:.Can I Get A Couple More Tootsie Rolls?.:

I was discussing with Britnee the worldwide sensation that is the arcade. I’m not talking about a regular old video game arcade. No, I’m talking about the prize wielding kind. The first thing I always did was scope out what I was playing for. I never could set my sights low, like a basketball goal that I could hang on the back of my door plus a foam ball that you couldn’t actually shoot from more than 5 feet away because it would instantly lose velocity. I always wanted something unattainable with tickets but easily attainable with 5 dollars cash. I’m talking about a CD boombox

a ride-on fire truck

an alien head lamp

maybe even an electronic gun that shoots bubbles…o yeah!

Once I’ve decided on my goal, I would set off to spend my college fund.

I usually started out trying to just get some guaranteed tickets by playing games I was pretty good at. Ski ball, basketball, and maybe even a little whack-a-mole. Those games only give you about 5 tickets for winning, so there is no way I’m going to be able to blast my enemies with bubbles if I don’t do some serious ticket damamge. Enter the games of amazing skill. Now it is time to play games where timing is everything! There was the one that if you stopped the light that moved incredibly fast in your “zone,” you could win like 800 tickets. Usually, I would spend around $5 dollars on the little whore (without winning because the light mysteriously stopped short everytime) before I would move on to something else. I also always hated the game where there was a really large, dumb clown face that you tried to shoot the teeth out of, but it was way to hard to aim the gun correctly. If I remember right, the teeth all had faces and crazy hairdo’s. I’ve never been much of a marksman, but I would like to believe blasting large hairy teeth out of a clowns mouth isn’t outside my skill set.

When I finally decided I was done, I would have a stack of tickets from the floor to my chin. In the olden’ days, I would have to try and count these tickets by hand. Then, you tell the prize redeemer how many tickets you had, and since they don’t make enough money to call you on your math, they would pretty much believe you. I never tried to fool them though, they always seemed to have an innate sense of how to count tickets at a glance, and I didn’t want to risk it. Later, ticket counting evolved from the hand counting method to this crazy invention that counted tickets by weight. I still think that machine was set up to screw me over, I always ended up a few tickets short. Well now-a-days, they have machines that can count tickets for you…amazing. I don’t know why more of our resources weren’t devoted to this technology, but that’s ok. Anyways, once your tickets were counted, it was time to do some prize picking.

I was always about 15,000 tickets away from getting an alien lamp, which means I can’t afford anything behind the counter. All of my prizes were placed, well lit, right in front of me in a glass case. This accolade atrium was full of fantastic knick-knacks. Spread out before me was every single flavor of tootsie roll (vanilla, banana, lemon, original, strawberry), a wide assortment of colors for friendship bracelets, those parachute guys who always got tangled in their damn parachute and never actually parachuted, every style of bouncy ball ever conceived, some weird vampire teeth that always hurt my gums, wax red lips that couldn’t open so you could never fake they were your lips, fake finger tips (i’m not really sure why i wanted those), a green army man for any situation(sniper, artillery, minesweeper, and a lame guy with a walkie talkie), and also those rubber things you could turn inside out and they would pop back up, but you could never set them down quick enough so they always popped in your own hand.

Since I couldn’t afford any cool prizes, I ended up leaving with 10,000 crappy ones. Every single one of my friends would recieve a new friendship bracelet. I would go home with a tootsie roll for each day of the year, and a different flavor for each month. I also usually went home with a new deck of cards with a professional team that no one cared about on them, such as the Cleveland Browns. All in all, I learned a lot about life. Such as, don’t stop till you reach the top…otherwise you will get worthless rewards.

:.Some Real Entertainment.:

I’m tired of having basic cable. In order to get the shows I really want, I need one of those original satellite dishes. I’m talking about those giant saucer’s that doubled as a children’s swimming pool. Those things always recieve the coolest channels. The All Karate Movies channel, the 24-Hour Supermarket Sweep channel, the Swedish Cooking Channel, QVC Japan (all Hello Kitty all the time), and of course the Animals Up Close, With a Wide Angle Lens channel.

