Hmm… I don’t know, this is shaky at best.

Hi, my name is Jon, or as my friends like to call me, Jon. Welcome to my blog. You may recognize me from some of my past posts, such as, “Ma’am… Excuse me, Ma’am? Ma’am that’s my penis. The true story of how I was inadvertently fondled on the bus ride home from the airport and DIDN’T enjoy it.” Or, “What the F just happened to my plane? A real tear jerker about how I lost my R/C plane while stupidly flying it at night. (it has a happy ending though because it turns out that when the sun is out, it’s much easier to find things you may have inadvertently lost at night while being a complete tool.” And the follow up to that, “How to modify your R/C plane so that it has LED lights that enable you to see it at night when you feel like being an idiot and flying it at night even though you know it can only lead to certain disaster.” Then again, you may not remember any of those because I’m too busy/dumb/finger retarded/hopped up on Gatorade/lazy (please circle all that apply) to have written any of those and any number of other time wasting posts I may have come up with. This of course begs the question (not from too many people though because I’m pretty sure I’ve lost all of my readers by now), what have I been doing?

Well, that’s easier asked than answered. There are three theories floating around amongst the Shuck ‘N Jive scholars these days. They are as follows:

Theory number one: I suck.

Admittedly, this theory has been growing in popularity quite rapidly over the past few post free weeks. There has been much evidence collected over the past month to corroborate this theory and I have done little if anything to contradict it. It started shortly after my 6^th consecutive post-free day. A small child standing in the back of the room during the press conference raised his and a hush slowly fell over the crowd. I had no choice but to address the small child and truth be told, I thought it would be a welcome relief from all the hard hitting no nonsense questions the media had been hammering me with all day. I said, “What’s your name little boy?” And he said, “Lancelot Phillip Tragglethorp the Eight” (that caught me a little off guard… I was really just expecting a first name. I certainly wasn’t looking for a genealogy lesson, so I tried to mask the befuddled look on my face.) “Uh… ok Lance” I said. “Do you have a question you want to ask me?” “Yes.” He said meekly. “Well what is it?” I asked. “How come you don’t post no more?” “Well first of all,” I said, “That question was a double negative Lance, and we don’t like double negatives around here. Unless of course we feel that they add something to the story comedically. But in your case it just comes off like you are poorly educated. Do your parents have trouble with the double negatives too? Did you learn that by watching them? No matter… anyways, to answer your poorly worded question, the answer is simple…” At this point in time, I was struck squarely in my left eye with what I believe was a rotten tomato. Lance didn’t take too kindly to my attempts to teach him proper English skills. He also screamed, “You Suck!!” at the top of his lungs… I was immediately evacuated from the premises by secret service agents so I was unable to complete my explanation to little Lance and I was so traumatized by the events that I completely forgot myself. Hence this theory has been dubbed the “I suck” theory.

Theory number two: I’ve been busy at work.

In my opinion, this is by far the weakest theory in circulation right now. Anyone that knows me knows for a fact that I simply do not try that hard at work. I’m not even going to entertain this one for very long because it’s just so damned ludicrous that I get angry just thinking about it. I’m half tempted to hack into the system and set up a live feed of the security cameras closest to my desk just so that you can see me sleeping/playing video games/cart wheeling/building small cities out of paperclips and pencils/ chucking wadded up paper at whomever is closest or whatever else I may be doing at the time. I think it would open a lot of eyes and bring in a lot of new applications once you see what they see me do everyday and realize that I still haven’t been fired.

Theory number three: I’ve been dealing with some family problems.

Given the sensitive nature of the situation, I can’t really go into detail but I will say this, the intervention we had for my sister went well and I think some real progress has been made. Her melon addiction seems to be somewhat under control and she is nowhere near the 17 cantaloupes a day that she was at 3 weeks ago. I’ll tell you what, nothing sobers you up like coming home to see one of your beloved family members passed out on the kitchen floor, covered in melon rinds, lying there all bloated and struggling for air like a beached whale or something. It makes you stop and think about what’s important in life. Like I said though, the rehab seems to be going well. She’s almost off the melon completely. The key is to step down a little at a time. You never want to quit melon cold turkey, that just gets ugly. However, this still has nothing to do with why I’ve been somewhat absent lately.

In order to find out the truth, you’ll have to stay tuned for the next very special episode on the Shuck ‘N Jive. (Seriously, I think there might be crying and maybe even like an evil twin or something. I’m not supposed to say anything, but I think the writers are going to kill off one of the main characters. I hear Lance’s days are numbered, but YOU didn’t hear that from ME, got it? Wink wink, nudge nudge.)

Also, please note that I didn’t edit this at all, so much like everything else, that’s why it sucks.

