Yeah, this was last minute...

Hope you're with friends and family and having a good time!

I've been going about this all wrong

Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the least obvious.  Whenever I experience a temperature change of 15 degrees or more, my nose runs.  I don't know why that is, it just is.  But now I've found the answer:

Another beard post.

Big day today.  My beard's ability to store food has officially exceeded my daily dietary requirements.

This is good news because in the impending apocalypse, I will be able to support my family.

The problem solver

One of the toughest things about switching to a new phone for my fiancée has been potentially losing some important data on her old phone.  Switching carriers makes it even more difficult since she can't just move stuff over to her sim card and keep it with her.  I'm inclined to make wild claims about things I have no real knowledge of.  In this instance, I decided that it must be possible to just move those items over to the mini SD card I put in her old phone awhile back and get them that way.  I'm not entirely sure why I thought that would work, but I did.  I seem to have run into some difficulties.  This is where I'm at right now:

This is my best idea so far.  I think I'm making some real progress.

SUCCESS!!

You might not know this, but I've been at war.  Things got ugly.  It was trench warfare at it's worst.  (I may have had to bring down an entire cellular network covering 2 square miles, allowing only emergency calls (the irony of which was claimed by the fact that those 2 square miles encompassed the campus of a hospital*))  But today, I claimed victory.  I have brought another member into the iPhone family!  This is how I celebrated:

Actually, I didn't really have to do that much.  When we walked into the store and we found out that there would be a 20% discount on our monthly plan because of where my Fiancée works and moving to a family plan in her name would save us $30/ month, plus give her a shinny new iPhone 3GS, the deal pretty much sold itself.  I had to lay a tremendous amount of groundwork of course.  Painfully searching out apps and games that I knew would appeal to her and letting her "discover" them on my iPhone.  But it has all been worth it.

There were casualties of course.  I had to sacrifice my old phone number.  I'm currently trying to find out if there's a way to easily send a mass text message to everyone in my contacts list, or should I just not let anyone know?  I'll sleep on it.  But if you never hear from me again, laziness is probably the reason why.

*This isn't true, but I like to pretend it is.

Differences

Why?!? Why does this happen?!?!

-- Posted From My iPhone, which is not covered in snot.

This is really real.

This is not made up. It is completely inconceivable that I would make this up. This is a guy I totally know in my really real life:



Imagine what his life is like today? And/or yesterday, depending on when you read this. Hope your day went half as well as mine!

-- Posted From My iPhone with apologies to all Lakers fans. I hold myself personally responsible for today's loss.

Happy Holidays!

You know, if you're in to that sort of thing. Otherwise, just pretend I'm a crazy man and have a nice normal day.



-- Posted From My iPhone with extra holiday pizazz.

New plan

In light of the current economic state, the pending holiday and the bitter cold climate of Chicago, I've developed a new plan.  I need heat, but I don't want to pay for it.  You know what produces heat?  Burning coal.  You know who is the greatest coal distributor in the world?  That's right, Santa.  Not a lot of people know this, but whether you celebrate Christmas or not, Santa comes to your house.  If you don't celebrate Christmas, you get coal.  Think about it  Christmas non-celebrators, how else can you explain your yearly delivery of coal on December 25th?  Unfortunately, I do celebrate Christmas, so there's no automatic delivery of coal, but there is a loophole in the system.  According to the rules, if I'm naughty, I'll get coal.  With that in mind, I introduce you to the new me:

I call him "Dastardly Jon" for fairly obvious reasons.  As you can see, I've forgone the usual dastardly mustache in favor of the less common and entirely under appreciated dastardly eyebrows.  Bring it Santa.  I look forward to a warm winter.  Muahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahah (deep breath) hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...

I promised myself I wouldn't cry...

And now I've failed at too.

I'm sure you're wondering why all the head swelling.  Well, it's pretty simple.  I thought I was going to be able to watch the Laker game tonight, but it's been blacked out.  I'm taking it pretty hard.

Should have been working on a post, but...

