JOBINJOB: October 2009

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Oh College...

It's best if you don't ask questions or judge on this one... This is what happens on a Sunday when a bunch of college kids are hung-over, bored and don't want to do any work.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Boston Excursion - 10.11.09

A girl playing with the pigeons in Copley Square.

A little girl waiting for the merry-g0-round.

Guitar man strumming on the streets of Boston.

A homeless man resting in the Boston Commons.

Two young musicians relaxing in the Public Gardens.

The couple above in 40 years?

A crazy man playing with his razor scooter in Copley Square.

A group of Break-dancers performing in Quincy Market.

A mysterious pair of shoes, notebook, and sweatshirt on a bench with no one around...

An ominous-looking building looming over Copley Square.

Two suns shining down on Copley Square.

Gothic Revival building in the foreground with a newer and much bigger building standing in the background.

Sax man playing the blues in the Public Gardens.

Shadowy Clock Tower around Copley Square.

Gothic Revival Reflection off of a building bordering Copley Square.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Hook'd On Fonix

Alright, so today was a pretty typical day for me, and I will shamelessly share it here in order to put this blog into context. Note to the 3 people that do actually read this: DO NOT JUDGE.

Okay, so I woke up this morning around 11:23 a.m. give or take, a pretty typical rise time for me when I have absolutely nothing to do, something that has become quite a usual occurrence in my life these days. I think about going out into the kitchen and making some whole wheat ego waffles because they are freaking delicious and it is before 12 p.m. and we all know that the only acceptable time to eat ego waffles is between the hours of 6 a.m. and 11:59 a.m. or between the hours of 2 a.m. and lets say 5:59 a.m. The first time frame is obvious: typical morning hours where breakfast is okay. Yes, breakfast goes until noon and not a second before and McDonald's should get the hint and extend their damn breakfast hours a little bit because the only way a college-ish age kid is going to make it to a McDonald's breakfast is if they are still going strong from the night before and are making a quick stop at McDies to pick up a bacon egg and cheese biscuit on their way home to sleep for the rest of the day. And "breakfast for dinner" does not apply to these standards of acceptable times. However, breakfast for dinner has to be made from scratch with either waffles, pancakes, eggs, sausage, bacon, or some delicious combination of them all, just not pre-made egos. Okay, back to my day.

So, I think about doing the waffles idea, but then I decide not to and I turn on the television to veg out a little more, like I hadn't gotten enough in my 10-hour beauty sleep of which I had just awoken from. But, it is the life I live and that was what I decided to do. So, I’m flipping through the channels and I stop on FOX, something I do from time to time to get my laughs. But on this day, they actually had a good story, probably because it had nothing to do with politics or anything of significance. It was the story of the “Barefooted Bandit”. It is actually a really interesting story about a modern day Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leo DiCaprio from Catch Me If You Can if you don’t know that name). Anyways, he has been on the run for some time now, robbed a bunch of houses, stole a few boats, stole and crash-landed 3 planes, etc. etc… As I am watching this, my phone rings, another unusual occurrence that I will get back to later. It’s J, (I will keep his identity anonymous so the paparazzi don't show up outside his house tomorrow…hah), one of my best friends from home and he asks if I want to go to lunch. I accept and we go to lunch at Applebee’s. I love Applebee’s and the 2-for-$20, fantastic! So we get our food, we both got burgers and boneless buffalo wings, he was responsible and had a water, I had a margarita, (It’s 5 somewhere… Right?).

The rest of the meal and day went along swimmingly and mostly uneventful for this guy. I sat around the house, watched tv, went online and stalked people on Facebook, you know the usual. Then, I decided that I was going to take advantage of my Netflix account and watch some of the season 1 episodes of Californication since with a single and decisive swift flick to the nuts of any diehard Californication fan Showtime (the tv station that it airs on) and Netflix decided to air only the premiere episode of Californication Season 3 on Netflix. Effectively, giving “us all” broners (Californication reference used completely out of context) and then not airing any of the following episodes. Not cool! And neither is flicking guys in the nuts. I know a girl who actually told me that she used a nut flick during foreplay. Big No No! That shit hurts!

So I’m left watching season 1, which isn’t so bad because the show is freaking awesome. I’m watching the third episode I believe with the red-haired girl that Hank sort of dates for a little bit in the beginning of the season. Anyways, the episode begins with Hank and her in bed and she says, “LOL,” as if it actually was an acceptable statement in ordinary face-to-face conversations, which it most definitely is not. And then I got to thinking about it more and it doesn’t end with the LOL’s and the WTF’s and the ABITHIWTITB’s (this abbreviation is real. Look it up.) of this world. The new cool thing is to spell words completely wrong purposefully and adding letters to words just to make them unique or something and I find offense because spelling does not come easily to me and this new language that has become such a mainstay in modern speech is destroying the English language. Just to demonstrate my point I know a group of girls, who will go unnamed, but go to my old college that have created a “secret group” and they only talk in their code language that involves adding z’s to words that absolutely do not need them and changing y’s to –eh’s. Not a very good code language, not even as good as pig latin. But it really makes no sense and although I will admit that I did like when they started calling me Homzer (My first last name, minus the z, for those of you who know me only by Brian) and I did enjoy changing my BBM name to Homzer for a few days, I find the whole phenomena completely and utterly ridiculous. It just makes no sense to me why that would be the cool thing to do and yet still I was somewhat drawn to it so that I could be on the in crowd and spell my wordz with z’s.

