Random Thoughts VI

- I'm always a little confused when companies or nonprofit organizations send me free stuff in the mail, like some return address labels or a nice pen, and then ask for a donation afterward. Shouldn't you send me stuff after I send you money? Do they know that they're doing it backwards? Or are they trying to guilt me into sending money, like "Oh, they sent me a sweet pen, I really should donate". If they continue to run this backwards form of capitalism, I'm never gonna donate. I'm just not.

- I've mentioned before the lack of protocol when it comes to textversations (conversations via texting, pretty self-explanatory I'd say). We need to create a word for a person who, to put it simply, doesn't "ask back". This is when you're texting someone, but the entire textversation consists of you asking questions ("How are you?") and them, answers ("good") BUT without them asking questions in return. It's less of a textversation, and more of a text interview. Texterview? We need to do something about all these texterviewees in our society.

- While we're creating new names for things, I figure this is a good place to put my thoughts regarding what I call "3 Star Restaurants". You all know what I'm talking about. The best way to think about a 3 Star Restaurant is this: They all have different names, different styles, and different menu's, but are essentially the same place. Another way to think about it is that 3 Star Restaurants are the restaurants that 15-20 year olds hit after going to a movie when you have $16 left, but not really a place your parents would go by themselves. I broke down 3 Star Restaurants into the following list:

• Chili's
• Uno's
• T.G.I. Friday's
• Ruby Tuesday's
• Outback
• Applebee's
• The 99
• Ground Round

So there you have it. 3 Star Restaurants. I'm gonna copyright that name.

- Strange phenomenon: When you're at, like, a Bertucci's, and you go into the bathroom and suddenly you realize that Michael Buble is playing and you realize that it has been on in the entire restaurant the whole time, but you didn't notice it until you got to the bathroom where it was quiet, and then you wonder for a second if it's actually only playing in the bathroom and how weird that would be. Am I the only one who thinks of these things? Maybe I should stop typing...

Childhood Games, Stupidity Of

I had a thought today (Go ahead, get it out of your system, "Yay Matt!" "How did that feel?", etc.). The thought was this: Do you remember the game "Mother May I"? Well, it was one of those games kind of like "Simon Says" or "Red Light, Green Light", and, if my memory serves me correctly, it went something kind of like this:

One person was the "Mother". "Mother" stood some distance away from everyone else. Now, the objective of this game is to reach "Mother" and thereby become the new "Mother". One at a time, someone would ask "Mother" if they may come closer, asking in a variety of ways. For example, "Mother may I take 3 baby steps?" or "Mother, may I take 2 giant steps?", etc., at which point "Mother" may reply 'Yes' or 'No'.

Read that last sentence again.



IS THIS NOT THE STUPIDEST THING YOU'VE EVER HEARD?!?! Holy shit, this blew my mind. Each person needs to ASK the "Mother" if they may come closer and win the game and steal the position of power and "Mother" can just say 'No'!? Are ya' kidding me?! How is this a game?

I feel like this game was totally created by an older sibling as a trick. It's kind of like "The Quiet Game" that parents play with their kids. I can totally see an older sibling saying something like:

"HEY! I have an idea! Let's play a game! You go over there and ask me if you can come closer. If you touch me, you win."
"OK! Can I come closer?"
"No"

Somehow this "game" caught on with other people. I can only imagine that it was passed on from the older sibling to his older sibling buddies, and, through them, it was passed down to the younger sibling, and over time it became a "part of everyone's childhood". But when you think about it...

It's just stupid.

College, Questions Concerning, Vol. III

- Is it weird that 3 of my 5 professors told us to call them by their first names? I mean, I know I'm an adult now too but you're still my teacher. I'd much rather just call you "Professor" than I would "Ellen", even though calling you "Professor" makes me feel like a character from Harry Potter.

-Is it weird that the girls enjoy the thrill of playing Rock Band on Easy way more than the guys enjoy it on Expert? Granted, some of them have graduated to Medium, but still.....

(Note: To those of you who did graduate to Medium, congratulations! I'm very proud of you! Keep on rockin! And Nicole...you'll get there...)

-How could I possibly lose a sock in the wash while at college? There aren't that many places that I find myself taking my socks off.

-This one has been bugging me for a while so I figure that this is as good a place as any to finally ask: When did North Faces become popular and how did I miss it?

-With the amount of time I find myself bored, how is it possible that I never put any of that time towards my blog?