:.Somebody’s Poisined the Water Hole.:

I was using the restroom at the Library this week and I spotted this little nugget etched into the stall.
This comment really had me taken aback. It appeared that it was completely unprovoked, since no one had written comments about Pixar films, Disney movies, nor the Toy Story series itself anywhere in sight. I guess that this angry critic felt the movie was so unexeceptional, he/she took the time to write with a sharpie on the wall, “toy story 2 was ok.” OK? Wow, they really let em’ have it. Some people hold back when they are writing on the stall, but not this die hard Woody/un-Joan Cusak fan. They went all out, letting their true, luke warm distest for Toy Story 2 show through. Luckily they staged this diabolical protest 8 YEARS after the film originally came out, and approximately 7 years, 11 months, and 10 days after the height of its popularity. In fact, this has really got me motivated to take a stand on a couple of sub-par sequels, such as:

Wow! I feel way… way better now that is off my mind.

:.It Ain’t as it Seems.:

The other evening we had a pretty large gathering at Britnee’s apartment for game night. I really wanted to mention one awkward, but funny moment. We were playing Catch Phrase and it was Steffen’s turn, who is on my team. He looks at me and says, “You have a big inflatable one of these.” Well instantly, everyone looks at me and is like…”wuh?” They assume Steffen is talking about a sex doll, since the phrasing insuates this. So I’m instantly on the defense, but because I am completely confused and caught off guard, I can’t say anything but, “um, n-n-noooo I don’t.” Well it turns out, Steffen was talking about Shrek, go figure. Here is what he is talking about:

Steffen might should have said, “he is the green ogre that has a donkey sidekick,” instead. O well, still provided for quite a laugh. O, and my buddy Klint somehow stepped in/on a York Peppermint Pattie and spent most of the game trying to unravel that mystery, which I thought was equally hilarious.

LOTD: Ask A Ninja: Back in the Day
QOTD: “Oh, and we owned all the tools ourselves
But not the skills to make a shelf with
Oh, what useless tools ourselves.” – Modest Mouse, Missed the Boat

:.The Flossy Flossy.:

Ryan, Kurtis, Steffen, Jeff and I packed up and headed down the road to go camping at the luxurious Blue River. Kurtis, Steffen and I rode in one vehicle, and we were going to meet the others down there. Kurtis had the entire thing mapped out on his iPhone, and were following along nicely. As George Castanza would have put it, “We were making great time!” But if you have ever been on one of our trips, you would know that nothing runs smoothly. Once we reached our exit, we noticed a giant orange sign had been placed over the front of it, reading, “CLOSED.” Being quick on his toes, Kurtis responded, “Maybe not?” Maybe not indeed, we took the exit anyways.

Once we arrived at the end of the on ramp, we were met with another informative tidbit, “ROAD CLOSED TO THROUGH TRAFFIC. BRIDGE OUT AHEAD.” In the spirit of Kurtis’ slogan, “Maybe not,” we drove on anyways. I wanted to floor it, and ramp the gap, but my friends didn’t want to. We finally met a dead end where the bridge actually was out, and there was a small detour sign. Sitting right above that detour sign was a pink piece of construction paper with the word “Glamorous,” written on it and an arrow pointing in the direction of the detour. We figured, who can’t trust a Glamorous sign?

Well after a couple more Glamorous signs, we were around the non-bridge and back onto the highway. It wasn’t after too long after that we reached Blue River, only to find that the water bridge to our side of the river was a raging rapid. Instead of settling for another campsite, we threw all of our gear onto our shoulders and made the mile hike to the campsite. After a couple of trips to and from, Ryan showed up and decided he was bad ass enough to drive across the bridge. Once the campsite was all set up, we went down to meet Jeff at the bridge, who just happened to already be standing there.

That was about it for the evening, until we all go into the tent for the night. Out of nowhere, we started singing a medley of show tunes and other classics, such as: Summer Loving from Grease, Dirty Pop from N’Sync, and A Whole New World from Aladdin. Summer Loving was easily the crowd favorite. We were all dancing around the tent and getting into it, classic. Another highlight of the tent action was every now and then, Jeff would yell out, “Steam Roll!” He would then roll from one side of the tent to the other, haha, it was hilarious. Then he mixed it up on us and asked, “What rhymes with ‘Bean Bowl’?” For some reason, none of us saw the obvious answer, until he revealed it as he rolled on us, “Steam Roll!”