Instead I was doing this:

Reminder post about how much I hate bare feet

I think at this point, you are all aware of my personal hatred of bare feet.  Yeah, it runs deep.  But what you may not be aware of is my love of new socks (New socks were provided by my lovely and talented Fiancée.).  If you're easily offended, then you best steer clear of me when I put on some new socks, because you will hear a deep, satisfying sigh of pure, unadulterated joy come out of me when I put on those new socks.  Let me be clear about one thing: I only wear crew socks.  Never, under any circumstances, will you see me wearing ankle socks*.  I have bald ankles (probably from all the sock wearing that I do) and I like to keep them safe and warm.  Here's a little something I drew up to commemorate today's post:

*In the event of a crew sock apocalypse (the "Great Crewsocalypse," as it will be called), I will use my secret stash of duct tape to fashion the ankle/calve portion of the socks and claim that they are a special pair of crew socks able to withstand any and all anti-crew sock weaponry.

Sorry for the nudity.

When it comes to showers, if there's no hot water involved, then there is only misery. This is what I look like when taking a cold shower. Don't worry, it's been censored for the kids.



-- Posted From My iPhone and yes, I WAS hurting for a post tonight.

Can't concentrate

That spec of dirt is on the side of the screen I CAN'T touch. I'm going to need therapy.


-- Posted From My iPhone, which is currently marred by a spec if dirt.

Enjoy your nightmares...

I had to look at this all morning, so guess what you get to look at:

I'm sorry I had to get so graphic in my drawing today, but there was just no other way to convey what I witnessed.  To be clear, I was looking at pictures.  I was not actually present during an autopsy.

Yeah, this post is about my dinner.

I had what I believe the kids call a "tuna melt" tonight.  There was tuna and there was melted cheese.  Is there anything else in a tuna melt?  I'm not going to look it up, but feel free to enlighten me in the comments.  This of course reminded me of that ages old, famous philosophical debate, "What the heck is canned tuna anyway?"  It just doesn't seem right that a meat can be put in a can and stay "fresh" for years, much less a fish based meat.  It's a well known fact that most fish meat becomes rancid within 2 hours of being removed from the recently deceased fish from whence it came.  Tuna defies the laws of nature.  Please help me spread awareness by posting this picture everywhere:

Please note that I do enjoy tuna, so I'm not really anti-tuna, I just want to redefine tuna in a dictionary sort of way, not in a practical, get-in-my-tummy sort of way.  Keep fishin' for tuna says I!

The Inevitable

There are annoyingly few guarantees in life, but I've resigned myself to a few certainties.  It is unavoidable that at some point in my life I will have to fight a bear*.  I don't know what kind of bear, but we will do battle with only our hands/paws and wits/uncontrollable bear rage.  You can expect it to look something like this:

*Please note that if it is at all possible, I will try to fight the smallest bear I can find.  I'm not saying I'll walk away from a fight just because it's a larger bear than I would like, I'm just saying that I'm a realist, and the chances of me taking down the biggest bear aren't nearly as good as my chances of taking down a smaller bear.  Not a baby bear, I won't fight children, but if there's such a thing as a dwarf bear, or a midget bear, or some kind of animatronic build-a-bear that's the size of a dachshund hound or something, I want in on that fight.  I'm also open to Koala bears.

This might be me at my best. Really take some time to think about that.

I don't actually have an idea for a post.  I'm just going to start typing and see what happens.  I'm sure a lot of you are thinking, "if you don't have an idea for a post, why are you posting?  NaBloPoMo is over.  Why are you still torturing yourself?  I'm certainly not reading your blog anymore.  You're really only hurting yourself by putting up sad videos of you shocking yourself."  I can't really argue with that.  Those are all very valid points.

Now allow me to contradict myself and argue why I should still be posting.  I need to keep doing this because not having an idea is just an excuse, right?  I see lots of stuff get posted on the internet that's a terrible idea.  Why should I be the exception?  Why not join in?  To tell you the truth, I'm not going to be happy until I'm posting the worst possible posts every day.  I need to know that people will not only stop reading this, but they will go out of their way to tell other people not to read it and they will do so with such a passion and fervor that you only see in Raiders fans that sit in the Black Hole.

