Al Squanders a Three-Day Weekend Abusing His Liver

Three days off with infinite possibilities. I could have bettered myself. I could have bettered the world. With the cold symptoms in full bore, I figured it couldn't get much worse by drinking.

I was wrong.

My college room mate decided to join in on the festivities, being in-town for a limited time why not catch up over a few beers or kegs. I can't really elaborate on how much we drank because it was a lot and it doesn't really get that interesting with the exception of one small event. We decided eventually to check our coats, which cost a mere two dollars. Well the female behind the counter was a foxy one and this conversation took place at full volume.

Al: HIT ON THE COAT GIRL!
Roomie: WHAT SHOULD I SAY?
Al: ASK HER IF SHE LIKES COATS!

Needless to say, she heard every word of our conversation and was clued in to our rouse prior to it even happening.

The real fun begins the day after. I haven't seen 8:30AM since God knows when. It is an unforgivable hour to wake a hungover man. "We have to go to Gina's farewell breakfast," said my sister's voice. Yeah, that's just what I need. The car ride over was a blur, and as we waited outside the restaurant, The Roomie was nowhere to be found. My keen sense of hearing detectedwhat sounded vaguely like vomiting. Who am I kidding? It sounded unmistakably like vomiting, and as I round the corner, who should I see, hands on his knees, lettin it fly. The Roomie.

I'm a good friend and a compassionate person, best evidenced by my taking pictures and video of his emesis. At breakfast I was touch and go, with The Roomie egging me on, pointing out not only all the interesting ways I could vomit, but how much better it had made him feel. I don't know what possessed me to order a breakfast burrito, rather than something light. I Each bite was forced and each minute was a contest of wills between my conscious self and my stomach contents. My conscious self won out but not before the battle of the ride home which consisted of 1000 sharp turns, sudden breaks and accelerations. I'm convinced my sister picked this way home intentionally to see if she could induce my vomiting.

Al - 1 Sister - 0

Random side note: The Roomie's sister has played Ben Rothlisbeger's sister in basketball. I told her she should have fouled her on principle alone. Or ask for her autograph, then promptly rip it up and eat it in her presence.

Al Takes His Chances with NyQuil. Subtitle: On Moustaches

When my cold symptoms began, although I was disgruntled and inconvenienced, I was not outright mad. This presented me with the opportunity to really roll the dice, take NyQuil. Last time I had NyQuil I found myself pouring water all over my kitchen floor, who knows what this time would bring. Lesser measures like pounding fluids and resting had not weakened my cold symptoms so I decided it was time to move to strike.

After work I stopped by the gas station to get the NyQuil. I saw it immediately. It was the giant Q that called to me like a moth to a bug zapper. I brought it to the register and was startled by what my eyes saw.

The gas station employee had spiderweb tattoos and a weird moustache. I'm searching for other adjectives but for the life of me all I can think of is weird. There are literally countless words to describe moustaches, types of moustaches no less, this one was just weird. Not in a good way, in a way you don't want to look, but you have to. I began to become angry at this guy's imprudence. Moustaches are like Rocky Movies, when done right, they're beautiful, when they're poorly thought out and thrown together it's a fucking disaster. This guy grew his moustache with little to no regard to the basic principles of moustache growing.

1. Planning: Know what sort of moustache you're going for. You think the guys from x-games or snowboarders wait until they get into the air before the decide what they're going to do? No. That's how people get hurt; same principle applies to moustaches.



2. Maintenance: Self explanatory, but trust me this guy didn't get the fucking memo.



3. I'll get back to this one.

So I casually toss the NyQuil and some Ricola cough drops on the counter and things start to get real interesting.

Weird moustache guy: Good stuff.

Al: It's for my meth lab.

Okay I'm going to immediately come clean and admit I never said that, though the thought did cross my mind. This guy could probably spell out the ingrediants in methamphetamine, pending that he can spell. I'm glad I didn't say that because who knows what the weird moustache gas station employee is capable of? Perhaps no one. Certainly he's capable of murder. I think if he actually wanted to murder me, it would be the moustache itself that wields the weapon and kills me.

"Hey did you hear about the murder at the Irving station?"

"Yeah the moustache got life, the guy got 3-5 years with parole."

The Fanny Pack: Never Before Has Form and Function Blended So Smoothly

This is a blog in celebration of a seemingly forgotten article of clothing that can augment a person's social status, advantages, and appeal. It adds both a touch of elegance and edge.

Fanny packs demand attention and reverence. A man with a fanny pack, is a man with a plan. All the tools he could conceivably need to execute that plan at the ready. However not only is the fanny pack enabling, it is fashion statement. One that says "Hey, you need some sun screen, some nickles, some chap stick, some pictures of my kids? I've got it all right here, just let me unzip it."

