Monday, September 17, 2007

Why Does it Hurt So Bad?

So I hit my knee on a table at work today. After my initial reaction of wishing the world would just implode in on itself, I began to wonder what the hell would make something so seemingly insignificant hurt so garsh darn bad.

Now, I'm not a medical doctor but I kinda figure I'm basically as smart as one. Whatever I may lack in book smarts, I more than make up for with an eagerness to make a fool of myself and a monumental set of balls. Seriously, sometimes they barely fit in my underpants. I feel the need to qualify that last statement with "sometimes" only because I don't always wear underpants (ladies?)

However, ridiculous intelligence and grapefruit sized cajones (which I'm told is spanish for "brains") aside, I should get back to the matter at hand . . . . or knee if you wanna be that jackass that thinks it's funny to take everything too literally. Choke on something already.

So I get home and bust out Wikipedia and my old Milton Bradley Operation game. After conducting some extensive research (I never made his nose light up ONCE! (I found that it helps to take out the batteries)) I discovered that all naked, red nosed fat people have a bucket of water beneath their knee! Who knew!? After finding out this nearly unbelievable medical fact, my detective-like instincts kicked in. I quickly did a Wikipedia search for "bucket" and was brought fact to face with the following search results:

" . . . Bucket? . . . Seriously? . . . You typed 'bucket' into our search engine? Really? Do you even have opposable thumbs? Don't answer. We hope . . . no, we PRAY that your retarded sloth of a cat somehow climbed onto your desktop and accidentally mashed out the word 'bucket' on your keyboard. Because, so help us, if it was really you that did a search for the word 'bucket' of all the stupid ass words in the world, we will see to it that you never reproduce or ever achieve true happiness. Good day sir."

And I'm gonna be honest with you. It hurt. Emotionally. It hurt about as much as being hit in the fucking knee. So then I thought, maybe when you bump your knee, the hurt you're actually feeling is more of an emotional hurt as a response to you even beginning to ponder why hitting your knee could possibly hurt so much that it could make you want to drop kick a chinchilla. I don't rightly know because, as I said before, I'm not a doctor. I'm just unreasonably smart. So much so, in fact, that if you were to paint a picture as a metaphor to represent my intellect, it might resemble something along the lines of a ninja pimp magician jump kicking a planet into smaller more manageable pieces.

What does that even mean, you ask? I don't have any idea. My knee still really hurts and I think I may be delirious. Good day to you sirs.

- The Bean

Saturday, September 15, 2007

I Thought it Was Funny But it's Snot

For me personally, I think that one of the greatest accomplishments in the world is being able to make someone laugh. Regular laughter amongst friends is great. A good belly laugh also has its place, as does the kind where you laugh til your face hurts or your stomach hurts or some combination thereof.

However, by and large the absolute best compliment in laughter that you can possibly achieve is causing someone to snot. For all intents and purposes in this blog, I have turned the word snot into a verb as I think thats how it best serves its purpose here.

To make someone snot, for me, is the absolute best thing you can do comedically for a number of reasons. The first and simplest reason is that it means they're laughing, which is great. The second reason (and the reason why I find it to be such a complement) is that it means you have caught this person so totally and completely off guard with humor that they don't even have time to open their mouth to complete a full laugh. They react so incredibly quickly to whatever it is that you said that the only place for their laugh to exit is through their nose.

If their sinuses are clear, well then I submit that it's not as satisfying because it ends up sounding more like a scoff. However, if they've got even a little bit of built up nastiness, then it's all worthwhile. And as soon as the snotting occurs, theres that instant moment of social awkwardness that both parties must deal with immediately (the only real minor downfall in my opinion). When this happens, there are a few different paths you can take to overcome this minor obstacle. The person doing the snotting (the snotter if you will) will have an automatic reaction of covering up their nose with either hand as their initial look of joy will quickly be replaced with one of 'Oh fuck.' I clearly just blew my nose in mid air in very plain sight and now I have to try and play it off. To put that phrase in simpler words, I might choose panic with a side of horror. Now that they have leapt from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other within a matter of milliseconds, it is up to you as the slightly amused, somewhat disgusted onlooker (and really, the cause of this whole thing) to do one of two things. You can either a) quickly look away as if to pretend that nothing happened while simultaneously attempting to continue the conversation without gagging, or b) fully embrace the events that have just transpired. In my experience, the best way to accomplish this is to raise one fist triumphantly in the air while shouting YES! and then pointing at the person while declaring 'THAT is awesome!' I'm a pretty firm believer in the latter for two important reasons. It helps to make the moment that much funnier for both parties, and gives the other person an opportunity to laugh at themselves instead of simply feeling embarrassed.

A side bonus of the whole snotting effect is that the person, from the time that it happens to the time that you're both finished with the conversation, will continue to brush the back of their hand across their nose like a coke fiend to check for any possible dangling stragglers. This, to me, is a somewhat endearing act as you've now accidentally made the person feel extremely self conscious. Also, if you do not address the situation as soon as it happens, you'll find that there is no possible way you can actually look this person in the eye for the duration of your interaction. Mostly because you will now have this mental image of them blowing their nose onto themselves, but also because you know that looking at them even for a split second will make them even more self conscious. That is yet another reason to fully embrace the phlegmy expulsion.

As another added bonus, if this person has a cold, you have just helped them clear their sinuses, proving the old adage that laughter truly is the best medicine. Of course, the people who believe that have clearly never tried codeine. That stuff is the shit.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Make A Stupid Statement, Alaska Stupid Question

Not long ago I worked in a customer service type environment, and as such, I dealt with a wide variety of people. The thing that I came to realize about people as a whole is that they are generally stupid and for the most part helpless. However, no one group of people, in my experience, has been as helpless as those lovely people from Alaska.

