A Thanksgiving Re-Release

Well, Halloween is long over, so in the minds of merchants and die hard capitalists everywhere the next holiday in line is Christmas, but to turkey addicts and football fans there is something standing in the way of tinsel and carols: Thanksgiving.

One year ago I published a story where I went neck and neck against a frozen fucker of a turkey... and barely came out alive. I submit the story again, slightly embellished, slightly modernized, fully (hopefully) awesome:

Two Thanksgivings ago I was stuck up in Philadelphia alone while my girlfriend, my family, and everyone I ever liked were off having great times and eating great food without me. 

They always break out the confetti when I can't come!

Not that I'm bitter or anything. 

Nothing beats Thanksgiving alone on a bench... except maybe crying alone in a bathtub

However, I had won a free Thanksgiving turkey from my local grocery store and I had no intention of letting that go to waste. If I had a free turkey, I was going to have a free turkey.

I consider myself a bit of a chef, but I had never tangled with the likes of a full grown turkey before so, naturally, as a male, I assumed I would have no problem.

I assumed wrong.

Video Post Number 2!

Caramel Apples are DELICIOUS!

I recently discovered this, luckily a camera was present:



If you like the video, check out the other one on YouTube.

If you like the blog, go ahead and follow it! Remember, an angel will make you a sandwich.

The thrilling conclusion to Turn your head and PANIC! is coming soon!

Turn your Head and PANIC!

Going to the doctor is always terrible. There is always a risk involved, no matter how minor your reason is for visiting.

It's kind of like swimming in the ocean. Sure it isn't LIKELY that you will be eaten by a Giant Murder Fish (Pescisdeathus holyshiticus - the scientific name) but it is definitely possible. Had you not swum in the ocean, your chances of being eaten by said fish would be diminished.

"It is in my gaping maw that worlds end and dreams die!" - Death Fish

It is the same damn thing EXACTLY as going to the doctor.

It's just Filler... but it is sexy

Check this out, should keep you going while I prep a post. One will be coming soon, I promise.



Remember, if you like the blog. Go ahead and follow it, right over there on the right side of the screen. Every time you follow my blog, an angel makes you a sandwich.

Try it out!

Dress to Impress

In third grade I wanted to be a dinosaur.

I don't mean for Halloween, I actually wanted to be a dinosaur.

Unfortunately, once the school told me that I had to stop biting people and roaring in the middle of arts and crafts I was forced to settle for just being a dinosaur for Halloween .

Lucky for me, Jurassic Park had just been released, so the market was full of awesome dinosaur costumes! As I had waited until October 26th to decide on my costume, however, my only choice was a Velociraptor costume. Rather...  a Velociraptor head and claws.

But my head and my hands are intact... what do you mean you won't serve me!??

Lookout Behind You!!

Halloween is coming, don't look behind you... you never know when Watson is watching:






New post coming soon!! Enjoy some candy and a classic or two.

O.E.D. (Owen's English Dictionary) Entry #446

Perpetuastoned (per-pe-tua-stoned) noun?

A condition where an individual is either: A - constantly stoned, or B - always looks and acts really stoned

When Everything Attacks!

I was driving down the road from Spokane to Pullman the other day, having just returned from quite the wedding, when, suddenly... I saw a SIGN!

No, not a sign from God, but a sign... from the Washington State Department of Transportation!

Observe:

In case you don't know, this is a rest area/picnic sign, a perfectly normal... wait a minute... Oh no... At first I didn't think anything of it, I had seen this sign before, but when I looked closer I noticed something terrifying!

Screaming and Crying

When I was a kid I made the brilliant decision to ride down a long hill on my bike, a hill that ended in a brick wall. Despite knowing that there was a wall down there, and knowing that I was riding one of those failure bikes where you have to back pedal to apply the "breaks" I went for it.

And now I'm in grad school. Anything is possible kids!

No, I didn't hit the wall. I actually bailed out seconds before impact. I say "bailed out", I actually mean that I "screamed and hurled myself left", landing directly on the concrete.

Never Forgive... Always Forget

Call it starry eyes, call it selective memory, call it stupidity, it doesn't matter what name it gets: we, as humans, have a depressing inability to remember, and learn from, our past mistakes.

The reason I bring it up is because of one recent infuriating night... the night I picked up the Monopoly board after years of separation.

