Random Thoughts on a Random Day

I’ve decided to take a brain dump on you all today because I have many thoughts that don’t quite warrant an entire post.

First order of business: More people that look like other people.


Watching the Super Bowl last weekend, I noticed a glaring resemblance between the NFL’s luckiest quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, and my hero Jim Helpert from my new favorite show The Office. Weird.



And before Dingeldein extracts his revenge on me for my expose on him looking like Antonio Freemen and Turk, I’m going on the offensive by revealing some incriminating photos of people that kind of look like myself. Unlike Brett Favre, some people actually DO think I look like Pacy from Dawson’s Creek and Eric Foreman from That 70’s Show. Personally, I don’t think the Foreman similarities are really there unless I’m two weeks past due for a haircut but that does tend to happen to me quite a bit.

Now for some Plugs:

I’d like to give a shout out to comedian Nick Mortensen for re-claiming his title of Funniest Person in Madison last December. He actually hails from Green Bay so you know he’s got to be funny in order to win this prestigious award without meeting the most basic eligibility requirements of actually being from Madison. Plus he refers to Su Doku in his bit and everybody loves Su Doku. Can’t wait to see you next year, Nick.

I’d also like to give a shout out to my second favorite wrestler of all time, “The Genuine Article” Chris Jordan for his Jackpot Jackpot Jackpot maneuver that is so nice, you have to say it thrice. My first favorite wrestler of all time, the Iron Yuppie, is unavailable for comment.

The last shout out goes to my English Lecturer from last fall for publishing my paper on her website about the time in high school when me and a bunch of my buddies broke into Lambeau Field to play a game of football. It’s one of my favorite memories so I’m just happy to be able to preserve it. It still needs a little work though.

A few more thoughts:

I got my Fusion Razor and I think I figured out why it is named the Fusion. It’s because the scientists at Gillette literally needed to harness the raw power of cold fusion in order to create this cutting edge shaving technology, no pun intended. My head almost exploded from pure glee using this device.

But it pales in comparison to the idea I have for the next generation of razors. Get this, not six blades, not seven blades, but ONE multi-purpose blade that does the same function as the five blades. I’m going to scrap that whole battery operated handle idea too because, is it just me, or does combining electricity and sinks filled with water just seem like recipe for disaster? Better yet, we’ll put the single blade on a cheap plastic handle so you can just throw it away when you’re done. I understand this idea is fairly radical so it’ll probably never catch on but what do I know?

Finally, I’m going to Phoenix this week and it’s going to be awesome. I’ll try to come back with a story. In the future, I’ll keep the brain dumping to a minimum.


Another Picture of No-Friends Hercules. I guess he can be KIND of cute when he's not biting feet and shitting all over the house.

Super Blog Sunday

What could possibly be better than Super Bowl Sunday? Could it possibly be TWO blog posts in one day? I bet it is.

Being the cutting edge blogging enthusiast that I am, it is my duty to report my observations on today’s game.

First, I am glad that advertisers have taken note from last year and given us exactly what we wanted to see in a Super Bowl commercial: more monkeys in suits doing business in an office. I’m sorry but to me this kind of stuff is timeless. I think we have reached the absolute pinnacle of low brow humor. The marketing department at whatever the name of the company that does those commercials have done a fantastic job creating a following and thus building brand recognition for their product and/or service.

The low point of today’s commercials was probably the Whopperettes commercial from Burger King. It’s painful to watch Brooke Burke go from overexposed beauty queen to utter obscurity in such a short period of time. What happened to you, Brooke? You used to be about the modeling and the partying. Now you’re about schlocking hamburgers for BK? What gives!? Even your most devoted Maxim minions are going to be upset about this. For shame. For shame.

The award for the coolest product easily goes to Gillette with its FIVE blades on the new Mach Fusion. If five blades aren’t enough to rock your world, there’s a bonus blade on the backside for sideburns. The Mach Fusion may be the greatest consumer product ever created. I could literally feel the patches of stubble on my face quibble in fear when the commercial first aired. I’m finding a 24 hour Walgreens when I’m finished with this post.

