Monday, May 29, 2006

Have you ever seen those movies that have the giant single file line of people, usually tribal people, walking thru the desert? The thing that always gets me about these lines is that these people could get to their destination in a fraction of the time if they walked in a straight line instead of a zigzag over, around and upside-down every possible obstacle in their path. It’s not even human nature to not walk in a straight line if applicable.

By the way, speaking of movies so far this week I’ve seen Over the Hedge, and X-Men 3: The Last Stand, and I must admit I was impressed with both of these movies but for different reasons. Over the Hedge was pretty comical and a laugh-out-loud adventure, while The Last Stand did a super job of rapping up the X-Men trilogy. The thing I liked most about The Last Stand was that the commercials on TV for it didn’t give anything away about the movie what so ever. That’s a pretty rare thing these days. Usually after watching 3 different commercials for current movies I have no need to see it anymore as I have already watched every good joke and action scene on TV between my favorite Seinfeld episodes. In case you find your way to see X-Men 3: The Last Stand, make sure you stay until the end of the credits. You’ll see why once you do.

Monday, May 22, 2006

Is anyone else fed up with this Preakness horse crap? I’m sad to say that I watched the horse race this weekend (against my will I might add) and frankly I wasn’t entertained at all. So the horse that was favored to win broke his leg. Let me ask you, do you know the name of the horse that actually won the race? Of course not. How could you? They only said it once and interviewed the winning jockey for a whopping 30 seconds. Instead the hype was, “Oh no! The favorite horse 'pulled up', whatever the heck that means. Boo hoo hoo.” Let me tell you something here friends. This is the aspect of racing in general. When watching Nascar (not that I do) the focus is rarely on the driver that crashed, but more on the driver that WON THE RACE! And those are actual people, not animals. And as if the horse race wasn’t boring enough, I now have to see the recap every night on the evening news. Luckily it’s not the whole race, just the first 30 seconds, because, you know, no one apparently cares about the END of the race. If the most exciting aspect of a horse race is how the injured horse had leg surgery the next day and is now on bed rest, clearly this “sport” needs a major overhaul.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

The state of New York bought me a pizza! Better yet, they bought me a pizza here in The Cove. "How is this so?" you say. The Story is as follows and not a single word of it is made up! This I truly tell you.

For two weeks out of every year I work for The Stony Brook School Summer Programs on Long Island. I coach volleyball there to junior high girls who are wanting to develop their game a little more in a Christian atmosphere (it's a Christian camp). It's great fun. But anyway, because I am employed in the state of New York for that short period of time, I need to pay my rightful taxes to that lovely (note the sarcasm) state. Most years Stony Brook does not take enough money out of my paycheck to take care of all the taxes and thus I end up owing New York money come April 15th. This past year however was different and The Summer Programs actually did well and took out just a little too much of my paycheck, and I wound up with a nice big juicy check this year for a whopping nine dollars! This money meant so much to me that it actually sat on my kitchen counter for about 4 weeks before I finally took the time to go get it cashed. But this past Friday I did just that and oh was I feeling good! So good in fact I decided to treat myself to a nice pizza for dinner. So I went down to my local Foxes Pizza and got myself a nice medium pizza with the usual pepperoni and sausage. And what would you know, but my grand total expense for the pizza was exactly nine dollars.

And that my friends is the story of how the state of New York bought me a pizza. Take what you will from this story but as my uncle would say, "At the very least I have done you no harm."

Saturday, May 20, 2006

This past weekend I was in Rehoboth Beach, DE for the MAV (Mid-Atlantic Volleyball) Last Rites Tournament. Usually when I go down to Rehoboth for volleyball tournaments I go down with a bunch of friends from the area for a long weekend. This means that on Friday and Saturday nights we all go out to a club and have a good time. Now if you know anything at all about Rehoboth Beach you would know that most people at that beach don’t “play for my team.” Tell anyone you are going to Rehoboth for the weekend and the response usually is, “Isn’t that the gay beach?” “Yes. Yes it is.” I tell them. While the fact that a lot of people there are homosexual doesn’t bother me, I do try to make sure I’m out with people who swing my way so that I don’t end up dancing with a man whose 6 inches taller than me, wearing high heels, a super mini skirt and a giant blond wig. This means that when in Rehoboth I need to avoid the gay bars. Easier said then done. Of course you can try to spot the upside-down rainbow triangles, but this seems to be going out of style these days. So real quick, these are my techniques on how to determine if a place in Rehoboth Beach, DE is a gay club.
  1. There is an animal in the name (i.e. frog, parrot, etc.)
  2. There is a feminine color in the name (i.e. purple, pink, etc.)
  3. Couples of the same gender are walking in holding hands
  4. The guys there are dressed just way too nice
  5. Or dressed like NYC hookers
  6. Most people are drinking fancy drinks instead of beer (mmmm, beer)
  7. The name makes reference to water in some way (i.e. pond, ocean)
So depending on which team you play for use these techniques to find the place in Rehoboth fit for you. If you do happen to find yourself in a place not meant for you, just remember to keep your friends away from the girl that licking all the other girl’s legs.

