better quit before i recycle your face

there is this old guy that lives a few houses over. he is kind of weird. he goes by many names in our house, but we most often refer to him as "abraham lincoln". i've noticed that he parks in front of our house a lot, even when the spots in front of his house are empty. he has a son that louise, dave and i refer to as "fake louis" due to the fact that he kind of looks like louis and drives a similar car. his son does the same thing. many times i will get home at the same time as one of them, only to see them park right next to me, while there are plenty of empty parking spots directly in front of their house, get out of their car and walk the couple of houses over to get to their house. now this never really bothered me. i always thought it was weird, but there is usually plenty of parking in front of our houses, so whatever...

now that louis has moved out, dave and i have been left to handle the house recycling. the last few times we have left out our recycling bin, we received a warning note telling us that they will not take our recycling if we put plastic bags in it. i just assumed that we accidentally put some bags in there, so i made it a point to make sure and check the bin before we put it out. a few weeks ago we got the note again and i was like "these recycling guys are crazy." i know for a fact that there were no plastic bags in there.

then one morning after i had taken the bin out for collection, i was making breakfast when i happened to look out the window and see abe bringing a bunch of plastic bags filled with cans and dropping them into our bin. wtf? why? now he is like 3 houses down, and if for whatever reason he wanted to put his recycling into someone else's recycling, that meant he skipped over a couple of the other houses' bins with the specific intention of putting his cans in our bin.


well now i realized that that's why we kept getting those warnings. so i went outside, emptied the cans into our bin and put the plastic bags on his front porch, hoping it would send him the message that we were onto him. well the bags were still there 4 days later, so i think any potential message was lost.

we got home late last night, so dave went ahead and put our bin out for collection. he told us that abe lincoln struck again! dave went outside like an hour after he put the bin out and noticed a plastic bag full of magazines were now in the bin. dave took the magazines out and placed them in a common area in between our houses that is yet another spot that you can put your recycling. what a weirdo.

this morning as i was leaving to go to work, i noticed another mysterious plastic bag in our yet to be collected recycling bin. apparently not satisfied with putting just his magazines in our bin, he decided he would step it up for a second round and put a giant bag of cans in our bin. so i took out the cans and placed them next to the magazines. i am not sure if the recycling guys will pick them up or not, but abe needs to stop.

this is one of those issues that's tough for me because i really shouldn't be that annoyed by it. it's not a big deal at all. i mean, besides the threat of not having your recycling picked up because some weirdo puts plastic bags in there. but it really is very annoying. it's such a mundane issue that really makes no difference in my life and yet i am bothered by it.

i guess the recycling combined with the parking issue together make a semi-viable complaint or else a questioning on why? why us? if you were living directly next door...maybe. but you don't. you can order a recycling bin for free from p.g. county and even if you didn't want to be bothered, you could leave your recycling outside without the bin and they will still pick it up. or if you didn't like that idea and were worried about your recycling getting lonely, why not put it in the bin of one of your neighbors? or in the common pickup area almost directly in front of your house? you bypass their bins and walk over to our house and put your shit there. why? it seriously boggles my mind.

because it is an issue that appears to be of minimal importance and because they don't know that we know, i will feel sort of silly going up to them and asking why or telling them to quit doing it. i also might not want to know why they have chosen our house. hopefully they're not stalking one of us (and if they are...hopefully it is jessie) instead i plan on being passive-aggressive and post a note on the bin saying something like:

To Whoever Is Putting Their Recycling In Our Bin,

If you do not have a recycling bin, you can order one for free here:
http://www.co.pg.md.us/government/agencyindex/
der/about_recycling.asp

If you still need to put your recycling in our bin, for whatever reason, please note that they will not take plastic bags and have refused our recycling in the past because of this. PLEASE DO NOT PUT YOUR PLASTIC BAGS IN OUR RECYCLE BIN!!! Thanks.

phil thinks that the exclamation points and all caps end to the note are a little too much. i'm not sure yet. i want to make sure that they notice it. but it might be too dark anyways when we put our bin out, so i dunno. maybe i can print it out on some crazy neon paper, or i can wait until the morning to put it out, hopefully getting it out there before the collection guys come through our neighborhood. we shall see.

paco

time to come clean tina

there is this girl who has kinda got the internet goin nutz. her name is tina and she posts videos of her singing covers of various pop songs. obviously this girl would not be getting thousands of views on her videos if her singing wasn't completely awful, but she is also extremely awkward, and has a very strange voice. she seems like a nice kid, i dunno. this blog post was a pretty funny take on the whole thing.



but as she has set the internet ablaze, most people fall into one of three camps. they either a) laugh at her, mock her and find this hilarious, b) feel very sorry for a young girl who is embarrassing herself and making a spectacle of herself or c) love her for being herself and not caring what other people think. i on the other hand take a different angle.

i think she might be a genius performance artist who may or may not turn out to be like 35 years old in an awesome milonakis-esque twist. i can envision her recording these videos in her new york city loft, using a bunch of oversized props to make her look like a kid. she's laughing the whole time, smoking cigarettes between takes, while i am sitting here wondering why i can't think to do these things.


