This is a post my brother wrote. He's in the air force living in Seoul, Korea and has many hilarious stories to share. This is an over exaggerated recap of his morning a few days ago.
"My mind wanders through subconsciousness like a snowflake wanders the sky on a calm evening. The clock ticks to 5:20 am and suddenly my ears are assaulted by the deafening electronic beeping. Still ensconced by the grasp of sleep, my arm is slow to strike the snooze button.
Eight fleeting minuets pass and once more I am at the mercy of the simple device on my nightstand. This time I manage to shake the semi hypnotic trance and lash out in full force, smashing my defenseless clock into the hard cement wall of my dorm. A litany of curses ensues its ruction as I work up enough gall to toss back my warm and inviting blankets and bare the savage cold of the room outside of my bed. My ceiling fan watches me from above, like a bird of prey encircling its next victim. Its chill wind is an unwanted guest in my room this morning so I choke out its life with the simple flick of a switch.
I go about my daily routine of getting dressed in my finely crafted ABU light armor set and brushing my teeth. The newly formed plaque and morning breath cry out in agony as I unleash an onslaught of minty fresh fluoride, crushing them between the mighty bristles of my brush. Once all my gear has been accounted for I leave the relative safety of my room and traverse down the hall way, stopping only momentarily to summon a magical box than transports me 80 feet down to the surface below. I make my way through a few more dim corridors and finally reach the last door of the structure.
Outside is a bitter, snow swept wasteland. The wind howling through narrow alleys, taxis racing down the ice ravaged road, the moon still looms overheard, casting a gloomy light over the unwelcoming world before me. But I cannot afford to be intimidated by such things. Who else would vacuum and clean if I were not to show for work? Thus is my duty. My calling. And with that I make the first step of many toward my shop."
-Fin.
Why I decided on the Super Bowl is another side story in it's self, and a story you have to hear to fully appreciate the poem.
About 3 weeks ago I was hanging out at my friend Travis's with a couple other people. We enjoyed some heated games of battle Tetris but as the night went on every one just started hanging out and I continued my quest for Tetris domination on one-player marathon style. Anyway after a while people got to talking about how the Cardinals had just beaten the Panthers and how they could not believe it. Then Tim spoke up about how his wife always picks the team that she thinks is going to win based on who would win in a real fight. In this case it was a Panther vs a Cardinal, so the obvious choice would be the Panther. This started a surprisinly serious debate about who would win in a fight and every one agreed on the Panther. They said that there is no way a Cardinal could beat a Panther. At that point I was still playing tetris (and in the freaking zone I might add) and i spoke up and said
"I just have one question."
They all stopped to listen and I asked.
"What if the Cardinal was fighting for love?"
And I returned to my tetris game. The room eploded with laughter and it has been an on going joke ever since.
With that said, my friend Travis is having a Super Bowl party this sunday which unfortunatley I will be unable to attend. But to make up for my absince I decided to write this poem in hopes that he would read it to everyone before game time.
So with out further adu, here it is.
It’s the Cardinals vs. the Steelers, the biggest game of the
year.
If you’re curious about who is going to win pay attention and listen hear.
Betting on the
Steelers may be considered easy money.
But listen to my story; I’m not trying to be funny.
Let’s take a closer look at the Cardinal’s playoff run.
Let’s analyze each game and see exactly what they’ve done.
In a real fight a Falcon would beat a Cardinal any day.
But with Kurt Warner at QB they somehow found a way.
The Panthers were the next opponent that they had to fight.
and the Cardinals defeated them with more than power and might.
Then it was the Eagles, an obvious safe bet.
But the Cardinals were victorious, there’s something people just don’t get.
People are bamboozled by the Cardinals success.
In the regular season they were a joke and a mess.
So how do they do it? Is what people want to know.
How does the team get better and continue to grow?
On Sunday the Cardinals will achieve their ultimate goal.
when they become victorious at the Super Bowl.
The reporters will surround Kurt Warner and ask him one question.
Tell us how you did it, and anything else you have to mention.
And with the Lambardi trophy in his hands and the sky up
above.
He will look directly into the camera and say “we were fighting for love!”
I signed into Facebook tonight to find my inbox flooded with tags of peoples notes. Yes for some reason a truckload of people couldn't think of that final person to add to their spam list and hated me enough to throw me on their list.
OK, maybe they didn't hate me, but they decided to tag me in a note that seems to be going around. Its basically 25 things about yourself. Its a flash back to 2005 MySpace where you write down 25 things about yourself "that nobody knows" and send it to 25 people who were apart of said line or that you want to write and pass on. Its another refresh of the ever annoying chain letter.
