Store Wars

I'm having a jam-packed week. I spent Saturday night over at the house of some family friends in Bodega Bay with my parents, and it was amazing. They have season five of Breaking Bad. I was in heaven. We also had long and thoughtful conversations, but... BREAKING BAD. It's the best friggin's show of all time. We have to cook, Jesse.

Anyway, then on Sunday I assembled the people in my group for the final battle of the Food Project for my school. We made apple scones, apple pies, apple salads, apple-stuffed pork loins, apple soup, and a quasi-apple fritter dish that resembled apples crammed into a really thick pancake. Some foods were more successful than others. As you remember, we invited our science teacher to come to dinner. He's an interesting guy, and goes only by the name 'Doc'. The party don't start until Doc shows up.

So now I'm getting into editing the video for the Food Project, and it's pretty funny. There's a good hour of footage of the four of us dicking around in Safeway, wearing Thrift Shop clothes and riding on carts. Then of course there's the actual food preparation, which features Calvin's insightful apple fact, "Apples are red. Except when they're not." It's good shit.

I'm pretty bemused by the news right now (HA, bemused by the news... it rhymes...), seeing as the 100 Best Memes of 2012 have just been released, with Gangnam Style taking #1, and other great memes like Socially Awkward Penguin, Binders Full of Women, and Bad Luck Brian coming in close. But I think a new meme is out. I don't know how the people of the internet will spin this one, but it's pretty friggin' funny.

You see, the G8 summit is being held in Ireland this year, but after the economic collapse of 2008, Ireland has been like Europe's Detroit. In other words, holding a big economic conference in a city filled with condemned buildings, decrepit factories, and run-down pubs isn't really sending the strongest message. So in order to bring back some of that old Ireland-y spirit, they've started plastering up pictures of bustling storefronts over brick walls. It's part of my new series...


IRELAND: Seriously, are you f**king kidding me?

I'm essentially the ultimate European, with lineage tracing back to France, England, Iceland, Poland, Austria, NOT GERMANY, and (you guessed it) Ireland. So I have absolutely no problem with saying the following. Ireland, this is pathetic. However, this is also one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time. I've always said that the Protestants and Catholics in Ireland need to stop killing each other and start putting a little more effort into their country's aesthetic design.

In other news, Michelle Bachmann is bowing out of Congress next year, so there's a job opening in Minnesota for a psychotic woman with dead eyeballs who likes blaming mental retardation on preventative vaccines. Bachmann was, of course, one of the most extreme, anti-liberal, homophobic politicians in recent memory. The people of Minnesota have been so appalled by her disgusting rhetoric that they've re-elected her to Congress four times.

Bye!

Sequester Quest

I am so fearful for my life right now. I have to add another thing to my OFFICIAL LIST OF THINGS THAT CAN KILL YOU AT ANY SECOND. And this is INCLUDING meteors in Russia. Take a look:

1) Brain aneurysms
2) Falling chunks of rock from the sky
3) The Kool-Aid Man
4) Gas explosions
5) Heart attacks
6) Terrorists
7) Predator drones, because for SOME reason, you're on the terrorist watch list.

And now we have SINKHOLES. In Florida, an enormous sinkhole opened to swallow some guy's house. As of this writing, he has been presumed dead, and the police have called off the search for him.  So now you get to worry not only about being sucked in by the Earth itself, but also about being abandoned by your tax dollars at work.

Speaking of which, Congress has stalled for a little too long, and now the automatic spending cuts set to kick in on March 1st have gone into effect. It's called the sequester (write that down, kids), and it's a really, really dumb idea. Not even joking, that was the intent. Congress basically said "Gee, let's make sure that we get this s**t done by March by saying that if we DON'T, this really crappy idea will take effect." I have no doubt that this was the exact thought process.


Yes. But not here.

So now the sequester is going to put an enormous bird crap on the beautiful windshield of Obama's second term. And yes, that metaphor is trademarked. I don't find it at all surprising that Congress is now deliberately coming up with bad ideas... they've been doing it on accident for decades, so it was just a matter of time.

I'm getting off track from my sinkhole story here... have you noticed that every time something crazy like this happens, it's always in Florida? The bath salts incident, and now this... it seems as if every day, a headline says something like "FLORIDA MAN STRANGLED BY BOA CONSTRICTOR WHILE PLAYING PACHINKO." It's uncanny.

I'm glad I live here in California, where the only things we have to worry about are earthquakes. Oh... GOD DAMN IT!!! I have to add another f**king thing to my list...

Bye!

Son of a Gun

My class has been working on something called The Mars Project recently, which is basically a plan to put a permanent settlement on Mars. So yes, my school is badass. We were designing the oxygen garden/greenhouses today, and I had the biggest and greatest idea in the history of big and great ideas. Vertco Respiration Hardware. Yeah, it's a thing. Just connect a Vertco mobile greenhouse to your Mars colony and BAM! Oxygen, water, and potatoes. Graham Vert

In other, non me-related news, there were two more shootings recently. In Alabama, a man shot a bus driver and took a 6-year-old hostage, and in Arizona, a shooting left one person dead. So now we're just gonna move through the alphabet. Up next: Alaska and Arkansas. What's amazing is that this happened WHILE CONGRESS WAS HEARING GUN CONTROL ARGUMENTS!!! Talk about ironic... ha ha ha...

I've been keeping score for a week or so, and we're up to 1,440 people killed in shootings since Newtown. Go to THIS website for an ongoing tally. So, how much longer is it gonna take? Well, a month ago, I said it wouldn't take long. And that's why you don't look to bloggers to predict the future. Fortunately, President Obama has introduced a total of 23 gun control-related bills to congress, so that guns like this one don't get sold in Wal-Mart.


