Shit That Happened to me in 7th Grade: The Hottest Girls of Parkview Middle School 1995

I decided that I would like to add a new regular column to my beloved Brain Litter, a segment called Shit that Happened to Me in 7th Grade. This segment will feature entries and pictures from my journal at that time period, the original Brain Litter, if you will.

Let me give you a little background here before you just go diving in head first into my deepest, most personal thoughts from eleven years ago.

The year is 1995. I just started Parkview Middle School after transferring from Edison Middle School on the east side of Green Bay. I was kind of chubby, my voice cracked after every other syllable that sputtered out of my mouth, and my mother still dressed me with hand-me-down clothes from God knows where. Add to the fact that middle schoolers are generally just evil and ruthless to any kid different in any sort of way and you’ll get a fairly accurate idea of the mentality that I was in.

My journal was a way to vent my frustrations with the world and to sort out any other random idea I had in my head at the time. I suppose I could have talked it out with Zak Mott and Mike Petresek, who were my best friends at the time, but I’m pretty sure they were only using me so they could play with my Sega CD.

The best way I can describe my journal is to paint you a picture of a typical entry. Imagine me sprawled out on my bedroom floor with my notebook, Zak and Mike are playing Sewer Shark, completely indifferent that I’m even in the room, and Weezer, the Blue Album, is playing at full volume in the background.

Okay, I know you’re all dying to see my list (dated April 1, 1994) so here it is. Keep in mind that the page before this list contained a map that I drew of where all the popular kids sat in the cafeteria and the page after this list contained schematics for a water balloon bazooka:



First of all, if you’re a girl from the AHS graduating class of 2000 and you’re reading this blog post right now, I’m sorry you didn’t make the cut. In all honesty here, it was probably because you didn’t have any boobs yet. What can I say? I was really immature at the time.

Secondly, yup, Katie Knott. She was the only girl I knew going in to Parkview because she went to my church. When I first started my journal, I basically transcribed, verbatim, every dialogue exchanged between the two of us during band practice. Then I would write about what song we performed in percussion and how well I played. It was not compelling writing to say the least, but I got progressively better at capturing my thoughts as the drama of 7th grade unfolded before me.

Third, the Word of the Day. I concluded all my entries with a word of the day. Sometimes the word of the day had enormous reverence to the journal entry preceding it, sometimes it was an obscure reference to The State on MTV. I’m guessing in this case, I was leaning towards the latter.

Well, I hope you enjoyed Part I of Shit That Happened to Me in 7th Grade. Even if you never had the privilege of attending Parkview Middle School, I hope you can appreciate the universal themes of surviving that hellish period in life known as puberty.

More to come in the next few months…

Alright, alright, I know you all want to see the map of where the cool kids sat at lunch time. You didn’t actually think I would hint about something THAT funny and not post it, now did you?



Hey, look at this motley assortment of characters!



This photo has gotten pretty dinged up over the years. I'm still not sure why I poked holes in my own eyes. I was probably lashing out at the world because my mom wouldn't buy me the Gibaud jeans and Cool Water cologne that was neccesary for me to fit in with the cool crowd.

Bachelorette Parties are LAME

There is nothing, NOTHING, worse in the world than for a guy to walk into his favorite watering hole after a grueling day of work and see upon him, you guessed it, a goddamn bachelorette party in progress. I happened to run into one of those bastards this weekend, and let me tell you, I was pissed. As I sipped on my beverage with contempt that night, it totally dawned on me that bachelorette parties and pennies are eerily similar in that they are both annoying, pointless, and stupid.

I mostly hate Bachelorette Parties for two reasons:

1.) Bachelorette Parties are uninspired.

Every Bachelorette Party is the exact same thing every single time. About a dozen or so obnoxious chicks will clamour out of a bus or something, where they will proceed to invade some poor hapless bar where all the patrons will be forced to deal with stupid scavenger hunts, solicitations for a “suck for a buck”, and of course, a barrage of phallic paraphernalia waved in front of their faces.