Never in all my time on this planet have I encountered a group of people that were more willing to use their geographic location as a crutch for their lack of knowledge and performing simple tasks. Now, don't get me wrong, I know a few people from Alaska, and they all seem to be pretty clever people. For example, I've got a buddy from college that thinks of all kinds of different inventions. His first was something he called razor paper which he was convinced was the most brilliant idea in the world. It was paper that had a razor sharp edge and you could use it to cut . . . stuff. Another invention that he was extraordinarily proud of was something he dubbed 'hissors,' which from as near as I can tell were to be heated scissors for cutting things that were . . . cold, I suppose. Hey, I never said these were brilliant inventions. I just said they were clever. He's a creative dude. But Im getting off track.

The point I'm trying to make is that, on numerous occasions, people from Alaska have used that little factoid as an excuse for laziness and sometimes incompetence. For example, a few months back a woman came into the museum to have a look around. She wandered to the back of the front desk (the opposite side of where all the important information is printed) and got my attention.

"Excuse me, but could you explain what there is here for me to do? I'm from Alaska."

What the fuck? She didn't need to throw in that last little bit. If you've never been to the museum, just ask me what there is to do, or approach the front of the desk where there are signs with information and prices on them. There was absolutely no need to qualify the first part by adding where she was from. Look, ma'am, I understand that you're not used to seeing our running water and fancy blinking lights, but why volunteer that information to me? Did she mention it so that I might take pity on her and talk slower or start explaining modern technology to her? Of course, I didn't actually say any of this to her. I simply did what any other excellent customer service representative would do. I pawned her off to someone on our staff that I knew was from Alaska.

"Oh, you're from Alaska!? So's she! You guys should hang out! "

And then like a phantom I disappear.

On another occasion a few weeks ago, this woman and her family came up to the membership window to say they were late for a Planetarium show. The show had already started and they KNEW they were already 10 minutes late. We don't let people in late for the shows. So they approach the window:

"Uh, yeah, we missed our Planetarium show and we need to get in to see it. We have a movie to go see after it (an OMNIMAX movie that we also show where I work at the museum) and were from Alaska. "

Uh . . . what . . . . the . . . . hell? How is one supposed to take that? Shall I take pity on you, or are you telling me this info as though you're bragging about it and I should let you in so that, in the future, I can tell all my friends about the time that I let these late Alaskans into the Planetarium show. I'm just not sure of the response. We don't let people in late. Period. Where you're from has no bearing on the matter, and you're dumb for even thinking that it might. I mean, honestly, do things not start on time in Alaska? Are they unfamiliar with scheduling different events to begin at certain times, or with the fact that you can't open a locked door? It just boggles the mind.

What I really want to know is how often they fall back on that excuse, and more importantly, how often does it actually work? Shit, if I was from there, I'd abuse that fact all the time.

"What? You want me to pay for my meal? No no, its cool. I'm from Alaska."

"Look officer, I know I was doing 90 in a school zone and accidentally clipped the retarded little stop sign flag boy, but heres the thing: I'm from Alaska. So no worries."

"What? Why was I watching you shower through your bathroom window? Doy! I'm from Alaska!"

You get the picture. And, again, I don't have anything against the wonderful people from our 49th state. I just find it quite funny that in numerous instances, people have used it as an excuse for so many things. It makes me laugh.

Anyway, I'm gonna put on my cheap gold jewelry and sell bags of oranges by the side of the highway. It's cool though. I'm from Mexico.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

A Walk in the Park

The following is based on true events.

So I just got back from a walk in the park, and let me start by saying it was anything BUT that. The weather was unbelievably nice, so I headed outside to the park across the street from my home. I found a nice shady tree and walked there on my hands while simultaneously doing vertical push-ups. When I got there, I was a little tuckered since, as I'm sure you all know that even with my peak level of fitness, vertical push-ups ain't easy.

I take shelter from the sun underneath a nearby tree and begin constructing a makeshift palm tree using bark, grass clippings, and fallen leaves from other nearby trees. I decide to do this because a) I've never gotten to take shelter under a nearby palm tree, and b) I've always wanted to say that I had. So I took shelter under a nearby palm tree.

No sooner did I start thinking of ways to save the rainforest, than I was approached by a homeless man with a thirst for blood. He threatened me with what appeared to be a trident. I didn't even know you could get those things anymore. Not like it did him even a little bit of good because, as he ran in to attack me, I back-flipped off a nearby tree and spin-kicked him at the base of his brain stem. I think, as he was coming at me, he was trying to say something along the lines of "Do you have any spare change?" but I was so quick that it came out more like "BLARG!" So he drops like a sack of batteries and I'm thinking it's time to call it a day. Suddenly his attack monkey, which I hadn't seen initially, came leaping forth from behind the brush (as they have a way of doing) and bit me in my arm. I quickly tied it's tail to a nearby branch as opposed to just killing it because, hey, I'm not an asshole.

Which brings me to my next point. What the hell does "based on true events" really even mean? The only part of that story that's true is that I went to the park today. That plus the monkey thing. But how little of a story has to actually be true for people to need to say that? They abuse it in movies all the time. Can you tell whatever kind of bullshit lies you want as long as you preface it with "The following is based on true events?" I mean, technically could you say that Superman was based on true events because there probably was once this guy whose name really was "Clark" and one time he wore the color combination of blue and red? I don't know. I say why the hell not.

You know what? I think I'm going to start using that phrase before every story I tell. I'll be at a party or a box social or giving a statement at the police station and before I start I'll say "The following is based on true events." Holy crap, I just realized how bulletproof that is! You could say anything you wanted after that as long as what you start with actually happened! Then, whoever you're telling the story to would have to decide for themselves. And ladies love mystery in a man. Especially in a man that was attacked by a monkey.

- The Bean