One thing I’ve always wondered about is why any respectable marketer would allow John Madden to do the commentary for the Super Bowl or any game for that matter. Not only is the man incapable of forming a coherent sentence out of his mouth, but his jowls flapping around in the breeze is enough for anyone to lose their appetite while watching the game. This is does NOT bode well for Pizza Hut, Doritos, Pepsi-Cola, or any other snack maker banking on huge game day sales. Someone needs to get Madden a bacon sandwich or something off stage to keep the camera off him as much as possible. I’m sure Al Michaels would agree.

The thing that annoyed me the most was that silly game of football that kept interrupting the commercials. It was really difficult to care about the game since my beloved Packers were not being featured but I’m pretty sure Pittsburgh was the victor over Seattle.

Well you could actually make a case that ALL the players were winners today. After all, they don’t have to live in Detroit.

3000 People Love My Blog

Wanna know something crazy? Brainlitter.blogspot.com.org has reached the 3000th hit mark. That’s pretty damn good! Granted I switched all of my roommates’ computers to make my blog their homepage so about half my hits last about .5 seconds as they immediately go to Google, so let’s just be conservative at 1000 hits and call it a day.

What I feel the real accomplishment here is that my little forum for groundless rants and irrelevant opinions has gone international. Thanks to my lovely foreign exchange sister Maite from Brazil and a few forwards to her friends, I now have hits from Curtiba (her hometown in Brazil that you’ve probably never heard of but has a population of 1.5 million people) and Argentina. That means I have achieved one of my secondary goals for my blog which was to give foreigners a completely inaccurate portrayal of a typical American.

My PRIMARY goal for Brain Litter is to stave off Brett Favre’s retirement for another 25 years. You’ll thank me when he throws in the towel at 65 years old like the rest of working stiffs.

Something else I found funny was that if you google the names of people I mention in passing, my site comes up within the top ten hits. My buddy David Dimmer, the Gandalf of computers, tells me the reason for this is because I’m linked to his business website (www.fyin.com) and he knows all these little tricks that Google uses in order to bring searches to the most relevant.

Gandalf tried to explain to me the subtle intricacies of this process but I had no idea what the hell he was talking about so I just nodded my head politely and thanked him for the publicity. It was equivalent to Chuck Norris explaining why his roundhouse kick is such an effective deterrent against crime. I am sure they are both fascinating subjects but I just assume leave the jargon to the experts. Ignorance is bliss.

I promise that the next 3000 (1000) hits will be just as exciting as the previous ones. There will be more posts, more pictures, more lists, more in-depth interviews, more action, more suspense, more man-woman-gorilla love triangles, more giant disgusting bugs, and more dinosaur fighting than you’ll be able to handle.

Whoops, I kind of digressed from what I was going to deliver in upcoming posts to more of what I want to see in a sequel to King Kong. My mind wanders like that sometimes.

Anyways, thanks for reading my blog everybody. And, yes, I do realize I am a shameless self-promoter. Hell, it works for Donald Trump…



My roommate Joseph Steven Daniels from Green Bay, Wisconsin put my favorite coffee cup in jello for retribution from the time I put his moped in his bed. This has nothing to do with the post, I just think it's funny as hell.

My Biggest Regret from College

I was watching Revenge of the Nerds the other day and it just occurred to me that I missed out on one of the greatest thrills of a college education: the time honored tradition of the Panty Raid.

When I was in high school, I was under the distinct impression that co-eds sat around their living quarters in perpetual fear that at any given moment, a pack of exuberant frat boys could come storming in and steal their undergarments. This would be horrific at first but deep down they secretly enjoyed being the victim of a sophomoric prank and would eventually cave in and have sex with said frat boys. I had no reason to think otherwise, after all, most of my ideas about college came from watching B movies on USA Up (insert annoying high squealing weird chick here) All Night.