Wow, good job maid-of-honor, no one has EVER thought of doing any of those things before. Your antics have put everyone in hysterics. Bravo. (Now imagine me clapping my hands three times very slowly with a smug look on my face, and you’ll get just the right amount of sarcasm I was going for there.)

As far as the “suck for a buck” thing goes, I’m actually okay with the idea of financially helping out soon-to-be newlyweds. After all, if they’re dumb enough to get married, then they're going to need all the help they can get. I just wish they offered something useful, like a refill on my drink, or for them to leave the bar. Almost anything is better than a stupid blow-pop.

I’m getting all worked up here just thinking about it. Come back tomorrow for reason Number 2, followed by a great remedy to cure your favorite saloon if it comes down with a scorching case of Bachelorette Partyitis.

Continued from Monday...

2.) It is impossible to pick up a chick in a Bachelorette Party

It’s been tried, oh lord has it been tried, but no man in the history of time has ever picked up a chick participating in a female stag party ritual. You would think that it would be easy based on the fact that they’re probably going to be boozing harder than had they been out at the bars normal-style and that there are about a million different ways you could start a conversation with someone because of their crazy theme or their scavenger hunt or whatever. But it’s not easy. It’s impossible, like I mentioned earlier. Here’s why:

A. Stick-to-itiveness. Every guy knows that deploying the divide-and-conquer method is textbook strategy for isolating a girl from a pack of women on any given night. But those girls are going to look awfully foolish holding dildos and inflated dicks in their hands if they’re not in their posse pulling the same kind of shenanigans. The chance of separating a chick from the rest of the flock is negligible at best.

B. The Bitterness Factor. A hottie in the bunch may look like she’s having a good time, but deep show she’s harboring deep resentment for the bride-to-be because she’s not the one that’s about to walk the plank. Since she can’t express these feelings openly, she will probably switch to man-hating mode for the duration of the evening.

C. Logistics. Even if you manage to beat the odds and make some kind of progress with a chick in a Bachelorette Party, you know in a few drinks, that drunk bus is moving on to the next tavern on the itinerary. No girl is worth following a Bachelorette Party around all night, I don’t give a fuck how hot she is.

So there you have it. Fortunately, I have concocted a scheme that is a sure-fire way to eliminate the Bachelorette Party in question. You simply approach any one of the girls as she’s coming from the bathroom or getting another drink and politely strike up a conversation, subversively pumping her for information on the bride and groom and other details about their lives. I realize that feigning interest in this dialogue will be EXTREMELY difficult but it’s very important for the next step.

Later on the evening, when the inevitable suck-for-a-buck girl comes along, casually mention that you heard about the recent affair that the groom had with insert name of girl you just spoke with and how happy you are that the bride was able to work out the drama because it looks like all you girls are having a lot of fun right now. Use as many details from the previous conversation as possible to add authenticity.

If the Bachelorette Party is particular annoying, tell suck-for-a-buck girl that the groom cheated on the bride with another man. For added effect, point to your buddy at the end of the bar and say it was him. This route is bound to end in hilarity.

Which ever way you choose, within a few minutes, the bride should either burst out of the bar in tears followed by all her friends to console her or a full-out Bachelorette brawl will break out. And we all know that fights between women ALWAYS end up in kissing and clothes being torn off, so it’s pretty much a win-win situation for everyone.

Okay, I’ve said far too much on this subject, but to make one final point, while I was typing this rant, my spell-check refused to believe the word Bachelorette even exists. Further research at dictionary.com confirmed that Bachelorette is in fact, not a real word.

It just begs the question, if Microsoft and Internet don’t acknowledge Bachelorette Parties, why should we?




Ever see the movie Bachelor Party with Tom Hanks? Me neither. But I'll bet you about a million dollars that these guys could throw a better party than the cacklefest I witnessed Friday night.