I was hoping that if I typed long enough, I would think of a picture to draw that would somehow tie all of this together.  Nothing yet.

Still thinking...

Ok, how about this?

Yeah... I don't know.  Try and figure out if that's a real mustache, or if I just drew it on there with a marker.

The Shocking Truth

***Updated with marginally larger video.  It's still pretty small though, so don't get your hopes up.***

So yeah... I do this.  It also seems as though I'm not good at creating a decent version of it for youtube.

Trust me though, it looks better in the original video.  I'll work on a better version, but don't hold your breath.

I'm already down, there's no need to kick me as well

I hate watching the Lakers lose.  I really can't describe to you how much it bothers me.  I know that they can't win every game, but that doesn't stop me from wanting them to win every game.  I sort of predicted tonight's loss too.  The Lakers have had a very nice start to the season with 17 of their first 21 games being played at home.  That's a lot.  Utah isn't a bad team at all, and the way the Lakers embarrassed them three nights ago, it's not surprising that when they played in Utah tonight that the Jazz we're looking for a little payback.  I didn't anticipate Kobe having a broken finger and the flu for the second game, but I don't know how much that really mattered.  I think Phil left him in the game for too long and it probably cost them, although I'm sure Kobe's ego made Phil keep him in the game.

That game is over now and there's nothing you can do but move on.  I get that.  That's the thing about sports.  The only losses that really stick with you are the ones in championship games because you have to live with them the longest.  But what I really didn't need to see was Taylor Lautner hosting Saturday Night Live tonight.  That's just cruel and unusual punishment.  I only made it through his first post monologue sketch.  I saw the premise as soon as the sketch started.  It went on for far too long and there was little to no payoff for it.  The saddest part for me was the last 10 seconds when Andy Samberg walked on and made me slightly smile, something Taylor couldn't accomplish in the 7+ minutes he had, and they were doing the EXACT SAME THING!  I spent 6 1/2 minutes doing this:

It's Friday, what did you expect?

Every once in awhile, like when I have no decent ideas for a post (which is only about 93% of the time), I like to imagine things like this:

I think the similarities are most obvious in the neck.

I can feel it in the air...

There's not a whole heck of a lot that I like about winter weather.  Actually, there's really only one thing that I like about winter weather and that is static electricity.  I've been spending the majority of my time doing this:

First, I roll around on the comforter, then I walk over to the nearest light switch and use the screws in the light switch plate as a good grounding point and enjoy the shock.  Roll and repeat.  I'm really not kidding.  I probably do this too much.  My personal best so far is about a 1 centimeter arc.  Usually it's only about 1/2 a centimeter.  I take what I can get though.  Most of the year I get nothing, so I probably over-indulge a little bit.  I might stop when I start to smell my flesh burning, but I make no promises.

My life is very mundane.

For you information, there has been a woot-off going on for the past few days.  For your further information, I have managed not to buy a Dyson vacuum this time.  We'll ignore the fact that I haven't seen them put one up for sale yet.  Sadly, my reward for this is having the money to pay the bills.  Join me now as I write some checks...

The one where I let my true feelings of David Blaine be known, but it's not really about him

Rain isn't always fun.  Neither is snow.  Sometimes they are, but sometimes they aren't.  But you know what's never fun?  32.5 degrees Fahrenheit.  That's just above freezing.  What happens at this temperature?  Nothing good.  You get an icy rain coming down and melting on the ground.  It's like watching rain in slow motion.  But that's not even the worst part.  The worst part is when the night comes and the temperature drops fairly quickly.  What happens then is everything is encased in ice and not in a good way.  (FYI, the only good way something is encased in ice is when it's David Blaine and no one will let him out.)  What you end up with is treacherous fun:

*** You'll need to click on the picture to get the full effect***

You may have noticed that there are no cars on the street.  This is because of a massive 348 car pileup just off camera.  And I'm not smiling because of the accident.  I'm smiling because I was enjoying the first few feet my slide when my face froze that way.  That was 15 blocks ago.  I'm actually terrified beyond belief because I can't figure out how I'm going to stop.