I think Elvira used to host that show too. In any case, it was the closest thing to porn I had at the time, so I thought it was pretty awesome.

Well, five years have gone by and I haven’t stolen NEARLY as many thongs as I would have liked to. The women these days are so PC, it’s ridiculous. Why can’t you let us men invade your privacy like the good Lord intended?

All this talk is bringing up other painful memories of stuff I never got to do in college. For instance, I will always regret:

1. Never having an arch-nemesis dean/rival fraternity to wreck havoc upon
2. Dressing up as a woman to infiltrate a female dormitory, sorority house, cheerleader locker room, etc.
3. Using my ability to turn into a werewolf for academic purposes instead of winning a championship boxing title for my school

Dudes! It’s time for us to unite for a panty raid to end all panty raids. We need to act now. The line between youthful hijinks and second degree sexual assault is growing ever thinner. We’re going to need dark clothes, flashlights, ladders, and probably wonder joints. Liz Waters won’t know what hit her! After THAT we’ll get even with those damn Alpha Betas once and for all.

This is going to be a great semester!



My cousin, Michael J. Fox, showing off his other talent besides car surfing.
I, unfortunately, chose more scholarly pursuits.

People that look like Things and other People

Below is a picture of Eric Dingeldein. He has been one of my best friends since High School and I love him to death. That’s why I feel I can get away with embarrassing the hell out of him to the entire Internet universe.



The first person that Ding looks like is Wide Receiver #86 from the Green Bay Packers, Antonio Freemen, sans the dirty moustache.



My roommates and myself last Wednesday made the revelation that Ding also looks like Turk from the hit show Scrubs on NBC. He's the one on the right.



It’s really a travesty that I don't have his picture but Ding looks the most like this dude I sat next to in my English class Freshmen year. They actually bumped into each other at this crazy Halloween party that semester but for some reason, they didn’t want to acknowledge to each other that they’re basically identical twins separated at birth. I think it’s because they were both drunk at the time. Typical!


Finally, this last person or should I say, recently animated fictional inanimate CGI object, is described by Dingeldein himself to be something that he thinks he looks like. He even gives himself the moniker “Archer” from the movie Small Soldiers because he’s weird like that. Personally, I think the similarities are negligible at best.




Well, that pretty much does it for Dingeldein. He looks like a lot of people and things apparently. We should all be so lucky. If you can think of people that look like other people or things or just want to make fun of Dingeldein, please feel free to drop a comment.

You know, it just occurred to me while I was writing this that there is another obvious similarity between two people that I know very well:



It’s almost scary how much we both share the same looks AND quarterback abilities.

Mildly Great Moments in Competitive Eating

An interesting proposition came across me the other day at work. Some company gave our company a solid brick of Hershey chocolate with their corporate logo on it as a Christmas, err I mean "Holiday" present. Anyways, this monstrosity has been sitting in the break room for about a month now because nobody in the office knows what the hell to do with it.

That is until one of the vice president’s threw down the challenge that he would give 50 bones to anyone who could eat the whole thing in under 2 hours. As an aspiring athlete in the sport of competitive eating, this immediate piqued my interest.

Even though I toil day to day as a real estate analyst, I know my true calling is to become a world champion eater of something. I still haven’t decided if I want to eat a lot of something the fastest or eat the largest quantity of something in a single sitting. All I know is that I want to be on the same pedestal as that little Asian kid that can eat 30 hot dogs in 5 minutes or whatever his crazy record is. People love that kid. I heard he can’t walk the streets of Asia without getting mobbed by fans. How sweet would that be?

My foray into competitive eating has been less than stellar up to this point. I’ve tried drinking a gallon of milk in one hour without throwing up but everyone knows that’s impossible. I’ve also eaten 2 slices of bread in a minute but that shit is BORING! Any hack can do that. It’s so amateurish.