Being how I can't let a thing like this go on without mocking it relentlessly and beating it bloody, I decided to write a rebuttal in the sekret form of the chain letter itself. I sent it out to a few people, knowing they would be offended by it, but if they can't learn to laugh at something like this, then they will live a sad life.
Here it is:
Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails
1) What is a note?
2) Why does anyone care about this note?
3) What is the reason for these notes?
4) Why do people keep irrelevantly tagging me in their notes?
5) Is this the new "poke"?
6) Why does everyone have a list of random things about themselves that don't matter in their notes?
7) Is there a point to having only 25 lines in the note?
8) Is this a new concept of a chain letter?
9) Is this a lighter version of the stupid surveys that float aimlessly on MySpace?
10) Did Facebook just start to suck again?
11) Why do people think this is fun?
12) Is there more to life than what people know about me on Facebook?
13) Do I share these "Things about myself that nobody knows" so that hopefully people will pay attention to me and read them and send me a comment back because I'm lonely and bored and want someone to like for my uniqueness and strike up a random conversation about hair dye or tooth paste or the fact that we both enjoy watching Gossip Girls but only on DVD so we can watch it all at once instead of show by show because its so good oh by the way what's up with Chuck I know his dad died and everything by why so serious chuck i love the Dark Knight Heath Ledger XOXOXOX
14) Is it really necessary to tag 25 people specifically? Will time and space implode? Will you die where you sit? Will your neighbors dog die where it sits? Will the Flying Dutchman haunt you and your family for 7 generations? Is there a man behind the curtain? Will you have to find Jack, Kate, Sayid, Hurley and Sun and go back to the Island?
15) Do you hate me so much that you would clutter my inbox with 15 tags of myself on notes that don't relate to me?
16) Is there a reason that every note is named some awkward, random phrase that makes people want to slit their own wrists just trying to comprehend its meaning?
17) Are you really that "Out of the Box" and crazy that you believe you will blow people away by starting at 25 and counting backwards to 1?
18) Did you know they found water on Mars? Did you know that this note is still more irrelevant?
19) Is it really so ironic to write that you secretly *insert non-secret fact here* by placing it in a public note?
20) Are you really the only person that relates their life to a movie when you know at least 500 other people that do the same?
21) Do you really love me/like me and that's why you tagged me or are you just tagging people randomly because you can't think of 25 people that you actually love/like?
22) Do you hate me yet for mocking these notes so relentlessly?
23) Is it really necessary to write that embarrassing fact about yourself that "OMG I can't believe I'm saying this but..." because you actually like the attention and aren't that embarrassed by it?
24) Is it really a wonder that I could make fun of notes for this long?
25) Are you offended and hurt now that I just made fun of the chain note for 25 straight lines? Don't be. Read on.
This is a joke and nothing more. I just signed into Facebook and had a massive list of notifications from people that posted "25 things" in notes with me tagged in them. There are a great many things within Facebook that I do not like nor participate in. I don't accept requests to join random groups to save Russian White Seals nor do I accept kidnap requests (honestly, who would accept an invitation to be kidnapped?) nor do I add every ridiculous app and poke and tag there is. I use it for what I like, so don't be bothered or angry if I don't accept your request, or for this matter, return your chain letter. All you need to know about me is already written on my profile page or can be found out by having a REAL conversation with me.
Now, go along and laugh it all off, because it really is quite hilarious (especially #13)
If you don't know who Dwight Howard is I would recommend watching this years NBA dunk competition. He is an incredible athlete and a good Christian. Hopefully he tries some of these sweet dunks.
I wanted to drive everybody over to Zeldman.com to read this REDUNK story he has shared of his "family ties." Made me think about my family and what weird stories might I be able to share, one of which involves a meat tenderizer and my bare back. Anyways...
A noble history all around.
My father and brother inherited the Ukrainian rapist’s good looks, and I inherited his thirst.
I first learned about the Ukrainian rapist last year, in the context of one of my father’s breakfast table reminiscences. My father mentioned it as if it was one of the old family stories—like the stories about my father’s childhood, or my mother’s father’s death in an airplane crash, or my parents’ marriage. I’ve been hearing those stories since I tasted milk, but the rapist in the family tree was news.
Perhaps because the boy’s face reminded him that he had failed to protect his wife, my great grandfather made a daily exercise of beating my grandfather.
He beat him in Ukraine, he beat him in steerage on the passage to America, he beat him in the new land. He only stopped beating him when my grandfather, with my great grandfather’s written consent, enlisted in the US Army at age fifteen to go fight the Huns.