And I know that I am part of the problem these days with all the texting and abbreviating I do on a regular basis. I had a full conversation through texting that involved only the use of the first letters we were trying to represent and we actually carried the entire conversation out and made plans for that night. It went something like this, (translation in parenthesis)

J: S? (Sup?)

B: N. T? (Not. Tu?)

J: S. W? (Same. Wasupi?)

B: B’ed o o m m. (Bored out of my mind.)

J: Y. M @ 9:20? (Yeah. Movie at 9:20?)

B: W O? (Which One?)

J: S-Gates (Surragates.)

And so on and so on…

Both of which are minor miracles and really show how ridiculous things have gotten. Now I know all of these new technologies with internet, cell phones, etc., are supposed to make society better and more connected, but please not at the expense of humanity and the English language.

So, in my own personal attempt to mend our ways I am vowing to text less, bbm less, actually call people more, or better yet get back to the old-fashioned face-to-face interactions of yesteryear and I advise you to do the same. It will be a better world I promise.

Anyways, that’s enough of my rant. I told myself that I would be in bed before 12 a.m. because I have to be responsible and be a substitute teacher tomorrow at 7 a.m. in the morning and that clearly didn't happen so I am now going to shut up and go to bed for real. Good night and N.O. (no offense) to anyone who may have been off-handedly mentioned in here.

Oh and if there actually are people out there reading this, which I really am skeptical about, I encourage and plead with you to comment on my posts. For one, I just would like to see what other people think about some of this same stuff, and secondly it is just nice to know that there are people taking an interest and reading this stuff as I am a new face in the blogging world. Also, and if you want to really make me happy, become a follower of my blog as posts like this will hopefully be coming regularly since I am a guy with way too much free time on my hands and nothing else better to do...

I will leave you with a fortune cookie fortune that I received the other day, “Don’t give up. Your problem gets better next month.” (I guess you will have me rambling on here for at least another month because China is telling me that October just won’t be the month for me.) Farewell.

Editor’s Note: There is no editor so please apologize the spelling and grammatical mistakes in this blog because I am not even going to proof read.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

The Ultimate in Bro-ness

Yes, I have found it! The absolute ultimate place for bro's to be bro's. For those of you who do not understand the full extent of what it means to be a bro I will give you the very politically correct urban dictionary definition that got 1134 thumbs up and only 257 thumbs down that seems to fit the bet. A bro is,

"An alpha male idiot. This is the derogatory sense of the word (common usage in the western US): white, 16-25 years old, inarticulate, belligerent, talks about nothing but chicks and beer, drives a jacked up truck that’s plastered with stickers, has rich dad that owns a dealership or construction business and constantly tells this to chicks at parties, is into extreme sports that might be fun to do but are uncool to claim (wakeboarding, dirt biking, lacrosse), identifies excessively with brand names, spends a female amount of money on clothes and obsesses over his appearance to a degree that is not socially acceptable for a heterosexual male" (Urban Dictionary: Bro).

Okay, the Holy Grail of Bro-ness is amongst us, and contrary to what you may be thinking it is nowhere near Baltimore, or in the locker room, although both of those places are undoubtedly very sacred places within the realm of this meaty sanctuary. Drum roll please.... (sound of drums rolling?)......www.brobible.com!!!

At long last, a place that combines a patented Compatibility Matching System® that narrows the field from millions of bro-worthy men and matches them with a highly select group of compatible bros who have been prescreened on 29 Dimensions™ of personality: scientific predictors of long-term brobility. Oops, actually that was from E-Harmony. My bad.

But seriously, this place truly does exist. It is self-purportedly a place to "make every bro's life a little easier" (brobible.com/about). In a slightly different definition of a bro, the site states that it serves as a forum and meeting place for ambitious, socially active, sports- and recreation-minded men aged 18-up to have a one-stop hub of Bro-worthy content, tailored to the Bro’s specific needs and interests. Included are articles, media, forums for bros to peruse and further perfect the craft of being a bro (Brobible.com/about).

Hilarious!

NOTE: Despite this rant on the utter ridiculousness www.brobible.com , it actually is pretty entertaining whether you are a bro or not. Just beware and be cautious of long-term visits as the bro-ness may rub off.

Sunny Day in October- Sauquoit, NY

Monday, October 5, 2009

Upstate New York- Fall '09

XC Bike Trip- Summer '08

These are a few of the pictures that I took on my bike trip across the country, from San Francisco to Long Beach Island, New Jersey, during the Summer of 2008. To see more pictures or to read about the trip you can go to it here. (http://www.greatxcadventure.blogspot.com/)