My first real challenge was posed by a roommate after he heard my frozen pizza hypothesis. My frozen pizza theory is simply that 100% of all men have the capacity to eat an entire frozen pizza at any given time. I don’t care if the dude just got done stuffing himself at Thanksgiving, if presented a frozen pizza, the guy could somehow still eat the whole thing with little to no trouble. It’s just one of the many idiosyncrasies of the male appetite. I can’t explain it, it’s just true.

Anyways, my buddy challenged me to eat 4 frozen pizzas in 1 hour with the prize being the cost of the pizzas. It was an interesting proposal but I felt the stakes were too low to jeopardize my frozen pizza hypothesis. Can you imagine what the world would be like today if Einstein gambled away his theory of relativity because some other scientist bet him he couldn’t eat six Whoppers in one sitting or some stupid shit like that? Not on my watch.

Back to the mammoth brick of chocolate, I did some prep work to test the feasibility of the challenge. I weighed the chocolate on the postage meter minus the packaging and it came out to 2 lbs and 5 ounces. I then checked Hershey’s website for nutritional information, made some metric to English conversions, and deduced that the block had approximately 5170 calories and 685 grams of fat.

After about an hour of deliberation, I ultimately decided to back off from the challenge. I weighed the benefit of being the office hero for the rest of the afternoon versus having the runs for the next 8 weeks. It was THAT and the fact that I didn’t want to be the youngest person to ever need a triple bypass heart transplant. I think I chose wisely.

Maybe I’ll never be a grand master in the art of gorging myself, but I do have a back up plan in case things don’t pan out. I also happen to be extremely awesome at rock-paper-scissors. My rock strategy never fails…



Charles Lindbergh, Lou Gehring, Chuck Yaeger, Indiana Jones, and now Takeru Kobayashi: The short list of greatest American Heros grows ever longer.

What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas, My ASS!

We survived.

Barely.

One more day in that crazy city and we would have been goners. Not because of the excessive gambling, not because of the double 7&7’s that the casino’s are all but willing to supply for free, not even from the sheer exhaustion of getting only 6 hours of sleep over the course of a three day weekend.

What almost did us in was the stench of our hotel room.

When you get four dudes shacking up in a tiny ass hotel room, you know it’s going to be bad, but our room took top honors for all time worse smells ever. The room was littered with smoky sweaty clubbing clothes and leftover McDonald’s wrappers (I realize we could have eaten better in a city known to offer every type of buffet known to mankind, but, hey, that would have been one less red chip to throw down on the blackjack table) for as far as the eye can see. If I had to guess, I would stay the overall smell would be equivalent to sasquatch taking a dump between two McGriddle paddies and then letting it bake in the sun for eight days. It was bad.

But that odor was compounded exponentially due to certain people on the trip whom I won’t mention but their names start with Pete Noreberg and Cody Langeness, thought it would be a good idea to wake Comrade Dmitry up by picking up the mattress he was sleeping on and then slamming him into a wall. This was, of course, very humorous to everyone. Unfortunately, the giant picture on the wall broke, so that meant we could not get room service until we were property evacuated from the premises and the credit card that our room was paid for on was reported stolen so as to avoid paying for said giant picture frame.

I almost feel guilty about the whole incident and the mess we left behind, but then I calculated my gambling losses for the weekend and realized that the Stardust made out like a goddamn bandit. Now I see it as a fair trade: They break my wallet, we break their picture. We probably could have broken a few lamps too and they still would have come out ahead. Bastards.

The weekend was not ENTIRELY jam packed with debauchery, though. We did manage to have a little honest fun. We did see a few shows. Well, I guess eROCKtica does not qualify as wholesome entertainment. Let’s see here then, there’s the few hours we spent at Gameworks. Wait, crap, that afternoon too was filled with gratuitous gambling on 3 puck air hockey and arcade basketball. I guess the 30 second freefall from when we went sky diving Friday morning was about the only time one of us wasn’t gambling, drinking, smoking, cursing, grinding, or breaking objects. I KNEW I had a reason to feel good about myself when I got home.