The Vertco ARBX-35 dual magazine rapid-fire sniper rifle with reticulating grenade launchers, laser-guided cop-killer bullets, pullback pump-action masterkey shotgun, bullet silencer, automatic crosswind calibrator, holographic ACOG heartbeat sensor scopes, and spoon-onet attachment. Comes with one free coupon for head examination at your local clinic.

Anyway, there's no point in owning a gun like that. As cool as it is. I mean, just LOOK at it! It's so awesome and--- NO! FIGHT IT! FIIIIIGHT IIIIIIIIIITTTTT!!!!

It's like owning a Hummer or a t-shirt that says 'I feel inadequate about my manhood'. And the real problem is the gun salesmen. They are only required to check their stock once every 18 months, they delete all background checks after they are performed, and the one at Big Five Sporting Goods called me an asshole when I told him that guns are responsible for 30,000 American deaths a year. So yes, I'm pretty pissed off.

Bye!

Putting the Mental in Governmental

So, here's something awesome--- apparently there's a website where you can create petitions on the internet. If you get the required number of signatures by a certain date, the White House HAS to respond. Like, legally. So, I created THIS petition to lower the legal voting age to 16. You see, the next presidential election in 2016 takes place about four days before my 18th birthday, on November 8th. So as you can see, I'm a little perturbed.

But by far, the most popular petition subject on that website is anti-gun laws. Because there were two more shootings today: A teenager killed his family in New Mexico and a shooting at a college in Texas left four people in the hospital. So this has literally become a daily thing. I come home from school, and I get to ask "So, who got shot today?" Because THERE'S NOT WIFI AT SCHOOL... but that's not the subject. Wait, maybe I should petition for mandatory WiFi at all American schools! Yeahhhh...

Anyway, that's not the only gun-related event, because Barack Obama was re-inagurated yesterday for his 2nd term, and he gave a really impassioned speech about... totally not gun control. Since, although he never said the words, you could tell that the implications were there. So now Republicans are going friggin' OUT OF THEIR MINDS over his 'inability to compromise' and 'partisan agenda' and 'actual intelligence.'



Anyway, as I've said many a time in the past few weeks, this is going to be a pretty intense debate. And it's not like climate change or abortions--- This time, EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN has an opinion. And according to polls, 79% of them favor stricter gun laws. That's a pretty big margin, given that statistically, some of those people have to be gun owners.

On a lighter note, we've finally delved into the dark recesses of an evil organization that robs people of their money and gives them unsatisfactory products in return. An organization that has influence worldwide, that has distributaries all across America. I'm talking, of course, about... SUBWAY. In a recent Facebook post, someone pointed out that Subway's "$5 Footlong" is a mere 10 and a half inches, with the caption "Subway pls respond." Now, normally I'd find this kind of distraction from real national issues a pain in the ass, but THIS NEEDED TO HAPPEN. Too many people have fallen victim to this BS. There needs to be some kind of restriction. Or waiting period. And we should carefully monitor the distribution of these... sandwiches.

Oh God, are we actually caring more about sandwich laws than gun laws...?

Bye!

Know When to Hold 'em and Know When to Fold 'em

I've begun playing poker with my parents, a little tradition founded three days ago on Thanksgiving. I won five bucks off my dad, then five more. I feel so rich.

I've begun giving out loans, although nobody's really taken me up on it. One of my friends owes another friend twenty bucks, so it won't take long until he caves to my 150% pay-back rate. I'm so evil.

I was sitting in bed the other day when I had an epiphany. Pros and cons are opposites, right? Well, if pro is for and con is against, is Congress the opposite of progress?

OR DID I JUST BLOW YOUR MIND???

I called the White House (202-456-1414, don't forget to add the one at the beginning), and I told the receptionist my theory. She didn't buy it. I said I was on to something, and then she hung up.

I swear, the people I have to deal with.

Bye!

Trouble With Turtles

Ello, loyal-ish followers! I was going to make this blog part of my previous blog, Ironic Man 2: The Spoilers, but I REALLY wanted to use both that title and the title of this blog. So, without further ado, here's my entirely true story about a turtle!

I was walking around Lake Lagunitas, when I found some random turtle sitting in the middle of the fire road. I was about to pick him up and move him, when a group of Incredibly Stupid People®. They consisted of:

-A little girl who wanted to touch the turtle

-Some dumbbutt who thought he was in a desert

-Some guy who reminded dumbbutt guy that he was in a forest by a lake

-Some old fart and his wife, who kept talking about their turtle, Pete

-A lady who thought that the turtle was a tortoise

-And some lady who wore massive sunglasses and acted completely oblivious to the turtle's fate.

These seven idiots kept arguing and arguing over what to do with the frickin' turtle. I just wanted to take him and put him by the edge of the lake. But NOOOOO, these idiots kept arguing and making incredibly stupid points. The little girl wanted to keep him, the old fart rambled on and on and on about his turtle, while his wife repeatedly asked "How old is Pete, again?". Finally, I just grabbed the stupid turtle and put him in a little stream.

Well, dumbbutt guy and tortoise lady started saying "Hey, he needs to go back to the desert, he's a tortoise", and old fart guy kept saying "I miss Pete", and the little girl started whining that she still wanted the turtle. I wanted to just yell 'SHUT THE **** UP!!! I FEEL LIKE I'M IN CONGRESS!!!"

Well, the turtle escaped, and the idiot squad dispersed. But I will never forget the feeling of being the only person with a clue as to what was going on.

I don't know whether to feel good about myself or scream.

Here's a pic of the turtle.