"do not say my videos suck! or you are a whore! bye-bye!"

now if i am wrong, i am not sure how i will feel. i guess she has gotten her 15 minutes doing what she loves to do and while many will laugh at her, she has a lot of non-ironic fans. as i delve deeper into her library of video gems, i think i would consider her a genius, intentional or not...but i am waiting for the "gotcha!" video when her prank on the world is all revealed.

melora hardin...i'll be diregardin'

i watched the office last night. this is one of my favorite shows on tv. while jenna fischer is one of my top celebrity crushes, there is another actress on that show that i have waffled back and forth on since the beginning.

melora hardin plays the ex boss and current girlfriend of steve carell's character michael scott. many of my friends know that i will get the occassional crush on an older woman (lori) and melora hardin instantly caught my eye. it's tough to pinpoint what it was that i found appealing about her, but i just knew that she was borderline on my list. i really liked the character of jan that she played on the office. i would see pictures of her outside of the show and she always looked hot.

at the same time there was something holding me back from full-on endorsing her and placing her on my list of celebrity crushes (which i will discuss in a future blog). she seemed like a very normal, smart, down to earth person. i read an article about her and found out she is also a professional singer! well that sealed the deal, she was going on the list and i would plan to induce eyerolls from louise as i explain my reasons why she was now crush-worthy.

that is until i saw her sing one of her songs off of her new cd on some late night talk show. now she has a great voice. that was not the problem. she explained her album to the host and how it was "very sexy" and witty, filled with innuendo, or something along those lines. i am not usually a fan when someone describes something they do as "sexy". it seems a little too self aware and presumptuous, 2 traits that i did not assume melora had. but i thought "she's pretty hot, maybe she can pull this off without my opinion of her sinking..."

here's her video. what do you think?



ugh. seriously? a song about a boy and his "cat"? hmmm...pussy is a boy's best friend? that sounds like a song idea a 12 year old would come up with...and then quickly realize it's not very good...and then become embarrassed that she thought of it.

kid's inner thoughts: ok...i want to think of a song that will make all of my friends crack up...hmmm, i got it...a song where i talk about cats...but then i start saying "pussy"! and how boys like pussy! genius! and how pussy likes to fiddle with his BALLS...of string!..ok that's kind of gross...and on second thought...that's a pretty obvious joke to make...hmmm....it's getting less funny to me by the second, that can't be a good sign...ok brain, let's forget we thought of that one...they can't all be winners...i feel sad inside....oh well, i am gonna go play with my bratz dolls and then videotape myself doing the souljah boy dance...

anyways, back to melora. this song is anti-witty, with the innuendo beating you over the head. i should submit my youtube video response "let me get my nixon up in you". maybe i shouldn't have had such high hopes. unfortunately she is no longer eligible to be on my list and i can never look at her the same way again...so disappointed...so very disappointed...

the ikea jerktopus

this probably explains a lot

as a kid, there were many popular games that i enjoyed. i spent many years honing my skills in all of them. there was mercy, which was basically you and another kid trying to break each others' fingers. i was pretty good at that one. i managed to bring the pain and win almost every match. i had a few different techniques. the move i usually liked to start off with was what i like to now refer to as "swinging for the fences". this involved crushing my opponents' fingers between mine with a vice-like grip, then quickly transitioning into a bilateral twist that would put both of our wrists pointing up. then i would torque on their wrists, hands and fingers, pushing mine in the direction towards their waist, thus having them scream mercy all in about 3 seconds. it was a nice transition between moves that i compare to efficient brazillian jujitsu moves. this worked on about 2/3 of my opponents. if they were stronger or more experienced, this maneuver usually wouldn't work. now i think i have kind of a low threshold for pain, so i had to analyze what my best options were. if they were a little slow, i might try the ol' "what's this game called again?" i might also try to use distraction, make a quick move and hope for the best. either way, i was not trying to have my hands mangled the way i mangled hands.



arm wrestling was another favorite of mine. while i was stronger than the average kid, most of the kids who had any interest in actually arm wrestling were generally stronger than me. i incorporated a few techniques (cheats) that allowed me to stay competitive in this arena. i had learned a little about leverage and quickly realized that the further your arm reached from your body, the less power you were able to exert. so i was always sticking my hand out first, keeping it close to my body, alligator arm style, and made my opponent meet my hand, thus having him extend his arm out. i also employed the move where you use your non-wrestling hand to push the side of the table and thus give you additional power. this technique became too obvious and i was subsequently called out for it, deservedly so. arm wrestling was fun, but i was only ok at it, having beaten aaron sheer at it, but never winning once (after dozens of attempts) against ian alestock.



six inches was a game where you and your opponent took turns punching each other in the shoulder from six inches out. this was another game i was ok, but not great at. a couple of my opponents overreacted and hammed it up when i hit them, so everyone seemed to think that i was this guy who punched really hard. i always thought my punching power was average, and i didn't really like getting hit in the shoulder, so i let everyone continue to think i was good. people didn't really want to play me after that, so i just coasted on my reputation.

finally there was hot hands. ah...hot hands. this was the game i was the best at. this game involved holding your hands out in front of you, palms up. your opponent would face you with the hands, palm down, placed directly on top of yours. you would them try to slap their hands. you could try to fake them out and if they flinched 3 times, you get a free hit. once you miss them on a slap, you switch places and it is their turn to try and slap you.

i'm not particularly quick, but in hot hands, my hands moved like louis' when he's cutting coupons. i brought the power too. it was a deadly combo. literally. sike. but i did put the hurt on my unsuspecting opponents. when i hit your hand, the slap can be heard in the future. i've made hands beet red, bloodied and broken blood vessels, though i put the blame on the opponent for not knowing when to stop. most people would put a limit on the times i could hit them or they would simply quit after 3 or 4 slaps. but occasionally i would come across a player that would let their ego get in the way and refuse to quit, thus the aforementioned outcomes. it's too bad that hot hands never developed into a sport, cause i think i could have done something in it. nowadays, everyone is all "grown up" and doesn't like playing hot hands, so i am probably a little rusty, but if they ever start up the ultimate hot-hander...i'm trying out.