:.2-Dimensions Are Never Enough.:

Well I have a habit of keeping junk for too long. You know whenever you go to a career fair and every company is giving away free stuff? I make sure I get one of everything; a sewing kit, light up pens, poncho’s inside a football, magnets, even magic eight balls. Not only do I knab up all of the free knick-knacks, I keep them for years. I’m always concerned that someone is going to say, “I think there is something really cool, just out of my viewing range!” And I’ll swoop in and say, “here, borrow my binoculars with a Tyson chicken logo.” For that moment, I’ll be king. But that never happens, and I end up with just too much junk that I can get rid of.

Recently, I moved out of my apartment and decided it was time to throw that crap in the trash. So I did, I cleaned out an entire drawer of it. One of the items I threw away, a pair of the 3D glasses from The Nightmare Before Christmas: In 3D. No big right? Wrong! I turn on my TV tonight, and find out that I Love the 80’s is on, and, in 3D! What are the chances!? Less than a month after throwing away those sweet glasses. I could’ve seen The Noid, Weird Al, and even Michael Ian Black in 3D! Rotten Luck.

:.Chicago Pics

The title says it all. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the chicago trip, enjoy!
from vodpod.com

:.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