If Picasso Were Alive Today...

If Pablo Picasso were alive today and decided to channel his artistic genius into directing music videos for MTV, he probably would have come up with something very close to the video for DJ Eric Prydz Call on Me.

Let me back up a second. First let’s talk about how awesome the song is. The song is AWESOME. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you need to do one of the following:

A.) Get your ass on iTunes and download it
B.) Burn it from a friend that’s already in the know
C.) Go back to the year 2004 and walk into any club in L.A. or New York

I first heard the song this summer at a club in Milwaukee where people were rocking out to it like it was brand spankin’ new (we here in the Midwest are a little slow picking up trends from our fashionable neighbors on the coasts). It blew my mind then like its blowing my mind right this second as I’m boppin’ along to it and typing these very words.

The reason Call on Me is so awesome is that it takes the best part of Steve Winwood’s Call on Me, Valerie and gives it to you over and over again. And again and again. And again and again. It’s like eating pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Every day.

If I ever open up a night club, the theme of the club is that I’m going to instruct the DJ to play Call on Me basically every other song, unless of course the kids out on the dance floor are having too much fun, in which case I’ll have the DJ play it a ratio of 3:1 to other songs, in favor of Mr. Prydz’s opus of course.

The only other songs I will allow in my club are songs that have the same format as Call on Me, where the refrain is simply repeated over and over again. That way, uncoordinated white guys like me can string together a few coherent moves on the dance floor, secure in our knowledge that the beat isn’t going to go anywhere.

I might also allow songs with explicit instructions on how to move throughout the entire duration of the song. I’m thinking of that one song where the dude is like, “slide to the left, now slide to the right, three hops this time, now cha cha cha.” You know what song I’m talking about. It’s played at every wedding. Please don’t make me look it up. In any case, I can gyrate to that song as well, so it’s okay.

I wish I could somehow have Call on Me pumped into my cubicle as a permanent soundtrack to my work week. The hours would go by like seconds as I completed all my daily tasks with machine-life efficiency. Then at 5:00, the music would stop and I would slowly awaken from my trance, staring at my hands quizzically and asking myself questions like “where I am?”, “how did all this work get done so quickly and thoroughly?,” and “why am I getting promoted to vice-president?”

Enough said, Call on Me is genius. Picasso would be proud.



I don't think this video needs an explanation. This is high art, people!

Blog Me? Blog You!

Alright Internet, I don’t like you and you don’t like me.

Well that’s not necessarily true…I do kind of like you, Internet. You’ve given me free music and movies, up-to-date news and weather reports to distract me at work, and fantasy football. I won’t even mention that you’ve essentially taught me the birds and bees through your infinite stash of pornographic materials.

I guess I owe you a quite a bit.

Which is why I have decided to bring Brain Litter out of retirement: To feed you a couple extra kilobytes of binary code to help alleviate your insatiable appetite for raw pointless data. I realize my content is far from a hearty meal, but at least it will tide you over until those assholes at Facebook get their shit together.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m referring to the falling out at Facebook HQ over that new FEED feature that updates you on random wall posts and comments from other users. Talk about a horrible idea going more horribly awry.

I bet you were puking your guts out when that feature was released, huh, Internet? What’s that, you say? Just the dry heaves? Yeah, that happens to me too when I drink too much cheap tequila.

I really don’t know why I stopped writing in the first place. It’s one of the few things I really enjoy doing besides going out with my friends and dominating 5-star sudoku puzzles. There have been so many times over the past few months when I’d be out and I’d witness something cool or be part of some weird event and in the back of my head, I’d be thinking, oh man, I can’t wait to get home and blog the shit out of this interaction, but alas! I can not, for I have forsaken my creativity to be some cog in a wheel.