What the fuck is it about Monopoly that keeps sucking us back into it's black pit of despair? No matter how many times we say NEVER AGAIN, the godforsaken, festering shit pile of an excuse of a family board game just shoots out a tentacle and pulls us back in.

They should drop the pretense and just put this on the box. 

There are only two Monopoly related questions that should be answered with a "Yes". They are:

Q - "Do you want to not play Monopoly right now?"

A - "Yes, I want to NOT play Monopoly right now."

and

Q - "Do you want to pour gasoline on Monopoly and light it on fire?"

A - "Yes... of course... always"

O.E.D. (Owen's English Dictionary) Entry #284

Prutellagasm (pru-tell-a-gasm) noun
The feeling of elation immediately following consumption of a pretzel covered in Nutella.
(see also: "Anything-gasm")

FCKNG AWSM3 P0ST

So for those of you wondering why the blog has been updating, well... nothing. The answer is that I recently moved from Philadelphia to Washington State. For those of you who failed, or refused to take, geography... that is a long-ass drive (long-ass is the technical term). 

Pennsylvania is on one side, Washington is on the other. Here is a map:

Who chose our country's color palette? No wonder other countries hate us... 

One advantage to driving that far is that you get to see the country. The lavender mountains majesty, the amber waves of... mauve? Robin's egg blue? Who DESIGNED this country!?

The other thing you see is cars, lots and lots of cars. Every one of those cars has a license plate. Most of those license plates are normal... some are not.

Vanity License Plates fall into two categories which, coincidentally, are the same two categories that describe jokes you tell when drunk: 

1 - Hilarious

or

2 - COMPLETELY UNINTELLIGIBLE!

I don't quite understand why people would pay money to have the back of their car say something... Don't get me wrong, things that say things are cool, but presentation is important.

Well, this is pretty self explanatory... or is it?

When the Assman Testifies!

Maybe I do this because I like to write, but sometimes, when I am bored, I find myself describing what is going on around me as though I am narrating a book.

Am I the only one to do this? Am I weird? I mean, I know I am weird, but are other people weird like this too?

I'll give an example. I work at a company that specializes in people dressing up in colonial era costumes and providing entertainment to Philadelphia tourists. I don't engage in the dress up, (they do make me wear a polo though... rrrrr), but I spend my day in the company of silly looking men and women.

This... but somehow sillier.

So the other day, when I was sitting around waiting for one of our programs to start, I found myself again narrating my surroundings. The problem? Once I started narrating I realized exactly what was going on around me:

Micro Yap

This blog post only exists because I have a really high tolerance to alcohol.

Don't worry, I will get to the topic of the post eventually. But first, I have to ask: does anyone else have one of those nights where you are totally committed to getting, if not drunk, at least comfortably tipsy, but then, despite ALL EFFORTS, nature fights back?

Maybe not QUITE this far... but heading in the right direction..

Is it just me? Whenever I plan my drinking in advance, fully invested in getting a little sauced, I end the evening discoursing Proust in my most eloquent prose while, on nights when I plan to have only one drink, I end up vomiting in the corner on a towel I retrieved from the bathroom. 

(That is right, I went INTO the bathroom, removed a towel, placed it in the corner of the bedroom and threw up on it, then went back to bed proud of how forward thinking I was… next morning, no memory of it. Let me know if anyone wants the full story on that one, if I get enough requests I may divulge it.)

I have them!!! 

But the topic of this post is, in fact, SMALL TALK. Small Talk is a many varied and cunning beast that can rear it's head in a myriad of different ways. Often employed extensively on blind dates, it can be hard to remember that Small Talk's sphere of influence extends beyond the twisted miasma of the ocularly impaired dating scene.

A Picture's Worth a Word... or Two

Hey, Hey Everybody!

Do you like to laugh, but find you really only have a second or two to devote to your joyous giggles?

If so, head on over to A Picture's Worth a Word... or Two, a new blog concept I am working on. I see a picture and I attach a thought to it... anything I think of when I see the photo. If I did it correctly, that thought is funny, if not... we'll I'll just have to try again later. 

At this point I am working off of pictures I find myself, but ideally I would LOVE to be able to have readers send in pictures and I could work from there.

Before anybody starts worrying, I will NOT abandon this blog. The new blog is a place to put short, sweet humor to the test.