The US government arranged to have my underage grandfather’s soldier’s pay sent directly to my great grandfather in America.
My grandfather might have thought World War I would be softer than life with Poppa, but if so, he was mistaken. He emerged from trench warfare with a plate in his head, a metal disk in his knee, and certified paranoid schizophrenia as the result of exposure to mustard gas, a chemical agent the civilized nations were using on each other’s soldiers.
When he emerged from the hospitals, the US government gave my grandfather a disability pension, and this time the money went to him. Armed with those small funds, a schizophrenic’s talent for the grift, and his striking handsomeness, he won my grandmother and produced two children, one of whom was my father.
In deference to tradition, my grandfather beat my father every day. He extended the tradition by also beating my grandmother.
That stopped when my father, still wearing his Navy uniform, returned from World War II and threw my grandfather out.
In the decades that followed, my grandfather would sometimes appear out of nowhere, creating emotional havoc until my father gently put him on a train back to New York.
My grandfather married seven women that we know about, but none of the marriages stuck.
He gravitated to the Bowery and probably died there.
We last heard of him in the 1970s when I was in high school. Late one night, the phone rang. I answered. A man claiming to be a New York City policeman told me that he had picked up a deranged homeless man claiming to be my father’s father. Could we come pick him up?
We didn’t live in New York; my parents were out of town; as a minor watching my younger brother in my parents’ absence, I couldn’t travel to New York to fetch my grandfather. So I told the policeman that my father’s sister—my grandfather’s daughter—lived in the New York area and gave him her telephone number. Then, very politely, I hung up.
I had a bad feeling, like I should have done more, but what?
We never heard another word about my grandfather.
I used to go around barefoot all the time.
All. The. Time.
I was a no-shoes-wearing freak. The shoes came off as soon as I opened the front door and weren’t worn again until sometime after I left the house the next morning.
During this season of my life, until roughly… yesterday, I hurt my feet in so many wondrous ways. Not that it was wonderful, just that it made people wonder, “How the bleep did you do that?!” Well, you know, some people cuss when they’re wondering.
When I was a kid, there was this section of the floor where the tile butted up to the carpet, and I never seemed to lift my feet high enough to avoid tripping over the dumb edge hump. Not sure of the technical term for “edge hump”, but maybe you get the picture? It’s quite possible that I broke nearly every toe on each foot growing up. I say “it’s quite possible” because I’ll never know if they were really broken or not. That’s what you get when you have a mother who’s an orthopedic nurse. You get taped and splinted, because really there’s nothing they can do about a broken toe. One toe would barely heal before another toe was injured and the first toe would act as a splint for the newly hurt toe. It was a vicious cycle.
Sometimes, I would puncture a toe on the stairway because I got my piggies too close to the tack strip.
One time, I did this.
Another time, I stepped on a blown-glass Christmas ornament and barely came away with my skinniest toe intact. As it is, I’m still trying not to lose the thing to infection.
Hmmm, okay, I really only shaved a few layers of skin off, but still…it hurt, okay? Plus it was my skinniest toe and it didn’t have many layers of skin to begin with. And it was on the underneath side, so I had to step on it all the time. It’s one thing to cut your knee while your shaving, but you don’t have to walk on your knees all the time, so it’s really not similar at all.
When I couldn’t bear to hurt my feet again I finally decided to start wearing shoes all the time. Even at home, which is where a person should be able to go around bare footed. And, for that matter, bare you-know-whated as well if he or she really feels like it. I hear it’s kind of nice to walk around in your underwear when there’s no one else at home. Not that I do that when Rex is at work and Bx is at school… or when I’m looking for a towel that just happens to be in the living room. I just hear that it’s nice, that’s all I’m trying to say. And, all of that aside, I wear tennis shoes around the house all the time now anyway, and I’m pretty positive tennis shoes just aren’t flattering on people who walk around bare you-know-whated. I’m so certain about it, that I got these cute little lavender slippers that have rubbers soles in order to prevent just such an unflattering occurrence.
Not that I do that anyway. Good grief, y’all! How many times do I have to reinforce that point?
Here’s my main point: My feet have been feeling so much better since I started wearing tennis shoes (and rubber-soled slippers) to prevent mishaps like the illustration above. I highly recommend instituting the practice at your place of residence.
P.S. Please don’t unexpectedly pop by my house to try to catch me wearing my tennis shoes during the day. It won’t work, and my ugly old sweats’ll just disappoint you anyway.
P.P.S. If you’re going to pop by during the day, please call me 10 minutes in advance on regular days and 1 hour in advance on laundry day.