Let me give you the tour...

Do you know what this is?

That's right, it's a picture of my bedroom wall.  I've covered my walls with custom Fatheads showing off my amazing athletic prowess.  Some people want posters of their favorite bands, some people want motivational posters featuring kittens in precarious positions, but those are for middle school kids.  I'm an adult now, so it's time that I moved on to more adult decor.  If you think these are for kids, you're dead wrong.  No kid should be able to afford these things.  Custom Fatheads are a status symbol, trust me.  They say, "I'm successful enough to afford to take high quality pictures of myself wearing the uniforms of professional sports teams and have them converted into life sized nylon stickers that I can place on my walls and windows."

I can't wait until they film my episode of Cribs.  That show is totally still on, right?

Times have changed.

I remember trimming the tree when I was a little kid.  It was a lot different than what we did tonight.  Yeah, you know what's coming now.  An illustration good enough to be a photograph*.  We're going "before" and "after" this time.  Just a heads up, this tree is pre-lit with fiber optic lights.  We didn't have those as children.  I'm still on the fence when it comes to pre-lit trees.  I think stringing the lights on a tree is an art.  It's a huge pain, but that's what art is, right?  A huge pain.

Majestic, isn't it?

*Digital photograph with a .01 MP camera.

Two things...

There are two issues I'd like to address today.

Issue #1:

As you can see, this is a highly detailed diagram of the temperature status inside our living room, bedroom and outside.  I'm not sure what the temperatures are like at either of our neighbors condos, so I've cleverly added question marks in place of numerical temperatures.  I don't really care if you want to use the Centigrade scale, or the Fahrenheit scale, I believe the principle remains the same.  Sure, under the Centigrade scale I look crazy for turning on the heater, but that's not what I'm trying to illustrate here.  What I'm trying to show you is that the heat distribution is terrible.  Which brings us the next isssue.

Issue #2:

I believe I've documented the NGZs on my face before.  I can't grow sideburns.  It is my cross to bear.  But what I've previously been to ashamed to admit is that if I were to attempt to grow a goatee, I would reveal another NGZ on my face.  I currently get by with combing some of my beard into the area to make it less obvious, but the truth is, HDTV would ruin me.  My NGZs would be major fodder for all the tabloids.

I guess my point is, even though my shameful NGZ existed long before I moved here, I'm going to attribute it to our uneven heating circulation.

That is all.

Another reason you should be jealous of me.

Yesterday we had our first snow flurries here in Chicago.  That means it's fricken dang cold here again.  I'm ok with it this year though because of where I work.  I know what you're thinking, but no, my work does not supply me with a heated bubble to travel around in.  That would be sweet though.  I have the next best thing.  I have about 1/2 mile of underground pathways that connect the building I live in to the building I work in.  I wish I could take credit for digging these myself, but I cannot.  It's just part of the downtown area.  The "Pedway" they call it.  It takes a little longer to navigate the Pedway than to walk outside, but when there's 12 feet of snow on the ground, I'll take the extra five minutes of warm walking to the shortcut of digging through snow and ice (which you would think would take longer due to the digging, but I use special tools that actually propel me forward at an alarming rate as I dig.  It's very tiring and it makes me sweaty.  Nobody wants to work with a sweaty guy.).  So until they invent these:

I'll be taking the Pedway.

Caption Contest!!

Ok, so I had this dream:

Thoughts?

For future reference

I won't say exactly what prompted this post today, but I will say that I'm doing this as a public service.  Please print the following graph and carry it around in your wallet in case we ever meet.  I think you'll find that we will all benefit from it.

That's all for now.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

For my birthday this year, the other of great significance bought me two tickets to tonights Weezer concert at the Aragon Ballroom.  It took me awhile to decide who I wanted to take (I went with the gift giver (and by awhile, I mean .000004 seconds)) but that was ok because I had a month to think about it.  So we're about to head out now, and to show my appreciation, I may do this:

Hope you're all enjoying your December 1st as much as I am!