Once again, that is apicturesworthaword.blogspot.com

Let me know what you think!

Rock me, Google!

One great thing about blowguns…

...ugh... Fucking auto-correct… let me start again.

One great thing about BLOGGING is going every now and then and checking the stats for your blog. How many people have visited in the past week, how did they link to the site, etc.

I say it is great, often it is a little depressing, especially when the numbers go down, but that never happens to this blog…

*shifty eyes*

But one of the best parts about the stats page is that it shows you google searches that eventually resulted in the searcher arriving at your blog. More often then not these are searches like "whyihateeverybody blog" or "that really funny, awesome blog".

Every now and then, however, you find some truly amazing searches. I have gathered my three favorite below, these are 100% real searches that brought people to this very blog.

Orgasms, Asses, Puppies and Tea Pots

Crying children are annoying for all parties involved, including, I assume, the child itself. Even if that particular child hasn't had bland food rubbed into it's eye, he or she still packs an auditory wallop. 

In fact, the only way to make the sound of a child crying WORSE is to put that child onto a plane, and put yourself on that same plane... and what the hell, for good measure, have yourself sitting right next to the child, and give yourself... herpes? Yeah, herpes makes everything worse.

Even without the herpes, at this point you have a perfect storm of annoyances: the stress of flying, the cramped compartment and the sweaty people around you create an unholy allegiance much like if the ebola virus and the atom bomb had a mutant love child named Eboltom who blasts bad Hair Metal out of his car while slowly driving through the neighborhood.

... I was going to put a picture illustrating the above mental image... but that picture would just be horribly depressing, so to pull everyone out of a suicide spiral, we will take a brief detour to:

Puppy!

Now, back to the babies crying on planes. If you have flown more than once in your life you have probably experienced this. Even in the best of times, when you're in a great mood, it is annoying. 

I remember one time I was on my way across the atlantic. I was sitting in the second row of coach right next to a child screaming like its little life depended on it. After enduring about 30 minutes of wailing the flight attendant came back from First Class, leaned down and said to the mother:

"Ma'am, is there any way you could quiet your child? They can hear him crying in first class."

Flaming Death

I will start this off by apologizing for the long hiatus between posts. I can't go into details on where I have been, but  do you remember that Alien Invasion that destroyed the world? No? You don't? Exactly… YOU'RE WELCOME!

Not THIS time Mother Fuckers!

Ahem… Well, getting right back into the swing of things:

Here in America we have a tradition of overreacting about everything. Video games are violent = we're all going to die. Other countries have different customs from us = we're all going to die. A politician named after a wang displays his wang? You guessed it… we're ALL going to DIE!

Those are the specific overreactions that deal with the specific problems… like rampant penises. However, as the years have gone by I have noticed a few general overreactions that seem to exist no matter what else is going on. There are many troubling examples of this, but few demonstrate the overall loss of our ability to handle our collective shit more than the Spicy Food Indicator Logo.

A Row of Rainbow Unicorns

It all starts with eye contact. Some people avoid it like the plague, others (myself included) lock onto eye contact in a conversation like the giant squid from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and refuse to let go until we're done talking or the Nautilus sinks, which ever comes first!

Raaaahhhhhhghhhhsquidnoisesghhhhhhhhh!

*ahem* 

Eye contact is how we make our connections, its how we show our intention. It can be a beautiful connection between two people, a sharing of thoughts and feelings and emotions

"God... don't we both love LL Bean?"

or the precursor to something horrible.

"Inara?"

Since examples of beautiful thoughts and blah blah blah are boring. Here is a prime example of when it spells doom:

Hardcore Technology!!

Hello readers!

Today marks a new, beautiful, strangely sexy chapter in the life of Why I Hate Everybody…

The VLog!!

That's right. This Blog has added a VLog component.

Now, I don't quite know what VLog means… I know it has something to do with videos… so I assume it means "Vicious Blog" because, as we all know, videos are viciously awesome. They are also technology, and technology is awesome. So the new VLog element of this blog is viciously hardcore video technology!

I'll stop hyping it now and let you watch:

So tell me what you think of the new thought process, as well as the new video. I will still write entries, but I will also be putting in some videos from time to time!