Cog no more, I’ve got some big ideas (blog and non-blog) that I’d like to make happen between now and next spring. Ideas so big that it necessitated the purchase of a giant 40 dollar dry erase board, because big ideas need a big medium to be written down on. Yeah, I’m THAT guy now; guy that paces around a room, stroking my chin and pondering at a big dry erase board, while drinking a Cabernet and listening to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony in the background. I know, what a douche bag I have become.

At least I don’t have a clipboard, though. I’ve got a long way to go before I become Clipboard Guy.

Stay tuned, ladies and gents, me and Internet have some interesting things lined up for yuhs.



A lot has happened since my last post. For instance, Joe got pubes now.

Brain Litter is Retiring

Hello friends,

After very careful consideration over the past few weeks, I think it is time to end my little experiment here and retire my blog. Yes, I realize that many of you will be absolutely crushed by these turn of events, but I have my reasons, most notably, the real world is starting to crash down upon me and so I think it's time to put an end to my little fantasy world here, where Brett Favre looks up to me, zombie epidemics are eminent, and I have to resort to childish dating rules to screen the hundreds of potential love interests that are hounding me at every corner.

This whole turn of events transpired a few weeks ago when I put my house on the market. I was extremely busy with painting, landscaping, and general cleaning to make my house ready for viewing. I was coming up with good ideas in my head, but I was just too exhausted to type them out at the end of the day. It was frustrating.

Well, things actually started getting worse. Work started really picking me up so I had to stay later just to keep up. Then some asshole that I showed my house to ratted me out to the City of Madison Code Enforcement for illegally renting one of my two non-conforming bedrooms in the basement. Even as I write this, I’m staring down at my gut that magically grew this winter, which makes me realize that my ass should be on a treadmill right now instead of in front of a keyboard.

All of a sudden, blog posts on applying economic game theory to pick up chicks and reasons why the sport of boxing in Hollywood has been at the epicenter of the some of the biggest turning points in history (the thesis there being that Russell Crowe in Cinderella Man, Will Smith in Ali, and Sylvester Stallone in Rocky IV, single handedly defeated the Great Depression, Racism, and Communism respectively) became pointless in light of my current predicament.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not depressed or anything. I have great friends and family, I love my job, and things will eventually be on the up and up again. I guess I just realized that I don’t need to live in a fantasy world any more; reality is working out pretty well for me as is. I just need to concentrate on it harder.

So thank you once again for tuning in, leaving comments, and complimenting me on my work over the last 10 months. Your support has really meant a lot to me. See you all later in this crazy mixed-up world of ours. I hope to milk as much fun out of it as I can and I hope you do as well.

Busted With My Secret Song

Every dude has a secret song that they are ashamed to like.

Fellas, you know what I am talking about. It’s the song you keep on that unlabeled CD that sits underneath the driver’s seat. It’s the second or third to last song, cleverly hidden amidst a collection of Pantera Greatest Hits or some other assemblage of death metal. It’s the song you only listen to after rolling up your windows and checking over your shoulder for stowaways. Sound familiar?

Well I was driving home from work today and I think this warmth has gotten into my head, because I decided to pop in my secret song with my windows haphazardly down. I knew it was foolish to tempt the secret song gods with such insolence, but I didn’t care, the intro was just starting.

A Jitterbug...A Jitterbug…you put the boom boom into my heart…

You can stop laughing now. Any guy that has never sang along with a Wham song is lying to you. Well, maybe not necessarily Wham but they are pretty much interchangeable with any other singing fairy dance squad out there. Yes, I am ashamed that I find that ONE Wham song kind of catchy, but dammit, what a man listens to in the privacy of his own car is his own damn business.

Unfortunately, this business became public when my car suddenly came to a halt in the always reliable 5:00 traffic of the west bound Beltline. Instinctively, I applied my brakes to prevent myself from crashing, but mentally, I was staging up George Michael in front of a packed stadium of delusional teenage girls.

The older woman in the white Sebring next to me was particular amused by my bellowing. At that point, where you’re caught red-handed, you’re only option is to run with it.

Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go. Take me dancin’ tonight! Yeah Yeah Yeah !