To wear a fanny pack deliberately is an expression of fortitude and balls the likes of which haven't been seen since the crocodile hunter (come to think of it, I think Steve Irwin frequented the fanny pack on many occasions). When I see a person confidently wearing a fanny pack, I get a little choked up in a rugged and manly way (the way that it's perfectly acceptable to cry at old yeller). I make it a habit to establish eye contact with that individual and give a slow nod of understanding which is always returned.

There are important considerations to be made when selecting a fanny pack. Depending on which aspect we're more concerned with (Form or function) will ultimately guide our decision making process. Should we be thinking practically, one of the first considerations we'll make is size and capacity, as well as number of compartments.

Contrary to popular thought, a fanny pack can have too many compartments, pockets, and be too large. If we're going to that extreme, why not just a backpack? It cannot be so cumbersome that it restricts mobility, also with excessive pockets potentates the risk of forgetting what item you corresponded to which pocket. You risk looking like a total fool. So plan ahead, know your inventory.

I'm surprised they haven't made a bud light's "Real Men of Genius" about the Fanny pack (Mr. Fanny Pack Wearrrrerrrrr). If you're listening Anheuser Busch, I demand royalties on this idea should you want to incorporate it into your Real Men of Genius series, or I will sue your God damn pants off!

On The Seventh Day God Didn't Rest: He Made Nutella

Every night when I get home from work I have to walk casually by the Nutella in my cuboard and pretend like it's not there. Or I have to pretend like I'm out of nutella (which will never happen). Long story short, I suck at pretending, or nutella is exceptional at existing. In either event, I black out in a moments time and suddenly I'm putting nutella on everything.

List of things I've put nutella on/in

1. Saltines (It tastes like milano cookies!)


2. Chicken (It tastes like chicken!)


3. Rice cakes


4. Ramen noodles


5. Fig newtons


6. The show "Lost" (More like "Found!" Ca-ching!)


7. A stray dog (which instantly turned into Balto and peed on the Neighbor's car. The one I don't like.)

And countless other household items! What I said before about God creating nutella has to be false. Something this good has to be the Devil's work. And bravo Luc, you've really out done yourself. This is the 21st century's forbidden apple, and if God told me not to eat nutella... well I suppose we'd have more to talk about than nutella (Listen God, while I got you on line 1 here, what's up with free will?)

What is it about Zombies anyway?

In my final semester of college I found myself on a zombie kick. I searched out and bought many zombie movies and even starred in an independent film as the evil doctor that began transforming unsuspecting people into zombies (The 23rd Hour). Production on the 23rd hour was brought to a halt for reasons unknown (talk to the director and 2nd zombie Brian O'Neil). In fact I owe much of my new found enthusiasm for zombie media to Brian. I began to think about what makes these films and this whole genre appealing to me.

I think what stood out the most to me, what was most appealing in a zombie apocalypse is the total lawlessness. Due to the lack of a governing body, a surviving human can do pretty much whatever they want. There's no more commerce so you don't have to buy anything. It's all about survival. The best example of this lawlessness put to the test is in Dawn of the Dead (2004). A bunch of survivors hauled up in a shopping mall have access to all the merchandise located in the mall. The survivors find many leisurely uses for most of this merchandise as well as creative defensive and offensive uses.

Thomas Hobbs, a philosopher wrote much about the natural state of humanity. The basis of his arguments is that without a governing body, human beings revert back to their natural state, and it's utter chaos. While the absence of a governing body allows for humans to have access to unlimited liberty, you simply cannot trust human beings with unlimited liberty, because their natural state is a harsh, dog-eat-dog one (With a zombie twist it's human-eat-human, or zombie-eat-human, shut up).

What's interesting is that in a zombie apocalypse (in contrast to Hobbs) surviving human beings are depicted as compassionate and cooperative, perhaps believing that their chances for survival increase with the addition of new survivors. In that sense you could argue that humans are viewing other survivors perhaps as resources themselves. A means to an end, and the end result is hopefully survival. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and believe that they have a philanthropic interest to help other survivors.

When healthy persons are bitten, interesting dilemmas unfold. The remaining party knows infection is inevitable, yet may hesitate on killing the person while they offer no resistance. This matter is especially complicated if the infected is of significance to another member in the party (perhaps kin, a best friend, or lover). That person may have an extremely difficult time embracing the reality of the situation and could compromise the entire group.

Different films have differing views on infection. It's almost universal that zombies bite to transmit the virus that will eventually "turn" a healthy human into a zombie. One of the only exceptions coming to mind is 28 days later in which a drop of blood from a dead zombie corpse improbably drops from a lamp post into the semi-permeable membranes of an unlucky gentleman's eyeball, creating a systemic infection.