You can also follow the videos through my new youtube channel: WhyIHateEverybody

Hell on Earth

The preceding poignantly pithy phrase points profoundly at the (ok alliteration over) subject material for this particular post (sorry, I'm done I swear).

Now, I have worked in retail. I remember the experience. There are a few elements that make retail hell on earth:

Stupid Questions - 

Customer - "Do you work here?"

Employee - "No, I just wear the company shirts to throw you off, SUCKAH!"

Unfounded Anger - 

Customer - "Where are your veggie burgers!?"

Employee - "Sir, we don't serve food."

Customer - "Why NOT!? AREN'T YOU SUPPOSED TO PROVDE VEGETARIAN OPTIONS!!!???"

Employee - "We're a record store…"

Price Hagglers - 

Customer - "How much for this shirt?"

Employee - "Seventeen dollars."

Customer - "I'll give you sixteen…"

Employee - "Tell you what! You give me eighteen and I'll give you a dollar in change! It will be like you made money."

OR, the ever popular.

Customer - "This doesn't have a price tag on it… I guess it's free"

Employee - "HA-HAAAAAAA… You didn't tell me you were the reincarnation of Andy Kaufmann you sly devil! That was so original, I'll even throw in a shirt for sixteen dollars!"

Giant Pink Things!

Well it is Valentine's Day, this means one of two things:

"Hooray! Valentines Day! I love you. You love me? Yaaaay! Let's eat chocolate!"

or

"Fuck Valentine's day! It is all commercialized and fake and who cares! I don't have a significant other and I don't WANT one!"

I fall into that first category, (CHOCOLATE, AHHHHH!) but I can sympathize with the people who fall into the second category. My suggestion is chocolate, you should try it, it is great.

AHHH!!! CHOCOLATE!

One of my favorite things about Valentines Day has to be the expectations that pop up as a result of it. When you have a holiday built around romantic love, it makes things a little less magical. When Christmas comes, it is highly unlikely that Jesus will actually fly in on a magical sleigh and deliver presents, so why not just drink eggnog and have a good time?

President's day? Unlikely that dead presidents will come back to life, so why not just drink Sam Adams and have a good time?

VALENTINES DAY? Completely possible you're going to get lucky. So DO EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO MAKE SURE THAT HAPPENS!

Observations: Terrifying, Erotic, Expensive… in that order

I love to walk. Walking places is fun and easy. That being said, I'm fairly certain that that there is an entire room in hell full of nothing but treadmills. Can't you see it now? Hundreds upon hundreds of dead eyed people in perpetual motion, the clomp of their feet becoming a numbing dirge reminiscent of drums on Viking slave ships… all producing the exact effect expected from moving WHILE staying still…

I know, I know, exercise. I get it.

The problem is, walking the route I take into work, while not as mindshatterlingly mundane as being on a treadmill, doesn't really make me want to look around and enjoy the sights.

No offense, two people lying in sleeping bags under the underpass who get mad at me in the morning for not giving them the lunch I packed for myself and then get mad at me again in the evening for not saving them some of the lunch I already wouldn't give them because I ate it. It's not that I dislike walking through your… back yard? (Front yard? living room? Cedar closet?) But your decor leaves something to be desired.

My solution, as a result, is to lose myself in my own thoughts as I walk into work and then back out. This works great when I have something specific to think about.

Not so much when I have "Pepper" playing over and over in my head and all I can think about is what it would sound like to slap two jellyfish together.

So here I have compiled a few of my observations. Things that I think about as I pretend to be on the phone so I have an excuse to not engage the two sleeping bag people who want my turkey sandwich:

What's your calendar like for 2017?

Aside from plane tickets (which I plan meticulously months in advance) I am not the biggest proponent of far off planning. It is nice to have big events planned out, but as far as other things go… meh.

But I've started noticing that people are extending their calendars further and further out in front of them. The easy explanation is that, with the economy fully embedded in the watery grossness you find at the bottom of a trashcan after going out of town for a month and leaving your air conditioning off in the middle of summer, people like knowing their schedule far in advance.

But I first noticed this problem years before the economy went "Phut".

Back in April of 2008 I had a doctors appointment, routine stuff, just went and turned my head and coughed and got a clean bill of health. But when I left the room and stopped by the reception desk, the woman asked me if I wanted to make another appointment.

"Sure," I said, thinking this would be easier because the minute I left that hospital I would totally forget I ever even HAD a doctor.