Stupid rush hour. It’s the source of all my problems. Well, maybe if people didn’t gawk at the car wrecks IN THE OPPOSITE LANE then my secret song would have remained an enigma to this day.



You know that rule for concerts where you're not supposed to wear a shirt with then band that you're about to see? Apparently that rule doesn't apply if you are the band.

The Time I Convinced Brett Favre to Not Retire

Yes, the rumors are true. It was I, who single handedly convinced Brett Favre to play another season for the Green Bay Packers.

It’s kind of a funny story actually.

You see, Brett Favre and I are in regular communicato for pretty much everything. We both have one of those direct red phone systems without any phone numbers on it like the United States and Russia used during the cold war. The only difference is that Brett Favre dominating another season for the Green and Gold has far more repercussions than the prospect of nuclear holocaust.

Normally, Brett Favre and I keep tabs with each other on a weekly basis. He usually just calls for women advice, home improvement ideas, penetrating the Vikings defense, stuff like that; but lately he has been really on edge. I knew he was stressed out on whether or not to play next this year so I kept my distance but I was starting to get a bit perturbed when two months went by without a peep from him.

Finally, last Tuesday, I got a call from the man himself. I picked up the phone, livid at this point that he hadn’t kept me in the loop on his retirement decision. There was all this wild speculation going and I wanted some honest to God answers. I’ll transcribe the conversation verbatim:

Brett Favre: Hey, Ben, it’s me.

Me: Oh…hey, Nancy.

Brett Favre: Ben, c’mon, cut me some slack, I’m under a lot of pressure here. I’m not the same man I was ten years ago. I lead the league in interceptions, my quarterback rating is at an all time low, the…

Me: Yeah, well Dan Marino had a sob story like your too but that didn’t stop him from setting the all time record for passing yards and touchdown receptions. But I guess you don’t care about being better than Dan Marino, do you?

Brett Favre: Well Dan Marino doesn’t have a super bowl ring either, does he?

Me: Sure, you’re right, I guess I didn’t notice that when he was chewing the scenery with Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. How much more screen time did he have from you again in There’s Something About Mary. I can’t remember because he was basically in the whole movie while you only had a few crappy lines.

Brett Favre: Dan Marino is a hack! That’s it! I’m going to play another season and not only break every one his records but I’m going to win another title for Green Bay. Then I’m going to star opposite of Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in some new comedy and it’s going to be awesome.

We then got into a heated debate on what song he wanted played when he returned for the home opener of the 2006 season. He thought the Imperial March would be a great way to intimidate the opposing team but he eventually conceded that the Star Wars Theme Song would be more appropriate seeing that he would be the new hope for the Packers claiming the Super Bowl XLI title. At least the decision for him to lead a charge onto Lambeau carrying a sword and riding a white stallion was unanimous.

You see it was me and my cunning use of reverse psychology that prompted Brett Favre to forget about his retirement. I know how to hit him where it hurts. I figure I’ll be using that Dan Marino ruse to keep him playing for at least another six seasons.

You’re welcome, Green Bay.



You can easily trip up Brett Favre's ego by making fun of his performance in There's Something About Mary even though, deep down, I know he's done some of the finest acting performed in Hollywood in probably the last decade.

My Genius Idea: VI ( and some stuff about Ding)

I just wanted to let everyone know that I have received a very positive response from my People that look like Things and Other People post a few months back. It was so successful, in fact, that people are actually starting to refer to Ding as Turk now in his home town of "The Good Land" i.e. Milwaukee.

To mess with my friends is one of the main focuses of this blog. In the spirit of this hazing, I have entered Ding into a contest sponsored my NBC. The hit sitcom Scrubs has decided to let the audience name the future baby of Turk and Carla.

I have submitted a convicing argument to the producers of Scrubs to name the baby "Dingeldein". My case is simple, yet effective. Dingeldein looks exactly like Turk. Case closed. End of Story. You heard it here first.

