It's Stupid

I live out in the middle of nowhere on my own. I moved out here something like three years ago to live with my grandmother after grandpa died, she passed on herself not a couple of weeks later and now I'm living in this huge, out of place old mansion by myself. To be perfectly honest, it gives me the creeps, but I don't want to sell it. There's too many memories from when I was a kid. The house is about hour away from the town I was born and raised in and with the town, everyone I know. I can make it there in something 40 minutes provided I'm riding on the highway, traffic is good, and I'm really hauling ass. On weekends when I don't have work to catch up on, I cruise into town and spend the evenings drinking and fooling around with my friends. I don't like sleeping in any bed but my own unless it's completely unavoidable. Because of this eccentricity I frequently find myself making the long, lonely drive back to the house at two and three in the morning and sometimes even later.

On my drive home I follow the highway right up until it ends. It's meant to go further but right now it's under construction; my exit is signaled by the white and orange road-blocks and the reflectors surrounding them. I pull off onto the ramp and make a right turn. From here the rest of the way home is a series of winding country back roads. These are actually pretty pleasant to drive during the day, but at night... Well, it's stupid, because I've driven these roads a million times, but driving them creeps me out. I saw this video once on the internet, it was some kind of short horror movie about these kids that got lost on these sorts of road and were killed. Their camera picked up the murders. It's stupid, but it really got to me, and the back roads I ride to get home make me think of it.

Sometimes when I'm driving on these roads, I'll get a car behind me. It's stupid, but I can never shake the feeling that they're following me. The roads are only one lane, they couldn't really pass me if they wanted to. Still though, I can't get the notion out of my head; I think about how easy it would be for them to follow me back to my house where no one else lives; even comes by, and do whatever they want to me. It's stupid, but if the car that's behind me is following to closely I speed up. Just start tearing down the road in an effort to get away from them. Sometimes, but not often, they speed up too, which doesn't do a lot to help my anxiousness. It makes me think of that story. The one where the girl is driving home from a school dance? And the car starts following her and flicking it's bright lights on and off? Then at the end you find out there was a murderer in her back seat and the person following her was turning the lights on and off to keep him from stabbing her while she was driving. So I check the back seat of my car. It's so stupid! I'm laughing just thinking about it. Ha ha.

If they're still behind me, and they speed up after I speed up and I can't get get away from them, I pull over to the side of the road and let them pass. It just makes me way too anxious to have them following me for so long out there in the dead of night. I'm a very careful person, so I always turn on the caution lights when I pull over to the shoulder.

Here's where it gets really stupid, you're going to love this. I'm freaking out at this point, you know? I'm just losing it. If the car passes me, I just take a deep breath and keep driving home. Sometimes, but not often, though, they don't. Sometimes, they see the caution lights flip on and stop. They walk up to the window and tap on it a couple of times. Saying something I can't quite make out, although I can hear an upward inflection in their voice. Probably a question. It's so stupid, I can't even explain to you how embarrassing it is to tell you this, but once I know they're in range, I unlock the car door and kick it open. Usually it catches them off guard and the impact causes them crumple to the ground, but some are quick enough to jump back, or savvy enough to keep their distance. 

It's stupid, but once they're on the ground, or even if they aren't, I leap from the car and beat them with my bare hands. I really get in there, you know? Just waling on them. They cry and they scream and they beg me to stop and sometimes, but not often, I do, but never before they're beyond help. It's stupid, but the blood dripping from my fists gives me the courage to finish my drive home and I do. A lot of times, I'll even get another car behind me and do you know what? I don't even get scared!

Vegeta Sucks

In the universe of Dragon Ball Z, a man’s value is not determined by how hard he can punch or how loudly he can yell, but instead by how loudly he can yell as he punches really hard. By the end of the original Dragon Ball series, protagonist Goku has yell-punched his way to the top of the Tenkaichi Budokai (roughly translated as “The Yellingist Puncher”) tournament ladder and has been formally recognized as the world’s foremost expert in yelling and punching, both separately and in conjunction.

When your protagonist has been officially recognized as the strongest person on the planet and your series is based on him fighting progressively more powerful foes, there’s really not much to do but bring in some space aliens. In steps Vegeta, the proud prince of a powerful galaxy conquering warrior race with his sights set on Earth. In his first appearance Vegeta handily wipes the floor with every character that isn’t Goku and even then only loses that fight due to bad luck and some assistance from Goku’s pussy friends. When the dust settles both men are battered and almost unable to move and Vegeta lies helpless, his fate in the hands of Krillin, perennial bitch of the Dragon Ball universe. Always one to recognize a pattern, Goku begs Krillin to allow Vegeta to live on the merit that given the nature of the series, they’d probably all end up friends anyway, something Krillin is incapable of forming an argument against.  Vegeta gets into his spaceship, flies off swearing vengeance on Goku and the audience collectively goes, “Oh, shit, this buster is gonna be trouble.”