Ok, I might be dead now…

I’ve actually had dozens of posts in my head, but what I’m lacking right now is time. I lost three hours a day when I moved back home due to commuting. Two to driving and one to the extra hour earlier I have to go to bed now. I need solutions people. I’m thinking that if I get infected with some sort of rare disease where I’m forced to live inside a plastic bubble that could solve the problem. I can collect unemployment for money, I won’t have to commute or work so there will be almost limitless time for blogging. Of course, I’ll never be able to leave the bubble or experience any kind of human contact ever again, but I will be back to blogging again, so there’s some give and some take… I’m open to other ideas though. I’d like to make “rare disease bubble boy freak” plan B if I could.

I'm not dead yet.

Well, it's probably just a matter of time, but as of yet, the death in me is decidedly minimal. As many of you may not be aware, and as many more of you may not care, I'm now posting from the small out of the way state of New York in some tiny, almost forgotten town, also ironically called New York. I flew in on the red eye flight Thursday night and arrived Friday mourning. I did not sleep on the plane. I have never been able to sleep on planes. Consequently, I found my self awake for a good 40+ hour stretch off of a nice little 5 hour nap that I had taken Wednesday night between the ours of 1:30 am and 6:30 am. I was completely un-caffeinated during that entire time. And yes, un-caffeinated is not a word according to several accredited dictionaries. I'm still going to use it though because one of the major benefits of being a self proclaimed English major is that I now have the license to add words to the English language whenever and where ever I see fit.

The frequency with which I post and comment is going to be lower than you have come to expect. For this I apologize, but hey, I'm on vacation. We'll see how you do when you're on vacation. Just a few thoughts as I began my vacation that I wanted to share. These are probably going to be some of the most insightful things you'll ever read, so I imagine you'll want to commit them to memory or at the very least, have them tattooed in an easily accessed/viewed area on your body. Please take a second to clear your mind of other useless details like your social security number, your drivers license number, your birthday and anything else that will pale in importance to the following few paragraphs.

I had some time to kill at the airport while waiting for my flight. (I spent the first half hour trying to convince them to just take off now because I was already there so why not get a jump on the schedule? My logic was so sound and practical I still haven't been able to figure out why I was refused. Never the less, I was refused, thus I had said time to kill.) I went into one of the many gift shops located inside the airport. Mostly they were filled with overpriced items you could buy to prove to people that you had actually visited LA. I needed no such proof for this journey, so I spent little time perusing the selection of shot glasses and bottle openers. (What exactly is the implication with that? When you remember this place you visited once, you are immediately going to want a drink? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?) No, instead my attention was diverted over to the magazines and newspapers. I thought I might like some light reading for the plane ride. This is where I was thrown off a little. Across the top row of magazines, there was an unusually large and diverse selection of porn to choose from. "Yup... got a long flight ahead of me... just thought I'd catch up on all my porn..." I was brought up in a Christian home and at a Christian school that taught me to have tremendous shame and guilt involving anything of a sexual nature so I don't really see myself ever purchasing said porn and certainly not at the airport. I wonder about the kind of person that wouldn't have a problem making such a purchase. I think I would be slightly uncomfortable sitting next to them on the plane. (when I said slightly, I was exaggerating in the negative, which I believe they call understating.)

At this same airport, I found a similarly baffling item up for sale: Luggage. I claim to be one of the biggest, if not The biggest, procrastinator out there and even I don't come to the airport with just an armful of clothes and hope in my heart that they'll have some suitcases for me to buy. I see them a lot at airports though and it kind of makes me sad that there is a market for it and that the market is doing well enough to justify the sale of luggage in almost every major airport. You want to know what's wrong with this country? People are buying luggage at airports, that's what's wrong with this country. Well, that and tanning salons... (sorry to get all political on you like that, I usually try to stay away from politics in general, but this one really hits close to my heart.)

I have also decided that any time you sit next to a person on a plane that is filled with questions about you, but refuses to answer any similar questions in return is highly suspect. It's not often you meet someone that is so willing to talk about your life and so completely unwilling to talk about their own. Here's what I know about the kid that sat next to me, he's not from New York, but he lives there right now. He's only staying for a few days on this trip though and after that he's going somewhere. That's it. That's all I could get out of him. I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. I did try flicking his ear until he answered my questions, I'm telling you, this kid was up to something. He clearly had training. At this point, I'm not even willing to rule out the fact that he may have been trained by ninjas. He was that good. I don't often say stuff like that, so you know that has to mean something coming from me.

I suppose there are a few other things to tell about my trip so far, but lets face it, I don't have much quality posting ability, so I'd better stretch this out for as long as I can. When it's over, I will have been in NY for 10 days, but when I'm done posting about it, hopefully it will seem more like 10 weeks. Until next time, my happy thought is the Aquabats performing "Super Rad" live and in concert... good times... good times indeed...