Oh I forgot to mention one more vice. Chalk one up for Comrade Dmitry, for shattering the record on gross misconduct for the state of Nevada’s stringent usury laws. He wanted a $10 dollar juice on a $50 loan for ONE night. By my calculation, that equates to a 7200% APR. He made all the loan sharks in Vegas look like goldfish that night. It must be all that Russian mafia blood flowing through his veins. I love that kid.

Getting on the plane home, I had nothing left in my pockets but 60 cents and a handful of ATM receipts. Do I have any regrets? Hell, no. There were so many definitive moments that made the losses all the worthwhile. Between Cody yelling “I fold!” right before passing out at the blackjack table at the Wynn, or Pete’s charity on Sunday night with the presentation of his McDonald’s gift card to me with 30 cents on it, or simply the glance I got from this hottie at Body English at the Hard Rock as her boyfriend dragged her off the dance floor (must have been my eyebrows!); there was just too much fun had last weekend. There is only ONE thing I did not understand:

How did the Patriots AND the Colts lose on Sunday? It was a lock I tell you, a lock!

The four of us, still maintaining our dignity. It was only a few hours later when we discovered Craps.

Don't Drink and Blog

Drinking and blogging. It's probably right up there with calling ex-girlfriends or anybody after bar time for that matter. It’s something you know is wrong but you do anyway. Well I had one too many Jager bombs tonight and do not anticipate going to bed anytime soon and there are only reruns of Entourage on the tube right now so here I am. Thank God I have a spell checker right now to make this mess even possible.

Let’s talk about my weekend. In particular, I would like to talk about Friday night.

There is nothing better than kicking back on a Friday after a long hard day of work. I was in a pretty chill mood so when an old friend asked me to meet up with her and some of her friends at the Blue Velvet, I was really excited. Get dressed up a little, sip a few martinis, engage in some sophisticated conversation; I couldn’t have asked for a better way to start the weekend.

Well after about 10 minutes of exchanging pleasantries, the conversation quickly turned for the worse. Apparently, the people in this group wanted to talk about new vibrator technology. I am almost positive that I was NOT the one that brought this up. In any case, I got a crash course on the finer points of what’s cool and not cool in the world of battery operated man parts. It was awkward. I never want to hear the following sentences ever again:

“The rabbit has a nub now instead of ears!”

and

“It’s like a bullet only a lot bigger!”

I’m pretty sure the girl who said that last statement has never seen a real bullet in her entire life. That’s fine, though. I was actually starting to think to myself, Damn! I can compete with that!” But then I got to thinking, what if she was referring to can of Coors Light. Once again, my logic has placed me into an uncomfortable situation. Curse the man that first filtered the majestic streams of the Rocky Mountains to give us the crisp, refreshing banquet of beer known as Coors Light. Those Silver Bullets are tasty but now I’m going to have to add them to my on-going list of things that really intimidate me.

I jest that the conversation was weird but it pales in comparison to what transpired later. I can only describe the precarious situation I got myself into football terms because that’s how my thought process works. THAT and Simpsons analogies, but’s that’s neither here nor there. So let’s make this easy for everyone and pretend that every man is a running back and messing around is scoring a touchdown. In this universe, I am a strong runner and know a few moves, but I tend to fumble. A lot. Kind of like Ahman Green.

But Ahman Green never fumbled in a Super Bowl which is what happened last night only worse. I was making steady gains throughout the game, a few setbacks here and there, and some bad play calling in the fourth quarter, but nevertheless still in the game. I think I was wearing the defense down though because towards the end of the night, I had a clear shot at the endzone. But I ran out of bounds near the goal line! It does not matter how good of a player you are, ANYBODY can fumble at ANY given time, but it takes a true DUFUS to run out of bounds with no time on the clock. I wish I could remember what I was thinking at the time. Did I think I had time for another play? Did I actually WANT to lose on purpose, thinking the chase for another Super Bowl was more important than actually winning? Or did I simply just run out of steam? I honestly don’t know and I am really pissed at myself. I think the opposing team is pissed at me too or more likely, just really confused. I don’t blame her.