I could write an entire entry on the characters in the Dragon Ball franchise who didn’t live up to their potential, but no one got it quite as bad as Vegeta. In the storyline immediately following the one in which he was the major threat to the heroes, he is surpassed in Punch-Yelling capacity by Goku and spends the rest of the series playing catch up. When he isn’t getting his face smashed into the geographically vague desert environment as an example of the power of whatever freaky-deaky space alien is lobbing fireballs at the earth this week, he’s relegated to the growing group of gaping losers that follow Goku around and offer insightful commentary like, “I’ve never felt this type of power!” Even his little victories are snatched away immediately, either by bad luck or his own hubris. When he appears to be able to go toe-to-toe with Frieza, Frieza simply transforms and bats him away like a fly while the ten-year old Gohan takes his place in the fight. Despite this bad history with transformation, in his battle against Cell where he clearly has the upper hand, Vegeta allows the monster to absorb the android it needs to complete its transformation and once again receives an all you can eat buffet of fireballs and fists. 

The Prince of all Saiyans

Vegeta receives arguably the most character development of anyone in the entire series, growing from brutal would-be world conqueror to over-bearing Tiger Mother. There is a case to be made that DBZ is more about him and his journey than that of its actual protagonist and for the entire run of the show he’s consistently one of the top three most powerful characters. Despite this, his crowning achievement after his first appearance is admitting that he is inferior to Goku and distracting the last bad guy by presenting his ass for a whooping long enough for Goku to save the day. 

-The Management

In Which I Am Mad About Words

There's this meme that I've been seeing making the rounds on the twit-tumble-facebook-and-generally-teen-girl-o-sphere lately that people seem to be having a lot of fun with. As anyone who knows me personally will attest, the concept of others enjoying themselves causes me deep personal offense, so I figured I'd try and take the piss out of this one post-haste. Please, come with me on a trip. Journey with me as I take a moment to explain why I find this thing that other people like to be thoroughly dumb and why your disliking it also will lead to your  being a smarter, healthier, more devilishly attractive person who has lots of sex.

The meme goes like this:

"That awkward moment when [universally relatable uncomfortable situation occurs]."

And the reaction to one of these generally goes like this:

"Yes! This is an uncomfortable situation that I too have often found myself in! It is good to know that someone else has made similar social or personal faux pas as well! Indeed! Our bonding over our comparable level of social incompetence (or often the social incompetence of others) is most assuredly a laughing matter! Tee Hee!"

That... That's how these things talk to each other, right?

As someone with no idea what makes anything funny, even I can tell that as far as comedy goes this "joke" has about the same chance as making any intelligent person laugh as a three-legged racing horse with Parkinsons has at winning a blue-ribbon. I don't even know if horses can get Parkinsons, but if they made a movie about that it would probably win a couple of Oscars.

The entire joke hinges on the brackets up there being filled with something other people can relate to. They say it's funny because it's true, after all. The problem comes about when you start post "Awkward Moments" about something nobody can relate to.

"That awkward moment when my grandma and I went camping and we forgot our canteen."

HA HA HA HA.

Which leads me to my biggest complaint about this stupid, stupid, dumb, stupid thing: These people don't know what the fuck "awkward" even means. It is not an "Awkward Moment" when your go to make a sandwich and you don't have any mayonnaise. Fuck you! It's an inconvenience! It's annoying! It's a reason to use mustard, but it's not fucking AWKWARD!

awk·ward/ˈôkwərd/

Adjective:

Causing difficulty; hard to do or deal with: "one of the most awkward jobs is painting a ceiling"; "some awkward questions". Deliberately unreasonable or uncooperative: "you're being damned awkward!".

American youths have a fucking obsession with "awkwardness" which has morphed essentially be a synonym for "uncomfortable", but it's gotten to the point where they won't even let it mean that. "Awkward" has become another word for "bad thing" because they heard someone they know say it once and never bothered to Google the word to see what it actually meant.

That's where it started. Now they're playing this ridiculous game of darts with the English language where they grab a handful of "awkward" and fling them at the wall hoping at least a couple will still stick to the board.

-The Management

P.S. This is the debut of a new Label for Meaningless Meandering that I like to call: "Bitching About Trivial Bullshit". 

P.P.S. I feel like I'm going to have a lot of these. 

[Standard Comedy Entry]

I've been thinking lately that although my life is pretty full right now, something was missing. I did some soul-searching and finally figured out what it was, and what I needed to fill the void in my life, and, dear reader, do you know what I came up with? What the essential element missing from my life is? Perhaps even has been for as long as I have lived?

That's right! Tired stand-up comedy cliches!

I haven't been on a plane since August, and even then I didn't have the opportunity to sample the food, so my ability to comment on it's quality is decidedly less than satisfactory. In lieu of that, I've begun going to the gym (irregularly) so that I might work the "Unfit Person Tries to Get Fit" angle of hackneyed over-used jokes. You see, reader, it's part of my New Year's resolution to make this blog as trite and devoid of interesting subject matter as possible by any and all means short of simply not updating it at all for the entire year (and as much as I hate tooting my own horn (in public at the very least) I'd say I'm off to a rousing start.).

Watching Paint Dry: A more interesting (and also cliche) alternative to reading this entry. 

