Time to Play "Catch-Up"

Well, the gauntlet has now been officially thrown, eh? Jimbo's back, blogging with a vengeance. After triumphantly returning to the land of blog on April 16th, he's put out a whopping 5 articles, complete with pictures, requisite sarcastic captions, and his trademark wry observations on life, in only 10 days! While the pace is nothing short of heroic, and I certainly hope our buddy, Jim doesn't wear himself out (or maybe I'm just ashamed of my own measely contributions to my own blog these last couple of months!) That said, Jimbo's back with some excellent material, and I'm always grateful for another opportunity to procrastinate!

This is called a "visual gag." If you don't get it, break out the dictionary, kids!

And if that weren't enough to shame me into blogging more frequently, Chris has recently updated his blog with some new features - links, pictures, and captions! He's been a consistent blogger these last many months... but now he's upgraded to a complete multi-media presentation. And on top of that, I've now been drawn into the ever-entertaining political banter of Mikey vs. Chris... my joking about being a "card-carrying member of the The Young Republican Mountain Ranch Boys (My codename is "Entitlement Lad - The Irate Conservative") has resulted in me being called out on a recent blog article by the Über-blogger himself, Mikey Esquire. "But, 'twas all in good fun!" (Hey, considering the career I'm trying to get into, I've got to stay on the good side of every lawyer I know!)

And just imagine... this is me before I got drunk!

So with all this going on, I figure that I oughta keep up with my pals in my own humble blog. Anti-Canadian Loser tirades aside, I've been pretty quiet lately... and while I can certainly explain why with one word, that begins with "N" and ends with, "eurology" - (which I think is Latin for "Mental Buttrape." I'm not lying when I say that there's been more than a few times I've thought about chucking it all and going to Zeke's Plumbing School. These have been, unequivocably, the four worst months of my life. I'm sure my future residency days will beat out this recent academic prison-rape, but for the time being, this is, without a doubt, my personal nadir. And to top things off, while I was bashing my brains in, trying to remember all this stuff, I had started Weight Watchers... which, to be perfectly honest, has been pretty successful so far, as I've shed a solid 15 pounds. My goal is to lose another 30 by August 5th... but we shall see.

Hanging out in the City of Brotherly Love... Well, the safe part, at least...

Several weeks ago, Ally, Jenna, Jay and I headed into Philadelphia to catch the Body Worlds exhibit. The Body Worlds exhibit, for the uninitiated, are a series of displays of preserved human bodies that demonstrate the various body parts and systems. While I've had the unmitigated joy of dissecting cadavers and huffing formaldehyde on a weekly basis, it was still fascinating to see all the bodies posed in various positions, exhibiting all the amazing nuances of the human body. Of course, outside of that, the four of us basically walked around Philadelphia, acting like goofy tourists and taking the expected ridiculous shots.

His Holiness, Pope Jason I meets His Inebriated, Wavy Gravy

Believe it or not, but one of our favorite stops was a hat shop on South Street. We seemed to keep finding ourselves in there, trying on hats, taking pictures, and essentially annoying the heck out of the store owners... of course, wacky pictures aside, we never thought of how many other people may or may not have tried on all those hats before us... Ewwww.

Yaargh!

Yes, of course I jumped up and down on the Rocky Steps.
Are you the least bit surprised?

South Street was a trip. It was sort of like Bourbon Street, meets Haight Ashbury. Every third business was either a lingerie shop, liquor store, or a ghetto fabulous jeweler. You may be wondering - "How does one distinguish a 'ghetto fabulous' jeweler from a usual jeweler?" Quite easy - if every piece of merchandise's every possible surface and facet is encrusted in ostentatious bling, if there are autographed photos of every conceivable hustla, busta, MC, or East Side Boy adorns the walls - you know you're visiting a ghetto fabulous jeweler.

It's posing for shots like this that draw stares from Chinese tourists. Doesn't the black-and-white effect make it look all artsy?


What woman hasn't wanted to crush her fiancee under a gigantic novelty domino at some time or another?

"Whiz Wit!" All Philly Cheesesteak Purists should be happy - I insisted on making everyone wait on the three-block-long line at Pat's for the distinctive Philadelphia delicacy.


Rob Zombie was awesome live...

...but that'll have to wait until next time!

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Asinine Awards, Part 1

The glory... the power... the ill-fitting striped shirt...