:.Saturday: Day 1…Kind of.:

Saturday was an action packed day. We woke up early and headed up stream. The horseflies were all over us, and we ran into a spider web about every 7 or 8 feet. Once we got far enough up stream, we decided to float back. This proved to be both dumb and difficult, as the water was rarely deep enough for us to “float.” Usually we were floating with our legs up so that way we could avoid having our knees and hips smashed to bits. Sometimes, though, a rock would spin you sideways and the current would take you away too quickly to turn back around and you would pinball your ass, for a good 10 feet, off jagged rocks. For lunch we had turkey on bread and ice cold beer, perfect on a hot day! We wrapped up lunch with a classic game of grenades. The concept of grenades is simple, you throw rocks at each other…fun stuff.

We were disappointed to find out that the “holes” we normally go spelunking in were completely full of logs, sand, WWII propaganda, and twigs. This meant we could do our death defying tricks that we are infamous for (at least among the 5 of us). Since this kind of threw a wrench in our plans, we had to come with a new agenda. Since we had already swam for a bazillion hours, and were still nursing our rock wounds, that was out. This only left drinking! So we started throwing a couple back and decided that we better replenish our supply before we were intoxicated. So we hopped in Ryan’s truck and headed to Scotty’s.

On our way out of the camp grounds, we passed 4 cop cars: 2 highway patrol, 2 unmarked. Immediately we knew something was going down since you would rarely see a cop out in those parts, better yet 4. On our way back, turns out we were right. They had set up a roadblock to check for drunk drivers, underage drinkers, and the most sought after outlaws, people camping with out a hunting or fishing license. Lucky for us, Steffen was driving (he hadn’t had a sip), and we were all at least 21. Unfortunately, Kurtis and I are not hunters or fishers, so we didn’t have a license. Kurtis and I both have Ninja licenses, but those may have got us into even more trouble at that point. If I show anyone my ninja license, I have to kill them, which made this a tension filled situation. The Game Warden let Kurt and I off with warnings, and told us to lay low and drink our beer. So we did just that.

One more note on the evening. While we were sitting around our non-existent campfire, I felt something crawl on my leg. I brushed it off, but I was a little nervous because it felt like a large creature. Within seconds it came right back over onto my leg, and I lost it. I jumped up like I was on fire and was yelling for a flashlight. The culprit quickly identified himself as one Mr. Stick Bug. I thought he was pretty creepy, but Ryan is a beast master and just picked him right up. Look at how big this guy was:

:.A Farewell to Arms.:

All in all, the trip was a success and went somewhat better than the last time we were there. We couldn’t swim in the holes, but the horseflies weren’t nearly as treacherous and we had adequate camping supplies. It was great getting together with all the guys once more before school.

You can see all of the pictures from this trip right here:

Blue River

LOTD: Essential Camping Gear
QOTD: “By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher and that is a good thing for any man.” -Socrates

:.Spider-Man 3: Still No Good.:
I saw Spider-Man 3 this weekend (for the 2nd time) at a dollar theater. And for the 2nd time, I didn’t really like the movie. The 6 green vertical lines that moved about the screen for the duration of the movie didn’t help, nor did the possesed child behind me. I couldn’t believe the behavior of this kid. She spent the entire movie tugging on my hair, climbing on my seat, grabbing and poking my arm, and yelling for 10 second periods. I understand, she is a kid, but my beef was with the parents. Not once did they grab her, silence her, or even say “stop pulling the stranger in front of you’s hair!” Come on guys, if you aren’t going to step up, I’ll handle it! I felt like suplexing the girl into the pile of melted gum resting under my seat.

The reel (get it) highlight of the movie wasn’t even on screen. I went to the movie with Brandon and Kurtis. About 15 minutes in, a few Indians (from India) wanted to sit on our row. Whenever someone wants to walk down my isle, I have a little manuever I pull out. I raise myself out of my set using my arms alone (because I’m a bad ass) and then pull my legs back, pushing the seat into its original position, giving the person room to walk. Well, after about 3-4 of these folks walk by, I look back, and there are about 10 more! So I just go ahead and stand up, let them all pass and get to their seats…except for one. For some reason, one of the Indians cannot figure how to walk past us or something, and just stands there. After about 25 seconds, I shit you not, she is STILL standing there. Kurtis, Brandon and I are just exchanging giggles and awkward glances when the lady finally speaks. “I’m going to wait and see where I want to sit.” AH HA! She reveals the master plan! So she just stands there, waits for her entire crew to get situated, pass out food, rearrange seats, and play an entire game of a Hearts before she decides to move her happy ass on down the row. I didn’t watch where she sat down, but if I were to guess, probably the only open seat left, retard.