-If your recycling bin is literally overflowing with soda (and lemonade) cans, isn't it only natural to take them all and build an enormous tower of cans on your roommate's dresser? Okay, good, I thought so too.

-Does it make any sense to say that the more hours of sleep I get, the more tired I am the next day? I wouldn't think so but hey, what do I know?

-Is there anything better than secret handshakes? Anything at all?

-If you got hooked by "The Bachelor"...actually, let's not mention this one.

-You know you're at college when you can spend a weekend like this: take the bus to eat at Five Guys, spend $15 at Target on lemonade, root beer, and Fritos, watch 'Young Frankenstein', watch 5 episodes of "The Office", take the bus to eat at Qdoba Mexican Grill, watch 'Back to the Future', and then watch 30 (THIRTY) episodes of "How I Met Your Mother". Yes, 30. That's 622 minutes worth, or 10.4 hours. I'm so proud.

-If you find a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the ground outside your building... 1. How did that get there? and 2. You have to pick it up for your door, right?

-What should you do if your nicknames from the beginning of the year are slipping away or already dead? It's really hard to resurrect a dead nickname. Should we create new ones? Should we, God forbid, call each other by our actual names?! Perish the thought.

Random Thoughts V

- Ever feel like working out in your own home with an electronic yet still sarcastic and snappy personal trainer? Then Wii Fit is for you!!! My brother plays Wii Fit a lot, I'm not sure why, it looks extremely boring. The most interesting feature in the Wii Fit is that it comes fully equipped with, well...an attitude. When you start it up after not playing for a while, it says things like "Hey, looks like someone's been slacking off". Woah! Back off, Wii Fit! The Wii Fit is really big on balance, for some reason (not sure what having good balance has to do with anything). When analyzing your balance, the Wii Fit really takes the opportunity to mock you with things like "Do you trip over the sidewalk when you walk?". After a conversation about this, my brother and I tried to think of the meanest and funniest thing to hear from the Wii Fit. Best we came up with: "Someone should think about putting the fork down between bites".

- In my kitchen, we have a stainless steel refridgerator. It looks nice and all, and works fine as far as I know. Only problem: It's not magnetic. I didn't know they made non-magnetic fridges! Why would you buy something like that? Where else do you put your magnets? Seriously...name one other place you put magnets.

- How do they make bubble wrap? Don't just read this point and blow past it. Stop. Think about it.........weird, huh?

- In my opinion, there are two kinds of people in this world: Those who sit and watch the credits after a movie and those who don't. I do. I feel like that is a great moment to think about, like, where are all these people going? It's not like they all have to be somewhere. What's the rush? Sit down, relax, life is too short to rush out of movie theaters.

-Married people wear rings. Tradition says that they do this to signify the bond between the husband and wife, but it's really just so someone who's checking them out can know ahead of time whether they're single or not. Well, in that sense, I think that everyone in a relationship should have some sort of physical evidence. Like, if I see an attractive girl, I'd want to know if they were single or not before I talked to them. Is this a ridiculous idea?

- Last semester, I had an 8:30 class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They were absolute hell. Each Tuesday and Thursday came with the experience of waking up at 7:40, trying to wake up my still sleeping roommate, meeting my buddy for coffee, and heading to class, all the while wondering how it is that I'm awake at such an ungodly hour. Then I remembered that, in high school, I woke up at 6:30 every day and was at school by 7:30. How is that possible? Why don't I remember that sucking so much?

- I have to bring this one up. There has been lots of talk of decades lately. Summing up the past decade, best this and worst that of the decade, first day of a new decade, etc. But I'm getting mixed signals, I'm being told by some that the new decade doesn't start until 2011, yet everyone else is acting like a new decade started yesterday. How can we get an official ruling on this? Is there one that everyone is ignoring? I need to know these things.

- A few more New Year's notes: Firstly, everyone sits around at midnight and watches The Ball drop. Does The Ball have a name? It's just "The Ball". How has it not been bought yet? How has it not become, say, sitting around and watching the Comcast New Year's Ball drop? This just seems too obvious to me. The Ball. So weird. Also, after midnight, they showed on TV the celebrations from around the world. Other countries had lots of fireworks, Hong Kong shot fireworks off of every skyscraper, London had an enormous fireworks show, things like that. In America....we watch a shiny ball slowly descend down a pole. How exciting. Well done, America.