen. On my reply of yes she proceeded with her question, "can you pee with an erection?" Even I was caught off guard by that question and after a second told her my honest response and she then turned to the other friend and said "I told ya so!" And that was just a typical moment with those two.

One of many great images when your Google Image search "morning wood pee"

Since I seem to be going on too long I'll tell one more story, the story of the first class I had to teach. Granted I wasn't actually the instructor of the course but I was a teaching assistant with my own one hour block once a week. During the class I did the normal introduction and ice breakers that I was taught to do, then I went over the course syllabus but those didn't fill the time so I asked the class for general questions. One student's hand shot up almost instantly. He asked me how you get a suitemate to move out. My only response was to redirect him to the people who have the power to change housing assignments. Nevertheless of my lack of power in that situation he felt the need to tell myself and the rest of the class that his reasoning for wanting the guy to move out was that his suitemate had a habit of spending most of his days watching adult cartoons featuring characters from Naruto. I found the situation to be genuinely funny so the only thing I could do was hide behind my desk and laugh until I was straight faced enough to change the topic. Since then I've been fairly certain I can take anything a student tries to throw at me.

Most exhausting foreplay ever.. Also, right side, dude?

Welcome to my life..

2012: The Year of Seconds

It has been quite some time since I've had enough structure in my life to keep up with television shows by watching new episodes on their regular weekly showing time, but there once was a time when I was able to and here's how I remember it.  The first season or two are really exciting because the show is new and you never know how the writers are going to create new situations and how they are going to make the characters change over time.  Everything is fresh and new and surprising, in other words, those intro seasons are the reason people love television.  Around the time of the third season two things can happen, the show creates convoluted situations to keep the show alive and keep people guessing (mostly done by shows on Showtime) or they can settle into their routine and episodes become moderately predictable.  Then at some point during a season you sit down to watch a new episode and you realize that the episode seems oddly familiar, it usually should take no longer than 3 minutes to realize that they are showing a damn rerun during primetime.  Those primetime reruns were probably the most annoying thing when I watched TV rather than Netflix, I wanted a new experience, not to watch an old episode again that I probably remember too well.  Before my 1 faithful reader starts thinking I'm going to explode into a rant about primetime television, I'll bring this point together.  You see, I've reached the point in my life where I am starting to get reruns, and it is a little bit worse than on television.  It is weird because with the rumored apocalypse coming I'm pretty sure that the ratings on my life are waning and the writers are taking a few weeks off to rewrite all the scripts to put a succinct end to the story.  Either that or the writers are completely mailing it in.  Anyways, lets look at some of my reruns in this year of 2012.

Sounds like a plan!

The year started off pretty new, as you can read in some of my past posts I was unemployed and tried to start a sports blog with some friends, it was all new experiences for me even though most of them were terrible experiences.  But the time for new experiences was over when graduate school decisions came to me (yeah, I'm continuing my education, its gonna be sweet) and I had to make my decision on where I was going to spend an arbitrary amount of years depending on my program. If you read my past post about how I chose which college to attend for my undergraduate studies you know that I made a decision and later got a better deal from another school so I switched schools before attending a single class.  Well for some reason (my subconscious being an asshole) those two schools were the only ones that I applied to for graduate school.  Sure as hell when I got into both of them I was only given a financial aid package for one of them, and after a visit I decided that the program and the package was right for me so I sent my confirmation there a few weeks before my decision was needed.  Proud of myself and happy to no have had to make a difficult situation I relaxed and prepared for my new life at a new school.  But since this article is about reruns I'm sure you can guess what happens next!  My Alma Mater sent me a more attractive financial package and I was forced to rethink my decision again.  This time I actually held steady with my initial decision (I couldn't spend any more time out there, just not a nice place to live) and I'm gonna end up questioning that one just as much as with 4 years ago. It seemed at the time like an isolated incident of my life repeating itself, but I was eventually going to learn that was going to become a trend.

I know the feeling yellow ghost...

After that I returned to my apartment at school to have some final fun with my friends before the graduation ceremony, which was the obvious setting of my next rerun.  Over the course of four years I forgot how incredibly boring graduation ceremonies are, you are wearing a silly looking dress with a cardboard square on your head, it's summer and you are probably outside and the only thing you have to listen to is some guy reading names off of a list.  Luckily I knew the people I was sitting with so instead of seeming like I was sitting there for the 4 hours the ceremony lasted it was more like 3 hours and 52 minutes.  Then came the recurring situation of saying goodbye to your friends that you spent the last few years bonding with just in time to likely see them a limited number of times in the future (obviously a lot more true for college than high school but it did happen with some people in high school), which is always full of making fake plans that will never come to fruition because you don't want to get emotional in what could be your last meeting.  I know that this was a planned rerun, but it happened and was kind of a rough day.

Slightly relevant but funny nonetheless.

 The next case was when the year of reruns completely dawned on me, because the next two took place on the same day.  I spent the morning helping one of my best friends move into a new house closer to where they work, which is over an hour away and at that distance that makes visiting slightly burdensome.  This was the second one of my best friends that I had helped move to a spot that fits the slightly burdensome description (granted the first one was December 2011 but this still counts) and since they are both in different  directions I wonder how often I will ever see both of them at the same time.  I have spent most of the last seven years with those two guys, and moving them away is changing my life just as much it is theirs, except they have to become grown-ups now and I'm retaining my youth by staying in school.  Knowing this was a great time to celebrate this change in life, we spent that night having some good old fashioned fun!  Whilst having said "fun" I received a text message that I was warned about that morning.  It was a picture of a ring on what is to be my sister-in-law's finger and thus was the second time one of my brothers had gotten engaged.  The oldest of my brothers was married last summer and was 25 at the time, and the brother who had just gotten engaged and is currently 23 years old.  The "fun" I was describing earlier reflects the fact that I am 21 years old as of this writing and nowhere near a place where I will follow in the footsteps of my brothers in that category.  I've known for a while that I lead a much different life than my brothers so it's not like this happening put me in a state of "what am I doing with my life," I am proud of them all and I can't wait to give another best man speech next summer, maybe I'll have someone there this time to facepalm and ask themselves what they see in me.  

Hey bride, pull my finger!

So there's a few reruns from my life, now that I see this trend coming along this year I can't help but wonder what situations I am going to find myself in again with the half of the year that remains.  A lot of ones that come to mind aren't the most pleasant, but I think I'll enjoy them as they come and go.  I'll be sure to keep my reader up to date on all goings on in my life whether they are new episodes or reruns, until then enjoy Lawrence at his finest.