:.Catchy Lyrics.:
If I had to chose the most poetic lyrics of all time, they would be the following lyrics by Hurricane Chris:

Stuntin wit a stack of dem dubz
Ridin’ In A Lac Wit A Mug

I get choked up a little bit, everytime I read them. Even Chaucer would’ve like to have written in such fluid prose. In case you are wondering how you too could stunt wit a stack of dubz or even ride in a Lac wit a mug, you might enroll into 50 Cent’s Stunt 101 class, where you can learn the following:

My wrists stay rocked up
My TV’s pop up
in a Maybach benz
N***a you can’t see me
My bently GT
got smoke-gray tints
I’ll teach you how to stunt

Once you graduate from Stunt 101 you can enroll in Macro-Economics on Political Wankstas of Post Renaissance Italy. Here is a snippet of the curriculum:

We’re in the club doing the same old two step
Gorilla Unit cuz they say we bugged out
Cuz we don’t go nowhere without toast

And to wrap this up, I’ll Quote Stewie Griffin, “Well, good luck finding the subject and predicate of that run-on sentence! And what the bloody hell does it mean, “we don’t go nowhere without toast”? Now, you listen to me, Mr. Cent. If you want to make it in this business, lay off the doobie!”

:.And one more thing.:

This post was supposed to be up earlier this week, but some stuff tied me up (nothing really, just an excuse) so I wanted to add this update. I’m going camping this weekend at Blue River and incase you missed the last round of what happened, here’s a fanatastic recap(and another). Hopefully the horseflies ain’t bitin’, we’ve packed better, and it will be AWESOME!!

LOTD: Strongbad’s Movie experience (very similar to mine)
QOTD: “Do not fear mistakes. There are none.” ~ Miles Davis

:.My Powers Have Been Stripped.:

For most of my life, I’ve been holding in a dark secret. I’ve never told anyone, mainly out of fear. Fear that I would become an outcast in society and treated like a mutant. I mean, I’ve seen X-Men, those guys don’t get any love. I didn’t know if I was a mutant, per say, but I thought I had something special. What is my special power you ask?

For the longest time, I’ve been able to see transparent tiny creatures. If I unfocus my eyes, look at something bright (this computer monitor) and keep them still, I can see them. Some of them are shaped like tiny little dots while other ones are squiggly and worm-like. I’ve never understood what they were, or why I was seeing them. The only logical solution was that I had a super power, I could see cells or maybe atoms in the air. I thought that maybe, if I could train this talent, I could see them everywhere. I’m not really sure of the magnitude of usefulness this power has, but it is a power none the less.

Well yesterday, I was surfing the internet, and I came across this. Turns out, I don’t have a super power at all. I just have a damaged Vitreous Humor. I was pretty excited when I first found this, because it confirmed that I wasn’t making this up. But as I read on, I realized that it wasn’t too much to brag about. Although I no longer have to worry about being shipped off to Mutant-ville, my return to normalcy isn’t all that exciting. No more checking over my shoulder all the time for the man, no more trying to stare through walls into their molecular structure, and no more checking the change slots at the arcades in case someone put in too many tokens into Cruisin’ USA and didn’t know it. O well.

:.My Next Heroic Attempt.:

Since my “super powers” turned into eye problems, I need to focus my talents elsewhere…enter Guitar Hero. I had never really had a chance to get into the game, except the little demo at Wal-Mart that I might play during Hide-n-Seek. Last night, at Steffen’s, I changed that. Steffen and I ripped it up as we played such greats as: Van Halen – You Really Got Me Now, Rage Against the Machine – Killing in the Name of, and of course Strong Bad – Trogdor (see video below). The game is crazy addictive, so if you haven’t played it don’t, unless you have a couple of hours to set aside.

:.Viva La USA!.:

Last night, the USA Under-20 (U20) Soccer Team defeated Urugay to advance into the quarterfinals of the U20 World Cup. It was a poor showing by the US, but they won 2-1 in overtime anyways. They’ll have to pick it up if they want to win their next game against Austria. Tune in Saturday to see how it goes.