The Garage
I breathed a heavy sigh as I let the bar down on the squat rack.

I didn’t know how many more repetitions I could handle but I knew I had to continue the farce. I wanted to be in a middle of a set when Aaron returned yonder. The look on his face would be worth all the gold in Eldorado.

Aaron religiously practiced the art of muscle blasting. He has carefully crafted and accumulated many iron oddities to isolate and build muscles in the body that probably remain dormant in most people throughout their entire existence. Anything that deviates from his muscle manufacturing philosophy (like wearing gloves or doing bicep curls) irritates him to extreme measures.

Which is exactly why I was performing quadriceps exercises in the front of my driveway during rush hour traffic. For Aaron, weight lifting was a solo spiritual experience of metaphysics and stamina, not an egregious display of showmanship.

As I expected, he was most perturbed by my utter lack of respect for his equipment. The bird was promptly flipped in my general direction. The sweat factory would never be the same again.

J.Peteman Ideas: Part V

Almost there.

My Old Bedroom
A hint of gasoline tickled my nostrils when I entered the house.

“How odd,” I thought to myself.

Perhaps I stepped in a puddle of petrol when I was refueling my automobile earlier that day. Or perhaps I spilled a bit of gas on my denims when filling the mower at the week’s finale.

All good guesses, but the stringent smell was indeed, a motorized bicycle that someone parked in my bed. It was deliberate.

Oh! How I laughed at the spectacle before me! It was a humorous jest to say the least. Who could have masterminded such a devious prank?

Although Razz was printed on the flank of the jet black moped, it was clearly I who was razzed that day.



Living Room

I proposed a toast to all the gents standing in the parlor.

“To the greatest Christmas in the history of all time.”

I raised my chalice, a sacred relic bequeathed to me from a fair maiden in the employment of a Burger King franchise. The King has exquisite taste. This particular goblet was fashioned in the likeness of Gandalf of Lord of the Rings infamy. The intense mahogany flavor of the Yellow Tail Merlot was accentuated by the glowing scarlet beacon underneath my cup.

I grinned sheepishly as I set down my hearty drink. Donned in our absolute best winter holiday attire, my colleagues and I set out that evening to accomplish one task: to spread yule tide spirit in the form of a Seasons Greetings post card to all our friends and family. The mission was successful and celebration was in order.

The rest of the night was filled with revelry and debauchery as we took in our fill of fine wines and other lagers and ales on the streets of downtown Capital City. Although my memory of that time is hazy, the photograph shall last forever. It was a sublime moment for us all.

J Peterman Ideas: Part IV

This J. Peterman idea is taking longer than I thought but I'm going to keep plowing through anyways because I'm stubborn like that. On a positive note, my ridiculous goggle tan is gone, as you'll notice from my new profile picture. You'll also notice that I'm wearing a shirt in this photograph, because I know people will appreciate that.



Shawn's Old Room (Currently my room)
A mouse scurries across the open. He is blissfully unaware that the skeletons that litter his surroundings were once his friends. Why should he worry? For the time being, the predators were gone.

Two Botswanan boa constrictors, the very same kind of boa constrictors that have terrified the pygmie tribes of Western Zimbabwe for generations, have escaped from their glass cell. The whole upstairs is put on lock down like a prison riot at Sing Sing. If the snakes were loose, it was important to keep them as closely contained as possible.

I muster up all of my courage and begin searching for the fearsome reptiles. It was better to go on the offensive than to be ensnared in the deadly embrace of Shawn’s so-called “pets” when I least expect it. I begin my search by checking the recesses underneath my bed.

I coil in horror as the lethal serpents hiss at me, beckoning my doom if I should approach any further. The language of the parseltongue is ever so subtle, yet excruciatingly terrifying. I yell for back up. Shawn came to my rescue and promptly retrieved the slithering assailants.

I was safe for the time being. I wish I could say the same for the mouse.