For those of you who've never heard of Ghyslain Raza, "The Star Wars Kid," then... welcome back to society, I hope the rock you've been under for the last three years was comfy! The SWK, as the ever-lethargic internet community immediately abbreviated him, became an overnight internet phenomenon about three years ago, when his martial arts prowess was exposed on a neglected video in his high school AV room. At this point, I should probably stop typing and give you a link, if you've never seen this goofball... because words cannot do the trainwreck justice. Check out the original video, and some of the modified versions: SWK

You just been SERVED!

Ah yes, a goofy, chubby, bespectacled doof taped himself playing "Darth Maul" from Star Wars, and then forgot to get rid of the video. Well, a couple of his fellow highschoolers inadvertantly discovered the abandoned tape - and predictably shared their excrutiating, shame-inducing, gold with the international internet community. Before long, creative artists would modify the original footage with special effects, graphics, and clever editing. Everybody was laughing... except for Ghyslain.

SWK becomes yet another of Seth McFarlane's pop-cultural references that no one will understand in 5 years.

No, the shumbling troll didn't exactly take the whole experience with a grain of salt. It wouldn't take a genius to extrapolate that Ghys wasn't exactly sitting at the "cool table" in the school's cafeteria before the SWK incident... and afterwards he was apparently so ridiculed he had no other recourse than leave school and enter a psychiatric hospital. But if you're expecting me to don sackcloth and weep lamentations for poor chubby Ghyslain, you'd be wrong. While embarrassing to be exposed at playing a Sith Lord in an empty AV stage, manically swinging sticks around, making crude sound effects, and clumsily executing karate kicks, this entire incident is at least partly his fault as well. I have little sympathy for gibbering infants who can't deal with consequences of their foolishness. Pathetic Ghyslain's wounded self-esteem would evolve into something of an eye-roll-inducing internet cause célèbre, with coddling sympathizers even urging others to help them raise money to buy him an ipod for his woes. Ghyslain is probably quite comfortable in his lifestyle of victimhood - even his name is derived from the Germanic word gisel meaning "hostage." Why should he have to deal with the problem he created?

And here I thought that Vincent Pastore was supposed to be "Big Pussy"

My first obstacle towards more sympathy is the inarguable fact that he taped himself doing it. It never ceases to amaze me when people get so righteously indignant when their potentially embarrassing home-made videos get leaked to the internet. If someone had set up a hidden camera and taped him, it would be a completely different story. But he taped himself. He had this brilliant idea, which probably popped in his head after a fruitful afternoon of sitting and eating, of taking the high school's golf ball retriever (that stick thingy), go into the school's AV room by himself, and show off his light saber skills to a video camera. Why would anyone think to do this? I don't know. But it's fairly obvious to anyone watching that Ghys appears to be a couple of muppets short of a Jedi Council, if you know what I mean. Which is probably also the reason why he didn't have the cerebral capacity to remember to erase the videotape or take it home with him and hide it away in a deep, dark place forever and ever. It seems that in addition to the mean bully conspiracy theory, SWK is somewhat, if not mostly, to blame for his predicament.

Ninja, Please!

Between the ages of 11 and 14, my mission in life was to become a ninja. No, seriously. Way before it sort of became a Chuck-Norris-esque- internet-hipster-ironic-retro-thing. To be more specific, I actually wanted to be a Ninja Turtle. Unfortunately, radioactive mutagen is somewhat hard to obtain when you're in the 6th grade, pet turtles aren't sold anymore because they can breed salmonella, and you have to have your Mom sign for katana swords when they're delivered by UPS. (Funny story, actually - that really happened. Mom wasn't too thrilled with the idea of me swinging around large bladed objects, and made me send it back, along with the throwing stars and grappling hook I ordered). I took out books on Ninjitsu from the library, I even fashioned Ninja masks from my t-shirts (ask me and I'll show you). I felt no need to actually take martial arts lessons... I had already sat through all three Ninja Turtles movies, and I memorized all the cool phrases to yell when you're punching and kicking hordes of anonymous, clumsy bad guys.

"When the evil Shredder attacks, these Turtle Boys don't cut him no slack!"