LOTD: HomeStarRunner
QOTD: “Words are the most powerful drugs used by mankind.” – Rudyard Kipling

:.A Really Fast Walking Pace to Remember.:

If you need to review the rules for Wal-Mart hide-n-seek, Go Here. We headed back to Wal-Mart this weekend to play…twice! Each round of it added a couple more players. Luckily, Christine didn’t run over any kids, but Joel was told to stop running (cheater). I posted a gallery here with pictures of the event, some candid hiding shots!

:.Things Are Getting Heated Up.:

Since no one decided to vote on here, Steffen and I had to take the polls to the streets of Stillwater. In case you missed what all the fuss is about here is the argument: for your money, who is better? Justin Timberlake or Usher

So fart (I accidentally typed fart, but decided it was such a hilarious typo, I would leave it), it is a close campaign with the votes adding up to JTim: 4 (Me, Kurtis, Greg, Christine) | Ursher: 3 (Steffen, Cole, Ross). I said that Cole’s and Ross’ votes count as 1 vote, since they are brothers and almost share one brain. If you get a chance, post your votes in the comments.

:.The Blogs, They Are A Changin.:

I’m going to be trying some new things out on my blog, when I get a chance. I’m going to be bringing back the ol’ Link of the Day (LOTD) that I used to do, once upon a time, and put it at the end of the each post. Accompanying it will be a Quote of the Day (QOTD), which might be a song lyric snippet or a quote that I read on the internet, or even something a friend might have said (but my friends never say anything good, I’m the only funny one). I’m also going to be “tagging” my posts through Technorati to see if I can get some increased traffic on here, since my gay friends can’t make an effort to click on a link when they are reading blogs to come see mine (they are Xanga folk). I’m also going to try and bring my posts over from xanga and tag/categorize them, so I’ll everything in one place. The last one is kind of wishful, but we’ll see what happens.

LOTD: GetHuman
QOTD: “Give us time to shine. Even diamonds start as coal” – Incubus

:.Review: Transformers.:
I saw Transformers last night at the Cine Capri (Oklahoma’s Largets Auditorium). This movie completely blew me away. It had everything I could’ve wanted. The special effects were breathtaking, the highway chase scene was way awesome, and the entire downtown fight sequence was so awesome. I love how fluid the Transformers were, like skilled, cannon-wielding ninjas! But best of all, when the robots Transformed, they played one of my favorite sound effects of all time. That gugrling robot arpeggio! I highly recommend it and I’m sure that I’m going to see it again soon.

:.A Battle Royale.:
On the way to the theatre, Steffen and I were arguing. He thinks that Usher is better than Justin Timberlake. I think that for my money, it doesn’t get much better than J-Tim! Let me know what you think in the comments.

:.Pork-Chop!.:
This past weekend, I headed up to Stillwater. Not only did I get to see my girlfriend, but I also joined up with my friends to play a little Wal-Mart Hide and Go Seek. If you have never done this, you are missing out…big time. Since none of us had played in a while, we adapted a new set of rules, as follows:

• No Running, but you can walk as fast as you want (Joel didn’t abide by this as he took off his flip-flops to run faster)
• In order to tag someone, you must be within a normal speaking voice distance (5-10 ft) and say “pork-chop,” plus include a karate chop motion. This signifies a tag
  • Instead of tagging somebody to get them out, we instituted a new tagging method
• If no one has found you within 8 minutes, return to base, to keep the game moving.
  • We never had to implement this rule as most rounds lasted only a few minutes.

We played Hide-n-Seek for over an hour. By the end of it, I’m pretty sure the Wal-Mart staff was wise to the gig. The main reason we stopped was because Christine nearly trampled a small child, trying to run from me (which is cheating). The little boy ended up sprinting the opposite direction of his (also frightened) mother. Joel was definetly the champion as he was only it, unvoluntarily, 2 times. 1 of those times, Kurtis was “babysitting.” Whenever Kurtis wasn’t babysitting, he was ratting out everyone elses most likely postions, chump! The best part was counting before seeking. Since one of those “price-check” scanners in the DVD department was homebase, while you were counting with your head down, people were trying to check DVD prices, haha. I assumed that I probably looked like a drunk who had passed out, but they had no idea the impor