"Great," she smiled. "How is July 20th, 2009?"

Wait… seriously? I'm standing in front of you with no calendar and no smartphone and you're asking me to confirm an appointment 15 months in advance? Do you really need to ask if that works for me? Does anyone ever say anything aside from "um… I guess that will be fine…"?

I had to fight the urge. I really wanted to just put on a grim little smile and go "damn… July 20th, fifteen months from now… yeah I can't do that. I have a thing. Do you have something on another one of the 364 days of that year or is the 20th your only availability for 2009?"

The Tip Clock

Tonight a bunch of us are going out to dinner here in Philadelphia because it is restaurant week, a two week event where local expensive restaurants give prix fix menus for special prices. Poor people rejoice!

Lets stop here on this guided tour of a blog post while we examine something in a  little more depth: Restaurant WEEK… is a two week affair. Did you notice that?

When exactly did advertisements get the privilege to openly lie because it sounds better? Lets be fair… "Restaurant Weeks" does not sound very good, in fact it kinda sounds like a skin condition if you say it fast enough and run the two words together (go ahead, try it out) but it is flagrant false advertising!

Personally I like "Restaurant Fortnight", because that sounds exciting. Anything with "fort" in it adds an element of danger! But the Philadelphia chamber of commerce won't return my calls, especially after I bugged them about the tree watching last year.

Nomenclative disasters aside, thinking of restaurants has caused me to come up with an invention that both amazes and disgusts me, and I will present it to you today.

We've all been there. You're out at a restaurant and the service was fine and the food was good, whenever you needed your water refilled someone slid by and BAM, you had a full glass. But after the plates have been lifted and your stomach is groaning with too much deliciousness, you no longer really want to just laze around, it is time to go home.

But something is standing in your way.

The bill...

Why DO I hate everybody? (part 3) - Beautiful Fields of Death

It has been snowing a lot here lately.

Good for snowballs, bad for trying to get into your parking lot when the UPS truck driver decided it was a good idea to stop directly in front of the entrance, completely blocking it off, because he didn't want to risk pulling into said parking lot, then, when you ask him to move, he gets stuck with his wheels spinning for a solid five minutes before just jamming the truck into reverse and almost ramming into your girlfriend's car out like a giant, brown, deranged wildebeest full of undelivered packages…

Ahhh… winter!

With nothing to do but sit inside and avoid a UPS related death, it's all gotten my remembering juices flowing. When I was six we went on a summer backpacking trip in the Sierra Nevada mountains. They're beautiful, as you can see:

But you can also see that, despite it being summer, there is still some snow in the mountains. That is important, but I need to give a little background:

Both of my parents are associated with medicine, and as a result would often discuss parts of their work at home. Therefore, as a kid I would hear my dad come home one day and talk about, say, brachiocephalic angina. In listening to him describe it, I would hear that it often manifested first with pain in the left arm.

Then, a month later, I would overhear my mom talking about meningitis and how it was associated with severe neck pain.

Now, the reason why adults are doctors and kids are not, (aside from the fact that kid doctors couldn't examine members of the opposite gender because they're YUCKY!!!) is that adults can distinguish between different diseases and their different symptoms.

I did not possess this ability.

Basically what I was hearing my parents talk about amounted to one giant super disease that was ever growing, constantly adding various crushing pains, bloody wounds and general pus-iness  to its arsenal, all the while zeroing in on nine year old boys named Owen.

Space Bowling Balls!!!!

All right!

We're back!

Now, I know, I know. "Owen," you're screaming at your computer screens. "You have been gone for OVER a MONTH! How dare you!?"

Well, that is true, I have been and for that I am truly sorry. But New Years happened, then other stuff happened.

By the way, have any of you heard of the Peekskill Meteor? Well, in 1992 a meteor brighter then the moon crashed into a car and completely destroyed it. Don't believe me, check out the site.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110123.html

Why am I bringing this up?

Because it makes you think. At any point, at any time, you could be going about your day, maybe mowing the lawn, maybe tossing your neighbor's pet cat up in the air to see if they really land on their feet, when BAM!  A fucking bowling ball from space could just take you out.

Could happen.

But, since it hasn't. Updates will come this week. And they will be goooooooooood.

(is it bad that, now that I've written this, I'm suddenly more wary of meteors?)