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Here’s some irony for you. This evening I decided to watch a documentary entitled “Understanding Sleep.” This in itself is anything but ironic. What is ironic was the fact that the last thing I remembered about the show was that the hosts were talking about naps. Next thing I was opening my eyes to see that the show was over. Someone should write a song about evens like that some day . . .

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Mother's Day cards seemed to be slightly out of control this year. What I mean by that is all the cards at my local grocery store Hallmark were GINORMOUS! There wasn't a single card for "Mom" that didn't require extra postage to mail. And of course, a card big enough to require extra postage also requires extra purchasing expense and thus extra sales tax. Cards for "Grandma" were normal size and not a single one of those required extra postage. Now don't get me wrong, I love my mom, but has it now come down to "Mom" being so important that I have to put two stamps on her envelope instead of just one? I don't really think so. If anything the "Grandma" cards should be the larger ones because they are losing their vision and need that large font to read the thing comfortably. While "Mom's" eyes might fill with tears upon reading her Mother's Day card, she should still be able to read the normal size font of her non-extra postage card. Oh well. What's a few extra bucks for Mom anyway?
Laws of Attraction. I tried to explain these to a fellow co-worker this week and what she came away with from that conversation was that “gay people smell.” Let me just state for the record, this was not even close to the point I was trying to get across. Pheromones. We all have them. They are chemical secretions from the body that are physically undetectable except thru some kind of 6th sense from another body. It has been postulated that pheromones are the reason people feel “chemistry” between one another at a first meeting. We sense these pheromones using our basic sense of smell. It’s what some companies have been trying to market in their colognes and perfumes to help people attract members of the opposite (or same depending on which way you swing) sex. Science says that I am attracted to other people that have different immune systems and are immune to different diseases and viruses than myself so that our offspring can inherit both parent genes and have twice the immunity that myself and mate solely have. Basically Science says that we are attracted to one another simply to produce superior offspring and that it’s by detecting other’s pheromones that I can determine who the best mate will be to produce such progeny.

So in a nutshell, it’s that simple really. Do I believe such a theory? Well in theory (pun intended of course) it sounds good, but I guess the real question is do I want to believe such a theory? It’s no secret I enjoy marveling at the mysteries of this world. I doubt that each person has what some call a “Soul Mate,” a single person out there that exists only for another individual. The world just isn’t that mysterious. I prefer the think that the Laws of Attraction are derived from our environment growing up, our personalities, and of course what we perceive of as beauty. You know the saying; “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” The thing that is interesting about that saying is that while our eyes perceive this world in two dimensions (our brain actually converts those two dimensions into three, but how it does so still remains a mystery) we as people are clearly hyper-dimensional, and the beauty we see goes well past the eyed two dimensions and into depths and proportions so deep that if we were to ever get lost in them, we would never return. Surprisingly enough that exact situation tends to occur quite often in nature. I believe they call that Love.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Ultimate Frisbee Mondays started yesterday. Now I was pretty excited for this as I haven’t played the sport since college (which scarily enough has been 3 years now, almost as long as my actual time in college), but I was completely unsure of what to expect. So I show up at the field in my sneakers and shorts ready to play a game of pickup when the rest of the players show up and start to put on their cleats. “Uh oh,” I think. Then one of the guys put on some socks that go half way up his thigh. At this point I’m a little concerned, because as I stated earlier, I haven’t played since college. So we warm up and everyone seems to throw a disc pretty darn well so I’m really starting to get nervous. We divide up the teams after counting by 2s like a middle school gym class and end with 4 on 4. Now if you’ve ever played ultimate Frisbee you know that a game with a total of 10 players or less can be pretty tiring, and by the looks of some of the guys that were playing, people were going to get tired. So after 15 minutes of play, sure enough players start dropping like flies.

Now let me inform you a little more about this sport. It turns out that there exists an actual offense and defense that to me is completely foreign. When I played in college we just sort of ran around until we got each other tired. The guys that I was playing with yesterday ran an actual offense and defense, which left me pretty much clueless. So I just ran around and tried to get the others tired.

So with the apparent lack of inshapeness with my team other than me we struggled to keep up. About the only advantage I had out there was that I could run faster and jump higher than anyone else. Or course nobody knew that I was a semi-pro volleyball player in training (or would like to be anyway). When it came to actually playing the sport I seemed to be a little lost. But with my apparent inshapeness I was stuck covering the only other guy that was inshape out there except he was darn good. He’d dart and dodge all over the place leaving me, well lost, but still moving all over the place.

In the end I was pretty darn impressed with all the players there and their ability to play the game. If I were to give them a little advice however it would be to possibly get on the mindset that they will have to run around a little more than once a week to be in shape to play in tournaments come this summer. Maybe I can’t provide offensive maneuvers, but I can provide a little bit of stamina.