I identify with SWK to the point that I have zero sympathy for him. I, too, hung out during my early teens in my backyard, fashioning wooden ninja weapons, having practice ninja battles with my two similarly socially-misfit friends, collecting smokebombs and planning nighttime patrols to fight crime (I wish I was kidding). I was so painfully geeky, I can't help but laugh at how earnestly I loved it all. While writing this article, I figured I'd dig through my family photo albums and find some atrociously awful picture of me posing with my bo staff in my jams and neon green t-shirt, or something, and put it up on the blog. But no, I found no such pictures. Apprently, amidst my carefree days of whacking myself in the family jewels with my nunchuks and preparing to be a superhero vigilante - I had the common sense to NEVER RECORD ANY OF IT! That might be a good bit of advice for all you people out there that want to videotape yourself doing something you don't want other people to see. If you videotape or record it in any way, you are intrinsically acknowledging that it may be seen by others. Tommy Lee, Pam Anderson, Paris Hilton, Fred Durst, Chyna, X-Pac, Rob Lowe, Brett Michaels, Pam Anderson (again), Tom Sizemore... you all should have known better.

Those are the whitest sneakers I've ever seen not on an 80-year-old person...

So, as you can see above, hands down, I beat Ghyslain for biggest geek in the universe. I was old-school dork, back before school administrators were more obsessed with self-esteem and bully-prevention, than... you know, education. Mercilessly harangued by the knuckle-dragging upper-crust of middle school, I had to grow up fast. So maybe this is why I have nothing with disdain for Ghyslain Raza - SWK, because his parents went and sued the kids who originally put the video onto the internet, for mental cruelty and other assorted new-wave, hippy bullshit.

Without a doubt, the worst picture of me... ever. Sorry I put this in, bro.

It is my fervent belief that the moment our legal system began doling out cash rewards for "pain and suffering," the very fabric of human society began to unravel. This abysmal legal precedent has encouraged the utterly absurd notion that we are all somehow entitled to a life without suffering, pain, injury, or danger. When did this happen? Since the dawn of human civilization, back in the fertile crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates, people have, on occasion, tripped over their feet and scraped their knee. It didn't matter if they were in front of Mabooboo's thatched hut, they just said, "Oh boy, I skinned my knee... I guess I should be more careful." Only in the last thirty years or so, do people feel entitled to extort money from others because something bad happened to them, and our legal framework has somehow justified it. Now if you skin your knee in front of Mabooboo's hut, you can sue him for medical costs and damages for gross negligence because he didn't have to forethought to provide clearly marked signs warning pedestrians of slight bumps in the dirt. I don't object to someone being reimbursed for some finite, known amount. If someone drives their car into you, destroys your car and puts you in the hospital, that person is without a doubt responsible to replace your car and pay your hospital bills. But that's it. Bad things happen to people, and the world is a big, mean place. So in the words of Dennis Miller - "Wear a cup!" Because you never know what might happen.

Thus, the fact that the Razas sued the two kids who put the video on the internet, and lamentably won around 300,000 dollars (Canadian), is atrocious. On behalf of the millions of nerds in the world, who've grown up amidst the taunts and scorn of our Neanderthal contemporaries, and somehow grew above it, you are hereby stripped of any status or depiction of "nerd," "geek," or "dork," and are permanently relegated now and forever as "helpless loser for life." Congratulations to the newly wealthy Mr. and Mrs. Raza for raising a gigantic infant who will never be able to cope with the real world. My snidest regards for the coddling hippies that raised money to buy that idiot an ipod. And nothing but my deepest and most utter disgust for Canada's own Ghyslain Raza - you guys can keep him. Also, no more Star Wars for you. We're taking that back, too. Jackass.

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Bring it On

"Do it! Do it Now!"

I was shocked when I realized the date on my last blog entry was back in the middle of March... almost a whole month ago! And while blogging is certainly not as high a priority as say, passing my classes... I figure I should still update this thing once in a while, if only because it infuriates me when others don't.

Well, in about a week, I'll be taking my third... and hopefully, final Neuro test. This has been a brutal couple of months, and I'll be glad to move on from Neurology. After the Spring Break, I'll have 5 weeks of muscles and skeletons... and then what is shaping up to be - The Greatest Summer of My Life!

Of course, during the Spring Break, I look forward to updating the hell out of both this blog and Wedded Blitz. As neglected as this blog may be, my wedding blog has been ignored for quite a while! So look forward to a plethora of updates starting April 14th.

There's a lot of fun things that have happened in the meantime... things that I simply have not had the time to properly blog about... things like the Rob Zombie concert, and the Philadelphia weekend.

So hang tight... all you four people out there that actually read this thing... you'll be seeing some new junk REAL soon!