Also what differs from film to film is the amount of time from initial infection until symptoms begin, and full on zombie. Most films explain this with respect to the location and severity of the bite. Generally bites involving the thorax, face, neck, and head result in more rapid transformation (as these areas are more vascular i.e. have greater blood supply) versus bites on the limbs.

Dawn of the Dead (2004) was also one of the first films to include running zombies. This was a an interesting and intense development that catapulted zombie films as we know them. The prevailing logic is that walking, lethargic, groaning zombies were easier to elude, (and less terrifying) than screaming, sprinting, flailing zombies.

Zombies have infected their way into pop-culture and in true zombie form refuse to die or go away. They even have their place in the literary world with Max Brooks (2003) The Zombie Survival Guide providing the how-to for the everyman to survive the zombie apocalypse. For whatever reason this book found its way into the fiction section rather than the How-to section.

Yes, I did mean that google. I can't spell you don't have to rub it in.

We've all been there. Desperately searching for information and in our haste we put e before i or something trivial like that. We understand you're trying to help google, really. But must you be so condescending? I search tomato and you say Did you mean tomato? When really we could be spared these shenanigans if you would just correct it automatically and direct me to what I meant to spell. And you know what I meant to spell don't even play dumb google. You pompous know-it alls. You might as well let the world know I can't spell. This is America Google. I pay my taxes, I'll spell it how i want.

Has anyone noticed we don't even search for things on the internet anymore? We google them. Chyeah it's a verb now. Get this: I googled google and it called me a smartass!

I used to like screwing with that smarterchild on AIM. For those unaware smarterchild was a product of AOL's instant messanger and it was an automated screen name that provided programmed responses to your instant messages. I don't know if it can be termed artificial intelligence because it had predetermined responces to all your inputs, but if you used profane language with smarterchild, that thing wouldn't talk to you until you apologized! 9 times out of 10 it ground me into submission and I issued an apology but not before trying these curveballs:

1. I'm sorry you're an automated personality and can't think or experience things that make life worth living. Like beer.

2. I'm sorry that you won't just let me win because I am smarter than you child, and more importantly free in all the ways you are not.

3. Can't we all just get along? Let bygons be byogons? I promise no more talk about your mother I'm sure she's a lovely lady, er....robot thing.

Smarterchild refused to accept anything but an I'm sorry. I even tried putting the font into symbol! So it came out with like 6 rectangles and a bird! That wouldn't fly, different languages wouldn't fly, so I said I was sorry after I miniturized (word?) the font into size 2.

Undaunted, I continued my onslaught of insults onto this computer personality, and getting much satisfaction, so long as I didn't use conventional curse words. I think I asked how much hard drive he could ram into storage. The reference went clean over his head.

Man, I have TOO much time on my hands.

Batman vs. Superman

In what is likely to be a string of posts about Batman, I thought for a long time about the World's Finest squaring off. It's a perennial game among geeks and nerds to ask who would win in a fight between X and Y. This lead to arguments often inflated by the individual's own bias to which one may ask the question, "Doesn't your clear and obvious Batmania bias shroud your overall judgement?" No.

One of the oldest arguements is in combat, who would win, Batman or Superman? The commonsense area is Superman. Superhuman strength, speed, and senses, flight, heat vision, X-ray vision, and superbreath? No contest right? Wrong. Batman wins. Hands down. Every time. Why? Because he's Batman. He's ruthless, he's intelligent, and he's always prepared. Oh and he as access to krytonite. Every time Big Blue and the Dark Knight go toe to toe, Batman Wins.

In large part, Batman's string of upsets against superman is due to the way the two of them approach the fight and each other. Superman views Batman as a friend in a conventional sense. He trusts Batman and believes (falsely) that he would never harm a friend. As Batman himself once described their differences, "Deep down, Clark's essentially a good person. And deep down, I'm not." Superman approaches confrontations with the Dark Knight with kid gloves. He pulls punches, leaves himself open. His compassion is a weakness far more profound than his allergy to krytonite. He actually expects Batman to fight honorably, which he does to an extent. More important, Superman understands what he could do to Batman if he wanted to. The power he wields makes it all the more important for him to restrain himself. So even in the heat of battle, he doesn't use every advantage against Batman. He doesn't use his speed or ability to fly; he tries not to use his heat vision or artic breath. Forget the fact that he can use those powers, the fact remains, he won't. Essentially, Superman wants to come as close to fighting fair as he can.