And just like the Super Bowl, a crack at the title only comes around about once a year for me so that really blows too. Well, at least I have my Vegas trip coming up next weekend. I’m sure there will plenty of opportunities for me to bumble an exhibition game or two…

2006: Where are the Hoverboards?

Well, 2005 is over and what a disappointment it was. In a year marked by an amazing European trip, a balls-to-wall Spring Break in Cancun, my college graduation, and the start of a full time career, a question in the back of my head still lingers: Where the hell are the goddamn hoverboards?

I know I am not the sole individual having this same thought. Like most children, we were all raised to believe that the by the year 2000, we were going to be traveling in flying cars, people would be living in colonies on the moon, video games where you had to use your hands would be considered childish, and more importantly, every kid would have their own recreational hoverboard.

Sure, fine, okay, maybe I have seen the 1989 smash hit Back to the Future II one too many times. But in my mind, that was just wishful thinking. My REAL vision of the future was actually inspired on that crappy Disney ride at the Epcot Center that I was forced to ride on because Space Mountain was under repair. I was as bitter then as I am now about this whole situation.

I daresay the status of our current hoverboard technology is no where close to where it needs to be for mass production. When I was kid, I thought by 2006 we would be rolling out 5th or 6th generational hoverboards that were FINALLY capable of going over water. Now we’ll be lucky to even see a working prototype by the next decade. This is completely unacceptable.

I propose that we restore the former Soviet Union in all of its Communist glory and then challenge them to a new arms race to create the most awesome hoverboard known to man. A worthy cause like this will no doubt unite even the most jaded Republicans and Democrats, which will in turn, inspire confidence in the American people and jumpstart the economy once and for all. It’s win win for everybody because even if you are not totally gung ho for creating the ultimate hoverboard, then surely you can get behind fighting the communists again.

Plus we’ll get to beat the Commies again at Hockey in the 2010 Winter Olympics. Who doesn’t want to see that?



Waiting for my very own hoverboard would be a lot easier if I could get a pair of those Nikes.

Great Moments in Fantasy Football History

I am what you might call the Vince Lombardi of Fantasy Football.

I never realized it before but it turns out I am a true brain genius when it comes to Fantasy Football strategy. As of last weekend, I am now 135 dollars richer for kicking the crap out of my fellow office drones in a brilliantly executed line up of the best and the brightest in the NFL.

Well, actually it really came down to Donald Driver sucking some major ass in the Monday night game against Baltimore. This girl I had to play for a shot at the championship got incredibly lucky by having Tiki Barber play one of the greatest games of his career the night before. Because of that, I only had a 10 point lead and Donald Driver was Brett Favre’s go-to guy with the entire team having crippling injuries and all.

As much as it pains me to say this, Brett Favre really did me a solid by getting stomped by the Ravens. I thought I was in the clear until Aaron Rodgers, with 2 fumbles and an interception in a glorious debut, made one last attempt to restore some sort of dignity to the Green & Gold. He had 4 chances in the red zone to connect with Donald Driver and shatter my dreams at Fantasy Football glory. I promise you that no one was more on the edge of their seat with the Pack down 30 points late in the fourth quarter than me.

Needless to say, Rodgers followed through with his mediocrity and Driver only put up 6 points which paved the way for Larry, Rudi, and Chad or as I have affectionately labeled them, the Johnson Trinity, to triumph in the super bowl.

And the Vikings didn’t make the playoffs. Could this be the best football season ever!? Oh wait. 3-12. Inevitably 3-13. Shit.