Yes, I've become the dumpy looking loser at the gym struggling to perform the incline press with 15 pound dumbbells; face twisted into an expression of pain and shame as my arms shake on the second repetition. As strange as it sounds, my quest to hate the person I see in my mirror every morning just a little less has brought me here, to a room filled with heavy things to lift into the air, surrounded by other men far better at lifting heavy things.

As any third-rate comedian could (and will) tell you, sticking to a new exercise regimen can be exceedingly difficult; there are literally a handful of things that can slow ones progress towards becoming the Adonis one knows they are inside. Things such as laziness, soreness, and general incompetence with the equipment are major roadblocks, but the one thing that gets me more than anything is that I haven't once seen a single other person there in the same "just getting started" physique as me.

Logically we have to assume that these people started somewhere. I mean, nobody jumps solo on their first sky-diving lesson, right? Walking into a gym, though, the lack of other flabby weak-ass bros gives you the impression that these other guys were made to lift heavy shit, like the doctor slapped these motherfuckers on the ass and then spotted them while they bench-pressed the placenta.

I'm going to tell you the laziness of the edit is part of the joke, and you're going to believe me.

The idea that they were probably just like me when they started out, though? I have to admit, that humanizes them a little bit for me. I think pretty much everyone has the same end-goal in mind when they start a work-out routine, though. It pretty much boils down to: Look better, feel better and intimidate the shit out of the newbies once you do. 

It's a three step program. 

-The Management

Time to Get Dumb Whiny Shit Off the Top Entry

I should do something creative!

HA HA HA NOPE

Static Shock

One thing I've noticed about myself recently is that when I'm looking forward to something, I wake up earlier in the mornings and go to sleep earlier in the evenings. 

An observation the attentive reader might make about this particular entry is that it was written at something like three and change in the morning, which, to those of you capable of basic reading comprehension and following patterns might indicate that I'm not looking forward to anything, which isn't entirely true, Christmas is coming up, after all.   

That said, over the course of the last two or so months, I'd been having a lot of fun being around someone whose company I very much enjoyed, and as a result of that I was waking up excruciatingly early (seriously, like 8:30 holy shit) and as a result of that I was going to bed earlier and earlier, and thus the cycle would perpetuate itself and so on. It makes sense, really. On the days I didn't get to see her, I wanted time to speed up so I could. Basically: The sooner I sleep, the sooner the next day is here, and my excitement for that next day would have me waking up before my alarm clock even went off for me to attend my classes. 

 I'm probably not going to be seeing much of her anymore, and I'm fine with that for the most part, some things don't work out. It's a bummer, but it's part of being a person. This entry isn't so much complaining about the loss of a relationship as it is commenting about how quickly things can return to normal after one ends. It's bizarre the way you return to the things you were doing before the person ever entered your life. In a way, it's kind of like you dreamed the whole thing. 

There was one instance I remember from maybe a year or two ago; At the time I was working my way through an emulated copy of Donkey Kong Country 3 when a girl unexpectedly took interest in me. I remember I was stuck on one of those shitty stages where you're inside those stupid pink trees. The one with the yellow bugs that are carrying rocks on their backs, and you step on the rocks, and when you do they jump into the air and lift you up higher. 

Anyway, as we started talking more and more, I began neglecting my attempted play-through of DKC3 in favor of talking to her on the phone all night. We hung out for a couple months; it all fell apart, but more than the time I spent with her, I remember sitting down in my computer chair one night after it was finally, definitively over and booting up the DKC3 emulator I had been working on. I remember sighing as I returned to the pink trees and the yellow bugs and wondering to myself whether or not anything had ever really changed.  

-The Management

Sonic Boom

It's always surprising to me when a new entry in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise is released, because, invariably, I end up playing it. I've always attempted to dissuade others (and indeed, myself) from the notion that I am a legitimate fan of the franchise because of:

A) The series' childish exterior, which isn't typically an issue for me, but

B) The series' decline in quality in recent years happens to be.

Enough articles have been written about both the quality of some of the recent games and the quality of some of the die-hard fans that I don't really need to touch upon why both enjoying the games and being a fan of them have become increasingly negative things. One only needs to visit deviant art to see the sort of people I would be associating myself with were I to admit to being a fan of the series.

Search your fist name plus "The Hedgehog" on DA to see my point.

That said, I picked up a copy of Sonic Generations last week and beat it in a couple of hours, which was pretty disappointing, but one of the things that really stuck out to me in playing it was that I had actually played through every level before in their respective original levels.

Now, for those of you that don't know, Sonic Generations is sort of a greatest hits for the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. What I mean by that is, every stage in the game (there are only NINE) is a reconstructed stage from somewhere in the series history. Every main-series Sonic game is represented here, which was made it so shocking when I realized that, shit, I recognized every single one of them

I've literally played every main series Sonic game. Every one. I've suffered through Werehogs, Sonic '06, and every other stupid gimmick imaginable.

Including a few gimmicks that weren't main-series

So, yeah, for better or worse, I guess I'm a Sonic fan, which is why it's cool that SEGA has finally given me something I can actually enjoy.

-The Management