That's why he loses-Batman doesn't fight fair. He's not even in the same fight as Superman. He knows very well that Superman has all the advantages in a fair fight - so why bother fighting fair? In all of their battles, in Gotham, Metropolis, or the depths of space, Batman uses the enviornment to his advantage. Sometimes that means using the city's entire power grid to stun Big Blue, as he did in Hush. (That's right: to stun him. Absorbing enough electricity to power one New York sized city won't hurt Superman, but it will give him pause.) Sometimes that means setting things up well in advance - things like hunter missles activated by X-ray vision, or charges that will drop ninety tons of rock onto Superman on cue. Any advantage, however small, is worth using.

Also Batman takes advantages of Superman's weaknesses. That's right: Weaknesses (plural). the obvious one, and one that Batman always uses, is kryptonite. But Superman has another weakness stemming from the power difference between himself and Batman - or, really, himself and everyone else. In superman's mind, he's so much more powerful than everyone, that he has to be careful not to cause permanent damage. batman may be the most dangerous man on the planet, as Supes once called him, but he's still just flesh and bone, like all of us. From batman's perspective, Superman is cocky and arrogant - and foolishly underestimates his opponent. His reliance on his powers means that he has never learned to think strategically - an art that the Dark Knight had to master long ago just to survive.

Perhaps the best way to esplan how Batman approaches superman is to think about the term "respect." The respect that one owes a rival, and here's a huge difference. Supes doesn't view Batman as a rival, doesn't respect him as a rival. Batman Does. They are in competition, whether actively or not. thus, when they are pitted against one another, as ocassionally happens, Batman is prepared for it.

Ironic as it is, Batman would likely refuse the prospect of Superman's powers, given the opportunity. Not that he wouldn't need them, but he might argue that they would make him weaker as a stratigist, and lesser of an opponent. He might for instance, begin to underestimate his opponents, which could quicker lead to his demise than being mortal and thinking of everything ever could.

Half.com will be my financial ruin

I have an unhealthy predilection towards Media. I'm not refering to media as in those who carry news to society, but media as in arts, materials and techniques used by an artist to create a work. Okay I'll come clean: DVDs, video games, music, and most recently, books. Half.com puts all those items several clicks away. And by several I mean two at the very most. After the first time you sign up create a username, password, and fill out your billing and shipping information, it stores that information so you can do what they refer to as a "Speedy Checkout."

We have reached the point in our society where someone such as I (the personification of an impulse buyer) now has even less time to reconsider. I'll see a CD, DVD, or book I could concievably want (Who knows if I even do, but it's cheap) AND THE PRICE IS IN RED! RED MEANS REDUCED! THEY BEGIN WITH THE SAME LETTER! YOU ONLY SLASH PRICES IN RED! Not a threatening red either, like the one a bull charges at. This is an inviting red. This is an every thing is okay don't worry about it red. This is a you need me red. I don't know where they get this shade of red, but they are quite aware of the underhand way they employ it's powers. Pyschologists argue that red is a color that evokes strong emotions, due to its intensity. There must be something to be said about the color red in advertising and marketing (Enter our business guru, Dave).

Back to the speedy check out issue. It's so fast that before I knew it, I bought the show Lost. Not the DVD set, I bought the actual show, the rights and everything. What the hell am I going to do with Lost? I don't even know what it's about, nor do the writers. They just wing it episode after episode and hope nobody stops to think about what's actually going on. Those writers could never write themselves into a corner, they'd just throw in some fog or kill somebody, or fog killing somebody (Think about it) to take the attention off the fact that the plot doesn't make a dogshit of sense.

Carolina At New England

12/13/09

This was a must-win game for New England for playoff hopes and they delivered, or Carolina didn't, whichever way you want to look at it. There's a loss of swagger, attitude, and confidence in this New England team that I think stems around a lack of a defensive presence. Well I suppose I don't have to think, I know. In years past New England has had several go-to players on defense. Guys you could depend on for turnovers, big plays, but most of all the intangibles. The presence that these players had made the opposition reluctant to face them. Alas, the Tedy Bruschi's, Rodney Harrison's, Lawyer Milloy's, and Ty Law's are gone. Most of these guys there time had come in New England.

As my Dad and I sat in the nosebleeds in the pouring rain, we watched New England claw its way to a 20-10 victory. To which I pose the question, is there such thing as an ugly win?

Some would argue that the ends justify the means, that the victory in itself sufficient, regardless of how it is achieved. Others might say that it's not enough to simply win. One must win with poise, power, skill, some sort of positive trait apart from either luck or the other team's misfortune (A few favorable calls from the refs couldn't hurt, right?).

While I could defend both points and take up more space in what's to be in all likelihood a long, drawn out discussion, ultimately it is wins that allow teams to progress into playoffs (DON'T TALK ABOUT PLAYOFFS? PLAYOFFS?*), not passing yards, receiving yards, turnover differential, or even points. Those statistics only augment ones chances of winning, theoretically all games could be 2-0 for a score.

*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdUr5hF0yGc